Baxters Psychedelia

Baxters is a series of playlists in progress that aims to offer a look at the global psychedelic scene. For the guidelines, please refer to what was written in the foreword to the 2020 edition.

The tracks

Australia confirms itself as home to one of the richest and strongest scenes on the global psychedelic map, thanks to the debut of an Adelaide band whose name points straight to Japan: in the language of the Land of the Rising Sun, zoku means tribe, family, and, as they revealed to us via Facebook, "from the very start we imagined the band as a musical tribe. We then added the umlaut to ZÖKU because visually it felt more fitting for us". SÜN is a magnificent portrait of the potential of rock songwriting in a psychedelic key, with that constant backward-glancing touch (already evident in "Sacred", which recalls the Beatles' "Within You Without You") that never tips over into anachronistic stasis, sounding instead perfectly fresh and contemporary. Going back to the valuable words Ricardo Da Silva, the band's singer and guitarist, shared with us privately on Facebook, the track chosen for this playlist, "Ö II", is "the second chapter of an imagined stream of consciousness in which a new life is born into the wilderness, where it finds fresh air and love". All wrapped in vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys and a tribal rhythm section.

Brano: Jaws Of Life

On their second album (chosen here both because it's the track's original source and for its delightful cover art), Canada's Lammping offer a mix of - as the press release puts it - Stereolab, De La Soul, Kraftwerk, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Sleep, exploring themes such as social division, gentrification, memory and spirituality.

"Jaws Of Life" has the nerve to take on (probably unwittingly, and without meaning to) one of the all-time giants of pop psychedelia, the Pretty Things' "Defecting Grey": there's the same intent to deconstruct and destabilize. The defeat is unmistakable, but the fact that it doesn't come out with its bones shattered, as almost any other challenger would have, says a lot about the quality of the track.

Track: Deep Inside A Labyrinth

Probably the leading lights of the current Czech psych scene alongside Madhouse Express, Ribs and Sýček, Prague's Purplefox Town deliver with their second album a magical, enigmatic vision, in which the songs form a puzzle leading to the identity of the title's Malkallam, and where the declared influences are the Beatles, King Gizzard, Tolkien and old role-playing games like Might and Magic. "Deep Inside A Labyrinth" is the album's most fascinating episode: although placed halfway through the tracklist, the song actually belongs at the end of the story, as an epilogue. After her death, the goblin Lady takes the form of a green hyacinth in the Labyrinths of Aise, and Duke von Douer repeatedly visits her to sing her lullabies. A narrative dimension closer to prog, but one that musically embraces, without a shadow of doubt, a psychedelic soul.

Track: Only Human

Well before the (harmless) crowd-pleasing of Tame Impala and King Gizzard charmed the mainstream, aussie psychedelia was already alive and well. Active since 1987 and hailing from Brisbane, Purple Avengers deal in a strain of space psychedelia devoted almost entirely to improvisation. “Only Human” is the track that closes “Let The Compass Sink” and conjures the darkest, most nocturnal rides of Doors and Pink Floyd. Thematically, it's grimly topical: in the band's own words, it “points to war as the sole victor if humanity fails to come together for its collective survival. The musical arrangement aims to mirror an uneasy peace, interrupted by moments of war. The closing riff is a call to action and to hope for a reimagined destiny.”

Track: Them Apples

Australia again, though singer-songwriter MF Tomlinson now lives in London. Setting aside the “Last Days Of Rome” EP, released in 2020, “Strange Time” is his debut, an album born of a rather peculiar inspiration: listening to a handful of compilations. Tomlinson has cited “Even A Tree Can Shed Tears,” a collection exploring Japanese folk from the late 60s and early 70s, and “Soul Of Nation: Jazz Is The Teacher, Funk Is The Preacher,” as starting points for conceiving the album. “Them Apples” is the only co-written track (the other half is by Viljam Nybacka, who plays organ and bass on the record) and explores modern-day paranoia and social media addiction, drifting between female choir, organ and a flow that John Martyn would surely have loved.

