Mind Fair – Mind Fair [CHANNEL029]

Having impressed with a variety of weird and wonderful singles on International Feel, Golf Channel and their own Rogue Cat Sounds imprint over the last three years, it’s probably about time Ben Shenton and Dean Meredith dropped their debut album under the Mind Fair alias. Predictably, it’s an impressively wonky, off-kilter and dubbed-out affair, effortlessly joining the dots between dub disco, hazy punk-funk, heavy African rhythms (see stand-out “Voodoo Train”), slo-mo chuggers (“Neon Carnival”) and bluesy Balearica (“Sunny Carter”). Blessed with plenty of live drums, guitars and bass, as well as vintage synthesizers, it’s an attractively loose affair, with great ideas and beautiful mood pieces complimenting the low-slung, out-there experiments.

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Mind Fair – Mind Fair [CHANNEL029]

Mind Fair – C.E.R.E.M.O.N.Y [CHANNEL037]

The first part of another Golf channel double header from the insanely prolific and scarily on form combination of Dean Meredith & Ben Shenton. A side ‘C.E.R.E.M.O.N.Y’ has been dubbed ‘the barnyard stomp’ by split secs’ / sonns’ Travis Kirschbaum (aka TK Disco) – 11 minutes of bluesy peyote riot that features Derek Holt of 70’s black country legends The Climax Blues Band. B side ‘Hiding from my Shadow’ is ripe with the funk too, but takes us away from the fertile stench of the psychedelic session in the barn and instead channels Minneapolis via Stafford as P-funk squiggles give way to Mr. Meredith’s trademark chugging bass.

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Mind Fair – C.E.R.E.M.O.N.Y [CHANNEL037]