nick nicely's 'Hilly Fields' was described by NME as "the best psychedelic record since the 60s" and I can't help but agree - it's track that leaves you with a huge grin on your face every time you hear it (it does for me, anyway).
So when nick mentioned he was putting together a new version of the track, 30 years after the original first appeared...well, I knew it would be perfect for Fruits de Mer - which it is; and when Cherry Red kindly agreed to let us put nick's original version of 'HF' on the b-side (it's still available on nick's 'Psychotropia' LP, by the way), well, I knew this was just going to be a bloody brilliant 7", which it is.
If you love psychedelia and you only buy one 7" single in 2012, this is the one to buy - it's as simple as that
By the way, look out for nick's new album, 'Lysergia', coming out sometime in 2012, meanwhile enjoy 7" of psychedelic madness and magic - on sale mid-june - but not for long!
Meanwhile, here are a few comments on nick and on 'Hilly fields', if nick and 'HF' are new to you...
"Anyone who's never heard the 1982 single Hilly Fields is in for a treat, as it not only sounds like a collaboration between The Beatles and Pink Floyd but mixes hip-hop record scratching and contemporary synthesisers into the mix" (Record Collector)
"This superb early 80s psychedelic 7" masterpieceby nick nicely is a perfect example of why magic mushrooms and music can sometimes make such wonderful soup! (Record Collector)
"nick nicely is perhaps the ultimate musical cult hero — he released two singles in the U.K. in the early '80s, both of which earned critical acclaim but gathered little commercial steam, and then he fell below the radar. nicely's mix of '60s psychedelic influences and the sonic vocabulary of '80s New Wave prefigured the work of artists like Robyn Hitchcock, The Three O'Clock, and XTC's paisley alter egos The Dukes of Stratosphear" (Limewire)
"Hilly Fields (1892)" remains his best-known track. A melange of electronics, cello, sung and spoken voices and the first non-hip-hop use of scratching I ever came across, wrapped around a contagious melody and a pleasantly bizarre lyric...nick nicely's place in music history is assured" (Ugly Things)
"Hilly Fields (1892), which Nick worked on for six months in the studio, turned out to be his masterpiece. This alienating evocation of a park in South London puts Sgt Pepper's psychedelic esthetics in a time machine bound for the eighties" (OOR magazine)
"...a DIY Good Vibrations, all scratching decks and spooky cellos. Its genius encouraged XTC's Andy Partridge to cut 'The Dukes of Stratosphear' (Mojo)
...and if you haven't heard 'Hilly Fields' before....
...now you KNOW you want a copy, but I've sold all of mine (and the record's been on sale for less than a week!), so check our list of FdM-friendly shops to track down your copyand then email me to get on the FdM mailing list so you get lots of advaance warning in future
and then email me to get on the FdM mailing list so you get lots of advaance warning in future