PSYCHEDELIC PROG

Take a trip with ROB HUGHES as he seeks out the latest mind-expanding music.

Grooves rule when it comes to Bananagun. Debut album The True Story Of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby) sees the Australian five-piece shape a dizzying spread of influences – Afrobeat, tropicalia, cosmic jazz, funk, garage rock and classic psychedelic pop – into something rhapsodic and pretty wonderful. Singer, flautist and guitar player Nick van Bakel leads his troupe through infectious delights like The Master, Out Of Reach and Bird Up!, the latter featuring animal hoots and chatter.

There’s also plenty of exoticism in Mordechai (Dead Oceans), the latest from Texan trio Khruangbin. The band draw inspiration from afar – India, Pakistan, Korea and West Africa included – filtering disparate musical styles through the eclectic hub of their Houston hometown. The result is lush, woozy dream pop with mutable rhythms, from the post-Santana groove of Connaissais De Face to the dubby One To Remember.

Previously known for instrumentals, there’s considerably more emphasis on vocals this time round, with bassist Laura Lee Ochoa stepping up to the mic. Closer to home, Sheffield’s International Teachers Of Pop unleash Pop Gossip (Desolate Spools). It’s a record planted firmly in clubland, although the dystopian visions of Flood The Club and Gaslight hint at darkness and disease beneath the lurid dancefloor lights. Adrian Flanagan, Leonore Wheatley and Dean Honer have a gift for unlikely turns, not least prog-disco anthem Ein Weiterer Stein In Der Wand, a German-language shimmy through Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall.

More outré tastes are catered for on Simurg (Sdban Ultra), a collaboration between Belgian oddballs Compro Oro and Turkish psych-folk couple, Murat Ertel & Esma Ertel. Described as a story of attraction, existential research, purification and rebirth, the improvised album travels way out into the ether, exemplified by the space-weird Valley Of Gossip and the heavy fuzz distortion of the deeply trippy Ben. The minimal Valley Of Loneliness sounds like a less sweaty, avant-garde recital of Serge

Gainsbourg’s Je T’aime.

Those familiar with Allah-Las will welcome Spiritual Vegas

(Mexican Summer), the second solo work from singerguitarist Pedrum Siadatian under his guise as PAINT. Sung in Farsi, the Persian disco of Ta Fardah salutes his Iranian heritage. Siadatian indulges his love of The Kinks and The Beatles on psych-pop gems like Strange World and the terrific Land Man, while the whole thing – fittingly, given his alias – is flooded with colour.

At the noisier end of the spectrum, Peter Bibby’s Dog Act offer pottymouthed pleasures on the uproarious Marge (Spinning Top), the Australian (backed by ‘Strawberry Pete’ Gower and ‘Dirty Dave’ Taylor) yelping his frustrations with daily life on songs that ricochet between psychobilly, thrash-punk and guileless folk.