I love all of these recommendations. Thanks so much !

Just in case it hasnt been mentioned I'd like to recommend a really great psyche album that I've had on rotation lately :

DUNGEN - TA DET LUGNT

i really like the ELEVATOR THROUGH album THE SUCH, especially sleep experiment no.3 (maybe not what you are looking for, but it's such a great song).
and of course, CAN (can can you do the can can can you do the can can can you do the cancancancancancancan).

Pink Fairies
Baby Woodrose
Black Mountain (they qualify as psych, I think)
Mahavishnu Orchestra

U.S. Maple: Long Hair in Three Stages

I am getting a good deal of enjoyment from the most recent Om record, Conference Of The Birds, on the local Holy Mountain label.

Om = Sleep's rhythm section. No guitar. Thick bass and drums that only occasionally get "heavy." Mostly, these guys are rooting around in the sweet red mud of true psychedelic music.

I love the vocals and the awesomely trippy lyrics, which contain many quasi-Egyptian references.

Can we back up a minute?

"Psychedelic" means so many different things, as all of these answers imply.

All of these bands are "psychedelic":
My Bloody Valentine
Grateful Dead
Neu!
Pretty Things
Pink Floyd mk.1
Pink Floyd mk.everythingelse
Beatles
Robyn Hitchcock
Dream Syndicate
The Church
Cap'n Beefheart
Arthur Brown
Incredible String Band
etc.

The thing is, they don't really sound at all alike. The common ground is lysergic acid.

What do you mean, exactly? What style are you thinking of as a starting point? So many good bands...

I think starting with the basics is always good, so maybe you should pick up the Nuggets II box set. Nuggets I is good, but II, which is mainly British, covers the ground as Mod moved into Psych. That period is often refered to a Freak Beat, and it's fantastic stuff. Bands like The Monks. Rock music gone terribly wrong, due to chemicals.

You probably know most of the modern Psych classics, but a few I can recommend are:
The Church - Heyday
Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Dukes of Stratosphear - Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (XTC's alter-ego band. An homoage to their heros. Brilliant music.)
XTC - Skylarking

And some old ones you might have missed:
The Action - Rolled Gold (A Mod/Soul band takes a turn for the dreamy)
Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxters (Hate this band, love this record)
Pretty Things - SF Sorrow
Byrds - Fifth Dimension
Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (You probably know it, but just in case...)
Syd Barrett - Madcap Laughs

Almost all of the above are rooted in pop, whereas bands like the Dead were into freeform jams in the jazz/bluegrass tradition. I like the former and dislike the latter generally, with the exception being Krautrock. So my suggestions are more in the Pop Psych category. "Paisley Shirt Music" as I call it.

You might want to read Kaleidoscope Eyes by Jim DeRogatis. It's a pretty good book that really stretches out at times. He spends very little time on the San Francisco bands, which most people know about already.

Storming Heaven, a history of LSD is a good book because it gets into the sociology of how "mind expansion" truly changed things culturally. Academic, but not dry.

-A

alex maiolo wrote:Can we back up a minute?

"Psychedelic" means so many different things, as all of these answers imply.



The thing is, they don't really sound at all alike. The common ground is lysergic acid.

What do you mean, exactly? What style are you thinking of as a starting point? So many good bands...

I think starting with the basics is always good, so maybe you should pick up the Nuggets II box set. Nuggets I is good, but II, which is mainly British, covers the ground as Mod moved into Psych. That period is often refered to a Freak Beat, and it's fantastic stuff. Bands like The Monks. Rock music gone terribly wrong, due to chemicals.

You probably know most of the modern Psych classics, but a few I can recommend are:
The Church - Heyday
Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Dukes of Stratosphear - Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (XTC's alter-ego band. An homoage to their heros. Brilliant music.)
XTC - Skylarking

And some old ones you might have missed:
The Action - Rolled Gold (A Mod/Soul band takes a turn for the dreamy)
Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxters (Hate this band, love this record)
Pretty Things - SF Sorrow
Byrds - Fifth Dimension
Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (You probably know it, but just in case...)
Syd Barrett - Madcap Laughs

Almost all of the above are rooted in pop, whereas bands like the Dead were into freeform jams in the jazz/bluegrass tradition. I like the former and dislike the latter generally, with the exception being Krautrock. So my suggestions are more in the Pop Psych category. "Paisley Shirt Music" as I call it.

You might want to read Kaleidoscope Eyes by Jim DeRogatis. It's a pretty good book that really stretches out at times. He spends very little time on the San Francisco bands, which most people know about already.

Storming Heaven, a history of LSD is a good book because it gets into the sociology of how "mind expansion" truly changed things culturally. Academic, but not dry.

-A

This is a great post, but I have to say that listening to Merzbow in a dark basement at fairly serious volumes while waving a flashlight around was a wildly psychedelic experience for me. Under the influence. Wildly. Recommended to those interested in that sort of thing.

Maybe the criteria for psychedelia is a focus on the more 'subjective' side of the experience of hearing music. Seems to be a parallel with what a lot of people call 'artistic' or 'creative'.

And thanks for mentioning the Dukes of Stratosphear. They are great.

Angus Jung wrote:I am getting a good deal of enjoyment from the most recent Om record, Conference Of The Birds, on the local Holy Mountain label.

Om = Sleep's rhythm section. No guitar. Thick bass and drums that only occasionally get "heavy." Mostly, these guys are rooting around in the sweet red mud of true psychedelic music.

I love the vocals and the awesomely trippy lyrics, which contain many quasi-Egyptian references.

I second that. The live experience is hypnotic, and decidedly heavier.

I was going to post a rather provocative post arguing why I think the Grateful Dead were one of (if not) the all-time great psychedelic band, but perhaps with that I should just let you all have at me with your reasonings for the many snide dismissals that have so far in this thread referenced them.

When I have more energy I'll post my reasons why I think so. Till then, have at me!

I will admit right from the start that I detest The Grateful Dead, so I'm hardly going to offer a sober, reasoned argument.

It's hard to separate this hate from their fans. I'll simply say that I find 99% of their output hollow, infuriatingly fluffy, and just plain weak.

In fact, no single band can encapsulate the all attributes that define bad psychedelia like Grateful Dead. Meandering, long-winded, pointless, ditzy, naive, etc, etc. They're all there in the GD catalogue. "Dark Star", anyone? Bleh.