Not sure if I ever mentioned the greatness of Gram Parsons W/ The Flying Burrito Bros' (hey, that's how it's listed!) Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (Amoeba Records).  This 2CD is Volume 1, so I hope there's more to come in the series from around this period.  Taken from the Grateful Dead's live vaults, these two shows from early April '69 showcase The 'Bros in peak form with their classic lineup intact and Sneaky Pete Kleinow's fuzz-box pedal steel raining down like liquid phosphorus all over the Avalon.  Even better you can compare the two similar but distinctly different sets from the same tour and see how utterly in the coZmik boogie zone these boys really were, even if only for a short while.  Beautiful, beautiful performances captured at soundboard quality.  Classy album styled packaging with vivid recollections from the period in the liners.

Some Live Aktionz

Made it out to a few sweet shows this past week, including Woven Bones and Tinsel Teeth (at Brofest).  I hung out for a little more action (including Naam and White Mice), but didn't really feel like watching 10 plus bands straight through on a Sunday, so bailed pretty early.  That's right, no Sleepy Sun.  No Liturgy.  The horror (or non horror as it were).  I'm sorry I missed Liturgy actually but also have a feeling their brutalistic blackened onslaught might've been the death of me.  Old fart right here.  Tinsel Teeth's singer (TT is a hXc noise rock nightmare with a small female screamer on vox) stripped nearly to nothing but bra and torn tights and screaming in the faces of/collapsing on various audience members was both hilarious and kind of pitiful to behold, as I'm sure was the intention.  She came off like a rape victim trying to get anyone to call for help, or maybe the last survivor from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre just after she'd jumped out of the window and finally made it out to the highway.  So, naturally, when she slammed into me, I did my Kung-Fu Panda SKADOOSH thing and she flopped right off the belly and smacked the floor like a fish.  I went to help her up, but some valiant buck beat me to it.  Tinsel Teeth provided one of those what-the-fuck(?) train-wreck type live experiences that left me wondering if people too often confuse creative expression with seething, mutilated rage.  Regardless it's neat to see all the hipster stoics in their tattered hoodies holding their own like billiard pins in the wake of her elephantine bumper-car angst.  Woven Bones were less...complicated.  Minimal bass/guitar grooves with reverb-drenched vox and a cute lil Mo Tucker chick w/ glasses smacking the snare and floor bass (no cymbals per Mr. Reed's instruction), and though they sadly did not play "Let it Breathe" from the Janie 7", I was still adequately rocked 'n' rolled in a Wooden Shjips meets early JAMC kind'a way. 

The next night -- a Monday night mind you -- it was time to get Pocahaunted, drench the Wet Hair and get raddled by Rene Hall at The Lounge on Elm.  Blissed Out and local mellow psych merchants eyes, wings and many other things rounded out the bill.  I guess I arrived too late for Rene Hall, but Blissed Out brought their big fuzz/beat driven sonics down on the Lounge like a thousand com satellites crashing to Earth at once.  Maybe I just don't do enough drugs anymore to really enjoy these subliminal noise barrages, but it made for an agreeable background whitewash while smoking cigarettes and sippin' mixed drinks on the porch.  Headed upstairs for the bird's eye view of Wet Hair, Shawn from Night People/Racoo-oo-oon's (rip) new-ish duo project of banks of synths with live drums and echo-drenched vocals.  Three long tracks ranged from gooey glowing dollops of Spacemen 3 worship to further refracted beams of syncopated beats and komische drones.  Pocahaunted (who I'd not seen before) were operating in a slightly more conventional mode with the release of their rockin' new Not Not Fun platter, Make it Real, featuring some real eye-popping cover art to go with its groovy Raincoats-gone-West-Coast-psych vibe, and live these three ladies and two lads are a sight to behold.  Musically we got grooved out goth rainbow trances and methodical tribal rhythms graced with ceremonial war paint and sparkly sequined wraps and gowns.  I was reminded of the incomparable awesomeness of The Spires That in the Sunset Rise with less witch and more squaw, but as the wording suggests Pocahaunted aren't exactly up to the Spires comparison just yet, but at least they're reaching and in the process teaching.

Then just this past Saturday made it out to the Phoenix Project for a night of jazz -- two performances, one a quartet the other a trio.  The quartet of Norwegian bassist Ingerbrigt Haker Flaten (also of The Thing with Mats Gustafsson), Stefan Gonzalez (drums), Jason Jackson (sax) and Nick Cabrera (clarinet) started with the revered bassist playing upright acoustic for half the show, then plugging in the electric for a while.  The brass players were a bit more low-key and distant beneath the Haker Flatten/Gonzalez rhythmic low end, alternately punctuated and robust and flickering like a prairie fire in the wind.  The final track with Inger on electric bass went deeper into mid '70s Kraut fusion territory and pulled me in nicely.  The closing trio of Vancouver's Gordon Grdina on guitar and oud, Haker Flatten on bass and a phenomenal Canadian percussionist whose name I can't find (bad!) offered more trad swing interspersed with stellar region string eruptions that tempered the primal rumbling builds of Sonny Sharrock with the gale force winds of Sonic Youth.  Every player in this trio delivered stunning, world class performances that kept me tuned throughout on a sonic level and completely fascinated in terms of physical dexterity and observational telepathic precision.  All in all, another memorable night of world class jazz at the Phoenix Project here in Big. D.   

Been neglecting blogo duties of late. A lot of events have come and gone, and I've dug on a few. Too many folks have died lately. Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, him I definitely had some time for, and just before that Dallas's own Tommy Aldridge of The Great Tyrant and Yeti, and others still, near and far, including an actual relative. Farewell to my cousin, Bettie Claire Winters.


Decided to forgo SXSW this year to save some $$$ and avoid that all around madhouse for a change. Turns out Alex Chilton couldn't make it either. He died of a heart attack Wednesday at 59, and was scheduled to play the fest Saturday night. According to WFMU's Brian Turner, Big Star played anyway -- well kind of -- with original bassist Andy Hummell, Auer/Stringfellow/Stephens (the remainder of Big Star's current lineup), John Doe, Chris Stamey, Evan Dando, Curt Kirkwood and others. Sorry I missed it.

When people ask me, as they still do time to time, "Just who the heck is your favorite band anyway?" 90% of the time I say, "Big Star, of course." I'm not going to go all into specifics as to why that is. It's all in the music, three remarkable albums released from 1971-'75 for Memphis's Ardent Records: #1 Record, Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers that capture so many conflicting emotions, sounds, styles and images of an era that's special for so many reasons, and not just because I was born right in the middle of it all in 1973. Music simply sounded better before the encroachment of the digital age. Let's just leave it at that, but I like a lot of the digital shit too.

"Nighttime," "For You," "Big Black Car," "Blue Moon," "The Ballad of El Goodo," "September Gurls," "Thirteen," "Watch the Sunrise," "I'm in Love With a Girl," "Way Out West," "What's Going Ahn," "Mod Lang," "Holocaust" and, of course, "Kangaroo" (to name just a few) define pop excellence that rivals and arguably surpasses heavy hitters like The Kinks, The Byrds, CSNY, Buffalo Springfield and The Who on some deeper, more achingly existential level. I may be a little biased, but I'd waver that less than ten bands in the rock world actually have a Sister Lovers in 'em. The Velvet Underground's self titled comes to mind. So does Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos and maybe Tim Buckley's Starsailor. Very few others.


(A vintage clip, featuring Alex and Chris, from the #1 Record sessions)

Rhino released a new Big Star 4CD box-set recently, Keep an Eye on the Sky, which consists mostly of early alternate takes and live material from the '70s era, but I've only just started digging into that stuff. Then there's Chilton's work as a teenager with soul garage teen idols The Boxtops, and his later more discordant solo work of damaged post-punk abandon. The Big Star story could probably be converted into its own HBO miniseries, complete with all the layered revelations, unexpected reversals and ironic ambiguities that make something like The Wire so profound. It can be heard in a song, such as Chris Bell's "You and Your Sister" on which Alex lends a harmony vocal long after the two had had their own version of the typical rock band falling out. It's the kind of healing that has to be sung instead of spoken. And for me that's what the music of Big Star is really about -- poems of hope sung in the darkest hour, just before the crack of dawn when the night is chased back into the dusty corner where it belongs. It's questionable whether Chilton or Bell ever really made it through to that bright morning, but then that's the point. It's not about getting there. It's about going as far as you can as long as you can, and maybe feeling a little love along the way.

