There's refined radio friendly Beach Boys then there's deranged scuzzy Beach Boys and much in-between but hey its all Beach Boys. Many can't hack the rough unhinged and lo-fi version but for those that can handle it there's a load of wild stuff. I mean they sometimes get so goofy its like outsider music at times... And they are retarded aren't they... like they've got arrested development, grown blokes stuck with 15 year old boy brains. In a way they're keepin' it pure with these adolescent rock'n'roll concerns and startling strange music that's so abrupt you can't ignore it.
A young Mike Love at a vocal peak here on this tune penned by Brian Wilson. Many moons later It was credited to Wilson/Love after legal action, there was no love lost between these two cousins. Creating a Christmas classic is no mean feat and here The Beach Boys entered the Christmas pop culture lexicon forever.
By this stage, the Brian's Back era, The Beach Boys were post-modern whether they knew it or not. Everything about this is fan-fucking-tastic: The melody, the words, the sentiments, the impeccable Brian production, the expansive harmonies, the hand claps, Brian on the fucking Moog!
You don't hear this ever on golden oldies radio here but it's an undeniable feel good hit of the summer.
The fuckin' best!
Find a ride
In the sum-sum-summertime It's OK
it's alright
Dennis on the outro... two Dennis' in fact!
Dennis
Dennis
*Roy Wood guests on drums
**The sound and vibe here are a precursor to Brian's great 00s solo LP That Lucky Old Sun.
***Also surely this is the inspiration for several sunny tunes on Ariel Pink's Before Today.
Beach Boys fans know this as a tune originally from Wild Honey but some insane people prefer this rerecorded disco version. The legendary Curt Boettcher (The Millennium/Sagittarius) along with Bruce Johnson were behind the production on this one. The ten minute version took up most of side two of L.A. (Light Album) however this is the 7 inch single edit of the tune. Many fans hated it as did guitarist Al Jardine.
[1967]
The Wild Honey LP is an underrated masterpiece. Its got a harder stripped back r&b vibe compared to the sophisticated psych pop of the previous two records. Like the rest of the album Here Comes The Night is heavy on the piano, bass and organ: A very nifty proto lo-fi sound. I do love it when Brian has a sing on Beach Boys songs.
This is a neat medley of the record that the Beach Boys scheduled to put out to follow up the strange synth pop odyssey Beach Boys Love You (1977) but Mike Love and Al Jardine ixnayed Brian's plans for that and made a different album instead called M.I.U. Album (1978).
The Beach Boys - Hey Little Tomboy [1978]
The one tune they salvaged from the abandoned Adult/Child project for the M.I.U. Album was this peak weird Brian tune. A lost classic. Many don't realise that Brian is a fucking hilarious dude because he's often so deadpan. He was one funny fellow!
A dark psychedelic dream pop classic. Mournful tones give way to a mesmerising kaleidoscope of ecstatic sound that gets so fervent it spirals off into the stratosphere leaving the gloom behind for the heavens.
Every Road Leads Home - Breathless (1986)
Another soaring hypnotic tune that detours into hair raising menacing sonic excursions before returning to the waves of celestial atmosphere and empyrean euphoria. Then the swirling gets so frenzied it's confusing and hard to distinguish if it's ominous or uplifting. An incredible dreamscape depiction where puzzling emotions are conjured: Foreboding joy.
Breathless – The Glass Bead Game (Full Album) [1986]
Breathless? Who were they again? You may ask. Well for a start singer Dominic Appleton sang The Jeweller, The Strength Of Strings and I Am The Cosmos on the second and third This Mortal Coil albums. Surprisingly however they weren't signed to 4AD despite being the archetypal 4AD band. Breathless bridged the gap between goth-y post punk and dream pop. At once a throwback and a glimpse into the future, the tried and true gloomy atmosphere and the future ecstatic sonic spirit that groups like Slowdive, The Church, Panda Bear etc. would later incorporate into their sound.
