Joe Meek And The Blue Men – I Hear A New World
I was obsessed with this record from the first time I heard it. Everything about Joe Meek's story is fascinating. The way he worked, the way he lived. As a producer, he turned down the Beatles, saying "The Merseybeat sound is going nowhere." This record was made in 1960 and it's berserk. It captures a time when space exploration was an international agenda. 'Telstar' had captured the mood when the first satellites went up; this record went a lot further, imagining an entire planet beyond our solar system. It's an artist you know doing a record that's so far from what you thought they were capable of: "Really, this is the same person?" I just got obsessed with it. I only had a taped version of it which, to me, isn't like actually having the record. I was in Japan a few years later, before it was reissued, and I found a bootleg copy there at great expense. It's almost like an early hauntological recording; it's very crude but incredibly evocative. It's interesting to wonder what would have happened to Joe Meek had his story turned out differently…