Planet Mellotron Album Reviews: Julian Cope

	Julian Cope

Highlighting in album tracklistings denotes 'contains Mellotron'. On 'multi-part' tracks I've tried to indicate which parts contain 'Tron, although this isn't always possible.

Ratings:
The * rating (½-5) is my personal, entirely subjective and completely partisan rating of the music.
The 'T' ('Tron, of course...) rating (0-5) is an only slightly more objective indicator of an album's Mellotronness.

Julian Cope Presents 20 Mothers (1995, 71.50) ***½/TTTT
Wheelbarrow Man I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Try Try Try Stone Circles'n'You Queen/Mother I'm Your Daddy Highway to the Sun 1995	By the Light of the Silbury Moon Adam & Eve Hit the Road Just Like Pooh Bear Girl-Call Greedhead Detector Don't Take Roots Senile Get The Lonely Guy	Cryingbabiessleeplessnights Leli B Road of Dreams When I Walk Through the Land of Fear

	Interpreter (1996, 48.25) ***½/TTTT½
	I Come From Another Planet, Baby I've Got My TV & My Pills Planetary Sit-in Since I Lost My Head, it's Awl-Right Cheap New-Age Fix The Battle for the Trees Arthur Drugstore S.p.a.c.e.r.o.c.k. With Me	Re-Directed Male Maid of Constant Sorrow The Loveboat Dust

	Rite² (1997, 55.26) *½/TT½ Ver Hill of Odin D - c.o.m.p.o.s.e.r** The Ringed Hills of Ver
	Odin (1999, 73.42) */T Breath of Odin**
	An Audience With the Cope 2000 [2001] (2000, 51.20) ***½/TTT½ The Glam Dicenn (Parts 1 & 2) Holy Mother of God Born to Breed Ill Informer The Glam Dicenn (Parts 3 & 4) [Untitled]
	Discover Odin (2001, 46.06) ****/TT The 18 Charms of Odin Discover Odin Ode to Wan (Parts 1 & 2) Yggdrasil & the Stone of Odin Road to Yggdrasilbury I Want to Go Wandering
	Rite Now (2002, 72.36) *½/½ Twilight of the Motherfuckers Give the Poet Some** Supernatural Agencies Ephaedra
	Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day (2003, 54.20) **/TTT Shrine of the Black Youth Zennor Quoit The-Way-Luv-is King Minos Dance By the Light of the Bridges You Burn Michelle of My Former Self Far Out Eccentrifugal Force**

Dark Orgasm (2005, 48.01) ***½/TTT

Zoroaster
White Bitch Comes Good
She's Got a Ring on Her Finger... (& Another One Through Her Nose)
Mr. Invasion
Nothing to Lose Except My Mind
I've Found a New Way to Love Her
I Don't Wanna Grow Back
The Death & Resurrection Show

	Black Sheep (2008, 67.22) ***½/TTTT
	Come the Revolution It's Too Late to Turn Back Now These Things I Know Psychedelic Odin Blood Sacrifice The Shipwreck of St. Paul	All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers) Feed My Rock'n'Roll Dhimmi is Blue The Black Sheep's Song I Can Remember This Song

Preaching Revolution EP [as Julian Cope & Black Sheep] (2008, 14.15) ***/TT

Mother, Where is My Father?
I Wanna Know What's in it for Me
Fuck Me U.S.A
Preaching Revolution

	The Unruly Imagination (2009, 50.24) ***½/TT½
	Preaching Revolution Militant Feminist Dream Mother, Where is My Father? I Wanna Know What's in it for Me Fuck Me U.S.A. Gang of Four (At Home He Feels Like a Tourist) Alexei Sayle Driver Improvement Course	Creedist Blues James Nayler Enters Bristol on a Donkey: 1656 Chairman Mao Spitfire Boys (British Refugee)

	Floored Genius 4 (2009, recorded 1983-2009, 69.37) ***½/TTT½
	I Ain't Saying When All You Got is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail Pre-Hysterical Blues Sub-Mission A Sassenach Tune The Shrines Are Ablaze The Glam Dicenn Mad Clothes	I've Got My T.V. & My Pills We Gotta Get Out of This Place Mr. Self Respect I Got With God Sleeping Gas '90 I Gotta Walk Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled Sucker Strut Somebody Spiked My L.S.D.

