Been real busy lately, and haven't had much time/desire to talk/write about music as I've been enjoying it so damn much that all that criticism would just get in the way! So I'm just gonna sort of ramble about a lot of different shit here, maybe write a few paragraphs or just a sentence or two.

First, check THIS out! Way to go Brainwashed! All the elite goth hippies of the world finally have an island of their own. I wanna go and stuff.

Second, props to Deep Water for assembling a fine interview with the increasingly excellent United Bible Studies, the flagship ensemble for the Deserted Village collective (the last cool collective on earth?). They just released their first official CD, The Shore That Fears the Sea (Deserted Village), currently en route to the Womb-din.

DW also recently published a fine piece on modern psych pop, including Norway's Dipsomaniacs main man Oyvind Holm, Kelley Stoltz and the truly weird Jennifer Gentle. I expressed my own thoughts on Holm's solo debut, "The Vanishing Act," here.

So speaking of syke poppery; I've not really listened to much in '06, yet here I am semi-obsessing over The Flaming Lips once more. They at least rub up against the genre pretty regularly. "At War With the Mystics" (Warner Brothers) does not suck. I'm sure some folks out there think it does. And then there are others, with good taste mind, who simply consider The Flaming Lips sellout poop to begin with. "Transmissions From the Satellite Heart" IS a big fat major label album. "She Don't Use Jelly" WAS something of a novelty pop hit. They did appear on 90210. People with minds should realize that all of these events are actually pop cultural blessings instead of apocalyptic omens.

Though earlier albums exhibit a fairly caustic edge, for the last 15 years or so it's been a celebration of life, love and all that sunshine-y shit. They can still get fucked up if they want to (see the quadraphonic and impossible to sync up properly for longer than one track "Zaireeka" boxset). Anyone who's seen "The Fearless Freaks" DVD knows Steve Drozd nearly shot himself to the moon before finally kicking heroin for good (for the last three years or so anyway). For all the bliss there's a lot of darkness and confusion here. The Lips are simply vindication for some of us living in the Midwest. We feel better knowing that they're there doing what they're doing, no matter how many itunes commercials or endorsements they might give out along the way. Things will be OK as long as Wayne is still playing a guitar and warbling about his big concept silliness.

So, the music: "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" (as in "If you could blow up the world with he flip of a switch, would you do it? YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!...") is one of the more obnoxiously joyous things Wayne and his merry band of pranksters have constructed in a while. Familiar, sure, but it also makes for some quasi-intelligent commentary on the current state of things. "Free Radicals," on the other hand, is indebted to the artist formerly known as Prince, T-Rex and Queen with equal gratitude, as Wayne's high falsetto voice is backed with Beatles-loving harmonies and the gnarliest funk/acid guitar hook the boys have dropped in years. It's simply a freaky masterwork to my ears. Justin Cober Lake referred to it as "a disaster" over at Pop Matters, which may be codespeak for "this is actually weird and cool," but I doubt it.

There's also the 70s blaxploitation of "The Sound of Failure" (light soul psych about desposable pop divas), the stunning wall of sound balladry of "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion"--with a noise break that'll make the brain bleed if you play it loud enough--and the streaking Led Zep/new wave hybrid of "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung." Sure, some of this sounds a bit too tight in spots, uber-produced and sort of scaled back at the same time, but I like it. So many of their contemporaries have fizzled or collapsed under the weight of their own pretensions. The Flaming Lips continue to matter, and in turn so does life.

Downer time, but it's the kind of down that eventually starts to lead up when you dig deep enough. I've always admired Cat Power without necessarily calling myself a trueblue obsessive. It's the voice. Chan Marshall has the voice when it comes to sensual, sad, defeated longing. "The Greatest" (Matador), or what I like to call "Chan in Memphis," was recorded at Ardent Studios, the home of Big Star and many more rock/soul greats. It features a bevy of pro session players helping her along on her not so merry way with loose shuffling arrangements, the occasional harmonic accents, horns, pedal steel, strings all flushing out a fairly playful and spontaneous sounding production. No matter how much you dress it up, it's still a Cat Power album, marked by an urgency and uncertainty that feels as dependable as it is, ya know, honest.

With "Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives" (3 Beads of Sweat), Maryrose Crook and the Renderers follow a similar track. The Renderers can be a tough sell. You either get them or you don't. You're either willing to trip and fall face first in the dirt (and of course slowly get back up and brush that dust off) or you try as hard as you can to live in a dream and not notice the horror that pervades all existence.

Thing about country music is it's sacred. It's raw. Your Hanks, your Lorettas--they didn't grow on trees, yet the mentality that spurned their best performances was packaged and sold so long ago that the real salt-of-the-earth/down-but-not-out drive that marks the best country music is all but extinct today. Country is supposed to be about contemplations of the mundane and the infinite with equal conviction, as the contemplator clutches whatever he/she can--a bottle, a body, a crucifix--just to get through the cold dark night. The Renderers are not country per se, but they get that part of it better than 90% of the fools streaming out of Nashville today--the pain and isolation that comes with being stuck in the same job, surrounded by the same horde of company men and vampires, and the other prisons we make ourselves. Maryrose Crook uses all this just as a starting point and throws in her own language of cryptic metaphor and noirish despair to conjure a charred near mythical psychedelic wasteland sparsely populated by tortured souls and twisted creatures. Brian Crook (her husband) is the perfect foil for such surrealism-meets-rustic imagery, whether lathering melting feedback ontop of ghostly ballads or kicking up a slash and burn racket, captured with garage rock immediacy.

