So I guess I can die now. Last night i had the pleasure of seeing Boris at Rubber Gloves in Denton, TX. By the time I arrived (9 PM) I was already buzzing a bit from a few vodka shots and found an epic line that suggested the 'Gloves would be over-crammed like sardines with heavy metal scum this night. This was no surprise of course. Boris is a pretty popular band in the underground these days (possibly aiming for MTV? I don't know; haven't watched in years). The Glove's 200 plus capacity ain't exactly kind to bigger draws, and this was the fabled Japanese trio's first visit to North Texas. Why was Boris even playing a place it could easily fill twice over? Well read this interesting little Pitchfork article and you might get a clue. It's a humdinger... very Texas. Very redneck. And there's more to that story too: I had the privilege of meeting and conversing with the subject of said article, Josh Baish, at a High on Fire concert just one day before the calamity took place, and it was strange. I can't go into detail here, but ask me sometime in person and I'll fill you in.
As for Boris, I suppose they have become a bit of a commodity these days. I've fallen for it; a lot of us heavypsychmetalniks have fallen for it. Their earliest recordings reveal a band non concerned with any kind of mainstream appeal. The AbsoluteGo, Amplifier Worship and Flood CDs are highly revered 'round these parts, and any heavy psych fan should at least be aware of their existence. But more recent endeavors have revealed that within the corpus of this lumbering behemoth lies the heart of a genuine songwriter. I don't know who is responsible for what as far as songwriting duties go, but the turn towards actual songcraft--often blissful and transcendent--is welcome to these ears. This stuff is without question more accessible, but its presentation still proves that these guys and gal are one of the heaviest bands on the planet, and their brand of pop rocks pretty dang hard.
The Show:
After making my way inside, I marvel at opener Clouds' t-shirt and album designs. Wicked shit--if their music is even half as compelling, I'm down. And it isn't bad at all. Clouds come off like the Husker Du of sludge doom. Their tempos are upbeat, their riffs crunchy and thick. I almost buy an album.
Around this time it finally becomes crystal clear that one of my favorite guitarists in the world is playing as a fourth member of Boris, guitar god Michio Kurihara of White Heaven, The Stars, Marble Sheep, Ghost, etc. I'm a big fan of the collaboration album that came out on Drag City last year and swore to myself at the time that I'd see this quartet version without ever really making it happen. I figured Kuri would be kicking it back in Tokyo right about now, sipping sake and enjoying the good life, but nope. Here he was, my man and my band. Yeah, I'm a fan boy. Deal with it.
By the time the second band--a new Hydrahead signing called Torche--finish their set (which i better than the Myspace clips I'd heard: epic proggy sludge rock) I'm feeling good. Any alcoholic malaise has long since subsided, and the prospect of seeing the Master drop some serious fuzz bombs has me giddy. I tell a few folks in the crowd they're in for a treat, not sure if any of them actually care what my jerk ass has to say. As for the gig, it's heavy. It's loud. Boris is one of those bands that knows how to operate in a few different volume modes. Quiet/sweet, faster/building right on up to throbbing tectonic shift. My hopes are high, but I'm also prepared to compromise my expectations since Boris has been around a good 15 years now and enjoyed its share of evolutions.
By the way...
The brand new Smile (Southern Lord) is recommended by any measure. I have no doubt some die-hards will scream blasphemy, but I see it a little differently. First off: Smile is produced by You Ishihara, another one of those living legends in the Japanese psych scene via his solo work, White Heaven and The Stars. Secondly, Smile is fairly cohesive piece with slow heavy ballads, memorable hooks, shoegazing drifts, burly punk explosions and 15 min noise freakouts all present and accounted for, along with some fun embellishments--the sound of a needle dropping on vinyl at the opening, a baby's giggle--to remind us that it's all in good fun. Boris may have been all down in the dumps back in the AbsoluteGo days, escaping amid thick clouds of bongsmoke and subharmonic dissonance, but today the sun's out and they can see for miles.
And what about their set? The play all of the new album plus at least one newer track. Kuri's fuzz bursts meld perfectly with Wata's screaming acid leads, and the rhythm section is tighter than a nun's clenched sphincter. Between the songs the quartet uses sublime Eno-esque minimal interludes to help make it all go down a little easier, and through it all Boris manages that delicate trick of being able to make everything louder and heavier just when you think they've finally topped out.
Footnote on the subject of marketability: Southern Lord has a curious habit of dressing up its American releases of foreign albums a bit strangely. The original Japanese cover of an orange heart flanked in yellow becomes a bizarre image of an aircraft flying over what looks like urban rubble in the American version. The Japanese release features a few more electronic effects, and a couple of the song titles are different. For instance: The shoegaze stomper "Next Saturn" (from the Japanese release) becomes "My Neighbor Satan" for us Americans, and "Shoot" becomes "Laser Beam." The differences don't stop there. The original Japanese mix of "Shoot" emphasizes is a freaky stripped down minimal pulse which comes off as an ode to (American) electro noise pioneers, Suicide, yet the American version is a much more straight forward fuzz punk stomper that's simply less interesting. If anything, the Japanese version should be called "Laser Beam." I suppose this more typically rock sound could be to appeal to the typical lug-head Southern Lord buyer, or maybe Boris and the Sunno))) boys just like to tinker with shit in their sonic laboratory simply to fuck with minds. Maybe it's a bit of all the above. Makes no diff to this freak. In the end I dig both mixes just fine, and the schizophrenic tendencies fall firmly in line with past Boris sonic adventures. Here's to keeping them (and me) guessing.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
I've been tagged! Apparently Ned Raggett (the nicest, most musically informed person on Myspace or at any Terrastock) tagged my friend Nari, and she tagged me, and I guess I'm gonna tag some other folks too!
So the basic idear here is 7 Songs, 7 Blogs. I dig cuz it offers me a chance to get wordy on some tunesmithery and other strange numbers while revisiting a few things of old that have somehow slipped through the cracks till now, and I can comment on my Terrastock voyage with a few tracks by T-stock performers thrown in for good measure. Cool? Cool:
1. Flying Saucer Attack and Roy Montgomery "The Whole Day" from a split 12" on VHF Records - I recently got to rediscover this throbbing psychedelic morsel and since then it's found its way onto the player a few times, and just now too! I'm not sure if Roy Montgomery actually plays on this, though it's certainly possible. "The Whole Day" opens with some fairly indistinguisable feedback drones, the sonic answer to just-waking disorientation, before it transitions into a massive tower of pulsing feedback throb that lands squarely in Popol Vuh's holy-enlightened sonic territory. It's a huge number that can make you feel small; more importantly it offers a fine way to wipe the mind clean for 6 or 7 minutes and leaves the listener a kind excuse for simply being for a little while.
2. Gowns "Cherylee" from Red State CD (Cardboard Records) - A friend and I were recently discussing the concept of God in the modern world, and the underlying beliefe that something is definitely out of wack, with large sections of the Earth's religious population today seemingly set for self-destruct. This human race is in need of a new Enlightenment maybe, some kind of evolution on a spiritual plane. I'm sure 2012 will tie into it all somehow. The weird thing is soon after this discussion I found myself outside in the sweltering heat doing a little gardening, Ipod Nano set to shuffle--my random aural fate in the hands of Steve Jobs and all who follow--"Cherylee" miraculously sprung into my mind with a voice passionately pleeding what could be an intervention for a drug addict (0r any kind of broken organism desperately in need of some repair) over a plaintive backdrop of weepy piano and squelching feedback in near biblical images of cleansing and final judgement, followed by a simple refrain that burns into the gray matter while offering no real answers: "You've got to look it in the eyes and say that I don't believe." She's right. We all have to doubt sometimes, even if only for a few seconds. Beyond that, the fact that the title of this song combines my bro's wife's name with my own and brings me almost to tears if I've had enough beers before hearing it seems to suggest some sort of cosmic communication, but then i'm a goofball.
3. Hush Arbors "The Same Tree Forever" from Hush Arbors CD (Digitalis) - And just then Nano-shuffle deposited this song onto my lap--one of the finest deep drone earth trips I've heard. Keith Wood uses guitars and bows to stretch things out far and wide, invoke's the faces of God and Gaia wrapt in an endlessly growing, distorted embrace. It makes for some kind of respite for my troubled/confused mind in the process. Apparently Wood doesn't really play stuff like this any more. Pity.
4. Sharron Kraus "Brigid" from The Fox's Wedding CD (Jnana) - Yeah, I guess you could say the Womb's gettin' all Lilith Fair on your ass right about now, but then its no real revelation that we love English folk chanteuses, and Kraus has hit her stride with her Jnana debut. I'd think NPR could easily do one of their little spotlights on "the English folk revival" and not a find a finer practitioner of particularly dark and tender acoustic song poems. This bittersweet ditty (the album opener) starts on some splendid minor key acoustic guitar before Kraus sings in a croon worthy of comparisons to Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior of the ill-fate of the title character, along with flutes and strings in a truly classy chamber folk backing that eventually erupts into a kind of pagan celebration with Kraus throat-singing to the gods over soaring strings in her sensual worble. Hot.
5. Grails "Silk Road" from Burning Off Impurities CD (Temporary Residence) - I've managed to build quite an affection for this Po(r)tland crew, and this track as much as any other covers all bases when it comes to a mastery of trippy epics that combine Western aggression with Eastern mysticism. Some fine tambura drones give way to Arabic guitar lines, thunderous prog percussion and levitated bass grooves all eventually melding into a dense drone stew before bubbling up to a fierce climax that you can almost headbang to. Godspeed You Black Empoeror on an Agitation Free kick. Not bad at all.
6. David Peel and the Lower East Side "Hemp Hop Smoker" from the Comin' Down Fast 10" compilation of songs inspired by the Manson Family (Helter Skelter) - This absolute behemeth of hilarity finds the legendary Peel remolding Helter Skelter as the ultimate ode to smoking pot, concluding with the immortal closing words, "I've got joints in my fingers!"
7. Religious Knives "In the Back" off the Resin CD (No Fun Productions) - A compilation of recent singles and rare tracks - Religious Knives (ex Double Lepards, current Mouthus) is emerging as one of the coolest of the new breed of Brooklyn groan rockers, and, as evinced by this tasty freight train of dense organ buzz and garage bludgeon, they have truly arrived amid piercing vocal howls and tribal percussive sprawl thudding/crashing beneath a dense fog of distortion in a way thats both completely harrowing and undeniably alive. Shit is fucking for real, ya'll.
7 Songs Playlist
And now for further taggings - 7 more blogs, 7 more songs:
-- The Broken Face
-- MCMCMCMCMCMC
-- SUBkommander
-- Travis
-- Zoedune
-- Blastitude
-- Siltblog
Instructions: “List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”
So the basic idear here is 7 Songs, 7 Blogs. I dig cuz it offers me a chance to get wordy on some tunesmithery and other strange numbers while revisiting a few things of old that have somehow slipped through the cracks till now, and I can comment on my Terrastock voyage with a few tracks by T-stock performers thrown in for good measure. Cool? Cool:
1. Flying Saucer Attack and Roy Montgomery "The Whole Day" from a split 12" on VHF Records - I recently got to rediscover this throbbing psychedelic morsel and since then it's found its way onto the player a few times, and just now too! I'm not sure if Roy Montgomery actually plays on this, though it's certainly possible. "The Whole Day" opens with some fairly indistinguisable feedback drones, the sonic answer to just-waking disorientation, before it transitions into a massive tower of pulsing feedback throb that lands squarely in Popol Vuh's holy-enlightened sonic territory. It's a huge number that can make you feel small; more importantly it offers a fine way to wipe the mind clean for 6 or 7 minutes and leaves the listener a kind excuse for simply being for a little while.
2. Gowns "Cherylee" from Red State CD (Cardboard Records) - A friend and I were recently discussing the concept of God in the modern world, and the underlying beliefe that something is definitely out of wack, with large sections of the Earth's religious population today seemingly set for self-destruct. This human race is in need of a new Enlightenment maybe, some kind of evolution on a spiritual plane. I'm sure 2012 will tie into it all somehow. The weird thing is soon after this discussion I found myself outside in the sweltering heat doing a little gardening, Ipod Nano set to shuffle--my random aural fate in the hands of Steve Jobs and all who follow--"Cherylee" miraculously sprung into my mind with a voice passionately pleeding what could be an intervention for a drug addict (0r any kind of broken organism desperately in need of some repair) over a plaintive backdrop of weepy piano and squelching feedback in near biblical images of cleansing and final judgement, followed by a simple refrain that burns into the gray matter while offering no real answers: "You've got to look it in the eyes and say that I don't believe." She's right. We all have to doubt sometimes, even if only for a few seconds. Beyond that, the fact that the title of this song combines my bro's wife's name with my own and brings me almost to tears if I've had enough beers before hearing it seems to suggest some sort of cosmic communication, but then i'm a goofball.
3. Hush Arbors "The Same Tree Forever" from Hush Arbors CD (Digitalis) - And just then Nano-shuffle deposited this song onto my lap--one of the finest deep drone earth trips I've heard. Keith Wood uses guitars and bows to stretch things out far and wide, invoke's the faces of God and Gaia wrapt in an endlessly growing, distorted embrace. It makes for some kind of respite for my troubled/confused mind in the process. Apparently Wood doesn't really play stuff like this any more. Pity.
4. Sharron Kraus "Brigid" from The Fox's Wedding CD (Jnana) - Yeah, I guess you could say the Womb's gettin' all Lilith Fair on your ass right about now, but then its no real revelation that we love English folk chanteuses, and Kraus has hit her stride with her Jnana debut. I'd think NPR could easily do one of their little spotlights on "the English folk revival" and not a find a finer practitioner of particularly dark and tender acoustic song poems. This bittersweet ditty (the album opener) starts on some splendid minor key acoustic guitar before Kraus sings in a croon worthy of comparisons to Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior of the ill-fate of the title character, along with flutes and strings in a truly classy chamber folk backing that eventually erupts into a kind of pagan celebration with Kraus throat-singing to the gods over soaring strings in her sensual worble. Hot.
5. Grails "Silk Road" from Burning Off Impurities CD (Temporary Residence) - I've managed to build quite an affection for this Po(r)tland crew, and this track as much as any other covers all bases when it comes to a mastery of trippy epics that combine Western aggression with Eastern mysticism. Some fine tambura drones give way to Arabic guitar lines, thunderous prog percussion and levitated bass grooves all eventually melding into a dense drone stew before bubbling up to a fierce climax that you can almost headbang to. Godspeed You Black Empoeror on an Agitation Free kick. Not bad at all.
6. David Peel and the Lower East Side "Hemp Hop Smoker" from the Comin' Down Fast 10" compilation of songs inspired by the Manson Family (Helter Skelter) - This absolute behemeth of hilarity finds the legendary Peel remolding Helter Skelter as the ultimate ode to smoking pot, concluding with the immortal closing words, "I've got joints in my fingers!"
7. Religious Knives "In the Back" off the Resin CD (No Fun Productions) - A compilation of recent singles and rare tracks - Religious Knives (ex Double Lepards, current Mouthus) is emerging as one of the coolest of the new breed of Brooklyn groan rockers, and, as evinced by this tasty freight train of dense organ buzz and garage bludgeon, they have truly arrived amid piercing vocal howls and tribal percussive sprawl thudding/crashing beneath a dense fog of distortion in a way thats both completely harrowing and undeniably alive. Shit is fucking for real, ya'll.
7 Songs Playlist
And now for further taggings - 7 more blogs, 7 more songs:
-- The Broken Face
-- MCMCMCMCMCMC
-- SUBkommander
-- Travis
-- Zoedune
-- Blastitude
-- Siltblog
Instructions: “List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”
I'm back from what was one of the most enjoyable weekends of my life, and I'm happy to say that it wasn't just the music that made it such. It was the people, the stories, the laughs--goodness so many shits 'n' giggles--that made Terrastock 7 a complete success in my mind. I'll try and post some round-up thoughts about the trip within a few days.
Belated RIPs for Harvey Corman and, of course, George Carlin. You guys will be missed.
Boris tomorrow...
Belated RIPs for Harvey Corman and, of course, George Carlin. You guys will be missed.
Boris tomorrow...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
More Random Emanations...
