Wyrd Britain Mix 9

It's been a few months since we did one of these mixes so I thought it was high time for a new one.

This time we've included a couple of our favourites from last year, some old favourites and some highlights from the first few months of 2016, a year that seems determined to wipe out as many musicians and actors as it possibly can.  As I type this news has broke of the passing of Gareth Thomas who, as Roj Blake (in 'Blake's 7') and as Adam Brake (in 'Children of the Stones') amongst many other roles, is an icon of Wyrd Britain.  This one is for you sir.  We thank you for your work.

The player is, as ever, at the bottom of this post.

I hope you enjoy

.....................................................

Opening this here cavalcade of sinewy, sonic shapeliness is the bone aching loveliness of The Dandelion Set whose gobsmackingly good new album we reviewed in these here pages a short while ago.  This track, 'Tone Garden', is an itty bitty ditty that seemed like too good an opener to not use especially as it begins with such cool opening dialogue.
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/a-thousand-strands-1975-2015

The horticultural theme is continued with one of my own tunes, 'The Synaesthetic Garden' by The British Space Group which is part of my 'Phantasms' trilogy of radiophonic miniatures newly collected together and released on disc and digitally as 'The Phanstasmagoria'.  You'll excuse the shameless self promotion but needs must and all that.
https://ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-phantasmagoria-the-collected-phantasms-eps

Jon Brooks' 'Walberswick'was a real highlight of last year and here but one that was fairly difficult to get hold of and so here we present a track to help tide you over until a reissue appears.

Another one of last years gems was the debut EP from Reading's tongue mangling folktronica collective Revbjelde.  This years new album is a slightly more angular affair but one that is filled with delights such as this fun ditty that feels like it's been lifted from the opening credits of a 1970s kids TV show which is something Wyrd Britain heartily approves of.
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/the-weeping-tree

King Crimson are a band that never managed to grab me,  prog was never my thing, but I stumbled across this the other day and was a little bit blown away.  Prog tropes are noticeable by their absence and in their place is a rather lovely, floaty Krautrock-like guitar and electronica tune.

We gave an early shout out the Matt Saunders' Assembled Minds album in our best of 2015 list but as we had an early copy and it wasn't actually out until a few weeks into this year he's not actually featured in one of these mixes and it's something anyone with an interest in electronic music will thoroughly dig.
https://patternedair.bandcamp.com/releases

Orbital are one of those bands that always seem to have been there.  I still maintain that their version of the Doctor Who theme should have been used for the revised series but you can't have it all so here's a tune about, I presume, underwear.

I do like to include a Trunk Records release in these mixes and so this month it's the turn of the unusually named Cults Percussion Ensemble,  this is an album made by young (female) musicians living in and around the Aberdeen suburb of Cults - and you all thought it was something creepy - and features a young Evelyn Glennie as part of the group and it's an album I really can't recommend highly enough.
http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/cults.shtml

Drew Mulholland's Mount Vernon Arts Lab investigate the ghosts of martians past on a track from the Ghost Box reissue of the fabulous 'The Séance at Hobs Lane' before the Mix ends with a beautifully calm piece from Godflesh's Justin Broadrick's dark ambient project Final.

The Dandelion Set - A Thousand Strands 1975 - 2015

Buried Treasure

So, as some of you know I spent much of the second half of  last year pretty immobile due to numerous broken bones and the ensuing surgical procedures.  Truth to say it wasn't a whole lot of fun.  I was on quite a lot of morphine and as such watching films or reading books was out as I couldn't follow a plot and so I found myself staring at a lot of daytime TV - side note:  not even morphine makes Jeremy Kyle any less noxious - and listening to copious amounts of music, so much in fact that I quickly ran out of what was to hand and so began searching around for new delights to do interesting things in my ears and my opiate addled brain.

Alan Moore

One of the things I stumbled across was the Buried Treasure label whose John Baker Vendetta Tapes became one of my most played albums of last year.  In fact, if you check out my end of year list you'll find several Buried Treasure releases on there with several others not making the list simply due to numerical considerations.  So it was with real excitement that I opened the promo copy sent by label honcho Alan Gubby of this, the first B.T. release of 2016 by psychedelic troubadours The Dandelion Set here ably assisted by one of the spiritual godfathers of what we do here at Wyrd Britain,  Mr. Alan Moore.

Expectation, as we all know, can be a real bitch and I'd heard some Dandelion ditties on the recent B.T. comp, 'The Delaware Road', and I know now that Alan G. has an ear for the wonderful so this had a lot to live up to; an awful lot to live up to.  We've all been down that road of getting all 'kid at xmas' about a new release only for it to turn out to be more of a 'kid at dentist' experience but now and again under the tree, wrapped in some beautifully psychedelic wrapping is that perfect gift and it surpasses all expectations.

From the opening moments of 'Pristina Strawberry Girl' we know that we're in for a trip of a ride as dreamy psyche-pop insinuates itself into the room before the wordy wizard of Northampton weaves a weirdy, wandering narrative over a skronking frug noir soundscape and so the scene is set.

Angular prog excursions make way for forays into the realms of opiated French jazz pop.  Playful dances of electronic fireflies throw themselves through animated radiophonic swirls of psychedelic colour as tales of love, loss, hopes, delusions and a trip to the cinema stand square, stark and unflinching basking in the hallucinatory haze and calling you into this twisting, writhing, mesmerising world.  A technicolour playground of lysergic intensity and intent filled with love and magic.

.........................................................

'A Thousand Strands 1975 - 2015'  is released on 22nd April and Bandcamp pre-orders of the physical editions - LP / CD / Cassette - are sold out from the label - that's how good this album is - but will be available from an independent music supplier - shop independent and say no to tax avoiding multinationals - near you upon release.

Meanwhile here is a taster featuring the mighty Alan Moore, below that a video montage featuring live footage from 'The Delaware Road' launch gig and later this week you can hear a track on the next Wyrd Britain show on Mixcloud.