Here's a recollection from an email of a Big Star/Posies concert I was lucky enough to attend on New Year's Eve Y2K in New Orleans just over ten years ago now. Jesus, where do da time go, mah peoples?

I saw Big Star play the Y2K New Years Eve show w/The Posies at the Howling Wolf in NO and for some reason it felt like a golden moment. My friends and I had rolled into New Orleans a few hours before and made the mistake of hitting up Pat O'Briens for a Hurricane or two. During most of Posies set we were irredeemably sloshed. I was afraid of this too, shooting our collective wad to soon so to speak. My friends actually dared to suggest an early retreat before Big Star even took the stage. How dare they! Ever the rocker soldier than I was (and still am), I insisted that if they could just hold on a little longer, that the band would start and the resultant power of the music and those classic melodies would revive the spirits of all in attendance (and kick in the endorphins too) and all would be well. And all was well.

After the Posies agreeable, low-key all acoustic set, it was time for the main event. As I said before this night felt special. One night you see a band firing on all cylinders/not missing a beat, the next you see a bunch'a pissy crybabies throwing things and blaming the sound man. But more than that it felt like seeing a boxer or old cowboy who'd come to terms with an affliction and slowly wrestled his way back to a place of contentment and even temporary nirvana. They were well rehearsed yet loose, exploding like it was 1972 all over again -- Jody's drums as crisp and metronomic as in the old days, Alex's guitar reverberating out across the packed house and filling the room like a chorus of church bells. He was all smiles too. He drank a toast from the stage at midnight and then broke into an appropriately stumbling version of "Auld Lyne Sang." Probably played close to 2 hours, nothing but hit after hit -- pow! pow! pow! Hadn't seen such a consistently enjoyable pop type set since Nirvana in late 1993, and let's just say Chilton looked like he was having a lot more fun that night than poor ol' Kurdt did back in '93. I've seen Big Star since and it was, dare I say, one of those sloppier, phoned in kind'a gigs. The kind of gig that has to get worked into the mix every once in a while so that the good ones burn so brightly. But that night, amid all the paranoia of impending doom and so forth revolving around Y2K (what a joke that was, right?), it was the stuff of rock 'n' roll dreams and a genuine life saver. So thanks Alex, Jody and the Posies for one of the best shows and most memorable nights of my life, and a lot of great music besides.

From Boing Boing, via Moistworks:

Ben Greenman remembers singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, who died tonight at age 59.

Alex Chilton, who died, wrote songs. He recorded songs. He made songs. He unmade them. In the end, the life was largely in song, and the songs all had life, and that's all there is to say, and there isn't anything that can be done. Once he covered "Let Me Get Close to You," which was Goffin-King via Skeeter Davis:

How long I'll never know
I've waited to tell you that I love you so
Now I have finally said it
Come on baby don't make me regret it

"It's Your Funeral" is an instrumental. There are no words.

RIP, Alex Chilton

Four Tapes

Greg Davis Full Spectrum (Digitalis Ltd.) C-40 - '09 is the year I really started to dig deeper into this Vermontster's discography of celestial minimal noise and electronic dreams. His influences are vast yet sort of simple too: The Dead, La Monte Young, Jim O'Rourke and Mirror styled ambient hazes, and raga of any kind. He strikes an especially dulcet glow across the two glacial drifts of tonal haze that comprise Full Spectrum. This is as transcendent/beautiful as anything I've heard by Davis, which means it's better than the recent Mutually Arising (Kranky), though that same sense of meditative tranquility is found here. As suggested, every hue of the color spectrum gets its space-time due via these magnificent portals.

Dire Wolves Dire Wolves (Secret Eye) 2xC-30 - It's been a treat seeing the new wave of lumbering Cozmik pSych groops come wafting up from the basement like so many black smoke monsters. Pittsburgh's Dire Wolves definitely fit the bill with their sprawling psych jams owing to Träd, Gräs och Stenar, German Oak, Amon Düül II and the like (including Earth before the smoke cleared). The quartet -- featuring members/former members of Arco Flute Foundation, Black Forest/Black Sea, Forest Dweller, Sagas, etc -- that is Dire Wolves somehow manages to explore the corroding line between earth/sky, heaven/hell, order/chaos and show how limitless and vast that seemingly small space can be. What I truly dig about these 4 sides is how easily the group shifts gears from a hypnotic on-'n'-on caveman stomp to something more formless with the most insane/feral acid leads cutting through all the dense smoke -- a sound that was made to be heard on tape. Apparently sold out some time ago, but more releases are forthcoming on other labels. Keep your ears out! Righteous sample time!

Thurston Moore Blindfold (Destructive Industries) C-30 - Blindfold is one of the more interesting tapes I grabbed at the harsh noise fest I attended last Summer. It's quite the monster of creeping ominous 6 string electric guitar dread, somewhere between sadistic Silence of the Lambs informed ambient shades and a much deeper spiraling sound sculpture that for me personally ranks as some of the coolest, most arresting guitar work I've heard from Moore yet. I'm not sure if Blindfold is more intended as a kind of tonal death march, or creeping exploration of the mind of sadism, but it does breathe with an ominous groan that gets under the skin and digs its hooks in deep. Before it's through, the torture drone gives way to a more ecstatic breakthrough, possibly emblematic of the spirit leaving the body of our victim. Either way, a viable transcendence occurs.

Sun Araw In Orbit (Stunned) C-30 - This one will be hard to find and costs a little more than maybe it should, but hot damn if the two 15 min live tracks captured herein do not completely honor Sun Araw's school of less is more groove-ology. No, In Orbit isn't as complete a spiritual transformation as the massive Heavy Deeds, but it still honors that tradition and keeps the lunar module in its proper orbit across 30 minutes of pulsing, clanking see-sawing effervescent splooge. And that's really all any cosmonaut can ask for, ain't it?

All hail Decrepit Tapes!  It's a download blog thingy that seems to specialize mostly in out of print sonic esoterica, which me thinks makes it acceptable to share here.  Most of these things operate under the precondition that if ya like it, buy it; if ya don't, delete it.  When it comes to something as amazing as the Un Plays the Non Hits For You tape, which has probably been impossible to find for well over a decade, I fully endorse the upload/download.  More current ensembles like Hototogisu, Fursaxa and the Double Leopards can all be traced back to this zonked out crude noise meets collapsed folk blissout.  Charalambides and Tower Recording fans will love it.  Lots of other highly recommendable titles to be heard too.  I'm happily decimated, myself.


In out there collaboration news, take a look at this story from LA Weekly's Off The Record blog, about the forthcoming collabowork of grim art between Womblife faves, Xasthur and Marissa Nadler.  Not really such a stretch if you think about it.  Can't wait to hear the results!


Scooting out the door to see these guys at The Granada tonight.  Woo-hoo!

As some of you may know, this past weekend there was a celebration of the life and times of Jack Rose -- in two parts -- A Record Release Show for Luck in the Valley (Thrill Jockey) in Philadelphia (Jack's home town for the last 10 years) at The Latvian Society on Saturday, and the next night A Valentine For Jack Rose at Brooklyn's Issue Project.  By all accounts these were two nights of magic and celebration involving many of our favorite weird folkies and blues dogs here in The Womb.  Below is a heartfelt summation of events written by Bob Bannister, a fine gentleman and guitarist, whose work with Tono-Bongay, PG Six and under his own name should not go unnoticed:

"To begin with, the night sustained that really strong sense of community and mutual respect that is such a big part of "this thing of ours" – joyous (and sad, in this case) and invigorating.

Opening were the Megajam Booze Band – 9 or 10 people, of whom I immediately recognized Harmonica Dan and Jesse Trbovich, plus I think Willie Lane was up there, no doubt others you know. They set a suitably Dionysian tone with a 20-minute over-the-top jamming version of "Proud Mary" – all in all it was a high-energy hard-drinking night (whereas the Issue Project Room show the next day was more acoustic and sombre).

