I've been recently trawling through the pages of the Rev-ola web recently and an intrigued by the number of obscure psych albums they have on offer.I'm sure a lot of these were period fads,but there's still some good stuff to be discovered both here and with other good reissue labels.

My most recent favourite discovery is "A Gift From Euphoria" by two American guys Hamilton Wesley Watt and William Lincoln that originally came out on Capitol in 1969.The most obvious influences are Buffalo Springfield,The Byrds,Moby Grape and flourishes of Sgt Peppers in the range of odd sound affects (animal sounds,circuses,the sound of marching,crying babies etc) interspersed through the music.It's an album of great melody and beauty to my ears at least.

Most of you will know "The United States Of America" and their lone offering (not counting founder Joe Byrd's and The Field Hippies ).Others might like J.K.and Co. "Suddenly One Summer" which also springs to mind,or Merrell Fankhauser and His HMS Bounty's "Things".

So what are your favourite obscure psych albums ?

I like Merrell Fankhausers Return to MU.

I've also got that comp of absolute rarest psych in the Love, Peace & Poetry series.
And The Tokens' "Intercourse" is an underrated pop psych masterpiece, which has been reissued twice so far.

I hope I don't go on for too long, but here is a list of fave's off the top of my head

Pink Fairies - Never Never Land
Open Mind - Open Mind
Sam Gopal - Escalator (Lemmy's pre-Hawkwind band)
Tomorrow (featuring Keith West) - Tomorrow
Jade Warrior - Eclipse
Billy Nichols - Would You Believe (featuring the Small Faces)
Meic Stevens - Outlander
Man - Revelation
Clark/Hutchinson - Blues
Clark/Hutchinson - A=mh2
Ansley Dunbar - Blue Whale
Red Crayola - Parable Of Arabeland
Golden Dawn - Golden Dawn
Moving Sidewalks - Flash (Billy Gibbons first band)
The Deviants - The Deviants (Nun on the cover)
Edgar Broughton Band - Wasa Wasa
The Lolipop Shoppe - Just Add Color
The Unfolding - How To Blow Your Mind

(a more current one)
Opal - Happy Nightmare Baby

My favorite is a relatively recent one (from the 80's)
Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip

In terms of modern psych, I really liked Echo & The Bunnymen's lone McColloch-less album, "Reverberation." I agree with those that say they shouldn't have called themselves E&TB, but it was a fine album

I also really dig "My Name Is Tom" by The Jigsaw Seen.

As for classic Psych, I can't really think of any obscure albums I have, but I'd love to hear more of We All Together, whose "It's A Sin To Go Away" is one of the highlights of Nuggets 2.

I guess "Rolled Gold" by The Action might count.

Two votes for Rolled Gold. I also want to throw in The Idle Race's Birthday Party.

Electric Ladyland - Hendrix

Not sure how obscure it is but I love the Incense & Pepperments album by Stawberry Alarm Clock. I have a budget CD on MCA with zilch historical information so I'm not sure if this was an actual album or if it is a compilation. Whatever the case, it has some great psychedelic pop.

I would be also be remiss if I didn't mention Chips From The Chocolate Fireball by Dukes of Stratosphear. This is a compilation of an album and e.p. put out in the 1980s, and it is fairly common knowledge this was actually XTC. These guys clearly knew their psychedelic music, both the pop side and the heavier stuff, and a more loving tribute/takeoff I cannot imagine.

Me again. If you like the "weird, spacy sounds" aspect of psychedelic music, mixed in with dub and electronics, you might want to try out these albums from the 90s:

U.F. Orb -- The Orb
Lifeforms -- The Future Sound of London

I like it more for the "25 O'Clock" EP - amazing stuff. Those first 6 songs are right up there with anything put out in the 60's. "My Love Explodes" is amazing. "Mole From The Ministry" is as great a Beatles set up as any. The album has some very good songs too, but the magic/originality of the EP is missing. "Vanishing Girl" is a great song though.

Speaking of 6 great songs....Love's Da Capo is the best half album (psychedelic or not) ever made.....side 1.

Not obscure but.....
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

How obscure would y'all consider The Crazy World of Arthur Brown? I'm listening to "Spontaneous Apple Creation" as I type, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this album.

That CD is in my car stereo as we speak.

