From the Top Drawer XXXI - Mutagen

I've been trying to do my own rip of Mutagen's album 'Inner Sense' for quite a while now, but technical difficulties have prevented me from achieving a tape rip that comes up to standard for upload. The combination of an ageing cassette and my ageing tape deck just hasn't worked and the rips have sounded muffled and indistinct, maybe due to the oxide coming away from the tape. Young people today don't know what we used to have to put up with! Crisp digital copies of easily transferable music with no quality degradation or danger of getting mangled due to dirty pinchwheels and dodgy transport mechanisms are taken for granted in the 21st Century, but this wasn't always the case 20 or more years ago :-)

Anyway the good folks from Mutagen have been in touch to tell me that they have made available two albums on Bandcamp for free - 'Shrine In Your Mind' from 1992 (already posted HERE) and 'Inner Sense' itself from 1993.

You are invited to go to http://mutagen.bandcamp.com/ and download the album files from there.

Also please go to their Facebook page and leave a comment, picture or story if you have any...

Many thanks to the band.

Here's a the first part of a live set which the band performed in Winchester in 1992 -

From the Top Drawer XXX - The Oroonies

Here we are at the Winter Solstice once more (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), on the shortest day/longest night of the year, the exact time of the event this year falling at 0530 GMT on Thursday morning 22nd December. It's unusual for the Solstice to fall on the 22nd, but the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days, so each year the exact time of the Solstice is pushed back by around six hours. Next year is a leap year so the auspicious solstice of 2012 will be back on track for the 21st December. 11.11am, I believe, will be the actual time for the Mayan Calendar-inspired End of this World (or not, according to whatever your belief system tells you!).

What better way to celebrate the Solstice and to enter the year of the Final Countdown than by putting another log on the fire, raising a mug of ale or glass of mulled wine and toasting the imminent return of the Light to a soundtrack provided by those Pagan minstrels, the Oroonies.

Here we have a late 1980s (?) tape release called 'Ee-I-Ee-I-O'.
The band had improved (slightly) the quality of their recordings by this time and were also using more electronic gadgets such as drum machines and samplers. The tunes were more diverse and distinctively melodic (!), dipping into reggae and other forms of danceable musics (albeit in a mutated fashion) but on the whole there would be plenty to please lovers of their early earthy Pan-worshipping pagan weirdness...

Contained on the tape are the tunes 'Aradia' and 'They Don't Want Us', both of which appeared on a rare 12" EP on Hiraeth Records with 'The Woods Are Alive With The Smell Of His Coming'. 'They Don't Want Us' even got played by John Peel on his show one night (I heard it!). After spinning the tune Peel was heard to comment enigmatically, 'I know what they mean...'

Ripped as two side-long tracks @320kbps from an original tape.
The only track titles on the tape artwork are as can be seen above -
  Side One: Around The World
  Side Two: And Back Again

Sorry folks, but there's somebody out there that does not want this album shared on Mediafire (the file hosting service I use). I have received two warning emails from MF to take this file down from their server. These could only have come from someone who is making a copyright claim on this album (or a simple mistake). Unless we are living in a Kafka-esque world where we don't get to find out who is making a claim against us, then would the person(s) involved please identify themselves here in the comments so I can either apologize to them or if I consider their claim to be invalid, tell them where to go. I find it strange that I've posted a few Oroonies albums but it's only this one that's getting the negative attention. Thank you.

From the Top Drawer XXIX - Another Green World

Taking a name and much inspiration from the minimalism of Brian Eno's 1975 same titled album, and evolving around founder and constant member keyboard/synthesist Paul Chousmer, Another Green World is a pioneering act which from the early 1980s has been supplying music to quiet spaces which have now become known as 'chill-out' rooms at many club events and meditative relaxation areas at festivals in the UK and beyond.

 

WOMAD '96 - A G W playing the Whirl-Y-Gig stage

Paul had been involved with acts such as Vane and Webcore before branching out into a simultaneous parallel existence on his own, most often with collaborator sax player Dan Carpenter but also other guests. They performed at events such as the Alice In Wonderland Mystery Trips, Club Dog, The Crypt in Deptford and many underground events in London and elsewhere. A.G.W. later recorded for the Magick Eye label and have also been much in demand to contribute tracks to ambient chill-out compilation albums on many labels.

