From the Top Drawer X - The Moonflowers

Self styled 'divvies' the Moonflowers were formed in Bristol in 1987/88 and in 1990 enjoyed a massive indie chart hit with 'Get Higher' as a one-off release on the Heavenly label. Coming on like a loose mix of Sly & The Family Stone, Funkadelic and the emerging 'baggy' scene, they caught the mood of the record-buying public at the time, and with their painted faces and tales of wild gigs they rode a wave of interest from a crossover indie kid/raver audience. Later releases came out on their own Pop God label which featured associated spin-off bands such as Praise Space Electric. They set out on the road after a while and went to live in Europe busking and playing impromptu gigs here and there from what I can gather. I believe they existed in some form or other for the rest of the 1990s when they called it a day and moved on to other projects.

I caught them at a few gigs in London when they were at the height of their fame, and one night in Tufnell Park they were supported by Pulp (!) but I arrived too late to catch Jarvis and co. I also remember seeing them play an early morning slot on the band stage at the Avon free festival, which took place at Chipping Sodbury Common over the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend in May 1991. I was stumbling back to my tent from the rave area just as it was getting light and caught the band totally enjoying themselves despite there being little or no audience paying them any attention. I always liked hearing the guitarist Jesse let rip on his weird looking (Ovation Breadwinner?) instrument, reminding me of a cross between the styles of Funkadelic's Eddie Hazel and original UFO guitarist Mick Bolton, a great sound that really scraped out the multicoloured cobwebs at the back of your mind. The vocal harmonies were a good effort but didn't always hit the musical mark! Groovy stuff anyway.

This tape was something I picked up at the merch table at one of their gigs and it reflects their live set around the turn of the 90s with most of the crowd favourites of the time. The recording's a bit rough and ready, not sure whether it's soundboard or an audience job for the live tracks, but quite listenable anyway. If you feel like holding hands with somebody while you're listening, I'm sure that would go down well with the band...

As for the track listing...there are no titles given on the artwork at all, but if you've got any of their early records, you'll recognise the songs.

Ripped as two side-long tracks @320 kbps
Download HERE

This video shows what can happen if you stand too close to a divvy.

http://sparror.cubecinema.com/gothmag/moonflowers/history.htm
http://www.myspace.com/thelegendarymoonflowers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonflowers

Spring Equinox

Bit late with this one as I believe it was round about 23.21 last night (exact times seem to vary according to various sources), and the (Super) moon was bright on a clear night, a lovely sight. The weather seems to have picked up a few degrees of warmth, some trees are budding up and the light has changed somewhat in the last week or so.

What a tragedy that the Supermoon has inspired more lunacy in the form of another illegal war.
But it's great for business if you're a shareholder of a psychotic arms manufacturing corporation like Lockheed Martin, who incidentally have been awarded a very lucrative contract (£150 million) by the UK government to collect the data for the Census next weekend. Nice to know where taxpayers' money ends up, isn't it?

It's going to be a very blood red moon for some.

Relativity

From the Top Drawer IX - Mutagen

Mutagen were formed in Brighton in the early 1990s and played a mixture of what at the time might have been termed 'crusty' techno mixed with dub and electric guitars. The line-up originally included an ex-member of Ring (Ian) and in a later incarnation a synth player (Simon) who would go on to play as a solo electronic act called Astral Engineering and release a CD on the Worm Interface (Ambient Soho) label.

I remember first seeing them play at the Deptford Urban Free Festival that used to take place in Fordham Park in the summer and thinking that they were pretty impressive and fresh sounding. Mutagen featured vocals as well and the live set quite often included dancers and performers of various kinds. I like the combination of guitar and electronics, the organic with the inorganic, it seems to work well as long as the music doesn't stray into cheesy and predictable song structures.

 

Thinking about the Deptford Festival, there used to be an equivalent event in Brighton called the Brighton Urban Free Festival (B.U.F.F.) which took place on the Level over a couple of days at a weekend in the summer. I think there were noise complaints from the locals (who even to this day seem only too pleased to put up with the Fun Fair which arrives for a noisy week to 10 days regularly throughout the year - commercial/money-making, you see...ah, that's all right then) and the BUFF had to move. There was a great day out in 1995 in Wild Park which seemed to be ideal for something the size of this festy, but a year later it moved again to Stanmer Park for a day, after which a minimal number of complaints about noise to the police (from over the other side of the A27!) meant that it was never staged in the town again. So much for democracy - it seems that if there's ever a danger of anyone enjoying themselves in Britain somebody else will disapprove of it, and even if this represents the minority, the law always will take their side and get the thing shut down. The Puritanical streak still persists in this country.

