Journey to the West

Some years ago, as a young enthusiast of the d-i-y cassette tape scene, I improvised a piece on my reed organ one moody Summer afternoon, called 'Journey to the West', and credited it to The Mystic Umbrellas. 

The name had come about when I visited Glastonbury in pursuit of the Arthurian Mysteries, in the company of my friend G J Cooling. There was a fine rain in the air. 'Well, here we are,' I had said, as we got off the bus, 'in quest of mystic enlightenment'. 'And an umbrella,' added Mr Cooling.

The piece was, remarkably, accepted by the Deleted Records label for inclusion on their Deleted Funtime tape (1980), sub-titled 'various tunes by various loons'.

A dub remix, once compared to ‘Augustus Pablo meets The Orb in an abandoned country house’, was issued on CD by Waterden in 2004.

‘Further to the West’, a new re-imagining of the original piece, was devised by the enigmatic musicians Watch Repair and issued as a CDr and download on Aphasic Ear in 2017.

Now Mark Lancaster, one of the original co-producers of the tape, has made a 'Journey to the West' video to accompany the dub version of the piece, true, as he says, to its mood of 'antiquarian trip-hop'. This promising genre has not quite caught on - yet. 

(Mark Valentine)

 

Journey to the West - The Mystic Umbrellas

“On a Summer afternoon in the back bedroom of a Sixties semi-detached house on the western edge of Northampton, over thirty years ago, a boy of twenty improvised melodies on a reed organ and captured them on a cassette recorder….”

Now available, Watch Repair presents Journey to the West by The Mystic Umbrellas: original recordings from the 1980s independent tape scene by Mark Valentine as The Mystic Umbrellas, with beautiful new elaborations by enigmatic contemporary composers Watch Repair, complemented by new texts and images.

“Journey to the West” originally appeared on the sought-after Deleted Funtime cassette (1980) alongside tracks by Stabmental (featuring John Balance, later of Coil), The Door and the Window and The Instant Automatons. Its wistful, melancholy air brought comparisons to Popul Vuh and The Third Ear Band. Artist John Coulthart has written a fine evocation of the project.

As well as the digital album, there is also a special edition comprising two CDRs, four postcards, and texts by Mark Valentine and Anthony Clough, with design by John Coulthart, photography by Deborah Judd, and packaging by RebexLibris. This includes a download code.

Limited to 100 numbered copies, this is available for £10 each plus £2 postage (UK), £4 rest of the world. To order, send a message to lostclub[at]btopenworld[dot]com, replacing the words in square brackets with symbols.

“The silence when the playing ceased, and the thunder faded, was like a crack opening in time: he always remembered how it felt, as if he had caught a glimpse of some un-nameable change in the nature of things.”