Following was Meg Baird with Chris Forsyth and Willie Lane – they did a couple of tunes from Meg's solo repertoire and closed with a version of Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher" that was pretty astonishing – lots of Verlaine/Lloyd-isms from the electric guitars and Meg really let rip on the vocals; her solo work, as you know, tends toward the more delicate, so it was an exhilarating move.

I'm going to lose track of the order and will be really embarrassed if I leave anyone out. Black Twig Pickers you know well. They did 5 or so characteristically engaging numbers – a take on "Kensington Blues" with Hans Chew adapting Jack's part on piano, and a piece called (I think) "Dan's Friend's Blues" that was gently elegiac, two slightly different melodies alternating unhurriedly. A big part of their appeal is the sense of a return to the pace of rural life, before the hyper-charged, urban migration, bluegrass style began to predominate.

If you've heard Byron Coley read before you know what to expect, and even if you've only read his writing, his live performance won't surprise you – sharp, irreverent humor with an oblique but fierce defense of the countercultures (the real ones!) that he has tirelessly championed for 30+ years. His poem for Jack was a gruff, funny, loving send-off – we should all be so honored.

Glenn Jones mostly played 12-string, including the excellent title track from his new record "Barbecue Bob in Fishtown," the title itself a nod to Jack. Sunday he did the banjo piece from the same record, "Keep It A Hundred Years" – I forget if he also did it Saturday.

Pelt's performance was astonishing by any measure – more so when contrasted with the Black Twig Pickers music. They started with the Tibetan singing bowls, making a shimmering luminous cloud of sound, and finished with an oceanic roar of gongs and cymbals. For the mystically minded among you, I'd call it the sound you'll hear while you're in the bardo of rebirth and I conservatively estimate 10,000 souls found themselves reborn by the end of it.

In between several of these performances were video segments – interviews and performances that I think were from the forthcoming "The Things That We Used to Do" DVD (pretty sure, based on the trailer) and Tara Young's interviews with Jack for her film on Michael Chapman. For a guy who would already be described as "larger than life," to have him projected 8 feet high on the wall above your head was intense to say the least – the interviews capture his personality well, a beautiful memorial, and the performances are riveting.

Michael Chapman's performance was as steady as you'd expect, with the kind of confidence that comes from 40 years of playing. His guitar sound is a big bear-hug of a sonic embrace, his voice gravelly and sure and his unsentimental affection for Jack matched the emotional tenor of the evening.

It hadn't been a quiet night but Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano, Thurston Moore, Samara Lubelski and Bill Nace weren't running the risk of bringing down the energy level, presenting a sustained high-energy improv tumult, with Flaherty staying in the topmost register of his horn.

D. Charles Speer closed with a long boisterous set – you'd think after 3 or 4 successive generations of people compellingly spanning multiple genres, there'd be no surprises left, but there is still something noteworthy about a set of musicians with so many experimental music connections returning to such straight-up country rock – gives a glimpse of how the Flying Burrito Brothers must have seemed, turning up at the crest of psychedelia.

This is already way too long, but I need to give a few shout-outs to the Sunday night lineup at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. Tom Carter's massive drone-guitar tidal wave was a great contrast to almost everything else either night, as was Marcia Bassett's more dissonant threnodic performance for voice and guitar. Steve Gunn did a short but beautiful set – anyone who hasn't heard his Boerum Palace record should try to do so. Pelt added Tony Conrad as a guest and did a huge Outside the Dream Syndicate drone, starting with three violins and two harmoniums – again, impressive on its own, but even more intriguing in the context of all the other music they do."

Thanks so much to Bob for sharing!

I enjoyed the snow days, even though we're not used to 'em down here. I bet I'm not the only DFW dingbat that forgot to buy a snow shovel this year. Doh! 49 states got snowfall concurrently! Freaky. And don't go telling me how this disproves global warming cuz ya got yr science all wrong and don't understand climate change AT ALL. Round here we got a record setting blanket of white that topped out at 12 inches. That's a LOT for Dallas. Chilly Willy's keepin cool, and I'm sitting here warming my slippered feet by the fire, tucked in tight and watching it all melt away. Times like these I recommend digging into the spectral/psych/astral folk heap if you can.



This is My Music: Vol 6, Part 1 (Spirit of Love)

James Blackshaw The Glass Bead Game (Young God) CD - What Blackshaw does with 6 and 12 strings truly exceeds the expectations of so called raga-blues, a style that as exemplified by folks like John Fahey and Jack Rose, really already has no limits in terms of the way melody and repetition can be extended, sculpted and collapsed in on themselves to reveal new sacred modes of communication. If ya ask this old fart, no other 6/12 string open-tuned picker so adequately melds the tangible, natural side of life with the Other World. Blackshaw has a visionary understanding of composition as meditation and the deeper spiritual concerns that guide us all. After all, the album's title derives from Herman Hesse's final epic novel of utopian ascendancy and the resultant stagnation that comes when progress is no longer on the menu. Where do we go when we're already there? A question maybe best left unanswered, but meditated on all the same. These 5 songs are drawn from a well so deep, and augmented by subtle embellishments of cello, flute and harmonium, to reveal the infinite emotional possibilities of a genre we thought we knew through and through.

It's to Blackshaw's credit that he's never afraid to reveal the influence early minimal composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich, as well as older Romantic traditions and jazz greats like Albert Ayler have had on his rapturous string music; but his compositions of quick flowing rivers of fingerpicked strings and resonating vibrations are worlds entirely of his own making. Moments of this record rank with anything that was ever created to invoke beauty, to reveal the sacred, to illuminate the darkness.

The Goner Hind Hand/Haven (Deep Water) 2CD-R (Deep Water) - Another swell new discovery in '09, courtesy of Kevin Moist's forever-expanding Deep Water universe, comes these spectral musings of one Swede and a guitar. The Goner emerges from the Scandinavian wood as a fully functional one man psych-folk unit. This 2-fer combines two albums from '08 into one affordable package, and its vibe is one of Earth and wind meeting the most tender kind of confessional folk songs. "A Song" in particular is a knockout of redemptive longing that sounds kind of like a cross between early Mountain Goats and Six Organs of Admittance lost in the frosty wild. Otherwise there's the spaced out raga flows of "Travelogue" and the delicate layered picking of "Harbor Song," though accented by some effects weirdness and percussion, still sounding entirely handmade and in the now. The all instrumental Hind Hand focuses more on tone and atmosphere in styles ranging from early Amon Düül inspired percussive deluge to more meandering flows of raga and drone.

Hush Arbors Yankee Reality (Ecstatic Peace) CD - It's been cool watching Keith Wood, who basically is Hush Arbors, evolve over the years from a one man bedroom folk psych noise project, as documented on the brilliant Since We Have Fallen (originally released as a li'l edition CD-R in Digitalis's Foxglove series and since dropped on vinyl by Harvest) to real deal psych folk rock craftsman. I knew then Wood was up to something special. Couple years later I saw him sit in on lead guitar with Sunburned Hand of the Man (still the best gig I've seen by that free noise/psych boogie unit) and remember a moment when Wood stepped to the mic and sang. It was the only remotely conventional number of the set and it totally killed. The rest was outer-space tribal industrial caveman sludge of the highest order, but it was this one actual song, with Wood's unmistakably high timber up front, that totally enthralled and left me hungry for more.

Soon after Wood would travel overseas, find love, find David Tibet (him again) and perform guitar on pivotal records by Current 93 and Pantaleimon, as well as tour with the dearly missed Jack Rose and play guitar with Six Organs of Admittance during their '06 tour. He's since honed his craft, wrote songs, signed to a bigger label, and now comes Yankee Reality.

When I say it's been a pleasure watching this guy evolve, this album is the ultimate representation of why that is. Wood spent a lot of time moving around, hooking up with different kindred spirits throughout the South and Midwest US before finding a larger audience. What really emerged on those early Hush Arbors records was an appreciation for the solitude of nature and the mystical beauty of trees, massive sprawling, seemingly alive trees. Many of my favorite roots-psych albums are about the need to escape urban desolation and get out into the untamed wild, but Yankee Reality is about exactly what it says: the harsh reality of leaving the woods behind for the sake of "modern living." Perhaps that's partly the reason so many of the songs on this record kick-ass with faster tempos and fuzzier backdrops, but the structures and melodies can be traced directly to the West Coast psych explosions happening in LA and San Fran in the late 60s, Neil Young, The Band, right on down the line to more modern alt country and indie rock developments, from MV/EE to the Sky Green Leopards. Wood sprinkles it all with his own fairy dust though and just happens to emerge as one of his generations finest songwriters in the process.

