Another all encompassing round up starting with something a little older that I've been revisiting lately. Where'd You Learn to Kiss That Way (Shinkansen) is arguably the ultimate compilation and round up of the Sarah scene, although The Field Mice are just one band in it. They are probably THE band, not to mention the label's flagship. This 2 CD set is an incredible anthology that shows how almost all of the great English post punk genres converged in a bouquet of shimmering pop brilliance in The Field Mice's capable hands during the end of the 80s. There's plenty of jangly bobs, shoegazey coos, sad folky awws, graceful Love flavored psychedelia and more potent soundstorms in gem after gem of populescence, all undiminished by time. Speaking of such silliness, ye shan't find a more populescent record than What We Did On Our Holidays (Hannibal) by the magnificent Fairport Convention. They're also probably a strong influence on the above. This second effort, first with Sandy Denny, is a respected masterpiece to many, but I actually only heard it for the first time about three days ago, believe it or not, on a long, traffic and haze strewn drive home from a job. And it is indeed a rare thing to find yourself seemingly lost in such urban chaos and still feeling somehow blessed. Won't find better hamonies, better folk, better rock, pop, guitar/bass/drums interplay or production than this in 1968 (or any other year). While on the subject of majestic pop mastery, finally got around to snagging the lush reissue of one of my very favorites of the bunch; the arrival of Echo and the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain (Rhino) from 1984 is cause for much celebration. The MOST literate, ornate psych rock record of the era. Fantastic guitar work, amazing vocals, fucking righteous hippie-dippy bonus tracks. Better than the Cure because they [Echo] wanted to be the Doors instead of Wire.
First forward to modern day and From the Cube by Liquid Visions, a German prog/psych record released by Germany's Funfundvierzig, who've put out some good shit by folks like Marble Sheep, Escapade and Acid Mothers recently. Vocals sort of rub the wrong way, but the instrumentation is a pretty right on mix of Bevis Frond acid guitar mayhem and at least one blatant rip-off of early Monster Magnet, truly a good thing. Terrascope readers would probably dig this, but they'd probably dig Earthbound (Virgin) by King Crimson more. Recently grabbed the 30th anniversary reissue of this notorious stinker, and must say, holy friggin' cow! KC has become one of my favorite heavy prog groups over the last few years, and I have no doubt they're the best. It's music that touches the crushing doom of other Goliaths of the era ( Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep), but fires in a healthy does of Hendrix's jazz/noise explosiveness and more, always taking it further thanks largely to Bob Fripp's uncompromising experimentation and his goddamned guitar. The heaviness of this recording far surpasses any of the studio albums from the era, not that every one of them didn't have their fair share of throbbing riffage. It wasn't till classics like Larks' Tongues in Aspic and Red that the production mirrored the ferocity of the monster's performance. Earthbound chronicles a couple shows from the 72 US tour that preceded the breakup of what was then the second and longest lasting lineup of the first phase of the group, and as expected it makes for an especially sloppy, blustery performance, and that's actually a good thing. Opener "20th Century Schizoid Man" shoots out the lights and sets the place on fire with a performance that completely dwarfs the original. The drums are a thunderous, primal low-end assault over which Fripp, Collins (sax) and Burrel (bass) unleash grimy noise hell for a good 11 minutes or so. This is the KC album for High Rise fans.
Switchin' gears yet again, a Coelacanth is that strange looking primordial marine beast sometimes referred to as the "living fossil" fish. It has little stubby legs, predates the dinosaurs, and it's still rockin the foggy depths today. Coelacanth is also a phenomenal newish ambient duo featuring Loren Chase of Thuja and Jim Haynes. Mud Wall (Helen Scarsdale), their third CD to date, is a fine example of eco-drone, literally, with recordings of pebbles, fossils, rocks and natural formations processed via homemade electronics, fitting the end results loosely in the industrial drone realms of Mirror and even William basinski, but this is a tad more primitive, and custom-made for serious headphones consumption. Beautiful, really. Fennesz's Venice (Touch) is actually a bit more subdued than the last couple albums I heard from the Austrian (including the excellent The Return of Fenn O'Burg with Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg). This is a quiet soundbath of skittering ticks and crackling distortion splashes, a perfectly moody headphone dream station of gentle, bubbling wave formations and subtle electronics. Favorite track is still the one with David Sylvian, which is about as close to Scott Walker covering MBV as one is going to get.
Amps for Christ's The People At Large (5RC) is a fine slice of primitive acid folk, traditionals and fuzzy garage noise that any fan of the new weird America thing can dig on, and it further solidifies my theory that the best folk music today is being made by stoned punk rockers. PG Six's debut solo album, Parlour Tricks and Porch Favorites (Amish) will be heralded as a classic by people in 30 years just as I herald the Band's debut album today, and with baited breath I've awaited the arrival of followup The Well of Memory (Amish), which is simply an incredibly elevated folk swathed tone dream. Absolutely haunting, crisp folk rock that doesn't really rock all that much and has plenty of experimental noise interludes (hello Tower Recordings!), gorgeous psych production, and will appeal to fans of classic brit folk (Fairport included) and Krautrock too. It's a worthy followup.
