Part of a triple DVD pack, this contains footage of German TV show Beat Club, a legendary showcase for the best bands of the era. Its late-'60s archive is now a valuable resource for DVD compilers. Like a visual companion to Uncut's Acid Daze CD given away two issues ago, Psychedelic High features Donovan, Arthur Brown, the Small Faces and The Nice all overlapping with that collection. The Who and The Moody Blues also attend what is mostly a very English psychedelic tea party, although The Byrds, Blue Cheer and Canned Heat fly the American freak flag.
Following the attention heaped upon 2002's lovely I'm Coming Home, Norway's most famous ex-postman Thomas Hansen began to wilt, preferring to "hide behind the beer". Straightened out and under the wing of producer Mark Nevers (Lambchop), Hey Harmony is the product of a frantic's week recording in Nashville, spotlighting the 26-year-old's Anglophilia and US country-folk leanings. Sort of Neil Young and Donovan tripping at The Wicker Man's solstice fest.
Bret Easton Ellis' second novel was very much of the '80s, but one of the many clever things Roger Avary's done with his pulsing movie adaptation is to catch the feel of that decade's music without slavishly nuzzling obvious nostalgia trends. The underlying score, by indie-flick stalwarts tomandandy (sic), is both inventive and unsettling. Around it are layered songs of a chic, shiny kind of darkness, borrowed from various eras: tone and temperature are more important here than timeliness.
