This is episode 9 from 2021. Number 9 put me in mind of John Lennon, especially after watching a video from the excellent series You Can’t Unhear This devoted to the Beatles song “Rain.” One of the ways “Rain” was innovative was that it included a reverse vocal line, which occurs during the track’s fade out. A Japanese pressing of the Beatles LP Hey Jude included a lyric sheet that transcribed the backward vocal. It tried to make sense of the gibberish and came up with “Stare it down and nourish/what comes near you” which actually works pretty well! I thought that would be a good starting off point for this episode’s collection of recent psychedelia.

Special thanks to Justin Bendell of fuguers cove for a better set of interview questions.

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April 20th is no stranger to strangeness. There’s the whole 420 weed phenomenon, and you can Google whose birthday it is. Perhaps most important, though, is that it’s the day after Bicycle Day. A time to reflect on the growing psychedelic influence in the world.

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Spiritual psychedelia (even if it is a punchline). The music in this episode all tends toward the spiritual. This episode leads off with “Zenith” by Avdey, a track that explores how a person can become one with the universe, followed by “By the Hand of God” by Children’s Ice Cream. The playlist concludes with “Brotherhood of Eternal Love” by Miss Lava. A few of the tracks also explore altered consciousness. Along with “Furthur Ahead” by Word of Life and “Peyote Sunrise” by Robot God is “Turn off your mind, float downstream” from Tim, where are you now? an album that commemorates the centennial of Timothy Leary’s birth.

Karl Stefanovic was one of the hosts of Today on the Australian Nine Network when he interviewed the Dalai Lama. He ill advisedly used the opportunity to tell a joke that was lost on the Dalai Lama. “The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, ‘can you make me one with everything.'” The Dalai Lama has a good sense of humor and even if he didn’t immediately get the joke he was a good sport about, even eating a slice of pizza during a subsequent interview. Not to mention that this actually went much better than former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota related a line from the movie Caddyshack to the Dalai Lama in cringeworthy fashion.

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One of the best discoveries of the year for me has been Psychedelic Source Records. Over the course of the year, I’ve featured tracks by Satorinaut, Lemurian Folk Songs, Pilot Voyager and Liquidacid, all affiliated with Psychedelic Source Records, a music collective of bands that share members and jam together. Located primarily in Páty, Hungary, Psychedelic Source Records has been prolific of late, with each of the artists releasing multiple albums in recent months. Psychedelic Source Records have made all of these recordings available at name your price on Bandcamp. Below you will find a linked word cloud with several of the artists and albums from Psychedelic Source Records, as well as an interview I did by email recently with Bence Ambrus.

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