Paisley Babylon started in San Antonio, Texas in 1996 on the cassette-only label Zombie Records. Soon after the release of PB’s first, Synthetic Noises for Beginners, Paisley Babylon was featured on an Uncle Buzz Records compilation of Texas psych and experimental sounds called Acid Ranch 2000.
In 1997 Paisley Babylon completed its first full length CD, The Alpha Wave Variations. Sole member Joe Wallace says from there, things only got stranger. “I moved to Iceland for two years and recorded most of what eventually became Midnight Hallucinations.” He says Paisley Babylon’s work fits into the musical canon somewhere between Eno and David Lynch composer Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for Twin Peaks and Lost Highway.
Paisley Babylon has found its way into some odd places for such surreal sounds. In 2003, PB was used as part of the soundtrack for a promotional video for the Texas Society of Sculptors, and some unreleased Paisley Babylon tracks have been used as production music for music industry demo videos.
In 2009, Paisley Babylon went back into the studio to compose tracks for an as-of-yet unannounced surrealist film, Text.
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Post Mortem Telepathy
In 1996, members of The Lysergic Dream, Crevice, and Paisley Babylon got together to record some experimental works under the name Post-Mortem Telepathy. There were many projects including some of the earliest versions of what today is called mash-ups. Post-Mortem Telepathy chose a particular band–Pink Floyd, The Doors, New Order–and assigned each PMT member an album.
The challenge? Mash up the whole album into a single track using clips from each cut on the record. By far the most fascinating result was with The Doors, but New Order and Pink Floyd also yielded similarly bizarre tracks. This work is extremely rare and was never given an official release.
Post-Mortem Telepathy recorded Nitrous Oxide From The Three-Point Line: The Adventures Of Dr. K in 1997 as a concept album with no vocals or liner notes to advance the concept. It’s a strange journey indeed, but well worth the listen. This album is joint effort between PMT members from Paisley Babylon and The Lysergic Dream. This is the albums first official, widespread release as well as the first wide release of any PMT material to the general public. Most of the mash-ups and other material were distributed regionally in the late 90s.
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