Returning back to those incoming seasonal happenings from the Fruits de Mer sound house (see Elfin Bow and Touch previously). Pencilled in for Christmas delivery or thereabouts, two newly stamped cuts from the legendary workbench of Nick Nicely, one a re-reading of Dylan’s ‘all along the watchtower’ and an original penning in the shape of ‘the doors of perception’. In truth, and here is where the complaint letters and messages will flood, I’ve never really gotten Dylan, just one of those things, still all the same a tall order more so a brave one to tackle ‘all along the watchtower’ especially given Hendrix killed it. Left in the hands of Mr Nicely, he furrows a path that at once is not only coiled with a heavily mystical charming, but sounds for all the world as though its fallen out of late 60’s bad trip. Densely wired in a thick hazy psychedelic shelling there’s something here fractured and wasted deliciously in a beard stroking stoner vibrancy that much hints of the Bevis Frond, all of which I’m sure you’ll agree, is no bad thing. That said, Mr Nicely excels best when in sonic worlds of his own making, ‘the doors of perception’ finding him in an unfamiliar joyously and celebratory mood spinning several sonic plates at once to forge a strangely amorphous collage that free spirits to distractively weave in and out of conscious focus to apply to its morphing musical bow an effervescently radiant array of gospel and hymnal accents paired with momentary slices of tripping eastern mosaics, head expanding fried psychedelics and bliss bathed astral glides.
the sunday experience 