Earth The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (Southern Lord) CD - The sparse Hex sound gets a full band treatment with help from Bill Frisell and others across seven epics of minimal fuzz twang. There are some of the fine stop-start dynamics of Hex and Hybernaculum mixed in with the jazzy post rock of Slint and the Spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. Haunted melodies grow from a steady harmonic drift to billowing plumes of drone-smoke across every one of these majestic horizons. Think of it as a cowboy's lament for some alien wasteland or a nod of resignation branded with an undying will to survive. One things for sure: Earth has never sounded more serene, more symphonic, more cosmically revenant than on this album. A genuine apocalyptic masterpiece for downtrodden space heads the world over (and well beyond), not to mention easily one of the year's best. The resurrection is complete. Outstanding packaging too.
Tatsuya Nakatani Primal Communication (H & H Productions) CD - Without a doubt one of my great pleasures in the last couple months was being able to see master free jazz percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani do his thing right on Main Street in downtown Dallas, performing solo and in a bigger band configuration with some local musicians, including the rhythm section of the very cool Yells at Eels. Solo Nakatani conjures some of the most awe inspiring acoustic percussion soundscapes I've ever wrapped my head around, and I've come across a few of thse guys in my day. Primal Communication (great title, that) starts with almost ten minutes of glorious bowed cymbal action before bass kicks and other more familiar thwacks start percolating through the live mix. What's astonishing is the way Nakatani's unorthodox but highly kinetic playing touches on so many different genres and styles: minimal drone/modern classical, early industrial, world music, free jazz and other genres not yet conceived. Live is the best way to experience this. Indeed, Primal Communication is all live with no overdubs, but as diverse as this hour long track is, what Nakatani does really should be seen as much as heard. Get a nice taste by clicking this button.
The Child Readers Music Heard Far Off (Soft Abuse) CD - Before now I only ever really heard The Child Readers on a 3" CD-R and a few compilations, but I've always been a big fan of the Knit Seperates and Loren Chasse's various Jewelled Antler projects (Blithe Suns, Of/Ov, Softwar, etc...) riding that line between atmospheric drone and off kilter acid-pop. Music Heard Far Off is a joyously cracked slice of deranged art-pop that earns comparisons to early Brian Eno, Alastair Galbraith, Bee Thousand era Guided By Voices and more, yet The Readers bring in their own bizarre infusion of tape noise, electronics and beats backed by some of the most direct broken melodies heard since Hood's Silent 88 or at least the last Maher Shalal Hash Baz record.
Ulaan Khol I (Soft Abuse) CD - Fantastic blurred guitar abstractions from Steven R. Smith offer the avid listener of psych guitar noise the oppurtunity to hear Smith create some of his most abbrasive/voluminous work since the Mirza days. Think of some long lost Fushitusha studio session lent the sad pallor of Smith's past solo recordings, turn everything up to 11 and simply bask in the shimmering glow.
Mouthus Saw a Halo (Load) CD - Saw a Halo could suggest some sort of spiritual concern on this recent Mouthus platter, but then if you know what these bastards sound like an image of a golden halo being sawwed in half by a massive corrugated blade might be closer to the mark. These six tracks are abrassive, hypnotic, live industrial soundtracks for a life of pain and transcendence in equal measure. I love how the acoustic plod of opener "Your Far Church" morphs into the clattery percussive backdrop of "Armies Between," with Nate Nelson clanking and smashing shit to bits in his percussive workshop -- equal parts robo-precision and vicious assault. Then comes the customary Mouthus morass of distorted jackhammers and feedback, all corroded like industrial waste and hallucinagenic smog, writhing and twisting heavy machinary captured in an industrial grating, thick gunk dripping through the cracks. Saw a Halo cuts through it all and grinds it down like an aural filter for that blackened lung of urban living.
Gowns Red State (Cardboard Records) CD - There's something scary and beautiful in the shivery builds the Gowns unleash on their Red State album. I likened them to an Appelachian Magik Markers before, which perhaps isn't all that fair cuz this is California trash, and it's pretty darn messed up in the way that you'd expect California trash to be. Not sure what's more enticing here, Erika Anderson's sultry vocals relaying images wrought with surrealism and druggy nostalgia, or how the trio builds from a smokey, confused clatter to monumental noisy jams via guitar/ violin/ drums, or the trance-inducing folk pop mindnumbers in between. Very human and earthy music, albeit run through a kind of narcotized suburban filter where the mundane somehow becomes profound and even mystical, simply because it's not experienced alone. Much beauty to be found in these nooks and crannies of the shattered Americam drean, Humpty Dumpty "leader of the free world."
A Pink Reason Cleaning the Mirror (Siltbreeze) LP - Raved about these fellas in my mega-SXSW round up. If the Gowns offer at least a glint of hope, A Pink Reason decided some time ago to throw in the towel. This six song opus is more subdued than the intense live set I witnessed. You get a plodding wall of fuzz and weary/wasted vocals in opener "Goodbye" (think early JAMC at half speed), a lost acid folk dirge in "Motherfucker" (beating Wooden Wand at his own game), and just when you're ready to give up entirely, they throw in an odd breakup lament that does everything but pull the trigger to the pistol that just miraculously appeared upside your head. "Only Up the Sleeve" is a banjo strewn stretch of heroin-laced campire song that touches on the broken-folk vibe of those early Tower Recordings albums. This isn't neccesarily bad. It's just sad. Ain't we all these days?
Renderizors Submarine (Last Visible Dog) CD - A dream melding of two of New Zealand's finest subterreneal noise purveyors (that is The Renderers and Sandoz Lab Technicians) yields what is expectedly one fucked up sonic murkfest. We're talking harrowing, distorted drone psych here. Describing this album properly seems like an exercise in futility. It's a dense mix, bubbling with all kinds of weird life swimming through the primordial ooze. It's a huge leap for the Renderers, a bold and uncompromising piece of work that pays off for the woefully devoted. It's hard to explain why this is so magnetic. It's the way the ensemble effortlessly kicks up to a gallop after a 10 min bottomless drone chasm like some black steed rising up from a valley of dust, meeting the red sun in full stride. This is a magnificent balancing act between bottomless despair and unwavering determination. Submarine is a record to be wrestled with. It's a record you listen to in your darkest hours when youre so far gone you dont know whether to laugh or cry (my suggestion is to do both at the same time). One seeking any kind of solace need not look here. That's what Chris Knox albums are for.
Vibracathedral Orchestra Wisdom Thunderbolt (VHF) CD - One of the many looming challenges for the discerning practitioner of modern experimental rock: Just how do we recreate those Krautrock classics of yore as something nonredundant and in the now today? Back in the day (that's roughly 15-20 years ago for the younguns) Loop and Stereolab knew how to do it -- the former with concise, lacerating post punk precision, the latter merging ethereal French pop maneuvers with the metronomic pulse of Neu! and Can. And then there's the Vibracathedral Orchestra, which in the meantime has burrowed itself into one of the most cosmically attuned niches in the post Kraut psychedelic substrate simply by sticking to what works best and piling it on thick.
When Mats G. interviewed VCO mastermind Neil Campbell (also of the equally vintage-inspired Astral Social Club) in our old zine The Broken Face, what struck me most was Campbell's strong desire to conjure modern dancefloor-ready psychedelia via the most primitive "live" means. If I remember correctly he was a Britney Spears fan at the time, and as far as I know probably still is. He's also a serious Krautrock head, conneissuer of early 80s minimal techno, '70s jazz fusion and a veteran of the UK's ever-evolving post psychedelic underground. My point with all this? Campbell wants to have a good time with his music, and he wants us to also share in that joy if possible, and of coure dance. Wisdom Thunderbolt suitably gets the mind and the ass grooving with its deep space electro-body-raga-drone. It's definitely one of the finer studio offerings I've heard from these masters of groove. Favorite bits: the cacophonous Kraut pulse of "A Natural Fact" (featuring Chris Corsano), the eruptive "Sway/Sage" which takes the opening seconds of a 'Stones classic and seems to freeze them in a lockgroove of microscopic repititioon.
Sunroof! Panzer Division Lou Reed (VHF) CD - As of late I think I prefer to get my brain kissed (and then raped) by Mathew Bower's Sunroof! incarnation over his more strident dispatches via Skullflower and The Hototogisu, and this here CD is as fine a justification as any. First track is a glitchy feedback whirlwind that makes me think of contact mics swirling around some massive wind tunnel before John Moloney's drums start to lend things some rhythm. Other places we get electronic firehoses dancing against the crimson sky like phospherescent snakes. All in all, one of the noisier and more fierce outings from this long-standing uk noise psych unit.
Nordvargr In Oceans Abandoned By Life I Drown... To Live Again As A Servant Of Darkness (Essence Music) CD - I have no idea who this is (actually it's a solo performer named Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) or from whence it came (Sweden), but I do know that Sunno))), Merzbow and Lustmord fans should have no problem exploring these two epic tracks of sonic woe. The incredibly bleak mix, use of samples and tapes, guitars and low-end distortion come together to reveal as masterful an example of ambient/noise/doom as any I've come across yet in all my grim travels. Battlecruiser and Black Boned Angels fans, take note. This is better.
Brainbombs Singles Part 2 (Polly Magoo Records) CD - Here's a band to obsess over as you creep your girlfriend out cuz she just doesn't get it at all. "Is this jazz?" she says. Is this jazz? This is psychedelic rape, scavenged remnents of blood soaked crime scenes set to a mind numbing wash of mongrel blues distortion and the sickening rhythmic throb that accompanies every young man's first self induced orgasm. Garage rock for hate meditation, sex punk for drinking, drugging, cruising the bad parts of town at 2 AM "just looking for something to do." Is this a sick joke? Do these people actually mean what they say in songs like "Stigma of the Ripper" (an ode to a serial rapist) and "Stinking Memory" (a wasted chronicle of incest and the resultant psychic damage). I tend to take it more as reportage, possible cathartic indulgence, vicarious sadism and some of the most hypnotic brain-fried racket ever laid to tape.
LSD March Nikutai No Tubomi (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2CD - Something else I'd really like a hard copy of is the awesome new LSD Pond 2CD recently dropped on Cd Archive (best label ever? Maybe), but it might a while before I can afford it the way this economy is going. In the meantime there's this smoking 2 CD which dropped on Beta-Lactam in late '07 and is probably already sold out at the source. Fans of the 'March might want to dig for it because CD 1 containes what just might be the ultimate LSD-March magnum brain melter in the title track, 40 mins of deep space fuzz exploration that never wears out its welcome and reduces me to a giggling/drooling puddle of semen and saliva every time I hear it. The second disc has yet to really grab me. It's more a series of duo recordings that sound like sketches and half-baked experiments and doesn't seem to add up to much. I hope this assessment will change at some point in the near future, but I have my doubts. That being said CD 1 makes this an essential package all the same.
Speaking of being disturbed, any fans of 300 and period cannibal porn might want to check out this uncensored video for the title track of Lair of the Minotaur's War Metal Battle Master. I'm not the biggest fan of these Chicago thrash fiends, but like its namesake this video is over the top and ridiculous and features hot naked vampire zombie babes doused in blood, feasting on the corpses of fallen. And as a friend recently noted, the zombie on the left looks like Miley Cyrus. It's very gory and rated NC-17.
A belated so long to Bo Diddley.
Terrastock 7 starts in just 8 days in Louisville, KY.
watch...this...space
Earth The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (Southern Lord) CD - The sparse Hex sound gets a full band treatment with help from Bill Frisell and others across seven epics of minimal fuzz twang. There are some of the fine stop-start dynamics of Hex and Hybernaculum mixed in with the jazzy post rock of Slint and the Spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. Haunted melodies grow from a steady harmonic drift to billowing plumes of drone-smoke across every one of these majestic horizons. Think of it as a cowboy's lament for some alien wasteland or a nod of resignation branded with an undying will to survive. One things for sure: Earth has never sounded more serene, more symphonic, more cosmically revenant than on this album. A genuine apocalyptic masterpiece for downtrodden space heads the world over (and well beyond), not to mention easily one of the year's best. The resurrection is complete. Outstanding packaging too.
Tatsuya Nakatani Primal Communication (H & H Productions) CD - Without a doubt one of my great pleasures in the last couple months was being able to see master free jazz percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani do his thing right on Main Street in downtown Dallas, performing solo and in a bigger band configuration with some local musicians, including the rhythm section of the very cool Yells at Eels. Solo Nakatani conjures some of the most awe inspiring acoustic percussion soundscapes I've ever wrapped my head around, and I've come across a few of thse guys in my day. Primal Communication (great title, that) starts with almost ten minutes of glorious bowed cymbal action before bass kicks and other more familiar thwacks start percolating through the live mix. What's astonishing is the way Nakatani's unorthodox but highly kinetic playing touches on so many different genres and styles: minimal drone/modern classical, early industrial, world music, free jazz and other genres not yet conceived. Live is the best way to experience this. Indeed, Primal Communication is all live with no overdubs, but as diverse as this hour long track is, what Nakatani does really should be seen as much as heard. Get a nice taste by clicking this button.
The Child Readers Music Heard Far Off (Soft Abuse) CD - Before now I only ever really heard The Child Readers on a 3" CD-R and a few compilations, but I've always been a big fan of the Knit Seperates and Loren Chasse's various Jewelled Antler projects (Blithe Suns, Of/Ov, Softwar, etc...) riding that line between atmospheric drone and off kilter acid-pop. Music Heard Far Off is a joyously cracked slice of deranged art-pop that earns comparisons to early Brian Eno, Alastair Galbraith, Bee Thousand era Guided By Voices and more, yet The Readers bring in their own bizarre infusion of tape noise, electronics and beats backed by some of the most direct broken melodies heard since Hood's Silent 88 or at least the last Maher Shalal Hash Baz record.
Ulaan Khol I (Soft Abuse) CD - Fantastic blurred guitar abstractions from Steven R. Smith offer the avid listener of psych guitar noise the oppurtunity to hear Smith create some of his most abbrasive/voluminous work since the Mirza days. Think of some long lost Fushitusha studio session lent the sad pallor of Smith's past solo recordings, turn everything up to 11 and simply bask in the shimmering glow.
Mouthus Saw a Halo (Load) CD - Saw a Halo could suggest some sort of spiritual concern on this recent Mouthus platter, but then if you know what these bastards sound like an image of a golden halo being sawwed in half by a massive corrugated blade might be closer to the mark. These six tracks are abrassive, hypnotic, live industrial soundtracks for a life of pain and transcendence in equal measure. I love how the acoustic plod of opener "Your Far Church" morphs into the clattery percussive backdrop of "Armies Between," with Nate Nelson clanking and smashing shit to bits in his percussive workshop -- equal parts robo-precision and vicious assault. Then comes the customary Mouthus morass of distorted jackhammers and feedback, all corroded like industrial waste and hallucinagenic smog, writhing and twisting heavy machinary captured in an industrial grating, thick gunk dripping through the cracks. Saw a Halo cuts through it all and grinds it down like an aural filter for that blackened lung of urban living.
Gowns Red State (Cardboard Records) CD - There's something scary and beautiful in the shivery builds the Gowns unleash on their Red State album. I likened them to an Appelachian Magik Markers before, which perhaps isn't all that fair cuz this is California trash, and it's pretty darn messed up in the way that you'd expect California trash to be. Not sure what's more enticing here, Erika Anderson's sultry vocals relaying images wrought with surrealism and druggy nostalgia, or how the trio builds from a smokey, confused clatter to monumental noisy jams via guitar/ violin/ drums, or the trance-inducing folk pop mindnumbers in between. Very human and earthy music, albeit run through a kind of narcotized suburban filter where the mundane somehow becomes profound and even mystical, simply because it's not experienced alone. Much beauty to be found in these nooks and crannies of the shattered Americam drean, Humpty Dumpty "leader of the free world."
A Pink Reason Cleaning the Mirror (Siltbreeze) LP - Raved about these fellas in my mega-SXSW round up. If the Gowns offer at least a glint of hope, A Pink Reason decided some time ago to throw in the towel. This six song opus is more subdued than the intense live set I witnessed. You get a plodding wall of fuzz and weary/wasted vocals in opener "Goodbye" (think early JAMC at half speed), a lost acid folk dirge in "Motherfucker" (beating Wooden Wand at his own game), and just when you're ready to give up entirely, they throw in an odd breakup lament that does everything but pull the trigger to the pistol that just miraculously appeared upside your head. "Only Up the Sleeve" is a banjo strewn stretch of heroin-laced campire song that touches on the broken-folk vibe of those early Tower Recordings albums. This isn't neccesarily bad. It's just sad. Ain't we all these days?
