Made up of two long standing members of space rock pioneers Spiritualized (Doggen, Bales) and named after the radical archaeologist turned occultist T.C. Lethbridge, the band return with three re-issues of their self-released albums recorded in the early nineties: Moon Equipped, Mina and 2000 TC – released November 23rd 2014 via Iron Man Records.
T.C Lethbridge is Kevin Bales, Tony Doggen Foster and Flinton Chalk.
The re-issues promoted their first public performance in 23 years last November at Liverpool’s Cosmic Trigger Festival, a theatrical production and continuation of the Illuminatus Trilogy – a satirical story of drugs, sex, magic and conspiracy theories – which was originally adapted to stage by legendary English writer and director Ken Campbell.
T.C. Lethbridge’s performance at Cosmic Trigger was a tribute to the late-great psychedelic evangelist Brian Barritt (cohort of LSD advocate Timothy Leary) who appears in the Cosmic Trigger book and had recorded with the band at Avebury stone circle during the making of 2000TC. Barritt also features on the track “Bou Saada” on the album and Flinton Chalk had previously collaborated with Barritt exploring the trance-inducing frequencies of Neolithic burial tombs – a main theme that runs throughout their music. In Brian Barritt’s words the group are exploring “Automatic writing on a sacred landscape.”
You can explore their music by listening to 2000TC here:
Author John Higgs has written a biography of T.C Lethbridge entitled “2000TC – Standing on the verge of Getting It On” and said:
“Spending a few months writing a biography of a band who have yet to show their faces in public was not the most career-minded way to spend my time, but it had to be done. This is a story about people who’ve had some form of visionary or incomprehensible experience, and about how they can only move on and process what happened to them through a creative act. It is about the impact an uncompleted artistic project can have on a life. It also functions as a jigsaw piece, connecting the story in my Timothy Leary book to the one I tell in The KLF. So, yeah, it had to be written.”
‘2000TC’ was recorded 1994 John Stewart Hall, Melbourne House, The Henge Shop, Avebury, 4 Track cassette, digitally remastered by John Davies 2014. You can buy 2000TC here
All re-issued TC Lethbridge albums can be found here
T.C. Lethbridge website: http://www.tclethbridge.com
– written by Guy Hirst 2015