When 7 & 7 Is comes on, the volume gets turned up as loud as it will go.

With guitars sometimes emulating sitars, the Ventures' "Super Psychedelics" is really cool.

There are numerous great psych LPs from the past 40 years or so, but the one i always go back to above all others is "Their Satanic Majesties Request" by the Stones. Unlike Rolling Stone magazine, i haven't had to "revisit" my opinion of this masterwork. It floors me as much today as it did when i first heard it at the age of 12 or so. An unjustly maligned piece of brilliance. I was most most fortunate to recently (finally) acquire the "Satanic Sessions" 8-cd set, and extracted only the tracks that were outtakes from the LP and put them all in the album's running order. This ended up filling 3 cds. I took the other best stuff (a couple of takes of "We Love You" and "Child Of the Moon", along with the complete disc #8, which is i think 10 tracks of takes of "Jigsaw Puzzle") and made a disc 4 of "other sessions". The other 4 cds worth of r&B-ish outtakes (none of which are recognizable to any finished works), although nice to have, are fairly disposable. (and for those not familiar with this, all 8 cds worth are instrumental tracks only, no vocals)

To God's Comic, i'm right there with on that Rain Parade cd, and if you've never heard the two Viva Saturn cds (and one vinyl only EP), you really need to.

Also strong agreement on Dukes Of the Stratosphere. Mr. Partridge had many other psych masterpieces strewn about many of the latter XTC lps. It would be interesting to go through the LPs and extract only the best overtly psych tunes and compile them all together.

Would have to add "Wish You Were Here" by Floyd (my favorite PF album)

Wow. Somehow I missed out on this band. Saw cheap CDs on Amazon, so I just placed an order.
Thanks for the tip.

Total agreeance re: The Dukes. Little Lighthouse is one of my favorite songs ever.

I love Matthew Sweet's "In Reverse" for all its backwards guitars and stuff like that. Carol Kaye played bass.

Captain Beyond - S/T

Doesn't it kinda sound like Buffalo Springfield?

I had been trying to figure out some of the obvious influences/parodies for the Dukes songs.

All I could think of off the top of my head

Mole From The Ministry - Beatles, cross between Walrus & Strawberry Fields
Bike Ride To The Moon - Tomorrow, My White Bicycle
Have You Seen Jackie? - Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd
Pale and Precious - Beach Boys, sort of California Girls
You're A Good Man Albert Brown - Paul McCartney, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

Any others?

Partridge owned up to all of them once.

"25 o'clock" is obviously The Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night"
"Bike Ride To The Moon" was an attempt at being Syd Barrett (though I agree that it sounds more like "My White Bicycle")
"My Love Explodes" was an attempt at doing an "Over Under Sideways Down" -type Yardbirds tune
"What In The World" is an obvious rewrite of "It's Only A Northern Song" with some Manfred Mann thrown in
"Your Gold Dress" was an attempt to emulate Nick Hopkins' work on "She's A Rainbow" or "We Love You"
"Mole In The Ministry" - That mole was clearly adopted by a walrus
"Vanishing Girl" - an attempt at the Hollies '66 sound
"Have You Seen Jackie?" - originally called "Have You Seen Sydney", so clearly the Barrett influence was there...
"Little Lighthouse" -- intended to sound like "a lot of those bands that imitated the Stones".
"You're A Good Man Albert Brown" - pub psychedelia, "it's like Oscar's ‘Over The Wall We Go’, Whistling Jack Smith's ‘I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman’, ‘The Universal’, a couple of Bonzos things.”
"Collideascope" - Lennon backed by The Move
"You're My Druge" - a cross between the Animals' "Monterey" and the Byrds' "So You Wanna Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star"
"Shiny Cage" - all of the Beatles' Revolver in one song with "I'm Only Sleeping" as the base
"Brainiac's Daughter" - a Mystery Tour-era McCartney "psychedelic soup" that they felt ended up sounding like the Bonzos or Thunderclap Newman
"The Affiliated" - Ray Davies, with the bridge being Unit 4+2's "Concrete And Clay"
"Pale and Precious" - Beach Boys, obviously. "California Girls" meets "Good Vibrations".

I spotted the Lennon right away, but was amazed many years later when I first got into the Move and heard Blackberry Way. "So THAT'S where Collideascope came from!"