I don't know if any of you guys got the cajones (with apologies to my three regular female readers) necessary to appreciate the bleak doomain that Khanate lords over, but my friends, my brothers and sisters, the mini CD, "Capture and Release" (Hydrahead)--a 50 minute two song mini CD mind you--is worth the trudge. It's among the most sonically visceral heavy rock albums I've heard with its thick aural soup of looped feedback, amp squelch and buzz, bass groans conjured beneath the most demented shrieking vokills ever ripped from a set of damaged pipes. The mix is what I really can't get over. The performances are all controlled torment and blistering subharmonic assaults every step of the way, but the layers of industrial screech, drone, multitracked vocals and more are at once horrifying and totally enveloping. Deeply textured, intricately assembled with a production value that fully honors the blistering rawness of Khanate's live sound (one of the most incredible live bands around, click here and scroll down for a live review at SXSW last year), but goes further out than most so called doom bands will ever dare to. This owes as much to Throbbing Gristle as it does AbsoluteGo Boris. Then there's the lyrics, which are either exaggerated to the point of absurdity or disturbingly accurate in their portrayals of sadism, hatred and disease. This mangled mass is closer to "The Silence of the Lambs" than "Lord of the Rings," with psychotic screams and repetitious whispers offering a deep look into one very sick mind. But it's all about perspective. You see/hear what you bring with you. Wolf Eyes meets Fushitsusha? Not a stretch...


Speaking of industrial wasteland skronkists, I listened to this Comets on Fire & Burning Star Core 12" on Yik Yak a few times the other day wacked out on formaldehyde and wam bam thank you Rapeman, it works really well! Utterly devastated, blown outside sludgeoid stupidity passed directly through the vermilion haze of the Burning Star Core. I like it raw and bludgeoning as much as the next guy, but too much of this sort of thing can dislodge molars and loosen rafters. Listening to this 12" has me staring up at the ceiling and waiting for the cracks. That being said, something demands my devotion. It could be Comets' singular desire to pulverize as much as they actually rawk out. It could be the rabid guitar squalls, the punishing crunked up Funkadelic rhythms, the caveman drums, deep fried vocal hoots and hollers. It could be the fucking shitstorm. Burning Star Core's injection of grime and crackling decay further tips the scale towards infinite waste and likely plays into the equation as well. The last track in particular is over 13 minutes of primal psych punk skree and splatter that sounds like Simple Saucer in a gangland scrap with Skullflower. All these could be reasons I find this so fascinating. But I'm gonna go with the formaldehyde.

I have procured my ticket for the sold out Jandek show in Austin on August 28th, 2005. Thank you, Nick, for pulling some strings! There are still plenty of seats for the New Orleans gig, with the magical mystery tourists MV & EE plus Chris Corsano lending the man in black a hand. Really wish I could make that one too, but time and finances are tight. Should be posting another roundup of newish releases in the next few days, this time of a more poppier variety. YAY!

In other news:

David Late Tibet is into Timothy the Revelator / Stone Breath! Good job, Mr. Chasny. Hopefully this brings the proprietor of Hand Eye/Dark Holler and his stable of artists a little more attention. Hand Eye and its sister Dark Holler are completely family owned and operated labels that don't have the benefit of a multimillion dollar hype machine or any current buzz phrases to prop them up in the public eye. When words like "wyrd" and "free folk" were bandied about, Mr. Renner and his various ensembles (Stone Breath, Mourning Cloak, The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree, Timothy the Revelator, Moth Mask, etc) always seemed to hover somewhere just above, but were rarely paid their due. They've been at it over a decade now, coming at the folk thing from a unique place. Stone Breath and Mourning Cloak were important stepping stones for me to folks like Comus, The Trees, Incredible String Band, COB--some of the most incredible acoustic music ever recorded. So yeah, listening to Stone Breath a lot lately, still getting that woodland chill down the spine when I hear the deep intonation of Timothy's baritone over the most minimal banjo and field recorded drones. An important and influential link in this whole modern underground folk scene thing. I realize a little more each and every day this is the most vital music around.

Case in point: Paul labrecque and Valerie Webb's "Trees, Chants and Hollers," about to be reissued by Eclipse Records (of course it'd be Eclipse) later this year. I must thank Brad over at Foxy Digitalis for turning me on to this, because I'd not have heard it by now otherwise. The sound is somewhere between Stone Breath, Charalambides and maybe Labrecque's earlier band, the underrated/known Bright, which played a more spacy drone rock during the late 90s. The same sense of cyclical progression and freedom is found in these acoustic guitar/voice/banjo folk-scapes, but this is deeper and more plaintive at the same time, and informed by some unknown mystery that could be attributed to the emotional extremes that accompanied its conception and release. It's not a pretty story, but then that's love for you. It's another classic in a year overflowing with 'em. Labrecque is also one half of the fnatastical Other Method. I know, it's a lot to process... But try.

NZ Super Noise Trio LIVE:

With Throats as Fine as Needles is the fantastic new deep drone duo (now trio?) of Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel) and Antony Milton (Nether Dawn) that I've praised recently at FoxyD.


Click here for a phoned in live recording with the help of one James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Techs!), recorded for Brown Student Radio. Sweet!

This is much more entertaining than this.

The previous post was supposed to be about new EAR-BLEEDING LYSERGIC RAWK instead of addiction, but I went off on a tangent. It happens. Sorry. The original point was supposed to be something to the effect that the music should be and really is the drug. After you've binged on some visceral rhythmic discord you can refile the CD and/or LP and repeat forever; the only thing you'll really have to fear is a ruptured eardrum or two.

