We got a big opening day here with three high expectation movies hitting the big screen at the same time: Werner Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and John Hillcoat's take on Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Pretty amazing. I can't remember a more ancipated opening day tbh. Speaking of Mr. McCarthy, here is an excellent conversation with the man, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. Like myself he's not a big fan of interviews but loves good converation. Two quotes which help to illuminate the brilliance of this guy's creative soul:
CM: ...I have a great sympathy for the spiritual view of life, and I think that it's meaningful. But am I a spiritual person? I would like to be. Not that I am thinking about some afterlife that I want to go to, but just in terms of being a better person. I have friends at the Institute. They're just really bright guys who do really difficult work solving difficult problems, who say, "It's really more important to be good than it is to be smart." And I agree it is more important to be good than it is to be smart. That is all I can offer you.
CM: I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
I also want to mention A Serious Man, one of the most profound and truly oddball cultural opuses to ever emanate from The Coen brothers's creative wellspring. Finally they skewer themselves and their own unique origins, and in the process reveal a work that is at once ridiculously Jewish, overtly American and undeniably Universal in what it says about any group that has ever tried its best simply to be itself in a strange land - in this case suburban Minnesota. It's basically a gut-busting old testament freakout, and even Jefferson Airplane is a character! Rock.
This season's Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld Reunion show was among the most brilliant, hilarious, laugh out loud inducing home viewing experiences I've ever enjoyed. So many great quotes; so many wonderful surprises. Lines I'll keep with me always: "E for effort! F for favor! C for Coffee!"... "You couldn't get to him. It was a Ponzi scheme!"... "Do you respect wood?" ...and of course, "George is very upset!" Oy vey. Love it.
Off to see The Road now. Happy Thanksgiving to those who observe it!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
I'd feel remiss if I failed to mention the passing of Blue Cheer's Dickie Peterson last month. Peterson was bass-man for the incomparable trio, which was as responsible as any other when it comes to the establishment of everything from acid rock and heavy blues to the noise and heavy metal genres. On those first two albums, Vincebus Eruptum and Inside Outside, the blues obsessed boogie hounds reduced rock 'n' howl to its most primal thudding-caveman essence. Sure Led Zeppelin and some of them British boys may have been better players with louder dynamics, but it could be said none was ever as truly visceral and stupefied to the bone as The 'Cheer in their heyday back in the late '60s. No small wonder so many of my favorite British heavy guitar bands from the '70s (The High Tide, Motorhead, Uriah Heep, etc) owed Blue Cheer such a debt. And lets not forgot that the god of dark noise, Keiji Haino, has said Blue Cheer is the single biggest influence on his own amazing power trio, Fushitsusha.
This clip of "The Hunter" from '68 says it well. Godly:
I loved 2012. Really. It's a Roland Emmerich flick, so yes, it's pretty laughable. Still, I dig watching two things more than most -- John Cusack shouting at his family "LETS GO GO GO!" and California cracking in half and falling into the Pacific. I don't know if I'd say it is genuinely good, but it's probably the best thing ol' Ro's done since Independence Day. Haha. 2012. Heightened solar activity and galactic alignment. Continental displacement theory. WOOHOO! If only, baby! Never know these days. Anyway, if you want to get the overall POWER and DRAMA of said film minus the ass-numbness that comes with watching it for two and a half hours on the big screen, check out this trailer, which is the best I've seen and packs more cinematic punch in just over 2 minutes than the actual 150 min version in theaters right now. I suggest watching that sucker in HD and dig that ominoud sound design!
And then there was this: the video for The Flaming Lips' "Watching the Planets," which could almost be a short concept film about Womblife itself. It's uncanny...and very cool. Courtesy of nme.com.
This clip of "The Hunter" from '68 says it well. Godly:
I loved 2012. Really. It's a Roland Emmerich flick, so yes, it's pretty laughable. Still, I dig watching two things more than most -- John Cusack shouting at his family "LETS GO GO GO!" and California cracking in half and falling into the Pacific. I don't know if I'd say it is genuinely good, but it's probably the best thing ol' Ro's done since Independence Day. Haha. 2012. Heightened solar activity and galactic alignment. Continental displacement theory. WOOHOO! If only, baby! Never know these days. Anyway, if you want to get the overall POWER and DRAMA of said film minus the ass-numbness that comes with watching it for two and a half hours on the big screen, check out this trailer, which is the best I've seen and packs more cinematic punch in just over 2 minutes than the actual 150 min version in theaters right now. I suggest watching that sucker in HD and dig that ominoud sound design!
And then there was this: the video for The Flaming Lips' "Watching the Planets," which could almost be a short concept film about Womblife itself. It's uncanny...and very cool. Courtesy of nme.com.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Oh Hey! Busy time of year, idn't it? As a result of new pressures and responsibilities -- some fairly disturbing, others outright inspiring -- on top of the old ones, Womblife will soon be bringing on at least one more (semi)regular contributor to both help lighten the load on yours and offer a more broad coverage of all those special sights and sounds that help make life a little bit more bearable. That's all I will say for now, though this guy has already been a contributor of sorts with recommendations and past comments leading to many blogs posted here over the years.
A few more recent live actions:
As mentioned at the bottom of this recent post, I was privy to some mighty fine electronics/noise/jazz improvising at the recent Improve Lottery jam held at the Phoenix Project. I was also so enamored in the moment at the time that I don't really remember any of the proper lineups or much more beyond a kind of propulsive miasmic goo that felt like one of H.P. Lovecraft's parallel dimensions had crashed into our own with all sorts of squiggly beasties and glowing shark-plankton swimming through the air. It was pretty neat. [All that stuff I just typed was paraphrased from Stuart Gordon's brilliant From Beyond, which you all must rent right now if you've never seen it.] Anyhoo, looky over here for detailed lineups of the Improv Lottery and another link where you can even download each and every set, as recorded by Zanzibar Snails member Michael Chamy. He also manipulated feedback/electronics that night in the fourth ensemble. I've already stated somewhere that the fourth set was my favorite, with a kind of John Coltrane Ascension blasted into outer space vibe about it. Featured players in all sets are members of DFW local area bands such as The Tidbits, Zanzibar Snails, Subkommander, Yells at Eels, Akkolyte and more.