Track: Inward Turning Suns

Label: Rocket Recordings

Led by David J. Smith, Holy Family is a six-piece and effectively a new guise for Guapo, Smith's previous band; before that, he also headed another collective, The Stargazer's Assistant. Right out of the gate, the group delivered one of the most enigmatic and captivating records of psychedelic 2021, an album that plays around a kind of lysergic whodunit inspired by the work of Dorothea Tanning and Angela Carter. Backed by a hypnotic video, “Inward Turning Suns” was the first promotional single and stands as its true spiritual representative: a pastoral mantra built on tape loops, flutes and otherworldly voices.

Track: Endless Sea

Two years after their acclaimed self-titled debut, Brazilian outfit White Canyon & The 5th Dimension have returned with a darker, more impenetrable record, less immediate but probably more fascinating. "Endless Sea" is the longest track, and Léo Gudan, the male half of the duo (the female half being Gabriela Zaith), let us in on the backstory: "We started writing it right after the first album came out. Actually, only the intro à-la Pink Floyd and the second part. For a while I didn't know what to do with it, but I liked the melody. After some work we got the result we wanted, it was a long song but we liked it. So we started working on the lyrics; it was probably the last track to be ready for the album. Around that time I was reading Erich von Däniken's 'The Gods Were Astronauts' and I came across a Sumerian story about a land where the gods take people away: that's the place described in the song, which spills over into an endless ocean. I think 'Endless Sea' really captures the atmosphere we were going for on the album, it's a special track because there are several musical influences that are very important to me".

Track: Transmission

Swedish collective DJINN, boasting members from renowned local acts like Hills and GOAT, deliver a cosmic jazz that looks to Don Cherry, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Arbete Och Fritid. But all eyes and ears are on the title track, where the (openly declared) homage to Popol Vuh's "L'acrime di rei" is so brazen it borders on plagiarism. Yet the interplay of mellotron and synth is so well executed that it hardly matters whether you settle the age-old dilemma of whether a forgery can be art: the pleasure here is immense.

Track: Uphill March

The duo made up of guitarist Matthew Rolin and dulcimer player Jen Powers became a trio in 2020, with the addition of percussionist Jayson Gerycz of Cloud Nothings. "Beacon" is the first record made together, followed by "Lamplighter" in September 2021. Originally released in 2020 in an extremely limited cassette run through the Garden Portal label, the album was reissued with a slightly reworked tracklist by Centripetal Force and Cardinal Fuzz for a more proper distribution, effectively saving it from obscurity (which is why it was deemed eligible for this piece). Entirely improvised, "Beacon" follows in the footsteps of John Fahey, and "Uphill March" is the most mystical fruit of the sessions, a trance induced by Powers' commanding performance.

Track: 17.01.2020 #2

Subgenre: jam band

An ensemble that over the course of a decade has established itself as one of the most vibrant and celebrated names in the free-form scene, largely thanks to the albums released on the El Paraiso label, Danish outfit Papir realized they had never actually put out a pure jam album. So the Copenhagen trio decided to draw on sessions recorded in early 2020, offering up 6 tracks whose titles simply reference the two days of recording, namely January 17th and 20th. "17.01.2020 #2" plays on the rhythm driven by Christoffer Brøchmann and Nicklas Sørensen's guitar, which once again reveals its debt to and admiration for the cosmic explorers of the '60s and '70s.

Brano: Shrinks The Day

While Baxters usually favors spotlighting bands and musicians who struggle to get the recognition they deserve, here an exception was made without hesitation. Because even though Ryley Walker and Kikagaku Moyo hardly need any introduction, at least among fans of today's psychedelia, a collaboration between the two is worth flagging immediately - and, above all, the result is astonishing. The two long live improvisations that make up "Deep Fried Grandeur", recorded in 2018 at Le Guess Who?, the festival founded in 2017 and held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, represent psychedelic rock at its very best. The 18 minutes of "Shrinks The Day" have two souls: the first 11 minutes unfold as a fluid raga rock so dear to the Japanese band's musical explorations, while the remaining 7 break apart into noisier, free-jazz-leaning fragments that spill over into a motorik march.

