“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.” It is now half a century since this phrase was immortalised by the American psychologist and writer Timothy Leary. Whilst he was speaking more specifically about the use of LSD and the positive impact the psychedelic drug could have upon achieving higher consciousness, his words also reflected a more general philosophy associated with the counter-culture of that era.
Fifty years later those same words could equally apply to the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia experience. For 36 hours in the former warehouse and recess spaces of Camp and Furnace, Blade Factory, and District in the city’s Baltic Triangle, you can “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” as Liverpool Psych becomes a fertile ground for limitless creative experimentation and the pursuit of individual freedom.
Returning for its fifth annual edition, Liverpool Psych festival has once more created a wonderful programme of events that celebrates psychedelic culture in its widest artistic sense. This year a huge immersive installation is located in the PZYK Gallery, alongside three newly commissioned virtual reality artworks. Also to be enjoyed is the screening of Turner prize-winning artist Mark Leckey’s Dream English Kid, an autobiographical film that draws upon key elements of British popular culture from the past 40 years. And then there is the welcome return of Musings In Drone, a series of off-beat conversations that take place with selected guests in the PZYK Cinema space across Saturday afternoon.
But it is music that remains the primary, throbbing heartbeat of the Liverpool Psych experience and the festival has again brought together a glorious spectrum of artists who stretch the outer limits of sonic exploration. The acts perform across four music stages – Camp and Furnace provide the two main performance spaces, along with the smaller capacity Blade Factory and District – all of which are within a matter of yards of each other. And whilst this facilitates quick and easy movement between stages, with more than 80 live acts (and DJs) on over the two days of the festival, clashes (the perennial curse of all such events) are unfortunately inevitable.
Following in the footsteps of past festival curators, this year’s Friday afternoon blasted off into sonic orbit in Camp courtesy of the Tokyo-based imprint Guruguru Brain. Dedicated to the underground music of Asia, the independent label showcased Nawksh, Prairie WWW, Minami Deutsch and Kikagaku Moyo in their Narrow Road To The Deep Mind presentation. Of the four, it was Prairie WWW who most stretched the imagination with their glorious soundscape of tripped-out ambiance.
One of West Yorkshire’s finest, That Fucking Tank – the duo of Andrew Abbott on baritone guitar and drummer James Islip – lit the day’s torch in District with a barrage of sound that owed as much to glorious repetition and coherent finesse as it did to undiluted power; the London-based quintet The Hanging Stars fired a similarly impressive opening salvo in Furnace with a lovely set that reimagined some of those missing links that still lie between San Francisco and the Stone Roses.
A memorable first showing at this festival three years ago (along with an appearance at Leeds’ Mono Festival the following night), brought Lorelle Meets The Obsolete to much wider attention in this country. A most welcome return here by the duo of Lorena Quintanilla (‘Lorelle’) and Alberto Gonzalez (‘The Obsolete’) not only sees them elevated onto the Furnace stage, but augmented by three other musicians their kaleidoscopic, spaced-out groove sounds even more vital this time round.
Friday night in Furnace belonged to the Welsh first with Gwenno and then Super Furry Animals seducing the audience with highly individual sets that respectively mixed subtlety, surrealism and charm with an acute grasp of melody. Not even the sight of SFA’s Gruff Rhys in his outsized space helmet can distract from the fundamental protest and sense of fair play that lies at the very heart of this rather special band’s music.
And then Silver Apples took it all back to a point where psychedelic electronic music had begun. Formed in 1967 in New York and often hailed as the inventors of space rock, their appearance at this year’s festival places psychedelia in its much wider historical context. Their set heralded the introduction this year of a new element in Camp called PZYK Colony. Described as “an immersive 360° audio-visual installation, the intense, singular light-emitting diode will transform the warehouse space into a shifting geometric cube” its visual impact was mesmerising. When experienced in tandem with the mysterious pulsing, galactic drones of Sliver Apples’ music the end product was exhilarating.