For yours truly, this past week has been the live show whirlwind here in Big D, and all the more so given who all actually played. First up was a rare opportunity ('least in these parts) to see Marissa Nadler at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, a locale that was a far cry from the small pub/bar she played four or five years ago in Dallas, back when she was, in her own words, "still a child." Could be said Nadler has done a lot of growing in the last few years, developing a powerful, brisk fingerpicking guitar tone and honing that operatic voice of hers to a resounding ghostly lilt. Then there's her supporting musicians, multi-instrumentalist Jonas Haskins (from Earth -- the band) and guitarist Carter Tanton of Tulsa (which is also a band), two guys who perfectly accent, augment, open up and support our forlorn chanteuse through her perilous journeys.
Though I (sadly) arrive too late to catch Denton group Bosque Brown's opening set, Nadler more than makes up with a compelling show drawn from her first, third and fourth albums, which is perfect as this offers my first chance to see some songs from Songs III: Bird on the Water and its followup, Little Hells, (both Kemado) in a live setting. Though she may have still been "just a child" when she recorded that first album, even then Nadler had forged her own unique poetic expression of the classic existentialist lost soul -- what we all fear becoming. It's all there in the lines of the remarkable opener to her first album, Ballads of Living and Dying (Eclipse). The song, "Fifty Five Falls," is as much a warning as anything else -- the tale of Mayflower May and her fifty five falls of lonliness and isolation. Such a dire yet completely lived in little song. It's one that can haunt the listener and the player on an equal plane, but so refined and accessible is its melody that we've no choice but submit to its dark spell. It was very cool that she closed her set last Wednesday with this amazing little gem since it's the very first song I ever heard by her. Also loved her Neil Young cover (which was actually written by someone else) whose title escapes me, and her ethereal rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" (check out her video for it here!). It's always a gift to spend a little quality time Marissa Nadler. And the songstress she's touring with, Alela Diane, is a dream in her own right, offering a slightly more earthy folk chanteuse sound. She's a beauty, and I was happy to nab a copy of this limited 10" recorded with Alina Hardin. Includes ace covers of "Maddy Groves" and one of my all time favorites, TVZ's "Rake." All in all a truly magical night.
Then two days later I made it out to The Lounge on Elm, which is becoming one of the better local venues for good punk/garage/psych underground happenings, all three genres The Axemen embody every aspect of without even trying. They're just naturally weird. I was shocked to find that they and Times New Viking had piggybacked onto Health's bill at The Lounge. Auckland's Axemen are living legends and a first wave Flying Nun band to boot. Lead guitarist Bob also has an amazing indie pop type band named Shaft that you probably ought to hear sometime if you like your 3Ds and Clean records. The Axemen are an altogether more skewed and scuzzier garage art punk slop concoction closer in line with earlier Pere Ubu, Public Image Limited and New Zealand's own Scorched Earth Policy, though you could say that The Axemen have an even more absurdist wit than all of the above. Just wrap your ears around the Siltbreeze reissued Scary: Part III 2Lp to try and figure it all out. It's ugly. It's beautiful. It just might make you piss your pants. Live these old goats kick out a raucous punk snarl that had me thinking Stooges one second, Beefheart and Wire simultaneously the next. Absolutely pummeling stuff that sounds right at home in the state of The 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. Times New Viking tore it up as well with what amounts to probably the best gig I've seen by them to date.
Then the next night it's back over to The Phoenix Project for a regular prog extravaganza featuring the likes of local drone fusion act Small Talk, Denton's Orange Coax, Philly's Many Arms and some goofy German duo called Schnaak and Ft. Worth's own Great Tyrant. Small Talk squawked and blurted with clarinet over moog and a weird creeping backdrop of cutout translucent images and swirling oils. Orange Coax did the hurky-jerk no-wave freakout like X-Ray Spex in a mash-up with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and ave the best drummer I've ever seen in a live setting (possibly a slight exaggeration). Many Arms were like King Crimson worship on steroids or Mahavishnu meets Sonic Youth. Cool enough, but them cats just don't know when to quit! Schnaak offered a bit more solace to the bombast with some trippy almost ambient interludes mixed into their prog throb. The Great Tyrant brought the iron-hulled synth dirge crush like Nick Cave fronting a cross between early Swans and prime Hawkwind. But I was beat, so left before they finished.
And then just this past Monday made it out, spur of the moment like, for the Blues Control gig at Mable Peabody's and was not sorry I made the trip. Also pleasantly surprised to see lots of the young and familiar local weird noise yokels out and about on a Mondaynight digging the crusty Brooklyn ghetto-tech highway boogie that Blues Control conjures, and they brought it this night with urbanized noise mantras that bridged the gap between early 70s prog and boogie rock and good old fashioned homemade noise sych. Very sweet indeed. There were more bands, which probably rocked real good, but I didn't hang much after saying hey to Lea and Russ (Russ wearing the same Warmer Milks shirt I got from Mikey Turner the first time I met him a few years ago - ha!) .
I need to upload some more images and vids of recent gigs and events to the Youtube channel/Photobucket eventually, but the big ol' pile of reviews in the corner is howling like a dying dog, so it could be a while. Have you heard the new Birch Book album? Holy shit! It's going to be a long bleak Winter, my friends.
In the meantime, here's a pretty good quality video of a sweet Zanzibar Snails gig I recorded at The Phoenix Project back in September. Though the visuals are pretty murky most of the time, the sound quality is top notch-ish. Enjoy! Part 2 and Part 3 for further perusing.
And one more clip my old buddy Greg E. captured of The Jesus Lizard last week at the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, which I could not attend. Not bad for a rinky-dink video phone thingy, but it's a shame he cuts out right at the start of "Gladiator"! Here's the same song caught in higher quality.