The murky, charred feedback and slithering acid country rhythms backing her compliment the malaise, and offer a world where Hank Williams and Townes Van Zandt are revered as preciously as Sonic Youth, the Dead C and Can, to name but a few. A different kind of transcendence indeed. A worthy follow-up to one of the most revered and unheard noise/psych masterworks of the last decade, "Dream of the Sea" (Siltbreeze).

Barnburning space boogie is what the doctor orders with The Clear Spots' second CD-R, the lovingly christened "Mansion in the Sky" (Deep Water). It's a slash and burn affair comprised of grinding two guitar/drums front, no bass, an abundance of distortion, and no, it's not grindcore. Sonic Youth, Juneau and Mirza are a few touchstones, but that more refers to an overall improvised groove-based approach than the actual music. The Clear Sports mold their spontaneous trips from a deep well spring where Krautrock, 80s guitar noise, West coast acid jams, surf rock, raga and much more is fodder for refabrication as cosmic musical evocations. There is something very real about what's going on here. It also shows steady growth from the damaged eruptions that marked last year's "Mountain
Rock" with a more sunburnt, ghostly blues aura. This one needs a nice vinyl reissue somewhere on down the line--my fave CD-R of '06 (so far).

Just as I was coming to terms with the clarity of The Clear Spots, another Deep Water CD-R hit the box to redistort my perceptions. I was talking a bit about psych pop up top there, and how nothing had really been grabbing me along those lines lately, but then came Adam Bujag's "Wave of Tears" to fully reinvigorate the genre and my faith in it simultaneously. Adam (also of The Clear Spots) seems to be workin at home here with piano, guitar, vibes, effects and other percussion as well as tape manipulation and primitive electronics to conjure dreamy meditive sound mobiles. Some computer mixing may have been employed, but I'm thinkin like Wolf Eyes, Adam takes a more primitive, hands-on approach. Van Dyke Parks, Kraftwerk, Orange Cake Mix and Xpressway come to mind. Highly recommended, in fact.

"Gipsy Freedom" (5RC) is the latest longplayer from the always interesting, occasionally fascinating Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice. Last year's "Buck Dharma" (Time-Lag) left me dusted in terms of lazy space blues free folky transcendence, but GF is something else, with hints of solitary jazz, vocal workouts and electro/industrial psych blues all flowing into one another and impeccably recorded. Ultimately more proof that WWVV can matter when they want to. Case in point: the sidelong trance feast of "Dead End Day With Ceaser."

Also finally picked up the vinyl reissue of Current 93's "Earth Covers Earth" mini LP on Free Porcupone Society, which David Tibet refers to as "a second utterance for Comus" in the nifty, handwritten liners. He signs off as David Michael, though. Confused yet? Until just recently, I barely even knew this existed. It was released soon after "Swastikas For Noddy" in a much smaller edition, and this (with a new master and hand drawn cover art by Tibet himself?) also comes in a fairly small edition of 800. An integral link in the development of the more spiritual psycho-folk side of C93, should be noted that the CD on Durtro includes some topnotch bonus tracks.

"Orange Garage" is the latest Last Visible Dog live album by Miminokoto (check my Foxy Digitalis review for the their studio recorded "3" here). Smoked out live boogiee, raw and blistering with that feral PSF energy that some of us have come to rely on, this one is an improvement over the first LVD CD, me thinks, better recording quality, more dynamic performances cut down the middle nicely between spacious, semi-improvised slow burners and feral stompers. The epic 16 min closer, "Kumononaka," is a fine culmination of all of the above. The price is right, the quality what you'd expect from a band with ties to White Heaven, High Rise, LSD-March--oy, you get the idea.

And here's a couple older Foxglove treats I've only just gotten around to really hearing: First up, the debut SeedyR by New York stomp noise combo, Heavy Winged, "A Serpent's Lust." Think freight trains and phospherescent grenades. Uberdistorted caveman stomp blasted out across two sprawling sidelong jams, and just when I think they might be a bit of a one trick pony, they throw some murky organ drone into the plodding death dirge mix and probe the most abyssal cold wind realms in the process. Definitely one brige to the infinite, but perhaps more comfortably numbing is The Floating World, which features the sculpted flute and electronics if one Amanda Votta. "River of Flowers" is haunted affair of siren tones, post-industrial rumbles and wafting minimal melodies. Many drone/ambient gods of the last 30 years come to mind, but rather than type out a laundry list, I'll just say this is another ethereal homerun from the ever dilligent sound designers of Digitalis/Foxglove and highly recommended.

Another one of these roundups should be ready soon, including recent works on Rebis, Soft Abuse, Holy Mountain, Time-Lag, PseudoArcana, etc. Peace, my dear friends.

