IN PSYCHEDELIC music, few figures as pivotal as Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and Love’s Arthur Lee, so it is hardly surprising that both men should appeal to a quartet of Canterbury psych fans.
And like Syd combining the name of bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council to create Pink Floyd, Liam Magill, Joel Magill, Fred Rother, and Raven Bush (Kate Bush’s nephew ) put together the names of their heroes to become Syd Arthur.
Tomorrow at 8pm, these neo-psychedelic warriors will be in Galway to play the Róisín Dubh as part of their current British and Irish tour. The group will play material from their latest album, Sound Mirror (Harvest Records - once also home to Pink Floyd ), which includes the wondrous time warp psychedelia of ‘Garden Of Time’.
Sound Mirror has earned the quartet enormous critical acclaim, being included on MOJO’s Albums of 2014 (So Far ) poll and winning Breakthrough Artist of 2014 at this year’s Prog magazine awards.
Paul Weller has also praised the quartet calling them “a f**kin’ great band...they should be massive”. The Independent on Sunday called them “fresh and nostalgic in equal measure”, while the Sunday Times description of Syd Arthur’s music as “free flowing, slightly jazzy, ever so folky, 1960s-style psychedelia” is perfectly captured in the marvellous ‘Dorothy’:
The band have also just announced the release of thier new remix collaboration with The Amorphous Androgynous (Future Sound of London ). Out now on Monstrous Bubble Records, five tracks from Syd Arthur have been “re-imagined and psyched into a 47 minute cosmic journey and aural delight”.
Support is from New Secret Weapon. Tickets are available at www.roisindubh.net, the Ticket Desk at OMG Zhivago, Shop Street, and The Róisín Dubh.