Track: Pharisaismic Plebeian Bureaucracism

More of a loose collective than an actual label, Psychedelic Source Records brings together Hungarian musicians who, under a huge number of names and with a remarkably prolific output (26 albums came out in 2021 alone!), release jam-based psychedelia. Despite such a relentless musical outpouring - the kind of thing that might suggest a tedious, musically anonymous exercise - their records have so far maintained a very good average quality: their jams aren't dozens and dozens of minutes of identity-less filler, as is too often the case in the free-form universe, but rather boast a solid melodic backbone. "Pharisaismic Plebeian Bureaucracism" features two guests, friends of the collective: Dávid Strauss on bass and Ádám Kalamár on guitar.

Brano: The Star Chamber

Peter Lawson is a Manchester-based musician who over the years has released music under various names and with different groups. Under the alter ego Venu Loon, Lawson put out five digital releases in 2021, all entirely self-performed. The musician describes himself as a lover of prog and space rock, citing among his influences Porcupine Tree, Hawkwind, Can, Cocteau Twins and Cabaret Voltaire. Driven by interstellar impulses, "The Star Chamber" is a guitar workout that brushes up against a stoner identity and winks at the Hendrix of "Third Stone From The Sun".

Track: We're Both Lawyers

California's Hooveriii (pronounced "Hoover Three," a nod to Bert Hoover, the band's founder) are a sextet who, with this debut, lean into their declared influences: the Iggy of "The Idiot", Berlin-era Bowie, Soft Machine and the cosmic kraut bands.

"We're Both Lawyers" babbles along on a robotic ticking, harking back to the drum-machine origins of Hoover's project - initially a solo endeavor - before exploding into a frantic acceleration that's a close cousin of Neu!'s "Negativland".

Track: Château Guitar

Another band making their recording debut, France's Veik are a trio who juggle guitars, drums and synthesizers. With the founding fathers of post-punk, kraut-rock and no wave in mind - Suicide, Implog, Indoor Life, Beak>, Suuns and Girl Band - Veik play music that arrives at psychedelia by a roundabout route. In particular, the noir tribalism of "Château Guitar" induces a dark trance that doesn't look directly to psychedelic rock, as the band's percussionist Boris Collet confirmed to us: "On this track we tried to engage with the codes, conventions and structures of techno, but playing with our usual live set-up and recording without a metronome. We took inspiration from Girl Band for the composition and from Laurent Garnier's 'Crispy Bacon' for the production. A fun fact is that the title comes from the wine we drank while recording the album. It's a French organic wine that's not actually all that good, but the name struck us as cool. It reminded us of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', a song we'd end up singing together after a few bottles."

Brano: The Moral Compass of A Self-Driving Car

If the name reveals a heart-shaped eye for kraut-rock (it naturally refers to one of Can's classics), Canada's Yoo Doo Right have more cards up their sleeve. Shoegaze above all, whose wall-of-sound guitars the band uses to sketch out space-rock frescoes, as happens on "The Moral Compass Of A Self-Driving Car": picture Jaki Liebezeit or Moe Tucker trying by every means to throw punches at My Bloody Valentine, themselves busy composing a mantra, and you'll have a fairly precise idea of how the track sounds.