Sunburned Hand of the Man was fantastic the other night. Was pleasantly surprised to find Keith Wood of Hush Arbors/Golden Oaks/Wooden Wand playing with them, and MAN what a performer. Also nice to finally meet the Sunburnedies after being a big fan from the start. This 5 piece version was simply incredible, touching upon Crazy Horse raveups, Dead C murk swells, creeping/gurgling free jazz and bombastic funk explosions, though there was perhaps lesser in the way of grove and more dissonant headlong drone this time out. Just astounding. Sunburned truly exemplifies the sound, and can only be considered one of the key bands in this unfolding scene (which I will not try to name because I don't know what it's called). Don't miss 'em if they come your way!

I purchased their last copy of the "Wedlock" 2LP which came out last year on Eclipse and is comprised entirely of recordings made via video cameras during a wedding held in the Summer of 2003 up in Alaska. It features a lot of collage type pieces, spontaneous jams, jugband blues, mongrel yeeows, moans and cackles, spoken word, the best man's toast and much joyous laughter. The excellent mix and package makes this a truly unique achievement in that it's both a celebration of the band, love, family and friendship (and therefore live!) as well as a stand alone work of art on par with the Faust Tapes, perhaps lent a little more sentimental weight than the typical epic noise rock record. Beautiful. Also got the brand new studio joint, "Complexion" and I'm loving it about as much. They've only gotten better over the years.

Opener's Unconscious Collective threatened to be interesting for a few minutes before delving into a fairly standard jazz/noise thing, with too much jazz and not enough noise. Mazinga Phaser (Mark III?) played bombastic post punk/krautrock that sounded sorta like mid period Swans crossed with Butthole Surfers. All in all, a fairly "what the fuck?" set, but I dug it despite the constant/cloying bass hum.

Man, amazing episode of the Sopranos this week, with Chrissy (above) getting into some unforseen trouble in more ways than one and the always combustible Pauly facing meltdown after meltdown. Also of note, the selection of songs this time out takes on a fairly cult flavor with a gem of gems by a certain New York coffeehouse folk originator serving as the soundtrack to the episode's most priceless scene, which I wont describe here, but it's a fuckin' knockout with tragic/comic/transcendental overtones.

Stoked to be going to this tonight:

Bear with me; this may get ugly. Last night I found myself at what most other music journo-hipster-asses would describe as a retro cash-in: a concert featuring a reconstituted version of Jefferson Starship (a real cash-in), Country Joe McDonald and Tom Constanten--he played with the Grateful Dead for 5 mins in 1968 (actually from 67 to 68, their most vital early studio period) and studied under the influential avant composer, Luciano Berio.

Constanten's set was mostly solo piano--some instrumental compositions, some vocal numbers including a fine "Werewolves of London" and a freaked out Beatles/someone else medley centered around "Day in the Life." He even got avant-weird later before bringing out Paul Kantner and a buncha other people who looked sort of like Jefferson Airplane to play the Dead's "Deal." Fun.

Country Joe was solo on acoustic guitar with some flange here and there. He sounded really good in a set that combined driving folk blues with more casual sing-songy stoner fare. Then about halfway through he shouted those immortal words and pulled "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin-to-Die Rag" out of his bag and the gig took on entirely different cast. Sure I thought about Woodstock and nostalgia, but I didn't stop there. Joe didn't either, halfway through the song changing his immortal line to "next stop is Iran," as we all sung along, clapped and danced. All 33 of us, though there were closer to maybe 150 sprawled out in the chairs and tables of the Granada Theater. I thought about the 300,000 singing along with Joe at Woodstock and the 33 dancing and singing here, my mind overrun with the irony and the realization that punk rock is just another commodity today, and that Joe McDonald was, in that moment, more punk fuckin' rock than a dozen warped tour headliners, and still willing to tell it like it is, point fingers and make a weirdo in Texas feel something resembling sanity for the first time in at least three weeks.

As a native Texan, I often think that real happiness must lie outside these borders. As humans we like to think something similar about this world. I know better than to start looking for some invisible pot of gold, but it wont stop me. That's why I went to Terrastock. It's why I felt the need to see people and feel part of something bigger for at least a day or three. Despite the enormity of this world, I rarely feel part of it (even though I obviously am).

At Terrastock you can feel it and believe it. And you can come home and enjoy the lingering glow, at least until you come to discover (in horror) that Jack Rose opened for Mogwai three nights ago, only you had blown off going to this particular show because a) Mogwai, as cool as they are, are a bit predictable, b) you were broke, c) Jack's name was not even listed in the teaser, but low and behold d) Jack put you on the guestlist, e) only he sent his message to your out-of-date email addy, so you basically sat at home and twiddled your thumbs in the meantime. You also missed The Fall, George Clinton and Blue Oyster Cult in this time period. And you can think "it's the thought that counts" and take solace in your imagination, and you can also be genuinely pissed that you didn't get to hang out and drink a few beers with Jack Rose, because he's one cool motherfucker. Or Buck Dharma for that matter. What were you thinking? And you can sprawl out on your big red couch and get your cracker and whippits and headshop-purchased salvia, and you can blow your mind out to the stars and beyond, and smoke a bit of this stuff and think "did I just get high or not?" but not really care because at least you were doing something constructive in the meantime.

