PSYCHEDELIC PROG

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

Ahead of a new album by the prolific Pond, multiinstrumentalist and founder member Shiny Joe Ryan (who’s also part of Tame Impala’s touring crew) has finally got round to following up his 2014 solo debut, The Cosmic Microwave Background. The impish Shiny’s Democracy (Spinning Top) is a shimmery piece of psych-pop with a knowing grin, as evinced on the infectious Ketamine and the funky synthetic groove of Pub Boat.

There are also echoes of Tame Impala about New York trio Acid Dad. Take It From The Dead (Greenway/The Reverberation Appreciation Society) comes wrapped in gauzy guitar tones and folds of early 70s krautrock. The hallucinatory Searchin’ relays holographic desert visions, while RC Driver and Smile You’re On Camera sound like a more punked-up Wooden Shjips. On a similar tip, Riders In The Stardust Gold (Mad Bunny) is the sixth effort from The Cush. Centred around the husband and wife team of Burette and Gabrielle Douglas, the Texan quartet venture into cosmic Americana and a blurry kind of cinematic punk. Gabrielle’s unhurried vocals on Haters, filtered through a prismatic haze, bring to mind Mazzy Star. Elsewhere, as on Chariots Of Smog or the intense Ajna Returns, they cook up a potent guitar stink.

For a more sustained attack, Toronto’s Comet Control have it figured. Driven by ex-Quest For Fire founders Chad Ross and Andrew Moszynski, Inside The Sun (Tee Pee) rips by in a blaze of heavy distortion. Keep On Spinnin’ and The Afterlife (the latter packing a great central riff) are typical.

One third of Californian rockers Duster, Jason Albertini also has a productive solo career as Helvetia. Essential Aliens (Joyful Noise) finds him joined by ex-Built To Spill bandmate Steve Gere, among others, for an engaging scuffle across stoner rock, psychedelia and shoegaze, with melodies erupting and dying seemingly at will. It’s an album that reveals more and more of itself with every play. Fans of Stereolab or Melody’s Echo Chamber will delight in Flowerland (Tip Top), the third offering from Pearl & The Oysters, aka French-American duo, Joachim Polack and Juliette Davis. It’s a joyful immersion in spacey pop, full of dreamy synths, woodwinds, electric pianos and tropicalia rhythms. Radiant Radish is named after Brian Wilson’s old health food store in Hollywood, while Ostreoid Asteroid is playful prog disco.

And don’t miss the beguiling strangeness of Shapeshifter (Tiny Tiger), the latest from Dutch artist and composer Tessa Rose Jackson under the guise of Someone. It’s a wonderfully inventive set drawn from strands of willowy folk, electronica, jazz and beyond.