Renderizors Submarine (Last Visible Dog) CD - A dream melding of two of New Zealand's finest subterreneal noise purveyors (that is The Renderers and Sandoz Lab Technicians) yields what is expectedly one fucked up sonic murkfest. We're talking harrowing, distorted drone psych here. Describing this album properly seems like an exercise in futility. It's a dense mix, bubbling with all kinds of weird life swimming through the primordial ooze. It's a huge leap for the Renderers, a bold and uncompromising piece of work that pays off for the woefully devoted. It's hard to explain why this is so magnetic. It's the way the ensemble effortlessly kicks up to a gallop after a 10 min bottomless drone chasm like some black steed rising up from a valley of dust, meeting the red sun in full stride. This is a magnificent balancing act between bottomless despair and unwavering determination. Submarine is a record to be wrestled with. It's a record you listen to in your darkest hours when youre so far gone you dont know whether to laugh or cry (my suggestion is to do both at the same time). One seeking any kind of solace need not look here. That's what Chris Knox albums are for.
Vibracathedral Orchestra Wisdom Thunderbolt (VHF) CD - One of the many looming challenges for the discerning practitioner of modern experimental rock: Just how do we recreate those Krautrock classics of yore as something nonredundant and in the now today? Back in the day (that's roughly 15-20 years ago for the younguns) Loop and Stereolab knew how to do it -- the former with concise, lacerating post punk precision, the latter merging ethereal French pop maneuvers with the metronomic pulse of Neu! and Can. And then there's the Vibracathedral Orchestra, which in the meantime has burrowed itself into one of the most cosmically attuned niches in the post Kraut psychedelic substrate simply by sticking to what works best and piling it on thick.
When Mats G. interviewed VCO mastermind Neil Campbell (also of the equally vintage-inspired Astral Social Club) in our old zine The Broken Face, what struck me most was Campbell's strong desire to conjure modern dancefloor-ready psychedelia via the most primitive "live" means. If I remember correctly he was a Britney Spears fan at the time, and as far as I know probably still is. He's also a serious Krautrock head, conneissuer of early 80s minimal techno, '70s jazz fusion and a veteran of the UK's ever-evolving post psychedelic underground. My point with all this? Campbell wants to have a good time with his music, and he wants us to also share in that joy if possible, and of coure dance. Wisdom Thunderbolt suitably gets the mind and the ass grooving with its deep space electro-body-raga-drone. It's definitely one of the finer studio offerings I've heard from these masters of groove. Favorite bits: the cacophonous Kraut pulse of "A Natural Fact" (featuring Chris Corsano), the eruptive "Sway/Sage" which takes the opening seconds of a 'Stones classic and seems to freeze them in a lockgroove of microscopic repititioon.
Sunroof! Panzer Division Lou Reed (VHF) CD - As of late I think I prefer to get my brain kissed (and then raped) by Mathew Bower's Sunroof! incarnation over his more strident dispatches via Skullflower and The Hototogisu, and this here CD is as fine a justification as any. First track is a glitchy feedback whirlwind that makes me think of contact mics swirling around some massive wind tunnel before John Moloney's drums start to lend things some rhythm. Other places we get electronic firehoses dancing against the crimson sky like phospherescent snakes. All in all, one of the noisier and more fierce outings from this long-standing uk noise psych unit.
Nordvargr In Oceans Abandoned By Life I Drown... To Live Again As A Servant Of Darkness (Essence Music) CD - I have no idea who this is (actually it's a solo performer named Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) or from whence it came (Sweden), but I do know that Sunno))), Merzbow and Lustmord fans should have no problem exploring these two epic tracks of sonic woe. The incredibly bleak mix, use of samples and tapes, guitars and low-end distortion come together to reveal as masterful an example of ambient/noise/doom as any I've come across yet in all my grim travels. Battlecruiser and Black Boned Angels fans, take note. This is better.
Brainbombs Singles Part 2 (Polly Magoo Records) CD - Here's a band to obsess over as you creep your girlfriend out cuz she just doesn't get it at all. "Is this jazz?" she says. Is this jazz? This is psychedelic rape, scavenged remnents of blood soaked crime scenes set to a mind numbing wash of mongrel blues distortion and the sickening rhythmic throb that accompanies every young man's first self induced orgasm. Garage rock for hate meditation, sex punk for drinking, drugging, cruising the bad parts of town at 2 AM "just looking for something to do." Is this a sick joke? Do these people actually mean what they say in songs like "Stigma of the Ripper" (an ode to a serial rapist) and "Stinking Memory" (a wasted chronicle of incest and the resultant psychic damage). I tend to take it more as reportage, possible cathartic indulgence, vicarious sadism and some of the most hypnotic brain-fried racket ever laid to tape.
LSD March Nikutai No Tubomi (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2CD - Something else I'd really like a hard copy of is the awesome new LSD Pond 2CD recently dropped on Cd Archive (best label ever? Maybe), but it might a while before I can afford it the way this economy is going. In the meantime there's this smoking 2 CD which dropped on Beta-Lactam in late '07 and is probably already sold out at the source. Fans of the 'March might want to dig for it because CD 1 containes what just might be the ultimate LSD-March magnum brain melter in the title track, 40 mins of deep space fuzz exploration that never wears out its welcome and reduces me to a giggling/drooling puddle of semen and saliva every time I hear it. The second disc has yet to really grab me. It's more a series of duo recordings that sound like sketches and half-baked experiments and doesn't seem to add up to much. I hope this assessment will change at some point in the near future, but I have my doubts. That being said CD 1 makes this an essential package all the same.
Speaking of being disturbed, any fans of 300 and period cannibal porn might want to check out this uncensored video for the title track of Lair of the Minotaur's War Metal Battle Master. I'm not the biggest fan of these Chicago thrash fiends, but like its namesake this video is over the top and ridiculous and features hot naked vampire zombie babes doused in blood, feasting on the corpses of fallen. And as a friend recently noted, the zombie on the left looks like Miley Cyrus. It's very gory and rated NC-17.
A belated so long to Bo Diddley.
Terrastock 7 starts in just 8 days in Louisville, KY.
watch...this...space
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Random Emanations from the Bottomless Well
Some time back I received a sweet package from one Mikey Turner, lead milker in the Warmer Milks, a Lexington, Kentucky ensemble that it's been a great pleasure to watch mature, or should I say devolve, over the last few years. 'Course their debut LP Radish on Light (Troubleman) is a goddamned classic of detuned angst-grunge that bears the weight of a dying world on its shoulders, the resultant stress cracks making it that much more of a harrowing thing of beauty. Then came some lineup shakeups and--shock!--Shawn David McMillen is invited into the fold along with Paul Oldham (as in Will's brother) for the culmination of the mini-album, Let You Friends In on Sweden's revered Release the Bats. Two tracks here, each a side-long plunge into some mighty destroyed psychedelic head-space. Opener "The Ripple, Children/The Jaunting" is the knockout with warped tape-speed madness giving way to a massive cycling sludge mantra that kicks the mud off my boots and makes it dance around like some sort of irate earth spirit. Turner's screeching balls-out death vocals on this song are the shit, easily some of the most harrowing/ visceral/ hilarious exorcizing Ive heard in a good long while. Beautiful. "The Wanderer" on the other hand is a bit more aimless with its Beefheart-on-thorazine lurching rhythm that keeps threatening to pick up steam and kick ass like the first track but never really does. I'm not saying I'm disappointed in this one, more that the first track is a hard act to follow.
A Special Time is a 22 min CD-R that comes courtesy of Turner's own Paranormal Overtime label (which can be ordered from him via the Warmer Milks website). It's a home-recorded piece conjured by a duo version of Warmer Milks featuring Turner and McMillen. Composed as an imaginary soundtrack to the cult TV show "The Tomorrow People," some 30 years after the fact, A Special Time is a surrealist garage drone freakout with levels maxed and eyes glazed over, detailing the ongoing struggles between the Homo Superiors and the rest of the Saps. The piece itself wavers from Faust-ian industrial pulse to a primitive Spacemen 3/Velvets guitar rush that cuts out far too soon but still makes me giddy with goose-pimply satisfaction all the same, before devolving into stumbling percussive sprawl and some eerie-as-shit deep space emanations more expected from such a garage soundtrack expedition. My favorite part just might be when the whole morass fades to just Mikey singing naked over guitar, banjo and what sounds like a distant helicopter. Pink Floyd couldn't have done this shit any better. It's like a new Faust Tapes for all us metaphysical neo-apes.
Also of note in the same package, the stripped down synth dreams of Collap (Paranormal Overtime), which covers everything from minimal techno pulse to OMD worthy synth pop blissouts via the M/T solo W/M guise. Who knew? Very cool. And that brings us to the Lortab Sunsplash 90 min tape, also on POT, which is an epic of slow burning bass hum and lost in the dark psychedelia that's probably best heard in the wee morning hours when the things that go bump in the night start to sound as if they were composed by some preternatural force that permeates the living space with infinite curiosity. I think I'm in love.
And now we say hello to San Francisco's Rahdunes. Rahhhhdunnness...I dig the name. Live in a Cave in 07 is a smoking little CD-R for the UK's Darkest Rainbow that features a series of live actions captured throughout 07 (duh), and color me head-fucked, this is the bomb. After having experienced somewhat mellower/more minimal live excursions by this duo/trio in recent months, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the molten supernova explorations of the first two tracks, coming off like a more probing, genuinely psychedelic Dead C. Yum. Elsewhere there's percussion, distorted shrieks and an overall tendency towards power-lectronic rocking that I've never really heard in the Rahdunes' music before, but then I haven't heard much. There's a full length on Emperor Jones I've been meaning to pick up and a brand new picture disk on Italy's great Qbico label, which Aaron Coyes claims really is a genuine rock set. But then in the end I guess it's all rock, aint it? Deep space bass hum meets wall of distortion overload never sounded so tasty. I'll definitely be on the hunt for Rahdunes in more permanent formats.
Mr Coyes also slipped me a CD-R by his self described "fucked modern pop duo," Peaking Lights. Clearvoiant offers up 6 songs of damaged hiss and surprisingly accessible acid pop meets freeform clatter that should appeal to devout fans of early Flying Nun/Xpressway Records, early Eno and other damaged post Velvets head-trippers. More, please.
Some time back I received a sweet package from one Mikey Turner, lead milker in the Warmer Milks, a Lexington, Kentucky ensemble that it's been a great pleasure to watch mature, or should I say devolve, over the last few years. 'Course their debut LP Radish on Light (Troubleman) is a goddamned classic of detuned angst-grunge that bears the weight of a dying world on its shoulders, the resultant stress cracks making it that much more of a harrowing thing of beauty. Then came some lineup shakeups and--shock!--Shawn David McMillen is invited into the fold along with Paul Oldham (as in Will's brother) for the culmination of the mini-album, Let You Friends In on Sweden's revered Release the Bats. Two tracks here, each a side-long plunge into some mighty destroyed psychedelic head-space. Opener "The Ripple, Children/The Jaunting" is the knockout with warped tape-speed madness giving way to a massive cycling sludge mantra that kicks the mud off my boots and makes it dance around like some sort of irate earth spirit. Turner's screeching balls-out death vocals on this song are the shit, easily some of the most harrowing/ visceral/ hilarious exorcizing Ive heard in a good long while. Beautiful. "The Wanderer" on the other hand is a bit more aimless with its Beefheart-on-thorazine lurching rhythm that keeps threatening to pick up steam and kick ass like the first track but never really does. I'm not saying I'm disappointed in this one, more that the first track is a hard act to follow.
A Special Time is a 22 min CD-R that comes courtesy of Turner's own Paranormal Overtime label (which can be ordered from him via the Warmer Milks website). It's a home-recorded piece conjured by a duo version of Warmer Milks featuring Turner and McMillen. Composed as an imaginary soundtrack to the cult TV show "The Tomorrow People," some 30 years after the fact, A Special Time is a surrealist garage drone freakout with levels maxed and eyes glazed over, detailing the ongoing struggles between the Homo Superiors and the rest of the Saps. The piece itself wavers from Faust-ian industrial pulse to a primitive Spacemen 3/Velvets guitar rush that cuts out far too soon but still makes me giddy with goose-pimply satisfaction all the same, before devolving into stumbling percussive sprawl and some eerie-as-shit deep space emanations more expected from such a garage soundtrack expedition. My favorite part just might be when the whole morass fades to just Mikey singing naked over guitar, banjo and what sounds like a distant helicopter. Pink Floyd couldn't have done this shit any better. It's like a new Faust Tapes for all us metaphysical neo-apes.
Also of note in the same package, the stripped down synth dreams of Collap (Paranormal Overtime), which covers everything from minimal techno pulse to OMD worthy synth pop blissouts via the M/T solo W/M guise. Who knew? Very cool. And that brings us to the Lortab Sunsplash 90 min tape, also on POT, which is an epic of slow burning bass hum and lost in the dark psychedelia that's probably best heard in the wee morning hours when the things that go bump in the night start to sound as if they were composed by some preternatural force that permeates the living space with infinite curiosity. I think I'm in love.
And now we say hello to San Francisco's Rahdunes. Rahhhhdunnness...I dig the name. Live in a Cave in 07 is a smoking little CD-R for the UK's Darkest Rainbow that features a series of live actions captured throughout 07 (duh), and color me head-fucked, this is the bomb. After having experienced somewhat mellower/more minimal live excursions by this duo/trio in recent months, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the molten supernova explorations of the first two tracks, coming off like a more probing, genuinely psychedelic Dead C. Yum. Elsewhere there's percussion, distorted shrieks and an overall tendency towards power-lectronic rocking that I've never really heard in the Rahdunes' music before, but then I haven't heard much. There's a full length on Emperor Jones I've been meaning to pick up and a brand new picture disk on Italy's great Qbico label, which Aaron Coyes claims really is a genuine rock set. But then in the end I guess it's all rock, aint it? Deep space bass hum meets wall of distortion overload never sounded so tasty. I'll definitely be on the hunt for Rahdunes in more permanent formats.
Mr Coyes also slipped me a CD-R by his self described "fucked modern pop duo," Peaking Lights. Clearvoiant offers up 6 songs of damaged hiss and surprisingly accessible acid pop meets freeform clatter that should appeal to devout fans of early Flying Nun/Xpressway Records, early Eno and other damaged post Velvets head-trippers. More, please.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
I'm in the process of overcoming one of those pesky Springtime colds, but I think I'm on the mend. Hope so because Ettrick is playing a house-gig tonight that I'd really like to attend. At the same time though, everything sounds sort of muffled currently, and mucus is dripping down my face, over my lips and onto my belly.
Farewell Klaus Dinger, one of the greatest rock drummers of all time.
And then...
It's time once more for a little visit to the darkside. As many of you know I cannot escape a seemingly juvenile fixation with all things heavy, sludge and/or metal here in the Womb. Psych metal, punk metal, prog metal, doom metal, grim metal, black metal, funeral doooom metal, garage thrash kosmische metal, and of course the burgeoning subscene of shoegaze or ambient metal--whatever it may be. I only ask that my metal be a little angry, a tad dissonant, not too operatic, post-Sabbathian if possible and always lurching on all fours towards its ultimate demise.
Burning Witch Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord 2CD reissue) - Hot damn. Here's an album for contemplating suicide while you smoke copious amounts of reefer. Hopefully you have better things to do with your time, but if you're feeling sort'a down and looking for something to provide that last push over the edge, give Crippled Lucifer a try. With bonus cuts from other singles and split releases around the time, this 2CD is the ultimate summation of Stephen O'Malley's early noise metal years and pretty much definitive in terms of bottomless chasms of sludge doom death. Most people will hate this. Khanate fans and the like will definitely dig it. Over half these songs are recorded by Steve Albini, so it's pretty much the heaviest album ever. And also a special mention to the incomparable vocal talents of Edgy 59, alternating between black metalesque seahag screech and a harrowing post-Ozzy howl. Somehow this feels like where much of what passed for grunge in the mid 90s should've gone but never dared. None but one.
