The Phantom Band are currently on a UK tour – they play The Haunt in Brighton tonight (2 October). Having released their latest album Strange Friend earlier this year, the Scots have made us a Playlist for a “Youtopian Tube”. “Dear Q Magazine, we’ve put together a Youtopian Tube playlist for you and your delightful readers to enjoy, it’s full of the kind of fantastical music that inspired our recent album Strange Friend,” they politely explain of their selections. “Life in The Phantom Band often feels like we’re aspiring towards an impossible community – trying to make music together without having any creative hierarchies within the band is tough, especially when we’re attempting to build a fantastical sound-world all of our own. We’re as doomed as Atlantis. A utopia is a perfect society or a fictional non-place, so our playlist is a portal into alternate worlds envisioned by some of our favourite idealists and musical fantasists. Radical.” So here’s their compilation of “imaginary sound-worlds, sonic Shangri-Las and flights of fantasy by musical idealists and visionaries”.
Joe Meek – I Hear A New World
“A space-age reverie by the studio pioneer.”
The Wu-Tang Clan – Triumph
“The apocalyptic vision of hip-hop’s most singular fraternity, awesome video.”
Matmos – Tract For Valerie Solanas
“Coprophagic portrait of the radical feminist who tried to pop Warhol.”
Silver Apples – Fantasies
“A fantastic voyage, change course…”
impLOG – Holland Tunnel Dive
“Former members of James Chance’s contortionists Don Christensen and Jody Harris drop all the way out into non-space: no garden to hoe, no seeds to sow, no food in the fridge, no TV shows.”
Laraaji – Unicorns In Paradise
“An aptly titledbliss-out by the esoteric Eno collaborator and zither innovator Edward Larry Gordon.”
The Red Crayola – Born In Flames
“A song by Mayo Thomson’s outfit for Lizzie Borden’s feminist sci-fi film of the same title that re-imagined 80s America as a socialist democracy.”
The Shangri-Las – Wishing Well
“A classic pop dream from the band named after James Hilton’s fictitious harmonious Himalayan valley.”
The Fall – The NWRA
“Mark E. Smith’s fantasy of a failed northern uprising “the streets of soho did reverberate with drunken highland men.”
John Fahey – Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Invisible City Of Bladensburg
Beautiful work by the steel-string virtuoso. Bladensburg is in Fahey’s home state of Maryland, which forms the backdrop to his biographical folk-tale How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life.”
Bill Orcutt – Solidarity Forever
“A rendition of the trade-union anthem by the former Harry Pussy front-man in his inimitable style.”
Old Time Relijun’ – In The Crown Of Lost Light
“Arrington de Dionyso’s vision-quest for trans-utopian world music.”
Popol Vuh – Aguirre
“A kosmiche choir of synthetic voices from the soundtrack to Werner Herzog’s film about a conqistador driven mad in the Amazon forest while searching for the golden city of Eldorado.”
Pink Floyd – Come In Number 51 Your Time Is Up
“Head-exploding jam for Antonioni’s counter-culture film Zabriski Point (which Fahey once described as a terrible hippy skin-flick).”
Dan Graham – Rock My Religion
“The artist’s collaborative video with Sonic Youth begins with the biography of Ann Lee, the founder of the 18th Century Shaker religion in New England, juxtaposing the ecstasies of the Shaker’s circle-dances with hardcore circle dancing at Black Flag gigs.
For more head to Phantomband.co.uk.