When it comes to hearing loss, sensory distortion, maximal sound of all kinds, Matt Bower and Marcia Bassett's Hototogisu takes the shit cake by storm. "Green" (Heavy Blossom), their first widely available CD, is the kind of molten lava wwwaaarrgh and splaaaanng that a lot of people have been making lately, but Bower and Bassett wrote the book on this shit years ago, and HOTOTOGISU is merely the latest and arguably greatest realization of an endless aural orgasm. There was a brief period in the mid 90s when Skullflower played a primal free jazz/metal skree overload that was perfectly realized on their "Carved Into Roses" CD (VHF). "Green" works like that; only the duo streamlines and compresses the tantric throng down to a propulsive fireball of skull crushing fury. Not to suggest that this is harsh noise...It is, but its aim is more elevated in the biomechanicalspiritual sense. It's like the musical equivalent to some sort of cathartic drug trip where you realize/understand everything across all dimensions simultaneously. And it's heavy. Guitars, mountains of effects, drums collide as a volcano expelling a constant stream of early industrial, primitive electronica, distorted GOO whose lineage can be traced from the early Velvets and Pink Floyd right up to My Bloody Valentine, Fushitsusha and of course Skullflower. Drop the laser down at any point and I'm immediately flung into a tsunami of ecstasy and rage. As if this all wasn't enough to keep my active noize junkie ass busy, SKULLFLOWER IS BACK! Bower has closed the Sunroof for a while, given Total a break and reanimated his original Frankennzilla of rock. Skullflower today sounds sort of like a cross between ye of old and Sunroof, and yes, the Hototogisu. There's lots of lasers and flange shooting back and forth across this radioactive shitstorm, Bower's guitar stuck in a lockgroove of howling dissonance and Spacemen 3 hypno-groove. As with "Green," "Orange Canyon Mind" (Crucial Blast) is a record to be surrendered to as the ghosts of Ash Ra, Harmonia, Faust and Merzbow pass ever closer before finally fusing into one magnificent beast.

Speaking of the more mongrel among us, always fine to see the Dead C back in the game, this time sharing a split 12" (Fat Cat) with wacked out Congolese street jazz/noise ensemble Konono No. 1. They're new to me too, but the buzz is rightly reverberating around these ethno-drones, chants and polyrhythmic percussive flows. They're going to be featured on NPR's The World this Monday (08/08/05), so check those listings for the scoop on some real deal industrial freakbeat. The Dead C delivers three more brilliant slabs of clangy stomp and skree that alternates between nutty tape manipulations and more rhythmic quagmires. Seething noise blues is the end result, and Robbie Yeats is still the best drummer since Neil Peart.

That brings me to Sunburned Hand of the Man's "No Magic Man." Seems like a lotta man's, man. Sometimes I feel these guys; sometimes I don't. Their rambling free form hippie acid/turntable/noise/etc is so scattered/far out there that I find myself wishing their albums came with a skeleton key that unlocked the hidden meaning of it all. Still haven't figured it out, and I don't really care to when the results are this pleasantly burnt. In fact, this is pretty much as good as this sorta stuff gets with its warped opener of old spoken word, surface and tape noise "sounds of hell" and more eventually cooked to a crisp and chilled across 11 compact, loosely rendered sonic expeditions. "The Air Itself" is quite Sun City Girls with Brooklynite spoken word over analog whirrrs and Hawkwind whoosh. Other spots make me think of Funkadelic, Comus, Nurse with Wound, along with the usual suspects. The tribal chants and primitive kraut pulse of "Your Own Eyes and Number None" build to Faustlike proportions, and closer "Gather Round" is funky echo drenched acid party sorta like "Maggot Brain" banged out of the bottom of a well. While we're down here may as well see what the always cosmically informed Third Troll is blabbing on about. "III" (Capillary River) is I believe my first exposure to this Bardo Pond offshoot, though I've been aware of it for many moons. These are dense epics of extended drone and building space rock that run from the most primitive industrial murk (guitars, electronics, shortwave, farfisa, etc) to full on rhythmic jazz evocation (the above plus heavy percussion and sax). The 21 min "Tropic of Entropy" seems to sum it all up well enough. Tony Conrad and Faust, Ash Ra Tempel, Xhol at their most long gone, among others...

And now allow me to introduce this year's newest model, Brisbane, Australia's G55. "Who is that" you say? Almost two years ago now strange rumblings were first felt with the arrival of the mysterious Lost Domain via the excellent Rhizome microlabel. It signaled a major exhalation from the lungs of "free electronic jazz noise," that's since blown further on the even more ghostly "Sailor, Home From the Sea," courtesy of Digitalis/Broken Face. Little did I know that it was just the tip of the iceberg for the loose conglomeration of musicians and noisemakers that comprise the Kindling empire. G55, a trio featuring two members of the LD, is just the latest manifestation from this hallucination factory. If the Lost Domain is levitated and ghostly, G55 is an entirely more mechanical post punk beast. In fact these 7 charging improvisations are some of the most perfectly realized blasts of pure rhythm and sound I've come across all year. G55 might suggest many previous ground-breakers--This Heat, Bablicon, Faust and Dead C among them--but strikes out for deeper waters and a purer evocation by leaving cumbersome details like lyrics, song titles and any recognizable form behind. Elements of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music," the Magic Band, Vibracathedral Orchestra are dropped into a cauldron, stirred and melted down to white hot sound. The way this trio goes from a squawking minimal noise blurt, expands it into a primitive krautrock pulse and finally blasts off for the deepest regions of space over the first three tracks alone is mindblowing--makes me think of early Kraftwerk's rawness combined with the scope of their later more realized works. This lo-fi art whatzit is some of the most satisfying pulse and churn I've ever heard, no lie at all. Given it was all improvised and recorded live in one day (!) makes it all too obvious: G55 is one to watch closely and consume impulsively like so many little pink pills. Bravo, lads.

