1) The document discusses the history and evolution of psychedelic rock (psych rock) from the 1960s to today. It originated in the mid-1960s with bands like The 13th Floor Elevators and was influenced by figures like Timothy Leary who advocated the use of psychedelic drugs. 2) Psych rock has endured and survived various permutations over the decades, with bands in the 1980s-1990s helping revive the genre. Current psych rock scenes are thriving in California, Texas, Australia and elsewhere. 3) The document profiles several modern psych rock bands like Thee Oh Sees, Tame Impala, and The Black Angels that are keeping the genre and its emphasis on altered states of mind

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FLYING
HIGH
Words: Min Chen
Images: Hedi Slimane, courtesy of Saint Laurent
Transcending space, defying time and expanding
consciousness, psych rock is more than a reverb-
drenched extended solo. Here’s to its altered and
elevated state of mind

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Lee Blackwell, Night Beats, Mecca, CA, April 25th 2014

3. A curious thing happened in the
music made in the mid-‘60s. Into
the era’s leading folk, pop and
rock crept reverb, raga accents,
drones and instrumental solos,
with whimsy and surrealism aiding
lyrical content, and harpischords
and theremins occupying studio
space. It was a phenomenon
that produced artifacts like The
Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things”,
The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”,
Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”
and The Beatles’ Rubber Soul,
while emboldening the Grateful
Dead to keep on jamming in
California. But it wasn’t until the
tail-end of 1966 that all of it came
properly christened.
The Psychedelic Sounds of The 13th
Floor Elevators, the full-length
debut of the titular Austin, Texan
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22
outfit, was the first instance of the
word “psychedelic” being applied
to rock music, where it very much
stuck. Defining a pattern, a state
of mind, a style and above all,
an experience, psychedelia first
slipped into the world with help
from West Coast figures like Ken
Kesey and Timothy Leary, who
advocated the use of chemical
enhancements in the name of
Raising Awareness. Transmuted
into music, it brought the same
consciousness expansion to bear
upon the sounds of the ‘60s, and
duly bathed the first Summer
of Love in the good vibrations
and purple haze of every long,
strange trip. Better yet, leave
it to Roky Erickson, frontman
of The 13th
Floor Elevators, to
supply psychedelia’s penultimate
position, in reference to an
American dollar bill: “It’s where
the pyramid meets the eye.”
Thus infused, the ‘60s flourished
with psych rock, pop, soul and folk
practitioners. Besides the usual
suspects of Pink Floyd, Jefferson
Airplane, Sly & The Family Stone,
Jimi Hendrix, Beach Boys and
Cream, even the most unlikely of
bands, when suitably enlightened,
could be found bounding down
the next strawberry field with
sitar in hand (see: Their Satanic
Majesties Request by The Rolling
Stones). So rich was psychedelia’s
influence that even the rising
amount of acid casualties and
punk’s arrival did nothing to wash
away its tie-dyed effects. Not
for nothing have the following
decades been littered with styles
like shoegaze, space rock, acid
house, kosmiche musik and new
rave, all of which wield the tools of
the psychedelic trade to further
its specialty of experiential
musical highs.
Of the above, though, it is
psych rock that seems to have
best weathered and survived
any number of permutations
to still retain its mystic and
synaesthetic groove. Thriving
in both underground channels
and overground charts, psych
rock has, since the ‘80s, been of
interest to acts like The Stone
Roses, The Flaming Lips and early
Primal Scream, as well as other
Paisley Underground outfits.
Its revival in the ‘90s came
largely down to Brian Jonestown
Massacre (Their Satanic Majesties’
Second Request) and the company
the San Franciscan band kept,
which consisted of the likes of The
Dandy Warhols and The Warlocks.
While extended jams and exotic
instrumentation thrived in this
scene, the bands were also
authentic right down to their
flowery shirts and technicoloured
album sleeves.
These days, the West Coast
continues to be a hotbed for
psych sounds. California can
count the lo-fi likes of Ty Segall
and the sun-dappled Mystic
Braves in its company, while San
Francisco flies the flag with bands
like Thee Oh Sees and Sleepy
Sun. The former stands tall with
a prolific output that powers
through garage and punk without
losing sight of a psychedelic
edge. John Dwyer’s songwriting
has spanned thrashers like “Toe
Cutter – Thumb Buster”, Syd
Barrett-esque folk stylings as
on “Minotaur” and spaced-out
numbers like “Putrifiers II”,
though ridden throughout is an
uninhibited, reverb-drenched
Kevin Parker, Coachella. CA, April 14th 2013