Ahab The Call of the Wretched Sea (Napalm) - While we're swimming in these dark waters, let's remember that Burning Witch formed from the ashes (and I mean that literally) of Thorr's Hammer, a fantastic but short lived doom quartet that featured an even younger O'Malley and post Engine Kid/pre Sunno)))/Goatsnake Greg Anderson serving up some of the most techtonic doom sludge heard anywhere in the 90s. In retrospect Thorr's influence is pretty darn immeasurable seeing as Corrupted is about the only band around at the time that also traded in such glacial doom. When I listen to Germany's Ahab I can hear those Thorr's Hammer reverberations with trollish doom sludge bludgeon and almost death metal vocal growls. What's neat though, like more recent dare-to-be pretty metal acts such as Pelican and again Corrupted, Ahab is willing to temper its sludge-adelia with some fine moodier subtleties to make things seem less repetitive than they actually are and even more epic at the same time. Parts of this album almost feel like Bernard Herrmann scoring a doom metal soundtrack to an unrealized film version of Moby Dick. Yes, another metal band dares to reference Melville. For once the liteary allusions ring true.
Nadja Skin Turns to Glass (The End) - I returned from SXSW with a few Nadja albums, including a promo of this brand new release on The End. Toronto's Nadja is proof that two people with a drum machine, a guitar, bass, piano, voices, a shipload of effects and some genuine inspiration can forge some of the most enveloping sludge walls ever known to man. If there's one band that really spearheaded the development of super heavy drone metal it would have to be Godflesh, and like those innovators Nadja uses a drum machine and their rhythms have a vacuum-cleaner-on-high sort of aura. Unlike Godflesh, the percussion is much more simplistic much of the way, and every song tops the 14 min mark and often goes well beyond. Also this is often quite beautiful--like beholding dreamlike apocalypse scene with hearts beating loudly, eyes welling up with tears. This is doom for those of us who never got over our Slowdive fixation.
Farewell Klaus Dinger, one of the greatest rock drummers of all time.
And then...
It's time once more for a little visit to the darkside. As many of you know I cannot escape a seemingly juvenile fixation with all things heavy, sludge and/or metal here in the Womb. Psych metal, punk metal, prog metal, doom metal, grim metal, black metal, funeral doooom metal, garage thrash kosmische metal, and of course the burgeoning subscene of shoegaze or ambient metal--whatever it may be. I only ask that my metal be a little angry, a tad dissonant, not too operatic, post-Sabbathian if possible and always lurching on all fours towards its ultimate demise.
Burning Witch Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord 2CD reissue) - Hot damn. Here's an album for contemplating suicide while you smoke copious amounts of reefer. Hopefully you have better things to do with your time, but if you're feeling sort'a down and looking for something to provide that last push over the edge, give Crippled Lucifer a try. With bonus cuts from other singles and split releases around the time, this 2CD is the ultimate summation of Stephen O'Malley's early noise metal years and pretty much definitive in terms of bottomless chasms of sludge doom death. Most people will hate this. Khanate fans and the like will definitely dig it. Over half these songs are recorded by Steve Albini, so it's pretty much the heaviest album ever. And also a special mention to the incomparable vocal talents of Edgy 59, alternating between black metalesque seahag screech and a harrowing post-Ozzy howl. Somehow this feels like where much of what passed for grunge in the mid 90s should've gone but never dared. None but one. 
Ahab The Call of the Wretched Sea (Napalm) - While we're swimming in these dark waters, let's remember that Burning Witch formed from the ashes (and I mean that literally) of Thorr's Hammer, a fantastic but short lived doom quartet that featured an even younger O'Malley and post Engine Kid/pre Sunno)))/Goatsnake Greg Anderson serving up some of the most techtonic doom sludge heard anywhere in the 90s. In retrospect Thorr's influence is pretty darn immeasurable seeing as Corrupted is about the only band around at the time that also traded in such glacial doom. When I listen to Germany's Ahab I can hear those Thorr's Hammer reverberations with trollish doom sludge bludgeon and almost death metal vocal growls. What's neat though, like more recent dare-to-be pretty metal acts such as Pelican and again Corrupted, Ahab is willing to temper its sludge-adelia with some fine moodier subtleties to make things seem less repetitive than they actually are and even more epic at the same time. Parts of this album almost feel like Bernard Herrmann scoring a doom metal soundtrack to an unrealized film version of Moby Dick. Yes, another metal band dares to reference Melville. For once the liteary allusions ring true.
Nadja Skin Turns to Glass (The End) - I returned from SXSW with a few Nadja albums, including a promo of this brand new release on The End. Toronto's Nadja is proof that two people with a drum machine, a guitar, bass, piano, voices, a shipload of effects and some genuine inspiration can forge some of the most enveloping sludge walls ever known to man. If there's one band that really spearheaded the development of super heavy drone metal it would have to be Godflesh, and like those innovators Nadja uses a drum machine and their rhythms have a vacuum-cleaner-on-high sort of aura. Unlike Godflesh, the percussion is much more simplistic much of the way, and every song tops the 14 min mark and often goes well beyond. Also this is often quite beautiful--like beholding dreamlike apocalypse scene with hearts beating loudly, eyes welling up with tears. This is doom for those of us who never got over our Slowdive fixation.
Monday, March 24, 2008
SXSW 2008
Riding in the whirlwind. That's what I call the SXSW showcase grind. It's a hero's journey to be survived more than enjoyed. If we're lucky we emerge better people after the week long odyssey of endless standing and badge-envy, apostles of musical enlightenment. If we're not we maybe end up drunk in a puddle of piss, or as roadkill on San Jacinto, or maybe we smarten up and just hang back from the official fest showcases altogether, drink free beer and dig on all the righteous day parties. I guess I did a little of all of the above, some highlights below:
Wednesday
I pull into Austin Wednesday about 6:30 P.M., and get on down to the Thirsty Nickle on 6th for my yearly indoctrination into the clan of Sunburned Hand of the Man. John Moloney and his sonic kin (mostly new faces to me) tear through a barrage of old school analog drones meets funk stomp damage. It all seems a bit chaotic and even aimless compared to the previous Sunburned show I caught a year before, but then that's how so many of the greatest bands come off in the end: inconsistent. Those highs and lows are worth the endurance for those of us willing to take the plunge. Fine fest opener all in all.
Then a quick dash over to St David's Church on 7th to catch a series of performances curated by Steve Reich (it's pronounced Reish btw). Shhhhwing. Anyone who has ever gotten drunk on cheap wine and spaced out to the pulsing tonal mantras of Music For 18 Musicians knows what kind of master composer Reich is, each note tightly arranged with classical and jazz precision to reveal room saturating symphonies for the soul. The SOLI Chamber Ensemble is perhaps a bit too "straight" for my leanings, but guitarist Eddie Whalen's gorgeous set and the percussive rush of So Percussion more than make up for it, supplying the kind of high brow musicality that low brow fiends such as myself can occasionally truly dig on.
After this delicate display a few of us make it down to Habana Calle 6 on 6th (where else?) to catch The Gowns, a trio I'd not heard before now but was interested in since there's an Amps for Christ connection. With a lineup of guitar/violin/percussion, these folks come off as a kind of Appalachian response to the Magik Markers with lots of quiet squiggly moments building to rousing post punk eruptions. There's a hot blond singer/guitarist, a busy jazzy drummer, and the violinist works well whether unleashing monochrome rainbows or squealing barnyard squalls. Next, oscillating punk screamers Parts and Labor--very good at what they do. I'm just not a big fan of what they do.
Thursday
...kicks off with an attempt at catching The Castanets at Mrs. Beas on the East Side, no luck. Catch The Woods instead, a cpl songs anyway; I guess these lads could be described as post Devendra hippie fuzz folk. Agreeable. Decide to trot up a couple blocks to a place called French Legation, nestled alongside a historical cemetery (makes for a serene backdrop), and catch a very fine J Mascis solo set in which he plays amplified acoustic guitar with occasional fuzz bursts. I guess this draws more from later Dino Jr. and solo stuff (must admit my woeful ignorance of more recent Mascis related things). Dig it regardless. Then back down to Mrs. Beas to find that The Castanets have played the shortest day set in the history of SXSW. I miss it. This marks a recurring motif of almost (but not quite) seeing The Castanets live (though I do manage catch a glimpse of Raymond Raposa with Denton locals Shiny Around the Edges two days later). I don't remember who the next band was at Beas. The trio has a sort of hillbilly scrappy dog appeal that makes me think of Flying Burrito Brothers and muttonchops and has me smilin' in my boots. Next comes Mexican food, coffee and further preparations for what would surely be a festival highlight: The Siltbreeze Showcase at the Soho Lounge on 6th Street.
Again, here I am in the middle of Asstown, TX, 6th Street cordoned off for showgoers, fratboys and gangbangers alike, and I'm about to watch eight different bands courtesy of one of my favorite indie labels of all time. All in the same venue no less. The impact that Siltbreeze had on my development as a fucked up antisocial sloprock junkie is immeasurable, and since then they've come back on the scene in a heavy way with a new generation of art skuzz purveyors ready to blow minds and scrape skulls. Enter Ex-Cocaine, a duo of guitar and hand percussion working a kind of post kraut tribal frenzy which is just what my sensitive receptors need to ease into this evening trip. Swim in it a while... (I recommending turning down the volume on these vids for better clarity)
Next comes Naked on the Vague from Australia. This guy 'n' gal marry distortion, minimal percussion and harrowing vocals into trance inducing/flailing/stumbling noisescapes that make such an impression that I'm forced to buy everything they have at the merch table. Definitely a real find.
Blues Control works a serene magic with its lulling underwater psychedelic muzak, skating the line between head burnt bong noise and easy as pie mellow-dee. Portland, OR's Eat Skulls bring the high energy garage punk onslaught. Psychedelic Horseshit throws a few more sarcastic punk logs on the acid fire, but it's A Pink Reason that proves to be the great white hope of the bunch with its earnest dope fucked fuzz punk anthems conjuring the ghost of a young Peter Laughner and his Rocket From the Tombs. Do us a favor, fellers, hang around a while. Mike Repp (with help from Times New Viking) stands in for the original Siltbreeze gen with his elder Ohio garage punk cred as a producer of some note (he recorded some classic early GBV sides among other things) and his gleaming silver locks. He also apparently appears on one of the first Siltbreeze releases, though I don't remember further details. Live he's a garage punker with a heart of gold who never really got over his Stooges obsession. Ace. Times New Viking close it down with their acidic art punk/pop. This set is more screeching and ramshackle than the one I caught some months before. Not bad at all, but kinda ear-splitting. All in all a life affirming evening of primal garage noise rock.
Friday
...is greeted with a quick dash over to La Zona Rosa on 4th to catch an afternoon show by me old pals Soundtrack of Our Lives, who I have fond memories of catching in a small space at SXSW back around 2002. Thankfully their 45 min gig completely rekindles my flame for these Swedish rock gods of yore as they run through a set comprised almost entirely of songs from their new unreleased album, including a fantastic cover of Nick Drake's "Fly" in the "Jehovah Sunrise" mold.
I don't know if some of the younguns truly know anything about these guys: Lead singer Ebbot Lundberg formed the group from the ashes of Swede Stooges stomp legends Union Carbide Productions with UBC guitarist Bjorn Olsson and tempers unabashed late 60s/early 70a hard/folk rock fixations with MC5 punk energy and does what a band like Oasis does without any of the smug annoyance, though rest assured SOOL are big stars in their homeland and likely have some fairly inflated egos. Everywhere else they're simply a must for fans of vintage psych pop. A taste, which sadly cuts out right before it really starts to rock...
Now a dash back over to French Legation to catch The Atlas Sound, comprised of members of Deerhunter, Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Yume Bitsu and more, trading in oldschool shoegaze/drone pop, providing the perfect bouncing shimmer for my post hamgover readjustment.
And then a quick drive over to a house party somewhere on the East Side where I'm lucky enough to catch three damn fine noise(esque) ensembles in a row:
--Indian Jewelry--Never grabbed me much on record, but here outside in the fading magic hour their fuzz industrial onslaught makes for an amazing pulsatng groove.
--Blues Control--More controlled and serene than there set the night before, the sweet stench of fruitbud in the air, nighttime, Mickeys, sprawled out on the grass, momentary nirvana. Perfect ballast for the big showcase grind.
--Rahdunes--New masters if the downtuned fuzz drone. Post industrial striations of deep-space-hum, spreading out against the night sky like so many fireflies before descending once more like invisible spirits shot directly into the third eye. Brainjam for the soul.
Back on the road again. I make it over to Emo's in time for The Akron/Family, but I grow impatient, so I start walking again with a couple nice folks I met from Canada (one of them plays standup bass in The Sadies) and we arrive somewhere (forgot!) and catch a few songs by Blue Rodeo--remember them? They've been around forever, and I can see why. Their amiable country folk goes down smooth for people unashamed to admit they enjoy bluegrass, The Byrds and The Eagles.
I dash back to Emos for the promised two hour set by The Akron/Family and behold The Line. Two of them actually, one for badges, one for wristbands. One moves much, much faster tha the other. I wait at least an hour. As I wait I hear Blue Cheer playing across the street--the real Blue Cheer!--and wonder why the fuck I'm standing in this line. It's sort of cool hearing them run through a muffled version of Jimi's "Third Stone From the Sun" a mere 50 feet away but mostly lame. I finally get into Emos about 30 mins into A/F's set, witness most of the damn thing and conclude that what Funkadelic does for all night funk jam parties the Akrons do for art rock hoedowns. And they're funky too. They invite the Lexie Mountain Boys (who are actually girls) on stage for much of the set (and some other folks too...hazy). Almost every song is 15-20 mins long, and the boys in the band start to look damn tired by the end. Their almost two hour set closes with what's become a fairly common practice for both the Akrons and bands at SXSW in general: They come down into the crowd and lead the audience outside into the street (no doubt to the Emos staffers' delight) and just keep playing and chanting forever and ever, or at least as long as there are people around to clap and sing along. I get it; it's all about tearing down the wall between audience and performer. It seems The Akrons are almost frat rock superstars now. Odd, but acceptable. Vi-vi-video...
Saturday
Can't believe I've made it this far. Report first thing to End of an Ear to catch Nadja, Paul Metzger and Gary Higgins. Toronto's Nadja trades in dense doom fuzz crescendos drawing equally from the Sunno))) industrial void and the heyday of blissed shoegaze. Makes for an interesting mix and a fairly mind-glazing live experience.
Now I'd been hearing and reading about this Paul Metzger guy for a while. Picked up a copy of his Music for Modified Guitar at Terrastock and a split 12" with Ben Chasny/Chris Corsano. I'd also heard the angular jazz punk of his Minneapolis ensemble TCBC and always suspected he was best sampled in the live setting. Though that's perhaps debatable since his Music For Modified Banjo CD is undoubtedly one of the truly great solo acoustic raga albums of the last ten years or so.
So there I am, camera in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, seven feet from Metzger and all ears. He plays two extended blues/bluegrass ragas, one for guitar and one for banjo. The results feel decidedly more oriental in tone, with a strong emphasis on space and restraint and some well placed bow work. By the time he gets going, head deep into primitive string space, he's fully emersed and we're along for the ride. He almost looks like a marienette with his banjo, bouncing and convulsing as if controlled by some unseen force. Truly a mystical experience.
Gary Higgins and his band play smooth psychedelic folk with mellotron, bass and guitars. Nothing revelatory, and I only catch really two songs of their End of an Ear set before I dash off again (and of course the recently reissued Red Hash is a genuine lost classic btw), but it's a fine mellow ride, and as evinced from the tune below his new album is going to be something pretty special. Thanks again to Ben Chasny, not just for turning me onto Gary but also for helping to bring him out of musical retirement for a new generation of avid listeners. That's Gary in the back center...
Almost there...promise. Next I head over to the Chaindrive off 4th to catch Strategies in Beauty, yet another day party curated by members of Denton bands, Shiny Around the Edges and Zanzibar Snails. I miss Aiden Baker's (Nadja) solo set but catch the closing bits of Dust Congress, and the entirety of Shiny Around the Edges. SATE is a band I'd not heard or seen till now. Apparently they played as the Castanets backing band during all of its SXSW performances, so I guess I finally get to see the Castanets after all. Well almost. Shiny's grungy noise clang meets broken ambient dreams provides a sufficient kick in the pants and hooks me nicely. Behold the clang...
Next personal Dallas faves The Zanzibar Snails tear through a 30 min set of blistering deep space sonic murk that just keeps growing more intense and insane with each passing minute. The molten lava flow makes me feel as if I've been directly teleported into the heart of a red giant, time slowing to a crawl as my flesh starts to melt, and POOF, no more. Nothing. This is the end...only not really. Like an electromagnetic pulse, the Snails' shreiking electro clatter saps my camera of its remaining juice. I'm unable to document this highly visceral sonic experience. Apparently they blew a fuse so the whole groaning mass just cut out instantly. No resolution, no fade out. Nothing. The events are almost preternatural from my close vantage point.
