#PSYBIENT

[bozemane]

Progenie Terrestre Pura - Uomini Macchine Anima, 2013

[haveyouheardthisband]

[the-cheese-man]

Break core is adhd music but serious, bossa nova is calm adhd music, and this weird genre called psybient is idle adhd music.

[fractus-quantizer]

Wandering bird exploring an underwater temple (feat. Piotr Karpiuk)

[randomvarious]

Today's mix:

Feed Your Head by Michael Dog 1993 Psybient / Ambient / Tribal Ambient / Dub / Downtempo / New Age / Trance

Well, it's definitely not my cuppa, folks, but if you want some early 90s UK spacey ambient acid chillout psychedelia, the Planet Dog label's Feed Your Head series definitely seems like a good place to look. Coming out of a hippy-ish British space rock tradition, Planet Dog, like a whole lot of other UK labels that launched at around roughly the same time, originally started out as uniquely quirky and eclectic club nights, first under the name of Club Dog in the mid-80s, and then as the more popular Megadog afterwards. And here for 1993, the biggest brain behind the operation, Michael Dog, puts together a partially mixed set that reflects upon his new label's then-current electronically-driven state.

Similar to what the San Francisco underground had been putting down at around the same time—as the Haight-Ashbury Grateful Dead spirit of the 60s collided with the contemporaneous techno-libertarian vision of Silicon Valley—this comp pulls ambient, dub, spiritually new-agey eastern tribal sounds, and trance all together, yielding a linked crop of tunes that feels fit for something like Burning Man, which is a festival that you couldn't pay me to ever attend, unless it was enough for me to quit my day job and explore the history of modern music full-time! 😁

And speaking of San Francisco, it also can't be ignored where this series' title obviously derived itself from: Grace Slick's repeated, finishing line on the late 60s psych rock staple, "White Rabbit," by SF heroes Jefferson Airplane.

(by the way, isn't it bonkers that the same band that made that song would transition to Jefferson Starship, and then just Starship, and then release that ridiculous early 80s hit of "We Built This City" too?!)

Anyhoo, I don't mind cyberhippy music altogether, but I'm much more partial to the downtempo side than I am to the ambient one, which means that I prefer the music to have some kind of consistent drumbeat that I can nod my head along to. And the only song on this album that really seems to hit me in that regard comes courtesy of the one-and-only Banco de Gaia, an inimitable pro's pro when it comes to that beautifully lush and psychedelic globally-quilted chillout sound. A more well-known Washington, D.C. duo like Thievery Corporation would take a similar approach to newer generations and masterfully enmesh themselves in that massive global chillout scene that would flourish between the late 90s and mid-2000s, but a song like BdG's "Qurna (Haj Ali's Birthday Mix)" is more or less emblematic of where that type of sound comes from, as it lays beautiful blends of psychedelic and string synths alongside nature sounds, hand-drums, and my sought after steady backbeat 😎.

Another thing worth mentioning here is that even though I don't really like this mix very much, kudos still need to go out to Michael Dog for how he went about making it, because rather than just doing normal transitions like almost every DJ does, he went out of his own way to create passages himself to link these songs together to make the whole experience feel more seamless. Not the first time I've heard of this happening—in fact, some in-house person did it for one of those pre-Jock Jams, MTV Party to Go mixes at Tommy Boy a couple years afterwards—but definitely not a commonplace practice by any means.

Also, the liner notes on this release give a shout out to Beyond Records, another UK label that was in a similar vein to Planet Dog at the same time, whose own Ambient Dub series inspired PD to put out this Feed Your Head one. I prefer Ambient Dub as a whole over this first volume of FYH, and you can find a bunch of my favorites from that series in the earliest sections of my own coveted 90s Downtempo playlists—word to the wise, though: the YouTube one has more Ambient Dub stuff than the Spotify one, including an extra super tasty cut from Banco de Gaia himself 😋.

And one other thing I wanna mention here is how a lot of the music on this album seems to have come from offshoots and side projects of already well-established psychedelic and space rock acts. Astralasia, the group that opens this comp up, are from the Magic Mushroom Band, duo System 7 came from Gong, and Eat Static, Nodens Ictus, and The Ullulators were all directly linked to Ozric Tentacles. All part of the same UK scene and all traveling along this sort of newfangled psychedelic electronic club thing together too. Interesting times, to say the least.

So, once again, not the biggest fan of this broad, early 90s psychonautic ambient vibe, but if that's your thing, or you think that it very well might be your thing, this release feels like a pretty wide-ranging and exemplary capsule of it.

Listen to the full mix here.

Highlights:

Banco de Gaia - "Qurna (Haj Ali's Birthday Mix)"

[captainwormburner]

Garden Bar - Folktronica Electronic Rock Mix By Captain Wormburner

[tahlianewlandcreative]

Have you noticed the beautiful, inspiring music I use in my videos? The composer, Kris Newland has just released an album that is simply stunning. Have a listen now. https://krisnewland.bandcamp.com/album/the-mist-of-time #music #psybient #InstrumentalChill

[dankalbumart]

Cosmology by Cosmosis Transient Records 1996 Goa Trance / Acid Trance / Psybient

[bozemane]

Carbon Based Lifeforms - Seeker, 2023

[theparanoid]

Bríi - Entre tudo que é visto e oculto

(2020, full album)

[Atmospheric Black Metal, Avant-Garde Metal, Tribal Ambient, Psybient]

[alexrossa]

[thechronicfiles]

Total chill/psybient

[jerdie-music-blog]

[captainwormburner]

Eclectic Pizzeria - Folktronica Electronic Rock Mix by Captain Wormburner

[spiritual-ambient-music]

Listen/purchase: YAMAGATA | Japanese Psychill Music by TAKEO SUZUKI

[nctrnm]

#NowPlaying: "Ambient & Atmospheric Mix Vol 1" by Felix Kismet