The Electronic Insides of Dr. Krieg - The Riders of the Mark

The reason I love sixties garage so much is because it was a hotbed of experimental sounds and creativity. It's like a drip feed of one-off bands and projects pumping you full of mutant morphine to give you wonderfully weird hallucinations. Hallucinations like The Electronic Insides of Dr. Krieg:

Much like The Monocles from a few days ago, The Riders of the Mark appeared out of an LSD saturated haze and gave us one song before vanishing again. Armed with little more than a Lord of the Rings referencing name (naturally), Riders John Hill and Don Cochrane entered the studio in 1967 wanting to make a song similar to The Beatles track 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' Only, you know- with a whole lot more angry German machine men bathing in fire (naturally).

The song is a fascinating melding of reference points and genres. The lo-fi fuzz bass and thudding steam-powered drum line feels like a blue print for thrash punk. The backwards looping guitars and organs are firmly entrenched in mid-sixties psychedelia. Electronic squeals and blips slip and slide across the foundation, boring into you like an elastic power-drill. The automaton fever dream screams echo, burst and submerge beneath the waves of sound.

Wonderful. And apparently it's an anti-war song. In so far as songs about degree carrying fire robots can be an anti-war song.

The Spider and The Fly - The Monocles

I just...

Okay. It's...

It's hard to explain. Or find any explanation. As far as I can tell, The Monocles were a garage rock band from Colorado who started out making clean cut pop, then they discovered drugs, then this happened.

It walks a very fine line between being insanely kitsch (which it is) and pretty unnerving. The echo drenched bass and drums feel like rubber bands slapping against the underside of your brain. The guitar is less played than punched, crackling with electricity and bark. The organ screams and rolls, building higher and higher before crashing down in on itself.

I don't even know where to begin describing the vocals. A bit like the Justice League narrator and Vincent Price were dropped in a blender. With a mouse. And a B movie actress.

It's not like it would ever be (or ever was) successful, but it doesn't matter. The fun the musicians were having is infectious, and it's definitely unique. It makes me wish we'd see more bizarre stuff like this today. If this doesn't open the door to psychedelic auto-tuned tornadoes of robots demolishing humanity with pop songs, then there is no justice in the world.