It's surprising a group like Breathless weren't more famous back in the day or even now while Chameleons, The Sound, And Also The Trees, Sad Lovers And Giants etc. who also weren't all that renowned either have fanatical cult followings amongst the younger generations online today. Breathless don't seem to be as highly regarded for some reason yet they might be more innovative with their sonic explorations expanding beyond the limitations of genre. Perhaps it's because those aforementioned groups were more about successfully nailing the tone of the style in that specific moment rather than experimenting by pushing the boundaries and creating new possibilities. Transcending the gloom of the era by injecting surreal trip-outs and euphoria into the mix was their masterstroke.
On The Glass Bead Game gloomy post-punk, eerie tribal ominousness, ecclesiastical tones and dreamy neo-psych gloriously collide in a splendid atmospheric vision....
The debut Neats EP came out the same year as spiritually similar records like Mission Burma's Vs, Dream Syndicate's Days Of Wine And Roses,Chronic Town from REM etc. yet today many aren't aware of these Boston legends. Evocative and moody lyricism was combined with clean edgy dark strumming. These driving instrumental workouts would go on a really intense journey with chiming jangles offering a reprieve. This was supreme shadowy art rock.
Rocking your dystopian nightmare hard in psych-post-punk electro manner.
The Hands Of Cain didn't release a record during their existence in the 80s but somebody tracked down these lost tapes, digitally restored them and in 2009 the compilation LP The Only Sound was released.
The Hands Of Cain - Pristine Passion [1983]
Mental psychedelic goth jam with ott anthemic synth touches.
The Hands Of Cain - Two Steps To The End [1984]
Absurd Bowie-isms, phased drummage, classic goth bass, gloomy synths, Barney-esque one string guitar lines and dark space rock flourishes all put through a gothic echo chamber.
The Hands Of Cain - Deadlips [1983]
These guys could get pretty weird too with their fx, synths, psych guitars and echoed vocals. This one's for fans of early Chrome.
Spotlight paid homage to old school electro with its vocoder robot amongst the woozy noir funk.
The funky trip hop hop sounds of pioneer Wagon Christ get a bit forgotten in the historic lineage of plunderphonics to sampledelia to instrumental hip hop to hauntology to whatever but he was a master of the nocturnal downtempo tune.
Back in the day when it all used to, literally, be all about the beats. Sometimes all I ever heard in a tune was the beats, the actual beats and we were beat connoisseurs.
Apocalyptic noisey ambient drone classic. It's got the feeling and texture of Daydream Nation and F#A#∞ without the Beatles rock band dynamics and instrument definition just a crushing, chaotic and catastrophic looming clusterfuck of a sound. Drowner Yellow Swans is ominous hovering amorphous sludge and yet it still feels a bit like a rock album because of the loud propulsive racket created containing an array of swirling and fluctuating distorted tones and hidden melodies. The band described it as their gonzo psych rock record... er just don't go looking for a beat or anything.
The dawning of a new age with dazzling displays of acoustic guitar prowess. Hedges conjures a trompe l'oeil affect creating picturesque splendour and an exquisite spacious atmosphere. On Aerial Boundaries he explores his instrument to its maximum potential pushing the American primitive folk-prog thing out into another dimension. However daggy it may be, it's an undeniable jam.
A barnstorming slice of neo-psych dream-gaze. Great drummage!
Difference Engine - Breadmaker [1994] [Full LP]
Totally missed these guys at the time as they were a bit late to the gazing of the shoe party but I gotta say Difference Engine's 1994 cd Breadmaker is top tier second wave shoegaze. They had a real tight nit band aura and thankfully weren't doing exact replicas of the genre's pioneers. Amongst the dreamy atmospheres and ethereal reverberations they would sometimes whip up an incredible disorientating maelstrom. Pretty psychedelic and hypnotic.
Get mesmerised.
*The final track at 35:08 is a bonus track added to the 2015 Breadmaker reissue cd. It was originally recorded a year later for the unreleased follow up album. To me it doesn't really fit and the album should always end with the spectacular epic Epiphany...
Difference Engine - Epiphany [1994]
The aforementioned spectacular epic that closes the original cd. Epiphany is an xpressway to your disintegration today and forever.
The opening 22 minute title track to Cat System Corp's Palm Mall. The vague distant muzak reverberations and the field recorded atmospheric buzz of shoppers and mall staff in Palm Mall, as opposed to the rest of the album's vaporwave tunes, has become a minor ambient landmark in certain quarters. A sound design triumph, this soundscape is a soft, wistful, immersive and hypnagogic journey that needs to be experienced at least once.
