VA - Losing Touch With My Mind: Psychedelia In Britain 1986-1990 (2019) [CD-Rip]

3CD, 60-track set exploring the UK’s psychedelic scene in the late 1980s. A sequel to the critically acclaimed ‘Another Splash Of Colour’.

All of the key players! Including Spacemen 3, The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, The Shamen, Sun Dial, The Prisoners, Magic Mushroom Band, Thee Hypnotics, One Thousand Violins, Robyn Hitchcock, The Pale Saints, The Legendary Pink Dots, The Revolving Paint Dream, The Charlatans, Captain Sensible, Inspiral Carpets, Blow-Up, Gaye Bykers On Acid and many more

Sixty of the finest scene hits, lesser known deep cuts, obscurities and underexposed nuggets.

Includes introductory essay, track-by-track sleevenotes and ‘I was there’ memoir from Hugh Dellar.

A must-see, must-hear, must—have set from the same team who brought you “Scared To Get Happy”, “Another Splash Of Colour”, “Still In A Dream”, “Revolutionary Spirit”, “Close To The Noise Floor”, “Just A Bad Dream” and countless other hugely successful deep excavation box sets.

It’s here! A fitting sequel to 2016’s critically acclaimed “Another Splash Of Colour!”. A startling collection charting the C86 generation’s brazen raid on the second half of the Sixties, from their fashion sense to their music to their drugs of choice.

Taking The Velvets, The Doors, The Byrds and a plethora of psych originals found on the ‘Nuggets’ and ‘Pebbles’ compilations as inspiration, the latter half of the 1980s saw bands across the UK replace their angular post-punk sound with a gentler, weirder direction, fusing jangly guitars and bowl haircuts, paisley heavy wardrobes and the remnants of the glam, goth and garage revival scenes with a new positivity and enlightenment offered by the ecstasy and LSD that began to reach every suburb and estate in the land. Festivals, alternative lifestyles and neo-hippydom, raves, fashion and an encyclopaedic knowledge of 1960s recordings came together, for a brief time, in a blissed out, fuzzy replica of the late 1960s, re-imagined by a generation with little else to play for. From the ‘shoegaze’ movement to ‘Madchester’, the Mods to the out and out revivalists and beyond, all of these disparate but intertwined scenes collide in wonderful harmony again on “Losing Touch With My Mind”.

Packed full of rarities and collectibles, ‘Losing Touch With My Mind’ will appeal to fans of ‘80s Psychedelia, Mod Revival, Indie, the Madchester and shoegaze scenes and, of course, the ‘60s outfits who inspired so many of these artists.

AllMusic Review by Tim Sendra
In 2016, the Cherry Red label released Another Splash of Colour, an excellent overview of the neo-psych scene happening in the U.K. between the years 1980 to 1985. Since the sound didn't fade away after that time frame but instead fragmented and grew in new directions, the label thought it worth their time and effort to put together another set to round up the highlights of what came next. Losing Touch with My Mind: Psychedelia in Britain 1985-1990 is a three-disc set that does a fine job trying to corral the various slippery strands of psychedelia as it mutated into new forms. It's no easy task to connect the dots between the various styles, and to their credit, the compilers of the set kind of throw their hands up and just let the weirdness of the music take over. They don't try to shape the story in any coherent manner as they let the songs bump against each other in mostly random fashion, which is itself an act of psychedelic inspiration. It's easy to imagine a listener losing their bearings as the set switches from the twisted psych-pop of Robyn Hitchcock to the danceable and loose strut of the Stone Roses, the brain-scraping grind of Spacemen 3, or the sky-walking whoosh of the Boo Radleys. The set touches on shoegaze, dream pop, garage rock revival, super-twee baroque pop, noisy indie pop, Madchester, baggy, drone pop, electro-psych, and biker rock as it trips along, mixing up well-known bands like the Primitives and Inspiral Carpets, cult favorites like Paul Roland and the Modern Art, and some bands who only the most dedicated fans of the era might remember (such as the Glass Keys, the Sugar Battle, and C Cat Trance, whose trancey "Shake the Mind" might take the prize for most left-field track).