And I think about Current 93 and black ships floating on the ether. NOT a good idea if feeling the abyssmal infinite breathing down your neck, and I feel it every day. I look around, and I see chaos, even where I know there is order. I feel something greater and worse hovering within and without, but it's lost amid so much confusion and information. The information overload is what's drowning me, because so little of it actually matters. I can't buy myself out of this hell. Eat, drink, smoke, snort, collect--maybe, but all that just leads to new hells.

I envy those who are ignorant. I envy children. I envy lovers and anyone living his/her dreams and following the path to his/her bliss, because too much of what I see and feel is horror, discontent, confusion. I know so many addicts, so many fools, too many dying souls. It's like what Mick Jagger was singing about in "Satisfaction" multiplied tenfold. Who actually gets satisfaction today? Old bald men on the top floors of corporate headquarters, the faithful, the creative, the learned, the sacrificial, the sociopathic, the addicted... I guess I land somewhere between such extremes on any given day, but I'm not satisfied. I smile and I laugh, and I feel love when I can, and I'm thankful for every breath. And sometimes it's enough.

I'm thankful that I understand what is and has always been happening, and what will happen long after I am gone. Life is dying. Consciousness requires a kind of pain in the process of understanding. Love is the one addiction that no one will blame me for indulging in--medicates my soul.

I have been listening to "Black Ships Ate the Sky" rather obsessively in the last month or so. Current 93's latest opus is the album of 2006. Others will say something similar about Scott Walker's new one, but David Michael Tibet and his friends seem to be speaking directly to me on this record and exploring the confusion--the ecstatic highs, the barrel-scraping lows and all the in betweens of this fading luminous existence--with bone-piercing intensity. And Tibet points to us all. No one is innocent in this judgement. But I still dont think this means all is lost. It doesn't mean that the very technology that may be currently destroying us wont one day save us.

Much has happened in the last month. I feel like I've been to hell and back, passed through the underworld and returned to that of the living, and this album is some sort of map for negotiating this tangled path. It's gripping, it's maddening, it's beautiful. It's the kind of dream I can live over and over and dissect intimately because it is just so damn vivid. I'll write more about in a review in Foxy Digitalis soon, and my pretentiousness will know no bounds.

There's more to this, too, and many people are here searching with me. From friends and family to my tabby sister lovers, Charlie and Amber. From Country Joe to Jack Rose and David Michael. From the birth of man to the end the world. This protest thing holds resonance. This anger, this pain, this need to rise above. By all means, let the ascension begin.

I adore The Go-Betweens. I even adored their last proper album, Ocean's Apart.

Goodbye, Grant McLennan. The pop world has lost one of its patron saints.

Road to Zuma...

Little Jimmy has gotten back to where he once belonged. Terrastock was a blast. Saw so many faces, familiar and new, had a Guinness with Jack Rose in a thumping techno club/Irish bar early in the AM (and Larkin Grimm and Miriam from BF/BS too!) After seeing the incredible sets by all three, I feel that much more humbled. Got to catch up with Mats and Anna from Sweden, Mike Tamburo, Joe and Jeff and the Green Pajamas family, finally put a name to the face with Kevin Moist (a beardstocker from way back, though this was his first official appearance at the fest), got to have many fine exchanges with the consummately cool masters of ceremonies, Jeffrey Alexander and Phil M., say hi to MV, EE and Zuma (their set was beeeeyoootiful, as are the two new Bummer Road releases I snagged at the merch table), had my own impressionistic brush with death and the infinite (roughly during the time Avarus and BOTOS were ripping the fabric of space time wide open), and talked to the lovely Arttu from Avarus about American pro wrestling and other mysteries of the cosmos, like why the only records he purchased from the incredible merch room were Kenny Rogers and other bad country acts.

I had a few complaints here and there. Ghost's set was masterfully performed, but somehow felt too rehearsed. A similar complaint has met their recent studio work (which I've gobbled down enthusiastically), and now I sort of get it. As one observer casually observed, it felt like they were playing a different festival, yet Ghost undeniably are a key band and central figure in the development of the Terrascopic sound. And Michio is Michio. No coincidence they had the best soundmix of the weekend. Otherwise, all grins. Amazing scheduling. Larkin Grimm was a revelation with her dulcimer, guitar and vibrant chirps and vocal dances. The Spires that in the Sunset Rise were mangled and twisted and completely absorbing. Marissa Nadler had fun and brought a tear to my eye with her soaring rendition of "Box of Cedar" (it's a coffin!). Lightning Bolt crushed and spazzed on our level, brought the mosh to the hyper spastic subset of the Terrascopic nation. Dangerous people indeed. Bardo Pond induced massive waves of billowing distortion in the big room. Major Stars were fucking RIDICULOUS and boner-inducing in their new sextet format (the new album seems somehow pointless in light of their writhing porn-sex live energy). MV/EE and the Bummer road stole the fucking show. Charalambides rocked harder than I'd seen in years. Kinski fucking slammed. Landing pulsed. Sharron Kraus floated on the trembling night air. I missed some sets do to some sort of viral infestation, but at least I saw Avarus, baby! (Avarooooz)....fucking amazing. I now fully, finally GET IT. Their new album and live set are/were stupefying. Arttu told me "we will bring a joyous noise," and somehow all that maddening squiggly gremlin bad acid boogie was joyous in a Holy Mountain kinda way. Beautiful, inspiring....very real.
Favorite sets in no particular order:

MV/EE with the Bummer Road
Avarus
Charalambides
Lightning Bolt
Urdog
Bardo Pond
Jack Rose
Marissa Nadler
Larkin Grimm
Spires That in the Sunset Rise
Sharron Kraus
P.G. Six
Ghost
Kinski
Cul De Sac
Tanakh
The Kitchen Cynics
Green Pajamas
Paik
Magic Carpathians
MV/EE with the Bummer Road (you get the idea)...