Bert Jansch L. A. Turnaround / Santa BarbaraHoneymoon (Drag City) both CD - For folkniks and true believers alike, Drag City's reissue of three of Bert Jansch's Charisma records from the '70s is cause for much rejoice indeed. It could be said that no one guitarist is more responsible for the development of the modern folk rock guitar sound as envisioned circa 1974. As much as John Renbourne or Richard Thompson, Jansch is an architect of the myriad styles and developments that have come to fall loosely under the acid and astral folk banners. He first came to my attention via his recordings with Pentangle, which combined trad Brit folk melodies along with jazz and blues modes into a intricate folk rock jams, but for me it's the Jansch stuff further down the line, as so perfectly captured on L.A. Turnaround (recorded in '73) and Santa Barbara Honeymoon (caught the following year) that reveal an amazing poet and songwriter in peak form, doling out timeless meditative folk melodies that ride the fine line between country, blues, British folk and jazz to reveal lucid tone dreams that offer one Brit's perspective on the burgeoning Americana roots scene. Neil Young and Graham Parsons could be counterpoints to what Jansch is up to here, but his languid pace and fine voice (augmented but mostly two acoustic guitars and lap steel) offer a welcome British perspective on the proceedings.

Of the two albums, L.A. Turnaround (featuring session work by Mike Nesmith of all people!) is my favorite. It's production crisp, its meld of styles and traditions peerless, but Santa Barbara Honeyman is every bit its match, and includes a brilliant cover of Jackson Frank's immortal folk anthem, "Blues Run The Game." Excellent liner notes, pristine remastering jobs and lots of bonus goodies make for some essential British psych folk here, folks. Good on Drag City for putting these beauties back in circulation.

Marissa Nadler Little Hells (Kemado) LP - 4th record from this old world inspired folk chanteuse continues her journey through bittersweet nostalgia and mellow psych folk dream pop. There is something about Nadler which lies beyond any kind of critical appraisal. Like James Blackshaw, her songs and the characters in them almost exist beyond concepts like ecstasy or grief. Nadler's songs are soundtracks for the lost dreams of sad drifters who have been through the ringer a few too many times, and slowly come to accept the grim terms of their seemingly predestined fates. It's liks listening to a frozen snapshot of hope withering before your ears. Grim stuff, but in Nadler's hands, along with her chosen accomplices, that entropy is something quite poignant and beautiful to behold. It's all a bit dainty and melodramatic for some, I suppose, but I remain transfixed. And remember, no prophecy is set in stone.

Six Organs of Admittance Luminous Night (Drag City) LP - Here we have it, good friends: the ultimate nexus of Ben Chasny as soul-bearing tune-smith and dark-noise spirit-conjurer. The songs here rank as some of SOOA's most thoughtful psych folk compositions, drawing heavily from Brit psych folk greats of yore (Bert Jansch, Jackson C. Frank -- who was actually American but still somehow remains inherently British -- and John Renbourn to name a few). Especially mind-blowing is the hypnotic tone-mantra, "Bar-Nasha," a recurring ode to none other than The Son of Man, which evokes images of fanatical young believers dancing 'round ancient fires, hands skyward, hearts/minds open to infinity. Also of note, the stoned and sad "The Ballad of Charley Harper," which backs gorgeous layered vocals with squealing acid undercurrents in a way reminscent of Flying Saucer Attack's finest album, Further. As with past Six Organs records, there's breathing room for weird instrumentals and free-form drone dreams. Both "The River of Heaven" and "Enemies Before the Light" are my favorites of these. The former borrows an old Stooges melody, which I have no doubt was already borrowed from elsewhere, and recasts it as ancient tribal rite. Closer, "Enemies Before the Light," is one of Chasny's most indelible pieces of music yet with its esoteric spiritual vox moaning over a dense feedback wash, and the most fucked up/glorious acid blues solo of 2009, which ends up sounding more Celtic than Delta before it's finished. This is at once the most frightening and soothing Six Organs of Admittance record I've heard so far. Like a hand held by a close friend on your deathbed. Fear not, proud pilgrim.

Trembling Bells Carbeth (Honest John's Records) CD - Trembling Bells is the brainchild of the great avant-percussionist Alex Neilson, whose drum-work can be heard on recordings by Current 93, Jandek, Neilson/Youngs and more. Trembling Bells exists as an attempt to create a bridge between the British Isles trad folk styles and more recent free-noise and psych folk developments. The thing is Trembling Bells is really just a balls-out, glorious, celebratory folk rock ensemble, a genuine band that is as true to the old sound as it is completely and passionately played with blistering conviction for modern ears, and modern times. Carbeth is no throwback, but it is part of a chain. A chain of song, a chain of remembrance and growing. Albums like this are simply not supposed to be released in pristine form circa 2009, but here it is happening right now, and here you can listen if you wish. To these ears, Carbeth rates as one of the greatest Brit psych folk records of all time, plus one hell of a debut.

Old weirdy/genius/recluse J.D. Salinger wrote some stuff that foresaw the ascendancy of vapidity in our culture and the resultant evaporation of the human soul.  Then he gave us all the proverbial finger for a good 40 years and never fully expounded on said digit until the day he died.  Even then his final word was probably little more than a quiet sigh.  Guess nobody knows for sure.

As much as Hemingway or Vonnegut, Salinger captured a mindset -- a sense of dissatisfaction -- the lone voice asking above the rabble, is anyone else really listening?  It's there in the pages of Catcher in the Rye, ideas that live on in Rolling Stones and Joy Division songs and pervade our alienated/confused psyches to this day.  He was right, of course.  At one time I saw some Holden in myself.  Still do even, but over the years things changed and my understanding of the inconsistency of humans (or at least myself) became more clear.  The more I thought I knew, the less I realized I did know.  The more I wanted to be Holden, the more I realized I was closer to the object of his contempt.  Depressing, ain't it?  But, then, this is what it is to be alive and aware, or maybe the character John Locke on Lost.

These days I spend a good bit more time unlearning, returning if you will...  To where?  The name of this blog offers a hint, and that's NOT a roundabout way of saying I need to get laid -- though, I probably need to get laid. 

Now I think that we all basically start life as imitators, or "phonies," and through some searching, real work and/or old fashioned luck, we might grow into something closer to real. The problem is, thanks to the redundant illusions of mass media today and its subjects being rehashed/repackaged/remarketed ad nauseum, it's easier and easier to try on different avatars which we present as ourselves and harder and harder to find our own true voice amid all the chatter.

In this brave new world, bullshit comes as a torrential downpour and everyone has an opinion.  It matters not that we have VIRTUALLY NOTHING to say; what matters is that our thoughts don't fall on deaf ears. It's the tragedy of the human condition recast as abbreviated tedium, writ large and "shared" exponentially.  Thanks to Twitter, you can now watch someone's mental breakdown in real-time in syncopated bursts while browsing through the latest Photobomb over at Visboo.  Points of view are tried on like new hats, or pea-coats, or Lady Gaga's latest face-mask artistic statememt shocker (though on one level a nifty culture-jamming snafu, I still suspect designed to make us think her flavor-of-the-month dancefloor music actually matters) and all of it ejected into hyperspace for the final half-acknowledged, numbskulled reception.

One simply need a good avatar, which is why things like The Grammys and other mass media fellatio fests strike me as so fascinating.  I guess I blame MTV.  I blame Hollywood.  I blame myself.  Yet I thank all those things (and myself), too, for so adequately illustrating the divine comedy that is life today.  It's ironic to think that the things that make us the least interesting as people often define other species at their best.  I'm thinking of ants, honeybees, trees and flowers.  Hence Communism and Socialism are so enticing to young and hopeful minds.  Perhaps this desire for collectivist information reception, no matter how meaningless, is why trash like the VMAs, MTV, The Grammy's and The Things Famous People Do are all so darn important to us, or at least more important than they should be. 