No matter the band's profile, the selections are all top notch, and while it's a treat to rediscover old favorites in a new context (like the Dentists' jumpy "You Took Me by Surprise" or the Telescopes' dreamlike "Everso"), the real treat of the set is how deep they dig for obscurities like One Thousand Violins' brilliantly urgent garage pop near-classic "Please Don't Sandblast My House" or the Honey Smugglers' groovy rocker "Smokey Ice-Cream," which comes complete with a totally wigged-out guitar solo. It's also impressive how wide the compilers cast their net. Any set that contains both the Shamen's "Christopher Mayhew Says" and the King of Luxembourg's "Smash Hit Wonder," or the Charlatans' super-baggy "Opportunity" and the Sea Urchins' fragile folk-rock gem "A Morning Odyssey," is one that's telling the entire story of the U.K. psych scene of the time. Like the bands themselves, who continued to take the tropes and tones of psychedelia in interesting and almost always worthwhile new realms, Losing Touch with My Mind is a worthy successor to Another Splash of Colour. It's similarly well chosen and documented, and well worth checking out for anyone with a healthy nostalgia for the time frame or for anyone who missed it the first time around and wants to discover something weird, wild, and decked out in trippy finery.

Tracklist
Disc 1 (01:19:45)
1. The Stone Roses – Don't Stop (05:23)
2. Spacemen 3 – Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) (05:16)
3. Modern Art – Mind Train (05:13)
4. 14 Iced Bears – Mother Sleep (04:34)
5. Red Chair Fadeaway – Myra (02:43)
6. Biff Bang Pow! – Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding (04:25)
7. The Stairs – I Remember A Day (02:28)
8. The Prisoners – In From The Cold (03:35)
9. The Telescopes – Everso (03:12)
10. The Seers – Psych-Out (Fear Of Technology) (06:11)
11. Magic Mushroom Band – You Can Be My L-S-D (05:28)
12. Honey Smugglers – Smokey Ice-Cream (04:11)
13. The Sugar Battle – Colliding Minds (02:48)
14. Gol Gappas – Albert Parker (04:03)
15. The Thanes – Days Go Slowly By (02:15)
16. Paul Roland – In The Opium Den (05:44)
17. Moonflowers – We Dig Your Earth (03:32)
18. Thee Hypnotics – Justice In Freedom (08:44)

Disc 2 (01:18:15)
1. Sun Dial – Exploding Your Mind (Colour Mix) (04:09)
2. One Thousand Violins – Please Don't Sandblast My House (03:19)
3. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians – Lady Waters & The Hooded One (05:37)
4. Primal Scream – Imperial (03:38)
5. Barbel – Income Tax (03:05)
6. Pale Saints – Way The World Is (02:43)
7. The Sea Urchins – A Morning Odyssey (04:44)
8. The Boo Radleys – Aldous (04:51)
9. Rosemary's Children – (At The) End Of The Corridor (04:32)
10. The Darkside – Found Love (02:51)
11. The Glass Keys – Workshop Of My Mind (03:50)
12. The Legendary Pink Dots – Princess Coldheart (06:39)
13. The Bachelor Pad – Tumble And Fall (04:44)
14. Jeremy Gluck – Burning Skulls Rise (04:26)
15. Sleepeaters – The Last Mile (03:23)
16. Hangman's Beautiful Daughters – Darkside (04:11)
17. The Wolfhounds – Another Hazy Day On The Lazy 'A' (04:17)
18. The Shamen – Christopher Mayhew Says (03:48)
19. Revolving Paint Dream – The Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (03:28)

Disc 3 (01:19:04)
1. The Charlatans – Opportunity (06:44)
2. Captain Sensible – Exploding Heads & Teapots (Past Their Prime) (04:07)
3. The Tryp – I Dream In Black And White (04:30)
4. The Sneetches – Empty Sea (Live) (02:43)
5. Ultra Vivid Scene – Staring At The Sun (02:49)
6. The Aardvarks – Save My Soul (02:59)
7. The Dentists – You Took Me By Surprise (01:59)
8. The King Of Luxembourg – Smash Hit Wonder (02:55)
9. Inspiral Carpets – 26 (02:53)
10. Something Pretty Beautiful – Freak Outbursts (05:08)
11. C Cat Trance – Shake The Mind (05:35)
12. Cleaners From Venus – Victoria Grey (03:09)
13. The Primitives – Ocean Blue (03:18)
14. The Black Atlas – Living Colours (02:06)
15. Mood Six – When The Time Comes (02:24)
16. The Time Machine – Another Scene (In Black And White) (04:00)
17. The Jetset – Happy In My Mind (03:18)
18. The Times – Oranges And Lemons (Scream Quietly Mix) (03:03)
19. Blow Up – What Is In Your Mind? (03:41)
20. Jane From Occupied Europe – Parade (04:01)
21. Prime Movers – I'm Alive (02:27)
22. Sleep Creature & The Vampires – Look To The Sun (02:10)
23. Gaye Bykers On Acid – TV Cabbage (03:05)