Fucking amazing weekend. Thank you to Travis and Narnia for being there to share it all. And Mike T for showing me the way. Thanks to Matt Valentine for saying I'm a good writer and actually meaning it. Thanks to Jeffrey and Phil for being good pals and making it possible. Thanks to every kind face and warm regard. Feels like it will be with me always. And finally thanks to Zuma (and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and John Fahey and Townes Van Zandt and the other conspicuously absent trailblazers). Peace and love, friends. One ginormous invisible love.

Most of the sets from KFJC's streaming broadcast of the weekend can be downloaded here, courtesy of Red Nail. Thanks, Bunk!

Some random candids taken by Phil McMullen during the gig can be found here.

More of my own photos from the weekend can be found here, and yes there are some missing sets.

I bought a fat pile of swag which will likely get mentioned here and elsewhere in the coming weeks, but first I have some reviews to catch up on. Expect another update asap.

Sweet...

SEXY NEW SWAG FROM DIGITALIS!

well, i was gonna wait until monday to "officially" release these two new gems, but i'm too damn excited about them. both releases are the first CD (non-CDR) releases from each group and is, in my wholly biased opinion, the best thing each have done. nothing but love:

With Throats as Fine as Needles s/t CD (DIGI022/SoD-02) $12

Deep inside an abandoned bunker on New Zealand's north island, With Throats as Fine as Needles have perfected their craft. On this, their debut CD release, the group has expanded to a quartet. Birchville Cat Motel's Campell Kneale and Pseudoarcana chief, Antony Milton, have joined forces with James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate) and Richard Francis (Eso Steel) to create a claustrophobic, organic web of massive drones.

Everything on this CD was recorded outdoors with battery-powered instruments. Underneath the ground, the quartet burrows out their own cavern, bouncing sounds off the walls until it becomes a singular, solid mass. Each gently sculpted tone floats in humid air. The music is saturated with the dirt and grime from a million a years of human history, wailing out in unison like an excavation turned exorcism. With Throats as Fine as Needles are your guides through this aural fog.

Co-released with Ohio's Students of Decay imprint.

Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood "Goodbye" CD (DIGI023) $12

As far as the Southern Hemisphere goes, Australia's budding underground has often played second fiddle to that of it's island neighbor, New Zealand. But a new crop of Aussies is levelling the playing field. Leading the way is the brother/sister duo of Michael and Kristina Donnelly AKA Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood. These cosmic travelers are soaked to the bone in dust, like relics from the past. They speak only in tongues and send out shortwave psychedelic radio transmissions into the bleeding edges of drugged-out folk sludge.

BOTOS' organic compositions are familiar to many by now. After a string of CD-R releases on Time-Lag, Celebrate Psi-Phenomenon, and others, this is their first pro-pressed offering. Building on transcendent themes and saturating everything in an all-encompassing puff of bong smoke. Endless walls of instrumentation create artificial bounderies that the Donnellys destroy with far-reaching, hypnotic drones. By the time"Goodbye" comes to a grinding halt, it feels like the stuff of legend. Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood are only interested in blowing your skull to smithereens while cradling you in their arms. They are simply magnificent, and there aren't many doing it better these days.

The first 500 copies come in silkscreened sleeves done by the New Zealand crazies at United Fairy Moons.
----

so that's the new dice... two totally sweet jams that will tickle your every fancy. whoo! http://www.digitalisindustries.com/catalog.html

up next on foxglove: robert horton/keijo 2cdr split, seht, & "wailing bones 5" (w/ the clear spots, wolfskull, heavy winged, & the lost domain).

and the CD reissue of tom carter's "glyph" should be ready to go soon, too. the first 500 come in gatefold digipacks, silkscreened on one side by rob fisk, and spraypainted on the other by tom. they're gonna be totally sweet.

much love,
-brad

STANISLAW LEM
...the great Polish writer died this week. I have all of his English-translation books I could find save for one. You have to read him, and read everything. His work falls into three main categories: 1) books about man's inability to understand the truly Alien (Solaris, Eden, Fiasco, Return from the Stars, His Master's Voice, The Invincible, and similar in spirit to his two metaphysical mysteries The Investigation and the Chain of Chance), 2) Sci-Fi Humor (Star Diaries, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, the Futurological Congress, the Cyberiad, Mortal Engines, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (the one I didn't read)), 3) Meta-Book Humor (introductions or reviews of non-existing books; Imaginary Magnitude, One Human Minute, A Perfect Vacuum). The novel Hospital of the Transfiguration is also worthy of your time. His work is overflowing with ideas and the friction of competing scientific theories. Except for the Pirx books, I recommend all of them. The downtown Austin Public Library has many of these books. There are about 11 books that have not been translated into English, so please learn Polish and translate these for me. It is the least you can do. Please!
Sample of Humor
Sample of Alien

(Clipped from Josh Ronsen's excellent AUSTINNITUS, a round up of Texas experimental/jazz/psych happenings)

So long, Nikki. Feels like the end of an era. From the Swell Maps to the Jacobites right up to his recent solo albums (including the one above) reviewed here, Nikki Sudden was one of the coolest, most human post punk Gods. He will be missed.