Strangely soothing and serene consumerism ambience - Have a nice day.
A vaporwave eccojam video masterpiece. They sample and loop Kate's Wuthering Heights with the looped slow mo vision of a Pepsi Cola ad featuring legendary 90s supermodels Bridget Hall, Tyra Banks and Cindy Crawford.
*Who the hell would deliberately choose to drink Pepsi when you could have the greatest soft drink/soda/pop of them all Coke?
A classic plunderphonic exotica jam with possibly a ye olde Esquivel record on the turntables add in loops and fx, all done in real time. Experimental avant-garde is better when it's fun.
When noise becomes ambient, ultra minimalistic and psychedelic. To me it sounds like relentless weather occurring on my roof for an hour. Someone described this as every sound all at once. You could just listen to the first few seconds to get what the entire hour sounds like but that would be missing the point. The hour needs to be experienced.
The first comment on yt says:
"No ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse" - Vomir.
I'm not sure if the dude behind Vomir said that but it's pretty cool except of course there is an idea behind it and disappointingly there is a slight alteration to the sound in the final few minutes. You could just stop it at the 57 minute mark to keep the concept pure.
Actually it's worth trawling through the comments, these people are funny and insightful. Here are some other great quotes on the internet about this piece of sound.
"This is what I imagine the sun sounds like"
"Very quickly I started seeing stuff"
"Finally, something relaxing to listen to"
"Its like being dead"
"This cured my anxiety"
"It's psychedelic stuff"
"It just stays there and doesn't do anything at all for an hour when it ends just as abruptly as it had started"
"This shit is great for studying/concentration"
"Such a bop"
"It's like when I was 9 and used to stick my head out the car window"
"Great for noise cancellation, can't hear my mom"
"No art, no soul, no creativity"
"How to Vomir: Press REC on your phone, open your car's windows while driving on the highway, hold your phone out of the car's window for one hour (be careful not to drop it)"
DIY lo-fi outsider pop from the 80s Japanese cassette underground.
Cosmic Colors is like a naive art version of city pop. Pure beauty and innocence sans the too slick soulless sheen.
This guy released over 35 cassettes in the space of five years from 1981 to 1985. None of these albums were issued outside Japan. Cult status in the western world awaits for K. Yoshimatu.
[1982]
K. Yoshimatu - Spherical Voyage
Low key evocative minimal instrumental spacey ambience juxtaposed with strange almost cartoon-like clangorous percussion.
This cassette seems like a precursor to hypnagogia with its vaguely psych prog aura mixed with echo-y new age touches.
[1985]
Juma - Lunar Lavender
Juma is a K Yoshimatu alias. This guy's just got a knack for gorgeous guitar and synth melodies, like he just can't help it.
From the noise-y ambient drone end of hypnagogia was Bermuda Link and their underground limited run c-30 cassette Exit. This is the outer limits of music, if it's even music at all. More like the sound of trying to tune a radio dial on a spaceship in another galaxy but the signal is jammed and all you get is is an interrupted transmission with confusing hints of life and music amongst the static and blurred radio waves.
Bringing you all the misses of the 70s with divine funky grooves, splendid symphonic arrangements and luscious melodies. Na Boca do Sol is the ultimate in baroque samba soul.
Starts out with glistening Vini Reilly-esque guitars then goes into hypnotic daydream pop elation years before dream pop was used as a label to describe what AR Kane were uo to and way before shoegaze or original post-rock. This tune was on that top compilation Fingertracks: Vol 1 from 5 or 6 years ago which i just happened to listen to this golden autumnal afternoon in my backyard. I still know nothing about Rick Cuevas but I am curious as to whether his music goes down a more dreamy jangly route or further into trippy echo chamber laden pop opulance Arthur Russel style. Then again it might just be a one off anomaly.
I was going to say this is the best unknown song from 1984 but a quick look on spotify reveals it has now been played over two million times.
Like a BBC sports theme but with great drummage. It gets pretty off the wall for a minute in the middle thanks to the guitar shenanigans of the legendary Alan Holdsworth. Synth goodness supplied by Egg/Khan/Hatfield & The North keyboardist Dave Stewart.
