Music designed to blow your mind

Funkadelic’s 1971 release “Maggot Brain” remains one of Francis Leach’s all-time favourite albums.

It was too much of everything.

I felt like I could feel, touch, taste and see the music. It was thrilling and overwhelming all at once. Like you had plunged into a freezing cold lake, taking your breath away and sending a jolt of adrenalin through you that left you giddy, but at the same time I was scrambling to the surface.

I needed to come up for air.

My Bloody Valentine (MBV) were on stage at the Refectory at the University of Sydney. The year is 1991. It’s a gorgeous November evening, and MBV are a kaleidoscope of colour and sound, loud, so very loud, intoxicating and utterly mesmerising.

A new generation of fans are discovering the bewildering thrill of My Bloody Valentine’s impressionistic ocean of sound.

I lasted the first 20 minutes of the show before I had to step outside momentarily to draw breath and reorient myself. Like a child that had gorged themselves on a giant slice of chocolate cake, the richness of it all had left me with a kind of euphoric nausea.

It was so overwhelming, you wanted it to stop but you couldn’t wait to dive back in and immerse yourself again (and to be clear, the only substance I’d imbibed were a few luke warm cans of beer).

That night, it felt like MBV had bent the time/space continuum to their will. It was music designed to blow your mind.

With the recent vinyl re-issue of the Irish band’s three legendary albums – “Isn’t Anything” (1988), “Loveless” (1991) and “m b v” (2013) a new generation of fans are discovering the bewildering thrill of MBV’s impressionistic ocean of sound.

For thousands of years people have used music as a transcendental tool, from the Gregorian chants of the 9th Century, the Buddhist chanting traditions or the mesmerising practice of Mongolia’s Tuvan throat singers.

In contemporary music, that same desire to “break on through” to the other side continues to this day. Musicians continue to look for ways to transport us beyond our current sensory realm, to create worlds we can inhabit through their creativity.

For me, MBV has always been a gateway. Everyone will have their own list of records that are their favourite mind melts, and it’s a case of each to their own if that journey requires a form of herbal or pharmacological enhancement (for me, that’s never been the point).

To get you started on your trip, here’s a few of my other favourites to explore:

John Coltrane – “A Love Supreme” (1965)
As a child of AM radio, music offered a simple, predictable thrill. Verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus and out. It was familiarity and repetition. And it was – and is – addictive.

The first time I heard Coltrane’s legendary jazz opus, I was disoriented and confused. This had none of the foundation stones of music as I understood it and I was lost – but fascinated.

“A Love Supreme” taught me to listen to music differently. It’s about the ecstasy of the moment, riding each note like a rollercoaster and trusting the journey has a destination.

It changed the way I listened to music forever.

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Cocteau Twins – “Head Over Heels” (1983)
Emerging from the industrial town of Grangemouth in Scotland, the Cocteau Twins set about creating a music palette that sounded like it hadn’t come from the banks of the Firth of Forth but had been hand delivered by a chorus of angels.

“Head Over Heels” is their second album. It’s here that the combination of Robin Guthrie’s lush guitars and Elizabeth Fraser’s incomprehensible but utterly hypnotic vocals take flight.

It’s like the best dream you ever had pressed into vinyl.

The Birthday Party – “Prayers On Fire” (1981)
Long before he became Australia’s gothic poet laureate, Nick Cave fronted a band that harnessed the spirit of Robert Johnson, the fury of the Stooges and the outlaw attitude of the Sex Pistols.

The Birthday Party’s “Prayers on Fire” summons demons to a bonfire of blues and punk rock mayhem. It is part comic book madness, part nihilistic tantrum and part black comedy riot.

Funny, frightful and utterly brilliant, The Birthday Party burnt the house down with “Prayers on Fire.”

The Birthday Party’s “Prayers on Fire” summons demons to a bonfire of blues and punk rock mayhem.

Funkadelic – “Maggot Brain” (1971)
By 1971, George Clinton’s Funkadelic were on a trip so deep, it spawned this mind-bending classic that captures the essence of the burnt-out, post-Woodstock Nixon generation of young African Americans.

It opens with the epic title track, where Clinton instructed guitarist Eddie Hazel to play as if he’d been told his mother had just died.

Clinton begins the album with a monologue.

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y’all have knocked her up
I have rated the maggots in the mind of the universe
I was not offended
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit

And we are through the looking glass.

Flying Lotus – “Flamagra” (2019)
Flying Lotus is Los Angeles-born Steven Ellison’s vehicle to produce his unique blend of experimental electronic/Jazz/Hip-Hop gumbo.

If Coltrane was taking jazz on a voyage to the outer limits of the sonic solar system in the 1960s, then Flying Lotus is on a similar mission with their electro psychedelia here.

“Flamagra” has layer upon layer of sounds and ideas, echoes of the past and the future colliding as the beats and rhymes roll by rapidly.

It’s an album that interrupts itself as its swerves this way and that, but it’s worth holding on for the ride.