Now to be completely honest I'm too busy pulling off my balancing act between being a good little worker bee and contemplating The Infinite to really be bothered with mass culture today, but never the less I remain a part of the mass: The Grand Material Whatever It Is That Unfolds Randomly through seemingly endless space, spitting out gaseous giants, quasars and photons in all directions every step of the way, and me, the fool trying to assemble the puzzle that was never designed.  There is something magical at work here.  And spontaneous.  We only see a sliver, yet we see so much.  No wonder we're so delusional, so lost, trying to put it all together.  When I think about it, I feel less guilty for being Holden Caulfield and a big fat phony all rolled into one.  All that really matters is where you wanna go, and how you intend to get there.  Can you tell I'm in serious Lost mode currently?  Metacontemplation, baby.   


I'd like to send out mad props to all involved for bringing the second installment of the No Idea Festival to the Dallas area late last month, this time at the Phoenix Project Collective.  I meant to give this thing a proper review days ago.  Events like these are a real blessing 'round these parts, and I'm thankful to Chris Cogburn, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez and the other amazing musicians that played this night, Dave Dove, Jesse Kuddler, Lucas Gorham, Phil Brewer and Remi Alvarez, for making it one to remember.  My favorite set was probably the opening duo of Cogburn/Kuddler with Kuddler's muted Onkyo Music inspired electronic hums conversing with Cogburn's unconventional pats, scratches and bows on drums.  I hope there's more to come from these two.  The Dove/Gorham duo, operating under the designation Screwed Anthology, delivered the goods in spades with way gone trombone/lapsteel blues/jazz workouts that rubbed elbows with prechosen selections from the vast mixtape library of the legendary DJ Screw.  The final trio of the Gonzalez's and Mexico City's Alvarez (sax), along with Phil Brewer (trumpet) on a couple pieces, offered a good hour of exploratory free jazz aural-kinesis that dipped into the most jagged spiked rock valleys and ascended to blue-green windswept highs.  Ego-destroyed.


Rewatched Avatar (at home) - definitely better than Titanic, but I don't know about this Best Film Oscar stuff.  I'm thankful for prime-time pulp sci-fi entertainments like Lost and Fringe, as they keep my busy brain energized and stimulated in interesting new ways.  The former will be remembered as one of the most influential and thought provoking shows of all time, where the latter is closer to a theoretical-physics-meets-Paranormal-Investigation answer to The X Files.  Both are highly recommended if you want to try to shed your typical 4-dimensional mindset.  Also rewatching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (out of order) -  unable to escape hobbit roots.  They may be too long, but they beat the hell out of those awful Pirates movies.


Namaste.

Just in from Chris Scofield over at Strange Attractors, this looks pretty amazing:

Hi everyone –

I now have some trailers available for the forthcoming Jack Rose and Glenn Jones The Things That We Used to Do DVD.  And I am sharing with you folks first.

I’ve posted the little “teaser” trailer here:

Soon, I will be posting a more in-depth trailer, clocking in around six and a half minutes.  But this is intended to get a quick taste out there, and also to spread around in a much smaller, more convenient package.

Complete info about the DVD project can be found here:

http://www.strange-attractors.com/catalog/saah058.html


Of further note, here's an excellent article from Magnet, written by the one and only Bill Meyer back in '07, centering around the current crop of eclectic/ethnic solo acoustic players, like Jack and Glenn above, and other personal heroes (James Blackshaw, Richard Bishop, etc), minus quite a few others, but still a damn fine roundup for those curious of the mysteries of 6-string shamanism and the modern day descendants of the amazing players heard on the Wayfaring Strangers comp, of which I waxed ecstatic a while back.      

Three More Randoms

39 Clocks Zoned (De Stijl) CD - Zoned is an excellent anthology from this little known German duo, which just happens to be one of the most freaked out Krautrock groups to come out of the motherland that I'd not heard before now. Drawing equally from Nuggets era garage psych, The Velvets, Krautrock and even Suicide (who also used a drum machine and were a duo, though 39 Clocks existed concurrently), these lads weave such influences along with their own wacky screwball sensibilities to conjure weird, tuneful art punk/new wave ditties that amuse, disturb, confuse, transfix -- often at the same time.  It's fairly amazing how far ahead of the curve this stuff sounds when you think about it, not that I recommend such foolishness.  As stoned to the bone as it is minimally austere, Zoned lands somewhere between the warped acid pop of Ariel Pink and the original New Wave era.  Highly recommended, and one of the sweetest surprises of '09.

Blues Control Local Flavor (Siltbreeze) CD - Yet another tripped out duo with something to say, Russell and Lea hit their stride on this their third--fourth?--full length, first for the gods of Silt.  The four songs on Local Flavor are often more upbeat and downright boogielicious in a way that explores the righteous bleed-over between West Coast psych, early Eno, NYC ghettotech and Krautrock.  Nice enough trick on paper, but in Blues Control's hands it comes off like genuine psychedelic muzak majik on the changer (and on stage!).

Kito Mizukumi Rouber Otonaki Touge De Hagureta Kmr (Ultra Eczema) LP - This weird record was Tom Lax's #1 album of '09, so you know it's some messed up shit.  Kito Mizukumi Rouber is a self-described dance band from Japan.  Their "dance music" is, ostensibly, amateurish idiot slop that promises to test the listener every second of the way, but that's only at first.  The opening songs of Kito Muzukumi Rouber albums are apparently like a rite of passage of sorts -- a test to determine whether you are worthy of what follows.  Their second album, Otonaki Touge De Hagureta Kmr, features uber-destroyed art punk new/no wave garage skronk that comes recommended only for the chosen, deranged few.  If up to the task, you will find a cathartic post industrial dance party that raises the bar all over again when it comes to utterly destroyed/deconstructed sonic splendor noise punk mayhem.  As tortured as it is joyfully unhinged, as beautiful as it is ugly, not to mention deceptively dramatic and darkly hallucinatory, this record is a case study in calculated deconstruction that comes highly recommended for all the brain-damaged children of the sun.  There's even a couple hooks in there!  End results land somewhere between Harry Pussy, Dead C, The Stooges and Maher Shalal Hash Baz.  If that sounds like your cup of tea, then God help you, and dig in.  The rest of you can probably pass.  Me?  Hook, line and sinker.

So I've seen two really memorable New Years Eve live shows so far. The first was Big Star backed by the Posies in 2000, and the other was this one. (Highly recommend clicking that there link). Arrived just in time for the last song of Stardeath and White Dwarfs' set, which was actually their cover of Madonna's "Borderline," with Steve Drozd from The 'Lips sitting in. I dug it. I recorded it, but as you will hear, most of the videos I took myself bottom out pretty horribly. I've also included a couple clips captured by other folks and a whole mess of pictures, two of which were taken in Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill. Thanks to Travis, Tara, Nick, Evita and the wonderful people of Oklahoma City for making it a bash to remember. Here's hoping they do Revolver next year! Farewell to 2009, the year of anxiety. Hello to 2010, the year of meditation. Intro to the Dark Side portion of the show, featuring Wayne's enormous laser-beam shooting hands. Most of "Money."

More random pics of the psychedelic madness (click 'em for full size...





The silver saddle hanging above Toby Keith's bar.

Find a few more photographic goodies here.

Howdy, dear hearts. Happy 2010! I actually drove up to Oklahoma City and attended the Flaming Lips New Years Eve Freak Out bash with some pals a few nights ago, and also got to catch up with a dear old friend and meet his special lady. It was all too short and dancin' in the whirlwind, but I didn't get too intox too fast and awoke the next day sans hangover. Got some good videos and pics ripe for perusing, which I'll post next. Had a blast and must agree with my mates that it was the full cover performance of Dark Side of the Moon that propelled the whole evening into the stratosphere and made it one for the books. Also OKC has the most laid back security I have ever encountered in the continental United States, jsyk.

