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It says something about the current state of hallucinogens when the latest crop of psychedelic groups seem to be taking their cue from the murky narcotic haze of the Velvet Underground and their disciples, rather than peeking behind the doors of perception. Whatever happened to all those pretty colours?

To be fair, once Cumbrian quartet the Lucid Dream ease up on the wall of dirge after a couple of tracks, they start distilling some broader influences, ranging from the cavernous Spector-ish production to an encyclopaedic knowledge of North West bands in general and The Verve’s Nick McCabe in particular.

What stops The Lucid Dream from tripping over their own nerdy shoelaces is a sense of purpose and determination from guitarists Mark Emmerson and Wayne Jefferson, who revel in extracting every last tone from their combined wall of sound, from Roger McGuinn to, er, Nick McCabe.

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.