A few more recent live actions:
As mentioned at the bottom of this recent post, I was privy to some mighty fine electronics/noise/jazz improvising at the recent Improve Lottery jam held at the Phoenix Project. I was also so enamored in the moment at the time that I don't really remember any of the proper lineups or much more beyond a kind of propulsive miasmic goo that felt like one of H.P. Lovecraft's parallel dimensions had crashed into our own with all sorts of squiggly beasties and glowing shark-plankton swimming through the air. It was pretty neat. [All that stuff I just typed was paraphrased from Stuart Gordon's brilliant From Beyond, which you all must rent right now if you've never seen it.] Anyhoo, looky over here for detailed lineups of the Improv Lottery and another link where you can even download each and every set, as recorded by Zanzibar Snails member Michael Chamy. He also manipulated feedback/electronics that night in the fourth ensemble. I've already stated somewhere that the fourth set was my favorite, with a kind of John Coltrane Ascension blasted into outer space vibe about it. Featured players in all sets are members of DFW local area bands such as The Tidbits, Zanzibar Snails, Subkommander, Yells at Eels, Akkolyte and more.
For yours truly, this past week has been the live show whirlwind here in Big D, and all the more so given who all actually played. First up was a rare opportunity ('least in these parts) to see Marissa Nadler at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, a locale that was a far cry from the small pub/bar she played four or five years ago in Dallas, back when she was, in her own words, "still a child." Could be said Nadler has done a lot of growing in the last few years, developing a powerful, brisk fingerpicking guitar tone and honing that operatic voice of hers to a resounding ghostly lilt. Then there's her supporting musicians, multi-instrumentalist Jonas Haskins (from Earth -- the band) and guitarist Carter Tanton of Tulsa (which is also a band), two guys who perfectly accent, augment, open up and support our forlorn chanteuse through her perilous journeys.
Though I (sadly) arrive too late to catch Denton group Bosque Brown's opening set, Nadler more than makes up with a compelling show drawn from her first, third and fourth albums, which is perfect as this offers my first chance to see some songs from Songs III: Bird on the Water and its followup, Little Hells, (both Kemado) in a live setting. Though she may have still been "just a child" when she recorded that first album, even then Nadler had forged her own unique poetic expression of the classic existentialist lost soul -- what we all fear becoming. It's all there in the lines of the remarkable opener to her first album, Ballads of Living and Dying (Eclipse). The song, "Fifty Five Falls," is as much a warning as anything else -- the tale of Mayflower May and her fifty five falls of lonliness and isolation. Such a dire yet completely lived in little song. It's one that can haunt the listener and the player on an equal plane, but so refined and accessible is its melody that we've no choice but submit to its dark spell. It was very cool that she closed her set last Wednesday with this amazing little gem since it's the very first song I ever heard by her. Also loved her Neil Young cover (which was actually written by someone else) whose title escapes me, and her ethereal rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" (check out her video for it here!). It's always a gift to spend a little quality time Marissa Nadler. And the songstress she's touring with, Alela Diane, is a dream in her own right, offering a slightly more earthy folk chanteuse sound. She's a beauty, and I was happy to nab a copy of this limited 10" recorded with Alina Hardin. Includes ace covers of "Maddy Groves" and one of my all time favorites, TVZ's "Rake." All in all a truly magical night.
Then two days later I made it out to The Lounge on Elm, which is becoming one of the better local venues for good punk/garage/psych underground happenings, all three genres The Axemen embody every aspect of without even trying. They're just naturally weird. I was shocked to find that they and Times New Viking had piggybacked onto Health's bill at The Lounge. Auckland's Axemen are living legends and a first wave Flying Nun band to boot. Lead guitarist Bob also has an amazing indie pop type band named Shaft that you probably ought to hear sometime if you like your 3Ds and Clean records. The Axemen are an altogether more skewed and scuzzier garage art punk slop concoction closer in line with earlier Pere Ubu, Public Image Limited and New Zealand's own Scorched Earth Policy, though you could say that The Axemen have an even more absurdist wit than all of the above. Just wrap your ears around the Siltbreeze reissued Scary: Part III 2Lp to try and figure it all out. It's ugly. It's beautiful. It just might make you piss your pants. Live these old goats kick out a raucous punk snarl that had me thinking Stooges one second, Beefheart and Wire simultaneously the next. Absolutely pummeling stuff that sounds right at home in the state of The 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. Times New Viking tore it up as well with what amounts to probably the best gig I've seen by them to date.
Then the next night it's back over to The Phoenix Project for a regular prog extravaganza featuring the likes of local drone fusion act Small Talk, Denton's Orange Coax, Philly's Many Arms and some goofy German duo called Schnaak and Ft. Worth's own Great Tyrant. Small Talk squawked and blurted with clarinet over moog and a weird creeping backdrop of cutout translucent images and swirling oils. Orange Coax did the hurky-jerk no-wave freakout like X-Ray Spex in a mash-up with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and ave the best drummer I've ever seen in a live setting (possibly a slight exaggeration). Many Arms were like King Crimson worship on steroids or Mahavishnu meets Sonic Youth. Cool enough, but them cats just don't know when to quit! Schnaak offered a bit more solace to the bombast with some trippy almost ambient interludes mixed into their prog throb. The Great Tyrant brought the iron-hulled synth dirge crush like Nick Cave fronting a cross between early Swans and prime Hawkwind. But I was beat, so left before they finished.
And then just this past Monday made it out, spur of the moment like, for the Blues Control gig at Mable Peabody's and was not sorry I made the trip. Also pleasantly surprised to see lots of the young and familiar local weird noise yokels out and about on a Mondaynight digging the crusty Brooklyn ghetto-tech highway boogie that Blues Control conjures, and they brought it this night with urbanized noise mantras that bridged the gap between early 70s prog and boogie rock and good old fashioned homemade noise sych. Very sweet indeed. There were more bands, which probably rocked real good, but I didn't hang much after saying hey to Lea and Russ (Russ wearing the same Warmer Milks shirt I got from Mikey Turner the first time I met him a few years ago - ha!) .
I need to upload some more images and vids of recent gigs and events to the Youtube channel/Photobucket eventually, but the big ol' pile of reviews in the corner is howling like a dying dog, so it could be a while. Have you heard the new Birch Book album? Holy shit! It's going to be a long bleak Winter, my friends.