Love the U-Sound Archive. The label owned and operated by the folks behind Jackie-O Motherfucker has released key live documents by folks like Sunroof, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Double Leopards and Tan As Fuck, who I know little about, but this s/t live album is fucking amazing post Throbbing Gristle free jazz/noise/psych whatever that goes from quivering drones to screeching atonal wails with lots of in between weirdness, and recording quality is actually pretty good. Ominous to the max! Even more ominous and difficult is the limited Missing LP by Control Workshop, which I've had trouble getting all the way through, but the opening number, a barrage of trad folk instruments bowed and squiggled to infinity, sure sounds cool. The rest is more of that "difficult jazz" stuff that suggests New Zealand free noisers like Flies Inside the Sun and Rain, only not necessarily as accomplished. More love streams course from the fertile well spring of William Hooker's Complexity #2 (KOS Recordings), a live recording from 2000 which features the incomparable drummer, one Eyvind Kang, my favorite all around weirdo (his solo recordings on violin are highly recommended for fans of expansive, dreamy soundscapes) on electric violin, Doug Walker on synth and D.J. Olive on turntables in a controlled storm of blurry dissonance, fuzz washes, electronic pulses and off-kilter percussive crashes. It's sort of like being on the northeast coast, watching the morning tide wash away the detrital afterbirth of the new day as the quartet mimics the moans of deep sea life-forms and the strangled sounds of a gigantic cosmic mop being wrung dry.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Been dealing with them mid to late summer blues lately. Maybe it's the arrival of the anniversary of my birth that got's my mind slowly turning to rot. Sometimes, "Paint it Black" is more like a vacuum than a song. I haven't been to a concert in like a month...
...AND I've been listening to the Legendary Pink Dots again--"this music makes me want to kill myself" said a friend on the way home from a baseball game the other night. But I think The Whispering Wall (ROIR) is actually the first LPD album in over a decade that's proven almost entirely listenable from start to end. I know they're second tier goth/industrial/psych/whatnot, right? There's something about this stuff that wants to be despised, and I'm more than willing to do the despising. The saccharine synth lines, cheesy sax work, plodding disco beats, Ed Ka Spel's Syd Barrett acid-damaged mimicry (though he's certainly dope-fucked in his own right). It's Amsterdam in sound: cool architecture, good sex, bad drugs, goofy poetry, hash bars, red lights glowing against wet pavement. The Whispering Wall has an all around air of detached sadness that makes it all quite right by the time the last two tracks come around: "The Divide," an extended industrial/noise workout with spoken word that somehow echoes the annoying chatter in my mind to spooky effect, and three part album closer "Sunken Pleasure/Rising Pleasure/No Walls, No Strings," one of the best LPD songs ever, starting with Ed's sad pop croon over plaintive piano, guitar and ethereal drones, before fading in a quivering wall of ambient bliss and arriving at the kind of sonic rendezvous that wouldn't be out of place on a Piano Magic album. Not a bad thing at all...
...but nothing's gonna make me gush rainbows like the Jarr CD-R self-released by Zukonicon. This ensemble makes an unusual, free-flowing sound poetry that's formless at times, with nothing more than reverb drenched sax and minimal drones shimmering in the distance, but it's tightly wound at its rhythmic core when it needs to be with some mind-cleansing grooves that demand bodily reflex. Reference points: the jazzier krautrock spectrum, more recent free-psych ensembles like Sunburned Hand of the Man and Tan As Fuck...
...And thanks to Ms. Cello Sea for sending me the new reissue of Tuatara: A Flying Nun Compilation on, you guessed it, Flying Nun. This is one of the BEST post-punk comps of all time, drawn largely form the early/mid 80s, when any hippie punk will tell you the Flying Nun repeatedly shat aural gold. Definitive tracks from the Clean, Gordons, Verlaines, Tall Dwarfs, Bats and the Chills reveal the genesis of indiepop, and mixed with lesser known, but no lesser thrilling cohorts such as the dub-post punk hybrid of Fetus Productions, the obvious, but still incredibly powerful, Joy Division-inspired moves of Children's Hour, and holy shit! Marie and the Atom are playing creepy chamber pop/psych punk a good 15 years before it was, like, cool. Also really nice to see Scorched Earth Policy included, since they share members with some of the best (and my favorite) dark bands to ever come out of the "scene" (such as Renderers and the Terminals)...
...FOLK CLANG seems like an oxymoron, but anyone whose spent some time in the chilly woods of the Dead Raven Choir can tell you that it's real, and it's scary stuff too. Japan's Shuji Inaba sounds sort of like a cross between Smolken of DRC and the legendary Kan Mikami, who has been releasing arty, resonant jazz/folk/blues records on PSF that date back to the 70s. Inaba is not as established don't think, but as the Haino-esque title of his new live album on Last Visible Dog suggests--The Rapture of Being Destroyed is the Flipside of Destruction--this man roams some coarse aural terrain. His percussive style on acoustic guitar is forceful and raw, beneath lyrics delivered from a whisper to a venomous growl in a voice that cuts through layer after layer of the "shit we call life" in a deeply felt effort to make it bleed. On the subject of LVD, MCMS's MCMS: 1997-2000 is a fine example of homemade pysch clatter and space rockgod worship that probably deserves a better review than the one David Keenan gave it in last month's Wire, which may have been biased by Matt Silcock's suggestion in the liner notes that MCMS's first attempt at studio production was, "like the first Nurse With Wound album, only better." BUT GUESS WHAT! It's not even included in this collection, so I can't decide for myself. As Mr. Keenan suggests, maybe these albums are all just an elaborate ruse, a piss-take on the sanctity of "trash art" that's drawn more from a desire to do than a need to create, but then isn't that why Chance Meeting was recorded in the first place? There's more to this than amateurish avant-aping, and if I can dig PYLON, I can certainly dig this broke down collection of primitive noise, minimalism and stoned folk ramblings. Speaking of Pylon, Not Cobras is a reissue of the Finnish duo's earlier recordings that sounds equally ramshackle and a tad more inspired. These guys can take a stick, a paint can, cheap organ and recycled, beer soaked audio tape and reinvent Faust in under 2 minutes. Crude "free industrial" is the call of the day. More bands should try to be Throbbing Gristle...or Les Rallizes Denudes for that matter, which seems about what LSD-March is going for on their recent LVD album, Suddenly Like Flames. These young lads will appeal to Rallizes, White Heaven fans and other melancholy fuzz punk rockers, and that should be enough to sell it. No where else but the Japanese psych underground yields such volatile, gentle melodic sway with grimy garage grit bleeding through every pore--the scorched fuzz blast of guitar on "After the Storm" is ample proof. Not the best fidelity, but that's definitely part of the appeal for anyone who likes his brain matter flame-broiled...