So it's August, the time when people melt before they walk a city block in this town. Being one who's prone to drinking much coffee, there's a high sweat factor to be dealt with when under the sun for longer than 10 minutes. At least I'm conditioned to function in this shit. I feel for the more northerly acclimated sorts who might be coming through around now, but I welcome the burn. Every year I get to endure my own baptism by fire, and I'm always ever so proud of myself for making it through alive.

I've actually been fascinated with fire since I was a youngun (I once burned down my parents' backyard playing "chicken": true) and even now, sometimes feel a sick compulsion to shove my head in the oven and turn it up. I like it hot, like that lame song by The Power Station...Remember them? They're the kind of prefab glossy pop shite that made suburbanite losers like me resort to trying marijuana in the first place. So don't go thinking I'm getting all Sylvia Plath on your ass. I'm not. I'm just acknowledging my respect for heat, flames, laserbeams and other things that can make me go blind.

Since getting older, and arguably wiser (ROFLMFAOHAWHAWHAWHAWHAW!!!), I've realized that drugs are not necessarily the most beneficial means of expanding the mind. They're more like amplifiers that emphasize whatever thoughts are running through the mental wire wheel already. And seeing as most of us are consumed by negativity on a day to day basis, do we really need to give this stuff a platform from which to shout: "I SUCK! MY LIFE SUCKS! I FUCKING HATE YOU, EVEN THOUGH I TALK TO YOU EVERY DAY BECAUSE YOU BUY ME BEER AND TALK BACK, SO I WILL CONTINUE SITTING HERE AND LISTENING TO STORIES SUCH AS HOW YOU BOINKED A GIRL NAMED BRANDI LAST WEEK AND THEN BOINKED HER 60 YR OLD MOTHER THIS WEEK, ETC"? Of course we do. Shit sucks pretty bad when you're living the American non-dream nonstop, sucks less bad if you can share said suckage with another suckee over a glass of bad draft beer.

Anyway, back to the present point: If a record or CD is speeding by like a freight-train that might go off the rails, you can always turn it down. You can hit stop. You can even hit eject and throw the CD clear across the room. No such button lies in the cockpit of a Boeing airbus blazing on MDMA or 37 jello shots, coming in too steep and too hot in a thunderstorm. All the passengers can do is fasten the seatbelts, grab knees and pray that Jesus doesn't snatch their ass from the "jaws of life" (interesting phrase that).

Still, drugs are fun. They prolong life. They fight infection. They allow certain bores a means of staving off the traumas of early/mid life crises that the rest of us call "being awake" so that they might be invigorated by faux confidence and self esteem as their sex drive plummets. In the end it's all worth it, though, because they become more viable cogs in the human machine, or they're five times more likely to commit suicide and/or murder a coworker. All beneficial to society in the wacky decade affectionately referred to as the oh's.

There's always that danger of losing one's self among any kind of obsession--real, imagined, experienced or witnessed from a lachrymose daze. It's not always so obvious, either. One day you're running late, finally find your lost keys, stub a shin on the dash out, and you look down and find a warped prothstetic made of hemp and coca leaves. It happens! Perhaps moderation is the key to the beneficial ingestion of all stimuli. Maybe I'm just a ninny who thinks all you need is love. Jonathan Richman was onto something when he sang, "if these guys, if they're really so great, tell me, why can't they take this place straight?" Because, hippie Jonny, addiction gives one purpose.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR SKULL DESTROYING HARSH NOISE.

Been switching over from NPR more than usual lately, settling on 93.9 THE EDGE or something, which features a really solid mix of hair and heavy metal, proto metal and other classics of the 70s-00s, and found myself completely engulfed in Guns 'n' Roses' "Patience" on the ride home the other night. Be it total bullshit affectation or honest heart on sleeve sap, it works. I simply cannot deny that for a brief period at the end of the 80s, the guy I will now always know as Axl Bloat once had a clue. He also had a guitarist that knew how to play a smoking and/or sweet lead. In light of the rest of Axl's "career," it's hard to take "Patience" seriously on the whole, but if you just ease that bucket seat back a few inches, roll down the window and let the summer breeze rush over, it's a song that's bound to leave its mark. Big Star, Rolling Stones, Zeppelin (in country mode), Cat Stevens (pre muslim) all come to mind and sound better, but at least Axl and the boys once tried to come close.

God willing, I'm going to attend this:

Current 93 & special guests live in San Francisco: 4 & 5 November, 2005

BLACK SHIPS EAT THE SKY: Current 93 will be playing two shows at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall on Friday 4 and Saturday 5 November. Also appearing over this weekend, we are delighted and honoured to announce, will be OM, BABY DEE and SIMON FINN on Friday 4, and OM, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, PANTALEIMON and MAJA ELLIOT on Saturday 5. Tickets are $30 and go on sale on Sunday 17 July. They are available online from www.virtuous.com and www.tickets.com.

