Hapshash And The Coloured Coat* – Featuring The Human Host And The Heavy Metal Kids

The musicians on this album are members of Spooky Tooth & Micky Finn ( who played with T. Rex ) & was produced by Guy Stevens who produced the Clash, London Calling LP...

These guys were more a design group who created clothing and posters for the late 1960s freak scene and just wanted to get an album out and, ptooff!, there it is.
Spiritual percussion experience without a real melody or simply making any musical sense at all.
Somehow records like this influenced german freak hipsters like Amon Düül when they were recording albums like "Psychedelic Underground" or "Collapsing Singvögel Rückwärts & Co.". More a happening than a professional commercial attribute to the music scene itself.
Sound developments like this were popularized by groups like "Nurse With Wound" or "Current 93" in the nineties who made a list of recordings with a lot of obscure german krautrock themselves but they tend to be important today also within freak-addictives who try to free themselves from any kind of social norm and who give a shit about musical reputation.
More legendary than real meaningful to listeners today it is even though a document of the most far out records ever produced. Remind that musical experiments like this are not really danceable anyway but have to be experienced maybe by people like YOU!
So get it if you are INTERESTED in real underground happening and for this reason the record is highly recommended.
Crazy. Maybe these recordings should be acoustically repolished and republished after all. The cover artwork is but simply gracing the shit inside.

The first track (A1) is listed on the label as 3:32 minutes long, but it plays for about 7:30

I have the original red vinyl pressing of this album, but prefer the Drop Out re-issue, it sounds brighter compared to a noticably duller pressing on the red vinyl version. Maybe because of coloured vinyl technology and pressing wasn't too hot in the 60's. I've heard of similar problems with Twink's 'Think Pink' which is why the pink vinyl was withdrawn. The sleeve on the original is better though!

historical importance: this record is one of the first in which the rock (and not jazz) musicians play absolutely free.
it can be compared to le stelle di mario schifano (1967 too, and in both the projects graphic rules..). but dedicato a.. is a great experimental job; instead of hapshash or the heavy metal etc that in effect musically represents no more than the chaos of a bunch of freak teenagers, playing bongos while smoking joints and blessing shiva..
if you are old enough to have been at a rave party before of the mdma and the techno-music (they were called rainbow), you know what i am talking about..
amon dull will continue the party but with a very bigger talent.

Impetus for this release, in the vein of 'freedom, peace & love', is evidenced in the first track. "H-O-P-P- Why?". An anthemic and anarchic questioning rant at the imprisonment of "UFO" club operator and "IT" editor/contributor John 'Hoppy' Hopkins for drug-related offences. An album launched in a turbulent and eventful year that began with the "Human Be-In" at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. A year that saw the emergence of the Abortion Act and a repeal of the Sexual Offences Act to legalize homosexuality. The Stones drug-busts and an airplay ban on "Let's Spend The Night Together". The underground movement getting it on with "Pink Floyd" at the Alley Pally with the "14-Hour Technicolour Dream". An illegal "Smoke-In" at Speaker's Corner. Protestations at the Vietnam Draft. The foundation of "Release" & the Yippie "Youth International Party". Pirate radio forced to close down, Brian Epstein dying and The Times adding weight to the drug culture debate with the leader ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?’

Like the music of the time, the medium of graphic art became an effective tool to voice the opinions of this youthful counter-culture. Evidenced in the 'Apple Shop' art by "The Fool", or the work of "OZ" magazine's Martin Sharp who also provided sleeve-art for "Disraeli Gears" & "Wheels Of Fire". This "Hapshash" album also made its mark in the cultural stew. Nigel Waymouth and Michael English (aka Hapshash & The Coloured Coat) quickly became a renowned duo in the world of psychedelic art in the UK, becoming leading exponents of the genre outside of America's West-Coast/Fillmore scene. Their early designs for the "Granny Takes A Trip" outlet, their "Technicolour Dream" posters, events at Hopkin's "UFO" club and 'alternative' magazine articles set many precedents. Their original "Osiris Visions" posters and artworks are now highly collectable. Four performers who made up this album's 'musical group' (aka '"The Heavy Metal Kids") were, effectively, the nucleus of the band "Art" - who would later be known as "Spooky Tooth"; Harrison, Ridley, Kellie & Grosvenor. The remainder (aka "The Human Host") includes 'Granny' tailor John Pearse, while others are possibly members of the ensemble gathered by Waymouth on his later solo "Western Flyer" follow-up album. Guy Stevens is present at the controls.

The album is pretty much like English & Waymouth's 'Daubry-Weirdsly' artwork. You'll need to backcomb your barnet, don your best paisley shirt and velvet pants, adjust your Indian-silk neck cravat and pink-tinged spectacles, slip the vibrant red wax onto the turntable and settle down with a tin of 'wacky backy' as you let "Empires Of The Sun" take you to a land of tangerine dreams and friendly white rabbits.

It's certainly not a work of musical art. Rather like an antithesis of the brilliant "Sergeant Pepper" from the same year, it simply rambles along with gongs, bells & chants in a well-intentioned way, like the backing track for a party at "Middle Earth" or "The Roundhouse"- although not as 'catchy' as "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by 'Iron Butterfly'. But, in my opinion and despite its flaws, this is one of the keystone albums which captures the period of the UK psychedelic movement. I would imagine a CD of it is a lot better than my original riot-scarred fuzzy-sounding novelty red vinyl. Although, as you may gather, my imagination plays tricks...