...Speaking of shit gettin hot, Merzbow has released more albums than I've shot cumloads. Masami Akito is busier in his recording studio with collaborations and remixes than porn star extraordinaire Ron Jeremy on a viagra binge at the Bunnyranch. I had to hunt down the 2CD reissue of Frog (Misanthropic Agenda) after being previously amazed by the 2CD remix comp drawn from the same album (with contributions from Sunn0))), Fennesz, Russell Haswell, Pimmon, Boris, etc), and I may still like that better, but the source material sports some mighty killer power rhythms and screeching metallic hiss storms. This is a dense noise collage that ranges from samples of the titular croaks to other noises, loops of field recordings processed on laptop, degraded, regenerated, slice, diced, and refabricated as crushing industrial hammer rhythms and atonal drill screams. It's a ride, and definitely more than just noise for noise's sake, but there's plenty of that too...
...Speaking of which, finally got my latest order from Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, and its new doom/no wave subsidiary Battlecruiser, and me hath found the motherload of destroyed aural death on the 3" CD-R Waste, courtesy of the stoned march into the void that is Wardagger. Influences here are all that is black and tortured, including Sleep and Boris at their absolutedroneevil best, one 20 min track of perma-frost riff/glitch doom that reaches the expected catharsis by the time grim reaper vocals from hell come howling from the speakers. SuicideXwatchXcore! Wings of Vengeance on the other hand make me think of Naked City and other John Zorn related exploded jazz-punk on their Miseryguts 3" CD-R. Short, choppy bursts of aural angst with all the visceral lunges and grinding scrapes of a dumptruck barreling down the side of a rock quarry; also reminds me of the amazing video for New York group Unsane's "Scrape"--a montage of skaters wiping out and racking their nuts repeatedly. Wolfskull, on the other hand, a cryptic improv sludge beast supposedly related to the wonderfully fried Futurians and Armpit, is more primitive on the Black Hole Rose 3". Self described doom/no wave makes sense as this not surprisingly has a sort of turpentine soaked creature of the night vibe, like a stoned Skullflower covering "I wanna Be Your Dog" badly before the grime soaked monster trips and knocks over archaic stabbing utensils and and unleashes all manner of back-masked noise doom into the dark night. Mr. Psi even gets Dead Raven Choir to plug in and turn in his own blast of death fuzz folk for Battlecruiser. And when I say fuzz, I'm talking Flying Saucer Attack worthy distortion squalls, but what KICKS ASS about this absurd monument to mayhem is the source material--covers by Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt of all people--all delivered in Smolken's trademark gutteral black metal growl. Sturmfuckinglieder HAS to be heard to be believed. Back to CPP: With Sosina Arada Mica, Reynols sounds like they've somehow trained a swarm of bees to perform rhythm to Miguel Tomasin's vocal caterwaul. It's very hard to explain how this trio captivates the adventurous listener with each and every dissonant flush of the cosmic commode, but they do just that, and the end result is really quite unlike anything else in the noise/psych spectum. A good way in, or out. Finally comes something from the equally confounding Simon Wickam-Smith, who sometimes makes processed minimal noise, free industrial clatter and, such as on the Two4Dancin CD, endless trance techno/sample/noise hybrids that can make lovely portals for time travel. It's tempting to dismiss Wickam-Smith as a bit of a one trick pony here, since his basic rhythm loop has little variation, though the ethnic chants do get run through an interesting digital grinder over the steady hip-hop beat before more intense mind-warping variations are explored deeper into the seemingly endless mix. Any number of fascinating extracts can be heard in this cosmic discotheque, but at 73 mins, with no track-breaks, he's pushin' it.
...AND I've been listening to the Legendary Pink Dots again--"this music makes me want to kill myself" said a friend on the way home from a baseball game the other night. But I think The Whispering Wall (ROIR) is actually the first LPD album in over a decade that's proven almost entirely listenable from start to end. I know they're second tier goth/industrial/psych/whatnot, right? There's something about this stuff that wants to be despised, and I'm more than willing to do the despising. The saccharine synth lines, cheesy sax work, plodding disco beats, Ed Ka Spel's Syd Barrett acid-damaged mimicry (though he's certainly dope-fucked in his own right). It's Amsterdam in sound: cool architecture, good sex, bad drugs, goofy poetry, hash bars, red lights glowing against wet pavement. The Whispering Wall has an all around air of detached sadness that makes it all quite right by the time the last two tracks come around: "The Divide," an extended industrial/noise workout with spoken word that somehow echoes the annoying chatter in my mind to spooky effect, and three part album closer "Sunken Pleasure/Rising Pleasure/No Walls, No Strings," one of the best LPD songs ever, starting with Ed's sad pop croon over plaintive piano, guitar and ethereal drones, before fading in a quivering wall of ambient bliss and arriving at the kind of sonic rendezvous that wouldn't be out of place on a Piano Magic album. Not a bad thing at all...