Friday 4 November

SIMON FINN
BABY DEE
OM
CURRENT 93

Saturday 5 November

MAJA ELLIOTT
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
PANTALEIMON
OM
CURRENT 93

Om is basically the best live band on the planet currently...hoozah!

I actually want to like COLDPLAY. If these jokers are in fact this generation's BEATLES, I feel a certain cultural obligation to get down off my high horse, leave bias at the door, and dig on the pop bliss goodness. The cloyingly sentimental piano pop bliss goodness at that. No luck so far. Guess I'll just have to make do with the Radar Brothers until that blessed day.

PLAYLIST #1 (these are songs, mmmkay?):

1. Black Sabbath "Symptom of the Universe"
2. Black Sabbath "Lady Evil"
3. Salamander "Hail"
4. Eisley "Marvelous Things"
5. Carpathian Forest "Fever, Flames and Hell"
6. Deerhoof "Sound the Alarm"
7. Oneida "High Life"
8. Current 93 "A Gothic Love Song"
9. Sleater-Kinney "The Fox"
10. Marissa Nadler "My Little Lark"
11. KaS Product "Tina Town"
12. The Clear Spots "Hawk Wallace Pine"
13. Khanate "Captured"

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Sad times all around. To all in London and the UK, our thoughts are with you.

Well, WAR OF THE WORLDS was pretty good I thought, and it basically laid waste to my notion that big studio films are unwilling to subtly point fingers at the powers that be. But it was still a Spielberg flick, so the characters were a tad overly weepy and *sniff* emotionally fragile. Otherwise, awesome pandemoniac science fiction most of the way. I'd call it sci-fi, but there is actually a cult of people who take great offense when you call thematic science fiction scifi. What twats.

On to more pressing concerns; here is a hilariously informative one question interview with the great Sufjan Stevens, nicked from Foxy Digitalis. It's actually more like a three pronged interrogative paragraph, yet it still gives me a new appreciation for the man, THE MYTH that is Sufjan:

Q: Noise and drone often make cameos in your recordings. You have released what can only be described (at least by myself) as an unabashedly verbose experimental electronic record (Enjoy Your Rabbit). You have dabbled in the avant-improv. And yet you are now a folk sweetheart on the verge of international high-mall culture crossover appeal. So Sufjan Stevens, answer me this...are you about to completely sell-out to the quaintity (state of being charmingly old-fashioned and inoffensive) of Simon and Garfunkel nicetude, or do you still court a love of the subterranean squalor of things other and foreign to year-end lists and teen tele-drama? And how do you balance these loves/styles/sensibilities and get them to sit and eat a meal at the same table? Do you have any intentions of throwing such dinner parties again?

A. I think mall-culture and television and Simon & Garfunkel are environments for a special kind of noise. Sure, there is organized commerce and bad music at the mall, but consider the constant din of shuffling shoes and gossip, conversation, children screaming, dads groaning, sneaker soles squealing on varnished floors. It's a noisy place. Television is noisy as well, especially channel surfing, static, bad reception, mixed with the noise of the living room, music videos. It's a mash-up, in different keys, using different tones. Many of the performances on old Simon & Garfunkel records have intonation problems. This is widely known. For popular folk music, it suffers greatly from being out of tune. I think Art Garfunkel's performance on Bridge Over Troubled Waters is transcendent partly because it fumbles desperately for the pitch. Listen carefully here, I'm not kidding. My point: even these environments of popular culture celebrate their own kind of disorder; I think John Cage would have made field recordings in the mall.

In terms of my own writing, I don't think it's entirely necessary to qualify distinctions between what is noisy and what sounds nice. Sometimes the best way to understand noise is to concentrate on the organization of noise through conventional musical systems. The 12-tone scale is really just one prevailing method for organizing dissonance, in terms of sine and cosine, the laws of physics. Because all sound is particle waves, it almost always can be reduced and/or explained through similar systems, using the same laws of physics. In this respect, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between what is commonly termed "cacophony" and what is often maligned as Western "equal temperament." Maybe you could explain it in terms of moderation or variation. Indian ragas use different tones in a different scale, sometimes pentatonic or hexatonic, depending on the method, but they are no more or less noisy. In fact, ragas are often meditative. Atonal music, while sounding flustered and muddy to our ears, is still reasonably tame, in that it can easily be charted on staff paper. But why is feedback and computer static considered noisy when even its tones and rhythms can fall under a particular chart, if not on Western notation, then at least using the visual representation of sound waves? To me, all sound, whether tonal or noisy, is demystified by its conventional and observable nature. Light, on the other hand, is the enigma to be reckoned with. Is it a particle or a wave?