In the meantime, here's a pretty good quality video of a sweet Zanzibar Snails gig I recorded at The Phoenix Project back in September. Though the visuals are pretty murky most of the time, the sound quality is top notch-ish. Enjoy! Part 2 and Part 3 for further perusing.
And one more clip my old buddy Greg E. captured of The Jesus Lizard last week at the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, which I could not attend. Not bad for a rinky-dink video phone thingy, but it's a shame he cuts out right at the start of "Gladiator"! Here's the same song caught in higher quality.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
This is My Music: Vol 5, (Tanz Der Lemmings), Part 1
Ashtray Navigations Sugar Head Record (Deep Water) 2CD-R - Yet another essential dispatch from our old friends at Deep Water. Though the zine has slowed down a bit, the release schedule remains constant with this delightful mind-melter, along with multiple releases by DW's own in-house prog/psych folk unit, Evening Fires, and a new platter by free psych duo Flying Sutra being just a few goodies dropped in '09. Where to start with Phil Todd and his Ashtray Navigations? Maybe try here. The UK native has been releasing his ecstatic electro/psych/noise/skree mantra music for well over 15 years now with no let up in sight. To hear him at his most indispensable, seek out the Four More Raga Moods CD on Finland's Ikuisuus and hold tight! The newer and even more outer Sugar Head Record is as fine a deep-space head-trip as you will find in the considerable AN catalog. Its hallucinogenic con trails of crumbling feedback weave a story that's at once cosmic and subatomic, as if Todd and collaborators were soundtracking the fabric of existence itself -- microscopic landscapes bubbling over with new kinetic bursts in every second, all wrapped in an impenetrable amniotic pulse.
Boredoms Super Roots 10: Ant 10 (Thrill Jockey) 2LP - One of the most ass-kicking live shows I've seen would have to be The Boredoms in San Francisco in May, 2005. Cosmic gold! Super Roots 10 is the latest in this series which can be traced all the way back to the early '90s. Not sure where this one falls in The Boredoms' larger cannon, but, it's safe to say, be it remix or studio creation (this is a bit of both) and if released post '96, it's probably worth hearing. This also applies if you're a freak for repetitious noise throb on the strobe-lit dance-floor, a musical trend in recent moons which can be traced directly to the Boredoms' recordings and remixes of the late '90s/early '00s as much as anywhere else. Vol 10 offers up kaleidoscopic tone patterns gliding over a constant wall of percussion that derives equally from the golden Kautrock pulse of yore and minimal house-beat precision of the eternal now.
Headdress Lunes (No Quarter) CD - The great stoned award of 2009 goes to the mighty Headdress for their monolithic Lunes. It mostly eschews the more free psych trappings of their earlier work in favor of a massive ghost drone blues that can be traced to recent Earth records, while maintaining a minimal, stoned desolation that's fiercely psychedelic in its own right. These songs rumble and howl through the infinite void with a reverberating doom feel that feeds the imagination and ignites the soul. Lunes is the perfect soundtrack for cruising the cosmic waves or watching fireworks explode in the dead of night, each song like each concussion -- a little supernova to explore in the darkness.
Melvins Chicken Switch (Ipecac) CD - I ever tell you how much I love the Melvins? Not too crazy 'bout their last couple records, but I'd say Buzz and Dale are still trying, and that's good enough for me. From '87 to '05 The Melvins were one of the most unstoppably ass-kicking metallic punk threats on the planet. Wrap your ears around the likes of Gluey Porch Treatments, Stoner Witch and The Maggot to get the gist. The Melvins play real rawk, but it's rock with a healthy dose of irony and a never-ending penchant for surrealist strangeness that regularly leaves the mind befuddled and the mouth agape. Chicken Switch is just the latest proof of this age old maxim. It's a remix album featuring sound technicians from all over the globe, including some of my personal faves, such as Eye Yamatsuka of The Boredoms, Christoph Heemann of Mirror/Mimir/HNAS, Merzbow, Matmos, Panacea and more. Melvins get all IDM on your ass with a record that's dance-floor ready? Bet your ass.
Magic Lantern High Beams (Not Not Fun) LP - Whilst listening to this heavy fuzz psych drone machine, it occurs to me how nice it is that so many bands are crawling out of the woodwork these days that kick up a racket so clearly indebted to Bardo Pond, themselves so obviously indebted to the glory daze of early 70s stoned-to-the-bone psych/prog endless buildup jamathons, which I guess beats the hell out of three dudes trying to sound like the Jeff Healey band. These guys clearly love Spacemen 3 and Hawkwind, and are just completely zonked out of their skulls in the eternal acid wah-wah riff zone. Way gone and not even playin' around. No lyrics, no voices, just endless instrumental lockgroove ecstasy.
Magik Markers Balf Quarry (Drag City) CD - It's been a real trick'r treat in the last few months going back and rediscovering all the great Magik Markers live gigs and long-gone seedy-rs in the world. Truly think they've only gotten better through the years, and Elisa Ambrogia makes one hell of a front whoooa-man. Balf Quarry is their second full length for Drag City (the solid Boss is the first), and it totally kicks ass with slightly sloppy damaged ferocity that's unlike anything else out there in terms of seething primal/sexual rawk energy. It's true that Sonic Youth turned out a solid album this year, but I don't think it was near this continuously listenable, weird and straight up kickass. 'Course it could be said the Markers owe a debt to the 'Youth's early 80s recordings themselves, but this is 2009 and we ain't gettin' any younger. Bring on the ragged glory. Plus, Pete Nolan kicks ass.
Niagara Falls Sequence of the Prophets (Honeymoon) CD - Gorgeous progressive ethnic fusion workouts from this Philly trio, last heard (by me) sharing a side with the sadly missed Clear Spots. This is NF's third full length of ethnic psych fusion, more composed and sculpted than previously glimpsed sonic rituals but never at the expense of the spirit of the songs. Niagara Falls is clearly going for a kind of meditational mind-wash as their namesake might suggest, but Sequence of the Prophets is more skeletal in spots, and fantastically kinetic and propulsive in others. The pre-Kraftwerk ensemble Organization is one possible musical touchstone, where mythical rites of transcendence as evinced via Florian Fricke's Popol Vuh could be another. Absolutely gorgeous stuff here for prog/psych/drone junkies alike, and they're not afraid to kick up a racket either.