29 in '09

1. James Blackshaw The Glass Bead Game (Young God) CD
2. Six Organs of Admittance Luminous Night (Drag City) CD
3. The Soundtrack of Our Lives The Communion (Yep Roc) 2CD
4. Trembling Bells Carbeth (Honest Jons) CD
5. Courtis/Moore Brokebox Juke (No-Fi) LP
6. Peaking Lights Imaginary Falcons (Night People) LP
7. Om God is Good (Drag City) CD
8. Oneohtrix Point Never Rifts (No Fun Productions) 2CD
9. Aethenor Faking Gold & Murder (VHF) CD
10. Jesu Opiate Sun (Caldo Verde) CD
11. The Flaming Lips Embryonic (Time Warner) 2CD
12. Current 93 Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain (Coptic Cat) CD
13. Wand Hard Knox (Ecstatic Peace) CD
14. Sun Araw Heavy Deeds (Not Not Fun) LP
15. Sunn O))) Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord) CD
16. Greg Davis Mutually Arising (Kranky) CD
17. Starving Weirdos Into An Energy (Bo'weavil) CD
18. Flower-Corsano Duo The Four Aims (VHF) CD
19. Steve Gunn & Shawn McMillen - End of the City (DNT Records/Abandon Ship/Abaddon) LP
20. Age of Disinformation Self-Titled (Mayyrh) CD-R
21. Hush Arbors Yankee Reality (Ecstatic Peace) CD
22. MV & EE & The Golden Road Drone Trailer (Di-Christina) CD
23. Social Junk Born Into It (Digitalis) CD
24. Immortal All Shall Fall (Nuclear Blast) CD
25. Locrian Drenched Lands (At War With False Noise) CD
26. Barn Owl The Conjurer (Root Strata) LP
27. Nurse With Wound The Surveillance Lounge (United Dirter) CD
28. The One Ensemble Other Thunders (No-Fi) CD
29. The Shitty Listener Constant Stranger (Digitalis Ltd.) C47

Reissues

Chris Bell I Am the Cosmos (Rhino Handmade) 2CD / All those kickass Beatles remasters, at least the ones I've heard so far.

7 Top Gigs

1. Leonard Cohen @ Nokia Theater, Grand Prarie, 04/03/09
2. The Flaming Lips / Stardeath and White Dwarfs @ Cox Center, OKC, 12/31/09
3. My Bloody Valentine @ The Palladium, Dallas, 04/22/09
4. The Woven Hand @ Spiros during SXSW, Austin, 03/20/09
5. MV & EE @ The Lounge on Elm, Dallas, 02/02/09
6. Dave Burrell @ The Sandaga Market, Dallas, 12/12/09
7. Yells At Eels @ Lolas Stockyards during No Idea Fest, Ft. Worth, 2/24/09

Ho ho ho, yiz'all and peace to all da peeps! In all da places! Happy Solstice as well. Only three more years till the Singularity! All the late afternoon darkness makes me feel like I'm sitting in a coffin instead of an office these days, but that's all right. I'm still kickin'. Hope the same goes for all my friends and kin out there, near and far. You're in my thoughts.

I'm feverishly finishing up a batch of Winter-y treats, in this case some reviews of fine psychedelic folk records that have cropped up o'er the last year, a good chunk of which will make my year end best-of tally. I thought 2009 was just a killer year for psych/acid folk emanations. It was a killer year for other reasons too. I mean, like, a lot of people died! Brittany Murphy died! She's one of those sad ghost girls from Inland Empire now, all fragile and spent on the great futon of life. RIP. Rashied Ali died in '09 too. I don't think I ever mentioned it here, and given the scope of Womblife's coverage and the depth of his contributions to key albums by John Coltrane among so many more (including Keiji Haino, wow!), he definitely deserves a special mention.


Shitloads of movies came out this year too, and I didn't see near enough to draw up any kind of Cinematic Best of '09 list, so instead I'm going to rifle through some Twitter-styled mini-reviews which should express my thoughts in short, concise, geek-speek allotments that you may possibly comprehend, if not flat out enjoy. That said, my favorite theater-going experience of '09 was Dallas Cinemania's showing of a 35 mm print of Deep Red back in October. Best...soundtrack...ever.

Tweet-views:

@World's Greatest Dad - @Bobcat_G - disturbed/hilarious humanism! @Robin_W - decent tenderhearted loserdom. @Kid.from.Spy_Kids - u deserve an Oscar 4 ur portrayal of an auto-erotic-asphyxiated/shitty human/son = genius!

@The Road - @J.Hillcoat/@Cor_Mc - You two seem close. @Viggo_M. - Eat something for chrissakes! As @George Romero once said, the apocalypse will start in Pittsburgh. A+++!

@Night at the Museum 2 - Much better than a big budget special effects Hollyweird extravaganza has any right to be. @Amy Adams - I am in love with you and wish you'd have my babies.

@Inglorious Bastards - @Q_T- Nice attention to detail, nice NAZI bashing, NICE German villain, kick-ass tension building in that tavern scene! All a bit soulless though, m8. @Brad Pitt - nice John Wayne.

@Avatar - @J_Cam - cool 3-D space shits, dog! Dances With Aliens in Overdrive. Wicked Native Space Peeps - The Horror! The Dividends! SHITTY SOUNDTRACK. Classic Cameron!

@The Maiden Heist - Nice to see @C_Walken, @Morgan.Freeman and @Will_M in the same movie. Like Robin Hood for older middle-aged art geeks. Pretty good, no "Going in Style" though.

@The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - @Herzog - awkward title/awesome movie! The world is insane/there are creepy crawly lizards everywhere! @Nick_Cage - thanks for honoring yr 5 year rule - 1 good movie every 12 pieces of shit.

@Fantastic Mr. Fox - Dear @W_Anderson - re "Darjeeling Limited" - all forgiven.

Wanted to mention a really special gig I caught last Saturday here in Dallas, at a place called Sandaga Market, on the edge of the arts and apparel district of downtown. The gallery's lush interior decoration -- a combo of indigenous African rugs, throws, paintings, masks and sculptures -- belied its modest warehouse exterior. As much could be said for the musical expressionism of the legendary Dave Burrell, who makes for an unassuming presence behind the grand piano with only the the most minimal, gracious banter between his extended solo pieces. Burrell is a musician any fan of bold free jazz piano flux should be aware of, whether via his countless collaborations with so many of those who helped to write the language of jazz (Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Marion Brown, David Murray, William Parker, etc) or his astounding solo releases, such as Echo originally pressed by BYG Actuel. This is a guy that's been in the game for almost 50 years, composing and playing, living and learning, and what struck me most about the two sets he played was the immeasurable berth of his stylistic influence. Burrell is a jazz pianist, but what I heard this night touched on everything from baroque classical to blues, minimal composition, ragtime, show tunes, swing, pop and so, so much more. It was like taking a musical road-trip through every major musical development of the last 250 years, donning a blindfold, spinning 'round and 'round only to find seemingly disparate styles and eras living side by side in total harmony. Burrell, via his ever nimble fingers, tells a story beyond words, beyond time, and beyond my capacity to explain. It is the music of a full life, unfinished still. What struck me most was how how clearly Burrell appreciates so many different genres and styles but is fearless when it comes to combining and exploring it all via his own personal portal. He fits somewhere in the jazz pantheon between Thelonious Monk and Matthew Shipp, coming from a trad background like so many but taking those old bop and swing melodies to bold new, out (and long gone) places. I thought of Jack Rose more than once while comprehending Burrell's ability to juggle so many genres and always keep it movin' and groovin'. Thank you, Mr. Burrell, for making our hearts a little warmer and our minds a little clearer this night.


While researching and preparing to write this review, this just happened to pop up on HBO at the same time. And you say there are no signs. The Jazz Baroness documents the unlikely and quite profound relationship between British born heiress Pannonica Rothschild and jazz piano great Theloniuos Monk, and her unlikely journey from British aristocracy to one of New York's most passionate jazz enthusiasts during some of its most vital periods. Kind of amazing if you ask me. Unquestionably a life lived. Great narration (reading the words of Rothschild) from The Queen herself, Helen Mirren. Excellent archival footage and modern day interviews make this essential viewing, if yr interested.


Speaking of flicks. I'm going to have to break down and go see Avatar, where James Cameron and company appear to rip off Dances With Wolves and himself (Aliens/The Abyss) with MIND-BLOWING/GAME-CHANGING/SUPER-INNOVATIVE MOTION CAPTURE 3-D TECHNOLOGY NOT DREAMT POSSIBLE JUST 20 SHORT YEARS BEFORE! That was fun to type. I'm expecting this to kick-ass/suck of Michael Bay-ian proportions.

