Peter H. Cummings • Lavender Mindblast
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1. Forever Free 5:12
Classic acoustic guitar psych.

2. Dulcimer Girl 6:06
Pure ecstatic musical abandon.

3. Fishing For Tears 2:16
"Grey are the fjords..." This sounds like it may have been influenced by one of Guy Maddin's films.

4. Distant Angels 1:31
a psychedelic beckoning.

5. Curtains, Fire, and Drink 4:03
The original demo of this song from "Throne Of Wax"

6. Fishing For Tears Reprise 0:58
...and so on.

7. Lavender Mindblast 17:44
Under and over and throught the influence and into uncharted consciousness. See left for Peter's production notes .

 

 

Psychedelic music was the foundation of Peter's taste in music. It can now be revelaled that the title track of this collection was recorded while under the influence of psilocybin.... a substance that, with Peter, freed his improvisational musical skills. in no small part because it also temporarily released him from the pains of his scleraderma.

Here's some of what Peter had to say:

"Wow! I had a friggilty super-duper fish slap of a time! Very creative trip! The main, constant vibe was 'Euphoria' Totally into the 'art' zone... recorded about an hour's worth of keyboard madness....very special stuff....I mean 30% of it's just dicking around, but there's some psyche things that are the REAL DEAL......magic moment caught on tape! I'm thinking about editing what I have into a solid 1/2 hour
piece a la 'Very cellular Song' (I didn't listen to music except when I was in photoshop... then XTC) it's all just on one track, except for a 2 track slab o'truly messed up weirdness called 'Safety For Hubert' ('Hubert" was Viv's alter ego) so I can add little embellishments to flesh out the skeleton. But I tell you.... a lot of the time I wasn't really playing within a tradition tonal format... I was creating as I went along a technique I call 'sculpting' with the keyboard... I think you have to be tripping to fully understand it... but you celebrate and work with the physical touch of the keyboard rather then thinking in terms of notes..... a little bit more like dancing then playing in the traditional sense... very cosmic.. Any ways... a few times it really seemed to be 'it' if you know what I mean. Glad it's all on tape! And I listened to it, and while I'm still somewhat a little slippery from the fungi... it actually holds up when listening to it
while back on earth."

"I'm really enjoying this project I'm slowly working away at. It's funny, when I was recording it, while tripping out considerably, I thought of what I was doing as sculpture.  Carving out soundscapes with my hands... not playing the keyboard specifically to pick out certain notes and familiar tonal patterns, but rather approaching it like a solid mass of notes that I was carving a vision out of.
Hitting and stroking it, picking at it, and scooping out notes from each octave....digging into the scales. But now it's totally reversed.
I'm thinking of the piece as a solid, sculpted object....a tangible thing in my mind.
A distinct form that I'm now very carefully and systematically adding and taking away mass from.
Adding found objects to the structure.
Painting it different colors.
Putting up a background behind it and lighting it properly... Musically I'm working with small, layered sections.... little chunks and nuggets of sound.
Carefully building them up..... stacking them both precariously and securely.
But the incredibly cool thing is that it's all on top of a completely free, string of consciousness, improvised skeleton!
So it doesn't often drift into that flat, tired, stiff quality that home multi-tracking can get......even Rundgrens and Townsends stuff."

"There's something I forgot to mention about working with this piece... it obviously triggers something in my brain so that whenever I work on it.... get involved with it..... a part of me starts tripping again.
It's not a matter of: part 'A' recorded while tripping, and all other parts recorded straight..... but more a 'my mind gets sucked into the tonal & rhythmic pulses I felt while tripping so that when I tune into them again my synapses follow the same fungal driven paths" type
thing.... so the trip lives on! "

...you have a copy of the working title 'Lavender Mindblast' structure I'm working on.......give it a listen......it's totally trippy.

All Music ©2008 The estate of Peter H. Cummings