After the high-octane, mind-expanding sensory overload of the previous night, the gentle instrumental psychedelic sitar rock of Bristol’s Saddar Bazaar provided a most perfect glide into Saturday afternoon. Enter one Steve Davis; continuing his reinvention, the former six-time snooker world champion, and OBE had already played a DJ set in Camp the previous night before taking his seat opposite Bernie Connors for the first in this year’s series of Musings In Drone conversations.
Davis spoke engagingly and with great humour about his addiction to vinyl; his love of progressive music (amongst whose number he particularly favoured Argent, Gentle Giant and Magma, a band he subsequently funded at great personal expense to play a series of shows at the Bloomsbury Theatre); his early musical life as a soul music collector (though he did think Northern Soul was “all bollocks”, given the genre’s fascination with always seeking out rarities); his having reached number 6 in the hit parade with ‘Snooker Loopy’ (relegating Madonna down the charts in the process); how the satirical puppet show Spitting Image had given him a personality as “an interesting person”; and how much he was loving his first experience of Liverpool Psych as he was “amongst people who have the same mentality (as him) and just love music”.
Much less successful, though, was the ensuing interview with the one-time Spacemen 3, Spiritualized and Spectrum bass player Will Carruthers. Here, in part, to promote his recent Faber and Faber-published memoir Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands, he seemed to have difficulty in remaining focussed and presented as someone who had become disillusioned and perhaps even embittered by the whole music business.
Pure Phase Ensemble is an international music collective that convenes annually for SpaceFest in Gdansk, Poland and their appearance at Liverpool Psych Fest was the first time that the project had performed in the UK. Led by Mark Gardener of Ride, they felt instinctive and spontaneous capturing perfectly the serene blissed-out mood of early Saturday evening.
Formed last year as a side project for various members of chaotic indie-punk outfit The Fat White Family – Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski – and spooky experimentalists The Eccentronic Research Council – Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer – and joined here by one half of the Sheffield duo Slow Club, Rebecca Taylor, The Moonlandingz look and sound quite like nothing on earth. Introduced by Flanagan as “the square peg in the arsehole of psychedelia,” and in marked contrast to the vast majority of the otherwise fairly static festival’s artists, they are a compelling blur of visual and sonic energy. Their incredible appeal leans heavily on the strange sexual synergy that is created on stage between Saoudi and Taylor. Together they induce a crackling carnal tension into proceedings, one that is acted out over a magnificent sprawling soundtrack that defies description but is surely fuelled by those primary ingredients of rock’n’roll and rocket fuel.
Whilst both the Japanese kings of psych Acid Mothers Temple and the Sunday night headliners The Horrors did make a pretty good fist of it, neither they nor anybody else were ever going to be able to prevent The Moonlandingz from assuming the mantle of the best band at the entire festival. They embodied everything that is so great about Liverpool Psych Festival; a true pioneering spirit, and much like the world inhabited by Timothy Leary fifty years ago, one that seeks to push the boundaries of creativity and imagination.
Minor criticisms could be leveled at some of the organisational infrastructure surrounding the festival, most notably the dearth of adequate toilet facilities. Questions could also be asked about the decision not to allow any admission or re-entry to the site after 8pm and the use of the “one-in-one-out” system at the venues when it did appear that some (Furnace in particular) were still well below capacity.
But none of the above resulted in any adverse impact upon the great atmosphere that permeates the festival – a warm, friendly and relaxed vibe in a safe environment was consistently maintained for the duration – and the introduction of the new Bar Token System this year seemed to have been a huge success, particularly in reducing the time spent waiting/queuing for drinks. And when all of these factors are taken into consideration, coupled with the exceptional programme of events, it is little wonder that Liverpool Psych continues to be the best small festival in the UK today.
Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia was held at Camp and Furnace, Blade Factory and District in Liverpool on 23rd and 24th September 2016 .
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos from this year’s festival can be found HERE
