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Intersystems
Free Psychedelic Poster Inside
(independent) - 1968
Michael Panontin
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As the experimental electronic duo Intersystems, synthesizer pioneer John Mills-Cockell and performance poet Blake Parker put out three records in the late 1960s: the relatively acoustic Number One and the synth-laden Peachy for Jack Boswell's Allied Records in 1967, as well as the self-released Free Psychedelic Poster Inside the following year. The totally futuristic sounds on Free Psychedelic... were actually part of an architectural installation at the Mind Excursion Centre in Montreal on July 8, 1968 involving Michael Hayden (album art design and lighting for installations) and Dik Zander (architecture for installations).
The nine untitled tracks on Free Psychedelic... take Mills-Cockell's experimentation - an ambient array of humming, pulsating and oscillating synthesizer sounds - and set them as backdrops to Parker's spoken word narrations. Parker wryly introduces us to "a plastic boy and girl. His name is Gordie. Her name is Renee", who are thrust into the ordinary world of love, marriage, suburbia, drudgery, etc. Meanwhile, Mills-Cockell wrings sundry squeals and drones from his synths, unsettling sounds that must have been anathema to the peace-and-love world at the time.
Parker pressed on for some forty years with his post-Beat poetry until his passing in 2007. And after a brief stint with well-known hippie faves the Kensington Market on their sophomore Aardvark LP, Mills-Cockell would go on to form the criminally ignored electronic trio Syrinx, releasing their spacy debut on True North in 1970. All three Intersystems records were reissued by the Milano-based Alga Marghen label, individually on vinyl, in a 3-CD box set, and as part of a mammoth, kitchen-sink-and-all 3-LP package complete with a 120-page book of essays, poems, press clippings, and photos.
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