Om God is Good (Drag City) CD - More proof here that the best music is really just tonal meditation with killer drum fills. God Is God represents a bit of a shake-up since the last Om full length dropped. Hakius is out, Emil Amos (of the equally meditative Grails) is in, but not much else has changed. Om circa 2009 employs a bit more in the way of ambient effects. A good portion of this album is straight up flute rock! God forbid, Om has gone all prog on us. GOD BLESS! God is Good is as good as the legendary duo (born from one of the most legendary trios of our times) gets with deep inner probing bass/drum groove mantras that manage that seemingly impossible task of making low-tempo skeletal bass/drum psych workouts into spiritual portals to worlds that seem removed from our own subjective spheres yet can clearly be tapped into. Om is the sonic embodiment of this desire. It's also a beautifully recorded album, once more by Steve Albini. After making my way completely through the last two tracks for the 15th time I can say I'm completely certain that this is not only the best Om record to date, it's one of the most purely tantric hard rock platters you will ever feast your ears with. 35 mins of peerless psychedelic meditation. Absolutely essential.
The One Ensemble Orchestra Other Thunders (No-Fi) We (the voices in my head and I) here in the Womb consider Daniel's other group, Volcano the Bear, one of the most adventurous and visceral bands on the planet, but in no way does this impinge on our opinion that this here, the fourth studio LP under the One Ensemble name, is one of the most perfectly skewed slices of chamber folk we have ever heard. For well over five years now Daniel Padden and his ensemble (often times himself, more lately an ensemble of many) have continuously conjured their own brand of weird and mournful gypsy folk meets progressive, and dare I say, jazz fusion. What else, if you're a fan of the aforementioned 'Bear, and you're even remotely interested in compelling modern exploratory composition, proceed directly to Other Thunders. The unofficial title track (which is actually entitled "The Sun") is truly one of the most glorious things I've heard all year.
Plastic Crimewave Painted Shadows (A Silent Place) - Plastic Crimewave is something of an underground psych institution by now, between his rockin' acid punk band, Plastic Crimewave, the Million Tongues psych fests in Chicago and his holy bible of psych space punk dementia, The Galactic Zoo Dossier (available on Drag City press). I love his Damaged Guitar Gods and Astral Folk Goddesses collector cards, among other tasty tidbits. Pretty much any decent indie type record store plugged into the paranormal now should have issues of said journal. It's one of the last and best all print underground zines around, completely assembled, drawn and lettered by Plastic himself. Quite astounding really. Painted Shadows is approximately the fourth widely available PC album, and it's possibly the best yet, ranging from the Aftermath era Stones charged dark psych of opener "I See Evils" to fully-exploded side-long Hawkwindian space mantra of closer "Ecstatic Song" with plenty of smashing snare and fuzz guitar overload piled on for maximum transport. Oneida fans will love it.
Raglani Web of Light (Kvist) LP - This vinyl offering from one man St. Louis drone/noise project, Raglani, is a collision of minimal drone composition, power electronics and ghostly shoegaze fuzz that coalesces into a building ramp that leads straight to the stratosphere and comes crashing back down again. Drawing as much from the heyday of early analog electronic composition as more modern Kranky-esque drone outfits, a label Raglani has released work with, Web of Light offers two side long portals to spiritual tonal enlightenment and even violent catharsis. There's a point on the first side where the dense swirl of impeccably crafted electronics drops out to what sounds like massed choral harmonies the likes of which I've not heard since Mirror's Nights LP. The flip is an altogether more prismatic power electronics excursion that offers a tumultuous, but no less enthralling, atmospheric burn. All in all primo stuff that's ripe for warm analog late-night listening, plus it's one of Mr. Raglani's very best yet. Comes with a beautiful insert of a mind-bending illustration on one side and a clever film credits listing on the other, all in French no less. Snooty!
Starving Weirdos Into an Energy (Bo 'Weavil) CD - And just what universe do these people come from? Can it really be our own? The perfectly christened Into An Energy is a shimmering, exploding, spontaneous symphony of tribal mantra mind melding that deftly blurs the line between aural communication and a more sacred kind of meditation. It's almost the sound of unknowing. I find myself lapsing into these dense drone passages and wondering where does the time go? Is music like this created or is it channeled? Strings, voices, clattering percussive revelry and more come together in synapse melting charges that bypass the ego and go straight to the primordial id. These pieces contain ideas and concepts that are truly beyond my scope of understanding, but that's the beauty of the Starving Weirdos. Essential deep drone for those who appreciate getting lost in the material strands that weave into the fabric of infinity. Highly recommended for fans of Organum/David Jackman, AMM, No-Neck Blues Band, Mirror and other free-wheeling string and percussion drone masters.
Sun Araw Heavy Deeds (Not Not Fun) LP - This really is the shit right here. Sun Araw is the solo gig of Magic Lantern's Cameron Stallones, and Heavy Deeds is just about the most incessantly compelling psych platter to come out this past Summer. How to summarize? Let's just say Sun Araw has discovered its own musical theory of relativity which depends on a firm understanding of the laws of dub multiplied by fractals of funky fuzz, divided by wigged out vocal chants and squared by a pervasive rhythmic pulse that demands the listener occasionally awaken from his marijuana-stupor and actually dance around the place while diggin' on it. Add in some some delectable acid kissed organ runs and an overall laid back underwater cosmos vibe, you've got endless transcendental groove spirals that will work their magic for those willing to shut off their brains and turn on to the freaky harmony of the spheres. Somethin' else.
Zukanican The Stumbling Block (Pickled Egg) - You wanna dance and take gargantuan hits from the big purple party hooka while doing so? You want to spin round and round to the Komische beat and fall on your side in a confused giggling fit after doing 6 whippits at once? I don't really recommend any of that, but I do suggest throwing The Stumbling Block on the old player sometime soon. You'll be hard up to find a more proper soundtrack for any such endeavors than Dr. Harry Sumnall and company's take on primo vintage komische space fusion. It's probably fair to say that not everyone considers the recordings of various Germanic experimental/psychedelic musical purveyors to be some of the most far reaching sonic incantations the world of has ever known, but some of us actually do. And we mean it when we say La Dussledorf was one of the most important bands of the last 50 years. Zukanican understands. Their music is something of a living, mutating embodiment of this understanding. These propulsive hand-made deep space mantras make me think of other eras and scenes too, but to me this CD captures the mind-expanding properties of so many of those past masters while still being utterly in the now and living today. Fans of ethno jazz fusion like Larry Young, Can, Neu, Herbie Hancock in the early 70s, prepare for blast off. Long live Zukanican!