Here is a haunting recollection written by Nikki about his brother, Epic Soundtracks (whom he formed the Swell Maps with and also died tragically almost ten years ago). Eerie and poetic in that way that only Nikki can be.

I actually sort of wanted to hit up SXSW this year, 'specially to get drunk with Neil Young and check out Marissa Nadler's Texas debut, playing along with Jack Rose and some other people, but thought better of it with another big musical adventure looming the following month and only so much patience for the whirlwind culture media explosion that is SXSW. Besides, drinking that much Red Bull in a week can't be good.

I think I did my bit by crawling out of my dusty din and driving to The Cavern Saturday night(in the rain, mind you) to catch some SXSW carry-over: Marissa Nadler (playing Dallas ?) on a bill with Asobi Seksu ("playful sex"--LOL) and Tunng (beards and beats from England--LOL). Arrived too late to see opening band Voot Cha Index, boo-fucking-hoo.

Asobi Seksu has a sexy, short Asian singer/keyboardist. They sound like Tubeway Army meets Broadcast. They are not original, but they are tight and polished and use strobelights. I also thought Stereolab crossed with early "Seamonsters" era Wedding Present, but I was probably being generous.

Marissa's set was next, and despite a few sound issues ("the soundman is an asshole"), she pulled it off glowingly. Her voice is this massive, reverb drenched siren call from the land of broken hearts--an undeniably rich, luminescent specter that gathers over the crowd and thrives on the concentrated warmth. I was pleased with the response and Marissa and Jesse's (Sparhawk, a talented multi-instrumentalist touring with her this time out) tenacity in fighting through the gaffs and delivering the goods. They looked and sounded great. She played both "Box of Cedar" (set closer) and "Annabelle Lee," two of my favorites. She was shy and it showed (didn't say a word to the audience), yet I think her demeanor suited her songs.

A crappy phone pic taken by your Womb-master.

One fellow said he'd just seen Belle and Sebastion a few days before, and that was really good but didn't even come close to what Marissa did. He bought an album, even though he already owned both of her official releases. Another guy named Mike, who loves free jazz and harsh noise, also bought both albums and promised to do some sort of smash-up remix of Marissa's voice with loops and feedback a la Diamanda Galas. She was actually into the idea.

Marissa is a very sweet, beautiful young woman. I worried all day yesterday as she and Jesse drove up the torso of the American plains through constant rain and snowfall to get to Iowa City. Hopefully, they are sleeping right now somewhere safe in preparation for their show tonight. St. Louis tomorrow (3/21).

After the show, she asked me if she was everything I expected, if I was surprised at all by the real Marissa versus the one I'd gotten to know on record and through email. I hope I didn't disappoint when I said she was exactly what I expected, and qualified that with "I tend to know people really well." And it's true; I do. Her voice though, it was something else.

We both sung harmonies, drunkenly, to Townes' "Tecumseh Valley" much later than night and sounded GREAT together! Well, I thought so anyway...

Back among the land of the blogging, at least for today. Really enjoyed Be Here to Love Me, which comes out on DVD today. A deep, heartfelt look at the man and myth that was Townes Van Zandt; it features some priceless footage of TVZ and his second wife stumbling around his Houston trailer park circa '75, whiskey bottle in hand. Overall, an honest look at what a really down to earth, self-effacing and equally self-destructive guy he was. There are the expected morality issues of what happens when one leaves it all behind to chase inspiration down an endless highway, but director Margaret Brown passes no judgments either way. She obviously idolizes Van Zandt, but this is pretty far from a gush piece. Despite a few blurred collages and old acid-trip stories, "Be Here to Love Me" is a sobering portrait of a sweet guy who probably knew and understood his demons more closely than most of us would ever want to. He came from wealthy means, but he breathed humility. Sincerity appears to pour from his veins every second he's being interviewed, be it for Dutch television or Texas radio.

William Van Zandt's description of finding his father upright on his death bed leaves a chill of finality in the air. People lament the early loss of great talents to dope and excess, rightfully so. They write sad songs about all the good times that were and never will be, but Townes Van Zandt, at least in song, seemed to live a hundred lifetimes or more in just about half the time it takes most of us to figure out how not to fuck up over and over with cyclical precision. The wisdom is in his songs. Can't help but wonder if checking out early was just his way of saying, "Thank you, ma'am, but I got more than my share already."