...but nothing's gonna make me gush rainbows like the Jarr CD-R self-released by Zukonicon. This ensemble makes an unusual, free-flowing sound poetry that's formless at times, with nothing more than reverb drenched sax and minimal drones shimmering in the distance, but it's tightly wound at its rhythmic core when it needs to be with some mind-cleansing grooves that demand bodily reflex. Reference points: the jazzier krautrock spectrum, more recent free-psych ensembles like Sunburned Hand of the Man and Tan As Fuck...
...And thanks to Ms. Cello Sea for sending me the new reissue of Tuatara: A Flying Nun Compilation on, you guessed it, Flying Nun. This is one of the BEST post-punk comps of all time, drawn largely form the early/mid 80s, when any hippie punk will tell you the Flying Nun repeatedly shat aural gold. Definitive tracks from the Clean, Gordons, Verlaines, Tall Dwarfs, Bats and the Chills reveal the genesis of indiepop, and mixed with lesser known, but no lesser thrilling cohorts such as the dub-post punk hybrid of Fetus Productions, the obvious, but still incredibly powerful, Joy Division-inspired moves of Children's Hour, and holy shit! Marie and the Atom are playing creepy chamber pop/psych punk a good 15 years before it was, like, cool. Also really nice to see Scorched Earth Policy included, since they share members with some of the best (and my favorite) dark bands to ever come out of the "scene" (such as Renderers and the Terminals)...
...FOLK CLANG seems like an oxymoron, but anyone whose spent some time in the chilly woods of the Dead Raven Choir can tell you that it's real, and it's scary stuff too. Japan's Shuji Inaba sounds sort of like a cross between Smolken of DRC and the legendary Kan Mikami, who has been releasing arty, resonant jazz/folk/blues records on PSF that date back to the 70s. Inaba is not as established don't think, but as the Haino-esque title of his new live album on Last Visible Dog suggests--The Rapture of Being Destroyed is the Flipside of Destruction--this man roams some coarse aural terrain. His percussive style on acoustic guitar is forceful and raw, beneath lyrics delivered from a whisper to a venomous growl in a voice that cuts through layer after layer of the "shit we call life" in a deeply felt effort to make it bleed. On the subject of LVD, MCMS's MCMS: 1997-2000 is a fine example of homemade pysch clatter and space rockgod worship that probably deserves a better review than the one David Keenan gave it in last month's Wire, which may have been biased by Matt Silcock's suggestion in the liner notes that MCMS's first attempt at studio production was, "like the first Nurse With Wound album, only better." BUT GUESS WHAT! It's not even included in this collection, so I can't decide for myself. As Mr. Keenan suggests, maybe these albums are all just an elaborate ruse, a piss-take on the sanctity of "trash art" that's drawn more from a desire to do than a need to create, but then isn't that why Chance Meeting was recorded in the first place? There's more to this than amateurish avant-aping, and if I can dig PYLON, I can certainly dig this broke down collection of primitive noise, minimalism and stoned folk ramblings. Speaking of Pylon, Not Cobras is a reissue of the Finnish duo's earlier recordings that sounds equally ramshackle and a tad more inspired. These guys can take a stick, a paint can, cheap organ and recycled, beer soaked audio tape and reinvent Faust in under 2 minutes. Crude "free industrial" is the call of the day. More bands should try to be Throbbing Gristle...or Les Rallizes Denudes for that matter, which seems about what LSD-March is going for on their recent LVD album, Suddenly Like Flames. These young lads will appeal to Rallizes, White Heaven fans and other melancholy fuzz punk rockers, and that should be enough to sell it. No where else but the Japanese psych underground yields such volatile, gentle melodic sway with grimy garage grit bleeding through every pore--the scorched fuzz blast of guitar on "After the Storm" is ample proof. Not the best fidelity, but that's definitely part of the appeal for anyone who likes his brain matter flame-broiled...
...Speaking of shit gettin hot, Merzbow has released more albums than I've shot cumloads. Masami Akito is busier in his recording studio with collaborations and remixes than porn star extraordinaire Ron Jeremy on a viagra binge at the Bunnyranch. I had to hunt down the 2CD reissue of Frog (Misanthropic Agenda) after being previously amazed by the 2CD remix comp drawn from the same album (with contributions from Sunn0))), Fennesz, Russell Haswell, Pimmon, Boris, etc), and I may still like that better, but the source material sports some mighty killer power rhythms and screeching metallic hiss storms. This is a dense noise collage that ranges from samples of the titular croaks to other noises, loops of field recordings processed on laptop, degraded, regenerated, slice, diced, and refabricated as crushing industrial hammer rhythms and atonal drill screams. It's a ride, and definitely more than just noise for noise's sake, but there's plenty of that too...