Ashtray Navigations Sugar Head Record (Deep Water) 2CD-R - Yet another essential dispatch from our old friends at Deep Water. Though the zine has slowed down a bit, the release schedule remains constant with this delightful mind-melter, along with multiple releases by DW's own in-house prog/psych folk unit, Evening Fires, and a new platter by free psych duo Flying Sutra being just a few goodies dropped in '09. Where to start with Phil Todd and his Ashtray Navigations? Maybe try here. The UK native has been releasing his ecstatic electro/psych/noise/skree mantra music for well over 15 years now with no let up in sight. To hear him at his most indispensable, seek out the Four More Raga Moods CD on Finland's Ikuisuus and hold tight! The newer and even more outer Sugar Head Record is as fine a deep-space head-trip as you will find in the considerable AN catalog. Its hallucinogenic con trails of crumbling feedback weave a story that's at once cosmic and subatomic, as if Todd and collaborators were soundtracking the fabric of existence itself -- microscopic landscapes bubbling over with new kinetic bursts in every second, all wrapped in an impenetrable amniotic pulse.
Boredoms Super Roots 10: Ant 10 (Thrill Jockey) 2LP - One of the most ass-kicking live shows I've seen would have to be The Boredoms in San Francisco in May, 2005. Cosmic gold! Super Roots 10 is the latest in this series which can be traced all the way back to the early '90s. Not sure where this one falls in The Boredoms' larger cannon, but, it's safe to say, be it remix or studio creation (this is a bit of both) and if released post '96, it's probably worth hearing. This also applies if you're a freak for repetitious noise throb on the strobe-lit dance-floor, a musical trend in recent moons which can be traced directly to the Boredoms' recordings and remixes of the late '90s/early '00s as much as anywhere else. Vol 10 offers up kaleidoscopic tone patterns gliding over a constant wall of percussion that derives equally from the golden Kautrock pulse of yore and minimal house-beat precision of the eternal now.
Headdress Lunes (No Quarter) CD - The great stoned award of 2009 goes to the mighty Headdress for their monolithic Lunes. It mostly eschews the more free psych trappings of their earlier work in favor of a massive ghost drone blues that can be traced to recent Earth records, while maintaining a minimal, stoned desolation that's fiercely psychedelic in its own right. These songs rumble and howl through the infinite void with a reverberating doom feel that feeds the imagination and ignites the soul. Lunes is the perfect soundtrack for cruising the cosmic waves or watching fireworks explode in the dead of night, each song like each concussion -- a little supernova to explore in the darkness.
Melvins Chicken Switch (Ipecac) CD - I ever tell you how much I love the Melvins? Not too crazy 'bout their last couple records, but I'd say Buzz and Dale are still trying, and that's good enough for me. From '87 to '05 The Melvins were one of the most unstoppably ass-kicking metallic punk threats on the planet. Wrap your ears around the likes of Gluey Porch Treatments, Stoner Witch and The Maggot to get the gist. The Melvins play real rawk, but it's rock with a healthy dose of irony and a never-ending penchant for surrealist strangeness that regularly leaves the mind befuddled and the mouth agape. Chicken Switch is just the latest proof of this age old maxim. It's a remix album featuring sound technicians from all over the globe, including some of my personal faves, such as Eye Yamatsuka of The Boredoms, Christoph Heemann of Mirror/Mimir/HNAS, Merzbow, Matmos, Panacea and more. Melvins get all IDM on your ass with a record that's dance-floor ready? Bet your ass.
Magic Lantern High Beams (Not Not Fun) LP - Whilst listening to this heavy fuzz psych drone machine, it occurs to me how nice it is that so many bands are crawling out of the woodwork these days that kick up a racket so clearly indebted to Bardo Pond, themselves so obviously indebted to the glory daze of early 70s stoned-to-the-bone psych/prog endless buildup jamathons, which I guess beats the hell out of three dudes trying to sound like the Jeff Healey band. These guys clearly love Spacemen 3 and Hawkwind, and are just completely zonked out of their skulls in the eternal acid wah-wah riff zone. Way gone and not even playin' around. No lyrics, no voices, just endless instrumental lockgroove ecstasy.
Magik Markers Balf Quarry (Drag City) CD - It's been a real trick'r treat in the last few months going back and rediscovering all the great Magik Markers live gigs and long-gone seedy-rs in the world. Truly think they've only gotten better through the years, and Elisa Ambrogia makes one hell of a front whoooa-man. Balf Quarry is their second full length for Drag City (the solid Boss is the first), and it totally kicks ass with slightly sloppy damaged ferocity that's unlike anything else out there in terms of seething primal/sexual rawk energy. It's true that Sonic Youth turned out a solid album this year, but I don't think it was near this continuously listenable, weird and straight up kickass. 'Course it could be said the Markers owe a debt to the 'Youth's early 80s recordings themselves, but this is 2009 and we ain't gettin' any younger. Bring on the ragged glory. Plus, Pete Nolan kicks ass.
Niagara Falls Sequence of the Prophets (Honeymoon) CD - Gorgeous progressive ethnic fusion workouts from this Philly trio, last heard (by me) sharing a side with the sadly missed Clear Spots. This is NF's third full length of ethnic psych fusion, more composed and sculpted than previously glimpsed sonic rituals but never at the expense of the spirit of the songs. Niagara Falls is clearly going for a kind of meditational mind-wash as their namesake might suggest, but Sequence of the Prophets is more skeletal in spots, and fantastically kinetic and propulsive in others. The pre-Kraftwerk ensemble Organization is one possible musical touchstone, where mythical rites of transcendence as evinced via Florian Fricke's Popol Vuh could be another. Absolutely gorgeous stuff here for prog/psych/drone junkies alike, and they're not afraid to kick up a racket either.
