I guess I’ve always thought of psychedelic rock as being a genre on its own but psychedelia crosses genre boundaries and in this episode I’ll be playing some jazz, ambient and even a country track that are psychedelic. One of the most notable tracks in this episode is by the Medicine Singers, a collaboration between Yonatan Gat and the Algonquin drum group the Eastern Medicine Singers, among other noteworthy people. The result combines indigenous music with spiritual jazz and psychedelic rock with an improvisational approach. It’s well produced and really compelling.

Following the Medicine Singers are a couple of tracks that draw more on jazz, one by the London Odense Ensemble and another by the Chilean cellist Surreal, then on to the ambient/dub of bad lsd trips. Rounding out this set is a psychedelic country track by the Sensational Country Blues Wonders. Gary Van Miert is the psychedelic cowboy behind the Sensational Country Blues Wonders, and I asked him (as I’ve been asking a lot of artists lately) what makes music psychedelic. As you can see in the short interview below, he talked about psychedelic music having a surreal and perhaps a whimsical quality. He also talked about exotic instrumentation like the sitar. Psychedelic music is also a spiritual experience to a lot of the artists. In fact, more artists have mentioned spirituality as the inspiration for their psychedelic music than have mentioned drugs.

In past episodes of Turn Me On, Dead Man I’ve stuck mainly with recent releases but in this episode I’m going to close out with a set of tracks from reissues. One of the tracks, “Blast Off” by Psyclona, fits in well with this episode’s theme of When Worlds Collide (drops are from the 1951 sci-fi film). This final set opens and closes with 10th anniversary reissues, Flowering by Herbcraft came out in 2012, as did World Music by Goat, which has been remastered at Abbey Road studios. The Herbcraft album is being reissued on cassette but the rest of the tracks in this set are being reissued on limited edition vinyl releases. I never would have predicted how vinyl has become a sought after format. It seems like these days a vinyl release carries with it prestige and seems to make it more of an event. The LP format emphasizes the cover art but the records themselves frequently have really stunning designs.

00:35 Los Males Necesarios – Repeticion
03:07 Black Lizard – Killfire
07:20 Dead Waves – Wake Up In The Night
09:15 Kikagaku Moyo – Cardboard Pile
14:59 Medicine Singers – A Cry/Daybreak
19:32 London Odense Ensemble – Sojourner
25:11 Surreal – Sun Ra en la quebrada de Macul con Don Cherry (fumándose unos cuetes y bañándose en la cascada)
29:17 Bad LSD Trips – Consciousness Burnout
34:38 The Sensational Country Blues Wonders – There’s a Hole in the Fabric of My Reality
39:57 Psycada – Abstract/Halal
45:10 Primordial Undermind – Hermetic Armada
51:51 Science Killer – Blue
56:16 Smoke The Light – InHell
1:01:01 Fuzz Sagrado – In Her Garden
1:05:15 The Wesleys – Find a Way
1:10:12 The Cyanide Jug Band – Girl In The Can-Can Hat
1:13:00 Atom Mother – Searching/Finding
1:20:50 Quantum Pigeon – The Pigeon
1:24:43 Ciencias Ocultas – La ciencia oculta
1:35:36 Herbcraft – California Poppy
1:38:23 The Qualitons – Család
1:47:18 Psychlona – Blast Off
1:54:35 Goat – Goathead

Well, COVID-19 finally got me. I managed to avoid it for more than two years but everyone in my household has gotten sick in the last couple of weeks. Our symptoms were relatively mild, I’m happy to say, but it’s still been difficult. I haven’t gotten a lot done in the past couple of weeks but I have been listening to a variety of new music. So after doing a few geographically themed episodes this one is much more spread out across the countries you would expect: the US, the UK, Australia and western Europe. This episode opens with the Cosmic Lotus, who are from Mexico City and combine members of various stoner/psychedelic bands, followed by Tombstones in their Eyes [LA], Drug Couple [NYC], and the Japanese band Dhidalah.

I have to say that all of the bands I’ve mentioned so far are candidates for my best of list at the end of this year. I don’t know if it’s all the ibuprofen I’ve been taking to deal with my COVID-19 symptoms but the music has just been sounding so great to me. Like the last couple of episodes, this one runs two full hours, and I guess that’s becoming the standard for Turn Me On, Dead Man. So much good music out there I don’t want to leave anything out. This episode is particularly varied, from the heavy psych of Ecstatic Vision, the drone of Hashishian, the garage psych of Limestone, the dub of Guitars on Drugs, the improvisational music of Black Toast and New Standards Men, to the experimentation of one of my favorites, Thee UFO. The apocalyptic drops come from the 1958 sci-fi film The Lost Missile.

