Magic Mushroom Band - Feed Your Head / Live ’89

Fungus among us

Though these days the key members of the Magic Mushroom Band are predominately concerned with its ambient trance offshoot, Astralasia, there’s still a big interest in their early, selfreleased vinyls and cassettes, as the release of these live recordings shows.

Feed Your Head, noted as being recorded at assorted venues between 1982 (when the Mushies were established) and 1986, features loose and hypnotically drawn-out sci-fi-edged soundtracks for the second-wave, tie-dyed free festival generation. Tracks such as Magick Eye and Who Can Say are swirling oriental raves, crammed full of Eastern promise and best played outdoors and loud.

Captured at the Nag’s Head, High Wycombe, and featuring a guest appearance by Ozric Tentacles/Eat Static keyboardist Joie Hinton, Live ’89 sees them starting to break-out of the crusty/ squat scene. This disc is split between a largely acoustic first half of short, snappy numbers with skewed Zappa-esque humour, followed by the spacey drawn-out head-trips of The Octave Of Obsideon, Living In A Dream and their covers of Are You Experienced and George Harrison’s Within You Without You. Fractal music.

Voiceprint | VP 359 CD / VP 360 CD

Reviewed by Ian Abrahams
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