Also, LOVED "The Sopranos" season opener. I'm sorry to those of you out there who don't have HBO. Been there, done that. DVD's or torrents will possibly help to assuage some pain in the coming months. The voice of William Burroughs is featured in the brilliant opening montage--wickedly cool. Otherwise, don't really want to give away any spoilers [Uncle June's gone bonkers!] or reveal any key plot developments [AJ's grown a mullet!] because I can't stand assholes that spill the beans too early [Carm's getting mighty com-for-ta-ble with her position as wife of The Boss!].

Already hooked on "Big Love," too. Polygamy! Bill Paxton! Harry Dean Stanton! Who knew??? It's like a bizarre anthropogical inverse to "Deadwood" with zero profanity (everyone talks in this castrated "dangit!" and "oh my heck!" speak that's utterly charming and adorable), much God and more sexual tension than The Chicken Ranch during Texas/OU weekend. Thumbs up, brosephs and sistines.

...shit. I have tons of new albums to review, which'll mostly appear in other places. Just got the new Maryrose Crook with The Renderers album on Three Beads of Sweat, "Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives" (released concurrently with Brian's new solo joint under the name Anti-Clockwise, "Artificial Light"--aint heard yet). You Renderers groupies will definitely get a kick out of this Maryrose album, more to come on that front.

Buy your copy of Not Alone on Durto/Jnana if you haven't already. Compilation of the decade, no lie. Also got a fantastic package from United Fairy Moons that I've been soaking up with much disoriented glee, my favorite new label! Rory Storm owns my soul. That's all for now. Check back in a week or two of so inclined.

Hope to see some of you at Terrastock 6 in a little over a month!

I've been reading any articles I can find about TVZ and his later life, preparation for the movie I suppose, and stumbled upon this heartfelt and revealing interview with his son from Rockzilla, which goes into a good amount of detail. Give it a gander.

Two fine remembrances from the always capable Perfect Sound Forever:
Townes Van Zandt: A Tribute by Steve Cooper (August, '97)
Travels with Townes Van Zandt by Steve Hawley (July 2003)

Also, here are some fairly harrowing live reviews from the early-mid '90s.

Howdy, folkies. Been really busy lately. Hard to believe, I know. Just sweated out a fever, and I'm trying to wrestle a few different articles for a few different publications at once. Crunch time, as they say. The shit I do for rock 'n' roll...

I really liked Capote. Give Phil Seymour Hoffman the Oscar already! Also got some nice chuckles and much visual splendor from The Corpse Bride. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing.

I have received my copy of Not Alone and will proclaim here, without irony, it is the experimental music compilation of the decade for many reasons, mainly its content. Click the link for the low-down.

That's all for now. Don't expect to really make any updates in the next few weeks or so, but that may change.

Hope to see some of you at Terrastock 6 in April!

Couple bits:

Foxy Digitalis's weekly update features a fine review of the latest live One Ensemble of Daniel Padden CD-R, scribed by your Womb-master, and sitdowns with everybody's favorite Uncle Jim (Actually Al Bishop of the Sun City Girls/Alvarius B/Sublime Frequencies) and Elizabeth Harris, aka Grouper, plus much more.

Also, Deep Water's e-zine guise is now up and running with profiles on Nick Castro, Uton, and the dearly missed psych cult rockers, Thin White Rope (the name's a Burroughs term for ejaculate, you prudes). Also, I babbled here about limited, mostly CD-R releases, and Tony Dale shares his recipe for Damper Bread. We hope to be updating this on a staggered monthly basis, so turn on, tune in and freak out! And check out The MIGHTY Clear Spots while you're there!

A little bit out of left field here, but then in two years I’ve never mentioned Dischord once in Womblife. This is, after all, the label that gave us Fugazi, Rites of Spring, Shudder to Think, Scream and a lot of other crap! At least in regard to one long-standing band on their roster, I finally get it. I’ve heard Lungfish a few times over the years, and I never really knew what to think. “Hardcore noise rock”? “Proto-emo”? “Post-shoegaze”? A li’l later I realized what they are isn’t nearly as important as how they sound. And they sound pretty fuckin' great. “Feral Hymns” is their 11th album of angular crash and burn stomp rock with song titles -- “Time is a Weapon Against Time,” “You Are the War,” “Invert the State” -- that make their vaguely political intent known, while the lyrics and delivery maintain the expected art-school distance. What sells me is the trance-inducing repetition of their driving three-piece workouts, conjuring early 70s King Crimson and “Man Who Sold the World” era Bowie equally in heavy lumbering jams without all the prog bloat. Every song sounds fairly similar, but again, it’s about realizing that this is a good thing. For a glam-prog head such as myself, their power is hard to deny. “Feral Hymns” is the coolest real rock record for real rock rebels I’ve heard in at least two weeks.

And wow, sweet album cover!

On a completely unrelated note, if you have about 30 mins or so to kill, you can watch this filmed tour of Steven Stapleton's (Mr. Nurse With Wound) home and family. Pretty cool shtuff, nabbed from Brainwashed.