...Speaking of which, finally got my latest order from Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, and its new doom/no wave subsidiary Battlecruiser, and me hath found the motherload of destroyed aural death on the 3" CD-R Waste, courtesy of the stoned march into the void that is Wardagger. Influences here are all that is black and tortured, including Sleep and Boris at their absolutedroneevil best, one 20 min track of perma-frost riff/glitch doom that reaches the expected catharsis by the time grim reaper vocals from hell come howling from the speakers. SuicideXwatchXcore! Wings of Vengeance on the other hand make me think of Naked City and other John Zorn related exploded jazz-punk on their Miseryguts 3" CD-R. Short, choppy bursts of aural angst with all the visceral lunges and grinding scrapes of a dumptruck barreling down the side of a rock quarry; also reminds me of the amazing video for New York group Unsane's "Scrape"--a montage of skaters wiping out and racking their nuts repeatedly. Wolfskull, on the other hand, a cryptic improv sludge beast supposedly related to the wonderfully fried Futurians and Armpit, is more primitive on the Black Hole Rose 3". Self described doom/no wave makes sense as this not surprisingly has a sort of turpentine soaked creature of the night vibe, like a stoned Skullflower covering "I wanna Be Your Dog" badly before the grime soaked monster trips and knocks over archaic stabbing utensils and and unleashes all manner of back-masked noise doom into the dark night. Mr. Psi even gets Dead Raven Choir to plug in and turn in his own blast of death fuzz folk for Battlecruiser. And when I say fuzz, I'm talking Flying Saucer Attack worthy distortion squalls, but what KICKS ASS about this absurd monument to mayhem is the source material--covers by Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt of all people--all delivered in Smolken's trademark gutteral black metal growl. Sturmfuckinglieder HAS to be heard to be believed. Back to CPP: With Sosina Arada Mica, Reynols sounds like they've somehow trained a swarm of bees to perform rhythm to Miguel Tomasin's vocal caterwaul. It's very hard to explain how this trio captivates the adventurous listener with each and every dissonant flush of the cosmic commode, but they do just that, and the end result is really quite unlike anything else in the noise/psych spectum. A good way in, or out. Finally comes something from the equally confounding Simon Wickam-Smith, who sometimes makes processed minimal noise, free industrial clatter and, such as on the Two4Dancin CD, endless trance techno/sample/noise hybrids that can make lovely portals for time travel. It's tempting to dismiss Wickam-Smith as a bit of a one trick pony here, since his basic rhythm loop has little variation, though the ethnic chants do get run through an interesting digital grinder over the steady hip-hop beat before more intense mind-warping variations are explored deeper into the seemingly endless mix. Any number of fascinating extracts can be heard in this cosmic discotheque, but at 73 mins, with no track-breaks, he's pushin' it.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Where have I been lately? Ah, yes, 'round and 'round. "Hectic summer daze"? Many packages and promo things, age old back-orders etc have hit my box in the last week or two, so I will make a jumbled post about some of that crap very soon. For now, here's a review of two new recent Kitchen Cynics albums that will be published in next issue of the Ptolemaic Terrascope, posted here mainly because this is a great lil one man folk-pop dream factory that more people who like that sortathing might want to investigate:
Kitchen Cynics Parallel Dog Days (Secret Eye)
Kitchen Cynics Compulsive Songwriting Disorder (Audiobot Limited)
You could never accuse Aberdeen, Scotland’s Alan Davidson of sleeping at the wheel. Yawning, perhaps—cocking his head sideways, maybe—but the lad is ever vigilant in negotiating the detritus of failed love affairs and faded memories with the enchanted aural confections he performs as the Kitchen Cynics. I first heard the ‘Cynics do a version of Tom Rapp’s “Stardancer” on the first For the Dead in Space tribute album years ago now, and was instantly, effortlessly transported to another world. Davidson’s reserved, literate Scottish accent perfectly captures the ethereality of Rapp’s haunting original, with subtle use of fuzz and effects beneath delicate fingerpicking, serving as the perfect aural springboard to your favorite secret garden. Needless to say, it made an indelible impression. Ever since I’d approached the music of the ‘Cynics with a curious awe, something whispered about and asked for in dusty record shops to no avail, before I finally tracked Davidson down via email and arranged a fruitful transaction.
Sporting one of the more memorable titles in the recent history, Parallel Dog Days is one of two new Kitchen Cynics’ releases making the rounds, this time courtesy of the same people responsible for the Tom Rapp tribute albums, For the Dead in Space Vol.’s 1-3, Secret Eye (formerly Magic Eye)—all highly recommended for the discriminating psych folk fan. Parallel is the first ‘Cynics album to be released on American shores to date, but let’s hope not the last (the excellent singles comp Seasonings is screaming for a larger pressing as I type). In Davidson’s own words, the album title refers to his earlier, wilder days: “I used to frequent a local pub where a guy would always bring in his dog, and, instead of standing at right-angles to the bar, it stood parallel, often causing the regulars to fall over it when they stepped backwards. I admired its refusal to change its ways!” There isn’t a better metaphor for the poignant determination that marks this recorded legacy. For the uninitiated, this is the perfect way into Davidson’s sleepy folk dream world. Melodic acoustic guitars sketch vivid images with delicate brush strokes, creating a bevel for nostalgic recollections of youthful indiscretions and drunken date-swappings. Each of these twenty songs offers an assured, slightly post punk/lo-fi version of folk pop with bits of cheap synthesizer, muffled percussion and cortex-tickling distortion fleshing out the typically austere approach. But ultimately it’s that hushed delivery and a credible, often hilarious, insider’s perspective on the ins and outs of these characters that makes this such a worthy treat. The hypnotic longing and slighted jealousy of “The Place You Hid,” the medieval recollections of “At Villa E.107 (Eileen Gray Reflects),” the Nick Drake by way of Donovan memories of “North of Balmedie, West of the Waves” and the serene folk bliss of “Tune for Tom Rapp”—a simple gesture of goodwill to one cult legend from another—are waiting to be heard late at night, a glass of cheap red wine in one hand, a dear friend nestled tightly in the other.
