Jah Wobble and Liverpool duo Tian Qiyi have unveiled their interpretation of The Beatles’ classic ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the first release from the forthcoming album Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook, due in August.
by Paul Cashmere
Former Public Image Ltd bassist Jah Wobble has joined forces with Liverpool-based ethno-psychedelic duo Tian Qiyi for a new interpretation of The Beatles’ landmark song ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, launching a project that reimagines the Fab Four’s psychedelic catalogue through the lens of dub, Chinese and Mongolian musical traditions. The track is the first preview of the album Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook, scheduled for release on August 14 through Cherry Red Records and Wobble’s 30 Hertz label.
The project brings together three generations of musical influences and a family connection that stretches from East London to Liverpool’s long-established Chinese community. While The Beatles’ original recordings from the mid-1960s helped redefine the possibilities of popular music, the new album approaches the material from a very different cultural perspective.
At its core, Mystic Liverpool revisits songs from the psychedelic period of The Beatles, including ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, ‘I Am The Walrus’, ‘Blue Jay Way’ and ‘The Inner Light’. Rather than reproducing the originals, the recordings place them within arrangements built around dub bass, traditional Chinese instruments and contemporary experimental production techniques.
For Wobble, whose bass work with Public Image Ltd helped shape post-punk and dub-influenced alternative music, the connection to this material goes back decades.
“The track that flipped it for me as a kid was ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’,” Wobble said. “I didn’t have the language for what was going on in that song, I just knew it was more than music. The words you’d reach for are the ones people use about psychedelia: ego dissolution, a sense of unity, cosmic connection.”
He added that dub music and psychedelic music share common ground. “I consider dub music to fit into the psychedelia genre, and John T grew up listening to dub, so Mystic Liverpool was always going to have that sensibility.”
The album’s lead track, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, is itself one of the most significant recordings in The Beatles’ catalogue. Released as the closing track on 1966’s Revolver, the song was written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon-McCartney.
Inspired by Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience and Lennon’s exploration of consciousness and Eastern philosophy, it marked a dramatic shift away from conventional pop songwriting.
The original recording employed tape loops, reversed sounds, Indian instrumentation and studio manipulation techniques that were virtually unheard of in mainstream pop music at the time. It has since become recognised as one of the most influential recordings in the development of psychedelic, electronic and experimental music.
Those qualities made it a natural entry point for Wobble and Tian Qiyi’s reinterpretation.
Tian Qiyi consists of brothers John T Wardle and Charlie Wardle, Wobble’s sons, whose Chinese middle names inspired the group’s name. Their music combines British, Chinese and Mongolian traditions with dub and post-punk influences, creating a sound that reflects both their family heritage and contemporary experimental music.
The new recordings feature Wobble’s trademark bass work alongside John T’s drumming, Chinese percussion and yangqin, while Charlie contributes erhu, vocals and other traditional instrumentation. On ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, Charlie also performs morin khuur, with the brothers’ mother, acclaimed guzheng performer Zi Lan Liao, contributing guzheng.
The Liverpool connection is central to the project. The album was recorded and mixed by John T at Pagoda Studios in Liverpool. The Wardle family’s relationship with the city extends through Zi Lan’s father, K.H. Li, who arrived from Guangzhou in 1981 as Chinese Cultural Officer at Liverpool’s Pagoda Arts Centre and later founded the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra. Both brothers were members of the orchestra from childhood.
The album is dedicated to Li, a lifelong Beatles enthusiast whose extensive vinyl collection introduced much of the family to the group’s music.
Beyond its family story, Mystic Liverpool reflects a broader trend in contemporary music, where classic recordings are increasingly reinterpreted through global musical traditions. Rather than treating The Beatles’ catalogue as museum pieces, artists continue to find new cultural contexts for songs that remain influential six decades after they were first recorded.
For Wobble, whose career has included collaborations with Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, Brian Eno, Sinéad O’Connor, Massive Attack, Horace Andy and many others, the project represents another chapter in a career defined by musical cross-pollination.
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is available now through digital streaming platforms. Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook will be released digitally and on CD Digipak on August 14.
Tracklisting:
Tomorrow Never Knows
Strawberry Fields Forever
Within You Without You
I Am The Walrus
Norwegian Wood
Blue Jay Way
The Inner Light
Love You To
Flying
Rain
Live date:
June 18, 2026, Todmorden, The Golden Lion
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