the 14th dream of Dr Sardonicus – Day One

those of you lucky enough to be attending the forthcoming Fruits de Mer festival soiree – ‘the 14^th dream of Dr Sardonicus’ will each be rewarded with a bulging goodie bag of essential ear gear among which you’ll find three specially curated CD’s play listing pretty much everything sound wise that FdM stand for and delight in. over the coming days you can expect mentions for each of those CD’s along with commentaries on the goodie bag gathering. So without further ado, starting with CD1 – obviously – for a change – this is, I guess, what you’d call the psyched out one of the three, 14 specially selected head tripping cuties, with the exception – if I recall rightly – of three – Mystic Brew, Fast Cars and karovas milkshake – I could be wrong – the rest have all appeared in one form or another on past release happenings. the set opens to the bliss kissed lysergic burn of Aethereal’s ‘walking away’ which you might recall we mentioned in an earlier posting given it features on one of the four specially pressed lathe releases being made available at the event. we managed to shoehorn in a mention for the Fast Cars’ ‘mindset’ several dispatches ago, a bit of a dandy this one – all reverse loops with a irrefutable nod to Curved Air and Jefferson Airplane, in short a bit like imagining Crystal Jacqueline fronting up the much missed My Jealous God. frequent FdM flyers Stay slink their way in with the smoking cool ‘last time’ which in truth sounds like the luck of eden hall being taken by the hand through the more palatable kaleidoscopic moments of 90’s Brit pop in a Jesus Jones meets the mock turtles way. if memory serves me right, the Sons of Mod cut ‘lovebyrds’ is the alternating flip of that killer lathe cut that features the aforementioned Aethereal, and weren’t we just talking about the Luck of Eden Hall, well ripped from their current well received (too much grumbling we here are yet to see a copy) ‘the acceleration of time’ set this is ‘the happiness vending machine’ a straight on up power psych pop stomp fuzzily freebasing on Elephant 6 Collective whilst impishly nibbling away at the coda from Floyd’s ‘Lucifer Sam’. doyens of cool Vibravoid trip in with the f you ‘get out of here’ – having one of those moments myself strangely enough….all fizzing reverbs, hypno grooving psychedelics and shade adorned strut sneering – you know the deal – the dogs bollocks as they say in quaint tea rooms. next up Mystic Brew serve up some kaleidoscopic surferella in the shape of ‘yesterday’s sky’ which unless the ears do deceive sounds not unlike first generation Inspiral Carpets doing groovy things with Fuxa. those fancying their listening spaces daubed in all manner Eastern mystics as though applied by a killer cool Wall of Voodoo mighty do well to hook up to karovas milkshake’s flip wigging mushrooming mantra ‘purple sun of glastonbury’ while elsewhere the Seventh Ring of Saturn spin the darkly seductive ‘burning a hole’ – a zonked out stoned and skewed psych pop gem grooved to a mind arranging alchemy gathered from Wimple Winch essences. Adored around these here parts Topos Locos stump up their corking ‘Madelina Valentina’ originally released a few months back, a jet setting 50’s twang toned cosmopolitan femme fatale crafted out in the much missed spirit of b-movie sci-fi cadets Brand Violet. pulled from their recent ‘inside the wheel’ set, the Honey Pot delight and demur with the 60’s psych folk Moody Blues-ish ‘butterfly ride’ while fellow Mega Dodo label mates Mark and the Clouds opt for a spot of dreamy 70’s grooving via Dennis Wilson and Gene Clark for the radiant ‘take my sky’ and surely a new album from permanent clear light is long overdue, still the ghostly ‘iris murray’ hits the neglected spot, an eerie baroque pop chiller beguiled in a ghostly enchantment that sits somewhere between Paul Roland and Ooberman. which leaves the Telephones to see out matters in fine style with a smoking hot La’s-esque live take of ‘hummingbyrd’. nuff said.