This week’s show featured some longtime favorites (as usual) along with a couple recent releases. Principal Edwards Magic Theatre was a British prog/folk/rock troupe who released their first album on John Peel’s Dandelion label in 1969, entitled Soundtrack. It wasn’t a soundtrack to a film or stage production per se, but it could have been considered as such, given their theatrically ambitious concerts (the band consisted of over twelve members, including dancers and lighting technicians). I originally picked up this debut release as a 49-cent cutout from the K-Mart bargain bins, intrigued by the colorful sleeve design and song titles. I think it’s their best recording and the one that is most acoustically folk-oriented (they did two followup releases that sounded more typically conceptual prog-rock in style). It’s been reissued a couple times on CD and is an understated psychedelic gem, at times pretentious but quite tastefully executed. The other album I featured as the centerpiece of the program is another chamber/goth/folk classic from a couple decades later, the gorgeous debut from Nature And Organisation, Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude. This was the side project of guitarist/composer Michael Cashmore of Current 93, and it fits in well with Current 93’s discography, capturing the spirit of that band at their peak during the early 1990s. N.A.O. didn’t last very long, unfortunately, releasing only two albums, the latter of which was an unfinished instrumental recording for piano and string quartet – both of which are long out of print and long overdue for reissue, though Cashmore has shown no interest in rereleasing these early works, sadly. I also played a couple tracks from the brilliant double-CD Headless by 6 Comm, long-running solo project of Patrick Leagas, founding member of Death In June. This recording was somewhat of a comeback for 6 Comm in 2006, and compared to the 80s darkwave synth-pop sound of their early stuff, was a major leap forward, drawing in a diversity of influences from Scott Walker to Dead Can Dance, along with a deepened and matured lyrical thrust imbued with a wealth of esoteric occult ideas.

A fine new release on the Sub Rosa label is The Heavenly Ladder, that being the first scholarly interpretation of the music of Adolf Wolfli to be recorded (earlier recordings such as the one by Graeme Revell were more or less surrealistic reimaginings of what the music was supposed to sound like). The CD comes with a full-color book with many reproductions of the original score/paintings and detailed notes on the deciphering of the scores by the performer Baudouin de Jaer. I’ll have to feature some more from this release on a future program. And a recently unearthed collaboration between Irr. App. (Ext.) & Nurse With Wound entitled 4 Orphans has some choice systematic musical derangements, of which I featured just one on this week’s show.

Listen To The Podcast

The playlist gives artist name, song title, and album title (in that order). A space between lines of text indicates the break between sets where track announcements were made.

Playlist for Mindtrain 04 – 23 August 2011

• Cyclobe – Sleeper – Wounded Galaxies Tap At The Window

• Principal Edwards Magic Theatre – Enigmatic Insomniac Machine – Soundtrack
• Ginger Baker’s Air Force – We Free Kings – Air Force 2
• Little Annie – Viet Not Mine, El Salvador Yours – Soul Possession
• Herbie Hancock – Water Torture – Crossings
• The Jefferson Airplane – Chushingura – Crown Of Creation
• Baudouin de Jaer / Adolf Wolfli – The Heavenly Ladder, Part 1: Assiisen=des=Mittel=Landes – The Heavenly Ladder
• Irr. App. (Ext.) / Nurse With Wound – Rat-Size With Conical Headdress – 4 Orphans
• Irr. App. (Ext.) – Ausloschen Der Unnotigen Lichter – Radiant Black Future: Step Forward And Address The Present Amidst The Wreckage Of The Past

• 6 Comm – Again To Sleep… Awake! – Headless
• Graeme Revell / Adolf Wolfli – Ebony Tower In The Orient / Water Fanfaare No. 1 – Musique Brut Collection: The Insect Musicians / Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles
• Nature And Organisation – Introduction / Wicker Man Song / Blood Of Solitude I / Bloodstreamruns / My Black Diary – Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude
• Graeme Revell / Adolf Wolfli – Chimpnags-Apes Of The Union Canada: America – Musique Brut Collection: The Insect Musicians / Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles
• 6 Comm – Let The Moon Speak – Headless

• Principal Edwards Magic Theatre – The Death Of Don Quixote – Soundtrack