Ok, so maybe the crux of the issue lies not in my novice assessment of music theory, but in my decision to produce music that is easily approachable, listen-able, and immediately satisfying. I'll be the first to admit I've fallen under this category, of gorgeous, gratifying, symphonic songwriting. It's a crutch. So why haven't I invested suitable time and space for noise and improvisation? The truth is, I have. For every ten songwriting sessions I coordinate (with guitars tuned, microphones carefully angled, ear tuned to middle C, instruments warmed and resting), I often instigate a freak-out session as well, in which drum heads are thrown about, amps are buzzing, guitar strings are bent and de-tuned, in which curtain rods and swivel chairs and cloth napkins are solicited for instrumentation, in which the singing is unevenly pitched, in which agitated monkey yelps and hand claps on pants and finger snaps and uncertain whistling takes center stage. Much of this is done in private, behind closed doors, with close friends, in isolation, sometimes on tape, sometimes just for fun. I have hours of this noise transferred to my computer. One session has me klutzing with the abominable trumpet, my friend Joe hammering drumsticks on the battered banjo, my other friend Matt making chicken noises with his pick-ups. It's wonderful and terrible. In one session, at a rehearsal space on Ludlow street, we were kicked out for playing too loud, for too long, intoxicated, smoking cigarettes, breaking things, beating our heads, all the clang and clatter of youth ushering insurmountable meaning to our musical mess. We had a brief confrontation with Simone, the owner: "Last time you come here," he waved a finger at us. "Get out now." If you really want to hear the result, send a self-addressed stamped envelope. I can assure you, you will be disappointed. But it stands as secret proof, however detrimental, to the fact that I consistently invest serious time and energy in the superstitions of disorder, in improvisation, in noise, in not knowing what note to play next, in savoring the unexpected, in yielding to the unnatural sounds of an unnatural instrument: the window pane, the light shade, the air conditioner, the enamel of my teeth. I have great respect and awe for the element of surprise. I love noise. I just don't feel the need to share this love with the public. It's my own private love, the love of doorbells and jackhammers and bus engines and plastic bags caught in trees. It's not X-rated, it's not unlawful, but for now, for my own particular reasons, I'd like to keep this love under covers.

STOP THE DAMN PRESSES!

Mmmmmore essential Summer jams:

The Clear Spots are the three Bugaj brothers (or two brothers and a cousin or a dad and his two sons or WHATEVER) and a fellow named Kevin Moist kicking up a rowdy free or no wave two guitar/ bass/ drums racket on the "Mountain Rock" CD-R. Look past any obvious homage of the name, drink it down like the slightly tainted mountain spring water it is, and you just may see blurred visions of small glassy eyed woodland creatures scurrying in broken spirals about a Pennsylvanian hillside, drunk on bad ale and strange berries. These are ten tracks of barn-burning fuzz clang (actually recorded in a farmhouse!) and noise ragas that bite hard whether exploding like volcanoes or pluming as incandescent smoke signals. It all owes something to pals Bardo Pond, the long lost Juneau and the most damaged Mirza—spontaneous and raw but always moving forward towards some ultimate catharsis. Tracks like “F.O.” and the 12 minute skronk prog opus “Hawk Wallace Pine” should send Dead C and Skullflower fans somersaulting through the crop circles of his/her gray matter with their propulsive webs of distortion and cracked rhythmic flow.

"Ruskeatimantti" (Tumult) by Finnish Avarus is something more clattery and cosmically (de)tuned. This 2 CD is an excellent all encompassing jumping off point for these manic Tampereians, drawing together a few of their long gone early CD-R and vinyl releases, all deserving of a larger, more permanent pressing. This spastizoid Beefheart cum Yahaweh insanity is not so easily digested on first listens, but sometimes such a sound is just what the witchdoctor ordered, and it tends to go down better after a few piña coladas. Also, the excellent extended kraut-freakout "A-V-P" is included in all its Ash Ra Tempel worshipping glory.

The Gray Field Recordings latest is a limited CD-R entitled "Hypnagogia," and if the title isn't a hint, the first track--"Bloodstream (Runey Moon Version)"--should tell you where this (mostly) one woman band from Oklahoma is coming from. It's a bewitched brew consisting of spliced lysergic noise pieces, tribal percussive eruptions and gorgeous archaic folk spells that should appeal to anyone who ever chased Nico's "Desert Shore" with "Musick to Play in the Dark" or Current 93's "Thunder Perfect Mind," but like her forebearers, she's not derivative at all. It can be ordered directly from Anticlock Records.

Falling further down the rabbit, er cat, hole is the brotherly drone duo, My Cat is an Alien, whose "Through the Reflex of the Rain" comes via the excellent Free Porcupine Society. The Opalio brothers incorporate electric alien guitars, "cosmic effects," toy keyboard/ piano/ xylophone, field recordings and more into dense clusters of static drone and fractured almost folk across 39 mins of building aural hypnosis. The intensity is glaring for such a repetitive piece, with things picking up at about the 10 min mark with percussive clatter and meandering guitar plucks before the oscillating organ shifts to another key entirely and things get maximal in the best way. A lot of folks are making these sorts of damaged extended trance pieces lately, but MCIAA resides in another sphere. On a similar, albeit more minimal tip, comes the excellent "Czechoslovakia" CD-R from With Throats as Fine as Needles (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon). The duo of Campbell Kneale and Pseudoarcana head honcho Antony Milton is more claustrophobic and piercing than the above, which makes sense given it was captured in abandoned bunkers and tunnels in the hills of Wellington. The end results are the sort of relentless void scapes one would expect from all involved, lent a damp resonance via their musty surroundings. Two tracks of windswept tunnel vision, the the sort of headphones bliss I can't get enough of, and the echo chamber aura only further distorts/enhances an already intense sound that falls somewhere between Mirror and noisier early Popol Vuh.

