Simon Finn - Pass the Distance (1970)

Exquisite psych-folk gem right here. Finn has a really great gravelly voice. This album is really fantastic, I mean I'm going to be the thousandth person to say this but Jerusalem is such an amazing track, Simon Finn just loses it on that track. The whole album is nuts, I mean that in the best way possible of course. I really just can not stress enough how much I love this album, one of the best psych folk albums ever created, and if you think otherwise you're just silly, that's just my ~very~ humble opinion of course. Every second is gorgeous and the whole album is like one big acid-laced stick of cotton candy.

You are no more evil now
Than you were when you when you began

Cerberus Shoal - The Land We All Believe In (2005)

Cerberus Shoal started life as a post-rock band, before morphing and becoming even more tripped out, going from experimental rock to bizarre psych folk, and then settling into their avant-folk/freak folk mould. "The Land We All Believe In" is, without a doubt, their magnum opus, and one of my favorite folk albums of the last decade.

The Spoils of War - The Spoils of War (1969)

The Spoils of War was an Experimental Psychedelic Rock group which remained completely under the radar throughout the 60s and 70s. Though the advent of the internet has allowed us to learn a lot more about previously unheard of bands like The Spoils of Wars, we still know very little about them. What we do know is that the band was headed by a man names James Cuomo who, as it seems, was a bit of a control freak, in the sense that he was in charge of nearly all parts of the album, he wrote all of the songs, wrote the lyrics for most, and performed a lot of different instruments on a lot of the tracks, he was also the producer. We also know that the group released at least two albums, The Spoils of War and The Spoils of War II. Other than that details on the group are very murky. One thing that is more obvious is how ahead of its time the album is.

Ghost - Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet (1999)

Ghost is an interesting band, and one I'm surprised that more people don't know about it - guitarist Michio Kurihara has even worked extensively with fellow Japanese rockers Boris, yet the band still remains relatively obscure. They broke up shortly after the release of at the end of the 20th century, only to reform later and release another album in 2004. Still, Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet remains a testament to this interesting and unconventional group The first part of the album stays in relatively traditional Psych Folk territory - normal for Ghost at least - although the idea of Tibet and Buddhism flows throughout - for the first 30 or so minutes, this is a very serene album. Opener "We Insist" obviously pays homage to the central theme of the album by incorporating certain Tibetan instruments, and in fact, the first part of the album features Masaki Batoh's very hushed vocals over tenderly played acoustic guitars - at times, Batoh's singing is almost whisper quiet, and at other points, it sounds more like he's speaking than singing - it's beautifully tranquil, almost quiescent at times. Sometimes the pace and the intensity quickens - The vocal harmonies on "Comin' Home" for example - but for the most part, the first part of the album is tranquil and serene psych folk made up of a few easily digestible songs. The relatively noisier and more psychedelic "Change the World" gives a glimpse of what's to coming, building into a psychedelic guitar freak-out before fading back into mellow, guitar-centric psych folk before lapsing back into noisy, loopwheeling psych rock

The second part is a completely different monster - the 30 minute title track "Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet " is the real centerpiece of the album - the song starts off as extremely spacey and serene - it retains the poignant beauty of the rest of the album - but it's a shifting, snaking song - it shifts from thunderous tribal-esque percussion to oscillating bleeps and bloops, to crazy psychedelic guitar freak-outs. It's an immense piece, and while I prefer the soothing, mellow folk-oriented first part of the album, it's the second half that really makes it a unique record and shows off the prowess of Ghost as a band, cementing them as powerhouses within Japan's modern Psych scene.

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