VARIOUS ARTISTS – The 19th Dream Of Dr. Sardonicus Festival Of Psychedelia Live (2024, 2LP FdM Winkle 55)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Fruits de Mer Records

Format: 2LP, Limited Edition, Blue Vinyl

Format: 2LP, Limited Edition, White/Blue Vinyl

Release Date: 13 August 2024

Well, as you have already guessed by the title of this release, this is the yearly sanctioned Fruits de Mer Records LP release concerning the Dr. Sardonicus Festival Of Psychedelia. Keith ‘Head’ of FdM Records says:

“(COVID permitting) every summer, Cardigan’s Cellar Bar plays host to two days and three nights of great live music, organized by Sendelica’s Pete Bingham and supported by the global might of Fruits de Mer Records, Record Collector magazine, and Cardigan’s Mantle Brewery (who even bottle up special editions of their best bitter every year to celebrate our return!).

Ticket sales are limited to just 150 but we like to think we punch above our weight with the likes of The Bevis Frond, Astralasia, Fuchsia, and The Groundhogs gracing the Cellar Bar stage over the years (although not at the same time – it can get bloody crowded in there).

Last year, London Underground and Pinhdar flew in from Italy to play alongside the UK contingent and we’ve produced a limited-run double LP of recordings from a selection of the artists that played – music on the double LP set ranges from classic instrumental progressive rock to psychedelia, space rock to trip-hop, kosmische synth sounds to a barbershop quartet (OK, so there was no barbershop quartet, just checking you were paying attention).

I hope the four sides of vinyl give you a taste of how much fun the event was in 2023”...

“The 19th Dream Of Dr. Sardonicus Festival Of Psychedelia Live” contains 10 bands and 10 tracks divided into the 4 sides of the double LP album, and it kicks off with whom else than London Underground. The band ‘executes’ one of their favorite “live tracks”, “Tropic Of Capricorn” (taken from 1969’s LP “Streetnoise” by Julie Driscoll Brian Auger & The Trinity), a pretty close to the original version, quite passionate, a bit of lounge-y version with a pompous playing! Spectral Stream follows with “Dust Storms On Mars”, a trippy electronic improvised ambient-like proggy experiment in Space! The Funkadelic classic “Maggot Brain” (from 1971) has by now become a Sendelica classic ‘standard’ live performance on almost every set of theirs, trippy, proggy, funky while towards the end Sendelica pays tribute to Nik Turner by incorporating “Master Of The Universe”, another Classic! Hanford Flyover starts playing “Space Tractor” by saying “…never seen the light of day…” and I’m wondering why(???), this is a robotic danceable Spacey futuristic track that gives you the feel of Hawkwind on a date with The Ozric Tentacles! Consterdine presents “Sepia”, an improvised experimental piece of ‘organic’ new Space Age music, while Pinhdar performs “Atoms & Dust” presenting to the audience their unique dark creepy & trippy futuristic kind of Trip Hop! Now, what we have here by this duo called McDowell & Westaway is literally, indescribable… Their song “Black Tar Acid’ has electro music blending with Rock n’ Roll, a M-I-N-D B-L-O-W-I-N-G futuristic dance-a-delic theme! Wow! I haven’t heard such an addictive melody since… ages! Dark Zen Kollectiv with “Ice Lock Up Stones (edit)” are moving to a new age Space-Rock, full of energy and spacey effects, a track that after a while transforms into a 60s West Coast Jam thing, but then dives into deep Space, again… Cary Grace and her band are making ONE-OF-THE-BEST reinterpretations I’ve ever heard on a Velvet Underground song, for 9 minutes, they perform a fantastic dark and creepy Subversive Stoned version of “Venus In Furs”, a torturously “sadomasochistic” version! Spygenius closes the album with “Café Emery Hill”, a lovely Pop-Rock tune with some kind of a Beatlesque late 60s complexion… So, I believe that “The 19th Dream Of Dr. Sardonicus Festival Of Psychedelia Live” captured the “live Spirit” of the performed bands very well, it’s a very nice Live album, and it will certainly going to be raise your curiosity for most of the bands so you can start digging their stuff… TimeLord Michalis  

Tracklist

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