This Is My Music: Vol 5, Part 2 (Tanz Der Lemmings)

The Akron Family Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free (Dead Oceans) CD - Here we have it, yet another master stroke of roots psych progressive rock from Akron's by-way-of-Brooklyn The Akron/Family. Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free covers almost all the bases from the most sun-burnt farm jugband boogie to harmonies up-front roots-folk psych revelries and raging post George Harrison guitar eruptions that should probably sound out of place on a modern arty punk jam-band recording circa 2009 but come off as natural as the dawn here. Be not afraid to celebrate the this kinetic beauty, Womblifers. Sure, some of the songs may be a bit too sing-songy, but they ain't exactly Phish. This rocks!

Alumbrados Monochord (Important) LP - Here is you another fantastic ethno-folk psych transfusion from the awesome Alumbrados, one of many side projects to the perennial third eye dilating Bardo Pond, and I must say that Monochord has lept out as some of the most finely honed, carefully sculpted sonic psych folk meditations I've heard in '09. This is an absolute must in terms of conjuring the old gods and mystical rites through a carefully crafted prism of modern blues, psych and folk as if we've found the missing link between Sandy Bull and Manuel Göttsching. It burns with the incense of the ancients.

Circle Hollywood (Ekto) CD - I can't escape these Finnish lords' of psych/prog repetition. They're still knee deep in their vintage early thrash revisionist phase, which Katapult (No Quarter) basically marked the beginning of with English vokills, shred guitars and uptempo beats all backed by their trademark metronomic pulse. It's pretty silly on paper, but somehow Circle made it work then, and they make it burn brightly here too. With the help of American vocalist Bruce Duff -- channeling Rob Halford and Lemmy equally -- Hollywood is arguably the definitive Circle acid-thrash statement so far with nods to King Crimson, Judas Priest, Loop, the hell of the road and the Pori bad boys' own glorious past all rolled up into one mythical ball of righteous boo that you can pump your fist too while you get all physical and destructive in the listening space. There's more Circle stuff I'd like to cover here, such as their brand new live album Triumph (Fourth Dimension), but I'll have to save that for later. Amazing band.

Ducktails II / Ducktails (Future Sound Recordings) CD-R / (Not Not Fun) LP - Ducktails combines lazy minimal guitar textures like an echo-drenched Durutti Column with infectious/cracked melodies and a stumbling, playful delivery I've come to expect from the ever-dependable Not Not Fun record fortress. Some fantastical little space pop worlds are explored across the minimal pocket symphonies that comprise II (which I think actually predates the self-titled LP on NNF). Case in point: closer "Neptune City, NJ," which sounds sort of like a home-recorded homage to Kraftwerk's The Man Machine and totally fresh and spontaneous at the same time. The longer and, at times, heavier self titled platter offers more of the same with laid back strumming strings doused in reverb, backed by shuffling bedroom percussion and shakers. Absolute bliss drift for the troubled mind after a long day in the coalmines. Ducktails proves that keepin' it fresh really does matter more than keepin' it real, ya'll, though i think this shit is about as real as it gets too with a magical mix that sounds like what if the Velvet Underground was actually Syd Barrett fronting The Silver apples. Come git sum, chilruns. Your solace stew is served.

Endless Boogie Focus Level (No Quarter) 2LP - The third official long-player from these Brooklyn mantra lords comes in a lavish 2Lp package, if you indeed still have the means of listening to such morsels. It's got all the goody good from wound-tight mid-tempo John Lee Hooker trance outs to epic Velvets infused boogie blastoffs that merge the primitive and ecstatic into wailing psychedelic blues jams that touch on everything from the aforementioned Hooker and other blues greats of yore to Hawkwind and Captain Beefheart, in the process mapping the coordinates to the minimal blues Promise Land. Love the wild-ass "spoken in tongues" vocals, and these guys are DAMN FINE live, boys 'n' girls. Should've been from Texas.

Fell Incoherent Lullabies (Camera Obscura) CD - Phineas Gauge is a Denver duo that first came to my attention via Camera Obscura some years ago, and Fell is Josh Wambeke of said duo carrying on the reverb drenched shoegaze flame into a more accomplished and user friendly melodic sound that manages to captivate with only the most minimal means, key to any good dreampop bliss out. The results fall somewhere between Galaxie 500 to prime Chapterhouse or even Bedhead, all blasts from the past I know and you're sitting their scratching your head like WTF? Think of a kinder, gentler, less steroidal Mogwai, then sprinkle with equal doses of heartache and an endless morphine drip.

Jesu Opiate Sun (Caldo Verde Records) CD EP - What the hell is left to say about Justin Broadrick and his transformation from angst drone metal avalanche master to pristine noise pop song bird? Opiate Sun offers four more epic slabs of monumental harmonies and tuneful fuzz guitars that come off sort of like Big Star playing at the bottom of the world or Codeine reborn from the slow-core ashes like a magnificent fiery phoenix, course set directly for the heart of the opiate sun. Glorious.

Lightning Bolt Earthy Delights (Load) CD - It's been a while since the mighty Providence, RI duo unleashed its flailing limbs spastic cyclops attack on an unassuming public, and if it's only gotten tighter, more dynamic, splattered and calibrated at the same time with a furious precision that feels telekinetic at this point and is as fiercely uncompromising as it is listenable and fist-pumping to the heavens. Easily some of the most down and dirty, grooved out cosmik splooge that's as intelligently designed as it is spontaneously created. Hammer of the Gods.

Moon Duo Killing Time (Sacred Bones) - 12" EP - Four more groovy drone psych concoctions from this righteous Wooden Shjips off-shoot that draw from Suicide, Loop, Krautrock and the aforementioned 'Shjips themselves with epic trance raves that conjure images of alien spacecrafts landing on enormous strobe lite dance-floors overrun with indigenous creatures doused in day-glow and zonked in ecstatic revelry.

Oneida Rated O (Jagjaguwar) 3CD - Oneida recently dropped one smokin' 3CD platter that just may be their ultimate psych punk transcendence opus to date, and the price is definitely right. We're talkin' 3 CDs for the price of one -- Rated O for orgasm. These three discs represent a big part of the story of Oneida, though they comprise the second release in the so called "Thank Your Parents" trilogy. If last year's Preteen Weaponry was a roaring blast out of the cosmic gate, then Rated O is a work of greater diversity and further-along probing depth, encompassing aspects of new wave, no wave, Krautrock, 70s proto punk and art punk, dub, psych rawk, sitar laced trance minimalism and good old fashioned caveman stomp. It's a beast to sit through in one sitting, but no one ever said you had to do that. Throw in disc 1 at your next Saturday night disco house party. Pop in CD 2 for the garage punk freakbeat shuffle that following Tuesday, and just think of CD 3 as the perfect go-to spin for straight up third eye astral projecting. Highly recommended for hardcore acid punks, Circle fans and those who enjoy headbanging in the lotus position.

Pumice Quo (Soft Abuse) CD - Stefan Neville, recently heard hitting drums at Renderers gigs down south, released one of my favorite solo weird noise pop sorts of albums of recent times in Pebbles (also Soft Abuse). Seek it out if looking for the missing link between Alastair Galbraith and early John Cale/Tony Conrad styled minimalism. Quo sort of picks up where Pebbles leaves off, offering up an all encompassing commentary on all that is and ever will be Pumice. That means fractured, skeletal folk pop, angular art punk, no wave, minimal drone, tape hiss and manipulations are all accented by Neville's peculiar/affecting croon singing songs of heartache, loss, need and confusion. It's the human condition all thrown into a very old, noisy blender and set to puree. Quo falls somewhere between the shambolic folk psych of Sky Green Leopards and the deconstructed art pop of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, while sounding like neither. Roundabout praise, but praise all the same. Highly recommended.

Peaking Lights - Imaginary Falcons (Night People) LP - While spacing out and drifting down stream this year, I don't think any soundtrack carried me further along than Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes' homemade shoegaze duo, Peaking Lights, via the brilliant kaleidoscopic tone patterns of their Imaginary Falcons, which also dropped in the cassette format from Not Not Fun. The mood is playful and dreamy across these seven sonic vessels touching upon early Eno, Velvets, Nico, Xpressway, Krautglam and Young Marble Giants. I'm also reminded of the lovely Grouper in spots, only the moods of Imaginary Falcons reveal their own brand of hand-traded cassette tape drift and drone that's perfect head fodder for a lazy day shimmer or a rainy day trickle, and all points in between. Great stuff to fall asleep to.

