First off this is not about Psychedelic Rock, if anything it is Psychedelic Folk with an emphasis on Experimental arrangements - some of these bands dip into the rock aspect but they are definitely more experimental than rock. If you want Psych-Rock look out for 13th floor elevators, Electric Prunes, and The Seeds. Psych-Rock is also more associated with Garage rock.
Aside from freaking out my coworkers with my music selection, I spent a majority of my college weekends in record stores talking to 60 year olds about music that was made 20 years before I was born. For those who are interested as to how I started down this road I'd say it all began when I was a teenager listening to Leonard Cohen and The Stooges.
(Starter albums)
Somehow when I was 19 I stumbled across Amon Duul 2. Then, when I was 21, my friend Colin (Chopper, Hollow Stars) sat me down and played Brian Eno's "Another Green World" and ever since then I've developed a very specific taste for Psychedelic/experimental/folk. My love for the Stooges and Brian Eno seemed to ask me questions and I had to fill in the blanks and connect the dots to find the answers.
(Early-on curveball albums, listen to these again after the next set)
To find the answers I had 3 resources: 1. College Radio 2. Record store owners 3. Internet.
There are a couple of Prog/Pysch radio shows on Album 88 (wars), I remember hearing Kevin Ayers for the first time on "Tower of song", So I started looking for his stuff at record stores and discovered he worked with John Cale (Velvet Underground), Nico, and Brian Eno. Along with Soft Machine I started listening to Robert Wyatt, Gong, and King Crimson. It's ironic that I remember seeing the covers for all these albums when I was a punk teen and thinking to myself "Stupid Hippy Shit", years later they're some of my favorite albums.
I had accidentally stumbled across the Incredible String Band earlier in life around the time I graduated high school (there was a public access show that would play old psych videos). It took several years to wrap my head around their body of work especially cause of their immense backlog of songs. Eventually after hearing a few of their albums I was able to pick out what I liked and didn't - that's the beauty if ISB, you listen to the songs you like until they wear on you and then you find things about their songs you didn't like that turn you on again.
The Incredible String Band, "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (first I ever heard)
By this time I had made friends with Ted at Full Moon records, I used to spend saturdays in the back area of his store sitting on a couch as he played me mind-blowing albums like "Neu 2", "Celestial Ocean", "the United States of America", "Electric Lucifer", and "the Fool". They were albums from his personal collection and when I inquired about purchasing them he would shake his head and explain how every record on his shelf was worth about a hundred dollars apiece.
(If you've liked everything so far then these are great for you)
While searching for a way to hear these albums on my own time I discovered Psychedelic Music Blogs, many of which offer free downloads of extremely rare albums. I was just hopping from page to page reading about each album and then downloading it. It was trial and error because at this point I had developed a taste about what I like in psychedelic music with a emphasis in Textures/Sonic Soundscapes/Songwriting - I knew the Jazzier and Jammy type shit wasn't going to appeal to me that much.
Anyways here are some other albums I've discovered with a small description of each one, below are a series of Music Blogs I recommend if you want to find more on your own.
It was through these blogs that I found out about:
Fresh Maggots, "S/T": Beautifully textured folk with some heavy highlights.
Gandalf the Grey, "S/T": Typical psych, a fun listen.
Limbus 4, "Mandalas": Psych done.
Sunforest, "Sound of Sunforest": Eclectic pop music, wide range of styles, mixture of some beautiful and silly songs.
Forest, "Full Circle": Psych-folk-pop with non conventional instrumentation. If you like Sunforest and Nico then you'll love this.
Pearls before swine, "Beautiful Lies you could live in": Beautiful folk music, simple and pretty with good textures.
Philippe Besombes, "Libra" (soundtrack): Instrumental experimental, always interesting with surprisingly good melodies when present.
Sibylle Baier, "Colour Green": Folk Singer songwriter, good shit.
Subway, "Subway II": French electronic, apparently their first album was very folky but I haven't found it yet.
Caravan, "In the land of grey and pink": Canterbury area psych rock/pop.
Hawkwind, "S/T": members of Amon Duul 2, a little more structured than amon duul but still psychedelic as fuck.
Thanks to Julie Hines, I was introduced to Gandalf, who only released one album but it's still one of my favorites to this day.
Then there is the music I found out about through "Tower of Song" and "Jet Lag" two radio programs on Album 88:
Writing on the wall, "Power of the Picts": Really good listen, not really sure how to define it - a little bit of everything (Jazz, Rock, Pop, Experimental, Folk, Spoken word).
Kevin Ayers: Probably my favorite artist from this period, all of his albums are amazing except a few in the 80's.
J. K. and Co, "Suddenly one summer": Chill, still getting a feel for this one but the first two tracks are the shit.
Nino Nardini & Roger Roger, "Jungle Obsession": also a good listen.
That's it for now, if you'd like to explore more I've included some excellent Psych Music Blogs below, you can download almost any album you read about on these blogs so enjoy.
