After winning a Mojo award for the second Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble CD, Gaz – and, briefly, Brian – chatted to Mojo TV and Peter Hammill backstage, in which there was talk of all things Bubble, including the fact that the were knee-deep in the third volume, to be called The Revolution Will Not Be Digitised. An odd thing to call an album released on a digital format, but there we go. Gaz also mentioned the formation of Monstrous Bubble Records, on which future MPB-related projects would be released. Fans would have to wait until October for more news, which came in the form of a new title – The 3rd Ear – and a release date of 1st November. Platipus had gone bust earlier in the year, making the formation of Monstrous Bubble very timely, as the compilation would have been without a home, and due for an entirely new bunch of licenses had a new label been found. It came out without the fanfare and hype of the previous volume – no O2 event, the past one being seemingly forgotten about, despite Gaz’s promise of a rescheduled date – and reviews were very slightly less enthusiastic. Not that any were negative – they were pretty much all completely positive, in fact – but there was a touch of “it’s another one of these, you know what to expect by now” about their tone. Which is kind of fair, as The 3rd Ear would no longer sound groundbreaking or mind-bending having heard the previous volumes. Although ostensibly on Monstrous Bubble, History Records handled the manufacturing and distribution, sharing copyright with MB.
Each disc starts with a Timothy Leary quote, not listed as part of the main tracklist, but simply as in introduction. His most famous line – “Tune in, turn on, drop out” – starts the first disc, at the start of the wonderful Pierre Cavalli track that set things off with aplomb. The second disc, however, seems to place Leary’s quote about “the psychedelic hierarchy” in its own index, which then knocks the entire disc off for a while. 11 tracks – 2 to 12 – don’t match up with the tracklist given on the back cover, and things only come together again by the Tiny Tim and John Kongos tracks being stuck together in the same index, making the remaining seven tracks correct again. If that’s not confusing enough, the indexing itself is frequently madly off the mark. For example, Donovan’s ‘Get Thy Bearings’ starts two whole minutes into track four, with those first minutes taken up by the end of the previous track; many of the other tracks start about 20 seconds before the end of the previous index. I have no idea who was in charge of this chaos, but I hope they were sacked.
In terms of the tracks, there are no surprises, other than the appearance of several tracks that date right back to the very first broadcast in 1997, including the seemingly perennial ‘Cosmic Sea’ by Mystic Moods (how was this not already included on one of the CDs?), the Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Waltz for Lumumba’, James Last’s ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and Sun Dial’s ‘Exploding in Your Mind’. A couple of tracks are misnamed, such as ‘Exploding in Your Mind’ as ‘Colours Exploding in Your Mind’, and The Moody Blues’ ‘The Best Way to Travel’ as ‘ Thinking is the Best Way to Travel’. A fair number of the tracks come from various past broadcasts, including a Bruce Haack as heard on Electric Brain Storms Vol. 2. Only three Amorphous tracks are present this time, and both brief: ‘Guru Song’, a Paul Weller remix from earlier in the year, and the unreleased ‘In Fear of the Electromagnetic Machine (Part 4)’, which is little more than a linking environment. As ever, spoken word samples and field recordings are used to link the tracks.
I don’t particularly like the phrase ‘return to form’, but it feels fitting here: after the somewhat patchy second volume, The 3rd Ear feels like a huge step up. It helps that there are fewer oddities on the album – other than Bruce Haack and Tiny Tim – with a general blend of instrumental groove tracks and psych rock, punctuated by the occasional folk rock track. There are also only a small handful of recent tracks on the mix, with the bulk coming from the late ’60s and early ’70s, which helps keep an aesthetic consistency. While less adventurous than previous volumes, it manages to be incredible concise.
The cover features the same head design as the earlier volumes, although the morphing figures are replaced by a sunkissed naked woman, a lion and eagle, and some odd tentacles. Only one page of liner notes this time, with an invitation for the listener to sail on a ship of monstrous imagination and a lot of other Gaz-isms, in all sorts of crazy fonts. There’s also a list of concepts and philosophies that “the song of the 3rd ear is a devotee to,” including, among a lot of spiritual ideas, “2012”. Shame nothing happened, eh? The single band shot features Gaz, Brian and Jonathan Meyer, surrounding by ears and tentacles. The credits page advertises the previous CD and radio volumes, and lists “The Amorphous,” as Dave Sanderson, Virgil Howe, Edd Keane, Jonathan Meter, Kez Gunes, Rainy Moor, Antony Argiros, Alisha Sufit and Hagop Matossian. Probably the live lineup as of 2009.
Release date: 1st November 2010.
Tracklist
CD (HISTORY1006)
Timothy Leary – Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out
1.1. Pierre Cavalli – Chasse A L’Homme
1.2. Nektar – It’s All in the Mind
1.3. Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Coma Pony
1.4. Luv Machine – Witches Wand
1.5. Golden Animals – Hi / Lo
1.6. The Ravelles – The Psychedelic Movement
1.7. James Last – Here Comes the Sun
1.8. Ozdemir Edrogan – Uzun Ince Bir Yoldayim
1.9. The Amorphous Androgynous – In Fear of the Electromagnetic Machine (Part 4)
1.10. Spencer Davis Group – Waltz for Lumumba
1.11. The ID Company – I Watched the Women
1.12. Dick Hyman – The Minotaur
1.13. Bruce Haack – Electric to Me Turn
1.14. Ennio Morricone – Gil Scatenati
1.15. Aphrodite’s Child – The Beast
1.16. Rotary Connection – Turn Me On
1.17. Bill Plummer & The Cosmic Brotherhood – Journey to the East
1.18. Sun Dial – Exploding in Your Mind
1.19. Lau Nau – Kuljen Halki Kuutarhan
1.20. Corte Dei Miracoli – E Verrà L’uomo
1.21. Mystic Moods – Cosmic Sea
1.22. The Moody Blues – The Best Way to Travel
1.23. Gong – Master Builder (Eye Remix)
1.24. Drum Circus – Now it Hurts You
1.25. The Animated Egg – Sock it My Way
1.26. Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms
Timothy Leary – The Psychedelic Hierarchy
2.1. Leon Russell – The Ballad of Hollis Brown
2.2. It’s a Beautiful Day – White Bird
2.3. Donovan – Get Thy Bearings
2.4. Bob James – Nautilus
2.5. Brave New World – Soma
2.6. Paul Weller – Like Water Needs a Flower (The Amorphous Androgynous MPB Mix)
2.7. Amon Duul II – Toxological Whispering
2.8. Supergrass – Run
2.9. The Tremeloes – Hard Times
2.10. Bonnie Dobson – Bird of Space
2.11. Agitation Free – Laila Pt 2
2.12. Tiny Tim – Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight
2.13. John Kongos – Tokoloshe Man
2.14. The Amorphous Androgynous – Guru Song
2.15. Noah Georgeson – Find Shelter
2.16. Dorothy Ashby – Soul Vibrations
2.17. The Dave Pike Set – Spooky
2.18. Cosmic Michael – Now That I Found It
2.19. Albion Country Band – Morris Medley
2.20. Aphrodite’s Child – All the Seats Were Occupied (Short Version)
Credits
Compiled & mixed by The Amorphous Androgynous Gaz Cobain & Brian Dougans
Artwork by Gaz Cobain for Amorphik Arts.
Band picture collaged from photography by Simon Fernandez.
Fractional Difference 