Blog: An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Since Mark Stewart is playing in Bristol and I have absolutely no chance of going because we're about to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a new house, I thought I'd just simper and dwell a little... I'd like to say I came across Mark via whiteout anti-funkathons of The Pop Group but it was his connection with the cheap On U Sound compilations that got me interested... for one thing, they were cheap and for a coupla quid you could dig some out from Acorn in Yeovil and glory in reggae that seemed [...]

Regular readers will already know about the boiling mass that is the lost Yeovil ur-band King Mong , a tireless (sometimes tiresome) corruption of early electronica, krautrock and psych-frazzles played on vintage synths, self-generating machine taxes, glass pipes, CAT echoplexes, unplugged gitars and amorphous egg species. King Mong played half a gig before dissolving in a sea of retribution, Social Service hassle and hastily prepared Health and Safety initiatives (COSH was taken rather literally by all concerned). By the time the, er, Mission Was Terminated, one member [...]

Almost exactly at the time I bought this album I found out a friend, F, had been hit and almost killed by a meat truck. A little Jungian synchronicity that has stayed with me and recurs every time I listen to it. F had been following a Ley Line for the best part of 9 miles, having convinced himself that he needed to tap into some Earth Power (he'd been reading a lot of Slaine in 200AD). F was a rampant vegan - soya milk on his cornflakes, skin tighter than a Japanese [...]

Danny Hyde's Aural Rage (awful name, Danny!) A NatuRe of Nonsense album arrived last week and I've been trying to get to grips with it. For those who don't know, Danny Hyde is perhaps best known for his production work on several Coil albums, notably Love's Secret Domain and there are more than a few echoes of Coil's 'dancier' (always a misnomer) stuff throughout this new album though it (perhaps intentionally) lacks the immaterial goblin-spun atmosphere of Coil's best work, utilising many of the same squeaks and swirls and bells and echoes but somehow coming across as slightly [...]

Garmana are a Swedish band that mine the kind of dreamfolk that evoke Wicker Men and pagan rites (they probably sing about toothpaste or the nine different ways of smiling for all i know) and sweet West Country girls in floaty dresses, weighed down by linen bangles and headbeads. If this was american or english it'd be considered psych-folk or neo-wyrd ur-A-Cid or something but i won't hold that against them. To me it's enough that it's the kind of stuff you hear at [...]

The Vision keeps appearing at odd places at the moment, right now he's in the en-suite bathroom, lurking in the corners, manipulating molecules and causing me to slip on left over atoms. Freaky guy, I'll be keeping an eye out for him... Just completed a very successful mushroom experiment on my wife related to the Kahimi Karie Carmen de-form I posted earlier; she doesn't know and hadn't heard the track before but I've been playing snippets, seconds of it continually throughout the week; she comes into the office, she gets a 5 sec burst as I'm flicking [...]

William Burroughs was wrong, drugs aren't the perfect product, mobile phones are the perfect product. They assimilate the fundamental insecurities and desires of humanity into an easily marketable (and largely unrestricted) package, covering all the class/gender divides (cf. socio-economic target groups) and letting rip a vital, viral meme throughout our culture, one that says (imagine angry parent voice): this isn't a product, this is like your arm, do without it, I dare you, go on, just try and see what happens... From the [...]

The 'Acid' squiggle of electronica is mankinds' way of marking territory; a sound indelibly associated with manufacture, with artifice, with machine. It's been forever associated with the future, from the 1950 jet-age Forbidden Planet theremin swirls to to Acid House and it's descendents, even if 'acid' (as currently re-cycled via the Aphex loop) is now considered retro as culture tries to evolve around it into glitches, pops and the eskimo tunnel-howls of Grime. Coil - Nasa Arab Of [...]

Just finishing this book and it's entertaining in a tabloid way; Gary Lachman dragging through the embers of the 60s Aquarian Cycles and free associating links wherever he feels like it. It's supposed to be about the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius and what this amounts to is potted (sometimes inaccurate) histories of various 'occult' (this appears to mean anything vaguely Eastern as well as the usual suspects) figures, from The Golden Dawn through A.O.S., Ouspensky, Gurdjeff and Crowley and onto Kenneth Anger, Leary and Laing and then mapping these roughly onto popular culture (The Rolling Stones mythology [...]