4. Feature
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experience. Where Thee Oh
Sees offer a wild phantasmagoria
of absurdity and weirdness,
Sleepy Sun hews closer to its
’67 psychedelic predecessors
with its hypnotic sweep of
sparkling atmospherics and
fuzzed-out psych-blues. 2010’s
Fever is particularly swell. And
though the quintet professes to
simply wanting to “play pedals
that sound good”, frontman
Bret Constantino will admit to
an attempt to “provoke mind
expansion in our listeners”. “One’s
exposure to any such art that
bears the soul of its creator,” he’s
said, “may lead to a profound
experience in the upper state of
consciousness”.
Constantino’s “rebellion of
conventional standards” in
reference to contemporary psych
rock will also sit well with Kevin
Parker. The man who’s largely
responsible for the psych revival
in Perth, Australia via his Tame
Impala, has this to say about
his work: “I never think my own
music is druggy at all. If you need
drugs to get to that bar in the first
place, that’s not right. People’s
imaginations and dreams are more
screwed up than drugs; it’s just
the sound of music in my head.”
Rejecting the hallucinogenic
aid that’s guided everyone from
John Lennon to Jason Pierce to
psychedelic awakenings, Parker’s
woozy and heady psych swirl is a
trip all of its own. Tame Impala’s
2012 masterwork Lonerism was
a fantastic weave of atmosphere
and wild texture (and that bass
line on “Elephant”) that, besides
putting in a good word for neo-
psychedelia, planted the seeds for
Australia’s now-blossoming psych
rock scene. This was, after all, the
place from which Coloured Balls
emerged with the 1972 psych jam
that was “Working Man’s Boogie”
and now, in a post-Lonerism world,
plays host to bands like Pond,
John Steel Singers and Blank
Realm.
Meanwhile, back in Austin, Texas,
the birthplace of The 13th
Floor
Elevators and their Psychedelic
Sounds, the Austin Psych Fest
is in its eighth year. Now newly
renamed Levitation (in a nod
to the city’s psych pioneers;
“Levitation” is a kaleidoscopic
jangle of a track off the Elevators’
first album), the festival has been
bringing psych rock bands from all
over the world to Carson Creek
Ranch for three days’ worth of
collective consciousness expansion
and mind manifestation.
And Levitation is not the only
psychedelic notch on Austin’s belt
today, for the city also boasts a
haul of tripped-out warriors on
the scene. Amongst them, The
Black Angels stand tall: the band’s
the mastermind behind the Austin
Psych Fest and the Reverberation
Appreciation Society record label,
has backed Roky Erickson in
concert, and can lay claim to five
LPs of fuzzy, spacey, heavy-deavy
freak-outs that change colours
as gracefully as they change
moods. Less concerned with style,
though, The Black Angels place
its emphasis on the “spirit of
psychedelia”, an undying thread
that’s also drawn in other Texan
newcomers like Indian Jewelry
and Night Beats. Lee Blackwell,
one of the founding members of
Night Beats, may have relocated
to Seattle, but his band’s feral
and lo-fi brand of acid rock still
carries traces of, in his words, “the
freedom heard in a lot of Texas
psych”, in its bloodstream.
This year’s Levitation line-up
comes primed with psych
experiences great and small, from
The Flaming Lips to Fuzz, Primal
Scream to Jesus & Mary Chain,
Tame Impala to yes, The 13th
Floor Elevators. And it’s fitting
that it’s a roster curated by The
Black Angels, whose insistence on
“spirit” means that psychedelia,
even when not demonstrated
in style, still shows up here as a
state of mind and being. In that
way, psych rock endures, as it
has from Jimi Hendrix asking
“Are You Experienced?” in
’67 to Spiritualized’s float into
space in ‘92 to Pond’s belief in
its “Psychedelic Mango Vision”,
which “transcends space and time
/ To your mind if you just open
wide”. Now and then, it’s a search
for and the anticipation of the
next moment where the pyramid
meets the eye.
Shane Butler, Quilt, Austin. Texas, May 3rd 2014