Two interesting discoveries in early '06:

First up, Dallas cult rockers Virgin Insanity; they received an informative write up in the Dallas Morning News a couple weeks ago. Imagine my surprise when I read that a genuine cult rock band hailed from my neck of the woods, and more interestingly, played a kind of arty folk rock that could be compared to later Velvet Underground, The Manson Family(!), Brit psych folk, and any number of "lost/utopian" acid kissed garage bands. Needless to say, I immediately located their one and only privately pressed LP (edition of 200), "Illusions of the Maintenance Man," in digital form through nefarious means. The music: a humbling listening experience, youthfully optimistic, but with an edge that can be deemed "art basement," a cynicism that acknowledges the disasters of the previous five years (this came out in '71) and a hope that keeps eyes forward and attention focused on the present. The lyrics are both naive and honest in their declaration that all we really have left in a dying world is a little hope and much love. Seems obvious, doesn't it? Tempos occasionally waver as minor key guitars dance beneath heartfelt boy/girl vox, and percussion is rarely used, but effective when it is.

Opener "Don't Get Down" really does sound like it could've been the first song on "Loaded," only Bob Lang actually means what he's singing (but then, I guess Lou meant it by then, too), as he captures archetypical emotions of loss/hope in 2 and a half minutes of folk pop transcendence. Not everyone will see it that way, but then what do they know? Any soul who doesn't listen to the oblique acid pop/tender emotional pleas of "Be My Friend," a number that begs for affection and acknowledges the end with the same earnest poignancy over a soft bed of hypnotic fingerpicking, probably doesn't have a pulse. Belle and Sebastian and Clientele fans should appreciate, but I'm more inclined to think of Japanese folk pop legends, Nagisa Ni Te, or even Maher Shalal Hash Baz. All in all, shambolic, truly timeless folk psych, and get this: Japan's P-Vine records will be reissuing this album and its never released follow-up (recorded over 30 years ago!) in February. Can't help but wonder if Shinji Shibayama ever came across one of those original pressings back in the day.
Sound samples:
Don't Get Down
For a While

The Battles are not an instrumental math rock ensemble featuring the former drummer from Helmet. Based on a randomly read email in recent months, that's precisely what I expected. The Battles (the other act is simply Battles) actually hail from Vancouver (New Pornographers country) and conjure pretty melodies over a charging, garage punk backdrop of Feelies obsessed guitar jangle, Pere Ubu synth and Peter Hook hypno-bass. That's a simplification, of course. The ghost of early Flying Nun Records, Todd Rundgren, Ray Davies, Roxy Music (I realize these people are not dead) also hover sublimely over Steven Wood's alternately impassioned, quirky and detatched songs, which can definitely make the heart shiver in its cage, especially when his band kicks into high gear and hits everything harder. Just check out "Poem #8 (That Would be Good)," its elastic basslines and surging chorus wiping all memory of Interpol from the gray matter. Too bad it's so short, but I'll take a minute, fifty secs of what The Battles have to say over 40 mins of Interdull any day of the week. The beauty of these performances may have something to do with the fact that contributors play or have played with Destroyer, Loscil and Black Mountain, among others. There is depth to burn in "Tomorrow's Eager Hands" (Soft Abuse) and like a classic Wire album (other than "Pink Flag"), its genius isn't always so obvious on first listens. As for me, I just had to hear opener "Changes" turned up to 10, and I was pretty much hooked.

Dan Bejar can also be heard harmonizing on a few tracks, but you know what? I dig this more than Destroyer or the recent work by New Pornographers. It's because Wood is such a visionary, all encompassing songwriter. He obviously loves stripped down, minimal basics, but his use of harmonies, quirky synths and massed distortion ups the ante sufficiently. The glory hewn "We Were Right to Fight" sounds almost like the New Pornos gone prog. A welcome inclination towards moody, spectral folk pop never disappoints (see "In Excelsis, Yes"), and the monumental groove of "Northern Man"--Mott the Hoople power chords over thudding drums--propels a monster hook of a chorus to the golden rock promise land. Diggit. This isn't actually out till early Feb, but Soft Abuse is taking pre-orders now.
Sound sample:
Suzanne

Just what can one say about the Akron / Family? What a jam band should sound like? Brooklynite freedom fighters from da undaground? King Crimson locked in mortal combat with the Flaming Lips in an endless runout groove on the flipside of a scratched copy of 'No New York'?

The Akron / Family Four men with beards.

Driving around earlier with a friend listening to some kind of ultimate badass super mix, consisting of Eminem, Townes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Missippi Juhn Hurt--left me wondering why doesn't Jeff Mangum retool NMH and hit the nostalgia circuit, if not actually release a followup to "Aeroplane"? I don't care if it's half-assed. Just play some shows! He's been spotted on stage in the last year or two doing the damaged sideman bit with the Olivia Tremor Control. His absence leaves a fairly gaping hole in the pop cultural landscape today. What I loved most about NMH was the sound--grungy, gritty, full body fuzz drenched acid jugband pop that always sounded messed up, even during the most anthemic moments.


Going to see the Akron / Family tonight (one band doing its part to fill the void), and this newfangled Young God signing, Mi and L'au (impossibly beautiful people playing impossibly beautiful music). Shearwater (not the Chicago band, rather an Okkerville River side thing) goes on first. Should be boogielicious. First gig of the new year.

Just had to share... Rula Lenska is her name. Horses are her game.