Cornucopea: Two South Bank Evenings With Julian Cope (2000, 23.06) ***½/TTTT

[Queen Elizabeth contribute]
Temple of Diana
[Julian Cope contributes]
Ver

Current availability:

All titles: Head Heritage (UK)

Mellotron used:

All titles: Julian's MkII and/or M400

Cope, or Saint Julian as he's known round here, has trodden a highly eccentric path since (and probably before) the Teardrop Explodes er, exploded in the early '80s. Über-hit World Shut Your Mouth put him right in the public eye, and he's spent the better part of the next two decades extracting himself from this position with reasonable success, while keeping his cult status intact. Around the mid-'90s he discovered the Mellotron, and has used one with considerable enthusiasm ever since, both on record and live, where he tends to play either solo or as half a duo, with an M400 wrapped in fluorescent yellow shrinkwrap. His gigs are manic, unpredictable, effervescent affairs, where the music is probably less important than the sense of occasion, though I'm sure many of his fans would disagree.

His first Mellotron album was (to date) his last-but-one 'proper' release, the sprawling double LP (Julian Cope Presents) 20 Mothers. Like the bulk of his (considerable) output, it's endearingly bonkers, with a wide variety of material, from the pop of Try Try Try, the punk of By The Light Of The Silbury Moon (ho ho), the acoustic whimsy of 1995 to the ambient prog of the magnificent When I Walk Through The Land Of Fear. Mellotronic highlights include the string breaks on Wheelbarrow Man, although what sounds like 'Tron brass is apparently a real (overdubbed) sax section, the full-on strings of Greedhead Detector and the immense When I Walk Through The Land Of Fear itself. Always performed at concerts, featuring the Drude on solo Mellotron (choir/pipe organ/string section) and vocals, the studio version is almost as intense; a serious 'Tron classic.

The following year's Interpreter was even more eccentric than its predecessor ('eccentric' is a word that gets used a lot around these parts), with oddities like The Battle For The Trees and The Loveboat scattered amongst slightly more mainstream fare like the excellent I Come From Another Planet, Baby or Re-Directed Male. Mellotron on almost every track, with loadsa choirs and strings, with Julian credited with 'Mellotrons (400 and Mark II)'. Planetary Sit-In's real strings are augmented by Mellotron choir, ditto The Battle For The Trees, while Cheap New-Age Fix has not only the ubiquitous choirs and strings, but a 'Tron flute solo, rare in Cope-Land. All in all, a total 'Tronfest. Buy.

'97 brought Cope's second Queen Elizabeth album, Elizabeth Vagina, a double CD of drifting spacerock-type stuff. It also saw the release of his second Rite album, Rite², consisting of four lengthy tracks, a million miles away from the song-based material on his two previous albums. Hill Of Odin's hypnotic hand-drums sound nothing like D - c.o.m.p.o.s.e.r's Krautrock-style sequencer blips, while Ver is a drone piece with 'Tron strings (also heard on D - c.o.m.p.o.s.e.r). The album is essentially for meditation, and makes a better job of it than its successor, to be honest.

1999's Odin is subtitled 'A 73-Minute Meditation on Silbury & Waden Hill' and Cope's credited with 'vocals, Mellotron 400 & Starchamber 1', whatever that may be. The album's actually a one track, 73-minute synth drone, with occasional changes in pitch, and the odd bit of 'Tron strings or choir, very heavily effected, slipping in and out of the mix. Difficult to recommend from a Mellotronic point of view, although I imagine it's ideal for meditating to, getting stoned to or probably both. I hope I don't sound too dismissive, but I had trouble connecting with this album at all; maybe I just wasn't in the right frame (or state) of mind.

