various / 14 tracks

14 tracks: Psychedelic Wanderlust

At the fringes of lo-fi, freeform folk, blues and experimental electronics are a number of artists operating with an untamed and psychedelic spirit of wanderlust. These cottage craftsmen share a large amount of DIY and improvised sensibilities, often inspired by standardised forms like the classic folk and pop song or the spiritual Indian Raga, but intuitively seeking to free the music through distorted personal perceptions. Applying the "psychedelic" prefix to any style can be precarious, certainly when it leads to lazy tagging and lumpen classification, but these modern practitioners all deserve the title. Whether it's the great, recently departed Jack Rose's exquisite raga blues modifications, Astral Social Club's motorik electronics or the psilocybic sound collages of Black To Comm, the peripheries of modern psyche are providing some of the most charmingly esoteric sounds that we can find. In the mists of the online environment these scattered souls are able to proliferate in the undergrowth, leaving truffles of rare and unexplored beauty ready to be found by intrepid explorers like yourself.