The aptly titled Compulsive Songwriting Disorder offers more of the same in terms of quality songwriting, but as its title suggests, this is a bit darker collection. Tracks like the spartan opener “The Tartan Shawl” and the spectral “Great-Uncle Jack’s Deathbed Dance” paint forlorn melodic swathes in a dark, overcast sky. The tender interpretation of Bridget St. John’s “Ask Me No Questions” is a sweet kiss goodnight, before the more caustic “Murph’s Song” explores nooks and crannies of melancholic longing to hypnotic effect with its haunting refrain, “we’ve come together, but we’re all alone.” Other track highlights: the sinister discontent of “Waiting for Your Mail,” the slow burning fuzz wash of “Lethargic Lover,” the extended dream of “Dialogue,” featuring a lovely harmony vocal from Cara Lewis, and “In Dunottar Woods,” with music that sounds like it’s emanating from a very old phonograph, only fitting for this sort of moody folk pop impressionism. Contact: www.secreteye.org/se and www.freaksendfuture.com for more information.
Kitchen Cynics Parallel Dog Days (Secret Eye)
Kitchen Cynics Compulsive Songwriting Disorder (Audiobot Limited)
You could never accuse Aberdeen, Scotland’s Alan Davidson of sleeping at the wheel. Yawning, perhaps—cocking his head sideways, maybe—but the lad is ever vigilant in negotiating the detritus of failed love affairs and faded memories with the enchanted aural confections he performs as the Kitchen Cynics. I first heard the ‘Cynics do a version of Tom Rapp’s “Stardancer” on the first For the Dead in Space tribute album years ago now, and was instantly, effortlessly transported to another world. Davidson’s reserved, literate Scottish accent perfectly captures the ethereality of Rapp’s haunting original, with subtle use of fuzz and effects beneath delicate fingerpicking, serving as the perfect aural springboard to your favorite secret garden. Needless to say, it made an indelible impression. Ever since I’d approached the music of the ‘Cynics with a curious awe, something whispered about and asked for in dusty record shops to no avail, before I finally tracked Davidson down via email and arranged a fruitful transaction.
Sporting one of the more memorable titles in the recent history, Parallel Dog Days is one of two new Kitchen Cynics’ releases making the rounds, this time courtesy of the same people responsible for the Tom Rapp tribute albums, For the Dead in Space Vol.’s 1-3, Secret Eye (formerly Magic Eye)—all highly recommended for the discriminating psych folk fan. Parallel is the first ‘Cynics album to be released on American shores to date, but let’s hope not the last (the excellent singles comp Seasonings is screaming for a larger pressing as I type). In Davidson’s own words, the album title refers to his earlier, wilder days: “I used to frequent a local pub where a guy would always bring in his dog, and, instead of standing at right-angles to the bar, it stood parallel, often causing the regulars to fall over it when they stepped backwards. I admired its refusal to change its ways!” There isn’t a better metaphor for the poignant determination that marks this recorded legacy. For the uninitiated, this is the perfect way into Davidson’s sleepy folk dream world. Melodic acoustic guitars sketch vivid images with delicate brush strokes, creating a bevel for nostalgic recollections of youthful indiscretions and drunken date-swappings. Each of these twenty songs offers an assured, slightly post punk/lo-fi version of folk pop with bits of cheap synthesizer, muffled percussion and cortex-tickling distortion fleshing out the typically austere approach. But ultimately it’s that hushed delivery and a credible, often hilarious, insider’s perspective on the ins and outs of these characters that makes this such a worthy treat. The hypnotic longing and slighted jealousy of “The Place You Hid,” the medieval recollections of “At Villa E.107 (Eileen Gray Reflects),” the Nick Drake by way of Donovan memories of “North of Balmedie, West of the Waves” and the serene folk bliss of “Tune for Tom Rapp”—a simple gesture of goodwill to one cult legend from another—are waiting to be heard late at night, a glass of cheap red wine in one hand, a dear friend nestled tightly in the other.
The aptly titled Compulsive Songwriting Disorder offers more of the same in terms of quality songwriting, but as its title suggests, this is a bit darker collection. Tracks like the spartan opener “The Tartan Shawl” and the spectral “Great-Uncle Jack’s Deathbed Dance” paint forlorn melodic swathes in a dark, overcast sky. The tender interpretation of Bridget St. John’s “Ask Me No Questions” is a sweet kiss goodnight, before the more caustic “Murph’s Song” explores nooks and crannies of melancholic longing to hypnotic effect with its haunting refrain, “we’ve come together, but we’re all alone.” Other track highlights: the sinister discontent of “Waiting for Your Mail,” the slow burning fuzz wash of “Lethargic Lover,” the extended dream of “Dialogue,” featuring a lovely harmony vocal from Cara Lewis, and “In Dunottar Woods,” with music that sounds like it’s emanating from a very old phonograph, only fitting for this sort of moody folk pop impressionism. Contact: www.secreteye.org/se and www.freaksendfuture.com for more information.
