COPE, JULIAN - Rite At YaCD)

Containing 4 unreleased epics from 1993 right up to the present day, this record will send you out into the cosmos and leave you on a park bench possibly not of your own choosing. Opens with the 20-minute title track, in which a scree slope of Hammond organ rides a revolving and elliptical bass theme across your funky butt cheeks, as drums'n'brass thrash and thresh away your dusty urban cobwebs. Next up, Village of the Unshod Priesthood' hails from 1993 and showcases that archaic Harveytron keyboard so beloved of Cope's album Jehovahkill from the previous year. You dig the sound of Thor's backwash as he gargles the ocean? Well you goddit right here! The rousing rabble of sounds that make up Boskewan-Un' are all the result of a 2016 session with Cope's new group Dope. Yes, that's Holy McGrail on space echo, Christopher Holman on Moog, Philippe Legende on drums and Fatpaul on, erm, God knows what. This intriguing release concludes with Cope's 2001 bucolic revisioning of The Ringed Hills of Ver'. Recorded especially for Cope's Discover Odin lectures at the British Museum, this 20-minute plus piece trickles through the mind like spring water across a lightly inclined peat bog. So search out these 4 exceptional meditations, nay, medications! For simply rotating each one on your hi-fi will help to scythe away at the psychic accretions that collect and build up around us on our oft difficult daily journey through modern life. Music with a Mission? U-Betcha!