One of the most bittersweet songs ever. Great strings and George Harrison-esque lead break, outdoing America at their own game! We've all been there and this just perfectly encapsulates the emotion of a relationship you know was fun but it was always gonna end so just be glad that it ever happened at all. A song you couldn't write if you weren't ever fully living life in the moment. Vivaciously upbeat yet actually kinda devastating.
These dudes were one hit wonders reaching the top 20 in both the US and Canadia but just missing the top 40 here down under.
Haunted and hypnotic. These are ancient deep psychedelic jams.
Described as doing for rebetika what The Caretaker did for ye olde ballroom music. Rebetika aka rembetika aka rebetiko was a pastiche of urban Greek folk and traditional European music that was popular from the late 19th century to the 1950s. Aeson Zervas re-animates this outmoded exotic music by putting it through a hypnogogic echo chamber. It's a mysterious tripped out ethereal nostalgia trip. Discombobulating.
Epic banging industrial electro. EBM synthwave. Dark funky horror synth. Wave wave and waves and waves of intense darkened retrowaves. What they now call darksynth.
When I started this blog I was following a few mysterious acts with zero music press attention and minimal internet footprints Miami Nights 1984, Lazerhawk and ActRazer. They were all on the Rosso Corso Records doing retro-licious 80s synth action soundtrack gear with elements of disco, jock rock, synth-funk and whatever else for your cruisin' pleasure. The title given to this micro micro-genre was outrun which I guess was eventually subsumed into the synthwave subgenre. The acts on Rosso Corso all fitted in with parallel stuff going on at the time like Zombi and at the synthy horror end of hypnagogia/vapour-wave acts on Not Not Fun like Sand Circles, Umberto and Xander Harris.
Anyway on their third album Skull & Shark (2013)Lazerhawk eventually melded the 80s neon kitsch vibe with the throwback horror synth vibe and, unknown to me at the time, ended up in a place later named darksynth which was a scene in its infancy (beginning the previous year) made up of acts like Perturbator, Carpenter Brut and Mega Drive. Seven years later we end up with Vandalism by Masked doing music that resembles hard late 80s/early 90s ebm/electro industrial rather than, say, the soundtrack to Knight Rider.
Power - Lazerpunk [2018]
Academic Agent recently made a video resource on the youtubes which was a pretty successful attempt at a comprehensive guide to the darksynth micro genre from what I can gather. His guide alerted me to all things darkened synthwave after Lazerhawk's Skull & Shark. He included this harsh dark bangin' EBM-esque cyberpunk number which couldn't be more far removed from the chilled cruising and neon tropical vibes of synthwave.
Recently somebody smart rebranded 00s to early 10s hipsters as "Indie Sleaze" thus stripping it of its beyond the paleness, irrelevance and obsolescence in cultural cache terms as in "that shit is never coming back" so voilà it's now re-cycled and maybe even cool again... whatever all that means... wouldn't it be great if it meant the retarded ideological conformity of the last 15 years in the music industry was finished and now artists can go back to thinking and doing whatever the fuck they want without the fear of pitchfork mobs forming to destroy their livelihoods or blackmail them for not toeing the line.
Anyway... Snow Strippers' Know My Name sounds like prime 2009 witch house.
Snow Strippers - Again [2023]
Trash is the name of the game and it's certainly achieved here in a fake moronic kinda way.
Snow Strippers - Achin Like It's [2024]
Snow Strippers have got like 30 videos on their barely three year old youtube channel. Reckless youthful abandon in scuzzy dilapidated middle America is the vibe in most of them.
All the electro/disco/trance/house put through an electro-clash bubblegum-techno-pop ringer and tranced even further for the retro hipster rave in your bedroom.
Snow Stripper - Only Way Out [2022]
When you think maybe they pressed the crappy low-key trance preset button too many times then all of a sudden you realise this is one of the most tripped out ethereal jams ever,
Snow Strippers - Tragic Surprise [2022]
Electro-synthwave-chillwave with lil' mesmerising hooks.
Also the video is pretty iconic: T-shirt for a flag. Bare breasts for America. Patriotic!