00:28 The Cosmic Lotus – Lotus Devotion (Promo version)
08:17 Tombstones In Their Eyes – A Higher Place
11:22 Drug Couple – Missed Our Chance
17:27 Dhidalah – Soma
26:17 Ambassador Hazy – Modes of Transportation
30:32 Ecstatic Vision – Elusive Mojo
36:33 Foraging Badgers of the Black Forest – Vast Forest Lands
42:25 Hashishian – Let Us Reason
48:32 The Lower Depths – Trip Hazards
52:16 Boschivo – Oltre il Velo
55:43 Japanese Television – Space Fruit Vineyard
1:00:11 GDDLF – RAIIIWWAR
1:05:17 Limestoned – Sacred Key
1:08:35 Thee UFO – Impish Delight
1:14:42 Black Toast – And the Gods Just Stood There & Laughed
1:22:15 Guitars On Drugs – Trinity
1:26:29 UFO Över Lappland – Blå Vägen
1:34:05 The Telephones – Two Byrds
1:37:34 Weasel – Melt
1:40:07 New Standards Men – Spain’s First Astronaut A

I took a road trip recently and my GPS was behaving strangely. It happened a few times where my GPS was slow to identify roads I was traveling on–and I don’t mean back roads, I mean Interstate 95. I thought that was a little odd and then I noticed the street sign a short distance away from my destination: Black Swan Lane. There’s been some chatter recently about “black swan events” and it just seemed to fit somehow. A black swan event is one the is unpredictable, has far-reaching consequences, and somehow after the fact we create an explanation for it that makes it seem like it was inevitable all along. It strikes me that our world is defined increasingly by black swan events.
Even though this episode isn’t geographically defined in the way that Beyond and On The Line (in fact, most of the episodes this year) were, I’ve broken up the playlist into sets defined by geography. The first set is music from Europe, followed by a set from Latin America/Caribbean, and concluding with some tracks from the US and Canada.
The drops in this episode come from Panic in Year Zero, very much a black swan movie.

00:39 Luminous Rift – Bugs In The Module
04:31 Boar God – Birthplace
07:40 The Dharmas – 1000Miles
Europe set
14:39 Misleading – Whirlwinded
16:49 La Casa al Mare – Otherwise
23:50 SWCC Community – Dreams of Space
28:28 Vomit Heat – Dematerialize
33:05 The Moondig – gasvoor
37:20 Bity Booker – Dreaming in the Morning
40:40 Bookhouse – Eferwad y Tonnau Gwyn
Latin America/Caribbean set
43:55 The Kadeem Ward Project – Kaleidoscope (Demo)
52:12 Dorotheo – Alba Rosa
53:33 Mint Field – Contingencia
57:07 Hoja Madre – Hoja Madre III EP
1:00:20 Reverb Chamber – Let Her Burn
1:04:13 Venado Records – Jones Poison
1:08:20 Fulgor – Song
1:10:10 Skintaker – Face of Stone
1:13:32 Giant Jellyfish – Marvelous City
Northern America set
1:16:15 Su Evets – the Deering
1:44:30 The Frozen Heads – Whatever, Sky
1:54:17 Ogua – Play
1:34:35 The Sadies – Stop and Start

Since the start of the year I’ve been making music maps to go along with these podcasts. Since the maps show where the artists in the playlist are from, I decided to go with a geographical theme for the next couple of episodes. The playlist for this episode features bands from all over Europe. One of the most interesting tracks is from Turas Naofa, who made a holy journey from Berlin back to Ireland to record what I’d describe as a shamanistic track that really gets to the essence of psychedelia.

00:25 Juárez – Nébula
03:57 The Lost Noise Figure – Wake Me Up (When It’s Over)
08:46 Decasia – Hrosshveli’s Ode
14:33 Turas Naofa – I Mo Bholg
18:54 Bad Bed – No One Can Hear You
23:26 Syndrom Samasvanca – Alimpijada-20
30:41 Lunar Funeral – Burn The Shadow
36:10 Courge, MatttKonture, Alice ElRakun – Arthfuzz
38:31 The LSD Zapata – Organik
41:40 Küllä Küllä – Aural Surf
50:11 black (w)hole – unwind
55:24 Apex Ten – The Fourth Passenger