Om God is Good (Drag City) CD - More proof here that the best music is really just tonal meditation with killer drum fills. God Is God represents a bit of a shake-up since the last Om full length dropped. Hakius is out, Emil Amos (of the equally meditative Grails) is in, but not much else has changed. Om circa 2009 employs a bit more in the way of ambient effects. A good portion of this album is straight up flute rock! God forbid, Om has gone all prog on us. GOD BLESS! God is Good is as good as the legendary duo (born from one of the most legendary trios of our times) gets with deep inner probing bass/drum groove mantras that manage that seemingly impossible task of making low-tempo skeletal bass/drum psych workouts into spiritual portals to worlds that seem removed from our own subjective spheres yet can clearly be tapped into. Om is the sonic embodiment of this desire. It's also a beautifully recorded album, once more by Steve Albini. After making my way completely through the last two tracks for the 15th time I can say I'm completely certain that this is not only the best Om record to date, it's one of the most purely tantric hard rock platters you will ever feast your ears with. 35 mins of peerless psychedelic meditation. Absolutely essential.
The One Ensemble Orchestra Other Thunders (No-Fi) We (the voices in my head and I) here in the Womb consider Daniel's other group, Volcano the Bear, one of the most adventurous and visceral bands on the planet, but in no way does this impinge on our opinion that this here, the fourth studio LP under the One Ensemble name, is one of the most perfectly skewed slices of chamber folk we have ever heard. For well over five years now Daniel Padden and his ensemble (often times himself, more lately an ensemble of many) have continuously conjured their own brand of weird and mournful gypsy folk meets progressive, and dare I say, jazz fusion. What else, if you're a fan of the aforementioned 'Bear, and you're even remotely interested in compelling modern exploratory composition, proceed directly to Other Thunders. The unofficial title track (which is actually entitled "The Sun") is truly one of the most glorious things I've heard all year.
Plastic Crimewave Painted Shadows (A Silent Place) - Plastic Crimewave is something of an underground psych institution by now, between his rockin' acid punk band, Plastic Crimewave, the Million Tongues psych fests in Chicago and his holy bible of psych space punk dementia, The Galactic Zoo Dossier (available on Drag City press). I love his Damaged Guitar Gods and Astral Folk Goddesses collector cards, among other tasty tidbits. Pretty much any decent indie type record store plugged into the paranormal now should have issues of said journal. It's one of the last and best all print underground zines around, completely assembled, drawn and lettered by Plastic himself. Quite astounding really. Painted Shadows is approximately the fourth widely available PC album, and it's possibly the best yet, ranging from the Aftermath era Stones charged dark psych of opener "I See Evils" to fully-exploded side-long Hawkwindian space mantra of closer "Ecstatic Song" with plenty of smashing snare and fuzz guitar overload piled on for maximum transport. Oneida fans will love it.
Raglani Web of Light (Kvist) LP - This vinyl offering from one man St. Louis drone/noise project, Raglani, is a collision of minimal drone composition, power electronics and ghostly shoegaze fuzz that coalesces into a building ramp that leads straight to the stratosphere and comes crashing back down again. Drawing as much from the heyday of early analog electronic composition as more modern Kranky-esque drone outfits, a label Raglani has released work with, Web of Light offers two side long portals to spiritual tonal enlightenment and even violent catharsis. There's a point on the first side where the dense swirl of impeccably crafted electronics drops out to what sounds like massed choral harmonies the likes of which I've not heard since Mirror's Nights LP. The flip is an altogether more prismatic power electronics excursion that offers a tumultuous, but no less enthralling, atmospheric burn. All in all primo stuff that's ripe for warm analog late-night listening, plus it's one of Mr. Raglani's very best yet. Comes with a beautiful insert of a mind-bending illustration on one side and a clever film credits listing on the other, all in French no less. Snooty!
Starving Weirdos Into an Energy (Bo 'Weavil) CD - And just what universe do these people come from? Can it really be our own? The perfectly christened Into An Energy is a shimmering, exploding, spontaneous symphony of tribal mantra mind melding that deftly blurs the line between aural communication and a more sacred kind of meditation. It's almost the sound of unknowing. I find myself lapsing into these dense drone passages and wondering where does the time go? Is music like this created or is it channeled? Strings, voices, clattering percussive revelry and more come together in synapse melting charges that bypass the ego and go straight to the primordial id. These pieces contain ideas and concepts that are truly beyond my scope of understanding, but that's the beauty of the Starving Weirdos. Essential deep drone for those who appreciate getting lost in the material strands that weave into the fabric of infinity. Highly recommended for fans of Organum/David Jackman, AMM, No-Neck Blues Band, Mirror and other free-wheeling string and percussion drone masters.
Sun Araw Heavy Deeds (Not Not Fun) LP - This really is the shit right here. Sun Araw is the solo gig of Magic Lantern's Cameron Stallones, and Heavy Deeds is just about the most incessantly compelling psych platter to come out this past Summer. How to summarize? Let's just say Sun Araw has discovered its own musical theory of relativity which depends on a firm understanding of the laws of dub multiplied by fractals of funky fuzz, divided by wigged out vocal chants and squared by a pervasive rhythmic pulse that demands the listener occasionally awaken from his marijuana-stupor and actually dance around the place while diggin' on it. Add in some some delectable acid kissed organ runs and an overall laid back underwater cosmos vibe, you've got endless transcendental groove spirals that will work their magic for those willing to shut off their brains and turn on to the freaky harmony of the spheres. Somethin' else.