And now we really are approaching the end. I get my buttocks over to Central Presbyrterian Church just in time to catch Christina Carter and Shawn David McMillan performing as a duo. They're playing cleanup in the time-slot following Jandek, which I actually elect to miss this year since I've seen him twice in the last two years. With support from Susan Alcorn and Ralph White I know I've missed something special, but that's okay. The room is cleared out quite a bit for Christina and Shawn's set. Fine with me since it allows room to stretch out and relax. It's the perfect evnironment to get lost in the languid blues and folk interplay. Shawn starts out on pump organ as Christina plays electric guitar and sings. They play three or four spacious numbers including a little dueling guitar action. It's all a bit of a blur at this point but without question entirely indicative of the level of probing intensity I've come to expect from both of these amazing musicians. Hope some recordings of this new incarnation surface sometime soon.
From there I simply wander a while. Dazed and confused is an understatement. I want to lie down in the middle of 6th street and just stare at the stars, but the fear of being trampled to death by a few hundred scantily clad females in what have to be incredibly uncomfortable high heels prevents me from doing so.
Somehow I eventually end up over at Scoot Inn on 4th for the end of the Load showcase and White Mice's night closing set. How to describe White Mice? Well they're very Providence, and all the members seem to be reared on early thrash, hardcore and brain-scrambling nowave. One's wearing a Bathory shirt. When they perform they wear these incredible mouse costumes, each with its own unique defining characteristic. My favorite is the drummer with his skinned mouse head, all grizzled and pink with a shock of white hair shooting out the top like a mohawk--fucking cool. Oh yeah and those bulging eyeballs. This sight combined with the massive bass drum he sits behind (thing had to be over 4 ft tall) makes for one of the more memorable images I've seen the whole week. My cam battery is dead at this point, so just trust me on this. Their set is a brutal/violent barrage of bass/drums thrash bludgeon with screaming oscillations slicing through the downtuned sludge like chinese throwing stars. A group of young and highly mobile mosh devils procedes to flail about, smack into each other, break beer bottles on the ground and beam proudly the whole time. Interesting. I keep my distance. All in all it's too fucking much for my old-hippie-fart ass to stand for too long, but I guess I can see the appeal for them younguns. I feel old.
After that I drop by Shawn McMillan's house for his latenight party and see many of the folks I'd seen live in various constollations in the previous four days hanging out and chit-chattering. And whaddayaknow there's Thurston Moore (who I didn't see perform once during the whole fest--shame on me) hanging out and digging the vibe too. He plants himself on the floor about three feet from the Rahdunes, running through another one of its serene deep space voyages. It's a nice sort of mid-volume come down with some rhythmic turbulence towards the finale. Love it. Thurston looks impressed. And let me just say here and now Aaron Coyes is a really cool guy and a consummate gentleman. He builds all of Rahdunes instruments from scratch and is certainly one of the great practicioners of the analog-aural-mind-cleanse working today. Long may you roam, brother.
Well that's about it. I apologize for the immense length of this post, probably should've split it up into parts. It's a madhouse down at SXSW and I'd not be surprised if I just lay low the next few years. I missed tons, i mean TONS of great stuff but still felt I managed my time well enough and got the most bang for my buck. I also bought a shitload of records, but that's a different story.
Also, sometime during this chaotic period I managed to see a stripped down Radar Brothers instore performance at End of an Ear and two songs (including "You're Going to Miss Me") by Roky Erickson and the Explosives along with guest guitarist Billy Gibbons. Thanks to M. Chamey, N. Hill, N. Mann and everyone else who made this rambling indulgence possible and my SXSW experience a lot more fun. Thus concludes my ranting and raving summation of four days in the whirlwind. Until next time. To quote the great one, "That'll be the day..."
Riding in the whirlwind. That's what I call the SXSW showcase grind. It's a hero's journey to be survived more than enjoyed. If we're lucky we emerge better people after the week long odyssey of endless standing and badge-envy, apostles of musical enlightenment. If we're not we maybe end up drunk in a puddle of piss, or as roadkill on San Jacinto, or maybe we smarten up and just hang back from the official fest showcases altogether, drink free beer and dig on all the righteous day parties. I guess I did a little of all of the above, some highlights below:Wednesday
I pull into Austin Wednesday about 6:30 P.M., and get on down to the Thirsty Nickle on 6th for my yearly indoctrination into the clan of Sunburned Hand of the Man. John Moloney and his sonic kin (mostly new faces to me) tear through a barrage of old school analog drones meets funk stomp damage. It all seems a bit chaotic and even aimless compared to the previous Sunburned show I caught a year before, but then that's how so many of the greatest bands come off in the end: inconsistent. Those highs and lows are worth the endurance for those of us willing to take the plunge. Fine fest opener all in all.
Then a quick dash over to St David's Church on 7th to catch a series of performances curated by Steve Reich (it's pronounced Reish btw). Shhhhwing. Anyone who has ever gotten drunk on cheap wine and spaced out to the pulsing tonal mantras of Music For 18 Musicians knows what kind of master composer Reich is, each note tightly arranged with classical and jazz precision to reveal room saturating symphonies for the soul. The SOLI Chamber Ensemble is perhaps a bit too "straight" for my leanings, but guitarist Eddie Whalen's gorgeous set and the percussive rush of So Percussion more than make up for it, supplying the kind of high brow musicality that low brow fiends such as myself can occasionally truly dig on.
After this delicate display a few of us make it down to Habana Calle 6 on 6th (where else?) to catch The Gowns, a trio I'd not heard before now but was interested in since there's an Amps for Christ connection. With a lineup of guitar/violin/percussion, these folks come off as a kind of Appalachian response to the Magik Markers with lots of quiet squiggly moments building to rousing post punk eruptions. There's a hot blond singer/guitarist, a busy jazzy drummer, and the violinist works well whether unleashing monochrome rainbows or squealing barnyard squalls. Next, oscillating punk screamers Parts and Labor--very good at what they do. I'm just not a big fan of what they do.
Thursday
...kicks off with an attempt at catching The Castanets at Mrs. Beas on the East Side, no luck. Catch The Woods instead, a cpl songs anyway; I guess these lads could be described as post Devendra hippie fuzz folk. Agreeable. Decide to trot up a couple blocks to a place called French Legation, nestled alongside a historical cemetery (makes for a serene backdrop), and catch a very fine J Mascis solo set in which he plays amplified acoustic guitar with occasional fuzz bursts. I guess this draws more from later Dino Jr. and solo stuff (must admit my woeful ignorance of more recent Mascis related things). Dig it regardless. Then back down to Mrs. Beas to find that The Castanets have played the shortest day set in the history of SXSW. I miss it. This marks a recurring motif of almost (but not quite) seeing The Castanets live (though I do manage catch a glimpse of Raymond Raposa with Denton locals Shiny Around the Edges two days later). I don't remember who the next band was at Beas. The trio has a sort of hillbilly scrappy dog appeal that makes me think of Flying Burrito Brothers and muttonchops and has me smilin' in my boots. Next comes Mexican food, coffee and further preparations for what would surely be a festival highlight: The Siltbreeze Showcase at the Soho Lounge on 6th Street.
Again, here I am in the middle of Asstown, TX, 6th Street cordoned off for showgoers, fratboys and gangbangers alike, and I'm about to watch eight different bands courtesy of one of my favorite indie labels of all time. All in the same venue no less. The impact that Siltbreeze had on my development as a fucked up antisocial sloprock junkie is immeasurable, and since then they've come back on the scene in a heavy way with a new generation of art skuzz purveyors ready to blow minds and scrape skulls. Enter Ex-Cocaine, a duo of guitar and hand percussion working a kind of post kraut tribal frenzy which is just what my sensitive receptors need to ease into this evening trip. Swim in it a while... (I recommending turning down the volume on these vids for better clarity)
Next comes Naked on the Vague from Australia. This guy 'n' gal marry distortion, minimal percussion and harrowing vocals into trance inducing/flailing/stumbling noisescapes that make such an impression that I'm forced to buy everything they have at the merch table. Definitely a real find.
Blues Control works a serene magic with its lulling underwater psychedelic muzak, skating the line between head burnt bong noise and easy as pie mellow-dee. Portland, OR's Eat Skulls bring the high energy garage punk onslaught. Psychedelic Horseshit throws a few more sarcastic punk logs on the acid fire, but it's A Pink Reason that proves to be the great white hope of the bunch with its earnest dope fucked fuzz punk anthems conjuring the ghost of a young Peter Laughner and his Rocket From the Tombs. Do us a favor, fellers, hang around a while. Mike Repp (with help from Times New Viking) stands in for the original Siltbreeze gen with his elder Ohio garage punk cred as a producer of some note (he recorded some classic early GBV sides among other things) and his gleaming silver locks. He also apparently appears on one of the first Siltbreeze releases, though I don't remember further details. Live he's a garage punker with a heart of gold who never really got over his Stooges obsession. Ace. Times New Viking close it down with their acidic art punk/pop. This set is more screeching and ramshackle than the one I caught some months before. Not bad at all, but kinda ear-splitting. All in all a life affirming evening of primal garage noise rock.
Friday
...is greeted with a quick dash over to La Zona Rosa on 4th to catch an afternoon show by me old pals Soundtrack of Our Lives, who I have fond memories of catching in a small space at SXSW back around 2002. Thankfully their 45 min gig completely rekindles my flame for these Swedish rock gods of yore as they run through a set comprised almost entirely of songs from their new unreleased album, including a fantastic cover of Nick Drake's "Fly" in the "Jehovah Sunrise" mold. I don't know if some of the younguns truly know anything about these guys: Lead singer Ebbot Lundberg formed the group from the ashes of Swede Stooges stomp legends Union Carbide Productions with UBC guitarist Bjorn Olsson and tempers unabashed late 60s/early 70a hard/folk rock fixations with MC5 punk energy and does what a band like Oasis does without any of the smug annoyance, though rest assured SOOL are big stars in their homeland and likely have some fairly inflated egos. Everywhere else they're simply a must for fans of vintage psych pop. A taste, which sadly cuts out right before it really starts to rock...
Now a dash back over to French Legation to catch The Atlas Sound, comprised of members of Deerhunter, Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Yume Bitsu and more, trading in oldschool shoegaze/drone pop, providing the perfect bouncing shimmer for my post hamgover readjustment.
And then a quick drive over to a house party somewhere on the East Side where I'm lucky enough to catch three damn fine noise(esque) ensembles in a row:
--Indian Jewelry--Never grabbed me much on record, but here outside in the fading magic hour their fuzz industrial onslaught makes for an amazing pulsatng groove.
--Blues Control--More controlled and serene than there set the night before, the sweet stench of fruitbud in the air, nighttime, Mickeys, sprawled out on the grass, momentary nirvana. Perfect ballast for the big showcase grind.
--Rahdunes--New masters if the downtuned fuzz drone. Post industrial striations of deep-space-hum, spreading out against the night sky like so many fireflies before descending once more like invisible spirits shot directly into the third eye. Brainjam for the soul.
Back on the road again. I make it over to Emo's in time for The Akron/Family, but I grow impatient, so I start walking again with a couple nice folks I met from Canada (one of them plays standup bass in The Sadies) and we arrive somewhere (forgot!) and catch a few songs by Blue Rodeo--remember them? They've been around forever, and I can see why. Their amiable country folk goes down smooth for people unashamed to admit they enjoy bluegrass, The Byrds and The Eagles.
I dash back to Emos for the promised two hour set by The Akron/Family and behold The Line. Two of them actually, one for badges, one for wristbands. One moves much, much faster tha the other. I wait at least an hour. As I wait I hear Blue Cheer playing across the street--the real Blue Cheer!--and wonder why the fuck I'm standing in this line. It's sort of cool hearing them run through a muffled version of Jimi's "Third Stone From the Sun" a mere 50 feet away but mostly lame. I finally get into Emos about 30 mins into A/F's set, witness most of the damn thing and conclude that what Funkadelic does for all night funk jam parties the Akrons do for art rock hoedowns. And they're funky too. They invite the Lexie Mountain Boys (who are actually girls) on stage for much of the set (and some other folks too...hazy). Almost every song is 15-20 mins long, and the boys in the band start to look damn tired by the end. Their almost two hour set closes with what's become a fairly common practice for both the Akrons and bands at SXSW in general: They come down into the crowd and lead the audience outside into the street (no doubt to the Emos staffers' delight) and just keep playing and chanting forever and ever, or at least as long as there are people around to clap and sing along. I get it; it's all about tearing down the wall between audience and performer. It seems The Akrons are almost frat rock superstars now. Odd, but acceptable. Vi-vi-video...
Saturday
Can't believe I've made it this far. Report first thing to End of an Ear to catch Nadja, Paul Metzger and Gary Higgins. Toronto's Nadja trades in dense doom fuzz crescendos drawing equally from the Sunno))) industrial void and the heyday of blissed shoegaze. Makes for an interesting mix and a fairly mind-glazing live experience.
Now I'd been hearing and reading about this Paul Metzger guy for a while. Picked up a copy of his Music for Modified Guitar at Terrastock and a split 12" with Ben Chasny/Chris Corsano. I'd also heard the angular jazz punk of his Minneapolis ensemble TCBC and always suspected he was best sampled in the live setting. Though that's perhaps debatable since his Music For Modified Banjo CD is undoubtedly one of the truly great solo acoustic raga albums of the last ten years or so.
So there I am, camera in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, seven feet from Metzger and all ears. He plays two extended blues/bluegrass ragas, one for guitar and one for banjo. The results feel decidedly more oriental in tone, with a strong emphasis on space and restraint and some well placed bow work. By the time he gets going, head deep into primitive string space, he's fully emersed and we're along for the ride. He almost looks like a marienette with his banjo, bouncing and convulsing as if controlled by some unseen force. Truly a mystical experience.
Gary Higgins and his band play smooth psychedelic folk with mellotron, bass and guitars. Nothing revelatory, and I only catch really two songs of their End of an Ear set before I dash off again (and of course the recently reissued Red Hash is a genuine lost classic btw), but it's a fine mellow ride, and as evinced from the tune below his new album is going to be something pretty special. Thanks again to Ben Chasny, not just for turning me onto Gary but also for helping to bring him out of musical retirement for a new generation of avid listeners. That's Gary in the back center...
Almost there...promise. Next I head over to the Chaindrive off 4th to catch Strategies in Beauty, yet another day party curated by members of Denton bands, Shiny Around the Edges and Zanzibar Snails. I miss Aiden Baker's (Nadja) solo set but catch the closing bits of Dust Congress, and the entirety of Shiny Around the Edges. SATE is a band I'd not heard or seen till now. Apparently they played as the Castanets backing band during all of its SXSW performances, so I guess I finally get to see the Castanets after all. Well almost. Shiny's grungy noise clang meets broken ambient dreams provides a sufficient kick in the pants and hooks me nicely. Behold the clang...
Next personal Dallas faves The Zanzibar Snails tear through a 30 min set of blistering deep space sonic murk that just keeps growing more intense and insane with each passing minute. The molten lava flow makes me feel as if I've been directly teleported into the heart of a red giant, time slowing to a crawl as my flesh starts to melt, and POOF, no more. Nothing. This is the end...only not really. Like an electromagnetic pulse, the Snails' shreiking electro clatter saps my camera of its remaining juice. I'm unable to document this highly visceral sonic experience. Apparently they blew a fuse so the whole groaning mass just cut out instantly. No resolution, no fade out. Nothing. The events are almost preternatural from my close vantage point.
And now we really are approaching the end. I get my buttocks over to Central Presbyrterian Church just in time to catch Christina Carter and Shawn David McMillan performing as a duo. They're playing cleanup in the time-slot following Jandek, which I actually elect to miss this year since I've seen him twice in the last two years. With support from Susan Alcorn and Ralph White I know I've missed something special, but that's okay. The room is cleared out quite a bit for Christina and Shawn's set. Fine with me since it allows room to stretch out and relax. It's the perfect evnironment to get lost in the languid blues and folk interplay. Shawn starts out on pump organ as Christina plays electric guitar and sings. They play three or four spacious numbers including a little dueling guitar action. It's all a bit of a blur at this point but without question entirely indicative of the level of probing intensity I've come to expect from both of these amazing musicians. Hope some recordings of this new incarnation surface sometime soon.
