Search results
May 20, 2024 · Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—The Beatles. 3. Surrealistic Pillow—Jefferson Airplane. 2. Piper at the Gates of Dawn—Pink Floyd. 1. Revolver—The Beatles. Related: Top 200 Songs from the Original Psychedelic Era. Related: Top 15 Psychedelic Songs by The Beatles.
- Brett Milano
- Love: Forever Changes (1967) This classic album from really stands apart from the best psychedelic albums. There are no studio effects, no freeform jams, and hardly even any electric guitars.
- The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour (1967) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may have changed music, but if there was one moment that psychedelicised the world, it was the release of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (backed with “Penny Lane”) as a single in February 1967.
- Spirit: Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus (1970) Released in November 1970, this was the original psychedelic era’s final masterpiece. Lyrically, Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus wraps up everything that era was trying to say.
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland (1968) Jimi Hendrix was psychedelic by his very existence, and the expansive double-album Electric Ladyland brought you further inside his head (and closer to other parts of his anatomy) than any other record.
- Revolver – The Beatles
- The Doors – The Doors
- Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane
- Forever Changes – Love
- Electric Ladyland – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
- Bitches Brew – Miles Davis
- The Smile Sessions – The Beach Boys
- The Dark Side of The Moon – Pink Floyd
- Mothership Connection – Parliament
- A Live One – Phish
The Beatles were turned on to pot in 1964. They first tried LSD in 1965. And in 1966, they released Revolver, an album cementing their evolution from teenie-bopper boy band into some of the greatest musical innovators of all time. Considered by many to be the group’s best album, Revolver includes “Eleanor Rigby,” “Yellow Submarine,” and ends with “...
Featuring their breakthrough single “Light My Fire,” The Doors’ self-titled début infused hard rock with jazz, classical, and R&B influences. The album was produced by producer Bruce Botnick, considered one of the most important names in developing psychedelic rock. This album concludes with the 12-minute epic “The End,” which includes a highly Oed...
Vocalist Grace Slick formed her first band, the Great Society, after being inspired by seeing Jefferson Airplane play a show in San Francisco. Just a year later, she joined Jefferson Airplane and sang on their recording of “White Rabbit,” which she herself composed previously. Undeniably one of the era’s best psychedelic songs, “White Rabbit” draws...
Love, a band from Los Angeles whose original line-up lasted just a couple years, explored disillusionment with the 1960s counterculture on Forever Changes, their third album. Following up on the success of their top 40 hit “7 And 7 Is,” this album saw the band embrace what AllMusic called“a more gentle, contemplative, and organic sound,” infusing f...
Widely considered one of the greatest electric guitar players of all time, Jimi Hendrix regularly consumed cannabis, hashish, and LSD in the late ’60s, particularly while touring with his band. Electric Ladylandwas their third and final album. Hendrix passed away shortly after its release, joining the infamous “27 Club.” The album’s heavy guitar so...
Miles Davis rose to prominence as a jazz composer and trumpet player. This changed on Bitches Brew, which turned to looser, more improvised rock-style rhythms incorporating guitar and electric piano. Considered an early example of the jazz-rock genre, this album prominently features the soprano saxophone and bass clarinet. Rolling Stone praised it ...
Brian Wilson—songwriter, producer, and co-lead singer of The Beach Boys—was prone to debilitating perfectionism, which is one of several reasons that the album Smile, planned and mostly recorded in the late 60s, never came to fruition. After decades of anticipation, parts of those recording sessions were finally amalgamated into an official album. ...
The Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album exploring themes like individualism, conflict, greed, and mental illness, all of which were brought up as the band toured in the early 1970s. Each side of the album is a continuous piece of music, making it perfect for both psychedelic experiences and the fan-favorite “Dark Side of the Rainbow” theory, w...
George Clinton, frontman of the Parliament-Funkadelic collective whose sci-fi mythology became foundational to the Afrofuturist aesthetic, said his group intended to imagine “black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in”—such as in outer space. Concept album Mothership Connectiondoes exactly that in a playful and archetypally fun...
We can’t talk about psychedelic music without paying tribute to the jam bands who helped define the very concept. Their long-winded, improvisational live performances created hotbeds for the psychedelic community—a style pioneered by the Grateful Dead beginning in the 1960s. Following in their footsteps is Phish, which—like the Dead—cultivated an e...
- Grateful Dead - Anthem Of The Sun (1968) Described by drummer Mickey Hart as “our springboard into weirdness”, the Dead’s second album is a mutable collage of rock, psychedelia and wayward blues.
- The Zombies - Odessey And Oracle (1968) Such was their disillusionment with the music business that The Zombies split up before their second album was even released.
- Aphrodite’s Child - 666 (1972) European psychedelia never went further out than this weighty concept album about The Book Of Revelation, delivered by a mercurial band that included Vangelis and a pre-superstar Demis Roussos.
- The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin (1999) Firmly placing the Oklahoma City trio at the forefront of postmodern psychedelia, The Soft Bulletin joined the dots between the day-glo ‘60s and the knowing ‘90s with some aplomb.
- Baroness – Yellow and Green. (2012; Relapse) There’s not a lot of consensus on the kind of music that Baroness plays, other than “metal.” Though even that was in dispute with the release of their 2012 album Yellow and Green, a double-LP exploration through various sonic experiments and stylistic forays.
- Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right To Children. (1998; Warp) As a consistent champion for electronica here at Treble, I’m surprised by how small a dent it made in this particular countdown.
- Radiohead – Kid A. (2000; Capitol) The crucial question, “What constitutes psychedelia?” , is one that recurs through this list. Taken as a mode of dissociative dream-state music and not just chromatic shifts aplenty, it’s hard not to include Radiohead’s magnum opus in the running.
- Blue Cheer – Vincebus Eruptum. (1968; Philips) How many drugs can one band take? Blue Cheer’s name is a possible hint, an homage to a particularly potent strain of LSD.
Oct 15, 2021 · 23. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - L.W. 24. Django Django - Glowing in the Dark. 25. Yola - Stand for Myself. The Best Psychedelia Albums of 2021. View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band.
People also ask
How do you choose the best psychedelic albums?
What is the best psychedelic album ever made?
What are the best psychedelic songs?
Should I listen to more psychedelic music?
Here’s the deal: Psychedelic Sight revolves around two works in progress: A list of the 50 greatest psychedelic albums (this page) and another collecting the top 100 psychedelic songs. So where are the other albums? True to the spirit, the list is being filled in at random, whenever the muse pops up.
