Psychedelic music is intrinsically navel-gazey because it expresses the individual’s inner journey, the mystical expedition. Often, the effort is too pretentious and silly to bear, and laughter ensues. Sometimes the opposite occurs, and you get the feeling that you’ve been lifted to a higher plane. I’m not a great Moody Blues fan, and In Search of the Lost Chord is no Fifth Dimension, but I really like the album: it’s lush and soft, not particularly ground-breaking but particularly dreamy and pleasant.
Why am I writing about psychedelic music? Because I dig it, and because it’s intimately related to the explosion of the fantasy and sci-fi scene in the late ’60s, not to mention surging interest in the occult (or “metaphysics”) and mythology, all of which inform early geek culture.
The LP cover art is by Phil Travers, who recounts the experience—“the band wanted me primarily to illustrate the concept of meditation”—at Rock Pop Gallery.
2 Warps to Neptune 
I’m much more into prog rock than psychedelic. Roger Dean is definitely my album cover artist of choice.
Have you seen/heard Space Hymns by Ramases? Dean did a killer six-fold cover showing a rocket launching off a cathedral.
I’ve seen the artwork, but never managed to find or hear a copy of the album. I’m always on the lookout for anything done by Dean when I go record shopping at antique places, though. My collection includes some Yes and Uriah Heep.
Fucking great but very weird album by a dude who thought he was Ramases II reincarnated.
Try this early 1975 electronica occult psychedelia by Ataraxia (Mort Garson):
This is incredible! I’m really into Moog music as well, so this is like a perfect storm. He did a Zodiac album as well? Do you know where I can find his stuff on CD? There’s nothing on iTunes that I can see…
Yeah: This trippy pre-John Carpenter synth album just screams “D&D game background music” to me.
As for Garson, he’s tricky to find. The reason is that there is another band that call themselves “Ataraxia” *and* there’s another musician also by the name of Mort Garson. So search engines are of little help.
If you like Moog, start following Basic Hip Digital Oddio; ( http://www.basichipdigitaloddio.com/365/ ); They post an album a day for free over there and vintage synth stuff appears there regularly. The complete Ataraxia “Unexplained” album can be streamed there; There used to be a free download; But those expire after two weeks. Hint: http://sourceforge.net/projects/streamripper/
If you find a copy of the original vinyl LP at a thrift store, buy it. Copies in good condition sell for about $100 to $200 on the collector’s market.
Brilliant. Thank you. A lot of the Garson stuff is on YouTube, so I’ve been listening to it. Not the same. There’s really no way to avoid getting a record player any more…. I’ll be following that site.