From there I simply wander a while. Dazed and confused is an understatement. I want to lie down in the middle of 6th street and just stare at the stars, but the fear of being trampled to death by a few hundred scantily clad females in what have to be incredibly uncomfortable high heels prevents me from doing so.
Somehow I eventually end up over at Scoot Inn on 4th for the end of the Load showcase and White Mice's night closing set. How to describe White Mice? Well they're very Providence, and all the members seem to be reared on early thrash, hardcore and brain-scrambling nowave. One's wearing a Bathory shirt. When they perform they wear these incredible mouse costumes, each with its own unique defining characteristic. My favorite is the drummer with his skinned mouse head, all grizzled and pink with a shock of white hair shooting out the top like a mohawk--fucking cool. Oh yeah and those bulging eyeballs. This sight combined with the massive bass drum he sits behind (thing had to be over 4 ft tall) makes for one of the more memorable images I've seen the whole week. My cam battery is dead at this point, so just trust me on this. Their set is a brutal/violent barrage of bass/drums thrash bludgeon with screaming oscillations slicing through the downtuned sludge like chinese throwing stars. A group of young and highly mobile mosh devils procedes to flail about, smack into each other, break beer bottles on the ground and beam proudly the whole time. Interesting. I keep my distance. All in all it's too fucking much for my old-hippie-fart ass to stand for too long, but I guess I can see the appeal for them younguns. I feel old.
After that I drop by Shawn McMillan's house for his latenight party and see many of the folks I'd seen live in various constollations in the previous four days hanging out and chit-chattering. And whaddayaknow there's Thurston Moore (who I didn't see perform once during the whole fest--shame on me) hanging out and digging the vibe too. He plants himself on the floor about three feet from the Rahdunes, running through another one of its serene deep space voyages. It's a nice sort of mid-volume come down with some rhythmic turbulence towards the finale. Love it. Thurston looks impressed. And let me just say here and now Aaron Coyes is a really cool guy and a consummate gentleman. He builds all of Rahdunes instruments from scratch and is certainly one of the great practicioners of the analog-aural-mind-cleanse working today. Long may you roam, brother.
Well that's about it. I apologize for the immense length of this post, probably should've split it up into parts. It's a madhouse down at SXSW and I'd not be surprised if I just lay low the next few years. I missed tons, i mean TONS of great stuff but still felt I managed my time well enough and got the most bang for my buck. I also bought a shitload of records, but that's a different story.
Also, sometime during this chaotic period I managed to see a stripped down Radar Brothers instore performance at End of an Ear and two songs (including "You're Going to Miss Me") by Roky Erickson and the Explosives along with guest guitarist Billy Gibbons. Thanks to M. Chamey, N. Hill, N. Mann and everyone else who made this rambling indulgence possible and my SXSW experience a lot more fun. Thus concludes my ranting and raving summation of four days in the whirlwind. Until next time. To quote the great one, "That'll be the day..."
Thursday, March 20, 2008
This morning I had a dream about Kurt Cobain. Not really sure what it meant, but I remember my dreams so rarely these days that when I do remember them I convince myself that they're really important. Even if they're not. In this particular dream Cobain appeared to be acting in a film about, not necessarily himself, but someone like himself. I remember seeing him playing on a stage rocking hard, but I don't know what the music sounded like and there was hardly anyone there watching. It was in a big white room like a gymnasium. Bit of a time-lapse followed soon after, and I'm calling up a massive stairwell after a friend, not Kurt. I ask a question but never get an answer. I think I remember the question but I won't type it here now. I awoke some seconds later to the memory of Cobain dead in that little room over that garage along with a tinge of sadness. Sappy fool I am.
And yesterday Sir Arthur C. Clark stepped through the stargate for the last time. He was 90, and apparently suffered a great deal of physical pain over the last 50 years or so, so cheers to you old great one for making it this far. I can honestly say no author has more deeply influenced my view of the world and the universe...
From the AP:
Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90
By RAVI NESSMAN – 1 day ago
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.
Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.
Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.
"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."
From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.
Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.
When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."
In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: "2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."
Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.
Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.
Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.
It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.
In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.
But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications — an idea whose time had decidedly not come.
Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.
Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.
He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef. He discovered that scuba-diving approximated the feeling of weightlessness that astronauts experience in space, and he remained a diving enthusiast, running his own scuba venture into old age.
"I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.
Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.
At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka's raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.
"One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."
And yesterday Sir Arthur C. Clark stepped through the stargate for the last time. He was 90, and apparently suffered a great deal of physical pain over the last 50 years or so, so cheers to you old great one for making it this far. I can honestly say no author has more deeply influenced my view of the world and the universe...
From the AP:
Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90
By RAVI NESSMAN – 1 day ago
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.
Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.
Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.
"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."
From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.
Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.
When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."
In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: "2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."
Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.
Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.
Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.
It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.
In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.
But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications — an idea whose time had decidedly not come.
Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.
Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.
He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef. He discovered that scuba-diving approximated the feeling of weightlessness that astronauts experience in space, and he remained a diving enthusiast, running his own scuba venture into old age.
"I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.
Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.
At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka's raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.
"One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Roy Scheider died last week! And ho do I find out? Randomly on the fifth page of the Arts and Entertainment section in a tiny little blurb. He was 75. Most memorable performance? Going to get predictable and go with Jaws ("Smile, you son of a bitch!"), but then can't forget his disturbed turn as the ultimate bad vibe company man, Dr. Benway in Naked Lunch. And then there's Blue Thunder, which has the distinction of being better than its TV rip-off, Airwolf, the last film to feature Malcolm McDowell in a decent role, and Warren Oates' last film altogether. You youngens just don't know how cool American cinema was up to the early 80s.
As I focus on other activities this year, I hope to post some reviews here regularly, and if time/motivation permits, assemble a few more Bones From the Garden pieces for Deep Water. Otherwise, I wont be contributing any reviews or articles to other publications for a while. You can also expect the occasional random live show review, festival announcement, or useless rant here...and I hope nothing more about Britney Spears at all. It's weird. Lately I've been having these bizarre mental lapses where I think for a few seconds that I am Britney Spears. Very scary stuff. Damn tabloid subliminal suggestion.
Four albums (two of which were mentioned recently in this blog), all possibly more amazing than originally surmised:
Om Pilgrimage (Southern Lord) - Ti's true, Hakius is out, which makes me a lucky pup since I got to see these down tempo trance sludge masters in Ft. Worth some months back. Funny thing is I remember feeling privileged that they stretched out "At Giza" a good 8 mins past the original album length, only to read THIS and find that they recently played a five hour set in THE HOLY LAND! Whoa... Kinda what Om's all about. Nice interview there btw. Al Cisneros actually reveals some personal stuff that helps further illuminate the Unitive Knowledge of Om's Godhead. Sure the music is more of the same on this Steve Albini engineered behemoth, but then again that's the point. It's all just different parts of the same song. I love Cisneros's insistence on letting the music speak for itself. Esoteric, deeply spiritual, meditative, moody, bombastic... At least half this album is quiet with hypnotic bass vibrations coiling through a psychedelic headspace that's at once heavy and weightless. Otherwise great, crisp sound, wonderful dark moods and crushing doom fury are the order of the day. Cisneros says that the journey will continue with a new drummer towards The Shrinebuilder, and there's also a live album drawn from the aforementioned Jerusalem gig on the way. Been digging on some sweet live Om boots lately, including 4/29/06 at the Knitting Factory, so I expect total monolithic greatness on all fronts in the future.
The Terminals Last Days of the Sun (Last Visible Dog) - Can I get an AMEN for LVD's Chris Moon and his fetish for all things weird and kiwi? Don't get much weirder than this NZ superunit, but then weirdness doesn't get much more beautiful either. The Terminals are a band that seems terminally (excuse) obsessed with the dark side. Theirs is the kind of subject matter that most of us are supposed to outgrow at some point, but none of us really ever do. We simply ignore it. Such are the demands of sanity. Well The Terminals wont have any of that, but they still understand that need for maturation, settling down and finding beauty in the grimness. Last Days of the Sun is the melancholic glance at that single cataclysmic event that will eventually extinguish all. Enough philosophical mumbojumbo. It's also a deep, hypnotic trek through vintage psychedelic garage transcendence. There's dark magic in the swaying melodies of opener "Vertigo," a masterpiece of building tension that starts with plaintive rhythm guitar and Peter Cogle's subdued voice as distant organ joins with Brian Crook's slide guitar, and when Crook and Cogle come together for the chorus--holy shit! One of the most astonishing moments on anything released in '07, but then one could say I'm biased up the yin-yang in such opinions. Add to this the pile-driving Velvets drone of "Undertow," the moody fuzz wash of the title track, the trademark post punk throb of Peter Stapleton's singular percussion and some genuinely accessible melodies and you've discovered the missing link between early (read as classic) Roxy Music and the brooding fuzz squalls of Sonic Youth, and it's all quite special and addictive. P.S. Anyone heard that new Rendorizers disc on Last Visible Dog? Listening now, mind is melting. Incredible.
Magik Markers Boss (Ecstatic Peace) - I've always been fascinated by the abrasive clang this guys-n-gal trio conjures, but I think this album is the first MM release that I really enjoy listening to at the same time. Who know Elisa Ambrogio had a thing for Joni Mitchell as much as early Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch? Thankfully, this turn towards actual songcraft leaves none of the 'Markers' penchant for gut-wrenching/brain-squealing rhythmic dissonance behind. If anything, the melodies and lyrics found herein are lent that much more grim weight via the detuned distorted backdrop, all brilliantly propelled by Peter Nolan's ever present backbeat. Just wrap your ears around grooving opener "Axis Mundi," the writhing jaggedness of "Last of the Lemach Line" (with a hellacious vocal from Ambrogio) and "Four/The Ballad of Harry Angstrom," an altogether more spectral slice of piano and distortion drift, and I think you will agree. This is compelling stuff that doesn't just suck the listener in on a sonic/physical level but also digs deeper, burrowing into the recesses of the mind, dislodging existential rot and setting it ablaze in celebratory bonfires. Boss, indeed.
Charalambides Likeness (Kranky) - It's a testament to this unclassifiable duo's resilience that it can still pull me in after all these years. I've had Likeness since the end of last year but didn't really hear it till just recently. It feels like Tom and Christina Carter have come full circle in a way, as much of this is fairly accessible and rocking in a more conventional way, that is if early classics like Historic 6th Ward can be considered conventional, and given the more outer minimal workouts Charalambides dropped in the early '00s, I think that's a fair statement. Some of these songs are definitive to my ears, perfect examples of why this group's performances have left such an indelible impression on the heart/mind/soul for over 15 years. The sad piano and wah-wah drift of "Uncloudy Day," the layered vocals and wandering blues guitars of "Do You Sea" are good enough, but it's later tracks like "The Good Life" and "Saddle Up the Pony," both anchored on little more than Christina's vocal (delivering some of the most direct lyrics I've ever heard on a Charalabides record yet) and repetitious blues raga. "Saddle Up the Pony" in particular is really a stunning jam that I have no doubt will go down in history as the definitive Charalambides ode to alienation. "What You Do For Money" achieves a similar eeriness in its depiction of the moral decay that can come with selling out. Christina sings the title as a mantra in a high restless pitch, mournful guitar slides and drones beneath providing a subtext that describes the kind of wounds that will never heal. All in all deeply moving, contemplative stuff. This may not be the best Charalambides album. For that seek out Market Square (via download cuz you won't find it any other way) or Joy Shapes (also on Kranky), but Likeness is a solid introduction, truly worthy to fans new and old.
As I focus on other activities this year, I hope to post some reviews here regularly, and if time/motivation permits, assemble a few more Bones From the Garden pieces for Deep Water. Otherwise, I wont be contributing any reviews or articles to other publications for a while. You can also expect the occasional random live show review, festival announcement, or useless rant here...and I hope nothing more about Britney Spears at all. It's weird. Lately I've been having these bizarre mental lapses where I think for a few seconds that I am Britney Spears. Very scary stuff. Damn tabloid subliminal suggestion.
Four albums (two of which were mentioned recently in this blog), all possibly more amazing than originally surmised:
Om Pilgrimage (Southern Lord) - Ti's true, Hakius is out, which makes me a lucky pup since I got to see these down tempo trance sludge masters in Ft. Worth some months back. Funny thing is I remember feeling privileged that they stretched out "At Giza" a good 8 mins past the original album length, only to read THIS and find that they recently played a five hour set in THE HOLY LAND! Whoa... Kinda what Om's all about. Nice interview there btw. Al Cisneros actually reveals some personal stuff that helps further illuminate the Unitive Knowledge of Om's Godhead. Sure the music is more of the same on this Steve Albini engineered behemoth, but then again that's the point. It's all just different parts of the same song. I love Cisneros's insistence on letting the music speak for itself. Esoteric, deeply spiritual, meditative, moody, bombastic... At least half this album is quiet with hypnotic bass vibrations coiling through a psychedelic headspace that's at once heavy and weightless. Otherwise great, crisp sound, wonderful dark moods and crushing doom fury are the order of the day. Cisneros says that the journey will continue with a new drummer towards The Shrinebuilder, and there's also a live album drawn from the aforementioned Jerusalem gig on the way. Been digging on some sweet live Om boots lately, including 4/29/06 at the Knitting Factory, so I expect total monolithic greatness on all fronts in the future.
The Terminals Last Days of the Sun (Last Visible Dog) - Can I get an AMEN for LVD's Chris Moon and his fetish for all things weird and kiwi? Don't get much weirder than this NZ superunit, but then weirdness doesn't get much more beautiful either. The Terminals are a band that seems terminally (excuse) obsessed with the dark side. Theirs is the kind of subject matter that most of us are supposed to outgrow at some point, but none of us really ever do. We simply ignore it. Such are the demands of sanity. Well The Terminals wont have any of that, but they still understand that need for maturation, settling down and finding beauty in the grimness. Last Days of the Sun is the melancholic glance at that single cataclysmic event that will eventually extinguish all. Enough philosophical mumbojumbo. It's also a deep, hypnotic trek through vintage psychedelic garage transcendence. There's dark magic in the swaying melodies of opener "Vertigo," a masterpiece of building tension that starts with plaintive rhythm guitar and Peter Cogle's subdued voice as distant organ joins with Brian Crook's slide guitar, and when Crook and Cogle come together for the chorus--holy shit! One of the most astonishing moments on anything released in '07, but then one could say I'm biased up the yin-yang in such opinions. Add to this the pile-driving Velvets drone of "Undertow," the moody fuzz wash of the title track, the trademark post punk throb of Peter Stapleton's singular percussion and some genuinely accessible melodies and you've discovered the missing link between early (read as classic) Roxy Music and the brooding fuzz squalls of Sonic Youth, and it's all quite special and addictive. P.S. Anyone heard that new Rendorizers disc on Last Visible Dog? Listening now, mind is melting. Incredible.
Magik Markers Boss (Ecstatic Peace) - I've always been fascinated by the abrasive clang this guys-n-gal trio conjures, but I think this album is the first MM release that I really enjoy listening to at the same time. Who know Elisa Ambrogio had a thing for Joni Mitchell as much as early Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch? Thankfully, this turn towards actual songcraft leaves none of the 'Markers' penchant for gut-wrenching/brain-squealing rhythmic dissonance behind. If anything, the melodies and lyrics found herein are lent that much more grim weight via the detuned distorted backdrop, all brilliantly propelled by Peter Nolan's ever present backbeat. Just wrap your ears around grooving opener "Axis Mundi," the writhing jaggedness of "Last of the Lemach Line" (with a hellacious vocal from Ambrogio) and "Four/The Ballad of Harry Angstrom," an altogether more spectral slice of piano and distortion drift, and I think you will agree. This is compelling stuff that doesn't just suck the listener in on a sonic/physical level but also digs deeper, burrowing into the recesses of the mind, dislodging existential rot and setting it ablaze in celebratory bonfires. Boss, indeed. 