Pefkin is one half the very cool, very underheard late 90s Scottish duo Electroscope. The "Asa Nisi Masa" CD-R (Foxglove) is the first thing I've heard from from Gayle Brogan since then. Skeletal, fractured bedroom folk and feeback with occasional hushed vocals falling somewhere between the Charalambides and early Sarah Records. More like sketches than songs, lending the entire, and very brief--23 min--affair an intimacy that could draw comparisons to Nico and Alastair Galbraith and little else. I'm also happy to finally have a chance to wrap my ears around something by Ben Reynolds. "Oh Joy and Beyond," also on Foxglove, has a wondrous ethnic folk quality that I suppose could most easily be compared to Pelt, but that's only on the first track. Elsewhere we get tribal space jams and dense minimal journeys growing more massive with each swing of the pendulum. What makes it more than just another drop in the "avant folk" bucket is the the way Reynolds explores deep drone, homemade electronica and pure raga with equal mastery, blending them all into one gorgeous little ride. One of the best CD-R's I've heard in 05, though I'm not sure if it was released in '05.

Nagisa Ni Te's "Dream Sounds" (Jagjaguwar) CD is yet another essential offering from everyone's favorite dream folk duo. Three old songs, one new one, all recently re-recorded with maximum headphones ingestion in mind. It's not really a greatest hits, just more aural gold ripe for mining. I will review this thoroughly soon, so there's no need to get all specific on yr ass. Let's just say that David Grubbs' description of Nagisa as a dreamier Crazy Horse is pretty on the mark. Both Yo La Tengo and Galaxie 500 come to mind too, but Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda have one of the most unique minimal folk pop vibes, and Shinji is a master guitar player who makes every note shine with the brilliance of a thousand stars. Case in point: the 20 min epic, "True Sun," which is sort of like Nagisa Ni Te's own personal "Cortez the Killer."

Peter Wright's "Yellow Horizon" (Pseudoarcana), the latest from the New Zealander by way of England is easily one of his greatest. Carefully constructed ambient mood pieces drawn almost entirely from guitar and effects, careful and deliberate plucks and drones. Roy Montgomery, Loren Mazzacane Connors, early Labradford, Fripp/Eno could all be reference points, but Wright has his own signature somnambulant aura as he hits the golden chord repeatedly. Highly meditative stuff that teeters on the line between deep meditation and more song based melodic bliss. "Tone of the Universe (=Tone of the Earth)" (Pseudoarcana) by Various Artists is a strong contender for comp of the year so far. Included among its ranks are some of the most important out noise artists today (Keijo, Peter Wright, The Nether Dawn, My Cat is an Alien, Vibracathedral Orchestra, AM/Uton, Blithe Sons, CJA, Anla Courtis, Birchville Cat Motel, Seht, Of, 1/3 Octave Band, The Skaters and plenty more) spread out across 2 CD's with galactic tonal eminations as a loosly binding theme. Brilliantly edited and arranged from start to finish.

And now let us get proggy wid it. Circle's "Forest" (Ektro) is the northern most masters' ultimate harmonic convergence of trippy acoustics and throbbing exploratory repetition. Amon Düül II, Can and more come to mind, only these gems originates from Pori, Finland. This is one of the first Circle albums that I've come across to continually fascinate from start to finish while maintaining a mellower incantatory aura. Arguably more transcendental is the lovely sophomore effort from urDog, "Eyelid of Moon" (Secret Eye). The Rhode Island trio tones it down slightly this time in favor of a more minimal head space, although the rambunctious pieces are still there, too, and quite funny in an early Soft Machine/Pink Floyd sort'a way. "Paths of the Meridians" sounds like an homage to early 70s Nico, and the title track would've fit just fine on Amon Düül II's "Tanz Der Lemmings." Yes, that is praise.

That's it for now, but I've recieved plenty of other packages recently from Drag City (new GHOST DVD!), Eclipse, Social Registry, Music Fellowship, Volcanic Tongue, Jagjaguwar (new ONEIDA!) and more, so don't be surprised if I post another one of these mid Summer roundups in a week or two. Also, thank you to the nice fellow from the Foxy Digitalis forums who sent me the copy of Peter Walker's "Rainy Day Raga"--definitive stuff. Cheers!

Come on baby, eat the rich...

It's been a long time coming, but in my estimation "Land of the Dead" is primo George Romero. Viewing the previous three films might enrich one's appreciation for this big idea b movie, but it's hardly necessary for "getting it." There are things here that are simply right on. Universal picked up the low budget production, which gave Romero a chance to use the classic Universal logo, a worthy nod to an era that obviously touched the prepubescent auteur and the world at large. It's a thrill to see that clunky piece of revolving iconography before a film that's new, NOT a remake of anything. The director is giving us a wink and saying he's coming from a different place, that he gets the classic monster genre in a way that hacks today will never comprehend. It's a film that speaks more specifically to the conundrum of humanity and progress than anyone today would ever dare.

Horror shlock maestro Wes Craven and his 30-something stooge Kevin Williamson think they do something like this too. The repugnant "Cursed," with weird faced Christina Ricci as a sensual werewolf in training, was intended as sly homage to the Universal monster pictures, too, but in truth it was closer to a tepid rip-off of Wes/Kevin's "Scream" cashcow crossed with John Hughes teen dramadies. No one really means it; it's just a clever post modern satire--read as unnecessary bore--designed to appeal to you on a self referential level that at this point is just tedious and leaves you wishing Lon Cheney in original "Wolfman" garb or David Naughton circa "An American Werewolf in London" would pop out of a dark corner and start reciting a dissertation on the inanity of ironic send ups of already ironic horror films.