Inspired and pointless meta-music from Spanky and Our Gang found via the excellent trough of obscurities, absurdities and Munkin Music at ILMixor . The 'Our' alone is priceless. Thanks also to the people at Heavy.com for the free, beautifully packaged CDs that arrived the other day. Oh and cheers also to Parasol.com for the latest CD... not sure that Jose Gonzalez is really my thing (too far down the Damien Rice road to ruin) but theres's something inspired and random about their [...]

This post is just born out of sheer malevolence. Some people will know what I mean, apologies for those who don't, I know how this lark can seem as pointlessly nepotistic/incestuous as a Roman bacchanal but I just couldn't resist.... , PJ Harvey is a Goddess, a Faerie Rock Queen, an Icon of Femininity. She lights up all our lives, blesses us with her music, anoints us with her woven poesie, assaults our senses with her heartfelt politics, pisses all over her pathetic imitators (Patti Smith, stand up now). [...]

Grab a granny night at The Gardens Nightclub, Yeovil. Everyone's just come off the slow dance specials with Phil Collins's In The Air Tonight still pasted around their ears. A few Goths lurk in the corner, pretending to be vampires and rubbing fake kohl wounds into each others' bodies. King Kurt comes on and the Psychobillies hit the floor. There's a three ton of hairspray here tonight, quiffing hair into medieval siege machines; hair meeting skin at abrupt angles and Golden Ratios. Wah oo... Wah oo... [...]

One theme stringing it's waves through my posts on An Idiot's Guide is the problems inherent in musics interrelationships with psychedelics, specifically the implicit idea that psychedelics are only ever experienced 1) lying on your back, eyes closed, saturated with dope or 2) doing 'big box, little box' Bod marching whilst wondering why everyone in the club is looking towards the DJ booth (clue: there never was anything to see, folks...) It's with a nasty metallic taste in my mouth then that I figured it was time for Kahimi Karie, to my [...]

Iannis Xanakis - Jonchaie The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes

Montacute House, early 1990s, 2 AM. We've already upended a 70s light blue Mercedes and now P is outside the house, beginning to bay at the moon, half whispering, half snarling "The Pack....The Pack..." over and over again. A wants out; he's already lost the tip of his finger to a misplaced feasting and now he's trying to run for it. I look at P, now rubbing salt fish on his chest, mixing it with the animal fat. Someone, perhaps R, [...]

I'm generally a sucker for Japanese psychweirdness and there's something almost otherwordly about how Ghost have lurked around at the margins of psych culture, spoken about in hushed, almost reverant tones but... I don't know. I just don't know. If you like mid 70s The Who then you'll probably like Ghost. They tend to suck and blow. They have a slight tendency towards fucking things up with muso noodling and they end up sounding like a guy in a beard's gonna start a 27 minute [...]

There's a humchatter at work, a sound that keeps following me when I go outside for a cigarette. It's been going on for weeks now and no one else seems to hear it.... It sounds a little like the great morphing drones that ebb and flow in the midst of an Amazonian quest; an unameable sound, a great primordial chatter that seems to speak the language of the DMT elves or maybe the sound that Dennis McKenna kept hearing in True Hallucinations I investigated on [...]

Good to be back after multiple Mac pile-up... Pere Ubu - Misery Goats a yousendit presentation I heard Misery Goats before I knew anything about Alfred Jarry, or about the Crocus Behemoth or the Avant Garage. I heard Misery Goats thinking that Pere Ubu was a guy, a down-on-his-luck torch burner, a tortured loner, probably black, [...]

Having a chat with fellow Idiot Nick Gutterbreakz last night - decided someone was gonna have to tide things over here on "Idiots's Guide" whilst Loki was out of action. He claims his Mac is playing up, but haven't you noticed an air of studied indifference of late with regard to you members of the MP3 blogeratti? - (Or maybe he got stuck in one big fruityloop.....?) Anyway - if it's free MP3's you is after, best pop over to Nick . He's got all things grimey and a titlebar packed with more [...]

Yesterday, while in shuffle mode, my i-pod played 3 consecutive Pink Floyd tracks. Stirred by this synchronous electrical outburst I delved deeper and found that there are 4 Pink Floyd tracks in total on there. Wonder where the other one went? Interstellar Overdrive Astronomy Domine Flaming [...]