Here we have the first cassette dating from their early period called 'My Dreams In Your Hands' which had a release in 1984 on the Cornwall-based A Real Kavoom label.
No track titles are given on the artwork, relax and let your imagination roam where it will...

Ripped as two side-long tracks from an original tape @320kbps

Download a copy HERE

Another Green World on MySpace

The Future of Free Energy is here now...?

From the Top Drawer XXVIII - The Ullulators

A second outing on this blog to satisfy requests for more from the very popular Ullulators.

 Going beyond...

The second cassette release 'Beyond The Gates Of Ull' arrived in 1986 and provided another helping of psychedelic spacerock, ambient synth explorations, Holger Czukay-style ethnic samples and dub with lashings of rocking guitar.
(Check out the first, 'Share A Clam', & more info on the band HERE)

- Beyond The Gates Of Ull  -

Side One : Ul Ul Ul He / Simply Conscious Dub / Thump The Hampster / The Emerald Table Of Hermes Trisamagistus / Pineapple People / Whales In The Grass / War Apes / Unninurnies / I Can Smell Nirvana
Side Two : Improbable Muziks / Edilhe / Sloshy Sausages / Living In A Nice Hedge / Shringara / Fish Trunks / Brooce Babbling In The Undergrowth (live@Torpedo Town 1986) / Cluck-Cluck-Oi

Ripped from an original tape as two side-long tracks @320kbps

Get it HERE

Live at Treworgy Tree Fayre 1989

Ullulators on Facebook

Ullulators on MySpace

From the Top Drawer XXVII - The Rhythmites

Roots reggae/dub, and associated offshoot variations, styles & philosophies had a considerable influence on many bands of the UK underground scene covered on this blog, and even if that influence on the music of those bands was not that obviously evident, the values and consciousness expressed by reggae artists were very likely taken on board. Certainly the experimentation of dub techniques developed in Jamaica in the 1970s have had a huge impact on the way attitudes towards studio production and mixing have evolved since then, particularly in electronic dance music.

Here to fill a gap on the reggae front is a very tight live set from the West Country-based Rhythmites. Formed in the late 1980s and here captured playing at the Sir George Robey at Finsbury Park, London as guests of Club Dog, this is a very decent audience recording of this conscious roots band getting the crowd skanking to the max, the resulting tape being sold through the merchandising outlets of the Woofsters.

No track titles available for this set, but as usual ripped @320kbps and divided into two parts.

- Get it HERE -

Live at the Frome Festival 1997 - not great quality but nice performance.

The Rhythmites are alive and well and playing today. After a break from 2000-2007 they reformed to play a few festivals. In May 2009 they started writing and recorded the album 'Stand Strong' released in May 2010.

Rhythmites website 

Thanks to BJ for the lend of the tape.

Are You Ready?

• Are you ready to start your education as to why governments are perpetrating fraud and misrepresentation on you? 
• Why are you being required to pay 'income' taxes and pay for ludicrous infringements of alleged 'statutes' (victimless nebulous 'offences') when you are not employed by the government and therefore not liable? 
• Why are governments demanding money from you when you yourself have created the wealth of the nation through the very act of possessing a birth certificate which created a trust with the government who are supposed to be serving us, the people, in their capacity of trustees?
• Do you know that your signature on a piece of paper is equal to cash and any credit agreement that you think you have with a bank has actually been paid with the signature on that agreement?
• How to go to court (at least to start with) and be the undisputed ruler of that court without employing any lawyers. Later on learn how to avoid going to court altogether.

Dean Clifford is living outside of 'Their Law' - Part 1 of 6 
Watch the whole series of 6 x 6 part videos on YouTube - this is where to start.

All this and more in the wonderful world of 'Commerce'. Dean Clifford starts a series of videos here, and displays his hard-won knowledge as to how to escape from the illusion that anyone has power over you unless you want them to. Some of the most important info that I've ever come across. (Audio is not great as the video was not initially planned to be for the public.)