Charalambides Likeness (Kranky) - It's a testament to this unclassifiable duo's resilience that it can still pull me in after all these years. I've had Likeness since the end of last year but didn't really hear it till just recently. It feels like Tom and Christina Carter have come full circle in a way, as much of this is fairly accessible and rocking in a more conventional way, that is if early classics like Historic 6th Ward can be considered conventional, and given the more outer minimal workouts Charalambides dropped in the early '00s, I think that's a fair statement. Some of these songs are definitive to my ears, perfect examples of why this group's performances have left such an indelible impression on the heart/mind/soul for over 15 years. The sad piano and wah-wah drift of "Uncloudy Day," the layered vocals and wandering blues guitars of "Do You Sea" are good enough, but it's later tracks like "The Good Life" and "Saddle Up the Pony," both anchored on little more than Christina's vocal (delivering some of the most direct lyrics I've ever heard on a Charalabides record yet) and repetitious blues raga. "Saddle Up the Pony" in particular is really a stunning jam that I have no doubt will go down in history as the definitive Charalambides ode to alienation. "What You Do For Money" achieves a similar eeriness in its depiction of the moral decay that can come with selling out. Christina sings the title as a mantra in a high restless pitch, mournful guitar slides and drones beneath providing a subtext that describes the kind of wounds that will never heal. All in all deeply moving, contemplative stuff. This may not be the best Charalambides album. For that seek out Market Square (via download cuz you won't find it any other way) or Joy Shapes (also on Kranky), but Likeness is a solid introduction, truly worthy to fans new and old.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Kraftwerk performing their landmark "Ruckzuck" for WDR TV in 1970:
Even better, baby Kraftwerk aka The Organisation, which was actually a bigger ensemble and earlier, more ethno-cosmically infused version of the electro pioneers, performing the same song. Tribalicious: Thanks to Travis for pointing these out.
Even better, baby Kraftwerk aka The Organisation, which was actually a bigger ensemble and earlier, more ethno-cosmically infused version of the electro pioneers, performing the same song. Tribalicious: Thanks to Travis for pointing these out.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
BEST OF 07 BABY! 27 IN 07!! ONE SCORE AND SEVEN ALBUMS THAT MADE LIFE A BIT MORE WEIRD, CREEPY, BEAUTIFUL AND/OR COOL IN 2007:
1. NEIL YOUNG LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST (REPRISE) - I'm a sucker for the jams. Massey Hall kicks ass too.
2. PANTALEIMON MERCY OCEANS (DURTRO/JNANA) - Ghost spirit of love enraptured by the sweetest folk songs of hope and faith.
3. ANGELS OF LIGHT WE ARE HIM (YOUNG GOD) - Post-punk barnyard stomp for the heavey-hearted and open-minded.
4. BORIS WITH MICHIO KURIHARA RAINBOW (DRAG CITY) - Cosmic distortion rebirth as exploding comets and cascading snowflakes. Acid rock for the tender hearts.
5. THE ONE ENSEMBLE WAYWARD THE FOURTH (SECRET EYE) - Chamber prog from valued contributers to the English psych underground, sounds like Robert Wyatt gone Klezmer on Saturn.
6. HALA STRANA HEAVE THE GAMBREL ROOF (MUSIC FELLOWSHIP) - A fog of stringed ethnic drones conjuring old world spirit music for children of a new country with no borders.
7. THEO ANGELL AND THE HILLSIDE TABERNACLE SINGERS AUROPLINTH (DIGITALIS) - Mind-blowing cracked acid folk from Theo of Hall of Fame; debut of the year.
8. SIR RICHARD BISHOP POLYTHEISTIC FRAGMENTS (DRAG CITY) - Many gods, many frets, many notes, many paths to enlightenment -- one guitar.
9. DIANE ROGERSON THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NO-ONES HOME (UNITED JNANA) - Post apocalyptic industrial jazz dirge; from beyond the grave, Nico sits in for a one-off recording session with Nurse With Wound. Grim, harrowing and beautiful.
10. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE SHELTER FROM THE ASH (DRAG CITY) - Quiet songs of loss and heartache, splattered guitar squalls and cycling noise mantras. A Collision of styles, inspirations, possibilities and sounds. High, low and in between.
11. SUISHOU NO FUNE THE SHINING STAR (IMPORTANT) - The dark PSF psych sound recast as shimmering shoegaze cosmic bliss. The Live Band To See In 2007.
12. THE TERMINALS LAST DAYS OF THE SUN (Last Visible Dog) - Crazy/freaky depressive psychgarage-artpop quagmire groans and howls, melting beneath a dying sun. That world tour better be soon!
13. SIC ALPS PLEASURES AND TREASURES (ANIMAL DISGUISE) - Stoned to the effin bone. This whiskey soaked racket makes me remember the thrills experienced the first time I mashed up The Flaming Lips Oh My Gawwwd! with the J.A.M.C.'s Psychocandy.
14. GROUP DOUEH GUITAR MUSIC FROM THE WESTERN SAHARA (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) - Blistering afro-syke power jams from alternate continent/dimension riding the line between annoying as fuck and mindblowing as shit.
15. KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT (FONAL) - Sputtering massed acoustic/electric sound baths and actual songs that enthrall like a pinball machine played in the middle of a misty Finnish forest while blazing on DMT.
16. SAPAT MORTISE AND TENON (SILTBREEZE) - Building prog drone, art rock, slop blues played by American hillbilly potsmoking hot shots that dig Beefheart just as much as Trad Gras Och Stenar.
17. MV/EE AND THE BUMMER ROAD GREEN BLUES(ECSTATIC PEACE) The Road branches off into mountain wilderness and happens upon a campfire surrounded by Phish heads; hears the disembodied voice of Jerry Garcia intone, "where's the noise?" Here it is.
18. MARISSA NADLER SONGS III: BIRD ON THE WATER (PEACEFROG) - Our lady of the manor gets help from some Espers, signs to a bigger label, gets airplay on MTV, in the process suggests a lost dream collaboration between a young Leonard Cohen and Mazzy Starr. Plus cool acid solos.
19. MAMMATUS THE COAST EXPLODES (HOLY MOUNTAIN) - Psychedelic biker prog from Seattle rocks with epic and ferocious twin guitar precision. I'm only calling it prog because the songs are so damn long.
20. WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM TWO HUNTERS (SOUTHERN LORD) Post rocking shoegaze neo-pagans cash in on nordic black metal craze, deliver one of the most convincing usbm albums yet, probably because it's more than one or two guys and a drum machine making all that racket.
21. WOODEN SHJIPS WOODEN SHJIPS (HOLY MOUNTAIN) - Finally it's hip to be cool again. Jim Morrison lives and he's playing crazy fuzz splattered psychedelia with this fierce San Fran Kraut-boogie unit.
22. BLUES CONTROL/HEAVY WINGED BORED FORTRESS SPLIT (NOT NOT FUN) - Post-nature-reclemation-bubble-drone backed with crushing-cosmic-biker-death or vice versa.
23. MAGIC MARKERS BOSS (Ecstatic Peace) - Elisa and the boys go pop and the world is all the better for it. I guess this is the EVOL of the oughts or some shit. Pretty friggin' hot.
24. DARKTHRONE F.O.A.D. (FUCK OFF AND DIE) (Peaceville) -Best thing these idiots have released in well over a decade.
25. CLOUDLAND CANYON SILVER TONGUED SYSPHUS (KRANKY) - Cosmic splatter honed down to precise electronic space jams that draw heavily from Kraut and French prog roots.
26. GHQ CRYSTAL HEALING (THREE LOBED) - Destroyed deep space American ethnic blues drone music, primordial and ecstatic.
27. VALET BLOOD IS CLEAN (KRANKY) - I wish Honey Owens was my vibe partner. Charlambides and Grouper fans need this.
Caveat: One of the benefits of making multiple year-end best of lists is you can instantly revise from list to list. So there are things here that wont appear in the Deep Water piece and vice versa. Bring on '08 and its many splendors. OH SHIT! I really meant to include Mudboy's Holy Ghosts! (Digitalis/Not Not Fun) in this list and White Rainbow's Prism of Eternal Now (Kranky) too for that matter.
1. NEIL YOUNG LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST (REPRISE) - I'm a sucker for the jams. Massey Hall kicks ass too.
2. PANTALEIMON MERCY OCEANS (DURTRO/JNANA) - Ghost spirit of love enraptured by the sweetest folk songs of hope and faith.
3. ANGELS OF LIGHT WE ARE HIM (YOUNG GOD) - Post-punk barnyard stomp for the heavey-hearted and open-minded.
4. BORIS WITH MICHIO KURIHARA RAINBOW (DRAG CITY) - Cosmic distortion rebirth as exploding comets and cascading snowflakes. Acid rock for the tender hearts.
5. THE ONE ENSEMBLE WAYWARD THE FOURTH (SECRET EYE) - Chamber prog from valued contributers to the English psych underground, sounds like Robert Wyatt gone Klezmer on Saturn.
6. HALA STRANA HEAVE THE GAMBREL ROOF (MUSIC FELLOWSHIP) - A fog of stringed ethnic drones conjuring old world spirit music for children of a new country with no borders.
7. THEO ANGELL AND THE HILLSIDE TABERNACLE SINGERS AUROPLINTH (DIGITALIS) - Mind-blowing cracked acid folk from Theo of Hall of Fame; debut of the year.
8. SIR RICHARD BISHOP POLYTHEISTIC FRAGMENTS (DRAG CITY) - Many gods, many frets, many notes, many paths to enlightenment -- one guitar.
9. DIANE ROGERSON THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NO-ONES HOME (UNITED JNANA) - Post apocalyptic industrial jazz dirge; from beyond the grave, Nico sits in for a one-off recording session with Nurse With Wound. Grim, harrowing and beautiful.
10. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE SHELTER FROM THE ASH (DRAG CITY) - Quiet songs of loss and heartache, splattered guitar squalls and cycling noise mantras. A Collision of styles, inspirations, possibilities and sounds. High, low and in between.
11. SUISHOU NO FUNE THE SHINING STAR (IMPORTANT) - The dark PSF psych sound recast as shimmering shoegaze cosmic bliss. The Live Band To See In 2007.
12. THE TERMINALS LAST DAYS OF THE SUN (Last Visible Dog) - Crazy/freaky depressive psychgarage-artpop quagmire groans and howls, melting beneath a dying sun. That world tour better be soon!
13. SIC ALPS PLEASURES AND TREASURES (ANIMAL DISGUISE) - Stoned to the effin bone. This whiskey soaked racket makes me remember the thrills experienced the first time I mashed up The Flaming Lips Oh My Gawwwd! with the J.A.M.C.'s Psychocandy.
14. GROUP DOUEH GUITAR MUSIC FROM THE WESTERN SAHARA (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) - Blistering afro-syke power jams from alternate continent/dimension riding the line between annoying as fuck and mindblowing as shit.
15. KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT (FONAL) - Sputtering massed acoustic/electric sound baths and actual songs that enthrall like a pinball machine played in the middle of a misty Finnish forest while blazing on DMT.
16. SAPAT MORTISE AND TENON (SILTBREEZE) - Building prog drone, art rock, slop blues played by American hillbilly potsmoking hot shots that dig Beefheart just as much as Trad Gras Och Stenar.
17. MV/EE AND THE BUMMER ROAD GREEN BLUES(ECSTATIC PEACE) The Road branches off into mountain wilderness and happens upon a campfire surrounded by Phish heads; hears the disembodied voice of Jerry Garcia intone, "where's the noise?" Here it is.
18. MARISSA NADLER SONGS III: BIRD ON THE WATER (PEACEFROG) - Our lady of the manor gets help from some Espers, signs to a bigger label, gets airplay on MTV, in the process suggests a lost dream collaboration between a young Leonard Cohen and Mazzy Starr. Plus cool acid solos.
19. MAMMATUS THE COAST EXPLODES (HOLY MOUNTAIN) - Psychedelic biker prog from Seattle rocks with epic and ferocious twin guitar precision. I'm only calling it prog because the songs are so damn long.
20. WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM TWO HUNTERS (SOUTHERN LORD) Post rocking shoegaze neo-pagans cash in on nordic black metal craze, deliver one of the most convincing usbm albums yet, probably because it's more than one or two guys and a drum machine making all that racket.
21. WOODEN SHJIPS WOODEN SHJIPS (HOLY MOUNTAIN) - Finally it's hip to be cool again. Jim Morrison lives and he's playing crazy fuzz splattered psychedelia with this fierce San Fran Kraut-boogie unit.
22. BLUES CONTROL/HEAVY WINGED BORED FORTRESS SPLIT (NOT NOT FUN) - Post-nature-reclemation-bubble-drone backed with crushing-cosmic-biker-death or vice versa.
23. MAGIC MARKERS BOSS (Ecstatic Peace) - Elisa and the boys go pop and the world is all the better for it. I guess this is the EVOL of the oughts or some shit. Pretty friggin' hot.
24. DARKTHRONE F.O.A.D. (FUCK OFF AND DIE) (Peaceville) -Best thing these idiots have released in well over a decade.
25. CLOUDLAND CANYON SILVER TONGUED SYSPHUS (KRANKY) - Cosmic splatter honed down to precise electronic space jams that draw heavily from Kraut and French prog roots.
26. GHQ CRYSTAL HEALING (THREE LOBED) - Destroyed deep space American ethnic blues drone music, primordial and ecstatic.
27. VALET BLOOD IS CLEAN (KRANKY) - I wish Honey Owens was my vibe partner. Charlambides and Grouper fans need this.
Caveat: One of the benefits of making multiple year-end best of lists is you can instantly revise from list to list. So there are things here that wont appear in the Deep Water piece and vice versa. Bring on '08 and its many splendors. OH SHIT! I really meant to include Mudboy's Holy Ghosts! (Digitalis/Not Not Fun) in this list and White Rainbow's Prism of Eternal Now (Kranky) too for that matter.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Just a quick note here...and naysayers be damned. This is a bangin' lineup with more to be added soon:
The Terrastock 7 Music Festival is a 4- day event coming to Louisville (Kentucky, USA) June 19-22 2008 celebrating and sharing the experience of Psychedelic Rock, Folk, and Experimental Music.
Start planning now! Early Bird Tickets will be on sale soon.
Volunteers Needed....please contact Erica@terrascope.co.uk.
Who's Playing 2008 so far:
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno featuring Pikachu (Japan)
Rob Sharples (UK)
Ignatz (Belgium)
MV & EE
Grails
Plastic Crimewave Sound
Antietam
Tanakh
Bevis Frond (UK)
Wooden Shjips
Insect Factory
Dead Maids (formerly Monster Bastard Project , UK)
United Bible Studies (Ireland)
Linus Pauling Quartet with special guests
Motorpsycho (Norway)
The Photographic
Marissa Nadler
Mono (Japan)
Sharron Kraus (UK)
Bardo Pond
Pelt
Major Stars
Windy and Carl
Kinski
Paik
Jack Rose
Tara Jane O'Neil
Damon and Naomi
Black Forest/Black Sea
Sapat
The Terrastock 7 Music Festival is a 4- day event coming to Louisville (Kentucky, USA) June 19-22 2008 celebrating and sharing the experience of Psychedelic Rock, Folk, and Experimental Music.
Start planning now! Early Bird Tickets will be on sale soon.
Volunteers Needed....please contact Erica@terrascope.co.uk.
Who's Playing 2008 so far:
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno featuring Pikachu (Japan)
Rob Sharples (UK)
Ignatz (Belgium)
MV & EE
Grails
Plastic Crimewave Sound
Antietam
Tanakh
Bevis Frond (UK)
Wooden Shjips
Insect Factory
Dead Maids (formerly Monster Bastard Project , UK)
United Bible Studies (Ireland)
Linus Pauling Quartet with special guests
Motorpsycho (Norway)
The Photographic
Marissa Nadler
Mono (Japan)
Sharron Kraus (UK)
Bardo Pond
Pelt
Major Stars
Windy and Carl
Kinski
Paik
Jack Rose
Tara Jane O'Neil
Damon and Naomi
Black Forest/Black Sea
Sapat
Friday, January 18, 2008
Had a grand ol' time the other night at The Cavern and got to catch up with our old compadre Ben Chasny of the dependably kickass Six Organs of Admittance, plus two fine supporting performances by the slightly Neutral Milk Hotel-ish Dust Congress and the Zoviet*France-gone-wacky-on-datura Zanzibar Snails.