Zukanican The Stumbling Block (Pickled Egg) - You wanna dance and take gargantuan hits from the big purple party hooka while doing so? You want to spin round and round to the Komische beat and fall on your side in a confused giggling fit after doing 6 whippits at once? I don't really recommend any of that, but I do suggest throwing The Stumbling Block on the old player sometime soon. You'll be hard up to find a more proper soundtrack for any such endeavors than Dr. Harry Sumnall and company's take on primo vintage komische space fusion. It's probably fair to say that not everyone considers the recordings of various Germanic experimental/psychedelic musical purveyors to be some of the most far reaching sonic incantations the world of has ever known, but some of us actually do. And we mean it when we say La Dussledorf was one of the most important bands of the last 50 years. Zukanican understands. Their music is something of a living, mutating embodiment of this understanding. These propulsive hand-made deep space mantras make me think of other eras and scenes too, but to me this CD captures the mind-expanding properties of so many of those past masters while still being utterly in the now and living today. Fans of ethno jazz fusion like Larry Young, Can, Neu, Herbie Hancock in the early 70s, prepare for blast off. Long live Zukanican!
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
Happy (late) Halloween/Samhain to all the Womb ghouls 'n' goblins out there. Had a laid back All Hallows Eve giving out a li'l candy to the younguns, then went over to a friend's house and horrified another friend with my shocking skeleton get-up. Good stuff.
Also, ya know, I'm not a big digital animation freak, but watching key action scenes from Monsters Vs Aliens in 3D on bluray this evening left me suitably transported back to the age 10 or so, lost in the wonder of it all. Give it a try sometime. Smoke lots of pot right before hand if possible. What else... the highpoint of this week is Cartman's rendition of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" as heard on the Whale Wars episode of South Park. I can't stop trying to replicate its pop splendor in the shower with the hot water turned up full-blast, steam blinding my eyes. That is sex, my friends.
Made it out a couple nights ago to a big screen viewing of Dario Argento's Deep Red, which I'd never seen before. The 35 MM print was a bit beat up, but I loved it none the less. Figure the modern slasher flick was born with this movie, though John Carpenter and others would take it from here to new plateaus of horrific catharsis. Argento spends much of the time ripping off Hitchcock with a good bit more blood and an incredible "horror prog" soundtrack from Goblin(s), which combined together make my dick very hard. I love Hitch, perverted bald genius. Sadism isn't necessarily an intellectual exercise, mind you (see all those god-awful idiotic Saw movies), but Argento knows how to stage a kill-scene like few in the genre, and his sets are fucking incredible. He may as well be Hitchcock himself when compared to any other horror director working in the last 40 years. Thanks to Dallas Cinemania for making it happen.
Also, Krautrock junkies, feast your eyes on this very cool BBC produced documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, a title which lends credence to my contention that Krautrock was, as much as anything else, a successful attempt to rectify past social ills by sharing with the rest of the world some of the most brain-tickling influential experimental rock and roll it will ever know. It's loaded with vintage clips and interviews (now and then) from the actual players and manages to tie it all in with Germany's troubled past and emerging counterculture at the same time. Those playing catch-up with one of my favorite "scenes" should check it out:
And since it's almost still Halloween, here are a cpl Youtube clips which somehow reflect on or capture the mood of this special time of the year: Satanic Warmaster "Carelian Satanist Madness"
Public Image Limited live on American Bandstand, doing one of the most memorably weird rock songs of the punk/post punk era and tearing down the wall between artist and performer in the process, completely lip-synced and all the better for it. I love this clip!
While I'm at it, Happy Dia De Los Meurtos! Down here in Texas we've developed a special appreciation for The Mexican Day of the Dead, and it could be said Wayne Coyne has done the same. As some of you already know, last weekend I participated in The Flaming Lips March of a 1000 Flaming Skeletons part of the Ghouls Gone Wild parade in Oklahoma City. It was, like, a blast, and I'm too tired currently to go into specifics. So here are a few sweet pix and vid clips that capture the whole vibe of said event. Check the photobucket if you want more. Dig:
Also, ya know, I'm not a big digital animation freak, but watching key action scenes from Monsters Vs Aliens in 3D on bluray this evening left me suitably transported back to the age 10 or so, lost in the wonder of it all. Give it a try sometime. Smoke lots of pot right before hand if possible. What else... the highpoint of this week is Cartman's rendition of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" as heard on the Whale Wars episode of South Park. I can't stop trying to replicate its pop splendor in the shower with the hot water turned up full-blast, steam blinding my eyes. That is sex, my friends.
Made it out a couple nights ago to a big screen viewing of Dario Argento's Deep Red, which I'd never seen before. The 35 MM print was a bit beat up, but I loved it none the less. Figure the modern slasher flick was born with this movie, though John Carpenter and others would take it from here to new plateaus of horrific catharsis. Argento spends much of the time ripping off Hitchcock with a good bit more blood and an incredible "horror prog" soundtrack from Goblin(s), which combined together make my dick very hard. I love Hitch, perverted bald genius. Sadism isn't necessarily an intellectual exercise, mind you (see all those god-awful idiotic Saw movies), but Argento knows how to stage a kill-scene like few in the genre, and his sets are fucking incredible. He may as well be Hitchcock himself when compared to any other horror director working in the last 40 years. Thanks to Dallas Cinemania for making it happen.
Also, Krautrock junkies, feast your eyes on this very cool BBC produced documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, a title which lends credence to my contention that Krautrock was, as much as anything else, a successful attempt to rectify past social ills by sharing with the rest of the world some of the most brain-tickling influential experimental rock and roll it will ever know. It's loaded with vintage clips and interviews (now and then) from the actual players and manages to tie it all in with Germany's troubled past and emerging counterculture at the same time. Those playing catch-up with one of my favorite "scenes" should check it out:
And since it's almost still Halloween, here are a cpl Youtube clips which somehow reflect on or capture the mood of this special time of the year: Satanic Warmaster "Carelian Satanist Madness"
Public Image Limited live on American Bandstand, doing one of the most memorably weird rock songs of the punk/post punk era and tearing down the wall between artist and performer in the process, completely lip-synced and all the better for it. I love this clip!
While I'm at it, Happy Dia De Los Meurtos! Down here in Texas we've developed a special appreciation for The Mexican Day of the Dead, and it could be said Wayne Coyne has done the same. As some of you already know, last weekend I participated in The Flaming Lips March of a 1000 Flaming Skeletons part of the Ghouls Gone Wild parade in Oklahoma City. It was, like, a blast, and I'm too tired currently to go into specifics. So here are a few sweet pix and vid clips that capture the whole vibe of said event. Check the photobucket if you want more. Dig:
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