Album: Ded Hyatt - Glossy

A genuinely boggling record mangles a world's worth of pop and avant-garde influences into... something

This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack and fracture and could easily be about to break into some super jagged Berlin deconstructed club music at any minute.

But less than two minutes later and we’re into “Chlorine”, a song in the modern country-inflected pop style which wouldn’t sound out of place on most daytime radio channels, and you could easily imagine the Californian Ded Hyatt performing as a support act for Taylor Swift or Harry Styles.

Music Reissues Weekly: The Devil Rides In - Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult

THE DEVIL RIDES IN - SPELLBINDING SATANIC MAGICK Pop & rock embrace the dark side

When pop and rock embraced the dark side

Just over two weeks before Christmas 1967, The Rolling Stones issued Their Satanic Majesties Request. The album’s title appeared to serve time on the peace-and-love, flowers-for-everyone good vibes of the psychedelic era. A year later, the Stones’ next LP, Beggars Banquet, went further. It opened with "Sympathy for the Devil." “Just call me Lucifer…or I'll lay your soul to waste,” sang Mick Jagger.

Album: Goat - Goat

★★★★ GOAT - GOAT Mysterious Scandinavians put on their dancing shoes

Mysterious Scandinavians put on their dancing shoes

With the Pagan festival of Mabon and the Autumnal Equinox only just past us, it seems appropriate for Scandi psychedelic rockers, Goat to provide a soundtrack of celebration as we head towards the colder months. And, as expected, Goatman and his crew have not let us down with their completely wigged out set of funky vibes and transcendent rhythms.

Album: Caribou - Honey

★★★★ CARIBOU - HONEY The psychedelic indie-dance individualist still setting off fireworks

Almost a quarter century in, the psychedelic indie-dance individualist still setting off fireworks

Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (soon renamed to Caribou) making a giddy mixture of dreamy ‘60s psychedelic pop, glitchy electronica and then cutting-edge dance music.

Album: Jamie xx - In Waves

Get right on one, matey, with a glorious capturing of dancefloor dissolution of self

There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of signifiers. Fila, Stüssy, Air Max 90s, smiley faces, sirens, rewinds, crowd noises, hop in a Ford Cortina, tribes coming together, dancing at dawn, baggy hoodies for goalposts, isn’t it, wasn’t it, hmm? There’s been a little less discussed, though, about what raving actually felt like, and in particular that it its revolutionary character came from everyone having the same feeling of being on the same drug at the same time.

Album: Mercury Rev - Born Horses

★ MERCURY REV - BORN HORSES The venerable US psychedelic voyagers take a trip into inner space

The venerable US psychedelic voyagers take a trip into inner space

After the client has settled on the analyst’s couch, the lights are dimmed. Music sets the mood. A wordless vocal is accompanied by chimes. Cool saxophone breezes in. Sparse piano lines ripple like heat haze. Drums are understated, yet oddly insistent. The atmosphere is mysterious. Increasingly enflamed.

WOMAD Festival 2024 review - exuberant global roots sounds, hippies young and old, and blissful weather

★★★★★ WOMAD FESTIVAL 2024 Exuberant global roots sounds, hippies young and old, and blissful weather

The venerable coming-together of music from around the world remains a rich and cheerful feast

The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-electronic rock tinged with exotica and Middle Eastern flavour. Very WOMAD, in other words.

Album: Lava La Rue - Starface

Cosmic pop star harks back to a time when eclecticism came easily

Two of the biggest trends in 21st century pop culture today have been “poptimism” – broadly, the idea that pop as such is as serious and worthy of analysis as any other artform – and a kind of everything-everywhere-all-at-once telescoping of past influences into a grab bag of total availability. The former tendency has rather clotted into received wisdom (fuelled by click addiction) that bigger is better and Taylor Swift therefore deserves more critical attention than anyone else.

Rain Parade, 229 review - the Paisley Underground perennials prove unafraid of their past

★★★ RAIN PARADE, 229 Haziness, raga-esque guitar and top-notch psychedelia

Haziness, raga-esque guitar and top-notch psychedelia

It kicks off with “No Easy Way Down.” First released on 1984’s mini-LP Explosions in the Glass Palace, it was an instant benchmark by which to measure Rain Parade. Churning, dense and foggy, it made good on what this California outfit were portrayed as: integral to a Sixties-inspired wave of bands defiantly reconfiguring the past for the present. Not all Rain Parade songs were like this, but “No Easy Way Down” was a head-spinner. It still is.

Album: Wytch Pycknyck - Wytch Pycknyck

★★★★★ WYTCH PYCKNYCK - WYTCH PYCKNYCK Debut from south coast quartet renders heavy rock as stunningly messed-up psychedelia

Debut from south coast quartet renders heavy rock as stunningly messed-up psychedelia

Out on the perimeters where there are no stars, in a void full of bong-smoke and synesthetic noise… there, in a greasy biker hovel full of gigantic amps, there live Wytch Pycknyck. Some say that place is called Hastings. Whatever it’s called, this four-piece arrive to reinvigorate heavy rock with a demented energy, zigzagged to the gills with lysergic spirit and a belief in gutter-punk rock’n’roll.