Rahdunes Untitled (Qbico) LP picture-disc - When Mr. Coyes above told me about this here mind-melting sonic artifact and that it was an actual rock record to boot, I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd never actually get to hear the sucker. Wrong again! Found it in the racks at End of An Ear on one of my recent Austin trips, last copy of course. I'm not a big fan of reviewing things that are next to impossible to find, but I'm making an exception in this case and and just gonna say this is a true outer free psychedelic third eye melter that is as fun to look at is it is to smoke pot and badly dance to. Psychedelic freedom splendor unleashed and completely obliterated.

Wet Hair Dream / Glass Fountain (Not Not Fun) both LP - More righteous tones here from Shawn Reed, recently heard to make asses shake and minds convulse as a key member of Racoo-oo-oon -- now sadly defunct -- but that's okay as long as cool shit like Wet Hair continues to roll out of the green fog. Dream is rife with organ drones, minimal rhythmic backing with live and programmed drums beneath echo drenched vocal howls merging into some of the most chilled out handmade sci-fi bedroom psych I've bedazzled my mind with lately. Released soon after is the equally levitated Glass Fountain, a companion piece of sorts to Dream which could have quite easily joined with its sister recording into a 2LP platter of mythical proportions. Hard to say why the split, although like many of the freer improvised groove merchants out there today, Wet Hair is less about songs than psychedelic moods -- ecstatic revelries, primal dub-inflected dirges, floating electronic clouds of sound -- it's all here in an abundance just waiting for your lung-burnt, bleary-eyed perusal.

Zelienople Hollywood (Under the Spire) 2x3" CD-R - This Chicago trio continues to weave its levitated spell with a minimal/drone/improv wash that spreads out and fills every corner of the room with a glowing luminescence. This 2x3" CD-R is probably long gone, but can be downloaded, what you wanna bet? Seems just about anything can be downloaded today. The masterstroke is beneath all the shimmering feedback layers is an almost slow-motion alien swing jazz buried beneath all the phosphorous hum to help to help dazzle the subconscious while the ego zones out in tonal submission. Worth your time if you have a remote interest in minimal drone composition, the Kranky label and aural meditation of any kind.

Jack Rose 1971 - 2009
(photo courtesy of Keith Wood)

Jack Rose is gone. What an abysmal weekend. I don't really want to write this, but I have to. It's very hard to put into words what this guy means to me and tons of folks. He and I weren't that close, yet anytime I was able to just sit down somewhere and shoot the shit with Jack Rose I felt like part of his inner circle. He was a larger than life, robust, big bear of a man. He died two days ago of a heart attack at only 38. Lots of fine folks out there are offering up their own tributes and remembrances, so I'll try to keep mine short (yeah right!).

The first time I actually met Jack Rose was at Terrastock 6 in Providence, RI in 2006 (though I'd seen him in concert with Pelt twice before that). After the first night's festivities, Jack, Larkin Grimm and I walked down to a nearby Irish pub (complete with thumping disco background music), and he bought ME a beer of all things, after only just meeting me. I think I'd given him my spiel about how important Pelt's and his music had been to my old friend Mats (editor/publisher of The Broken Face) and I over the years, how Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky did as much as any other album in terms of turning us onto a different way of listening to music and exploring sound. Meditation as music, basically, or music as meditation, and forgetting where one ended and the other began. He could tell I meant every word, and I knew he was a friend from that moment on.

Later that night we ended up in a basement below the taqueria that connects to AS220, one of the venues where Terrastock was held that year. A lot of amazing musicians and some close friends were there: Jeffrey Alexander, Miriam Goldberg, Tara Burke, Larkin and Jack, Alan Davidson, Nari Mann, Travis Johnson and someone else I'm forgetting. Sharron Kraus? We drank beer and talked blues and guitars, about folks we knew, and I remember Larkin and Jack having a kind of pseudo-debate about feminism and folk music as the beer flowed and the smoke wafted upwards. A discussion of old primitive blues sparked up, and the name Skip James came up, a guy I'd just started to really get into. And Jack declared one of his classic aphoristic summations of James and his musical oeuvre, a sentence I'll never forget:

"Skip James is Whitehouse!"

And somehow I knew exactly what he meant. Guess you just have to listen to a li'l Whitehouse, and then listen to a li'l Skip James, to fully get that analogy. Made perfect sense to me, then and now. A little later that night, I remember Jack looking at me dead on: "You're not gonna write about any of this shit in your your blog are you?" 'Hell no," I said, and I meant it. Well, meant it at the time.

About a week later back in Dallas, I passed on an opportunity to see Mogwai live, completely unaware who the opening act was. My friend, Mike Maxwell, called me from the show and left a message asking, "Where are you? Jack Rose is playing, and he put you on the guestlist! Why aren't you here?" For whatever reason I couldn't make it, but I remembered being fairly impressed that this guy I'd only just met remembered my name, remembered where I lived, and put me on the guestlist, simply to be cool. I wish I'd have been there that night, for so many reasons...to see those post-rock kids' confusion and/or enlightenment in the face of Jack's tantric string fire, to shake his hand or give him a hug. I think about these things, and I think about the true beauty of the man. It's so weird to think that the music comes second.

But he was a guitar player too -- some would say the best raga-picker today -- a blues scholar and a real fan. His transcendent style derived as much from Skip James and other pre WW2 blues men as ragtime, country, John Fahey, Robbie Basho, The Grateful Dead and John Martyn, just to name a few. And, of course, his friends. Key albums? Hard to say. Red Horse/White Mule and Opium Musick (both on Eclipse originally) get the ball rolling with raw slide work, fluid fingerpicking and epic open-tuned raga mind wash. Both can be found on VHF's Two Originals of Jack Rose CD. The definitive Kensington Blues (VHF) would come a few years later, and a two more years later the concurrently released self titled and Dr. Ragtime and His Pals, both available as a 2CD from Tequila Sunrise. There's more too, like his long gone echoplexed 7" single, Untitled, which can at least be downloaded if nothing else. And don't get me started on Pelt! His 10th solo album, Luck In The Valley, is due in early 2010 on Thrill Jockey.

And now a little music:


The last time I spoke to Jack was at Terrastock 7 in Louisville, KY, but it's the time before that that really sticks with me. I flew up to St. Louis to visit my friend Travis, and while there catch a Jack Rose/D. Charles Speer/Raglani gig. It'd been a couple years, but he remembered me. I told him how much I was looking forward to seeing his buddy D. Charles, who is super sweet cat too, and I'm sure feeling his own heartbreak right about now. The show was in an art space called Open Lot, which is basically an old converted firehouse from what I could tell. All three acts killed that night -- D. Charles with his drunken country roots psych, Raglani with his minimal electronic storms, Jack with his mind-bending ragas and ragtime jigs. I think I bought a vinyl copy of Kensington Blues and the aforementioned 2CD on Tequila Sunrise.

At one point I remember walking up the stairs to watch Raglani's performance, and looking back and seeing Jack just sitting there on a big brown couch in the main room. "Aren't you comin'?" I asked. "Nah, I can hear it just fine down here. I'm just gonna enjoy this old couch and relax a little while," and he outstretched both arms on either side and gave us one of those big wide Jack smiles. Something tells me he listened closely and probably liked what he heard. Jack always had eclectic tastes, and he meant every word. He will be missed. Check out some of his music if you never have. It comes highly recommended. Here's to that big brown couch. Rest easy, Jack.

Deepest condolences to Jack's wife, family and friends.

Some more remembrances:

http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Features/Jack_Rose_Obituary.htm (a collection of thoughts by Phil McMullin and other members of the Terrastock Nation, including Bill Kellum, owner of VHF Records)

http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7975&Itemid=1 (Windy Webber of Windy & Carl)

http://strangeglue.com/news/a-farewell-to-jack-rose/10007802

http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/12/07/guitar-great-jack-rose-dead-at-38

http://citypaper.net/blogs/criticalmass/2009/12/05/remembering-jack-rose/

Addendum:

http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/12/11/american-musician-jack-rose/ (excellent in depth/recent interview with Jack by Brian Rademaekers)

http://www.drragtime.com/ (fantastic memorial site with poems, pictures, recollections, etc)