An Audience With the Cope 2000 (ho ho) was originally a tour-only CD, though it's now available via Cope's website, which tells us it was re-released in '01 with a new booklet, but identical contents. It consists of eccentric songs like Born To Breed or decidedly non-song pieces, like the various parts of The Glam Dicenn, often with minimal instrumentation, but mostly including Mellotron strings and choir. Most of the 'Tron work's pretty good, but the standout track is The Glam Dicenn Part 3, with a near-solo Mellotron part some minutes in. There's an untitled sixth track, loaded with female choirs (?), some strings under Cope's scat vocals and a short closing flute part; incidentally, I've chopped five minutes off the CD time for the blank space before the track.

Discover Odin is a cross between an album and an event programme, subtitled 'Two Evenings With Julian Cope, 4-5 October 2001', with a header reading 'The British Museum: illuminating world cultures'. As you can see, it's in the form of a 'long box', though what you can't see is that it contains a ten-page book, relating Cope's views on Odin, shamanism etc. from ancient times to the rock'n'roll era (so to speak). The 18 Charms Of Odin sees Cope running through some Odinist myths, while Discover Odin itself is fascinating, being a ten-minute Cope monologue on the history of the Norse gods, taking in the Roman Empire, early Christendom and the misnaming of the Celts and Germans. After another 'song' in Ode To Wan, Yggdrasil & The Stone Of Odin is another history lesson, this time taking in Orkney, standing stones and, of course, Paganism, a subject of endless fascination for Cope. The punning Road To Yggdrasilbury is a slow-building march, bordering (dare I say it?) prog, with a Cope poem intoned over the music, while I Want To Go Wandering is nothing to do with Cope at all, being a spoken-word piece by noted American weirdo Vachel Lindsay. As far as Cope's 'Tron is concerned, there's mixed choir on The 18 Charms Of Odin, church organ towards the end of the title track and on Ode To Wan (part 2), but that's your lot.

Rather less to say about the latest Rite album, 2002's Rite Now, which is a lengthy jam session, effectively, with Cope and pals roaring through four space-rock head-trips in over 70 minutes. Get stoned and off you go. Very little of the credited Mellotron, with a very nice string part opening Give The Poet Some, but that appears to be it. Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day is another 'event' souvenir, this time of his three gigs at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre, in London, in late '03. I didn't make the gigs myself, but the CD is pretty excellent, actually, opening with two of the best things I've heard from Saint Julian in Shrine Of The Black Youth and Zennor Quoit, although most of the rest of the material doesn't quite match up to this opening double-whammy. As for the 'Tron, I presume that's female voices on Shrine Of The Black Youth, and definitely flutes and strings on Zennor Quoit. Most of the rest is standard M400 strings, although there's a short burst of murky pipe organ on Dance By The Light Of The Bridges You Burn, and there are only a few string and choir chords right at the end of the 20-minute guitar freakout, Eccentrifugal Force.

2005's two-disc Dark Orgasm is actually under fifty minutes long, presumably split into two as a statement rather than as a necessity. Channelling the MC5 (again), it consists of seven 'normal'-length tracks and one twenty-minuter, itself clearly made up from two shorter pieces, all obviously Cope, all rather more listenable than some of his other work. Cope adds 'Tron strings to She's Got a Ring on Her Finger... (& Another One Through Her Nose), I Don't Wanna Grow Back and The Death & Resurrection Show (complete with pitchbend), and string section (I think) on I've Found a New Way to Love Her, making for a more Mellotron-heavy effort than some of his recent albums.