No to say that Romero doesn't appreciate some subtly irony of his own.

The Dead series is definitely about something more than gore and plot mechanics. It's about so much there's really no point in getting specific. Romero never falls back on the easy tricks of modern horror. He doesn't hate the ladies. He doesn't needlessly linger on gruesome images of cannibalism, though he has before, and in a sure to be released "director's cut" of "Land..." I hope he does again. There are some choice muscular chompings to be enjoyed in this shorter version, even an evisceration or two, but it's slightly toned down for a post 9/11 market. Folks don't need to be shocked out of complacency these days (unless they're Christians!), they just need to wake up and read the paper as they sip their morning coffee.

Against this backdrop Romero has formulated one of his richest zombie tales. Crammed into the 93 minutes are comments on evolution/Darwinism, class struggle, herd mentality, communist revolt, tolerance and more. Perhaps more so than with any previous Dead film, aside from "Night," viewers will leave discussing the philosophical implications of having and having not in the age of apocalypse, and testing their own preconceptions about so called solutions to larger problems. They'll also do their part in trying to identify the "true zombies" in the world today, and just possibly end up coming off like braindead cannibals in the process. That's the beauty of Romero.

Things drag a bit. The initial shock of the classic "Dawn..." can't and shouldn't be repeated, but it can be updated and streamlined. The makeup and special effects are incredible. CGI isn't on the menu. The cast, including yumyum Asia Argento (Dario's daughter), John Leguizamo (not that I'm a big fan, but this is his best scenery chewing support role ever), Dennis Hopper (remember him in the second "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"?) and plenty of familiar faces (including the one and only Tom Savini as "machete blade"--a slight reprise of his character in "Dawn") in supporting and cameo roles all snort, moan and chomp with glee. The zombies are beautiful to look at too. Again the real soul of the picture lies in their tortured moans, childlike fascination and developing compassion for one another, where the richies that inhabit Fiddler's Green are little more than caricatures--a symbol of excess and greed, with Hopper making a boring Prospero. All these folks could use a little more fleshing out, no pun intended.

Still in the end, this is a Dead movie with ideas and images that no one else could ever conceive--genuine filmmaking in an age when indie and major studio productions are practically the same thing and no one has a voice anymore. The master is up to his old tricks for a new age. True, it's not as good as "28 Days Later," but I like it more for my own biased reasons. There are moments that will leave you giddy and clapping with approval, not to mention sort of wishing Romero had been tapped to remake his own "Dawn of the Dead" last year, instead of some guy who used to direct Korn videos. But, contrary to popular belief, Romero does not repeat himself.

Two things:

1.) New stuff up over at Foxy Digitalis, including a recollection of one of my all time faves - CHROME - by founding member Gary Spain, gushing reviews of the new Angels of Light (by me), the awesome "Tone of The Universe..." comp on P-arcana and the new Wooden Wand and Vasnishing Voice album, etc; plus interviews with Ariel Pink, Drekka, Funeral Folk, a chat with my old pal and guiding light, Phil McMullen, and plenty more. Check it.

2.) Arthurfest this Sep 4 & 5th looks to about as good as I figured it'd be, only better. I hope to make it, but it's gonna be tough with another Cali trip in the works the following month. Check out the lineup though:

SONIC YOUTH
SLEATER-KINNEY
THE BLACK KEYS
CAT POWER
OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL
T-MODEL FORD
MERZBOW
THE JUAN MACLEAN
DEAD MEADOW
COMETS ON FIRE
SUNN O)))
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
VETIVER
JOSEPHINE FOSTER
SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN
WOLFMOTHER
GROWING
CIRCLE
RADAR BROS.
EARTH
MARISSA NADLER & JACK ROSE
MAGIK MARKERS
FUTURE PIGEON
BECKY STARK & THE LAVENDER DIAMOND
WINTER FLOWERS
with more acts to be announced shortly.

Jack Rose and Marissa Nadler together? You've got to be shittin'! Currently listening to the incredible "Catonapotato" by Volcano the Bear and totally loving every second...get it NOW!

So I was at the gas station today buying a lotto ticket, and couldn't help but notice this rather bodacious woman, curvy, cute, with her little daughter in line in front of me. As she turned to leave we made quick eye contact and I was immediately hypnotized. Ever seen someone on acid or cocaine? Their eyers are like THIS BIG and blinks are infrequent if noticeable at all. This chick looked like that. Every time I looked into her BIG BLACK EYES a wave of horror and perverse fascination rushed through me as all I could do was just stare hard right back at her! I had to struggle to rip my gaze away to find the more welcoming countenance of Mohammad, my attendant homeboy who worked the counter.

I considered it a moment and decided the chick had just received a botox treatment since her lips were pursed and fishlike, there wasn't a wrinkle in sight and the expression remained petrified for the minute or so we shared proximity. On the way to my car we locked eyes again, and I swear for a few seconds I felt my vital essence being sucked from my body. What the fuck?

Six Organs of Admittance Live 5-20-05...

...recorded at Fernwood Resort, a glorified restaurant/bar that is actually pretty cool. I highly recommend making the trip if you should ever find yourself rounding the sharp bends of Hwy 1. Thanks to Nari for hosting this.

Yamatzuka Eye with Light Hands


Stairway to Heaven


Green Stream


Welcome to Haight


Simply Divine


Monumental


Bottleneck Slide


Robbie the Redneck Hippie Hobo and Gurngy

See all this and more(!)...here.