Monday, July 05, 2004
Independence Playlist:
1. Isis Celestial (Escape Artist) CD. This is where the drone metal behemoth comes into its own, and it's only their debut LP! Monumental tidal waves o' doom crash against the cosmic rocks in churning guitar workouts that are just as effective when reined in as they are projected on the IMAX. Incredible production, with a strong debt to Godflesh and the Melvins, but sounds fresh and even occasionally ecstatic in its own right. Kraut metal fans rejoice.
2. Pharaoh Overlord The Battle of the Axe Hammer: Live (Last Visible Dog) CD. It's good that LVD is phasing out CD-R's. Now people can get over any shoddy packaging issues and get lost in what actually matters. LVD specializes in home-made murktronica, death folk and weird live recordings from all over (mainly Japan and Finland these days). This Circle alter-ego follows on the overblown space damage of Japanese acid punks like Les Rallizes Denudes, LSD-March and even Philly's Bardo Pond: unleashing molten riff magma of the Gods with acid splattered leads raining down from a lightning streaked sky. Most of what passes for "stoner metal" these days is closer to the Osmonds next to this Jackson Five.
3. John Cale Inside the Dream Syndicate, Vol.2: Dream Interpretation(Table of the Elements) CD. Every release in this series is essential deep drone ontology. Tony Conrad and Angus Maclise are collaborators. Starts with viola and violin on the cosmic overtone wash of the title track, then teeters slowly to some organ drone before erupting again in rabid guitar/cimbalim jazz conversations on closer "Hot Scoria" before it's all through some 70 minutes later. All history lessons need be this mind-bending.
4. Coil Live Four (Loci) CD. The last in a series of live concerts designed to show the evolution of the mighty trio is the best, and even a darn fine summation of their later studio career, plus a document that reveals their live abilities circa 2002, from trance-inducing electro crawls to spiking space disco. Nice plus: a showstopping rendition of Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang," recorded a good year before megalomaniac cheesehead Quentin Tarantino makes it popular again in Kill Bill.
5. The Skygreen Leopards One Thousand Bird Ceremony (Soft Abuse) CD. A glowing nexus of folky song craft and transcendental ambient hums and drones that brings together the voices behind two of the finer solo folk based groups coming in from the wild these days, Verdure and the Bird/Ivy/Olivetree. It's a smoother, more songbased ride than most of the Jewelled Antler crew, good for the shifting late afternoon breeze, and even widely available.
6. Mission of Burma OnOffOn (Matador) CD. Post punk forefathers return from the cold and dish out a worthy, though expectedly less frenzied, followup to the genre defining Vs and still sound pretty goddamn vital in the process. Easily beats the hell out of anything the Volcano Suns ever recorded.
7. Noxagt The Iron Point (Load) LP. Compared to Lightning Bolt, but this Norwegian trio (bass/drums/violin) weaves its own grungy gothic spell. It's a sort of chamber art punk, drawn from influences as diverse as the Velvet Underground and Jesus Lizard, but much better than all that, really.
8. Bardo Pond and Tom Carter 4/23/03 (Three Lobed) CD. A Hazy afternoon of improv and Philly KB indulgence captured at the Bardo house yields your new favorite lost dream soundtrack. 4/23/03 is truly a godsend for fans of Tom Carter's unique slide-guitar work and Bardo's hallucinatory string and voice escapades. Together they yield deep chasms of opaque drone swells in elongated spirals of sonic freedom. A subdued trek through the inner mind worthy of comparisons to Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II and Tony Conrad with Faust. Holy smokes.
9. Verdure The Telescope Dream Patterns (Camera Obscura) CD. Another excellent little surprise, Verdure is Donovan Quinn, one half of the aforementioned Sky Green Leopards, but the work of Verdure is entirely his own. It's a wonderfully scrappy collection of raw, infectious folky pop. As George Parsons' eye-popping artwork suggests, the second album is an off-kilter, fractured production that might not come as a surprise to anyone who's followed Jewelled Antler related releases, but make no mistake, this is its own brand of detatched, ethereal psych folk that sounds like the lost spectral offspring of Bob Dylan and Simon Finn, and fits in nicely with a long tradition of righteous west coast folk rock.
10. Earthmonkey Audiosapien (Beta-Lactam Ring) 3LP. Along the lines of Nurse With Wound's admitted prog opus, An Awkward Pause, this is Peat Bog's band (ie him and friends), with a lot of help from Steve Stapleton, making an inspired Kraut/prog record that turns up the space jazz a few notches and even incorporates drum machines beneath a sample heavy mix, but it rocks, and it flows organically when it needs to for those who love their Xhol and Amon Duul II like I do. Bonus 12" for vinyl connoisseurs offers more spacious motorik trancescapes and a bit of an introduction by Jimmy Carl Black of the Mothers of Invention, but it's not essential like the actual album, which along with the Bardo Pond and Tom Carter CD, will probably rank as the best non Germanic krautrock records of 2004.
1. Isis Celestial (Escape Artist) CD. This is where the drone metal behemoth comes into its own, and it's only their debut LP! Monumental tidal waves o' doom crash against the cosmic rocks in churning guitar workouts that are just as effective when reined in as they are projected on the IMAX. Incredible production, with a strong debt to Godflesh and the Melvins, but sounds fresh and even occasionally ecstatic in its own right. Kraut metal fans rejoice.