After a couple of relevant releases I haven't heard yet (2005's two-track Rite Bastard and 2007's You Gotta Problem With Me (note: no question mark)), Cope's heavy release schedule produced 2008's Black Sheep, another two-disc effort that would fit on one. More diverse than Dark Orgasm, it features several of his patented primitive acoustic tracks, bashed out with less regard for the music than the message, but then, that's always been part of St. J's ethos. Plenty of Copeotron again, with string section on These Things I Know, strings, choir and oboe (?) on Psychedelic Odin, oboe again and full-on strings on Blood Sacrifice, strings on The Shipwreck Of St. Paul and (deep breath) the cheery, singalong All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers), choirs and strings on Feed My Rock'n'Roll, oboe on Dhimmi Is Blue and The Black Sheep's Song and strings and oboe on I Can Remember This Song, making for Cope's heaviest 'Tron use since the heady days of 20 Mothers and Interpreter.

2009's The Unruly Imagination is yet another limited-edited disc, this time from his event at Manchester University's Whitworth Gallery, including the whole of the previous year's Preaching Revolution EP. Preaching Revolution itself is a typically Copeian talking blues, but the album's other strongest moments are otherwise unavailable, including the strange Alexei Sayle Driver Improvement Course and James Nayler Enters Bristol On A Donkey: 1656, although I remain unconvinced by the fourteen long minutes of Chairman Mao. Passable 'Tron input, with strings and choir enter towards the end of Preaching Revolution, strings on Mother, Where Is My Father?, strings, oboe and cellos on Alexei Sayle, strings on James Nayler and something stringy (violas?, High cellos?) repeating to infinity towards the end of Chairman Mao.

Later the same year, Floored Genius 4 (ho ho) appeared, gathering together more odds'n'ends of Copeiana, seemingly going right back to the Teardrop Explodes days. As with all such albums, it's a slightly mixed bag, but with enough strong material (most previously unreleased in any form) to make it worthwhile for Cope, or indeed, Mellotron fans. Speaking of which, we get string section on A Sassenach Tune (2006), regular strings (plus choirs towards the end) on The Shrines Are Ablaze (2007), more strings and choir on an almost rhythmless The Glam Dicenn (2000), with more strings on I've Got My T.V. & My Pills (1997) and Mr. Self Respect (2006), but most surprisingly, choirs and strings on Sleeping Gas '90 (stealing the chords from Hawkwind's mighty Assault And Battery), quite clearly introduced as The Teardrop Explodes, although the sleeve does say 're-recorded and broadcast 1993', although that's still early for Cope 'Tron use. Anyway, better on the 'Tron front than anything since Black Sheep, for what it's worth.

In a quick backwards step, in April 2000, Julian hosted the event that spawned the Cornucopea: Two South Bank Evenings With Julian Cope CD, bringing together many acts from the past, present and future, many of them reforming as one-offs, not least the original Ash Ra Tempel. The album isn't obviously taken from the festival, as the tracks sound like studio recordings, so I'm not at all sure of the provenance of some of them, but it's a pretty cool collection, whatever. It takes a while for Queen Elizabeth's Temple of Diana to go all Mellotronic, but when it finally kicks in there's huge slabs of strings laid down over the heavy synth backing, while solo Cope gives us another version of Ver, 'Tron strings splattered all over.

So...; there's an awful lot of 'Tron to be heard on most of the above, apart from Odin, so you really can't go too far wrong with any of the others. Of course, if you don't like the various things he does musically, you're a bit stuffed, to which I say: open your mind a little. For that matter, I also say: try to get to see him live if at all possible; until I was dragged along to see him a few years ago, I was quite disparaging of his work, not to mention being in considerable ignorance of it. As the slipcase to the Audience With the Cope disc says, "Fluorescent Mellotrons". I couldn't have put it better myself.

By the way, if you've got a good bit of time to spare, please try to read some of Julian's fantastic official site, including stuff about not just music, but history, politics and just about anything else important you can think of, not all of it written by the Drude.