Looky here:


and here:


Nabbed from my new favorite site.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love "Deadwood." Its Henry James meets Mark Twain on crack historical fiction is surely among the most exciting, tense and utterly humane programming on television today. If there is a God (and I'm leaning that way), "Deadwood" should be around long enough to take its place as the next Sopranos, but as far as I'm concerned it already surpassed that storied Goodfellas tribute in its first season. If you don't have HBO, rent those DVD's! In the meantime, here's a great blogpost, nabbed from the WMFU blog, which features 7 minutes of pure unadulterated Deadwood cussin'. The irony here is that Deadwood is often criticized as being the most profane show on TV, but an average episode yields maybe 10 mins tops of true blue potty mouth. 7 mins of Deadwood, taken from episode 10, season 1.

An Amtrak train through the Southwest is sort of like Moss Eisley on wheels. Every kind of human and celestial ride upon its buckling frame on an even keel across a vast and desolate landscape. I saw and conversed with Indians (from India), a 74 yr old guy I will call Bob dressed like a train engineer with earrings, a fellow who resembled Sammy Hagar (sadly the most recent incarnation) named Ted. Ted showed me a pic of he and Gary Busey that looked like Gary and Sammy. Met an actor from the film "Waking Life" who resembled a young Malcolm X, en route to Austin no less. He had just one line. Listened to Jack Rose rolling across the Arizona sand at 3 AM. There were dangerous lolitas, bald ruffians (who no doubt split their time between the railroad and the lockup), mobile outlaws, beached whales, the health impaired (read as terminally ill) and every other kind of person (had breakfast with two cops one morning--sweet dudes!) all sharing in the common task of going to or from somewhere. The more discussions I had with folks, on and off the train, the more I could see the appeal of this mode of travel. It was long and disorienting. Day and night blurred together. The train bounced and swayed on the tracks, one car after the other, as if they were all together a massive 100 ton kite tail fluttering in the wind.

It's easier to be yourself when your past/future successes/failures are hundres of miles and dozens of hours behind/in front of you.

In the past five days I've seen live:

--The Books
--The Boredoms
--Six Organs of Admittance, The Blithe Sons, Sean Smith
--Om, Six Organs of Admittance (again)
--Six Organs of Admittance (one more time at an Amoeba instore...could I be a fanatic? Watch this space!)

What else? Much walking, hiking, riding, drinking, smoking, flexing, decking (I knocked a trolly driver cold) and finally resting ensued. I bought some records at Amoeba (impressive place!):

--Jackson C. Frank "Blues Run the Game: Special Extended Edition" 2CD (Sanctuary)
--Kevin Ayers "Joy of a Toy" [with bonus tracks] CD (EMI)
--Residual Echoes "S/t" CD (Holy Mountain)
--Bert Jansch "Rosemary Lane" CD (Castle)
--High On Fire/Ruins Split 7" (Relapse/Skingraft)

I will write more on all of this for the next Foxy Digitalis update and post some pictures when I hit my home PC in a few days...

This one looks like essential listening:

Volcano the Bear "Catonapotato" (Broken Face/Digitalis)

Certain things just need to be seen and heard to be believed. One of these things is to experience England, Leicester combo Volcano the Bear in the live setting. Nothing I ever say will accurately describe that evening last year when I made the trip down to the unlikely setting of their first Swedish gig (the art museum in Norrköping, a mid-sized town in Southern Sweden) but it goes without saying that it was a night of pure magic and brilliance.

Volcano the Bear was formed in 1995 with the constant idea of being a group with uncompromising and boundless ideas, and they’ve always tried to aim for a live environment where they can do pretty much whatever they please. This results in a live show that beyond grandiose sonic qualities blends the very essence of key words such as surreal, shifting moods, myriad of instruments, humor, beauty and to a certain degree even self-indulgence. That being said, these sonic transgressors are not for everyone but if you’re a fan of free-form improvisations, free jazz, weird drones, pagan folk, whimsical acoustic pieces, disjointed percussive riffs, crackling electronics and actually own more than one record by either the Sun City Girls, This Heat, Faust, Residents, The Shadow Ring or Captain Beefheart than you owe it to yourself to check these cats out.

If you’re not as lucky as me when it comes to attending Volcano the Bear shows I am happy to report that Catonapotato is a perfect example of what they are capable of in the live setting. All eight tracks presented here were recorded live by the duo of Aaron Moore and Nick Mott at four different occasions in 2004. These four shows took place in Leicester (England), Paris (France), Norrköping (Sweden) and Sheffield (England) and all broadcasts different sides of this talented duo. The number of styles explored throughout seems endless, though words like free, folk and jazz keep popping into my head. Catonapotato is not necessarily free jazz or free folk, but it does indeed display music that is completely free from any sort of constraint and structure. It just floats along however it wants to with the aid of squeaking and skronking horns, corrosive string massage and hypnotic drums that more than once approaches the tribal. It’s mainly an instrumental affair although some vocals come up on a few tracks and as if all this wasn’t enough we’re served some incongruous electric guitar rhythms that recalls the Sun City Girls at their very best.

All in all, it's just a brilliant sonic excursion down a musical path very few are brave enough to follow these days, and along the way the band manages to explain exactly why the true environment for Volcano the Bear is the live setting. If you never have come across this band before I honestly believe that you never have heard anything quite like it. This is meditation music for the drone/noise generation.