Dust Congress currently features the great Ryan Williams of The Baptist Generals and live Jandek fame on mariachi bass, which I must say injected some class into the proceedings. His measured notes provided a warm, steady bedrock over which Nick Foreman spun lyrically rich paintings via guitar and voice, accented brilliantly by marimbas and solemn trumpet. Altogether, the quartet opened up the sparse DC sound into a fully functional pub unit while still maintaining the scrappy appeal of Foreman's earlier solo live incarnation. Very promising stuff perhaps best suited for dark drinking spaces more so than the open air. Perfect for The Cavern.
Same goes for creeping aural lurch of The Zanzibar Snails. Dark spaces, please. Playing as a quartet along with local tone generator Mike Maxwell sitting in, The Snails delivered to a well tuned and devoted audience choice servings of their oblique guitar strums 'n' plucks, pulsating electronics, bowed cymbals, radio and tape noise. Their half hour (or so) set went from a melodic slow-burning crawl to jerking post industrial blurts and massed drones, Morse code bleeps and more densely throbbing passages. I was reminded of Nurse With Wound and even the great This Heat at their groaning ambient best. Managed to record a few minutes of video on my cheapo digicam, the best parts of which can be glimpsed here:
A few hours before the show Ben Chasny played a solo set next door at Good Records,and it was a real beauty with a super attentive (meaning quiet!) audience and great low level Xmas lighting. My first instore at the new(ish) location, but surely not the last.
Unfortunately Ben's approach for the first half of his set later that night was not really the best fit for The Cavern's low stage. Aside from the first row and because the whole place was mostly standing room only, it was impossible to see much of anything at all. He was also unplugged, so couldn't hear much at all above the constant chatter and bottle clanking background noise. But the second half of the set, with Elisa from Magik Markers (who contributes to the progedelic Shelter From the Ash and just released a kickass album with her own band called Boss on Ecstatic Piece that showcases a welcome nod to songcraft while maintaining every bit of the raw nowave grime of earlier works) on second guitar, was more like it. Together they played ragged electric duo versions of some old and newer stuff, given an extra garagy quality that worked well to counter the constant bar-noise barrage surrounding us. Had a great time catching up a bit with Ben, getting to know Elisa and their merch guy, Jesse. I think that instore made up for any misgivings I may have had about the actual gig. All in all a thoroughly memorable night complete with some fine music scores including a SMOKING new Basalt Fingers CD-R and a recent Badgerlore album. And other stuff that may/may not find its way into these pages at a later date.
You can go here to see some really badly recorded Six Organs clips by yrs truly complete with horrible sound. Or you can check out Nari's superior captures from the next night in Austin right here (the opening of that second clip sounds really Fahey!):
That's it for now my bruthas and sistas. Best of 07 list imminent.
Dust Congress currently features the great Ryan Williams of The Baptist Generals and live Jandek fame on mariachi bass, which I must say injected some class into the proceedings. His measured notes provided a warm, steady bedrock over which Nick Foreman spun lyrically rich paintings via guitar and voice, accented brilliantly by marimbas and solemn trumpet. Altogether, the quartet opened up the sparse DC sound into a fully functional pub unit while still maintaining the scrappy appeal of Foreman's earlier solo live incarnation. Very promising stuff perhaps best suited for dark drinking spaces more so than the open air. Perfect for The Cavern. Same goes for creeping aural lurch of The Zanzibar Snails. Dark spaces, please. Playing as a quartet along with local tone generator Mike Maxwell sitting in, The Snails delivered to a well tuned and devoted audience choice servings of their oblique guitar strums 'n' plucks, pulsating electronics, bowed cymbals, radio and tape noise. Their half hour (or so) set went from a melodic slow-burning crawl to jerking post industrial blurts and massed drones, Morse code bleeps and more densely throbbing passages. I was reminded of Nurse With Wound and even the great This Heat at their groaning ambient best. Managed to record a few minutes of video on my cheapo digicam, the best parts of which can be glimpsed here:
A few hours before the show Ben Chasny played a solo set next door at Good Records,and it was a real beauty with a super attentive (meaning quiet!) audience and great low level Xmas lighting. My first instore at the new(ish) location, but surely not the last.
Unfortunately Ben's approach for the first half of his set later that night was not really the best fit for The Cavern's low stage. Aside from the first row and because the whole place was mostly standing room only, it was impossible to see much of anything at all. He was also unplugged, so couldn't hear much at all above the constant chatter and bottle clanking background noise. But the second half of the set, with Elisa from Magik Markers (who contributes to the progedelic Shelter From the Ash and just released a kickass album with her own band called Boss on Ecstatic Piece that showcases a welcome nod to songcraft while maintaining every bit of the raw nowave grime of earlier works) on second guitar, was more like it. Together they played ragged electric duo versions of some old and newer stuff, given an extra garagy quality that worked well to counter the constant bar-noise barrage surrounding us. Had a great time catching up a bit with Ben, getting to know Elisa and their merch guy, Jesse. I think that instore made up for any misgivings I may have had about the actual gig. All in all a thoroughly memorable night complete with some fine music scores including a SMOKING new Basalt Fingers CD-R and a recent Badgerlore album. And other stuff that may/may not find its way into these pages at a later date.
You can go here to see some really badly recorded Six Organs clips by yrs truly complete with horrible sound. Or you can check out Nari's superior captures from the next night in Austin right here (the opening of that second clip sounds really Fahey!):
That's it for now my bruthas and sistas. Best of 07 list imminent.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
So uh...do you ever just browse profiles at last.fm and pretend to fall in love with people based solely on their scrobble lists? Pretty nutty.
Hi kids. Happy '08 and all that good stuff. It's kind of an exciting time to be alive right now. Try and remember that. I've actually started writing a few posts in the last month or two and inevitably abandoned them. Less of my nonsensical pop culture ramblings seem as important as they once did, to the rest of the world anyway. I know a few people out there appreciate what Ol' Bull has to say, so I will keep saying it. Promise. Anyway I've missed some fine shows lately because of a slow healing ankle sprain, but it's almost 100% me thinks. And there's a quite a bit to see on the horizon...
Briefly, Movies: The proverbial horny virgin in me quite liked (and identified with) Superbad, but my older, more jaded self was more amazed by the quiet, tortured expanses of No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James. Both are modern revisionist Westerns of sorts -- one more weighted towards the crime thriller perspective, the other a historical bio piece. I especially dug the examination of celebrity in TAoJJ, going from the age of nickle books into the encroaching 20th century multimedia whirlwind. These are definitely two of my faves of what I actually saw in '07. Same goes for Inland Empire and even Once, the little Irish musical that could. No no one gets shot in Once. No one gets laid. No one gets paid (though they probably should've). Kinda refreshing.
Aside from the ongoing tragedy that is the life of Britney Spears, another excellent satirical examination of the cancers of celebrity can be glimpsed in the film length conclusion of Extras (HBO) which is of course Ricky Gervais's brilliant follow-up to The Office. Gervais does a great service for all peripheral wannabes the world over by chronicling the successes and failures of Andy Millman. This is the stuff of the highest literary ambitions masquerading as something as banal as a sit-com (which is apt given Andy's big break comes via a braindead catchphrase-driven Brit sit-com). It's actually 80 mins long and has a moral arc that's worthy of Charlies Dickens. But I'm not really here to get all literary on your ass. Just see it for yourself one day. This blog is supposed to be about music, a good bulk of it gifts of goodwill from friends, far and near over the year. Twas the season! Next post will be a slightly delayed list of faves'n'raves in '07. Which means it'll probably hit these pages sometime in early '09.
First up: Our old friends at the always dependable Deep Water compound have rolled out another fresh bowl of some truly worthwhile sonic debris that together comprises some of the label's finest releases to date. Flying Sutra is a duo of drums and guitar that walks the swaying line between tasteful jazz fusion and total chaos in a way that could evoke comparisons to plenty more popular acts on the Levitate and Dissolve CD-R, but I wont cheapen this blissful tornado with any name-dropping and just say this is a seriously able-bodied brainscrambler that rocks hard as heck, but in a completely unconventional -- yet still well rehearsed -- way. These guys actually know how to play their instruments, and that's always a good thing.
Another band it's been a great pleasure to hear in recent moons is Oklahoma's Anvil Salute, whose This is the Voice of Doom Calling is the ensemble's first DW platter (CD-R in fact), and I'm going to agree that this is the finest Anvil Salute dish to date, fitting easily with the current free folk/improvised scene while injecting a healthy dose of traditional warmth every second of the way, which makes sense for a bunch'a freaks from Oklahoma. Highly recommended for fans of The Bummer Road, United Bible Studies, Jackie-O Motherfucker and the like. Arriving some time before and just as welcome from AS is the All The Animals of the Forest (Lofi Shit) CD-R, which is a slightly more progressive take on the above, and has an almost bouncing, festive quality in a way that makes me think of a busy forest floor bathed in sunlight and running over with all manner of scurrying little furry things.
A heavenly blissout can be found on the split CD-R between Scottish one woman post psych project Pefkin (that's Gail Brogan from the revered Electroscope and Boa Melody Bar mailorder) and The Circle and the Point, the duo of Grant Capes and Adam Richards. Pefkin's side is taken up by one extended minimal pop droneout, creeping along on clinking music box melodies and ghost harmonica (or is that an e-bow? Harmonium?). Maybe all of the above. Serious zoneout bedroom shoegaze here, folks. My friend sitting beside me just asked, "dude, are you zoning out?" and, indeed I was. Must continue typing. The Circle and the Point mines a similar ore with wandering acoustic guitars/vocals over desolate drones and ambient noises that go from stumbling broken folk jams to full on void scapes and back again, all captured in crumbling live fidelity. Very melty indeed.
Also in the same package was the 3" cd-r debut by Nessmuk (this one's actually on Abandon Ship Records but can be ordered straight from Kevin at DW), the solo guitar sculpting guise of DW head honch Kevin Moist, heard recently with The Clear Spots and Bardo off-shoot Third Troll, and currently weaving aaural magic with the ever luminous Evening Fires. If you've heard any of his other output, you might have an inkling of what to expect with the lovely trance journeys of Flies Free--cycling electric guitar mantras building and subsiding like a gentler Sonic Youth, but minus the bloat of any lowend or vocals and plus some very fine/tasty/disjointed leads mixed in for good measure.
Another righteous 3" CD-R recently bequeathed to your Wombmaster is the mighty Zanzibar Snails' dark moods and trembling dissonances of Krakkatowiak(available on their own Mayyrh Records). AMM and the cryptic improvisation of Dead C circa their self-titled 2CD on Language comes to mind, as well as the early days of industrial before everything got so damn synthetic sounding. The Dead C comparison is fitting given the (apparently accidentally) identical use of the same designer paper that the mighty Kiwi noise trio used for the packaging of the aforementioned opus. I dig those happy coincedences. The 'Snails will be creeping/crawling their way through what's sure to be a groaner of a set, with guest twiddling from Subkommander/S.D.S noise guru M. Maxwell, sharing a bill with Dust Congress and the always amazing Six Organs of Admittance at The Cavern in Dallas next week, and I will be there. Sweet.
Hi kids. Happy '08 and all that good stuff. It's kind of an exciting time to be alive right now. Try and remember that. I've actually started writing a few posts in the last month or two and inevitably abandoned them. Less of my nonsensical pop culture ramblings seem as important as they once did, to the rest of the world anyway. I know a few people out there appreciate what Ol' Bull has to say, so I will keep saying it. Promise. Anyway I've missed some fine shows lately because of a slow healing ankle sprain, but it's almost 100% me thinks. And there's a quite a bit to see on the horizon...
Briefly, Movies: The proverbial horny virgin in me quite liked (and identified with) Superbad, but my older, more jaded self was more amazed by the quiet, tortured expanses of No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James. Both are modern revisionist Westerns of sorts -- one more weighted towards the crime thriller perspective, the other a historical bio piece. I especially dug the examination of celebrity in TAoJJ, going from the age of nickle books into the encroaching 20th century multimedia whirlwind. These are definitely two of my faves of what I actually saw in '07. Same goes for Inland Empire and even Once, the little Irish musical that could. No no one gets shot in Once. No one gets laid. No one gets paid (though they probably should've). Kinda refreshing.
Aside from the ongoing tragedy that is the life of Britney Spears, another excellent satirical examination of the cancers of celebrity can be glimpsed in the film length conclusion of Extras (HBO) which is of course Ricky Gervais's brilliant follow-up to The Office. Gervais does a great service for all peripheral wannabes the world over by chronicling the successes and failures of Andy Millman. This is the stuff of the highest literary ambitions masquerading as something as banal as a sit-com (which is apt given Andy's big break comes via a braindead catchphrase-driven Brit sit-com). It's actually 80 mins long and has a moral arc that's worthy of Charlies Dickens. But I'm not really here to get all literary on your ass. Just see it for yourself one day. This blog is supposed to be about music, a good bulk of it gifts of goodwill from friends, far and near over the year. Twas the season! Next post will be a slightly delayed list of faves'n'raves in '07. Which means it'll probably hit these pages sometime in early '09.
First up: Our old friends at the always dependable Deep Water compound have rolled out another fresh bowl of some truly worthwhile sonic debris that together comprises some of the label's finest releases to date. Flying Sutra is a duo of drums and guitar that walks the swaying line between tasteful jazz fusion and total chaos in a way that could evoke comparisons to plenty more popular acts on the Levitate and Dissolve CD-R, but I wont cheapen this blissful tornado with any name-dropping and just say this is a seriously able-bodied brainscrambler that rocks hard as heck, but in a completely unconventional -- yet still well rehearsed -- way. These guys actually know how to play their instruments, and that's always a good thing.
Another band it's been a great pleasure to hear in recent moons is Oklahoma's Anvil Salute, whose This is the Voice of Doom Calling is the ensemble's first DW platter (CD-R in fact), and I'm going to agree that this is the finest Anvil Salute dish to date, fitting easily with the current free folk/improvised scene while injecting a healthy dose of traditional warmth every second of the way, which makes sense for a bunch'a freaks from Oklahoma. Highly recommended for fans of The Bummer Road, United Bible Studies, Jackie-O Motherfucker and the like. Arriving some time before and just as welcome from AS is the All The Animals of the Forest (Lofi Shit) CD-R, which is a slightly more progressive take on the above, and has an almost bouncing, festive quality in a way that makes me think of a busy forest floor bathed in sunlight and running over with all manner of scurrying little furry things.
A heavenly blissout can be found on the split CD-R between Scottish one woman post psych project Pefkin (that's Gail Brogan from the revered Electroscope and Boa Melody Bar mailorder) and The Circle and the Point, the duo of Grant Capes and Adam Richards. Pefkin's side is taken up by one extended minimal pop droneout, creeping along on clinking music box melodies and ghost harmonica (or is that an e-bow? Harmonium?). Maybe all of the above. Serious zoneout bedroom shoegaze here, folks. My friend sitting beside me just asked, "dude, are you zoning out?" and, indeed I was. Must continue typing. The Circle and the Point mines a similar ore with wandering acoustic guitars/vocals over desolate drones and ambient noises that go from stumbling broken folk jams to full on void scapes and back again, all captured in crumbling live fidelity. Very melty indeed.
Also in the same package was the 3" cd-r debut by Nessmuk (this one's actually on Abandon Ship Records but can be ordered straight from Kevin at DW), the solo guitar sculpting guise of DW head honch Kevin Moist, heard recently with The Clear Spots and Bardo off-shoot Third Troll, and currently weaving aaural magic with the ever luminous Evening Fires. If you've heard any of his other output, you might have an inkling of what to expect with the lovely trance journeys of Flies Free--cycling electric guitar mantras building and subsiding like a gentler Sonic Youth, but minus the bloat of any lowend or vocals and plus some very fine/tasty/disjointed leads mixed in for good measure.
Another righteous 3" CD-R recently bequeathed to your Wombmaster is the mighty Zanzibar Snails' dark moods and trembling dissonances of Krakkatowiak(available on their own Mayyrh Records). AMM and the cryptic improvisation of Dead C circa their self-titled 2CD on Language comes to mind, as well as the early days of industrial before everything got so damn synthetic sounding. The Dead C comparison is fitting given the (apparently accidentally) identical use of the same designer paper that the mighty Kiwi noise trio used for the packaging of the aforementioned opus. I dig those happy coincedences. The 'Snails will be creeping/crawling their way through what's sure to be a groaner of a set, with guest twiddling from Subkommander/S.D.S noise guru M. Maxwell, sharing a bill with Dust Congress and the always amazing Six Organs of Admittance at The Cavern in Dallas next week, and I will be there. Sweet.
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