2. Pharaoh Overlord The Battle of the Axe Hammer: Live (Last Visible Dog) CD. It's good that LVD is phasing out CD-R's. Now people can get over any shoddy packaging issues and get lost in what actually matters. LVD specializes in home-made murktronica, death folk and weird live recordings from all over (mainly Japan and Finland these days). This Circle alter-ego follows on the overblown space damage of Japanese acid punks like Les Rallizes Denudes, LSD-March and even Philly's Bardo Pond: unleashing molten riff magma of the Gods with acid splattered leads raining down from a lightning streaked sky. Most of what passes for "stoner metal" these days is closer to the Osmonds next to this Jackson Five.
3. John Cale Inside the Dream Syndicate, Vol.2: Dream Interpretation(Table of the Elements) CD. Every release in this series is essential deep drone ontology. Tony Conrad and Angus Maclise are collaborators. Starts with viola and violin on the cosmic overtone wash of the title track, then teeters slowly to some organ drone before erupting again in rabid guitar/cimbalim jazz conversations on closer "Hot Scoria" before it's all through some 70 minutes later. All history lessons need be this mind-bending.
4. Coil Live Four (Loci) CD. The last in a series of live concerts designed to show the evolution of the mighty trio is the best, and even a darn fine summation of their later studio career, plus a document that reveals their live abilities circa 2002, from trance-inducing electro crawls to spiking space disco. Nice plus: a showstopping rendition of Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang," recorded a good year before megalomaniac cheesehead Quentin Tarantino makes it popular again in Kill Bill.
5. The Skygreen Leopards One Thousand Bird Ceremony (Soft Abuse) CD. A glowing nexus of folky song craft and transcendental ambient hums and drones that brings together the voices behind two of the finer solo folk based groups coming in from the wild these days, Verdure and the Bird/Ivy/Olivetree. It's a smoother, more songbased ride than most of the Jewelled Antler crew, good for the shifting late afternoon breeze, and even widely available.
6. Mission of Burma OnOffOn (Matador) CD. Post punk forefathers return from the cold and dish out a worthy, though expectedly less frenzied, followup to the genre defining Vs and still sound pretty goddamn vital in the process. Easily beats the hell out of anything the Volcano Suns ever recorded.
7. Noxagt The Iron Point (Load) LP. Compared to Lightning Bolt, but this Norwegian trio (bass/drums/violin) weaves its own grungy gothic spell. It's a sort of chamber art punk, drawn from influences as diverse as the Velvet Underground and Jesus Lizard, but much better than all that, really.
8. Bardo Pond and Tom Carter 4/23/03 (Three Lobed) CD. A Hazy afternoon of improv and Philly KB indulgence captured at the Bardo house yields your new favorite lost dream soundtrack. 4/23/03 is truly a godsend for fans of Tom Carter's unique slide-guitar work and Bardo's hallucinatory string and voice escapades. Together they yield deep chasms of opaque drone swells in elongated spirals of sonic freedom. A subdued trek through the inner mind worthy of comparisons to Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II and Tony Conrad with Faust. Holy smokes.
9. Verdure The Telescope Dream Patterns (Camera Obscura) CD. Another excellent little surprise, Verdure is Donovan Quinn, one half of the aforementioned Sky Green Leopards, but the work of Verdure is entirely his own. It's a wonderfully scrappy collection of raw, infectious folky pop. As George Parsons' eye-popping artwork suggests, the second album is an off-kilter, fractured production that might not come as a surprise to anyone who's followed Jewelled Antler related releases, but make no mistake, this is its own brand of detatched, ethereal psych folk that sounds like the lost spectral offspring of Bob Dylan and Simon Finn, and fits in nicely with a long tradition of righteous west coast folk rock.
10. Earthmonkey Audiosapien (Beta-Lactam Ring) 3LP. Along the lines of Nurse With Wound's admitted prog opus, An Awkward Pause, this is Peat Bog's band (ie him and friends), with a lot of help from Steve Stapleton, making an inspired Kraut/prog record that turns up the space jazz a few notches and even incorporates drum machines beneath a sample heavy mix, but it rocks, and it flows organically when it needs to for those who love their Xhol and Amon Duul II like I do. Bonus 12" for vinyl connoisseurs offers more spacious motorik trancescapes and a bit of an introduction by Jimmy Carl Black of the Mothers of Invention, but it's not essential like the actual album, which along with the Bardo Pond and Tom Carter CD, will probably rank as the best non Germanic krautrock records of 2004.
Friday, July 02, 2004
I could'a been.......
...Great! Dr. Moreau has left the building for the last time. Probably for the better. It's always hard to watch the most brilliant of any chosen medium or field be reduced to a series of scandalous headlines, or worse yet, a living joke. It happened to Welles. It happened to MJ. It's happening to Courtney Love. ^_^
I suggest three viewings of the documentary Heart of Darkness in memoria.
...Great! Dr. Moreau has left the building for the last time. Probably for the better. It's always hard to watch the most brilliant of any chosen medium or field be reduced to a series of scandalous headlines, or worse yet, a living joke. It happened to Welles. It happened to MJ. It's happening to Courtney Love. ^_^
I suggest three viewings of the documentary Heart of Darkness in memoria.
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