There seems to be little information online about the band apart from this -
http://www.mokshaproductions.com/Mutagen_Brighton.htm

What we have here then, is what I believe to be their first tape release called 'Shrine - In Your Mind' which is dated 1992.

Ripped from the original cassette @320kbps, the track titles can be found on this scan -

Get it HERE

The Ninth Wave

According to Carl Calleman's work on the Mayan Calendar which he sees as arriving at completion on 28th October 2011, today marks the start of the 234 day-long Ninth Wave, or Universal Underworld. This is the last step towards a transformation of human consciousness, rather than a physical event such as the Galactic alignment supported by other Mayanist scholars such as John Major Jenkins, who promotes the view that the calendar comes to an end on 21st December 2012.

As seen in the picture above, Mayan pyramids were built in nine steps before reaching the capstone; each of these steps, Calleman says, represents a stage (an underworld divided into seven days and six nights) in the exponential evolution of human consciousness. The explanation behind this and the maths involved is quite complex and I'm certainly not going to attempt a breakdown of it here, I just wanted to mark out this date for myself as I find this theory the more attractive of the various Mayanist scholar propositions. Calleman's predictions of paradigm shifts seem to be proving eerily correct as time unfolds, for example he was accurate with his forecast of the financial crash of November 2007, as he is now with his prediction of the revolutions currently seen sweeping across North Africa and beyond.

Chart of the Ninth Wave
http://www.4-ahau.com/ressources/Ninth_Wave_Calendar_4-AHAU.jpg

Carl Calleman's sites
http://www.calleman.com/
http://www.treeoflifecelebration.com/

Much credit must also go to the late Ian Xel Lungold for his work and teachings
http://www.mayanmajix.com/

His video lectures were most helpful to me in an understanding of the Calendar.

From the Top Drawer VIII - The Oroonies

Featuring another Oroonies tape today, this one is their second release called 'Like Yeast We Rise', which continues their lo-fi excursions into pagan spacerock and twisted folk-influenced fantasias. This dates from around 1986. In due course I shall be posting the rest of the five cassettes I have.

Members passing through the band included Dave "Boris" Jones (guitar, vocals), Tanya Horn (bass, drums), Russ "Ron" Stanley (guitar, vocals, bass, harmonica, drums), Gary "Geek" Wagstaff (bass, saxophone), Joie Hinton (keyboards), Jane "Breda" Harwood (flute, whistle), Jo Harvey (violin, viola), & Merv Pepler (percussion). The band later morphed into the Cheapsuit Oroonies to follow a more acoustic-based direction.

Thanks goes out to the compiler of this page for the info (which also has an attempted discography)
http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/the_oroonies

 

Ripped @320kbps as two side-long tracks
Download HERE

'He comes, he comes...!'
And so will you when you get worshipping and be part of the Pandemic.

Critical Massacre

I know I've previously had a bit of a dig at the perceived self-righteousness of folks who go on protests like Critical Mass, myself amongst them, but luckily I've never had to witness any reaction by a car driver as horrific as this.

DeMenTed

As if it wasn't crazy enough for global legislators to outlaw the cultivation of the most useful plant on the planet, hemp, simply because it contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis/marijuana, it appears that now the Australian legislature is now proposing to ban any plant, growing naturally or in cultivation, that contains DMT.

(For the definitive story of the war against hemp, the book by Jack Herer called 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' is essential reading - http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/)

This would even include the Australian national flower, the wattle (acacia pycnantha)! They've already criminalized five plants, and now these demented control freaks want to criminalize hundreds, maybe thousands more. Quote from Food Freedom - 'The purpose of this new legislation is supposedly to stop major drug trafficking, yet many of the targeted plants have never been traded for drugs and have no value as drug plants, because they only contain traces of the compounds.' What these maniacs don't seem to realize is that DMT is a naturally occurring hallucinogen that is present as a trace element in the brains of every human being and indeed in all life forms - does that mean that one day, to paraphrase the thoughts of Terence McKenna, that when they finally want to round us all up into the camps they will use this as the premise to do so? Of course those that have previously had their imaginations removed and sold their souls and minds to an insane political ideology will be exempt.

As McKenna said, 'Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous.'

More info here