Track: 六眼蚁葹 (Six-Eyed Dragonfly)

Author: 退格 (Backspace)

It's no new story that art born and developed in contexts of complex freedom of expression tends to bring out a particularly sharp eye and sensitivity for social themes. Being an underground musician in China is clearly no easy task, but Backspace, a Beijing group who debuted in 2018 with "Human Nature Architecture", have confirmed themselves as an act of real worth. Where on their first record Backspace pointed the finger at the solipsism of contemporary humanity, on "Ants Corrupt Elephant" they take aim at the blind pursuit of progress, which leads to growing alienation. Hence the idea of naming every track after an animal: flamingos, lizards, rabbits, millipedes and so on. "Six-Eyed Dragonfly", which also got a video, tells the story of a boy who finds comfort in the dreams of a dragonfly, which lets him escape from urban life. A round of applause for Maybe Mars, who confirm themselves as one of the most interesting labels on the global psychedelic scene.

Brano: Saw The Damp

On their fifth album, Portugal's 10 000 Russos carry on undeterred in their unconditional devotion to motorik rhythms, although "Superinertia" does bring one substantial novelty: bassist André Couto has been replaced by Nils Meisel, on synthesizers. The swap has led to an even more abrasive sound, which suits the album's themes well: the band have said that "Superinertia" explores the absence of movement, whether voluntary or involuntary, with a specific nod to the experience we've all lived through over the last couple of years. "Saw The Damp"? Nothing simpler: it's about a guy who's sick of his own life on a Friday night. In an alternate reality, Karl Hyde turned it into a generational anthem.

Track: Tatli Dile Güler Yüze / Kirpiklerini Ok Eyle

Author: Beynelmilân Orkesrtrası

Album: Tatli Dile Güler Yüze / Kirpiklerini Ok Eyle

Label: Ruby Eyes Records

Country: Turkey, France

Subgenre: Anatolian rock, psychedelic funk

Turkey remains one of the leading names in the psychedelic underground thanks to a single that's remarkable both for its history and its result. Ardem Deneyci, aka Beynelmilân, first emerged in 2019 with the album "Yeralti Oyun Havalan", and in 2021 gathered musicians from France and Turkey to record psych-funk versions of two classics of Turkish music from the '60s and '70s. "Kirpiklerini Ok Eyle" was written by Aşık Beyhani in the '60s and has since been covered by a great number of musicians; the most famous version is probably the one by Barış Manço. The Beynelmilân Orkestrası version is turned on its head, drenched in electric guitars, flute and synthesizers. The group is now working to expand the project into a full album.

Track: Hey Zauri

Artist: Vaqo

Album: Hey Zauri

Label: Tarla Records

Country: Georgia

Subgenre: psychedelic folk

Captain Beefheart is alive, he's hiding out in Georgia, and he's written the psychedelic track of the year. Vakhtang Kantaria, aka Vaqo, is a Tbilisi musician who, starting from a formal academic musical education, has become one of the most acclaimed names in Georgian rock. Initially finding fame at home alongside his brother as The W, Kantaria had to reinvent himself when his partner decided to return to a life away from the spotlight. The songs he wrote as a solo artist immediately met with success and began popping up on radio, podcasts and English-language compilations, leading various labels to reach out to him. Contacts that, after two live albums, culminated in the January 2022 release of "The Land Of Kartvelians" via the Austrian label Studio Handert. The album, repeatedly delayed because of the pandemic, is the studio consecration of tracks written (and performed live) by Vaqo over the past few years, though they don't represent the artist's most recent work. In September 2021, in fact, a 19-minute track blending Georgian folklore with psychedelic rock was released on Bandcamp through the Istanbul label Tarla Records — an overwhelming whirlwind that, among other things, even manages to merge two anthems: Georgia's own national anthem and Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Coming back to that heavy opening comparison: while there's no possible match on a vocal level, musically Vaqo here recalls the Beefheart of "Mirror Man", a warping of folk and blues tradition through endless, mischievous psychedelic improvisation. But "Hey Zauri" is also, and above all, epic narrative — or perhaps a parody of one — in which the protagonist is a 17th-century knight who lets himself be bribed by the enemy, thereby revealing the location of the Georgian army. An extraordinary masterpiece that serves as the lead single ahead of the forthcoming album "Ah! Qo!".

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Riccardo Nuziale, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition