Hawaiian lost archive

Ui - Sidelong (Southern Records, 1995)

2012-01-31T03:33:00.000-08:00

It didn’t quite squeeze into last-year’s US Post-Rock Top Five but it was pretty darn close. Ui was (and possibly still is) a New York-based band led by Sasha Frere-Jones, who is currently employed as the New Yorker’s pop music critic. The New York-ness of all this is highly significant as Sidelong, the band’s 1995 debut album, was (and most certainly still is) very much in the tradition of Big Apple post-punk and mutant disco.

With a line-up consisting of two bass players and a drummer, the version of Ui showcased on Sidelong made a sparse, funky, mostly instrumental sound – very similar to the one produced by NY legends like Liquid Liquid and ESG. All this, you should note, years before the post-punk revival kicked in. Perhaps Sidelong‘s sheer prescience explains why it has stood the test of time so well. Fifteen years on, it still sounds fresh.

Having said that, the stripped-down, bass-focused sound can get a bit wearing over the length of an entire album and the band’s white funk workouts do tend to lumber occasionally. Oh and sometimes, it really just sounds like something’s missing. Which might be why Sidelong‘s most successful tracks are those that add an additional element or two – vocals and synth on “Sexy Photograph” (a not-too-distant relation of Can’s “You Do Right”) or vocal and banjo on “Golden Child”.

Given the quality of this material, you can’t help wishing Frere-Jones would stop wasting his time writing books about Michael Jackson (or whatever it is he’s up to at the moment) and just pick up the ol’ bass guitar again. (on Bubblegum Cage)

sidelong

Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia & Delphine Dora - Pantomima Terrestre (Tired Trails Collective, 2009) // Devenir-Animal (Centre of the Wood, 2009)

2012-01-12T04:52:00.000-08:00

Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia is the new weird-folk, avant-folk forest-music project of Salvatore Borrelli(etre, wondrous horse); the music is made in a direct way, without processing or any other disturbance. Here he is joined by delphine dora, the brilliant singer and musician, who adds her honey sweet voice and piano to this already captivating set of sounds. "Pantomima Terrestre" or "Pantomime of the earth" could not be a more fitting name - this is the earth's musical. - a complete production with characters, story lines and dedications - a perfect collage of traditional folk, field recordings, organic drones and percussion. Delphine's airy vocals mingle with the drum beats, space sounds and radio static. birds chirp, dogs bark, cars drive by, and records spin backwards. sluggish dulcimer & guitar plucks crescendo beneath the drone of the harmonium. uniquely improvisational and experimental without loosing its familiarity, there's only one way to discover this world. press play. If your into Caethua, Vapaa, nnck, Nalle, Islaja, and any other trippy explorations of italy, Finland and forest spirits everywhere, this tape will not disappoint. Current/past releases on Ikuissus, Centre of Wood & Fire Museum and future releases on Reverb Worship & Beard of Snails. look out! rad purple tapes in silkscreened fabric & recycled felt (made out of plastic bottles!) cases.

This is a very limited object to 50 copies, made for the wonderful italian record label "Centre of the Wood". The work is played together with Delphine Dora at voice, piano & casiotone, and Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia at Tampura Swarmanthal, Harmonium, Resonant Ukulele, Dulcimer, Zither, Balalaika, Sansula, Shruti Box and Israj. There are 6 tracks for 18 minutes of avant-folk music..

Download Pantomima Terreste

Download Devenir-Animal

Wondrous Horse - Cavallo meraviglioso (Fire Museum, 2008)

2012-01-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome one and all to the world of Wondrous Horse! Cavallo Meraviglisio is the debut offering of the transatlantic (Italy/U.S.) duo of Vanessa Rossetto (Pulga, The Mighty Acts of God, etc.) and Salvatore Borrelli ((etre) & Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia). These two musicians continue to evolve in fascinating ways, and the sounds to be found on Cavallo Meravigliso may come as a surprise to some, which makes it all the more exciting to hear.

An avant folk tour de force combining elements of electroacoustic music, glitch and many other experimental forms, Cavallo Meraviglisio gallops upon the scene assured and ready. Performing with an arsenal of instrumentation at the ready (violin, viola, balalaika, theremin, guitar, dulcetina, concertina, autoharp, bells, xylophone, voice, baritone guitar, tablas, darbukas, turkish saz, xylophone, esraj, dulcimer, resonant ukulele, celtic "droned" harp, banjo, kalimba, shruti box, irish bouzouki, lap steel guitar, toys, & drum machine since you asked) the duo have crafted a recording that successfully combines the myriad of influences of its creators into an organic and unique whole.

Wondrous Horse's "Cavallo Meraviglioso" album is a rich tapestry of instruments, voice and mad percussion, created in the main by Salvatore Borrelli. The feel is otherworldly, the mood bizarre, but it is Vanessa Rossetto's natural/treated voice that makes this music freakily addictive. Weird cellos duck and dive, deraboukahs and tablas rustle and tap, and over some of this Rossetto's seductive voice floats and swirls (Borrelli sings too, less successfully). The track titles are all in Italian, but each is a variation on the main theme. The range of instruments is vast: the sleeve notes list fifty one, some of them multiples. This, then, is an eclectic mix, but it's impossible not to get sucked into the weird and mischievous sound-world, not least because all the songs have a Heath Robinson-esque 'stuck together with tape and glue' charm. Unexpectedly good, this one, dog, cat and duck samples and all...

Double bass and piano weren’t used in the recording of this album. Which is significant, as the list of instruments used makes up four entire lines of the press sheet (and a considerable part of the liner notes) and includes just about everything from theremin to Turkish saz, from violin to shruti box and from xylophone to drum machine. While such eclecticism isn’t always a good thing, Vanessa Rossetto and Salvatore Borrelli (aka etre) somehow make it work: The eleven tracks on “Cavallo Meraviglioso” are given enough room to breathe, even the meandering eleven-minute track “Ogni intuizione Ë il tangibile segno del declino” never gets lost on its way to bucolic bliss.

Rossetto and Borrelli hail as an Italian/American duo, but I feel that they would sit nicely in the Finnish scene as well, what with Rossetto’s vocals reminding me of Islaja or Kuupuu. Wondrous Horse’s dreamy free folk really is that good. I’m particularly fond of the gentle strumming on tracks like – wait – “Il tempo ha posato sei voci she gridano” but this playful, yet focussed album is enjoyable from start to finish. Ah, and Valerio Cosi appears on one of the tracks as well: “Questi Orizzonti Scomparsi” – even their track titles sound like music! 7/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns - Foxy Digitalis

Download Wondrous Horse - Cavallo Meraviglioso

Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia & Dora Bleu - Echo Palace of Finitude (Three Legged Cat Records, 2010)

2012-01-10T05:55:00.000-08:00

Dora Bleu’s music has a fragrance not so easily expressible with simple words. The quality of these tracks speaks for itself, with a first rate songwriting and her ability to create a bridge between the traditional folk singer mood and the nowadays free-folk attitude. So, try to imagine Bridget St. John and Larkin Grimm singing their souls out, lost in the Appalachian mountains and guided by the Sandy Denny’s spirit. But this music is a pure river, and on the other side of the edge there are the landscapes created for her by Harps Of Fuchsia Kalmia, a mostly kept secret project by Salvatore Borrelli, whose sensibility and musical culture seem perfectly integrated with the structures of these songs: his work is like a deep whisper, surrounding the atmosphere of this album. So you can feel his presence, both quiet and loud at the same time, over the pentagram and between the lines.
Listening to this album is like thinking of something that you mostly loved in your past: something precious that you’ve lost, but you don’t remember when and how.
The silent scream of a naked soul.

Download Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia & Dora Bleu

Plush - More you becomes you (Domino, 1998) \\ Fed (After Hours, 2002)

2011-12-31T07:36:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of Plush, let me begin with a little history. Plush is basically the work of Liam Hayes of Chicago, and whatever rock orchestra he can pull together for a given recording project. He began his career with a 1994 Drag City single, "Found a Little Baby" b/w "3/4 Blind Eyes," which was the best piece of sixties-style pop to bear the mark of a double A-side in years. Holding this single in my hand, I know that it's a pop classic. But is this Liam Hayes? I wonder, looking at the fuzzy haired cartoon caricature on the sleeve.

Hayes sings with the style and conviction of John Lennon and when he drifts into falsetto, as he often does, it evokes the sweetly feminine quality of Brian Wilson. Instrumentally, Plush's work could be compared to George Harrison's first solo record (think "I'll Have You Anytime") and The White Album (think "Dear Prudence") crossed with dead-on Wilson/ Bacharach style arranging. Plush has raised the bar for me on what I thought possible for orchestrally arranging rock music in this digital age where the life is compressed out of most every flat-sounding CD that hits the used bins.

With the delayed release of a follow up, 1998's More You Becomes You (also on Drag City), fans awaited the second coming of Plush as if he were George Martin himself in purple velvet hunched over a Gretch guitar, with the great ghosts of the past surrounding him for the session date. But instead of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Pet Sounds Band, we got Liam Hayes smacked-out on a grand piano, performing a solo song cycle. In the span of two releases, we went from grandiose to absolutely sparse. The songs on More You Becomes You weren't as strong as the "Found a Little Babyâ€ singleâ€”but something of interest was happening here. We were seeing Hayes' pop smarts unfolding in a very raw form. One gets the impression that he's making it up as he goes along, finding a little groove and then going for a big, unusual chord change, waxing his most elusive as he goes for the odd Joni Mitchell- style melody. Hayes seems to be playing a game of challenging himself to keep the songs coming; being as daring as he can with his simple, but well defined color strokes, reaching deep into the well of his pop-consciousness for the most obtuse melodies he can find.

Hayes maybe have been attempting to deliver an anti-climax, much like The White Album was the opposite of Pepper with its blank cover, or how the greatest piece from the Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds project, â€œSurfs Up,â€ is basically a free-associative unaccompanied piano piece.

Notably on More You Becomes You, Hayes sounded depressed, with lyrics like "I didn't know life was so sad, I cried." I even heard some strains of classic torch-pop, ala Laura Nyro's New York Tendaberry, showing how easily Hayes is able to tap into the feminine side of his persona with his melodic moodiness and that falsetto. But, man, what is this guy so depressed about? That he has remained relatively unknown? That he just wasnâ€™t made for these times? That he woulda been big time about 35 years ago? That he is a master of one tiny little style of rock that now just has a cult following? Probably all of the above. Or that he has to spend all his dough to make the recordings he knows he's capable ofâ€”recordings on par with other holy grail-sters like Ron Sexsmith, Fugu, Jim O'Rourke, Jon Brion, Louis Phillipeâ€”and half of these other guys are producers, with all the time in the world to sit around figuring out how to make shit sound great!

Now I'm confronted with the big daddy of them allâ€”another four years laterâ€”my little shy depressed wonderboy returns with Fed on the Japanese label P-Vine. Let me just say that Mr. Hayes' proper follow up to the massive single he launched eight years ago has big hairy purple velvet balls. Gone are the slightly smacked out longings. Gone is Brian Wilson cooing paradoxically, and come is the cocaine hangover ofâ€”Robert Plant?!? Hayes leads a laser-tight band on a 1971-sounding tour-de-force. We have a full-on seventies horn sectionâ€”at times resorting to soulful hits and accentsâ€”plus winds on some tracks and, most impressively, a full-on string section. We're not talking â€œEleanor Rigbyâ€ though. Think Shaft, straight up. Orchestrations also sometimes echo Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. The songwriting is tight, with echoes of Carole King and John Lennon. But it sounds like the Brian Wilson part of the persona has been exiled for the time being. Apparently he just didn't fit in at this party; too insecure, maybe.

I conducted this interview with Liam Hayes in August of 2002, via email. I sent him a list of questions which he answered on a jetset bumpy flight from Sydney to Tokyo. In general, our correspondence was extraordinarily friendly, and I found his answers to be pointedly funny, at times sarcastic, and intelligent. Perhaps what was most revealing were the questions that he chose not to answer, most of which dealt with my comparing his music to other artists. If anything, I felt like he was mocking me. To that end, I compare him to Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Randâ€™s The Fountainhead, who when asked by a fellow architect what he thought of his work, replied, â€œI donâ€™t.â€

Scram: between 1999 and 2002, you disappeared from the music scene. Where did you go?
Liam Hayes: Where the action wasnâ€™t. Part of the time was spent putting this record together.

Scram: I know you appeared in a movie [High Fidelity].
LH: Yes I did. I got to pretend I was playing and singing while the main character pretended to listen.

Scram: Well, I am so glad to see youâ€™re back! Iâ€™ve been waiting. Once I thought that I discovered a new Plush record on-line, only to discover it was a Christian band. Rats! Ever heard of them?
LH: Thatâ€™s interesting. Doesnâ€™t the bible say something about not taking a trademarked name in vain? Time for them to have a prayer session with the lawyers.

Scram: In the meantime, you changed labels, from Chicagoâ€™s famous Drag City to the lesser known Japanese label P-Vine. What prompted a move?
LH: P-Vine believed in it, made a serious offer, and were willing to make it a priority.

Scram: Were there issues with Drag City?
LH: Theyâ€™re a good label. It just ended up costing more than they were willing to pay.
[I've since found out the cost of Fed was well into six-figures. Understandably, Hayes was looking for significant compensation from a label to help cover the costs of recording for which he scraped together claw, tooth, and nail, and mostly on credit. A longtime friendship with a higher-up at Drag City could do little to keep Hayes faithful, since a label of that size simply doesnâ€™t have that kind of cash to give to artists with extravagant/ perfectionist leanings. Rhetorically, how much do you think it costs to make a Smog record?]

Scram: Do you have a fan base in Japan? They are notorious for their love of soft-rockâ€”which your work up to this point has certainly touched on auspiciously.
LH: I donâ€™t knowâ€¦ could be.

Scram: Plush is really just you, right?
LH: Yes, Iâ€™m the sole survivor.

Scram: But youâ€™re touring with a band?
LH: We just finished a tour of Japan.

Scram: Any big differences you can mention about Japan?
LH: People donâ€™t act like naked savages in public there.

Scram: Letâ€™s talk about people acting like savages. I live in Boston! Any memories of your last show here? I think it was at TT the Bears in Cambridge with Rufus Wainwright?
LH: Maybe that rogue Christian Plush was on the bill, but we certainly werenâ€™t. Iâ€™ve never played Boston. We were supposed to. I think it was in â€™98. We had come from NYC and were booked to TT the Bears. I remember reading some piece in a Boston ragâ€¦ some girl saying sheâ€™d heard all this hype on our band and was going to check out the show just to confirm her negative expectations. Namely, that it wouldnâ€™t be up to the hype. I donâ€™t know what she ended up doing that evening, but the venue was closed due to fire damage from an overactive tandoori oven next door. I was happy to drive home.
Scram: That's Boston. People are so negative here. Look at the Red Soxâ€”the only cheer we have for them is â€œYankees Suck!â€ Itâ€™s ridiculous. You donâ€™t want to play here anyway, and if you do, Iâ€™d recommend The Paradise. Itâ€™s really one of the last great clubs here and the bills are usually pretty solid.

Scram: Letâ€™s dig into this beautiful new album. Track one, â€œWhose Bluesâ€: you seem to be exiting the sensitive role you played on More You Becomes You and reappearing amid a bashing brass arrangement with a bit of a cocky swagger, ala Robert Plant. Is Zeppelin an influence on you?
LH: No. (â€¦uncomfortable virtual silenceâ€¦)

Scram: Well, let me milk you for another comparison. The legato string interlude introduced after the three-minute mark has a very Curtis Mayfield, Shaft-like feel to it. In other songs I hear bits of Marvin Gayeâ€™s Whatâ€™s Going On. Are you conscious that you might be moving from a sixties-inspired sound into a more seventies-inspired sound on this album?
LH: Itâ€™s partly Tomâ€™s influence [arranger Tom Tom 84 who goes way back to Earth, Wind & Fire]. I heard quite a bit of that music growing up. It was popular, so it was everywhere and left an impression.

Scram: Tell me about Tom Tomâ€”what exactly does he do? Score and everything? Where it says in the booklet that you did additional arrangements on certain songs, what does that mean? Did Tom Tom arrange â€œFound a Little Babyâ€ as well?
LH: Tom worked with me, took what I had written and cleaned some of it up, prepared it for performance. There are parts throughout that are mine that he kept. In many songs he just did his thingâ€¦ horns and strings and really shaped the tune. A lot of the winds are mine. â€œAdditional arrangementsâ€ are the songs that I arranged from beginning to end.

Scram: â€œWhose Bluesâ€ comes to a climax with the jarring lyric, â€œmy creation has drowned me,â€ which suggests to me Dr. Frankenstein. You also talk about living for â€œsomething elseâ€â€¦ this may sound corny, but are you talking about being Plush, or growing into a cog in society?
LH: Both. Nobody knows what to do with a wish giving tree. Itâ€™s not the tree's fault.

Scram: Going along with this sentiment, I wonder if the thing to which you assert: â€œitâ€™s my timeâ€ in track two, â€œIâ€™ve Changed My Numberâ€ is related to your involvement in the music business, or rather something involving a personal relationship or your relationship with society.
LH: Itâ€™s my time and how I choose to use it. One way not to spend it: getting caught up in other peopleâ€™s trips.

Scram: Well, thanks for not changing your number in this case. Are you tired of people interested in Plush trying to contact you?
LH: No. I like knowing that people are listening.

Scram: I get a sense that you have an interesting relationship with the character that is Plush. Are you more â€œPlushâ€ in real life, or more Liam Hayesâ€”or are the two inseparable? Like the Other Music review of Fed states about you, are you are an international man of mystery, like the James Bond of music? Or do you have a real life that is comprised of a job, bills, a lease, pals, a goldfish? Or are you a really a rock star?
LH: Please donâ€™t include the goldfish in all that nonsense. Heâ€™s the only thing thatâ€™s real, the rest isnâ€™t.

Scram: The bizarre photo montage within your CD features you in a Superman-like stature, a grocery stock boy, and a billy goat knocking down a pyramid of cans in a sterile white installation setting. Is it just for fun, or is that linked to any particular art movement?
LH: Yes, advertising.

Scram: I think I remember reading somewhere that you are like a rock nâ€™ roll vagabond, sitting on the park benches of Chicago as in your new single â€œGreyhound Bus Station.â€ Also I have heard that like Mr. Morrissey, youâ€™ve never had a job because youâ€™ve never wanted oneâ€”any truth to this, or a bunch of crap?
LH: Never wanted one and never kept one. For me music is the only thing worth doing.

Scram: Back to â€œIâ€™ve Changed My Number,â€ the chorus is very Carole King, with the lyric, â€œThey say, isnâ€™t that the way that it feelsâ€¦â€ Are you commenting on depression and dealing with people confronting you about depression?
LH: Look, most of the people Iâ€™ve met want you to do more than simply acknowledge them and their condition. They want you to empathize. Now you have two depressed people where there was just one before.

Scram: I make this assertion about depression considering that your first single contains lyrics such as â€œgonna be another lonely dayâ€ and â€œwhatâ€™s so bad about dying.â€ Likewise, on More You Becomes You, one canâ€™t be sure if you are laughing or crying when you sing the lyric â€œit took me so long.â€ Clearly, yours are not the lyrics of someone perennially happy, like Stevie Wonder for instance.
LH: Do you think that Stevie Wonder needs therapy?

Scram: Maybe he does these days. There is something a little sinister about â€œI Just Called to Say I Love Youâ€ and â€œThatâ€™s What Friends Are For.â€ Sticking with this Motown theme, I want to go back to my earlier comment about Marvin Gayeâ€™s Whatâ€™s Going On. The over-all sounds of the first two songs are very similarâ€”they were obviously meant to go together, as are â€œNo Educationâ€ and â€œThe Sound of San Francisco,â€ and â€œUnisâ€ and â€œBorn Together.â€ Is this intended to get that Whatâ€™s Going On effect, where the songs actually run together?
LH: I like the idea of a record that has a beginning, middle, and end as opposed to just a collection of songs.

Scram: Were they recorded at the same time as a suite? Itâ€™s really neat to see two different songs come from the same seed. If the songs were in fact recorded separately, you all did a very nice job putting it together.
LH: No they were not recorded at the same time. And thanks.

Scram: Incidentally, how long did it take to record Fed?
LH: Years.

Scram: Was it recorded on tape or with a computer, or both?
LH: Tape. Computers take too long to do everything.

Scram: I've noticed that Chicagoâ€™s finest turned the knobs on this recordâ€”Steve Albini, John McEntire, Bob Westonâ€”so you must not have been living in Japan.
LH: Donâ€™t assume.

Scram: Either way, does being in the Chicago music â€œglitteratiâ€ afford you to work with these engineers? Are they the greatest in the world or what?
LH: Being a seventh degree glitterati prohibits me from discussing what goes on in our meetings. I can however tell you that they certainly do know how to rock the mic collection.

Scram: A fringe benefit of working with McEntire (Tortoise, Stereolab) mustâ€™ve been his drumming talents, which he lends so nicely to the jazzy feel of track three, â€œBlown Away.â€ The song also has a really enjoyable, slightly obtuse chordal/ melodic structure. The â€œone man diesâ€ section is really breathtakingâ€”it really reminds me of â€œAnyone Who Had a Heartâ€ (Bacharach-David), which has that irregular waltz time feel as well.
LH: It didnâ€™t start out that way. I originally wrote it for guitar and then moved it over to piano. I suppose the instrumentation (upright bass, piano, and drums) automatically puts it in some sort of jazz context.

Scram: What is your attitude towards chords? Are you pretty liberated with the movements that you make? Do you use them as the building blocks of the song and then impose the arrangements upon them?
LH: This is a hard question to answer. Chords. Canâ€™t live without them. Chords move. They have to. Up and down they go. Itâ€™s very liberating, the movement, you know. Chords are imposing. You notice them when they enter a song.

Scram: Track 5, â€œGreyhound Bus Station,â€ is perhaps the happiest song you have ever released, a clear choice for a single, a relationship song for a relationship that didnâ€™t quit get off the ground. Yet is the sun coming out here?
LH: I think it is a happy song. The other person thatâ€™s being addressed wonâ€™t sing along, but that doesnâ€™t stop me from harmonizing.

Scram: But it's the happiest song and you still have to ride a Greyhound? What gives?
LH: Who cares if itâ€™s a Greyhound? Sure, itâ€™s depressing, but at least youâ€™re out of the house having an adventure.

Scram: I really think that lyric is funny: â€œsitting in the park for lack of ambition.â€ Very Lennonesque, and the melody on the big chord change is bizarre in a Lennonesque way. You obviously donâ€™t suffer from lack of ambition if you composed and produced this album together with some thirty people.
LH: It was a major undertaking. Everybody was challenged and we did what seemed impossible

Scram: Is that what you like to think of Plush, if you will forgive my pandering language: do you keep the rock star fantasy of Plush seated on a park bench too cool for school?
LH: Fantasy?
[I suppose I should acknowledge that I am projecting here. I think Liam is fantastic, so I must think he thinks heâ€™s fantastic. Or something like that. Plus, I wouldnâ€™t mind achieving his level of rock stardom, which to me, is fantasy.]

Scram: Or too smart for education? As we see in the next song, one of my favorites, â€œNo Educationâ€â€”it really just has such a beautiful lyricâ€”â€œNever read a book in my life, but I feel just fine, Iâ€™m alright/ Now is the time that I feel so inspired.â€ It makes sense that a creature of the soul would never read a book, but turn instead to song, for music is pure emotion. Comment?
LH: Iâ€™m not saying that I donâ€™t read, never read, or that itâ€™s not a worthwhile activity. At the time Iâ€™d just met somebody who was very intellectual, a brainiac, and they were applying that to their music. Maybe itâ€™s interesting in small doses, but I donâ€™t want to be a brain in a jar. Many do. This song is not for them.

Scram: I hate to bring them up again, Iâ€™m not even a big fan, but â€œNo Educationâ€ kind of has the same subtle sexy power of â€œNo Quarterâ€ by Led Zeppelinâ€”or maybe itâ€™s just the chorus on the guitar. Do you think that effects pedals are coming back in for guitar players, or is that just you experimenting with that sound?
LH: I donâ€™t know whatâ€™s in or out. Iâ€™ve been playing with the same set-up for the last twelve years.

Scram: This is in fact a different version of the "No Education" single that was released in '97, correct?
LH: Yes.

Scram: What motivated you to re-record it?
LH: Iâ€™d always wanted to do it with an arrangement.

Scram: â€œNo Educationâ€ really has a fantastic outroâ€”you dueting with the French horn (or is it English?). Also, the strings are splendid on the â€œfeel alrightâ€ section. Really an outstanding trackâ€”very powerful. By now you must be starting to learn more about what the different horns and winds sound like specifically, how and when to use them in an arrangement. Can you impart some of your discoveries on me?
LH: What you are refering to is a French horn and a Flugel horn. Itâ€™s really just what sounded good. I can recommend a book: â€œThe Study of Orchestrationâ€ by Samuel Adler. Thatâ€™s what I taught myself with.

Scram: You must be happy with track seven, â€œThe Sound of San Francisco?â€ (which along with the diabolical title track, â€œFed,â€ will really reward fans of "Found a Little Baby" / "3/4 Blind Eyes" with lush strings and horns, prominent organ and a chugging chorus-driven guitar). The way you say those â€œyeahâ€™sâ€ really makes me feel good!
LH: Good.

Scram: Thereâ€™s actually some Christ imagery here, am I right? Mention of bread and the lyric â€œWoke up today, said whoâ€™d gonna be my keeper?/ Said on the way, whoâ€™s gonna feed these people?â€ Any explanation for this? Is this designed to go along with some of the other spiritual/ philosophical references on the record?
LH: It was taken from a dream. San Francisco was and still is a weird place. In the dream it was even weirder. There is a Christ-type figure, yes, but heâ€™s really just as disconnected as everyone else. Itâ€™s not really religious.

Scram: I want to mention track nine, â€œBorn Together,â€ the ballad of the album. It's a lovely, bittersweet song that grows on me with each listen, as I am able to absorb some of the frightful originality of it bit by bit. It features an acoustic guitar with what sounds like a string trio. The feminine side of your songwriting really comes out here. I imagine Phil Spector arranging a John Lennon song like â€œJuliaâ€ from The White Album. All the little pieces, how it is put together, very unique. Do you have any special feelings about it? Did you arrange the strings here or did Tom Tom?
LH: I really like the song and always enjoy playing it. I did the arrangement

Scram: My last question: What is next for Plush?
LH: Breakfast.

(by Jonathan Donaldson on Scram)

more you becomes you

fed

Papa M - Live in a shark cage (Drag city, 1999) \\ Whatever, Mortal (Drag City, 2001)

2011-12-28T01:46:00.000-08:00

Pajo outdoes himself on the follow up, again instrumental, but this time credited to "Papa M": Live From A Shark Cage (Drag City, 1999). His minimalist and trascendental technique, inspired in equal parts by Pat Metheny (jazz), Robert Fripp (rock) and John Fahey (folk), has achieved a spectacular level of concentration. Pajo has found the magic balance among technique, emotion and structure. Roadrunner is a country watercolor similar to Leo Kottke's, but the melodious tinkling of the guitar (reminiscent of the Christmas carols), the deaf counterpoint of a jews-harp, the sparse and casual drumming of the percussions, the carillon of the vibes, share nothing of the elated joy of the rural world, albeit the dark introversion of the metropolis. Even the accelerated blues of Plastic Energy Man, one more time strummed by the guitar (almost in a calypso mode) and accompanied by very subdued percussions, goes back and forth between graceful imagination and sick psyche. The most "song" of all tracks on this album is Up North Kids, a catchy and quick melody which seems to leave behind, for a few minutes, the existential worries.
From that (more or less) fairy tale atmosphere the album instead plunges in the cryptic trance of Pink Holler, a velvety carpet of crystal guitar and banjo tones which does not run after a melody albeit simply grows thicker and thicker. And the mood sinks in the long raga of Drunken Spree, which repeats a simple melodic pattern on the sitar interwining it with intensely spiritual guitar chords. Over the fifteen minutes of I Am Not Lonely With Cricket Pajo drops completely in the minimalistic technique of repeating an elementary pattern with minimum and subtle variations, and in the eastern technique of achieving ecstasis through hypnotic stasis and intense meditation. The music slowly mutates and fades away in a tinkling of metallic tones.
The closing track, Arundel, fuses the two sides of Pajo, the melodic sketch drawer and the spiritual guru, in an indolent and broken theme, which sounds almost like a requiem and which disappears in a puff of sombre reverbs.
This album crowns the most taciturn guitarist in the history of rock music as one of the most original. His music is patient, does not hark for the spectacular and abhors speed. His music is built up from a hammering technique of the guitar which could not possibly be more ordinary. Nonetheless, the result is an extraordinary mixture of cubist, baroque and eastern accents.

(by Piero Scaruffi on his great History of Rock music website)

Contrary to popular wisdom, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The real problem arises when the old dog becomes so wrapped up in his new tricks that he forgets all the old ones. The miserable thing winds up spending so much time showing off its incredible new talent that it forgets to do the simple things-- like eat out of a bowl and not shit on the rug. Hopeless and frustrated, you find yourself with no choice but to take a rusty kitchen knife to Fido, ending both his misery and yours.

After hearing Papa M's Sings EP earlier this year, I couldn't shake the fear that I would at some point find myself cleaning David Pajo's diced innards off of my living room floor. After spending years with sonic adventurers like Slint and Tortoise, and working with such unique voices as Will Oldham, Pajo happened upon the miraculous discovery that he can play dusty old folk music. Unfortunately, those old blues and country records seemed to have wiped clean all that Pajo had learned in his travels, leaving him sounding painfully amateurish for a guy who wanted to sound like a weathered wanderer. He was an old dog trying to learn an older trick, and I for one feared that it would be his last.

Thankfully, it appears that I won't be gutting David Pajo with a crowbar any time soon. Whatever, Mortal is a wonderful synthesis of Pajo's old and new tricks, and one of those rare albums that manages to be seriously steeped in tradition without being trite and boring.

In some ways, Whatever, Mortal picks up where Sings left off: with Pajo trying his hand at some roots music, and putting his uncertain baritone to good use. But whereas Sings seemed little more than a genre exercise, Whatever, Mortal sees Pajo beginning to develop his own distinctive sound-- a kind of slapped-together orchestral feel that lends the album a beautifully downcast grandiosity. With Pajo, Tara Jane O'Neil, and Will Oldham covering a variety of instruments, ranging from guitars and melodicas to wood floors and dog tags, Whatever, Mortal is a magnificently rich-sounding album.

Whereas lesser artists might get carried away with such vast instrumentation, Pajo keeps this album beautifully thin and airy. Take, for example, the album's opener, "Over Jordan," in which Pajo's voice is often accompanied by little more than guitar and banjo. The cold, dark tone of the song's verse is contrasted by its gorgeous "I'm going hoooooome" chorus, in which Pajo's multitracked voice seems to melt into something beautifully malleable.

What could have been the album's most sparse, revealing moment comes with "Sorrow Reigns," a brief song in which Pajo is accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. But one of Whatever, Mortal's strengths is that, while parts of it are deeply affecting, the album never takes itself seriously. And on "Sorrow Reigns," Pajo makes this abundantly clear, letting loose the Oldham-esque lyric, "There was something like a wall between us/ That stopped your going down on my penis." There's a serious tradeoff here-- the break in the album's somewhat-serious façade (which is already cracked by the album's title) is welcome, but the lyric sounds painfully out-of-place, and frankly, kind of dumb.

A better executed bit of goofing off comes with the album's next track, "Krusty," a lovely instrumental set over the backdrop of an episode of "The Simpsons" (Episode #9F13, "I Love Lisa," for those of you who still find the phrase "worst episode ever" amusing.) Here, Pajo shows that, while he may be pursuing a folkier side, he still has some great guitar-based instrumental music in him.

"Krusty" is immediately followed up by Whatever, Mortal's strongest track, "The Lass of Roch Royal," in which Pajo manages to bring great sonic ingenuity to musical and lyrical themes that have been around for centuries. Using some wonderfully placed ethereal background vocals, a sample of rain, and what could either be keys or the aforementioned dog tags, Pajo constructs a sonic approximation of spooky sorrow that seems infinitely more substantial than just an acoustic guitar and voice.

So it seems that David Pajo hasn't lost his way after all. Quite the contrary, in fact; he's managed to produce his best album yet. By not strictly adhering to the various molds of old-time folk, blues, and country, Pajo has captured the essence of the music he once shallowly emulated. What's more, he's managed to turn it into something that's unquestionably his own. Good Pajo.

(By Matt LeMay on Pitchfork)

live in a shark cage

whatever, mortal

Matana Roberts - Coin coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres (Constellation, 2012)

2011-12-28T01:12:00.000-08:00

Three seconds into opener ‘Rise’, and you know this is going to be special. The fierceness that runs throughout the album is not merely a characteristic, but a method, an indictment, exorcism and history lesson. That Roberts manages to unite a universal message and the intensely personal is one of the album’s most striking merits, while combining free jazz, swing, folk music (spirituals, lullabies, the blues), the Bible and the oral tradition to accomplish a musical equivalent of Toni Morrison’s stories.

The music has ties to the rough-edged fire music of the sixties – the Ayler- Shepp-Sanders-axis, in particular, but it’s also a collective triumph for saxophones, trumpets, violin, prepared guitar, bass, drums, singing saw and vocals, teetering from Mingus-styled grooves to dense and mysterious imaginary soundtracks and back. And it is a record of childish unpredictability and diversity, with a ‘compositional sound language’ that’s channeled by ways of a graphic notation system. Also striking, and something which might alienate or irritate you as much as it might cause the shivers to run up and down your spine, are the vocals, which are playful and soothing the first moment, and incredibly harsh and haunting the next.

When Roberts unleashes (and that’s the only appropriate verb) her demons in ‘Pov Piti’ and its emotionally charged counterpart ‘I Am’, you’re being maimed by oppressive expression in its purest form. It is the blues, it is a peek into unresolved emotional issues, complete with regret and pain seeping from those open sores. But “Coin Coin” is not all about agony.

It is a strikingly rich album, full of throbbing grooves (‘Song For Eulalie’, being a wonderful example), spoken word interludes and blues-drenched, carnivalesque climaxes, that ultimately ends on a hopeful, life-affirming note: “I know how precious our lives can be / dedicate this moment to you and me / let’s dance / celebrate life”.

A history chapter, a therapeutic session, a sonic novel bursting at the seams. This could’ve been an ambitious failure, but it became a full-fledged triumph. A demanding one, yes, but music shouldn’t refrain from asking the listener to make an effort. Or should it? The best news: this is supposed to be the first chapter in a twelve-part cycle. If she manages to keep this up, it’ll be a major achievement.

Musicians : Matana Roberts (vocals, clarinet, alto saxophone); Gitanjali Jain (vocals); Xarah Dion (prepared guitar); Josh Zubot, Marie Davidson (violin); Nicolas Caloia (cello); Fred Bazil (tenor saxophone); Jason Sharp (baritone saxophone); Ellwood Epps (trumpet); Brian Lipson (bass trumpet); David Ryshpan (piano, organ); David Payant (vibraphone, drums); Lisa Gamble (musical saw).

by Guy Peters on Free-Jazz

download matana robers

William Parker & ICI Ensemble‎ - Winter Sun Crying (Neos, 2011)

2011-12-28T01:07:00.000-08:00

The ICI Ensemble Munich (International Composers & Improvisers) is a loose group of German musicians, with varying line-ups. They have developed their "Composer in Dialogue" concept to which they invite modern composers, with so far Olga Neuwirth, Barry Guy, Pierre Favre, George Lewis, Giancarlo Schiaffini und Vinko Globokar as invitees. From what I could find, only the collaborations with Neuwirth and Lewis were released on record, but I must say that - like most avant-garde music - their promotion is as amateurish as their music is good.

In 2009, the band invited William Parker to compose for them, and the result is absolutely staggering. Parker has of course composed for improvisational orchestras with his own Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, music of incredible density and freedom.

After some questionable side-steps in the past years, we find the New York artist back in full glory. In fifteen relatively short compositions, Parker develops incredibly coherent gems of sound, with the gravity and solemnity of a Bill Dixon, all forming one single suite, and with a lightness of arrangements that belies the size of the octet, because instruments come and go, for short bursts of sounds, a few phrases. Parker seems to try to evoke the strong memory imprints of his life or youth : "Bells", "Train", "Explosion", "Tears", or the space around : "Earth", "Moon", "Sky", but then in a deep and meaningful way : full of emotion and sprituality : "Hope", "Revolution", "Winter Sun Crying". The "Train" sounds like a train, or rather the shadow of a train. "Earth" is all angular and hard and unpredictable. "Moon" is slower and eery with unison howls and crescendos. "Explosion" is built around incredible tension, with weird background noises and dark rumbling drums laying the backdrop for innocent flute playing, juxtaposing Not surprisingly, the last piece, "Let's Change The World" is as fragile as it gets, almost transparent music with Parker's bamboo flute adding a kind of universal song for mankind.

Credit also goes to the entire band, who really move as one, with a great sense of direction creating sonic environments that are open in nature. To be clear, this is not all improvisation : this is well thought-through and structured music, with room for exploration and emphasis, and it makes it all the powerful for the listener.

This is jazz in its most modern shape and at its best : intelligent, complex, compelling, technically superb, surprising, deep, emotional.

Not to be missed and to me for sure one of the contender of album of the year.

The band is :
William Parker, double-bass, piccolo, trumpet, shakuhachi, double reeds
David Jager, soprano & tenor saxophones
Roger Jannotta, alto saxophone, piccolo, flute, clarinet
Markus Heinze, baritone & tenor saxophones
Christofer Varner, trombone, sampler
Martin Wolfrum, piano,
Johanna Varner, cello,
Gunnar Geisse, laptop & laptop guitar
Georg Janker, double-bass,
Sunk Poschi, drums

(from free-jazz)

winter sun crying

Daniel Givens - Age (Aesthetics, 2002)

2011-12-28T01:03:00.000-08:00

Chicago DJ and sonic explorer Givens brings us his vision of futuristic afrodelia. Exploring and merging all the variants of 20th Century Popoular Black Music into one glorious, thick, disorienting whole. Magnificent and cruelly ignored.
"This is the evolution of a new Negro, naturally..." intones Daniel Givens on "allies," the first track of his debut album. If Black people had to pick an album as a starting point with which to reinvent themselves, beyond the predictable traps of baller and shot caller, evading the "Erica Voyeur or Marcia Brady" dilemma, to be more than just a thug life advocate or the R&B crooner who would rather bump and grind than nurture and provide, this album would be considerably more challenging than most. Much like Ornette Coleman's "free" theories on jazz would spark debates that continue until this day, there is enough information on Age to keep a listener occupied well into the next century. For all intents and purposes, Age is a free jazz/post-rock release. But even that description is inadequate. Multiple listens can help trace familial ties to those who were here before Givens: Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Tricky, Carl Craig's Innerzone Orchestra, and many others could be referenced.

Each track is a journey unto itself; together they create an otherworldly experience. While a large percentage of this album is Givens' creation - he produced it himself and plays several different instruments - he does call on the assistance of a number of comrades within Chicago's artistic circles. Vocalist Seth Hitsky adds a haunting aspect on "rotation" with a spellbinding and spiritual utterance. Hitsky later dives into jazz scat exercise on "transitional," a drum 'n' bass bodied tune whose insides have been picked clean of its dance floor appeal. Josh Abrams' bass playing on "no visible color" leads the groove for Daniel's poetry to follow. His voice for prose can be a fixed monotone ("allies") or an impassioned Black Power chant ("never worship earth"). Musically, Daniel weaves a sonic tapestry for you to get lost in. The irregular time signature of "petals" makes the song sound like a more developed take on one of Tricky's abstract moments in time. "mandala/mural" signals a return to the motherland with the drudging sounds of an African drum section and a steady guitar pattern. It's as if Afro-beat was taken out back and severely flogged until it was forced to slow down the tempo. And the 18-minute, three-part opus "acknowledgement" is beyond words.

Daniel Givens was wise enough to mix past, present, and future sounds into this release, thereby creating a timeless work. What better time to listen to an album of this nature? Its effects will be felt long after his life span on earth has passed. Thankfully for us, that won't be for a long while. The reexamination of urban possibilities starts here. " - Macedonia

daniel givens

Brume - The dark tapes (Alterate state recordings, 1997)

2011-11-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

French sound-sculptor Christian Renou, who has recorded under the moniker Brume from 1985 to 2001, is heir to the glorious traditions of musique concrete and sound collage. His compositions (that treat, assemble and mix acoustic sounds) rely on dense, rapid-fire montage. They wed cacophony and dynamics, emphasizing both the element of discontinuity and the element of continuity. Compared with classical musique concrete, they harbor a "negative" virus that would be at home both in German expressionism and in British punk-rock. Brume exploits the technique of Mnemonists and the aesthetics of Einsturzende Neubauten.

He produced about 40 cassettes, including Frikture (Brume, 1985), Le Jour Du Cochon (1986), Program T.4 (1986), In Death We Trust (Underground, 1988), Poison (R.R. Production, 1988), Catalogue (Brume, 1988), Permafrost (1988), Tribalit‚s urbaines (Brume, 1988), Climatiseur (1989), Temporary Pigments (Old Europa Cafe, 1989), Headache (Organic, 1989), Accident de Chasse (Tonspur, 1989), The Sun (Old Europa Cafe, 1990), Unrelated Landscape (Audiofile, 1990), Autoportrait (La Legende Des Voix, 1991), Electrocoagulation (Irre, 1991), Schiluuk (Corrosive, 1991), Epineuse (De Fabriek, 1991), Recifs (Audiofile, 1991), Iswari (SPH, 1991), I'm...I Come...I Was... (Tonspur, 1992), Apocalypse at 6 AM (Tapes for Masses, 1993), Musique Pour Les Etres Humains (Old Europa Cafe, 1994), N-N-N (Anachronismus, 1994), Mammut (Prion, 1995), Stable (Bandaged Hand, 1995), The Emancipated Cell At The Fire Wheel Confines (Realization, 1995), Drone Gymnastic (Bandaged Hand, 1995), The Dark Tapes (Nuit et Bruillard, 1996). (from Piero Scaruffi)

the dark tapes

Laddio Bolocko - The life & times of Laddio Bolocko (No quarter, 2003)

2011-11-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Interview by Larry Dolan

Photos by Silke Fleming

I have always felt that the best that music and art have to offer resides in obscurity and receives very little attention. When I saw Laddio Bolocko open for Trans Am in September of 2000, this notion was confirmed. What I experienced moved me in a way that few bands have. Laddio Bolocko was an instrumental rock band unparalleled and indescribable. The energy that they produced during their live set could power a small city off the grid, but their manner was humble and inviting.

Every individual in the crowd with an ear willing to listen was welcomed into their world; a world of sound which they had constructed, a world unlike any other. Luckily I had the foresight to purchase the CD they were selling at the show, because in the months that followed I was able to find very little information about the band, and it was nearly impossible to purchase a release. They had no website, there was no current contact information on their CD, and there had been very little written about them. After a few inquiries, I was able to contact Blake Fleming, the drummer of Laddio Bolocko. Our conversation traversed the history of Laddio Bolocko as well as Blake's musical background and his current work, but at the core of the interview were the issues that every artist faces. As a musician myself, I could relate to many of Blake's insights and I feel that what he has to share is invaluable to those of you out there who are striving for that perfect note, that unique sound, and that perfect mix that will be your own piece de resistance.

noreasterzine.com: How did you start Playing the drums?

Blake: I was about 8 or 9 years old. I had seen this girl who was my neighbor play or something and it freaked me out and I knew I wanted to play the drums. Basically I just did the thing that a lot of kids did my mom would buy these big old gallon ice cream tubs and I would beat on those and pots and pans. You know a lot of people's typical stories. When I was 9 I got my first snare drum. After that I did a lot of things. I was in a colonial pipe and drumming corps until I was 13. It was very regimented, rudimentary snare drumming. We had a drum instructor who was a guy from West point who taught us the military style of drumming. It was very disciplined, stick heights were very important and the openness and cleanliness of everything. We would do competitions and we would travel all summer. We would travel all over the US and Canada doing reenactments, festivals for colonial periods, or whatever. I started getting drunk a little too much (laughs) and my parents found out and they yanked me out of it because I was just a fucking kid.

About two years later I started playing in a Scottish bagpipe band. And that was a very different style of drumming. Scottish snare drumming is very jazzy in a way and it's got a real swing to it. From there I started doing cover bands, and all through school I was a total band fag (laughs). I was in all the bands... I was in the jazz band, I was in the symphonic band, I was in the orchestra, the concert band all that sort of shit. By the time I was... well I wasn't driving yet so I must of been fifteen when I met Darin [Dazzling Killmen]. I was playing in a community college jazz band at the time and he had just enrolled to go to school there. We played a few weeks together there in the jazz band and then during one of the rehearsals - during one of the breaks he and I just started jamming together on the stage and we started doing our own stuff. It was pretty instantaneous the way it happened.

Our intuitiveness was very symbiotic so we were like, 'whoa we gotta keep doing this'. So we played pretty much every weekend after that. He had keys to one of the music buildings and we would just go there and jam all night. Literally we would have these six hour improv sessions and we would just zone out. At the time, he was going to have a baby and he had quit drugs and alcohol and I hadn't even gotten involved in that stuff so it was kind of perfect we just played music together and we did that for months and months and months. It correlated with him teaching Nick (Sakes) how to play the guitar. Nick came to the college one night and they showed me one or two of the songs they'd been working on and it was just one of those classic moments from the very first note it was like, 'Holy Fuck!' you know what I mean... like, 'this is fucking great'.

I was still 15 or maybe I was 16 and they were showing me this music that I had never heard of. I had grown up with the Ramones. That was my first intro into the punk scene... and the Clash and the Jam, because I had an older brother. who was into all of of that stuff. But I had not gotten into the early 80's stuff yet... Black Flag and the Minute Men and Misfits and all of these sort of bands. They turned me onto a whole new world and we just started playing together. That's how Dazzling Killmen came together. We made a single in the summer of '89 or '90. Started doing shows on the weekend. We got the money for our first record from a small label, now defunct, called Intellectual Convulsion. I think they put out the first Eye Hate God records. It started going from there.

noreasterzine.com: I've read that the Dazzling Killmen break-up ended badly. Did it end on a sour note?

Blake: Well, I guess most bands don't end on a good note, but there was... We started to have our fare share of inter-fucking-personal turmoil. At one point Darin and I got into a fist fight on stage during a sound check. And we still had at least another two weeks of the tour to go, but it actually ended up being Nick who quit the band and it was a shame because it was like two weeks before we were scheduled to go to Japan to tour with Zeni Geva. We had our tickets, we had the tour, it was actually going to be a money making tour and things just got so bad. Nick just said, 'I can't. stand it, I can't stand it anymore.' And I think a lot of it at the time started to be between he and Darin. They were the oldest guys. Nick was 10 years older than I was and Darin was 6 or 7 years older than I was, so I was the kid in a lot of ways.

I got my fair share of shit just for being a kid but I took it because I knew I was young. But I knew that as far as when we were on stage or when we were on records I was pulling %100 just like those guys. I think the fact that those guys were closer in age the friction just became a lot greater after awhile and the whole thing just exploded. Nick called and left a message on Darin's answering machine of all things, Darin called me and said that's it. That started a two year period where I didn't play with anyone I just practiced.

noreasterzine.com: Now did you end up doing that tour with Zeni Geva?

Blake: Not then, I was in Zeni Geva for a time. It was around '96 whenever they did the Freedom Bondage album. Their drummer Aito had quit and they already knew me. We [Dazzling Killmen] had toured together in the past and they were huge fans of Dazzling Killmen. I guess they knew right away that I would be able to fill in the spot, so they called me and asked if I would fill in for a two month tour with them. I said of course and it was perfect because at the time I was getting ready to move to New York. So it gave me the extra amount of cash that I needed to get there.

noreasterzine.com: Is this what brought you to new York, or was it something else?

Blake: Basically, it's sort of weird, when I was young knowing that I was always going to be a musician and a drummer, I always knew I was going to live here. It's always been a dream or a vision of mine since probably 11 or 12 years old. I had it in my head too, especially, from the Ramones. They really blew me away and I knew they were from New York. I just had this whole... I just knew I had to be in New York because I knew that this was where there was so much great music coming from. So just before the Zeni Geva tour I was getting ready to move, and at the time I was making my living from music, I was giving drum lessons. So it was great, I had no real ties to anything. I could go on tour, they paid me pretty well, I got a nice trip around the US and we had a fucking blast. We made a few recordings at some radio stations and it was cool because at this, time Zeni Geva became the hardcore band that they always wanted to be because I didn't have such a metal tinge to my style. I never played double bass drum. The interpretation that I had of the songs was a bit different than the previous drummer and they were really really happy with it because they always wanted to get away from that sort of metal sound. But I guess they couldn't find the right combination.

noreasterzine.com: They needed to get rid of that double bass kick?

Blake: Yeah [laughs], totally. They wanted me to move to Tokyo after that and be in the band full time, but I was moving to New York and I really didn't think I wanted to move to there. I would love to visit and tour but New York is crowded enough and Tokyo is even more ridiculous. You know, I'm from Illinois and I got to have a little space. So that's how that ended but it was great while it lasted and we all had a really great time. The shows were well attended. It was a cool period of my life.

noreasterzine.com: How did that lead into Laddio Bolocko... or how did Laddio Bolocko get started?

Blake: Actually Laddio Bolocko had already started. We were a three piece with Ben and Drew, but we had only played one show in St. Louis before the Zeni Geva tour. We had just started getting our sound together based on what we had been listening to and of course at that time Dazzling Killmen was still a big influence because Ben and Drew were really into that band and it was a band that I was in. So it played a big role in the beginning, but after we moved to New York, somehow, we really came upon our own sound. This was right before the whole big Kraut Rock explosion, we had gotten a hold of that stuff just before the trend really hit. We were really influenced by Can and Faust. Can for their repetitive locomotive rhythms. That was something we really took into Laddio Bolocko because we realized how far ahead of its time that it was. When drum&bass and techno was just starting to get bigger, we heard it being done electronically, there was no rock... or there was no real sex in that anymore, it had started to become very sterile and very clinical and we thought there were aspects to that music that we liked. We never listened to it a lot, but we knew about it because it was all around us.

We thought if we could take influences from that but add the fucking rock back into it, then we might have something. Also, we ended up making it a little more violent. On the albums it's hard to tell because the environment is a slightly more controlled version of what we did, but live it was more of a... some sort of... paganistic festival or ritual.

noreasterzine.com: When I saw you guys it was very impressive.

Blake: Thank you... I'm very proud of that band. It's weird to this day I still get quite a few e-mails from people. This guy out in Seattle is looking to reissue the entire Laddio Bolocko catalog right now. And he knows that we're defunct. But I still get e-mails from people all over the world seeing if I have any CD's for sale or if there is anyway that they can get the stuff. Yeah... It's a really great feeling actually.

noreasterzine.com: The sound of Laddio Bolocko was really unique. You touched on the influences, but did you have a specific approach to writing or was it more intuitive?

Blake: It was very intuitive. A lot of it came just out of jamming. Purely improvised jamming. We were starting to realize, listening back to the improvisations, that they were a lot more fun and a lot more interesting to listen to when we found an idea, hung onto it and played it out. There's all kinds of schools of improvisation of course but when you are doing it in a rock oriented way, if your just leaping around from motif to motif it becomes pretty boring pretty quickly. Especially in the rhythm section, we were a very rhythmically oriented band, we found that once we got onto something we should stick to it and after awhile you had the original motif in your head so there was always room to play over it -- to play outside of it but always being able to come back to it. We composed our songs -- 'a' section/'b' section -- and so forth, but how we got to a and b and c was always different. What made it cohesive was we always knew where we were going. Everybody had the freedom to get there in their own way. But the main thing was that we got out on that limb together and we always landed together. In the most ideal situations of course, things didn't always happen that way.

But towards the end of the band, within the last year, we were very much under control of what we were doing. We had developed our own compositional/improvisational language together. I think that was one of the real special things about the band, it came from very organic origins because it was really just spawned from playing... from listening to each other and having that intuitiveness.

noreasterzine.com: Did you feel that it translated to the recorded environment?

Blake: Um... That's the biggest shame. The last record that we started making was going to be the one where we really focused on translating our sound to the album, because we always looked at the studio and the live setting as two very different things. We wanted to blow people away at our shows, and we wanted them to expect that on the CD. But when they went home and put it on, we would give them something completely different and hopefully that would blow them away even more, and they wouldn't even believe that it was the same band. There both equally great but they're both completely different worlds, but it's the same group. A lot of people want their live show to be a version of the CD. We didn't even play a lot of the stuff on the records live. We would play different aspects of some of the songs, or different interpretations. It was intended to confuse people in the best kind of way.

noreasterzine.com: When you recorded Strange Warmings was that in Brooklyn? B: Yeah. L: So, you were living and recording in the same space?

Blake: Exactly, that's when the band really got under way. We had just gotten a practice space down in Dumbo. This really great basement space, actually. We had a sink and a toilet in the room which was quite luxurious for us at the time. We all just moved in. It was $450 a month for the whole space, divided by four people. We were like, 'Kick Ass! We can come to New York City and we don't even have to work hard. We can play music all the time.' And that's what we did. That whole summer of '97 I believe it was. We just played everyday hours and hours a day and we made the Strange Warmings record.

We got our hands on a small amount of pretty crude recording equipment and did our best. Part of the reason that record is so blown and distorted is because that was the only way that we could get our shit to sound good [ laughs ]. We just said, 'fuck it let's just blow it all' because when we tried to make a normal sounding recording it just came out limp, because we didn't have enough money to get good enough mic's to really catch the true air of the room. So we shoved everything and put it to the red, and I'm glad we did. It was intentional in the end but it came about by necessity. I think it was a pretty awesome characteristic of that record. All of our records we recorded ourselves. I mean we monitored through a fucking home stereo. We mixed on stereo speakers. The most expensive mic we had was a $100 Shure Condenser mic. We were just learning about the recording process then.

noreasterzine.com: You got some good results.

Blake: That was the beauty of having the equipment there. We could spend the hours to tweak it, tweak it, and tweak it until we got the results that we wanted. And that was the first time I was ever able to do that. With Dazzling Killmen, we did all of our stuff with Steve Albini and some of the stuff he did I liked and some of the stuff I didn't like. We figured we could drop a few thousand dollars on a studio or whatever, or we could spend the same amount or less and just continue to record records, and put that money toward equipment instead of studio time.

noreasterzine.com: In a very Can-esque way.

Blake: Exactly, Exactly.

noreasterzine.com: Did you play in New York a lot when you lived there?

Blake: No not really. That was one of the down falls. Right up until the end we were virtually unknown in our home town. It wasn't until about the last six or eight months of the band that we really started to play quite a bit [in NYC] and draw good crowds.

noreasterzine.com: I lived down there in '98-'99 and I never saw you guys.

Blake: During that period -- in the fall of '97 -- we moved up to the Catskill Mountains, just to get out of the city. We found this old Ski Lodge -- literally it was a fucking mansion -- for $200 more than we were paying in the city. It had a gigantic ball room attached to it with hardwood floors, a gigantic stone fireplace, these crazy wagon-wheel chandeliers. We had six bedrooms on the second floor, and two gigantic living rooms and a huge kitchen; two decks. I mean it was monstrous and we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was completely beautiful and serene and that was where we recorded the second album As In Real Time. That album really reflected our move because you really hear the change in our mood and the ambience of the record.

Strange Warmings sounds like what we were experiencing. Dealing with rats and mice, and the noise of the city and the garbage dumb right across the street. That was Dumbo. And then all of a sudden we were out in the land of Van Gogh and it was completely different. All these colors, in the middle of nowhere and more space than we ever had. Bigger than anything we ever envisioned, and it was just ours. It really changed the direction of our music. It was very powerful. It was a very mystical area, really enchanting.

noreasterzine.com: What was the name of the town?

Blake: It's called Elka Park. It's primarily made up of two religious communes/ cults. There were about 200 residents and about 150 of them belonged to these groups. It's really tucked away up in the mountains and there's a few scattered houses. Our closest neighbor was a football field away through some woods. We had crazy pagan rituals out there, running around our yard at night starting fires naked, beating on drums. Literally just 'cause we could. It definently had elements of Lord of the Flies or The Shining. There were the beautiful aspects and the sort of darker aspects.

noreasterzine.com: How did you survive financially?

Blake: Oh yeah, we got fucked man. That's one of the things that killed that band too, was that sometimes we definitely had a lack of foresight. We were just so involved in the moment that it was just like, 'fuck this man... we fucking hate New York. Let's go.' And literally two weeks later we had found that house and we were gone. We did it that quickly, it was that extreme. We were at a time too where we all weren't really tied to anything. We were experimenting in a lot of different ways. Musically, personally, and just with our lifestyle. We just knew that it would be a trip to go to such an extreme: from living in a one room basement in Dumbo to a dilapidated ski lodge in the Northern Catskills.

noreasterzine.com: How much touring did you do in the US?

Blake: We did one full tour of the US that I booked and that was a two month tour. That was the first thing that we did.

noreasterzine.com: How did that go?

Blake: It went really well actually. We actually made money, which was Un-Be-Leiv-Able. It was basically booked on the fact that I had been in Dazzling Killmen and Zeni Geva and we used that to get the shows. And then once people had seen the band we were definently invited back to most places. We were still scrambling for places to play, still eating like fucking Papa John's Pizza, and shit. There were quite a few nights that we slept in the van.

noreasterzine.com: Laddio Bolocko did a lot of touring in Europe. What was the reason for that? Was there a reason that you chose to focus your efforts abroad?

Blake: Well, we got a call while we were on our first American tour, from our booking agent in Europe. We had sent him a CD and he really liked it. He called to originally have us play at a festival in France but the festival fell through so he decided to book a tour for us. So that really changed all of our lives in a lot of ways. We went to Europe for two months and the first tour we went to thirteen countries. We made money, a lot of people came to the shows, and we got fed really well. We had places to stay and there was always an abundance of good food, wine, and hash or whatever we wanted. They were so much more fucking humane than in the US. People really had respect for you, you weren't just another dude in a band. You weren't just some fucking leper. It also really helped that we were from New York. Because still... in Europe there is still something about that New York mystique that was definently in our favor. All of a sudden we were being treated like rock stars and we thought, 'wow we can do this now. maybe we can actually start to make a living doing this.'

After that we started focusing more and more on playing in Europe. In Europe you don't deal with the shit that you do in the US, it's so much more organized. A lot of the clubs over there already had lodging taken care of. Many of the places have kitchens in them. So a lot of meals were really good homemade meals; roasted chicken, mashed potatoes. Of course there was always a great selection of breads and cheese. It was a lot more civil. It really felt like the people over there listened to what we did. Our music translated on a deeper level than it did in the US. We had good shows in the US but it was always more about, 'Alright, Alright, Alright.' and the fucking lights come on and it's, 'Everybody out! Get the Fuck out!' And after your done playing and you hear, 'Alright People Get the Fuck Out!' You haven't even had a drink of beer, you can't even converse with someone who saw your show. It wasn't like that at all in Europe. We went for another tour, and we went for two months on that one. It was incredible. That's my favorite place to play. All over Europe.

noreasterzine.com: I don't know why but for some reason your music seems to me to have an un-American feel.

Blake: Yeah, I don't know why that is, but the first tour we did a lot of people didn't know we were an American band and assumed that we were definently NOT an American Band. I still don't really understand why that is. Maybe because it wasn't traditional Rock and Roll.

noreasterzine.com: It felt Eastern European to me, almost Transylvanian.

Blake: Well, we went as far east as Zagreb, Croatia. And we played in Slovenia and those were two of our most favorite places to play when we went to Europe; always. The people there were amazing. The people there were so appreciative of the band, and we always appreciated them.

noreasterzine.com: How did the Trans Am tour come about and how did it go?

Blake: Originally we had hooked up with them because they heard one of our CD's in a club they were playing. They really liked it, they asked who it was, and we had our phone number on the back of the CD. This was when we were living on the mountain and they called us and said they had heard our CD. They really liked it and wanted to know, vaguely, if we would be interested in touring with them in the future. We said, 'yes, of course.' We had heard of them so we knew that they were in a band that would have a decent draw but none of us were listening to them, we didn't really know much about the band. We figured they seemed pretty cool, and we thought that they would definently draw more people than we do in the US. So we thought, 'yeah let's do it,' and we were really excited. But it didn't happen until about a year later. We did a short one week tour though with them and Pan Sonic and that went well and was a lot of fun. We liked the guys a lot so we went on the Fall of 2000 tour.

noreasterzine.com: I'm really at a loss why you didn't have label support, did you not want that?

Blake: Hmm... [long pause] We were pretty bad at that. We were pretty bad socially and we were pretty bad business men. We weren't good schmoozers in any sort of way. That was one of our downfalls. We were really not that organized when it came to maintaining the business aspects of our band. I don't know if we ever sent stuff out to labels. I don't think we ever did, that I recall. We were naive in some ways and it became more and more difficult for us to concentrate on the music and try to figure out how we would pay for the next event or whatever.

noreasterzine.com: Did this cause the break up? Did the tour with Trans Am have anything to do with it?

Blake: The tour definently did not. Things had already started to fall apart before that. Shit had been building up for about a year. We just started becoming more and more dysfunctional... [long silence] Finally... I couldn't take it anymore. I called everybody up the day after this rehearsal. We had gotten together, we working on the recordings for what was going to be our new record. I told each person in the band... I quit. I told them why, and I told them what I thought of them and what I thought of the situation. I was very honest and very direct. I said, 'I just can't do it anymore.' It had ceased to be fun, and it had ceased to be productive. It was like pulling teeth even to get everyone together for rehearsal. It was ridiculous. And I was really getting sick over it... I mean physically and mentally. I was getting really sick. It had been my life for so long and I had put so much into it - we all had. But it was just totally dying. And it was a shame. Because I knew... I mean in my heart - I believed in it. I knew it was what I really wanted to be doing, but it got so bad. The dysfunctional aspects out weighed the magic of the music and that's when it's time to go. That happened in January of last year.

noreasterzine.com: So what happened after the break up?

Blake: During the Trans Am tour we had done two shows in Los Angeles. We met these two guys. They were in a band called At The Drive In. They got really big about a year or two ago and had a record out on Grand Royal. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Omar and Cedric the lead guitarist and singer of the band, saw Laddio Bolocko both nights and they put us up in this house. We sort of hit it off with them and we thought they were really cool guys. We had never heard them at the time, but we were blown away by all the stories they told us. We came home to New York after that tour and then we started seeing them everywhere. We were like, 'whoa we just met these guys.' In march I got a call from Omar and he said that he and Cedric were quitting At the Drive In, and they wanted to start a new band with me and asked if I would be into it. I said, 'Of course, what the fuck. You guys sold a million records. Of course I'll give it a shot.' They had an integrity that I looked up to even though they were in this whole major label world. I thought that we would get along really well musically. So last year for five months I was living in Los Angeles. I'd started this brand new band with those guys. We got it off the ground, recorded a single, it was going to be on the Grand Royal imprint with Virgin putting it out. I thought, 'Wow! my dreams have come true. All of a sudden I don't have to work anymore. I can make money playing drums. I got cymbals coming to me. They want to make a drum set for me. ' And it all fell apart five or six and half months later.

noreasterzine.com: How did that fall apart, personality conflicts?

Blake: Yeah, well, we were all living together also, whenever I was out there. It was your sort of typical thing that happens whenever you move in with people. At first your like, 'these people are great,' but then you start to learn more things about them that you kinda wish you didn't know because it ruins the initial good picture that you had of them. We just ran into roommate syndrome where we just got on each others nerves... in a nutshell. So I couldn't take it anymore and I walked away from it. And that was a big thing because that was the first time that I had ever really made a solid living just from playing the drums. I mean, it is a big dream for a lot of musicians. And it just wasn't happening for me after awhile, because all of that did not matter... because I wasn't happy out there. I came back to New York and in the mean time I had been doing a lot of engineering and recording. I had worked at a recording studio before I went out there so when I came back I started doing that again. Now I have my new band which I'm devoted to full time of course and on the down time of that, I record, engineer and produce for other people. I'm starting to earn more of my money doing that. All that started back in Laddio Bolocko, but it's translating what we did engineering on a home stereo to a real studio with two inch tape and all that.

noreasterzine.com: Now you and Marcus DeGrazia [sax player, soundscapes for Laddio Bolocko] have begun anew?

Blake: Exactly.

noreasterzine.com: Do you have a name?

Blake: Yeah, we're called the Rock Gate Estate. Actually my wife and I started writing music together. Just because we spend so much time together we started writing together. It just came about naturally. We started really getting into the stuff we were writing, and we had a couple of solid ideas. At the same time, Marcus and I were smoothing things over after everything that had happened with Laddio Bolocko. We were hanging out with Marcus one night and we showed him what we were doing and he was really into it. It just started out that way. Silke and I had pretty solid concepts of what we wanted to do and the kind of music we wanted to make. The sort of visual aspects we wanted with our band. It's just the three of us right now and eventually we want to add two more people to fill out the band. But right now we don't need that because we can do the recordings ourselves. All the basic instrumentation we need we have in-house right now. And Marcus lives right above us in our apartment building. Our studio is in the basement. We have this whole sort of headquarters now and it is really convenient. There's vocals in this music which is something I hadn't done for a really long time. It's got more poppy elements than anything I have done before.

I started to realize, 'why is it that I just want to sit around and listen to T-Rex all day' but I never make music that I really enjoy listening to. I just wanted to start doing music that I would want to listen to a lot. I'm very proud of what I've done in the past, but it's not the kind of music that I listen to and it makes me feel that kind of way... that kind of sun shining in your face feel good sort of way. And I decided that I wanted to make music like that. There will always be darker aspects to it, because that's just part of what i really do - the music that I create. So I am writing everything with Marcus and Silke and I'm playing bass. I will play drums in the band, but for the sake of writing the melodic and harmonic ideas I am playing the bass. Which is really great because I always wanted to put my style of drumming on to a bass, so on record I can be my own rhythm section. I was actually downstairs recording the drums for the first song for our record when you called.

noreasterzine.com: So you plan on doing your own record? Are you going to release it and tour?

Blake: Basically, we are going to record this record, find another guitar player to do more lead stuff and find a bass player eventually. We are going to put this out ourselves but we are definently going to shop it around. We have a lot more business sense going into this. I mean, because, right now I bar tend a couple nights a week at the Lotus Club to supplement recording and playing. It's not bad but I don't want to be a bartender. The place is great though, because it's a haven for musicians and artists of all sorts. It's a great place to meet people. I've worked for those guys off and on since I've been in New York. They've always let me come and go. I was gone for a year to the Catskills and when I came back they gave me my old job. They've become friends of mine over time. Everyone who works there is involved in some sort of creative discipline. So people come and go a whole lot and those are the kind of people the owners want there. They are very understanding of unusual schedules.

noreasterzine.com: It's hard to find that.

Blake: And that's why I stuck with it. I hate looking for a job.

noreasterzine.com: Yeah I'm looking for one right now.

Blake: Oh, no! [laughs] Man it stinks. Especially in this City because when I first moved here I thought I was going to have a heart attack looking for a job 'cause money was going out the window. So once I found good people, I really hung on to them. It's been really good and I feel fortunate about my situation in the city. Finally, after years of living in fucked up situations, in one room with just electricity and rats, I'm above ground and pretty stabilized. I've got a bathtub and shit. I can eat decently. It's luxurious.

** editor's note: Both Laddio Bollocko albums, plus some previously unreleased recordings were reissued by
No Quater Records this fall. Blake Fleming is currently in a new band called ELECTRIC TURN TO ME.

disc 1

disc 2

God Is An Astronaut – All Is Violent, All Is Bright (Revive Records, 2005)

2011-11-03T02:13:00.000-07:00

As promised and as a follow up to the article God is an Astronaut - Suicide by star, here is an interview with one of the members of the band, Niels Kinsella.

Speculum: Seven years and four albums later, what has changed in the band, in the meantime?
Neils Kinsella: To be honest, it has been eight years playing together, but each of us has been playing for a long time. Torsten and I since 1994. In 2002 when we released The end of the beginning we thought that would be our final bow in the music world, our farewell. We just wanted to end with a release we were proud of, with no other expectations. But it worked... Today, the band remais the same and the priority is still to release music we love. The only thing that has changed is that we've become wiser with a few circles in the music world.

S: Do you have a masterpiece, from your point of view?
NK: To be fair, we don't have a favorite record, we like them all. Something in the process of making music changed with All is violent, all is bright, when we introduced a live component, that wasn't there for our first album. It was also the first time we worked with full live performances and not only loops, something that set the tone for our following recordings, a hybrid between electronics and live instrumentation.

S: I read an interview in which you said the GIAA's biggest influence is heavy metal, bands like Metallica. How does this kind of influence interfere with the band's music, which is very different from this type of music?
NK: We grew up listening to a lot of heavy metal/heavy rock and still listen to it a lot. I think it's because we never really tried to emulate the music we like and listen to. In the late 90s we made a lot of music. GIAA's style has more to do with the music we've played in our former bands, which ranges from jazz to rock, to electronic music.

S: In another interview, you stated that the movie Nightbreed is a reference to the band's name. In a way, has the movie's atmosphere, its story, seeped into the band's music? The oppressive, melancholic mood is undeniably present in GIAA's music...
NK: We just liked the name, it suited the apocalyptic and melancholic sound we had and the visual concepts we had in mind, that's all.

S: Something that intrigued me was the fact that GIAA's sound is different from anything I had ever heard from Ireland.
NK: Here in Ireland there are a few instrumental bands, but I think we are the first band to have some success outside of the country. But to be honest, even today I think we are ignored by Ireland's music scene. A lot of good music is made here, but most of the music the media showcases is worthless rubbish, that a lot of people outside won't swallow.

S: What about the writing process? Someone gets an idea and the boat sails from there?
NK: No, most of the time the ideas start from a melody in the guitar or the piano and we work on the full sound in the studio. We never write music through jamming, as other bands do. Because of our dance/ electronic background, we're a studio project, actually. We take a sound engineer on tour with us and reinterpret the songs, so they fit a live environment.

S: Rock's history is full of stories of bands with siblings who spend most of the time fighting. Does that also happen with GIAA?
NK: Now everything's perfect, but when we were younger things could get ugly. But now we're happy with the music we're making and, on the whole, we have a good vision of how things should sound.

S: GIAA is still little known in Brazil. How would you describe the band to those who aren't familiar with your music?
NK: Ambient, electronic and rock, with emotional melodies.

S: A lot of people say that lyrics, in rock music are quite helpful. You add a "yeah" here and there and everybody sings along. Since you don't use lyrics, what devices do you use to reel the audience in during live shows?
NK: Our music won't please everybody. The average music fan won't like what we do. We will have nothing to do with "yeahs" during a show, that's for idiots. Live, we have a visual show, and our main goal is to engage the audience emotionally, spiritually and visually. Our live shows are not programmed like the ones from most bands with of our style. Our show tends to please fans that aren't into post-rock.

S: I watched a few GIAA videos on the Internet and realized that you use them to illustrate your songs during live performances. How does that work? What's the connection you create?
NK: The goal of the visual components is to increase the emotion and structure of our live songs. Although the songs don't need a visual aid, I feel that in a live environment, some highlights are lost when compared to our recordings, for instance. The visual adds an extra layer and gives, in a simple way, a sense of entertainment to the performance.

S: GIAA is an independent band, with a loyal following. In this digital age, how have downloads affected you? Can you live off the band?
NK: We're an Internet band, because most of our fans discovered us through the Internet. We don't get a lot of attention from the traditional media; it is all based on word-of-mouth and piracy. We do this because we love it and you can make a little bit of cash out of it, but it's impossible to live off it. But we're optimistic about it and things are improving from one year to another. At live shows we sell a lot of material. In order to survive, you have to think outside the box and sell not only CDs or MP3s, but also shirts, vinyl records, buttons, etc.

S: If you were to recommend me an Irish band, which would it be?
NK: Butterfly Explosion! Torsten is producing their debut album, which should be coming out soon.

S: And what have you been listening to?
NK: DJ Shadow, Fear Factory, Nicker Hill Orchestra, Parhelia, Leech (from Switzerland) and Metallica, as usual.

S: What are your plans? New album, tour?
NK: Next September (2009) we are going to tour Europe and we're going to Finland in November. If everything goes well, we'll stretch it to Russia as well. In February 2010 we should release new songs, but I'm not sure it will be a full album, yet. (on Obvious)

god is an astronaut

Bark Psychosis - Hex (Circa circa, 1994)

2011-10-26T01:13:00.000-07:00

When you started in 1989, to place the music in the time period, I can’t think of any contemporaries. What were some of the sounds that inspired you?
G: Me and John had been doing it a couple of years before then started in 1987. When I was 14,1 was into Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black and those hardcore bands. Swans. ..It kind of has quite an impression on you when you're at that age. When we stated it was just a complete sheet of noise. We were like a hardcore band more than anything else. In 1994, right now, I feel like we're a hardcore band, but hardcore it terms of attitude. 1989 was a hard time. I was turned onto all these great bands. This really loud guitar stuff. But for some reason I just flipped one day and I realized silence could have a much greater impact than loud noise. I've been into dub stuff for fucking ages. Space and silence are the most important tools you can use in music. I just got really obsessed with that. Sonic Youth I was always realty, really into. Mostly their early stuff. I think they lost it after EVOL The more sort of textural stuff. I was always really into classical stuff.
It's funny that you mention the classical stuff, because the very first review that was published about (the band) in an old fanzine I did (Brassneck, 1990), the guy I did the mag with wrote "Classical music for the noise generation."
G: That's pretty cool.
The only contemporaries I can think of from 1989 were AR Kane and Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. 1989 was the year of noise.
G: For me 1988 was. 1989 was the year of silence. It's weird being bracketed into a sort of indie market. I don't listen to indie music. I don't like it and I never have, apart from a few bands. I have always been into more jazz and classical stuff. It's weird that you mention AR Kane and Talk Talk because I'm really into them...I've been into Talk Talk since I was 14 years old...
Since they were a New Wave band.
G: Yeah! When you're 12 years old you don't think about it. You just think it's a good tune. It's a weird thing about AR Kane as well. One of the weird things about being in this band is who approaches you or the people we meet. I've known Rudy from AR Kane for quite a few years and I'm going to be working with him shortly. I've also been working with Lee Harris from Talk Talk over the last year on a side project called Shwaa. They just turned into great friends.
What's the side-project?
G: Shwaa. It has Lee Harris from Talk Talk which is like bass and drums, then a bunch of different people like me, Matt Johnson from The The... It's loads and loads of different people and it's a really interesting project.
When will that come out?
G: They're in the process of signing a deal. They've being doing it for the last year and a half. They've finished one album and almost completed the second. They want to have two albums under their belt before they come out and play live. So they really swan and play live and put out the second one at the optimum time or whatever.
What is up with Talk Talk? Do they wait until Mark gets his stuff together and then they record an album and disband again?
G: It's more when Mark feels like doing something. Last time I saw him it was just before Christmas (1993) and I know he's written a bunch of stuff. But he's not actually in a position where he needs to do a bunch of stuff. He's financially very well off and all the rest of it. It could come down to when the time seems absolutely right. Even if that means every three or four years. At the moment he's looking around for a producer and stuff. He's looking for different people to work with.
How did the relationship with Cheree start and then we'll talk about how it ended.
G: I must have been 15 then and I bumped into Nick at an underground station, close to where I lived. I was getting on the train with some drums. And he was playing in this band called The Judas and Daisy Chain, which was just playing Jesus and Mary-Chain covers. I was chatting away with him and he knew I was fucking around with tapes, making weird sounds and stuff and he said would you like to make a record. I was 15 or 16 then and I was like "Fucking brilliant." Initially we did this flexi with the Fury Things and Spacemen 3.
I've seen that but they charge a/of for it.
G: It's crap. It's not worth the fucking bit of plastic it's printed on. It's complete Bollocks. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. We literally recorded it in 5 minutes.
What year was that?
G:1988.
What happened after that?
G: We put out one single with him, All Different Things. After they got some good response from the flexi they said, OK let's go in and do a 12". At this stage we were so naive we didn't know how things worked, how the whole music business worked. We did two nights of working, from 12 to 8 and gave it to them. They put it out, got a good response, played a few gigs and did Nothings Feels after that.
Was All Different Things difficult to record with all the dynamic shins? When I've tried to tape it for friends, I can't do it.
G: That's the first time we went in the studio properly, really. Basically, I had my hands on the faders and when it kicked in, I just fucking went to the faders, I didn't know anything about rt then. When we we're mixing "By Blow" we ended up distorting the DAT and we didn't even fucking notice because it was just monitoring so loud in the control room. It's nice, naive and all the rest of it but it's pretty crap at the same time.
Did you engineer and produce it yourself?
G: Apart from the album and the single Scum, which we engineered ourselves, everything up until then involved using a recording engineer, but he's just there to tell him what to do sort of thing. Use what mics, what EQ settings and all the rest of it.
"All Different Things" and "By Blow" seem to have bridged the gap between your noise phase and your quiet phase. With "I Know" and "Nothing Feels" (the second 12") being the first complete step to what you're doing now. Though, "All Different Things" & "By Blow" seem even more extreme than the songs you're doing now, with the extra bud and son dynamics, I was wondering if "I Know" was a complete reaction to the first single?
G: It's never been as contrived as that, it's always been where I am heading. You don't know where you're heading and you're just sort of there and you've done it. That's the most exciting thing I find about making music. You wonder what you'll be taken in by next, whatever drives you to make music. The 2nd single was what two tracks we had knocking around at the time. At the same time, live wise at this stage, it was completely different. It was very, very loud and extreme both ways. Aner the second single, that was the last we heard from you for a long time.
What happened between that and Manman?
G: It's a really complicated trail of events but basically after the second single at this point, Cheree was going through some changes. They had gotten a couple of backers in, business men. Up until this point, the group didn't know what the record business was all about. It is a business, entirely.
You were 18 when Nothing Feels came out, right?
G: Yeah, I guess so. I just didn't know how things worked. I didn't know how press officers worked, I thought if you got a review of a gig, I thought it was just that someone had stumbled along and had seen it and liked it. But, yeah, these backers came in and they gave us an album contract which we signed without any legal advice or anything. Because we trusted Nick (at Cheree) this guy I had known for a few years. He started off doing fanzines and all the rest of it. So we signed up and then this really weird chain of events that would take hours...I'd need to talk to you face to face over a few beers about it. Basically, we found out these backers were just a couple of cons, really that had screwed so many people, and one of them was involved in pornography and you know all the rest of it. This happened like two or three days after we signed this album contract with them. We just turned around and said "No, fuck you, we're not going to do anything with you. We're just gonna walk" So then it took a year to extricate ourselves from this contract.
What did Nick go through at the time, because I know Cheree has folded but he has reformed as Che. What was his position this whole time regarding Bark Psychosis or were his hands tied?
G: He was basically with them. It was a real us against them situation at the time. I see Nick every now and again and I get on with him. It's alright cause they're gone. He was just sort of taken in by the whole fucking shit and the business scum. I was completely new about how things worked. I've never been to see a fucking lawyer before. I had to go get lawyers and seek legal aid and that's when Rudy from AR Kane came onto the scene and was looking after us for a while and managing us and trying to help us legally and all this stuff.
After you were finally able to get yourself out of that contract then, why did you choose 3rd Stone instead of AR Kane's label HIARK?
G: Right, well for a while there we were supposed to be signing with Rudy's label but at the end of the day we couldn't do demos with them or we couldn't record anything for them because he was worried about getting sued by Cheree. That's what these business men types were like. Then this guy Gerald, A Guy Called Gerald, right (laughter), said I want to meet with you, I want to work with you. He didn't know anything about the Cheree situation. He had been trying to contact us for ages. I explained our situation and he bought us out of the contract. He had been managing Spacemen 3...
And Spiritualized...
G: Yeah and a few other people. So he (Gerald) seemed to have his shit together which, Nick, God Bless him, he hasn't got a business head. So he got us out of our contracts and he got us into the studio as soon as possible and we did Manman.
Well then, wasn't Manman recorded almost 2 years after you recorded Nothing Feels ?
G: I'm not quite sure really.
It seemed as, just because of the time period between recordings, there was no continuity between the second and third singles? Manman seems like a very odd release. I remember only one ot the three songs ("Blood Rush") really sounding "Bark Psychosis-like".
G: Sure.
In fact, the two faster dub songs, well the only thing that reminds me of them now is the b-side to Street Scene. "Reserve Shot Gunman." Those three really stand out from everything else you've done. Could you talk about the recording of Manman and the idea behind those songs?
G: The whole thing about being in this band is never repeating yourself. I've always tried to surprise myself and other people as well, fucking around with people's preconceptions about what you're about and stuff. I really get a real huge fucking kick about giving people the wrong impression. Or twisting things around. Like, it might sound initially sweet, but it ain't. Or vice versa.
Well you explained it in a way a bit earlier by saying you had been into dub music for a long time. Now that dub is a buzzword, I think when Manman came out, dub still wasn't widely accepted.
G: Right, which is weird since it's been around since God knows when.
There wasnt the music paper validation of it which a lot of people wait for.
G: I don't read the music press at all.
I'm talking more about people who were into the first couple Bark Psychosis records, and then heard Manman and then were surprised by it.
G: I don't want to shy away from wherever my, whatever goes. If that means going up a blind alley and I do something and I turn around a year down the line I think "Oh that was a waste of time" or whatever, I still want to pursue things. We've got another EP or Mini-LP to do starting the 13th of March and I know it's going to> be completely different to the album. Sonically, it's gonna sound a lot more electronic and a lot more dubby. I'm fascinated that the goal posts shift around so much.

What about "Reserve Shot Gunman", when was that recorded?
G: That was recorded at the same time as the album. It's weird, that track took the longest to do over the last year. That track really did take a whole year to do. It was really bizarre, it went through a lot of different changes and things.
It seems like it was inspired by techno music. Is that the case at all?
G: Kinda, yeah. I do like a lot of techno stuff. I really dig computer music, generally and I know this next thing is going to involve a lot more sampling. Although the album doesn't sound like it, a good 50% of it was just running from computer.
The album?
G: Yeah.
You're kidding?
G: No not at all!
What was controlled thought the computer?
G: A lot of things. Guitar things. Moving things around, you know cutting things out, then moving them around. Bits of vocal moved around.
More of the editing in a way.
G: Kind of, yeah. There's also a lot of samples of instruments involved. But we do it in a way that is idiosyncratic to us. Most people, to get a big reverb sound, will record something and then run it through a reverb unit. But we've taken the trouble to record in a church. We did Scum there. We were fucking around for a month. We set a PA up in there and puts sounds out through that. Part of the PA is set up at one end of the church and we set a bunch of mics up at the other end of the church and captured that. When you set up mics, you capture more than just what is being recorded. You capture an ambience or a feeling as well. It's all about creating something unique and of the moment rather than just another bland factory preset.
I wanted to ask you about some of the effects used on Hex. They sound more like they were run though a digital effects machine as opposed to the earlier songs, (which sounded more like analog delay) but one of the things I thought that was great is that it sounded natural. When I hear Slowdive, I know they're using the rack systems.
G: Yeah, all that heavy processing.
But "Hex" has much more controlled sounds than the earlier records but they didn't sound processed. What kind of effects did you use?
G: Very, very little. Very little indeed. In fact, all we used was a plate echo, which is a 1960s thing. Its brass plates suspended on springs. It's how they had echo on old Motown songs and that sort of stuff. Not because, we're retro chic, we just liked the sound of it. There's very, very little digital effects going on. But this next thing might be processed to fuck as a reaction to being so austere with digital effects with the album. It's like when you do special effects for a film, you're not supposed to notice that it's not a real coach going off a cliff. All the keyboard sounds for the album, they were just played through a PA in the church and when it came to mixing we just put the two faders up, stereo left and stereo right, that's it.
I mean more, what you had your guitar plugged into, not how you mixed the record.
G: Oh right. I had a tremolo pedal, a chorus pedal, a delay pedal. That's it. But I really haven't played much guitar in the last year. I've been mostly fucking around with samplers. I'm more interested in pure sound, than just a guitar or whatever.
Still, the album, while mixed with a computer, was played by humans, using analog equipment and then assembled in the computer. I think the more successful techno tracks still bring a human edge to the music.
G: Yeah, that's right. I like a lot of techno, that's the stuff I feel most excited about at the moment. Although the music is supposed to be really futuristic, it's actually quite retro. It's like the equipment they use, it's turning into the guitars for like anorak stamp collectors, trying to find this particular vintage synth.
The more successful techno groups have taken the analog sounds, which were trying to be so futuristic at the time and the fact that analog doesn't have any built in parameters, it's still subject to some randomness. I think people who are really talented can get a similar effect on digital, but I think most people will go for the easy route and it sounds extremely sterile.
G: You are so right, You are so right (well thank you). Have you ever heard the band Insides at all?
Yes. I don't really like them.. I find them too sterile.
G: I've known them for 3 years now and we liked them as Earwig (previous name) but yeah, you have to use technology carefully. I'm into doing something much more subversive, where there is a seamless blend between the computer and the acoustic instruments.
Yeah, my dream and ideals are to combine the sounds of the Human League with the songs of Nick Drake. Pretty folk songs with fucked up sounds.
G: I fucking love Nick Drake.
Yeah, I love beautiful, melodic songs with crazy sounds and that's why I really got into Bark Psychosis in the beginning because you are still really song oriented. Then when it became more drifty it was not showey, it still involved the listener, not like King Crimson, where you're supposed to sit there and say "Wow, listen to that technique."
G: Oh yeah like, "Wow look at that guy, he can really fucking play." I hate all that. Sometimes people compare us to Pink Floyd and they are just a muso thing. I'm more interested in feeling really.
Let me back up here and go back to Scum. It really sounds like a blueprint for what "Hex" became. You turned on the tape recorders and all play off each other around a motif, like a jazz band, and the lyrics sounded as if they had become equally improvised. Sometimes the lyrics almost sound conversational now, and to me that seemed to have started with Scum.
G: Right. We had a single to do but we didn't have any tracks that were suitable for a single. We wanted to do something completely new and put ourselves under a certain amount of risk. So basically we hired a load of gear and set up sort of a make shift string and sticky tape kind of studio under the church where we rehearsed for ages and in the church as well. We had the gear for ten days. We didn't have a track when we started, so we just set ourselves 10 days to do a 12" and that's what came out.
How did you get to record in the church?
G: Basically when we hooked up with Mark, when we left school, he had been working underneath the church for awhile in the crypt doing community schemes and all the rest of it. Those are finished now, but he still has access to the rooms, so we set up under the church. We did that for awhile. Then the vicars changed while we were still underneath there and this new vicar didn't want to fuck us off at all. It's cool, this new vicar is into the Grateful Dead. We had rehearsed in the church itself every now and then and we had really just gotten off on the vibe from it. I'm not religious, although I have been when I was really small, it still has an impact. It's a working church, it's not an abandoned church. So we said "Can we record some stuff in there" and they said "Yeah, fine" amazingly enough and that went really well.
Did the vicar see the cover to Scum or hear the final copy?
G: Mark may have played it for him. I really don't know. We were in and out there for 10 days for Scum, then we were in there for a month doing Hex. We couldn't have put him off too much anyway.
So Scum was pretty much all improvisational then?
G: Yeah, very much so. It's probably the most spontaneous record we've put out. There was no part except for a few rough galactic ideas. That's how we'd written the past few years, just jamming as a band underneath the church. 99.999% of it you wouldn't use any of it but the vibe was really good at the time so we decided why not just record a jam sort of thing. That's the thing, we tend to try and make life very difficult for ourselves for some reason. I'm not sure why.
Were there any over dubs on Scum or was it all live?
G: 90% of it was recorded live and then there was a few things. Vocals, some piano, some ambient guitar, a few different samples & stuff. The first 3 112 minutes of it was actually just the ambient mics left up. We had recorded a few different takes of things and those distance mics were just left up from a previous jam.
About 8 or 9 minutes into Scum you can hear someone say "Shhhh'and then there's all those crowd voices later on... Are those samples
G: Oh right, the gospel singers. That was just a found thing at the church. On one of the nights we were recording there was a Pentecostal meeting going on in the back room so we sort of sneaked up to their door and just tape recorded them because it sounded so brilliant..
So now it's just you and Mark (the drummer) what happened to John (the bassist)?
G: Last year was quite an intense year. The most intense fucking year of my life. The longest I had been in a studio was 10 days for Scum, but this was like a year of my life (for "Hex"). It was quite hairy at some points. He felt he just needed to get some distance from it once we'd finished it. I think he's moved to Holland now to do Spiral Tribe or squat over there or something. Daniel has gone too, who plays keyboards. He's gone to Israel for a bit. He's going to come back though and I still want to work with him. I'm not sure about John at the moment. It's just been a fucking intense year, though it might not sound like it on the record. It's been a real head fuck.
Yeah, you're lyrics don't seem mellow, they are really tense. At times you sound like a misanthrope and other times sad... Obviously, it has been 4 years since Nothing Feels came out and a lot has changed for you since then, but that track almost seems happy or escapist. And on Hex the only song that really echoes some of those sentiments is "Big Shot". Where it seems like an escape song, about just getting in the car and driving away. But the other songs seem so tense, like "Scum" for ex-ample. Is that about a particular person, or your legal troubles or is it about a general feeling.
G: "Scum" came about as a general disaffection with general sentiments from records that were being shoved down my throat. Crap house tracks. I just remember this one track had this chorus like "Everybody's free" and it made me want to fucking puke. I just wanted something completely the opposite of that and turn that sentiment around.
The music papers always just hinted at the legal problems you were having so...
G: That year was murder. When we were trying to get away from Cheree it was fucking hell. I had a lot of problems after that year. I was squatting and stuff and did a lot of things I shouldn't have done. It's caused a lot of problems. The legal problems were long behind us though when we made Scum. But there were a couple of other things going down when we were making the album.
Lyrically, "Hex" just has this certain amount of desperation and "Get out my face type of thing"
G: Right, right, right. I think that's a pretty fair comment! I think you've hit the nail on the head really.
The lyrics seem blunt and conversational rather than overly poetic. You just say, "Yes get out of my face" instead of hiding it. I was wondering how you go about writing them.
G: Lyrics come from pages and pages of stuff whittled down over...It's about the barest minimum all the time. I'm really into cut-ups as well. You mean cut-ups in the way that the surrealists and dadaist artists did cut-ups?
G: Yeah definitely. Just how words relate to each other. I'm quite an analytical person generally. I'm just interested in introducing that random element to things. Just writing something, then cutting it up and throwing it up into the air and reassembling it and seeing what happens.
I remember on the song "The Loom" the lyrics seemed almost like an afterthought. It seemed like you recorded the music then tried to fit it the words.
G: You mean it didn't gel sort of thing.
No, by inferring that they don't gel it would mean they don't work and that's not the case. It seemed like you were trying to fit square pieces into round holes. I thought it was an interesting experiment in a way.
G: Originally there were a lot more words going on in that track, I just whittled things away. If being more effective not singing anything, I'd much rather do that. I'm very minimalist. I consider myself to be a hard taskmaster and very difficult about things. I’ve just been getting more and more into words and how you can fuck around with language. I'm sure that will be more and more evident over the next couple of years.
I think it's interesting that Bark Psychosis have always had borderline instrumental songs, but you've never come out with an outright instrumental until "Reserve Shot Gunman" and "Pendulum Man"....
G: There were vocals on that for awhile "Pendulum Man"). Then I decided to scrap them.
The title of the song seems like it was named after the opening which sounds like a pendulum swinging...
G: Well Pendulum Man was just my nickname over the last year. I was mood swinging around like fuck going from one extreme to another.
One of the things that I think happens is that people tend to forget about your words, because the music is so unique and involving and the vocals are pretty quiet they miss the entire experience and extremes the music and lyrics represent with each other.
G: One of the things for this album that I hadn't done before was I wanted the lyrics printed on the sleeve so it's sort of there in black and white. I've spent a year whittling away and adding things and I want it to be there so people can work from that. Sometimes, musically, it is better for the voice to be down low in the mix or high up, at the same time I still want the words to be there. I'm really happy we did that.
What are your practices like?
G: We haven't actually done that for quite awhile now. For the last 5 or 6 months we just write stuff on the computer and take it from there really. This next EP is going to sound even more computery, because that's what I'm happy with at the moment. It's more like constructing a blueprint. You don't actually leave it on computer, you're just constructing parts and chords changes or whatever then you take it away and introduce the random human element and you're capturing the performance and the feel. I find the computer a fucking brilliant thing.
I think it's great that you are mixing jazz, with the stereotypically sterile element of as computer and you are coming out with as music that is completely flowing. I think it's much more about your talent and not so much about technology.
G: I'm very much into using technology in ways it hasn't been used before. Flow is such an important thing. The last year, so much time has been spent working on feels of things, like rhythm and things, trying to make it all loose yet tight as possible. Trying to get that balance. We wanted to write and record a whole album rather than a collection of tracks. I wanted it to be a complete flowing work, from beginning to end.
Is that why 'Reserve Shot Gunman' ended up as a B-side because it was so different?
G: That's exactly why. It just didn't fit. There's another track that is like the most extreme thing we've recorded noise wise, but it's not going to be released at all. It's just a live track we used to do, recorded the same time as Hex and was going to be on Hex but we dropped it at the last minute and recorded another track to replace it.
What's it like to play live?
G: We’ve had all sorts of different reactions. The worst time was when we played indie fucking discos, when the DJs stop and we come on it's like party fucking poopers. We've even had stage divers, which was very, very bizarre, indeed. The whole gig thing is part of the indie ethic which I don't get on with at all. I don't feel part of that thing at all. I really hate going to gigs, I find it a waste of time so we are trying to do something really, really different which comes from going to raves and all night events and stuff like this. So in January we went out with a feature film as a support with the band. It was this surrealist animated thing called The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb". I'm much more interested in recording. Maybe because I'm a control freak, because you can capture something with a certain atmosphere and you’ve got it, even if it takes a week to do it to capture that 30 seconds, but trying to recreate that night after night you just can't do it and it's quite frustrating.
Hex sounds like you took a lot of time to arrange it. Like "Big Shot", doesn't that have a vibraphone in it?
G: Yeah, that was just my friend's dad. This really, really old guy who used to play in a lot of old war time swing bands for kids going out for a dance in London. He hadn't taken his vibes out of his front room for fucking years, he just plays for his own pleasure, as a hobby. So we got him to come down and it was fucking brilliant, and I want to work with him again.
One of the great things about the vibes on "Big Shot" is that I think you found the acoustic instrument to your guitar sound. They are so complimentary.
G: Yeah, definitely.
Also the piano.
G: It's just that physical thing. Things can get very sterile if you just use samples all the time and it's that physical, random, chaotic thing. But I'm also very into digital technology and how you can manipulate sound with that. The vibes track on "Big Shot" was a whole mixture of 5 or 6 different takes and we sort of just chopped it up and reversed bits and pieces and mixed it all back together again. So we mixed technology with that chaotic human element of a person playing.
Did you just learn how to use samplers and the computer?
G: We've had samplers to some degree on everything, from All Different Things onward. I used to work with a sound engineer in a dance studio in the center of town here. It was just a matter of getting the money to buy the equipment. When you get the technology, the sky's the limit.
Is Bark Psychosis your only form of income or do you also work?
G: No, I'm signed on. Officially I'm unemployed. I'm no better off signing to Virgin than I was a year and a
half ago. I'm on the fucking breadline mate, just doing it for the love of it.
So when's the next EP or Mini-LP coming out?
G: April 20th or so over here. That's one thing, I'm into working reasonably quick at
the moment. (It's an EP called Blue and its out now).

(On post-rock)

bark psychosis - hex

Mark Eitzel - 60 wall silver lining (Virgin, 1996)

2011-10-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

60 Watt Silver Lining is the second solo album by American Music Club singer/songwriter Mark Eitzel. A compilation of many songs he had written over his career, it is considered jazzier than most of his American Music Club efforts.

60 watt silver...

Tom Waits - Bad as me (ANTI-, 2011)

2011-10-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Bad As Me is Tom Waits’ first studio album of all new music in seven years. This pivotal work refines the music that has come before and signals a new direction. Waits, in possibly the finest voice of his career, worked with a veteran team of gifted musicians and longtime co-writer/producer Kathleen Brennan. From the opening horn-fueled chug of “Chicago,” to the closing barroom chorale of “New Year’s Eve,” Bad As Me displays the full career range of Waits’ songwriting, from beautiful ballads like “Last Leaf,” to the avant cinematic soundscape of “Hell Broke Luce,” a battlefront dispatch. On tracks like “Talking at the Same Time,” Waits shows off a supple falsetto, while on blues burners like “Raised Right Men” and the gospel tinged “Satisfied” he spits, stutters and howls. Like a good boxer, these songs are lean and mean, with strong hooks and tight running times. A pervasive sense of players delighting in each other’s musical company brings a feeling of loose joy even to the album’s saddest songs.

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Caethua - The summer is over before it's begun (Turned word, 2011) \\ The Long Afternoon Of Earth (Preservation, 2009) \\

2011-10-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

Caethua is the project of Maine residents Clare Hubbard, now collaborating with Andy Neubauer. As Caethua walks deeper and deeper into the fogged up landscape, they bring with them a Walter Carlos take on baroque tinged psyche folk, and post industrial tinted lenses for which to look through. With a handful of releases under her belt on a variety of labels, The Summer Is Over is one of Hubbard's most realized works. Eight sonically perfect songs filled with heart-melting vocal melodies, and dream provoking lyrics. Tastefully accompanied by her piano, guitar, saxaphone and well placed soundscapes. She is joined on this record by the multi-instrumentalism of Andy Neubauer (Village of Spaces) who compliments this masterpiece with bass clarinet and cello.

Caethua is the recording project for songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Clare Adrienne Cameron Hubbard, from the US Midwest. Hubbard has been prolific over several years with a wide range of releases spanning folk, experimental, ambient and hip hop.The Long Afternoon of Earth is made up of two short sets of songs, both different in style but connected by themes – family, place, escape and remembrance. The first set, No Man’s Land, is acoustic-based, with songs haunting in their hypnotic way, finding common ground between the rustic and spectral in the spell they cast. Hubbard’s surroundings play deeply within the realm of her thoughts, with lyrics both unvarnished and emotionally shading in the way they portray experience both real and imagined.

The second set, Into The Dog-Dayed Night is also stark, but yet another spin on Hubbard’s otherworldly songs. Piano, guitar, raw beats and almost industrial-type textures alchemically fuse for an altogether different mood – more theatrical, lamenting and spooked. Both sets come together here in the kind of purity and fortitude that underline Caethua’s true artistry. The Long Afternoon of Earth is as enigmatic and heartfelt a statement you’re likely to hear.

the summer...

the long afternoon...

Steeleye Span – Ten Man Mop Or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (Pegasus, 1971)

2011-09-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again is the third album by Steeleye Span, recorded in 1971. Of all their albums, it is the most acoustic and it also has considerable Irish influence, second only to Horkstow Grange. Tracks like "Four Nights Drunk", "Marrowbones", and "Wee Weaver" are essentially pure folk. It was the last album to feature founding member Ashley Hutchings, who left the band in part because he felt that the album had moved too far toward Irish music and away from English music. The band was also considering touring America, and Hutchings was reluctant to make the trip.
The album begins with an adaptation of the Christmas carol "Gower Wassail". "When I was on Horseback" is one of the few folk songs to have an alternative existence as a blues song, sometimes known as "Six White Horses". It is also an Irish variant of a tune that inspired "Streets of Laredo" and "St James Infirmary". The last song, "Skewball" employs an effective counterpoint between a banjo and an electric guitar.
The album was notable for having a textured "gatefold" sleeve and inner pages on its original release. This was paid for by the band but cost more to print than the album generated in profits, meaning the band lost money on each album sold. None of the re-releases have included the original number of pages of liner notes.
The album's curious title and subtitle require some explanation. A 'mop' or 'mop-fair' is a late medieval term for a job fair, where labourers come looking for work. (The song "Copshawholme Fair", from the band's first album, is about such a fair.) The conceit was that the band was out of work and job-hunting. A 'ten man mop' would be a very poor show, since there would be few potential employees to choose from. The even more curious subtitle is a reference to Reservoir Butler, who had originally performed one of the songs covered on the album. The band was so struck by his unusual name that they decided it needed to be saved from obscurity.[citation needed]
The photograph on the sleeve was taken c. 1900 by John Benjamin Stone. Entitled "Sippers" and "Topers", it is of two villagers at the Bidford Mop, an annual fair held at Michaelmas in the village of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. The village has a centuries-old reputation for heavy drinking.

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Wilfried - Songs For Mum & Dad (Prohibited records, 2002)

2011-09-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

Wilfried* has been writing and recording songs since 1990 and has first been known through 45's and compilations. He has kept himself out of the spotlight so far, it was in order to prepare secretly many albums. It is not by total random then to hear that his first tapes and records were sold in a very tiny net of fans at shows, in the early 90's featuring on the same tapes than Katerine, Dominque A, Anne Laplantine and many others.
We could compare his work to a young Serge Gainsbourg or Philippe Katerine under the influence of LOFI American maestro Daniel Johnston. And finally in 2002 Wilfried* completed his beautiful first colored album.

He writes fluent English and French lyrics and the Japanese and English audience felt in love with his frenchy accent. His 45's "Central Park" (on his own label Chlorophylle 1998) and "La perspective…" (Ubik 1999) got a real success and were rapidly sold out. He seems to make part of an imaginary community of singers, somewhere between Anne Laplantine, Smog, Vincent Gallo.

As Label mate Nicolas Laureau explains : "We discovered Wilfried in 1994, and always had the wish to release some of his albums. Now, we work together, we know each other very well and have a good exchange on the artistic point of view. It is now exciting to release this first real album, that reveals the great talent and diversity of one of the most atypical French singer.Ó For "Songs for mum & dad", Wilfried* made the choice of working home, in the most absolute intimacy facing his computer and instruments. He was helped by producer F.lor (mixing, recording). He also invited many musicians : Anne Laplantine, O.lamm, Gel:, David Ivar Herman Dune, André Herman Dune, Flop, F.lor… The voice of Wilfried* recalls the sweetness of Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and floats on canvass of sparkling music, sometimes shifting from really 80's arrangements to woody pop songs. This is Wilfried*, always evoluating, always surprising, always moving.

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Jim O'Rourke - Old news # 5 (Editions Mego, 2011)

2011-09-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Introducing a nearly regular series of vinyl albums documenting analog synth and tape works (both studio and live) from the depths of Jim O'Rourke's archive, spanning a near quarter century of active duty in the field. OLD NEWS # 5 kicks off with Pedal and Pedal, a refined beauty of a live set at Tokyo's Super Deluxe, to only be followed by a massive blast from the past in the shape of the monsterous Detain The Man To Whom, recorded in 1992. Record two delivers the genuine weirdness of studio session Its Not His Room Anymore, backed with the ripping Mother and Who, which is an alternative version of what would become O'Rourkes live set at the 2003 All Tomorrows Parties Festival in UK. 1 Recorded live at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, 2010 2 Recorded at Steamroom, Chicago, 1992 3 Recorded at Steamroom, Tokyo, 2010 4 Recorded at Steamroom Mobile, London, 2003 [anost]

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The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? (A records, 2010)

2011-09-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

It’s 11. 30pm and the Brian Jonestown Massacre are backstage at the Leeds Cockpit in Northern England.

Its dingy walls host sunken couches supporting smoke-drenched, drunken characters, hangers-on, Swedish musicians, the entire cast of a British soap opera – Emmerdale Farm and of course, the band.

I am introduced to Anton Newcombe, the famously temperamental bandleader and front man of the Brian Jonestown Massacre (note: must be pronounced in full, Jomestown, not Jones town, as Anton sharply points out). With an inebriated glaze he shakes my hand, ‘hello, I’m Anton Newcombe and you’re?‘ It is an hour before we finally start the interview and already Anton is fucked out of his mind.

RC: Did you have a good night?

AN: Yes.

RC: Why are you called the Brian Jonestown Massacre?

AN: Do you mean the Brian Jonestown Massacre? Get your facts straight.

Emphasis is obviously very important when pronouncing the name of this band.

RC: Yes.

AN: Because Led Zeppelin was taken.

RC: What is it about Brian Jones though?

AN: You don’t like it?

RC: Yes, it has a tragic ring to it.

AN: What’s tragic about it?

RC: He died in a swimming pool and the name of your band is his town massacre.

AN: So what, there’s like a fucking thousand British soldiers died in Iraq, how tragic is that?

RC: I’m not denying the deaths in Iraq are a tragedy, but we’re talking about rock n roll.

AN: They [the soldiers] never got to pursue their lives, so let’s keep things in perspective right?

RC: The melody-laden, free-spirited psychedelic pop that came to be synonymous with both Brian Jones (the Rolling Stones) and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Is this pinnacle of popular music for you?

AN: I just like the way in the sixties they approached bringing ideas into the music.

RC: The Brian Jonestown Massacre seems to be entirely dictated by your ideas and your musical agenda, what ideas are currently circulating in your head right now? In what direction do you ant to take the band?

AN: Basically I just enjoy being creative. I just want to stay true to myself. I talk in sound. I can make some kind of heavy statement…

RC: Go on then, make a heavy statement…

AN: OK, I want to create an audio and visual environment that will bring them back to their genesis, the moment of conception.

RC: How will you go about that within your musical aesthetic?

AN: Well, I’m gong to hire Patsy Kensit. (Patsy Kensit was lurking around the dressing room just before this interview was conducted). I’ll use a kazoo too.

RC: I do a pretty good ‘Baker Street’ on kazoo.

AN: Do you like the way your lips tingle when you play it?

RC: It’s all right.

RC: Are you flattered that the entire cast of Emmerdale came to see you tonight?

AN: I am touched. Actually, I don’t like ITV that much at all.

RC: You don’t strike me as a TV person …

AN: I’m not. I like to cook for my friends; take walks with friends…enjoy sunsets. All my friends are girls and I really like them.

RC: Do you find it easy to be around women as opposed to men?

AN: I don’t hang around with any girls; I hang around with the girls I do because they are interesting people; they are all making films or are scientists. I have no problem with dating more than one person at a time.

Perhaps in his own mind statements such as these are perfectly connected their previous sentenence.

RC: After spending most of your young life in San Francisco you moved to Manhattan, how do you find it?

AN: I don’t like [Manhattan].

RC: Do you miss San Francisco?

AN: I do a little bit, yes.

RC: The band formed in Haight Ashbury, did the musical historical significance of Haight Ashbury have any influence on the music?

AN: They used to have a lot of acid – and I’m talking about in our time – in 1990.

RC: At that time the Seattle scene was taking off yet you didn’t opt for the grunge route, why?

AN: First of all, when I was growing up I didn’t listen to rock music. It’s fun when you go out and people are playing AC/DC and everyone’s dancing. It’s fun watching girls dancing away. Whatever, but I don’t like that kind of music. The same kind of patter tries to kick my fucking head in. I never even listened to Led Zeppelin. I always liked psychedelic music.

RC: What particular psychedelic music did you listen to?

AN: All kinds of stuff, let’s just assume that I know more bands than you do.

RC: What is your definition of psychedelic?

AN: My definition of psychedelic is ‘mind expanding’.

RC: Since the Brian Jonestown Massacre set up in the mid nineties your music seems to span the entire spectrum of pop music, there are moments like your music which reminded me of the Jesus and Mary Chain then other bits were much more sombre and Smiths-like. I wondered what exactly is feeding into your music…

AN: Well, I never actually set out to be like ‘we are the Smiths’. It’s amazing that all the time the NME spent slagging off the Smiths [that[ they later [hailed them].

RC: The NME can be incredibly fickle.

AN: The people that run that magazine are part of a firm that own a thousand other magazines. I don’t really talk to journalists.

RC: What exactly do you want journalists to do then? How do you want people to see you?

AN: I don’t give a damn. I just don’t care.

RC: How about band members at the moment? Are you happy with the band? Your track record suggests that you have gone through over sixty band members…

AN: That’s since 1990.

RC: I read an interview earlier which was conducted at the time when Dig was being filmed – in the interview you mentioned that you were particularly dissatisfied with the way in which you felt you were portrayed and that the film sensationalised one particular aspect of your character. What have you got to say about this?

AN: Did you see the movie?

RC: Some of it, yes.

AN: Then, why are we talking about it?

RC: I am interested in what particular part of your character you were unhappy in terms of its portrayal in the film.

AN: I know that people love talking about themselves but I’m not a movie. If you could think of something specific I would answer it.

RC: I am asking a specific question: what particular aspect of the way in which you were represented in DIG were you unhappy with?

Anton (rather aggressively) refused to answer the question.

At the same time the security staff at the Leeds Cockpit asked us all to leave in order for them to lock up the section of the building we were in.

End of interview.

Bomp Records have just re-issued the 7 albums that The Brian Jonestown Massacre released on the label plus Strung Out in Heaven on TVT Records. The label also releases records by The Stooges, Dead Boys, Soledad Brothers, The Warlocks The Black Keys are more..Get in there..

(Taken from Crossfire Magazine)

who killed sgt. Pepper

Silver Jews - Starlite walker (Drag city, 1994) // The natural bridge (Drag city, 1996) // American water (Drag city, 1998) // Bright flight (Drag city, 2001) // Tennessee EP (Drag city, 2001)

2011-09-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

Let’s say you’re a manic depressive or something and six months of the year you’re manic, and for six months of the year you’re depressed. Let’s say it’s split up in, like, one-month blocks - this is hypothetical - and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. You’ll see about two months of mania, a month of depression, three months of mania, blah, blah, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. But you’re writing songs all along. You set up a recording date for three months from now, and you have no idea when you go in whether you’ll be in this complete mania or this complete depression, this hypothetical person. Those are two different records. If there’s a parallel universe then, in one of them, he’s in a manic phase and interprets his song and then he goes into the other universe, plays in his depressive phase and he interprets his song. Two different records you know, but we can only live with the idea that there’s one. The one you have down, you know. And then, even after that, even after the record’s done, well, there are all the other sequences, you know? The idea for a minute, as a fan, that there could have been this other sequence that was better. It would seem like it was a failure or, like, it hadn’t reached its potential.

The same principle applies to the listener, too. The mental and physical environment when you first hear a record colours your future perception of it. There is a multitude of variables.
Which may affect whether you’ll ever hear it again. And the second time it could’ve been something that really, you know, changed you. If music can change somebody.

Obviously your lyrics are the primary focus of your records, but American Water’s instrumentation is much more of a factor than your previous material. Did you set out to prove you’re a musician as well as a poet?
Definitely, yeah. We even had an instrumental break. I didn’t know that was going to happen. So you didn’t go into the studio with a plan? No, it was only because the band was so good you know? And we practised a lot. We practised for eight straight days, three hours a day, and the songs … I was like, this isn’t going to be one of those records where the music is a pedestal for the singing. There’s other things in here and let’s let them happen. I’m happy with that.

Certainly with The Natural Bridge you were lumped in with many others among the alt.country genre that sprung up, or was invented. American Water is less easy to categorise. Was this a direct reaction to being pigeonholed or would this record have turned out the same regardless?
I don’t think we have to do that, especially because people don’t think of us that way in the States. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t react to a pigeonhole … I would, I’m not above that. But, in this case, it wasn’t that at all. If it sounds good it’s going to go in that direction. Before it all happens, there’s just the songs. Just put the people in the room and see what they do with them. I want them to write their own parts. I mean, I’ll guide them, like ‘I want you to play this piano like it’s your first day back after a 12 month term in Vietnam. And you’re broken and you’re shattered.’ That’s the only way I can talk, you know? There was a big screen TV in the studio, right where we were playing. I’d put on different things and pick a channel for the song that seemed like it was going to give it the proper…push.

Would your lyrics adapt in the studio, depending on musical mood shifts?
Yeah, you tinker when you’re in the studio. We were doing Send In The Clouds and there’s a line ‘Seventeen doctors couldn’t decide whether I should be allowed in the game’. We were doing a take and Steve [Malkmus] is trying to fuck with me and he kept singing ‘gime’ like in a Jagger way, or something. And these verses I want us to sing exactly together, [he’s] going to be a little lower in the mix, but I want us to be singing the same words at the same times, in total sequence. So we have to decide whether it’s going to be ‘game’ or ‘gime’. And we sat there for twenty minutes talking about it and then, finally, have us swayed into ‘gime’. Some days I wish I’d said ‘game’.

In the fickle world of music, do you expect a similar level of praise for American Water as you received for The Natural Bridge, which was very well received?
Not in the US.

It wasn’t? Sorry.
No, it’s a good question. I think more people could like this record, but the people who liked the last record really, really liked the record with intensity. You can get closer to that record than this one. This one is more distant, and this record has an awareness of an audience…an awareness of the imminence of the audience that the last record didn’t have. The last record was recorded under such stressful conditions and…so damaged that I couldn’t even get to a point where I imagined it would ever be heard, you know? I was just trying to get through the process. The trade-off is that there’s a carefreeness to the presentation on the new record. There’s less singular presence of a single person. This is obviously the work of a unit of people, a group of people. So there’s a watering down of a singularity of vision. It’s a rock record, and the last one wasn’t. And that’s the difference. In the sense that a record recorded in a lonely situation like the last one, where it was just me and God in a recording studio, probably found its best listeners in people who are listening to it alone. A record that’s recorded in a situation where everyone was having a good time would most likely be listened to in a room with maybe two or three people. [American Water is] really more the sound of a community.

You are quoted as saying “I’d like to write songs that are musically more complex and lyrically simpler.” Do you mean more complex in terms of time signature, or more layered?
Just more things going on, more things to listen to. I’m not interested in making the music avant-garde. I’m not at all. When you feel like you’re, technically, not a very good singer you must overcompensate for it with content. I think that’s why Bob Dylan or Lou Reed went towards the literary because they had to play their angle.

When you sang “All my favourite singers couldn’t sing” on We Are Real were you referring to them?
It’s a reference to that. Also it’s a statement and a plea. A plea for people to understand that in the past and in the future it will always be so. That the confines and the perimeters and the definitions of what singing is, what painting is, whatever, always change. And for a long time they’ve widened. What’s happened because of the widening is that people who would have been lost to us, like Willie Nelson for instance, haven’t been. But they could be. It’s a reminder to people. Let’s take the quotes off ‘singing’, that’s all.

On Blue Arrangements you sing “Sometimes I feel like I’m watching the world and the world is watching me back”. Assuming this is autobiographical, do you feel more like an observer than a participant?
That was something I actually considered revising. It was actually hard to write that and sing that because it seemed so self-pitying. I’m very down on self-pity. I had a tough time singing that but it was honest to the character of the song. Did you ever see that movie Breaking Away? Cycling movie? It was supposed to be like that, this poor kid sees this society girl…I would never say anything like that. I would think something like that but I would never say it out loud. But I’m a real social person and I would even go so far as to push myself on people. Like last night I was in a bar - a pub - and there were two girls sitting at a table. I’ll go up to any woman in the world and start talking to her. And I just sat down and said ‘Hi, I’m David’. That’s not the English way, but I’ll definitely intrude. There was a certain time in my life, probably a formative period, where I was only an observer. I was fifteen years old and then I was ready. But I think I was a late bloomer, always one of those people who watches, learns and then enters the game.

So, ‘why can’t monsters get along with other monsters’?
I think that’s about me and Steve being…for each other probably the only person in their life who is aware of…we both admit to each other our faults and flaws and the damage that we do to other people in situations. And, in a way, it’s a bond between us and, in another way, it causes friction too. We fight and he won’t be my employee and I won’t be his.

After The Natural Bridge, is it fair to assume that Silver Jews is no longer seen as a Pavement side-project?
Yeah, it’s not an issue for me anymore, and it’s really funny. It used to bug me. I think I’m really cognisant of the fact, I think a lot of people are too. I’m not the only one that thought about it. It seems pretty clear to me that Silver Jews will still be around when Pavement has self-destructed. [Silver Jews] is so low key and it asks so little of people and it doesn’t demand attention and it doesn’t insist on being bought and it doesn’t get in people’s faces. Only to ensure its survival, you know. It’s very camouflaged. In that way it’s protected.

You don’t play live. Have you ever thought of interspersing a music set with poetry readings? Or you could be your own support act.
I feel like there has to be new ways of presenting music live. I was talking with my friend Will the other night about turning it into a lecture. Like, you’d play a couple of songs and then talk about writing it. Bring something new to the song besides the fact that, okay, I’m going to play a different solo or I’m going to sing different words in the second verse. What you bring new to the song is information. You could even have some kind of transparency [projection] or graph things on a chalkboard or something like that.

You’ve somewhat bizarrely suggested an interest in working with, at different times, Dave Matthews and Extreme Noise Terror. Assuming this isn’t a way of amusing yourself during interviews, who’s next on your wish list?
[long pause] I would love to record with Siouxsie Sioux. I don’t even like her singing or anything that much, but I find her a fascinating icon or something. I had a dream about her. I got here yesterday and immediately took a nap. I fell asleep and in the dream Laurence [of Domino] put me in a room with a microphone and her. There were just like these two drums - that was all that was in there and he wanted us to record. He locked us in there and … she was, like, bending over … she looked really sexy and really good - I don’t find her sexy or attractive in real life, but in the dream she was really, really hot. She’s bending over to get a drum, and I come over and put my hand on her ass and, like, she got really upset. She was like ‘We’ve got work to do. This isn’t what this is about, we’ve gotta record.’ And so we recorded these tracks and she took the record home and listened to it and within the work she could feel that there was a sexual energy. And she comes back and she’s, like, ‘I’m taking you to my estate!’ And Laurence is, like, ‘No! He has work to do, we have things we have to do here. You can’t take him away.’ And she’s, like, ‘Bug off! This is more important than any work, this is going to be a great romance.’ And the next thing I know, I woke up. And, in my sleep, I had punched the wall as hard as I could and my hand was sore and there’s a dent in the wall. I don’t know why, I wasn’t angry in the dream or anything. It was some release or something. So, Siouxsie Sioux, yes.

Any new stories about Jackson [David’s dog]?
Yes, I have one … well, I broke up with my girlfriend of many years and we agreed that she should have custody. So, I haven’t seen the little fella in three months. But I am going to see him at Christmas. He’s doing well, you know. I call him once or twice a week, and my girlfriend - or ex-girlfriend - puts him on the phone and I talk to him for a little bit. Apparently he spends several hours a day staring out the window, waiting for me to come home.

That’s nice.
Yeah. It’s nice to be loved.

(on Comes with a Smile)

Dirty Three - Ocean Songs (Touch & Go, 1998) // She has no strings Apollo (Bella Union, 2003) // Horse stories (Touch & Go, 1996) // Whatever you love, you are (Bella Union, 2000)

2011-09-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dirty Three is a trio from Melbourne ( Warren Ellis on the violin, Mick Turner guitar and Jim White drums ) who perform lengthy instrumental jam sessions along with a seductive mix of folk, blues, jazz and psychedelic rock, echoing the more daring performances of Curved Air and Flock. The main idea is Albert Ayler’s free-jazz , but the presence of violin itself ( and occasionally the harmonica as well ) leans towards the “jazzgrass” style of David Grisman ( or of his main disciple, Darol Anger ) and the rhythms usually very relaxed reveal an affinity with the blues ( the violinist plays in Nick Cave’s band ). Dirty Three ( Torn & Frayed, 1994 ) ( Touch & Go, 1995 ) ( Big Cat, 1995 ) is the manifesto of this jazzpunk style. The prevailing instrument is Ellis’violin, played in the same way as John Cale played the viola in the Velvet Underground ( and sometimes just how Jimi Hendrix played the guitar ). Indian Love Song takes a few minutes to get going then it opens up with the hypnotic pace of the Raga and becomes a neurotic duo of violin and accordion with the feverish polirhythms of White. Dirty Equation brings to mind the last of the hippy jam sessions, like It’s A Beautiful Day and others, reinforced with the force and excellence of the Mahavishnu Orchestra . To finish off the accordion enhances the sentimental confessions of Odd Couple, and the harmonica takes the lead in The Last Night’s depression. Sad and Dangerous ( Poon Village, 1995 ) ( Shock, 1995 ) introduces the group in experimental jazz rather than instrumental rock. On one hand the violin takes up the melancholy folk of Killykundane, You Were a Bum and Warren’s Waltz, on the other the rhythmic part highlights the jazzy pieces ( Devil in the Hole, Jim’s Dog, Turks ) and brings up in Short Break a temporary noise climax. Horse Stories ( Touch & Go, 1996 - Anchor & hope, 1996 - Big Cat, 1996 ) begins in the style of Irish Folk music played in a sleepy mood ( 1000 Miles ) and rounds up in a ravaged and martial theme with a slight gipsy touch ( Warren’s Lament ) . The record’s true essence lies in the free structure with its dreamlike and trascendent style from the other tracks , all dominated by Ellis’ violin. Sue’s Last Ride brings in the “la” : the violin takes up the melody and draws the dance into ever more incandescent whirls, more Oriental than American. In Hope the instrument tunes exhaustedly, quietly, almost wailing, the melodic theme before relaxing joyfully in a kind of minimalist adagio in the style of Michael Nyman. In Horse it obstinately repeats its mantra set against the sound background of the great prairie, overturning the role of the “fiddle” in cowboy music. The violin which blathers on senselessly in At the Bar or which peevishly mutters in I knew It Would Come To This is the chief character. Ellis has invented a remarkably expressive language , worthy of a human voice. The consuming and depressed performance of the instrument covers all strains of moods, but excels especially in imitating the melancholy conditions of the soul. Its dialectics brings to mind the raga’s tuning up : beginning with a chaotic improvisation, where the instrument seems to be searching for the right tuning, then a gradual and inarrestable build up towards an ever more intense and hypnotic background. The other instruments seem to disappear. Dirty Three, Horse Stories and Sad and Dangerous have acclaimed this Australian combo as one of the most sophisticated instrumental group of the Nineties. Mick Turner’s guitar counterpoints in almost a dissonant way the pining melodies of Warren Ellis’violin. Jim White fills in the spaces with an accurate covering of open rhythms. The result is warm and gentle, the exact opposite of what is to be expected from such an abstract and intellectual program of strictly instrumental music. Their fourth LP , Ocean Songs ( Touch & Go, 1998 ) ( Anchor & hope, 1998 ) ( Bella Union, 1998 ), is in fact a notion dedicated to the sea. All the tracks have sea-related images, both in their title and atmosphere. This LP is suitable for all those poets who love sitting on the beach contemplating rainbows, sky and sea-gulls. What really draw the public to this album are the melancholic and soporific themes, all jazzed up of Sirena and Backwards Voyager, somewhere halfway between Cowboy Junkies and Palace Brothers, but without the words. This work however overflows also with delicate artistic moments, with the violin miming the waves in Restless Waves and nostalgic themes lacerating the languishing melodies of Distant Shore and Ends of The Earth (on the piano). Music sometimes of still silences , like in Last Horse on the Sand ; which practically glides over the minimalist breaks, but always in their own way, with all three instruments miming something, like in Black Tide : the drums being the surf , the violin the wind, the guitar gargling. The best of their subtle artistry is to be had in long philosophical wanderings like Authentic Celestial Music ( nine minutes ) enveloped in a martial beat and left to die off in tenuous tinkling chords. The violin is definitely a voice (humble and defeated ) of the existential anguish of our time. The sixteen minutes of delirium in Deep Waters, plumbing the deepest recesses of the human mind, at the same time give free rein to solemn prayers from those dephts of loneliness. For a few seconds a viola accompanies the violin and once again strikes up a minimalist dance and takes it along into a final burst of what is almost raga. The means, if not the performance, bring to mind John Fahey’s trascendent period. In the meantime Mick Turner has recorded a solo LP, Tren Phantasma ( Drag City, 1997 ), and a duet with Jim in LP format, the Tren Brothers. (from Piero Scaruffi Website)

ocean songs

she has no strings apollo

horse stories

whatever you love you are

Aaron Dilloway - Lip Syncing to Verme (Hunderbiss Records, 2011)

2011-09-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

As a slow motion Stan Brakhage on K, this latest and definitive new album from Aaron Dilloway is fluid and cinematic.After the monumental Chain Shot Lp and a furious live activity, the Mid West's mad tape-scientist is back to take your hands and dive you in a buzzy ocean of muddy water loops. Welcome to this creepy journey to the south of heaven, here you can just crawl like a worm.

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Laughing owls - Bad knees (Killer unicorns arts & crafts, 2007)

2011-09-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

Lo-fi attitude, just one shot, if I say right. Particular, then nothing, no other works. In my memory, these rare songs attended me in delicious, softy and sweet dreams. To recover it.

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Fabio Orsi, Gianluca Becuzzi, (etre) - So far (Porter Records, 2010)

2011-09-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

Fellow Italian sound artist Salvatore Borreli (a.k.a. ETRE) joins frequent collaborators Fabio Orsi and Gianluca Becuzzi on this exquisite electro-acoustic composition that is divided into three Acts. Although each Act clocks-in at precisely sixteen minutes and sixteen seconds, this trio manage to weave together a vast array of sounds, with no less than six distinct passages, within each of these Acts. Ambient tones give way to eerie repeating piano or acoustic guitar lines; ocean-side field recordings segue to fly-on-the-wall conversational din; high frequency fizzle leads to wind-swept sonics; muffled clanks of glasses set to distant sounds of trains.

Borreli’s liner notes provide some important context clues as to the general state of flux that “So Far” is in. He writes:

    Every recording says to us what we were in another history of our
    existence. Every recording in this work is a persistent plug of my presence inside living; I don’t remember everything but what is recorded has been recorded in my heart before. Music reopens those closed spaces, bringing me down.

    I remember: Centre of Athens, Some lovers, Different roads, Many flames, 100 or 200 trains, My childhood, The sun before the black, “Infinite Jest” and some letters, Doors closed behind of me and sometimes in front of me, Nights and their nicotine addiction, 100.0000 thoughts,

In less capable hands, a conceptual framework such as this could lead to a jumbled mess of fragmentary sounds. But there is a fluidity to which these sounds unfold, with recurring and subtly altered field recordings, found sounds, and instrumental motifs establishing a sense of time, place, and a general storyline. These gentlemen clearly set out to create, and have achieved rather convincingly, a complex, yet altogether dream-like audio narrative. 8/10 -- David Perron / Foxy Digitalis

Tre movimenti di eguale durata (16 minuti e 16 secondi) per la trimurti sperimentale italiana, accasatasi per l’occasione presso un marchio di sicura affidabilità come la Porter.

So Far è un disco che trae il suo spunto creativo dalla concezione del field recording come persistente eco della memoria, o meglio come mezzo che riapra spazi chiusi della memoria. Every recording says to us what we were in another history, afferma Salvatore Borrelli aka (etre) nelle poetiche note contenute nel disco. E mai affermazione fu più vera visto che riecheggiano in questi tre lunghi movimenti – fatti di frattali sonori evocativi e ambient estatica, ricami elettroacustici e piccoli intarsi elettronici – voci, memorie, immagini, ricordi che si rincorrono e accavallano le une sulle altre come fermacarte sull’eterno.

È sempre un piacere avere a che fare con artisti di tale sensibilità, e se non ci si dilunga nelle descrizioni è soltanto per non rovinare la sorpresa a chi voglia cimentarsi con So Far. 7/10 Stefano Pifferi on SentireAscoltare

DOWNLOAD So far

Phosphorescent - To Willie (Dead Oceans, 2009) \\ Here's to taking it easy (Dead Oceans, 2010)

2011-08-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

In 2009, Phosphorescent released To Willie, an album dedicated to covering songs written or popularized by Willie Nelson. At the time it seemed like a stylistic sidetrack-- not only did Phosphorescent mastermind Matthew Houck dig more deeply into traditional country music than ever before, a few of his interpretations also evinced far more playfulness and fun than any of his original offerings. Surely, the next proper Phosphorescent effort would find Houck returning to the forlorn wilderness folk he'd howled out on his first three albums though, right?

Not so fast: To Willie turned out to be more harbinger than lark. Phosphorescent's latest record, Here's to Taking It Easy-- with a full recording band in tow-- is by far the most conventional music he's ever made. Luckily, Houck and his cohorts compensate for a dip in idiosyncrasy by inhabiting the tropes of beer-soaked, sun-baked country-rock with fullness, commitment, and chops, all while finding enough room for Phosphorescent's trademark ragged lonesomeness.

The opening "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)" announces its shit-kicking intentions with hot guitar licks and blaring horn charts; it may be the first Phosphorescent song more impressive for what the music's doing than for what Houck's singing or how he's singing it, but it ain't the last. "I Don't Care If There's Cursing" is lyrically monotonous but boasts a vibrant bassline and sterling pedal steel while "We'll Be Here Soon" expertly recreates the feel of a late-night Mexican cantina (proving Houck's internalized Nelson exceedingly well). Then there's the closing "Los Angeles", which offers up a faithful facsimile (maybe a little too faithful) of Neil Young's bruised guitar heroics.

Speaking of L.A., it plays a substantial role in the album's lyrics, which chiefly concern the strain placed on relationships by life on the road. Perhaps the touring-man blues of "Tell Me Baby (Have You Had Enough)" feel a bit shopworn, but Houck proves himself capable of redeeming the tropes with a line like, "I wish those nights of pleasure and days of pain weren't so tightly bound," (from "Heaven, Sittin' Down"). And that's nothing next to the staggering, heart-crushing "The Mermaid Parade", the record's runaway best song, which finds Houck's narrator wandering around Coney Island to shake his mind off of a broken marriage, finally sputtering out with gut-piercing specificty, "Goddamn it, Amanda, goddamn it all."

All that said, there's no need to fret that quavering nature boy Houck's been lost entirely beneath all the musical carousing and Angeleno smog, not when the album also contains the spectral, gospel-haunted "Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)" and the evanescent, elliptical "Hej, Me I'm Light". Here's to Taking It Easy is a great record, but I feel like Houck's best is still in him-- the one where the deep roots of tradition will finally be inextricably fused with his own weird, shambling soul.

— Joshua Love on Pitchfork

here's to taking it easy

to willie

(etre) - Inferno from my occult diary (Porter Records, 2011)

2011-08-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Italian composer Salvatore Borrelli is known under the moniker (etre) for a variety of performances, recordings and installations of sound art. For Inferno From My Occult Diary, the composer boldly makes his inspiration and context quite clear in his liner notes: The work is “dedicated to the universal movement of synapses…” (I quote only in part here) and to “the memory of all people whom haven’t voiced their life or used hands to write their existence.”

These ideas do seem to resonate within and around the sounds themselves. The five sections are built from dark drones, disembodied voices drawn from electronic media, indeterminate clicks and static, and processed acoustic guitar and Satie-ish piano melodies (played by the composer). All of this is placed with the utmost care from both a timbral and spatial viewpoint.

For all the layers going on here, Borrelli evinces a deft touch in the organization of his material. There are occasional distant echoes of Ussachevsky — albeit in ways much less linear or harmonic — in the way sounds are treated not only for texture, but also for the tension between association and mystery. (Indeed, it might well be that listeners will meet these sounds with their own very personal associations and apprehensions.)

The final section, “Consenguito Silenzio,” reveals all of this in remarkable ways. It morphs from drone-and-event into a sonic structure that is almost unbearably dense in timbre. Paradoxically, this might bring the listener to an extraordinary experience, as the small spaces between the sound-layers seem to open into deep abysses, the effect hitting like a spectral ton of bricks. By Kevin Macneil Brown on Dusted Magazine

Italian sound artist (etre) dedicates this work to “the universal movement of synapses,” as well as “the memory of all people whom haven’t voiced their life or used hands to write their existence.” He also thanks all people who have unknowningly contributed to this album, particularly “black musicians of Delta music that played during pauses of hard work to survive and sustain life.” Opening track “Voices Stomp Flames For Requiem Times” loops crying voices into a slow mournful rhythm, and “To Provoke A Fire Beyond Your Shutters” uses the sounds of massed cries for freedom.

Musically, (etre) combines acoustic and electronic instruments with field recordings, loops, broken turntables and laptop processing, into a thick, dreamlike collage. Not that these are always good dreams, of course. “We Do Boring Things Together” has a somewhat sunny acoustic guitar melody, but the sounds of doom and depression abound. The sounds are processed and cycled in a stunning manner, and the disc is challenging and exciting for its entire duration. The disc is divided into five pieces, and there are gaps in between some of them, but the whole disc works best as one extended meditation.

More so than any other release I’ve heard recently, Inferno From My Occult Diary is a dense, complex work which reveals much on repeated listens. I hear different things every time I listen, and it’s all fascinating. This is a powerful work reflecting on oppression and humanity, and I can’t recommend it enough. 8/10 Written by Paul Simon on Foxy Digitalis

Inferno from my occult diary

Coil - Musick to play in the dark 1 & 2 (Graal, 1999 / 2000)

2011-08-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

At the end of its initial phase of operation, Coil had taken its music to a somewhat logical endpoint, a frigid coda where its jarring, industrial phase split between a love/sex/drug fascination and the hollow ring of metal-on-metal collision. Though traditional song structures and melodies shot through the underbelly of their most memorable work (anyone remembering their take on “Tainted Love,” Marc Almond inclusive, will have a hard time denying this charge), Coil thrived on the lurid dreams of the willing set against the chilling actualities of life itself. Our bodies begin and end at discrete points, in temporal, physical, and metaphysical situations, and the weight of this burden strikes a minor, ceaseless chord that resonates throughout Coil’s music.

Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels … almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back).

Musick the first peaks early on, with the Delia Derbyshire-esque sweep of the excellently-titled “Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night,” but does not sacrifice its ability to intone fear into the audience’s minds, as it does on the seemingly innocent “Broccoli,” its lyrical ramblings holding themselves in the round, turning from absurd to ghoulish as the track drones onward, pitched-down choruses adding to the overall effect. Vol. 2 is its own work entirely, more focused on a set of instrumentation and style that is smaller in scope than on the first volume. Tweaky, inner-ear synth squelch glides icily along its requisite sine waves, Balance’s vocals at first obscured by vocoding and electronic pincers but eventually ebbing back into its deep, reverberating pall. Even somewhat uplifting moments, such as the jumping-jack rhythms of “Paranoid Inlay,” collapse into interminable darkness given a few minutes of runtime. The bulk of what’s left is unreasonably cold, alone, and deadly serious, from the elegant piano tumble of “Ether” to the surgically imprecise puddle of “Where Are You?” leading into the album closer “Batwings (A Limnal Hymn),” a tour-de-force of Guignol imagery and the almost unavoidable, mantra-like denouement amidst electronic cycling and dulcet tones.

Not easy listening here, mind you, but then again, Coil never was. These records don’t merely deserve a full and unimpeded attention span; they require their own environments. Candlelight, blackout shades, red wine and intoxicants of choice are their demands. Anything less and you might laugh. You might still laugh on first listen. It’s just your nerves trying to avoid the inevitable. Listen again, until the cold, humid dusk of their finest hours truly sink in. by Doug Mosurock on Dusted Magazine

vol. 1

vol. 2

Nature and organisation - Beauty reaps the blood of solitude (Durtro, 1994) \\ Death In A Snow Leopard Winter (Snow Leopard Records, 1998)

2011-08-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Nature And Organisation is the project of Michael Cashmore, a project in the vein of Current 93's "apocalyptic folk" (he is a long-time collaborator of Current 93).

Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude (Durtro, 1994) features an all-star line-up of David Tibet (Current 93), Rose McDowell (Strawberry Switchblade), Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), Douglas Pierce (Death In June).

The four-song EP A Dozen Summers Against The World (Durtro, 1994) adds the mournful melody of Wicker Man Song (acoustic guitar, violin, bells, flute and Rose McDowall's ethereal vocals).

The instrumental neo-classical album Death In A Snow Leopard Winter (World serpent, 1998) is a composition for piano and string quartet.

Cashmore is also the author of all the music on Current 93's Soft Black Stars (Durtro, 1999).

Beauty reaps the blood of solitude

Death is a snow leopard winter

Spires That in the Sunset Rise - Spires that in the sunset rise (Galactic Zoo Disk, 2003) // Four Winds The Walker (Secret Eye Records, 2005) // Spires That In The Sunset Rise / Panicsville - Split (Nihilist, 2005) // This is fire (Secret Eye Records, 2005) // Curse the Traced Bird (Secret eye, 2008)

2011-07-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

Spires That in the Sunset Rise is an American Psych folk band from Decatur, Illinois.[1] The four original members of the band (Kathleen Baird, Georgia Vallas, Taralie Peterson, and Tracy Peterson) grew up together in Decatur, Illinois, eventually moving to Chicago, Illinois where they began to experiment with creating songs.[2] Drawing from experimental music and multi-cultural music, they created a unique sound which they debuted on their first self-titled album 'Spires That in the Sunset Rise'. [2] The first album was created without Taralie's sister Tracy Peterson, but she soon joined the group before the making of their second album 'Four Winds the Walker.' A year later they created their third album 'This Is Fire' which today is considered one of their most accessible albums thus far. Tracy Peterson left the band before the making of their fourth album 'Curse the Traced Bird.' Since the release of their first album, they have contributed a new slant to the New Folk movement, by incorporating a darker sound and witchy vocals- often involving cackles and yelps- to their music.[3] Their music has drawn comparisons to The Raincoats, Current 93, Comus, and The Ex, and they have toured throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

While a lot of the more recent folk derived combos have seen fit to drink from the well of benign inspiration, the quartet of ladies that make up Spires That in the Sunset Rise seem more intent on channeling pagan ritual and sound, imbuing their music with a pervasive sense of dread, an ominous clatter that shrieks and bursts more than it gently soothes. Four Winds the Walker is their second full-length album, and while not quite as unsettling as their debut, it drops more than a few haunting passages in its wake.

All four members of the band are talented multi-instrumentalists, and as such, everything from fairly standard acoustic guitars and banjos to zithers and mbiras get thrown into the mix. The vocals get traded off among three of them pretty equally, and it's safe to say that none of the songs presented here showcase the same instrumental configuration twice. This has its obvious pros and cons. On the one hand, an hour's worth of acoustic sentiment can get a bit trying, so a variety of sounds keeps the proceedings fairly interesting. But at the same time, there tends to be a general lack of cohesion that can be somewhat bothersome at times.

Few artists come close to the frightening blend of witchcraft and uncomfortable imagery that Comus struck on their classic debut First Utterance, but it seems that Spires are angling for just that sound. Generally, Spires are more jarring than comforting, reveling in dissonance and ramshackle percussion. Their compositions tend to be performed with the type of intensity that could tear apart a song at any moment.

"Little for a Lot" starts out quite lithe, gently building the clamor against a restrained vocal. "Sort Sands" undulates on top of sawing cello lines. The gentility of "Ong Song," with its thumb piano and slide guitar, doesn't attempt mask the threat lying just below the surface, and all the better for it. A banjo gets bowed to excellent disorienting effect amidst the gallop of "This Ain't for Mama," and the washboard-banjo-cello combination of "Imaginary Skin" sounds like a hoedown for the damned.

The only real problem with Four Winds the Walker is its length. At a full hour, it feels overlong and somewhat labored in parts. Absorbing the types of paranoid, claustrophobic sentiment that these ladies cook up over 14 tracks can become exhausting. Best consumed in small portions, Four Winds the Walker is morbidly good at times, and downright discomforting at others. By Michael Crumsho

Spires That in the Sunset Rise emit such inspired gusts of collective fire that they resemble a witches' coven almost as much as a band, their shadow-draped music seeming to issue forth organically from the soil like a sulfurous hot spring... [They] invoke the unbounded, ageless music one might expect to hear emanating from the deepest forest, as mysterious black-cloaked figures dance around the fire-ring.-- Pitchforkmedia

The Spires' third album is a masterpiece in their already mind-boggling and totally unique musical ouvre. With This is Fire (Secret Eye), the all femme group takes another step away from the scattered pagan howls and freakouts of their incredible self-titled debut (The Slits plays Comus?) towards the realm of pure psychedelic mysticism.-- Foxy Digitalis

[Spires] navigate an empathic terrain that veers between acid-damaged Comus-inspired witchery, and more mild-mannered areas that resemble Bridget St. John suffering from ergotism, or the Raincoats as a coven.-- Dream Magazine

Curse the traced birds

Four Winds The Walker

http://www.mediafire.com/?pe6hxwiily03y75

Spires that in the sunset rise

This is fire

Lucio Battisti - Anima latina (No reply, 1974)

2011-07-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

Anima latina (1974) segna uno spartiacque importante nella produzione di Battisti e un punto di non ritorno musicale. Troppo stretti erano le coordinate in cui era stato/si era confinato negli anni precedenti, per non tentare di evaderne. Stefanel attraverso racconti e interviste traccia un appassionato viaggio intorno all’uomo, al musicista, ai numerosi collaboratori, all’amico Mogol e al loro misterioso viaggio in Brasile, da cui partì e si sviluppò l’idea del disco.

Il cardine del volume è costituito dalle interviste e dalle ricostruzioni accurate pezzo per pezzo, dalle scoperte a posteriori (il disco doveva essere doppio, per dirne una) essendo Battisti come si sa molto schivo. Seguendone la tracklist, troviamo notazioni tecniche, curiosità e rivelazioni di prima mano da parte di chi l’album ha contribuito a costruirlo nota per nota, controversie e dissidi con il suo paroliere, che non apprezzava il missaggio a basso volume della voce nel disco, elemento così moderno invece visto con gli occhi della nostra contemporaneità. E segno del progressivo allontanamento dei due che verrà di lì a non molto.

Stefanel ordisce così intorno al disco una sinfonia di voci anche contrastanti tra loro, che converge verso l’intento di svelare appieno il senso di un’opera, un concept album, che suonava così alieno rispetto al contesto della canzone italiana dell’epoca.

Teresa Greco on Sentire Ascoltare

anima latina

Blackout beach - Skin of evil (Soft abuse, 2009) \\ Light Flows the Putrid Dawn (Soft abuse, 2004)

2011-07-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

Most people know Carey Mercer for his intensely energetic voice as Frog Eyes. As that ‘band’ and in his contributions to the group Swan Lake, Mercer carelessly rolled out passionate banter that bent the conventions of melodic songwriting. His free form lyricism bounced around the electric tones and high-paced rhythms of those releases without restraint, and the accompaniment usually matched his pained ramblings. It was convincing enough to energize a legitimate segment of college radio that was wallowing in all forms of frenzied hype bands.

After six years, the basic parts of Mercer’s signature have not changed – challenging allusions, unfinished metaphors, deeply personal explorations – but Skin of Evil does not reach the same peaks of past projects. First of all, the distinctly contemporary sound achieved on Mercer’s Frog Eyes albums is ditched in favor of an indulgence in gothic atmospheres. Echoes and reverb slow down an already tamed delivery and themes of waning and inner conflict permeate the verses. Where songs on The Bloody Hand, or The Golden River dart around with the ferocity of a migraine, Skin of Evil feels unfinished at times. The fragmented songwriting is not as novel as it once was and suggests a different motivation.

If Skin of Evil wasn’t so blatantly avoiding modern context, one could argue that Mercer is merely pining for a time that was simpler, less opaque. But there is too much Classical imagery, too much specificity and not enough perspective. So narrow is the peephole into Mercer’s archaic narrative that any close look blots out the light. His main character, Donna, sustains a running storyline in which she serves as muse to each protagonist’s lament (and there are many), and the one discernible thread embedded in their confessions is the fear of loss.

Mercer’s tenor, however, reflects a more contemporary dilemma, a voice obsessed yet apathetic (apparently the anxieties of Bush’s America have spread to Western Canada). If Frog Eyes posits Mercer as the intelligent non-conformist spewing everything that comes to mind, then Blackout Beach is a concentrated effort to reach someone who will never listen. The same author stands behind these words, but in this instance, you sense Mercer and his characters grappling with the realization that all those nights at the inkwell was time ill spent. If no one is listening, then how does one begin to cope with the need to be heard? Not well, apparently; the mood throughout Skin of Evil is bleak and wrought with acquiescence.

“Three Men Drown in the River,” the third track here, starts off with a verse so strongly composed, it could have appeared in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man:

“Three men drown in the river Damian, William, and Harold S. Dee I got the feeling that the rest of the men just wanted to lay Just fall around each other, and sift through the last dusty specks of the day But I am evil so I ordered them on”

But that’s it. Mercer quits before he gives the song a chance to succeed. These protagonists seem to be too aware of their dim fate to give more than a cathartic diary entry. And so the narrators’ weaknesses become the songs’ weaknesses; Mercer apparently prefers to sustain verisimilitude at the expense of Skin of Evil’s potential. It’s a bold artistic move that lends itself to the page far more convincingly than it does to the ear.

By Mitchell Bandur on Dusted Magazine

Imagine you're drifting off to sleep after having just performed for two hours to sweaty indie freaks in a smoky, rundown venue when a stout, woodsy Canadian shoves The Odyssey in your face again and forces you to keep reading. An unlikely scenario, to be sure, but it apparently happened repeatedly to Dan Bejar this past spring when Carey Mercer and his band Frog Eyes supported Destroyer on tour: hyper-literate (though not in any rigid academic sense), Mercer almost religiously takes every possible chance to digest the classics and proclaim their greatness to others, as if the works were his own personal discoveries. His enthusiasm, for all the quirky ways it manifests itself, is very genuine-- 500 years from now, I can imagine someone touting The Beatles, who by then will surely be relegated to historical academia, with the same intensity.
We're given some vague sense of Mercer's high-pitched Homeric fervor on his Frog Eyes recordings, but on Light Flows the Putrid Dawn, his solo debut as Blackout Beach, it's very clear that the British Canadian bard has internalized a distinctly classical vocabulary and all its accompanying metaphors. Combine these anachronisms with Mercer's fragmented, imagistic approach to lyrics and his feral, operatic delivery, and Light Flows the Putrid Dawn proceeds like some dense Delphic prophecy-- for our own sake, we can't keep ourselves from deciphering it.
The album's brief runtime (less than 24 minutes) is more than compensated for by the overwhelming density of the music. Opener "If I Were Not Alexander..." proceeds slowly, but remains impossibly disorienting: Mercer's impenetrable Central Park soothsaying competes with his equally cryptic guitar soloing, to which tickles of piano and accordion are distantly allied. "The Swineherd Sings..." follows as the more melodic and intelligible counterpart, as Mercer sings of Stalin, "I ain't no great fan of men/ It is men that built this damn pen." Mercer switches gears for the psycho-waltzes "Krull Courtship" and "The Stuttered XXX Breeze XXX", two songs that aptly justify the frequent Bowie comparisons.
Elsewhere on Light Flows the Putrid Dawn, Mercer situates himself firmly on the Rock Side of the burgeoning freak-folk movement: Sparse, overdubbed guitar tracks like "The Putrid Dawn Is Only for Us Baby" and "New Soft and Shimmering Motherhood Alliance" might draw comparisons to the San Francisco noise-pop outfit Iran, and especially on "Meadows and Pleasant Madames...", Mercer's lupine croons and the accompanying hellish miasma are closely reminiscent of Tim Buckley. On the relatively stiff closing march "The Quiet Merchant Gets His Song Too", Mercer tries his best to rhythmically mask the intense pain with which he wrings out alcohol's often devastating consequences: "Oh mothers, I feel for you."
For all Putrid Dawn's musical merits, Mercer's voice is still admittedly a tough sell. On Frog Eyes' past releases, he's sometimes sounded incongruous, either because the instrumentation didn't match his bravado, or because the accompaniment simply disregarded it. It's a well-warranted reservation to harbor when approaching Blackout Beach (which was recorded prior to 2003's The Golden River), but one that may safely be put to rest. Mercer is simply never out-of-sync with himself here, and his vocal melodies benefit from his bizarre but undeniably singular orchestrations. As listeners, we can tell Mercer clearly knows what he wants out of these songs-- even if we don't know exactly what that entails.
- Nick Sylvester on Pitchfork

skin of evil

light flows the putrid dawn

Current 93 - I have a special plan for this world (Durtro, 2000) \\ Honeysuckle Æons (Coptic cat, 2011)

2011-06-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

when everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
as by a shining brainless beacon
or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
when you are calm and joyful
and finally entirely alone
then in a great new darkness
you will finally execute your special plan

one needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows
and who i had believed was sleeping or dead
imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten
the teeth tearing into it
the tongue tasting its savor
and the hunger for that taste
now take away that flesh he said
take away the teeth and the tongue
the taste and the hunger
take away everything as it is
that was my plan
my own special plan for this world
i listened to these words and yet i did not wonder
if this creature whom i had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision
even in his deepest dreams
or his most lasting death
because i had heard of such plans such visions
and i knew they did not see far enough
but what was demanded in a way of a plan
needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh
beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away
and so i began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night
and a strangely shining light
that owed nothing to the light of day

that day may seem like other days
once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations
once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear
but that day will have no others after
no more worlds like this will follow
because i have a plan
a very special plan
no more worlds like this
no more days like that

there are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me
there is dying that occurs relatively suddenly
there is dying that occurs relatively gradually
there is dying that occurs relatively painlessly
there is the death that is full of pain
thus by various means they are combined
the sudden and the gradual
the painless and the painful
to yield but four ways to die
and there are no others
even after the voice stopped speaking
I listened for it to speak again
after hours and day and years have passed
I listened for some further words
yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me
there are no others
there are no others
was it then that I began to conceive for this world
a special plan?

there are no means for escaping this world
it penetrates even into your sleep
and is his substance
you are caught in your own dreaming
where there is no space
and a hell forever where there is no time
you cant do nothing you aren't told to do
there is no hope for escape from this dream
that was never yours
the very words you speak are only its very words
and you talk like a traitor
under its incessant torture

there are many who have designs upon this world
and dream of wild and vast reformations
i have heard them talking in their sleep
of elegant mutations
and cunning annihilations
i have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses
and in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe
which they with their new designs were made straight and sound
but each of these new and ill conceived designs
is deranged in its heart
for they see this world as if it were alone and original
and not as only one of count with others
whose nightmares all precede
like a hideous garden grown from a single seed
i have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep
and i stand waiting for them
as at the top of a darkened flight of stairs
they know nothing of me
and none of the secrets of my special plan
while i know every crooked creaking step of theirs

it was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows
who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner
and enter a narrow street
and stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight
then he said to me
he whispered
that my plan was misconceived
that my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake
because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go
there is nothing to be and there is no one to know
your plan is a mistake, he repeated
this world is a mistake, i replied

the children always followed him
when they saw him hopping by
a funny walk
a funny man
a funny funny funny man
he made them laugh sometimes
he made them laugh oh yes he did
he did he did he did he did
oh how he made them roll
one day he took them to a place
he knew a special place
and told them things about this world
this funny funny funny world
which made them laugh sometimes
he made them laugh oh yes he did
he did he did he did he did
oh how he made them roll
then the funny man who made them laugh
sometimes he did
revealed to them his special plan
his very special funny plan
knowing they would understand
and maybe laugh sometimes
he made them laugh
oh yes he did
he did he did he did he did
their eyes grew wide beneath there lids
and how he made them roll

i first learned the facts from a lunatic
in a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space
there are no people
nothing at all like that
the human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion
each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity
but there are persons of any kind
when all that can be is mindless mirrors
laughing and screaming as they parade about
in an endless dream
but when i asked the lunatic what it was
it swore itself within these mirrors
as they marched endlessly in stale time and space
he only looked and smiled
then he laughed and screamed
and in his black and empty eyes
i saw for a moment as in a mirror
a form the shade of divinity
in flight from its stale infinity
of time and space and the worst of all
of this world dreams
my special plan for the laughter
and the screams

we went to see some little show
that was staged in an old shed
past the edge of town
and in its beginnings all seemed well
the miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness
while those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes
and in its beginnings all seemed well
but then there came a suttle turning point which some have noticed
and i was one
who quietly left the show
no i did not
because i could see where things were going
as the antics of those dolls grew strange
and the fragile strings grew taut
with their tiny pullings ,tiny limbs
the others around me became appalled
and turned away and abandoned the show
that was staged in an old shed
past the edge of town
but i wanted to witness what could never be
i wanted to see what could not be seen
but the moment of consummate disaster
my puppets turned to face the puppet master

it was twilight and i stood in a grayish haze of the vast empty building
when the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice
all the things of this world it said
are of but one essence
for which there are no words
this is the greater part which has no beginning or end
and the one essence of this world for which there can be no words
is that all the things of this world
this is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end
and for which words were conceived solely to speak of
the tiny broken beings of this world it said
the beginnings and endings of this world it said
for which words were conceived solely to speak of
now remove these words and what remains it asks me
as i stood in the twilight of that vast empty building
but i did not answer
the question echoed over and over
but i remained silent until the echoes died
and as twilight passed into the evening i felt my
special plan for which there are no words
moving towards a greater darkness

there are some who have no voices
or none that will ever speak
because of the things they know about this world
and the things they feel about this world
because the thoughts that fill a brain
that is a damaged brain
because the pain that fills a body
that is a damaged body
exists in other worlds
countless other worlds
each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness
for which no words are being conceived
and where no voices are able to speak
when a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts
when a damaged body is filled only with pain
and stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness
and exists in a world for which there is no special plan

when everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
as by a shining brainless beacon
or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
when you are calm and joyful
and finally entirely alone
then in a great new darkness
you will finally execute your special plan

I have a special plan for this world

Honeysuckle Æons

Robert Ashley - Private Parts (The record)

2011-06-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

It's spring, 1977. Robert Ashley locks himself in his fifth floor rooms in the Lake Merritt Hotel in Oakland. He needs privacy.

He has been composing the libretto for a music film. Now a record possibility has developed; Lovely Music, just starting up, wants something from him. He's got the words, but not much time. He has tried to get various people to sing his words (or speak them or anything.) No luck. On the day before work is supposed to begin in a recording studio but with no work yet to do, he goes into a room with a tape recorder and sings the words himself. What comes of it is The Park and The Backyard. Eventually, he recognizes what he's created as the first and last episodes of his opera for television, "Perfect Lives," the middle opera of a monumental trilogy tracing the history of the movement of consciousness across America (east to west.) This original recording with Ashley's voice, accompanied by "Blue" Gene Tyranny on keyboards, and "Kris" on tablas, remains a classic. It is a masterpiece in its simplicity of form and in the purity and intensity of its effect on the listener.

Summer, 1978: What I hear broadcast through a clock-radio in my studio apartment near the freeway in Palo Alto one afternoon changes my life. Frankie Mann of KPFA describes the composer as the director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, and a founding member of the infamous Once Group. While I'm listening to this first recording of The Park, I realize that free will is possible. I am roused to a profound experience. The Vedas, too, were a revelation by sound. I wore out two copies of the stereo LP introducing it to friends. This issuing of a remastered CD recording of "the yellow record" is an event.

"This is a record," Ashley sings. "This is not a record, this is a story." I listened five times in a row before attempting to write these notes. Each time I've listened over the years, I've heard things I had not heard before. Everything in Ashley's creation makes metabolic connections; there's a transpersonal, time-exempt freedom in it; "the feeling of the idea of silk scarves in the air." In other words, the effect of his engaging, lyrical expression is that the mind opens. Only a masterpiece does that.

How do we know we are in contact with a masterpiece? Gertrude Stein says, "the masterpiece has nothing to do with human nature or with identity, it has to do with the human mind and the entity that is with a thing in itself of course masterpieces have no more time than they have identity although time like identity is what they do concern themselves about." Ashley, in The Backyard magnifies the details: "Fourteen dollars and twenty-eight cents is more attractive than fourteen dollars because of the twenty-eight. No one likes or dislikes zeros." We are in Isolde's mind, "She stands there in the doorway of her mother's house and thinks these thoughts Coincidence isn't a mystery to her...She is earth, we are the sun circling, but not circling her. She is circling, we are circling." And for him, in The Park, "Begins is a problem...He wasn't happy with the world, he worked with the forwardness and the backwardness...working against time as they say." His technique is judgment, gravity, the absolute. Her method is suspension, lightness, the curve. He sits with both feet on the floor, it's late morning: "In his mind the two men are frozen on the bench." She stands in light at evening watching the barn swallows: "This is the celebration of the changing of the light."

Ashley succeeds in immersing us in the essences of these people until we are overtaken by their particularities, by their atmospheres, and instantaneity ensues. We are in the moment, he is Adam-and-Eveing us, our identities merge with the characters and the narrator, and are blended in a chemistry, under the spell of his sensate technology. Ashley's words with music make a solvent for individuality, like compassion. Enter a masterwork the same way it was created. Only a person working without a sense of personal identity can make something of pure essence: There's the Eastern idea, also found in jazz, that music can only be performed correctly if one completely forgets oneself.

Did you ever leap out of a particularly murky human situation because you'd retrieved and incorporated the pure physics of, say, an Iago moving upon Othello's trusting bulk, or a blind Lear cast on the heath? Your own minor drama suddenly rings with a keen clarity beyond the mystery of its resolution. Robert Ashley's work . resonates in such a manner. And, he tells a great story, with beauty and grace. Every word is a locus from which the spokes of one's memory and cognition radiate out. Well, maybe that's a little too much. Let's just say, don't adore him. He'll insist: What good is praise, it never improves the work. He's a phenomenon like the reflective surface of a like. See the face, don't hear the name: It might as easily be Chaucer, Goethe, Jane Austen, or Frances Yates.

-- Melody Sumner, April 1990

This CD reissues Lovely Music's debut release, originally issued on LP in 1977. Along with Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, this is one of most engaging works he created in avant-garde opera. With simple accompaniment from "Blue" Gene Tyranny on keyboards and an elusive Kris playing subtle tabla, Asheley's voice is as penetrating and haunting as ever, delivering in the most expressive deadpan voice this side of the recorded William S. Burrows. As a cultural commentator, Ashley is equally as important as the late writer; in this economical opera he distills his unique approach to text and minimalist musical form, extending on the theme of his Perfect Lives television opera. Private Parts is simply one of the most poetic compositions of American minimalist art, and a vital document in the history of an artist whose mastery of aural-historic storytelling will leave the prepared listener speechless. A work only challenged in its exquisite realization by Ashley's other sublime work Automatic Writing. Listeners with interests from verbal/text-sound recording, minimalist composition and contemporary opera, owe it to yourselves to hear this masterwork. — S.J. Harrison

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Peter Wright - Let's Hide Under The House Until They've Gone (Basses Frequences, 2011)

2011-06-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

Am always intrigued by Peter's work, often standing head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries there's something about his sounds that really connect with me in a way which is not easy to articulate. I guess the vibrations he creates just resonate and stir something within me and this LP is no exception. He's tools in this instance are guitars, bass, mandolin, clarinet and effects. Peter has a deft sleight of hand without a doubt, employing each instrument with consideration and care he builds multifaceted drone worlds which are breathtakingly spooked. Just as I'm settling into the dubbed out slow motion soundscape I imagine hiding under a porch in post apocalyptic landscape and then the guitar sounds come sweeping across the sound-field like some alien force or unknown beings marching along as chills of fear shiver through the body. It's hugely pleasurable to hear the artist sculpt this bleak yet exciting netherworld. Darkened room late night full immersion is very much recommended. Edition of 350 copies on 180g vinyl. A beauty.

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Datashock - Pyramiden von Gießen (Dekorder, 2011)

2011-06-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

To call German titans Datashock’s new LP immersive is an understatement as enormous as the album itself. Firstly, it’s a krautrock album in 2011, which, by definition, implies a certain element of insanity and grandiosity. Secondly, it’s a double-LP release, which means, these guys are playing enough music and jamming long enough to fill up four full sides of wax. To put it plainly, this is not a record for the weak-hearted. This thing is a full-fledge supernova.

For those of us who will partake in this album, the listening experience is nothing short of revelatory. For 80 minutes, the fun does not let up. Every piece of this record is just fantastic and huge – so many epic build-ups that you might find yourself hearing echoes in your head days after. And Datashock gives listeners everything we want – extended synth workouts, funky rock anthems, and enough celestial exploration to send even the deepest space-head into a blissful trance. Not to mention the album’s slow-burning centerpiece “Kanal Telemedial Energieausgleich,” which is one of the most flat-out gorgeous pieces of music I’ve heard all year.

So, yeah, it’s an enormous record – one that feels not just like a great piece of music but also like a total sonic event. Anyone who finds krautrock and kosmiche music to be even remotely interesting is bound to find something they love here. If you’re willing to take the journey, Datashock is more than willing to lead you along and keep you smiling every step of the way. 9/10 on Foxy Digitalis

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Alexander Turnquist - Hallway of Mirrors (VHF, 2011)

2011-06-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Third VHF album from this young New York-based guitarist/composer who continues to forge his own radical style to create a very resonant and enveloping acoustic sound, full of beautiful harmonic overtone interplay, all instruments sustained. Alex’s guitar approach revolves around a prodigious right-hand technique and a minimalist slant on composition that separates him from the retro-styling endemic to most current acoustic guitar music. Hallway of Mirrors uses much of the tonal palate from his previous record (As the Twilight Crane Dreams in Color, vhf#118) – dense 12-string finger-picking with vibraphone and piano carrying much of the melody. On Hallway, the pieces are more concise with the added sweep of Christopher Tignor’s elegant violin punctuating Alex’s harmonics-laden forward motion and Matthew O’Koren’s immaculate vibraphone (played with both mallets and bow). The additional instrumentation, inspired in part by Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” provides an added focus in the music, signifying each change in tone and timbre. Recorded on analog tape using traditional automatic double tracking stereo mix techniques by engineers Henry Hirsch and Bram Tobey, the sound has an elegant soft focus that highlights Alex’s strong and sharp performance. The centerpiece of the album, the 16 minute “Waiting at the Departure Gate,” makes a sly nod in tribute to fellow VHF artist Jack Rose, who all too briefly explored similar techniques on his classic “Black Pearls.” A truly uplifting and emotional listening experience.

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Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Summvs [Raster Noton, 2011)

2011-06-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

‘Summvs’ is the fifth and purportedly final collaborative album from the dream-team of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto). Since 2002 the two musicians have fused their disciplines near-faultlessly, with Sakamoto’s evocative piano-based compositions melting effortlessly into Nicolai’s skillful digital rhythms and cautious manipulations. Each album has brought the duo slightly closer together, and ‘summvs’ (the title an amalgamation of the words summa and versus) sees their work reach critical mass. With Sakamoto apparently working on a rare piano (one of only fifteen in the world) using 16th interval tuning, and Nicolai expanding on his newfound love of harmony and melody, the results are much warmer than their earlier experiments, and all the better for it. While Nicolai’s glacial digital hiccups were always a draw for some, I found at times they distracted from the focus of the pieces – and here rather than eliminate them altogether Nicolai tempers them, working them into a more harmonic framework. The familiar bass-heavy shuffle we fell in love with all those years ago on ‘Transform’ still crops up occasionally, most noticeably on ‘Pioneer IOO’, but it's balanced by an unforgettable cinematic haze of ‘Naono’ (a clear standout – think Deaf Center, Ben Frost or The Fun Years) and ‘Halo’. There is something elegiac and deeply final about ‘summvs’, it feels like an ink stamp, an underline, a statement from the duo saying ‘this is it, and this is the best it can be’, and it truly is. Memorable, atmospheric and beautiful – even if you’ve missed all four of their previous albums, ‘summvs’ is the one to buy. Easily a highlight of 2011 thus far – you know what to do.

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Natural Snow Buildings - Chants Of Niflheim (Blackest Rainbow, 2011)

2011-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

"The curious and ever-intriguing Gallic duo Natural Snow Buildings have gifted us with yet another sublime full length with which to entertain our mind’s eye. This isn’t just material gleaned from their no-doubt bottomless pit of jams either, the material for
"‘Chants of Niflheim’ was recorded practically weeks ago, so stands as a proper follow-up to the widely acclaimed Blackest Rainbow LP ‘Waves of the Random Sea’. It’s damned good too, showcasing their now patented fuzzy shoegazing ragas in all their extended, gritty glory. There’s a reason that in a scene dominated by groups coughing out extended drones Natural Snow Buildings shine - they're just a little more unusual. It’s that opium-induced numbness that somehow works in tandem with the current crop of witch house/drag releases – Natural Snow Buildings might not sound the same at first, but the mood is simply unmistakable. Like a fistful of NyQuil, ‘Chants of Niflheim’ will do just the job when you need something to edge you into a lucid heavy-lidded state of bliss. Highly recommended."

fluid radio:
"Brand new full length CD album from Natural Snow Buildings, made especially for Record Store Day. Following on from January 2011′s “Waves of the Random Sea”, this is the most recent recordings from the duo of Mehdi and Solange, recorded over the first three months of 2011.

Epicly dark and brooding folk blurred with psychedelic and ritualistic overtones, this album sounds as good as any other Natural Snow Buildings / Twinsistermoon / Isengrind release, retaining the sound that only this duo can conjure up.

Opener “Chants of Niflheim Part 1″ is a dark reflection upon the concept of its title, followed by “Templars Ritual”, a psychedelic meandering 17 minutes of ritual head nodding zone outs. “Chants Of Niflheim Part 2″ builds ethereal levitation to new forms, from dark to light, blurring heavy riffs with almost vocal instrument sounds to create a mist of unknown. Album closer, “H. Scudder”, opens with Mehdi’s softly sung lyrics layered with percussion and string, heading straight into a deep ritualistic swirling drone section.

“Chants of Niflheim” again concretes Natural Snow Buildings as an essential contemporary duo, crossing the lines of folk drone experimentalism, traditional folk craftsmanship and post rock aesthetic. Again, another essential record from this French duo."

Limited to 500 copies in full colour 4 panel card sleeves.

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Califone - Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People (Glitterhouse Records, 2000)

2011-06-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Upon learning that Nancy Kerrigan's Olympic dreams had been dashed by the unforgiving crowbar of Jeff Gilooly, a famous rabbi posed the following question to God: "If you, God, are so great, then why do bad things happen to good people? That is, if God is so good, why evil? Shant Nancy have been spared the rod?" Although ordinarily fairly reflective and considerate, God, in this instance, wasn't much for patience or tact. "Kushner," he replied, "are you fucking daft?" Only then did the rabbi realize his error-- Kerrigan, in fact, was not good. No, Kerrigan was a bitch-- God knew it, the rabbi knew it, hell, even Gilooly knew it. She got what was coming to her.
Picking up on the rabbi's apparent dilemma, Califone hath chosen for its newest album title the converse of that age old conundrum. Yes, bad things happen to good people, but what about the demonic among us? What about the Hitlers, the Linda Tripps, the Big Poppa Lou Pearlmans? What about them? According to Califone, even minions like Tripp and Pearlman share in the bounty. This claim, however, obviously lacks substance. Because as much as good weather may follow bad people, it also clearly follows some really good people, as evidenced by the band's own career.
The Chicago-based ambient neo-folk band Califone was formed way back in the late 90s by two musicians (Brian Deck and Tim Hurley) and two pasta dishes, Rutili and Massarella, and rose from the ashes of another respected Chicago blues-rock outfit, Red Red Meat. Subsequent to that band's breakup, the four remaining members pulled a Voltron and came back hard, but with a new and innovative musical approach: blending southwestern Americana, blues, and bleak, rugged folk with updated, atmospheric percussion and drum programming. The result was at once unique and compelling. Good Weather Follows Bad People is the condensed, environmentally friendly reissue of Califone's first two critically acclaimed EPs, with the addition of two unreleased bonus tracks.
The first seven tracks are drawn from Califone's self-titled 1998 debut EP for the defunct indie label Flydaddy. Among the highlights are... well, all of them. Yes, each of these seven are damn near golden, including the damp, bass-heavy opener, "On the Steeple with the Shakes," the punchy, rustic folk of "Silvermine Pictures," and the lonely, emotive distance and sparseness of the guitar and piano riffing on "Dime Fangs." Tracks 8-12 are culled from the band's second EP, a 1999 Road Cone effort. The EP was less mood and composition-oriented than the debut, actually employing discernable songwriting elements like hummable choruses and bridges, as on "St. Martha Let It Fold" and the quasi-pop of "Beneath the Yachtsman." Still, though, the same innovative approach remained, solidified by Rutili's restrained and expressive vocal grit.
Being as it is a re-release, the question for fanatics is whether the two bonus tracks are enough to warrant another purchase. The answer for fanatics is no, they're not. One of them is a retread of "To Hush a Sick Transmission," already the least listenable track on the debut EP. The closer is "When the Snakehandler Slips," a dark, aggressive, full-band tune featuring more tempo and fuzzy distortion in everything-- vocals, guitar, and bass. It's a decent track, but by no means indispensable. Newcomers, on the other hand, will find Good Weather to be a perfect starting point.

— Brad Haywood, April 10, 2002

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Simon Joyner -Yesterday tomorrow and in between (Sing Eunuchs, 1998) // The Lousy Dance (Truckstop, 1999)

2011-06-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

Joyner established himself as a major voice in modern songwriting and arranging with the sprawling double-album Yesterday Tomorrow and In Between (Sing Eunuchs, 1998), one of the milestone recordings of that year, a glorious and highly personal summary of the aesthetic of Dylan, Young and Cohen. For this impressive endeavour, Joyner surrounded himself with seasoned professionals such as Mike Krassner, Glen Kotche and Joseph Ferguson of Edith Frost's band, bassist Ryan Hembrey of Pinetop Seven, pianist Deanna Vargona of Lambchop, keyboardist Scott Tuma (a former Souled American), and pianist Liz Conant, besides regulars Deden and McManus. The ensemble excels at both stark piano ballads and sumptuous pop, while Joyner does not hesitate to wear his old folksinger clothes or lead the band into a country-rock number. A bit of Giant Sand's existential laziness keeps everything in check. Standouts include the ten-minute meditation Eight Verses, the 11-minute cinematic closer The Passenger and the pretty elegy Christine. Bring Down Goliath, Cold Outside Your Window, Mama, Eight Verses, Yesterday Tomorrow and In Between , Ballad in the Past, Sinner's Song, Morning is Weary, That Was You, Christine, Came a Yellow Bird, Amen, Don't Miss Your Lover, Goodbye, So Long, Farewell, Goodbye, The Passenger.

The Lousy Dance (Truckstop 1999) boasts a completely renewed line-up: Ken Vandermark on clarinet, Jessica Billey on violin, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Charles Kim on pedal steel, Ernst Long on flugelhorn and trumpet, Will Hendricks on piano, accordion and vibes join the core quartet of Chris Deden on percussion, Ryan Hembrey on bass, Glenn Kotche on percussions and Michael Krassner on electric guitar. Lambchop's chamber folk is now the most obvious reference, but Joyner's songs still have Leonard Cohen written all over them. And his soul-searching poetry has never been more romantic and erudite. The wonders of the instruments and the wonders of the words somehow find a magic balance that turns Joyner's songs into metaphysical journeys.
The Lousy Dance, I Will Find You, the seven-minute Fool's Gold on Main St., the seven-minute Long Dark Night, It Will Never Be This Way Again, the six-minute When She Drops Her Veil, the six-minute The Rain Asked For A Holiday, the eight-minuteJohn Train Blues. by Piero Scaruffi

yesterday tomorrow and in between

the lousy dance

Liquid skulls - Dead in yr eyes (Fog Rattle Records, 2011)

2011-05-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

LIQUID SKULLS' psyched out waves of drone are a lot more peaceful and meditative than the band's name and song titles might suggest. With songs more reminiscent of bike rides through wooded paths and being carried out to sea than of graveyards or haunted caves, it's a surprise, but a welcome one. Big ups to White Moon for having the keen ear to drop this one.

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Pocahaunted - Make It Real (Not Not Fun, 2010)

2011-05-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

In this age of information glut, it can difficult to keep up. Granted, there are many tools at our disposal. We have RSS magick; we have the anarchic democracy of tagging; we have friends feeding real-time listening stats and instantaneously posting show footage. But despite our efforts to keep the pace, it feels like the only real solution is having a biometric port capable of directly uploading to the brain. This info drunkenness, like a bad case of the spins, makes it difficult to focus, to stop and properly digest. Neo may know kung fu, but can he appreciate it?

Pocahaunted exemplifies this quandary. With something like 40 releases since 2007, getting to know this LA band is more than a little difficult. The sheer amount of material should breed familiarity. Instead, we just get obfuscation. Did you hear Rough Magic? It was on cassette and limited to only 50 copies. The job of the reviewer is thus to catch fish with a broken net. You are left only with your direct experiences with the material, moments that tie it down and secure it to your memory. Making out with a girl with A Tear For Every Grain Of Sand wafting in the background; muddy-headed, sitting in a stupor after a long day with the heavy vibes of Island Diamonds. For Pocahaunted, there has been no solid, definitive body of work. No widely understood point of reference. Not until now.

Make It Real is by far Pocahaunted's most focused, approachable effort to date. After a six-month hiatus with founding members pursuing other projects — Beth Costantino making it "big" with Best Coast (and leaving the band), and Amanda Brown reveling in the arid haze of Topaz Rags — Make It Real is an album that lives up to its title, serving to give definite form to a previously amorphous band. Strangely enough, the presence of some significant collaborators has helped Pocahaunted define their sound. M. Geddes Gengras (Robedoor) brings a rock-solid low-end to the band's previously lithe sound. Britt Brown works in his extra-sensory guitar funk. The sax magick of Alex Gray (Dreamcolour) provides some needed skronk. Functioning now more as a loose collective of the like-minded, Pocahaunted has finally realized itself.

The major difference between Make It Real and every other Pocahaunted release to date is the presence of digestible songs. On prior releases, songs would average eight minutes (at least). Here, there's a handful of songs clocking in at under five. The opening salvo of "Touch You" and "Make It Real" are wonderful nuggets that highlight the band's newfound penchant for hypnotic grooves. The presence of Brown's psych guitar, Diva Dompe laying down syrupy basslines, and some wonderfully throwback organ-grinding by Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw) make for the most instantly enjoyable Pocahaunted songs to date. And, of course, there is the shamanic vocal tag-teaming, not simply aiming to invoke desert spirits as in the past, but now also invoking your ass to get up and move. "All Of Is Of" and "Sanctuary" are both nimble little jams. Even the extended numbers seem to have more focus, more life. "UFO" and "You Do Voo Doo" advance like opaque apparitions, all the parts jiving in lock-step unison. The longer ones are best enjoyed like a 3D picture hunt: the less you focus, the more you see.

Make It Real is a much-needed entry point to Pocahaunted's vast body of work. Now, instead of getting tongue-tied and promising to make your friends a mix that you'll never get around to, you can point them toward this utterly enjoyable album. And if you are new to Pocahaunted's realm, Make It Real will indeed be a very real experience for you. In this case, "accessible" is far from a dirty word, instead functioning as a totemic key for all to grasp. On Tiny Mix Tapes

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David Sylvian - Sleepwalkers (P-Vine Records, 2010)

2011-05-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Those who admire David Sylvian’s solo trajectory over the last 26 years do so, in part, because the language of his music has changed so drastically and so often. Even from the post-Japan romantic pop of his debut, Brilliant Trees, to the jazz-inflected ambiences of Gone to Earth only a few years later, composition and timbre have morphed considerably. Sleepwalkers is a compilation of non-album collaborations encompassing the last 10 years, and now, the only sound unifying all tracks is the dark-tinged smoothness of Sylvian’s voice. The music ranges far and wide, embracing acoustic and electronic instruments with equal frequency while allowing for the pregnant pauses that Sylvian uses to interject his pithy lines.

If points of definition in Sylvian’s career might be referenced, the musical language here does not go beyond that on 2003’s stark Blemish, save in one case. As with that album, the ghosts of instruments related to popular music rear their heads regularly. Even the outtake from Manifon that gives the compilation its title, a collaboration with Martin Brandlmayer, does not share a soundworld with Sylvian’s latest disc. That said, the song’s scorching lyrics and percussion, by turns stuttering and booming, makes it a wonderful opener. By way of fine contrast, at the other end of the spectrum, the only solo track, “Trauma,” bristles with energy and writhes through a complex drone. Even the more “traditional” material, such as the two Nine Horses tracks, are only so on the surface, brimming with sublimated energy and dotted with rhythmic accents.

The album’s biggest challenge comes with “Five Lines,” the most recent track here and a first-time collaboration with composer Dai Fujikura. The lean-textured impressionistic strings are a perfect foil to the spare vocals, each gesture brimming with drama. Fujikura thrives on staggered repetition, which is also in play throughout this miniature masterpiece. As with Webern’s piano variation set, we get glimpses of the same motivic material from many angles, but Sylvian’s melodies keep the situation fresh and the piece from stagnation.

As good as this album is, it’s clearly meant for more recently initiated listeners. Most of the material has been available before, and the alternative mixes don’t add much to these songs. For die-hard fans, and I’m one, the disc just conjures impatience for the next Sylvian full-length. By Marc Medwin on Dusted Magazine

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Tim Hecker- Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky, 2011)

2011-05-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of synth and drone artists that make epic, transportive music, but one of the unique things about Tim Hecker is his conceptual ability. Each of his records, from the cinematic rush of Harmony in Ultraviolet to the dreamed-up cartography of An Imaginary Country, explores a specific theme, often in great detail. When he talked to us last month about the artwork for his latest LP, Ravedeath, 1972, Hecker mentioned that he'd been consumed with the idea of sonic decay. "I became obsessed with digital garbage," he said. "Like when the Kazakstan government cracks down on piracy and there's pictures of 10 million DVDs and CDRs being pushed by bulldozers."

That idea, the notion of music as a cheapened, battered object, touches nearly every aspect of Ravedeath, 1972, a dark and often claustrophobic record that is arguably Hecker's finest work to date. The album is based on a single day's worth of recordings in a church in Reykjavik, Iceland, where Hecker used a groaning pipe organ to lay down the foundation for its tracks. (Throughout, you can hear the vastness of this place, as sounds ricochet around, bounce off the rafters.) With help from Iceland-based producer Ben Frost-- whose ominous By the Throat is a touchstone here-- Hecker then finished the record in studio, digitally adding synth wash and wailing shoegaze crunch to his live recordings.

The result is a strange hybrid that lives somewhere between the digital and material realms, and it's remarkable how seamlessly the two are combined. For example, in a track like "In the Fog II", it's difficult to distinguish between the organic church sounds and the processed ones that came after. But while there is harmony between the source material, Ravedeath, 1972 is by no means about prettiness or tranquility. Hecker pits noises against one another in such a way that creates a constant push and pull between discord and beauty. It's a bit like William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, but instead of music aging over time, this is far more combative-- like these songs are being attacked from the inside out.

It's an unusual concept but relevant given the rate at which music is consumed and discarded these days. More important than the record's ideology, though, is what Hecker does with it-- the weight, atmosphere, and contrast he builds into these songs. Take for example the "In the Fog" suite, where over three tracks, Hecker lets dissonant squall threaten an undulating organ drone until it's taken over by wailing guitar noise in third passage. Or the two-part "Hatred of Music", which recalls an Oneohtrix Point Never synth shimmer before it disintegrates into distant industrial creaks. In each case it's not just about the wild, unearthly sounds he creates but the force with which they move around the mix.

Hecker is also smart with pacing and knows when to dial things back or add in softer, interstitial numbers when things start to become overwhelming. That's the case in the record's back half where he uses open-ended pieces to achieve the same foreboding effect. "Studio Suicide, 1980" is almost dreamy but has a sinister undercurrent, sounding something like the more punishing moments of My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" heard through the walls of a neighbor's apartment. I wouldn't go so far as to call songs like this and "Analog Paralysis, 1978", which has a similar celestial vibe, "ambient," but they are subtler than those in the first half and give the album a sense of balance and a natural arc.

If you buy into the concept of Ravedeath, 1972 as an examination of music threatened by technology, there are pretty clear threads that pop up over the course of the record to support that. For one, it seems that the organ sounds Hecker captured back in that Rejkjavik church represent a certain purity of sound and that the digital noise battering it throughout act as the enemy, the corrosive effect. There's an ongoing struggle between the two that's mirrored in the menacing song titles and gripping cover art. It's important, then, that the album closes with "In the Air III", a track that features almost no interference whatsoever, just the plinking organ by itself. If I'm reading it right, it feels like Hecker's point is that music, in its purest form, survives no matter what you throw at it. (from Pitchfork)

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Bill Callahan - Apocalypse (Drag City, 2011)

2011-05-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from the arc of Bill Callahan’s career, it might as well be this: there is dignity in understatement. Once a 4-track troubadour, Callahan has grown into middle age gracefully, trading in the intimacy of low fidelity for a more refined sense of self-expression. But even as his arrangements have become increasingly ornate — and his production cleaner and sharper than ever before — Callahan has retained his knack for deprecation and quiet, off-kilter observation. It should come as little surprise to any longtime followers that Apocalypse — the third studio album since abandoning the Smog moniker in favor of his given name — continues this slow march toward maturity. And, as expected, Callahan continues the transition with warmth and humor, and without even the faintest trace of self-importance.

Sure, there are moments that give pause, such as the jazzy, boisterous “America!,” where initially it seems that Callahan is making ill-advised forays into heavy-handed political protestation. When faced with a portentous title like Apocalypse, the listener can be forgiven for reading a little too closely in the hopes of finding greater meaning. But Callahan manages what Laurie Anderson — and many others — could not; he not only makes the political personal, but also connects his private epiphanies to universal experiences. Who else but Callahan could follow a free associative list of surreal and absurdist military references with as succinct and sly a line as “Everyone’s allowed a past/ They don’t care to mention?”

But “America!,” with its woozy electric guitars and heavy, metronomic drumming, is Apocalypse’s exception. The album is otherwise ruminative, soft, and subdued, full of lilting flutes and mournful fiddles. As is to be expected, a few mantras stand out: “One thing about this wild, wild country/ It takes a strong, strong/ Breaks a strong, strong mind,” Callahan sings on “Drover,” repeating his lyrics, turning them over and over, as if trying to make sense of his own passing thoughts. On “Riding for the Feeling” — one of the most tender and conventionally pretty songs of Callahan’s 20-odd-year career — he makes a disarming confession:

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
"Who do you think you are?"
So I could tell them.

Never the most expressive vocalist, Callahan attempts a rough baritone croon as he sings those lines, and the effect is nothing short of heartbreaking. As an artist who has built his career on confessional songwriting — though, lately he’s eschewed the offering up of embarrassing personal details, tossed-off references to bad habits, and peculiar sexual peccadilloes — there’s something unexpectedly moving about his desire to redefine himself, to acknowledge the endless struggle over identity.

Maybe this isn’t how Callahan intends to be interpreted. One song later — on the Astral Weeks-y “Free’s” — he wonders whether the consequence of freedom is “being derided for things I don't believe/ And lauded for things I did not do.” Such is the risk of deeply personal writing, but, then again, thinking of the way Callahan repeats certain phrases, pulling and shaping them, he appears to be less afraid of being misinterpreted than he does of failing to make sense of himself.

“My apocalypse,” Callahan sings on two songs, seemingly in reference to his failure to represent himself properly. But the tone of his voice, calm but still cautious, implies that he’s somehow found a way to make peace with his own shortcomings. The listener, however, need not make any such compromises. Apocalypse is keenly observed, distinctly humane, and predictably idiosyncratic; it is yet another minor triumph from an artist who, despite his constant self-deprecation, seems incapable of offering up less than his best. (from Tiny Mix TAPE)

Apocalypse

Joanna Newsom - Ys

2011-04-04T07:36:00.000-07:00

The biggest tragedy concerning Joanna Newsom's brave, marvelous new album, Ys, would be if everyone sat there listening to it like bored middle-school kids at an amateur Shakespeare production. Newsom's copious, knotty verse is far removed from that of the old poet, but its effect on the crowd is similar: Yes, it's hard to follow without the lyric sheet, it takes a few passes to catch the nuances, and all that drama can seem like something of a history lesson. Ys-- pronounced "ees" or if you prefer, "yeesh"-- is free of the jolts and heads-up hooks we expect from pop music. But while it's sure to suffer accusations of empty self-indulgence from some, many will find the contrary truer: Ys offers an endless wealth of substance, teeming with dense, well-mapped beauty.

Take one example: "Monkey and Bear". The song's title characters escape from the farm where they've lived safely all their lives, before one deviously cons the other into performing for frightened children in order to make a living. Listen to the greed the monkey conveys in degrading, insulting, and controlling the bear, and the tight grip he keeps on her dignity so as not to lose her-- which, of course, by the end, he does. Not bad for what starts out like a nursery rhyme.

Newsom has said that all five of the songs on this 55-minute album tell true stories. But to find them, you'll wade through lines and lines of fantastic allegories and arcane references. Early listeners have latched onto the folky-druid overtones as an excuse to dismiss the record. But nobody's going to reject a record this bold just because Newsom uses the word "thee" on occasion, or because she appears in promotional photos wearing a wolf pelt ass-up on her head. What we really can't handle is escapism. We instinctively balk at artists who hunker down in their own worlds-- especially when they force us to guess what they're thinking.

For someone who's been pegged as an "outsider artist," Newsom chose a presentation that's defiantly decorous. Van Dyke Parks' orchestration is polite, never intruding on her performance. And her voice, though less shrieky and childlike than on The Milk-Eyed Mender, is still a tough read. The way she creaks, wavers, and punches the lyrics is expressive but never in an obvious way; rather than just illuminating the lyrics, she's almost sticking another code on top of them.

But for all the exquisite melodies, arrangements, and production work, Newsom's lyrics make the performance. She crafts elaborate images but drives them with strong actions, and even the densest tangents keep pulling you along. An image like this one, from "Emily"--

"I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror"

-- is beautiful in its own right, but it's also full of movement. Every line of the record conveys some want or desire. This is easy to hear on "Only Skin", the most modern (and Kate Bush-like) cut, where she describes "being a woman"-- feeling fear, carrying candy like a mother, sharing her lover-- with language as vivid as she uses for a cloudy sky. Her eloquence starts to feel so natural that when she sings a line as blunt as, "Stay with me for a while/ That's an awfully real gun"-- it sticks out like a rend in fabric. And the centerpiece, "Sawdust and Diamonds", comes closest to a full release: While the strings take a smoke break, she performs an exhilarating rhapsody where striking verbs-- "cleft," "shook," "buckle," "crash"-- support sweeping allusions to death, love, and fear. Her heart's racing, and she doesn't stop it.

This isn't a great album because she owns a dog-eared encyclopedia, or because it stands above the cheap rewards or superficial freakiness we expected from her. It's great because Newsom confronts a mountain of conflicting feelings, and sifts through them for every nuance. It's intricate and crammed with information, but it's never bookish, and she never sits back in a spell and lets her heart flutter: She swoops into the sky and races across the ground, names every plant and every desire, and never feels less than real. The people who hear this record will split into two crowds: The ones who think it's silly and precious, and the ones who, once they hear it, won't be able to live without it. - by Chris Dahlen

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Natalie Rose Lebrecht - Warraw

2011-04-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Greenpot Bluepot is actually a one woman project by NYC based artist Natalie LeBrecht. She gets the participation of a few other musicians now and then, but mostly this is her own multilayered and multi-talented expression.

I will try to keep the description of the music brief, because anyone can still check it out themselve. We hear large portions of spinning wheel guitars, hand-percussion, additional bass and amplified guitars, very nice vocal arrangements, with a heavenly voice and intuitively evolving semi-improvisational structures. On track 3 and 6 we hear additional trumpet by Pascale Cangiano (and cymbals by Michael Evens). All tracks seems to evolve in one another, like a musical book, varying from a beautiful kind of pleasant avant garde (track 4) to even more funny and odd multi-multilayered vocals (animals-and-toys-like pure vocalisations) (track 5) into more “normal” songs, (track 5,6,7). The vocal arrangements, with guitars, metallophone keyboards and other keyboards, trumpet sound brilliant on track 8. It’s difficult to skip any of these tracks. On various tracks an army-like "shouting" (harmonised by Natalie of course) intermediates with the other singing. Track 10 is a short trumpet solo before the last 17 minute song, accompanied by acoustic guitar, organ, synthesizer, and autoharp. This is work of true expression, true art.. Highly recommended !!

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ID Battery - Lily Events (Unique Ancient Tavern, 1997)

2011-03-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

Packaged in a plastic wallet with translucent paper cover. On the back cover is a seven line poem (taken from a book "Ritual: A Book of Primitive Rites and Events" by Jerome Rothenberg) which is often mistaken for the titles of the tracks. The pieces themselves are actually untitled.

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Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia - Burning with your old joy in the terminal sun (Ikuisuus, 2009) // The Angular Accelleration Of Light In The Mind Of Dead Uncle In Michigan (Reverb worship, 2009) // Fractal Psych-Obsessions For Rural Chaos (267 lattajjaa, 2009) // Time of love doesn't converge with the system of evil (A Beard Of Snails Records, 2009)

2011-03-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

Salvatore Borrelli is the man behind post digital/textural outfit ( etre ). His work as Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia is long-needed break from this music, and a foray into other influences, mentors, and the concept of naturalism. Combining acoustic guitar, flutes, and a wealth of other hand-crafted country-specific instruments, Borelli infuses all of his influences into a sprawling folk-tinged 50 minute improvisation (all of the guitars being recorded in one night during a volcanic eruption near Borrelli’s home).

The guitar improvisations (often stumbling in and out of rhythmic and melodic spells) make up the backbone of this release, as others (including Celtic Drone Harp, Shruti & Squeeze boxes, Dulcimer, Esraj, and Irish bouzouki) often flush in and out--either in tonal perpendicularity or syncing up with the erratic journeys of the guitar. Working around the single guitar improvisations provides Borrelli with a more straight-forward narrative, and what keeps the album compelling is when all the instruments suddenly find themselves in sync rhythmically (even for brief spells). Though Borrelli wishes to invoke “the states of mind of Maya Deren, Carole Schneemann, George Bataille and Derek Jarman”, it is best to view and judge the piece on what Borrelli, in his own words, attempted to accomplish: “the spirit of play between free improvisation and the accuracy of composed parts without making any compromises”.

Does it accomplish this? Yes, and quite expertly, but mostly right smack in the thick of it, as it takes some time warming up to what you are embarking upon. Like any experiment under these parameters, a musician can either lose his or herself in wandering, or more dangerously, lose the listener. Again, Borelli smartly has a set selection of instruments from the get-go, thus every wandering path, every new rhythmic or melodic strain is in some way familiar. This makes the journey more readily taken, allows for degrees of emotional investment, and makes close listening deeply, deeply rewarding. 7/10 --John Ganiard on Foxy Digitalis

Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia is an artist among the handful of Italian weird-folk artists such as Selaxon Lutberg, Donato Epiro, Architeuthis Rex, Valerio Cosi, and We Wait for the Snow that are often associated with the Italian label, Centre of Wood. Each artist, however, ought not to be lost in the lumping together of their common association. Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia is no exception. This project, which is the brainchild of Salvatore Borrelli ( e t r e ), unquestionably stands out, making its own autonomous mark on the experimental folk scene. Harps comes full-blast with its own sound of avant-folk-forest tracks. It boasts a “new form of rural psychedelia.” And a new form it is indeed. I have never heard anything like this before. It is a cross between blue grass, drone, and noise (made with traditional instruments). I appreciate its purist approach, sans major electronics. You really get a taste of the rural countryside in a very improvisational, avant-garde way. It is easy to spot the instruments used in this one: guitar, banjo, lyre, harps, organ, ukulele, brass, cymbals, and many others. Any strings are either plucked or bowed. On top of all the instruments are hints of field recordings and vocals. The vocals almost sound like Ilyas Ahmed’s highs minus the intelligible word annunciations. Instead, any voice is used as an instrument itself. No focus on lyrical poetry, but rather the emphasis is placed on the sound of the vocal chords themselves. There’s only a track or two that might challenge this statement as lyrics seem to emerge. However, I still think that Borrelli cares more about the sound of his voice than the words. I’ll let him tell me otherwise. Definitely intriguing.

Now, to the actual sound of the CD itself… An intrusive discordant dance of spattered notes from instruments that have long since been tuned. Drones are birthed by long strokes of gliding bows. Almost sounds like a warm up session for some kind of early pagan folk songs. Although sometimes demanding upon the listener, I really dig this. Somehow all the cacophonous elements work together to create a unified whole that is very satisfying. Props to Borrelli for offering up such an enigmatically pleasurable release. Standard Reverb Worship card sleeve with minimal paste-on art and separate track list sheet. 8/10 --Dave Miller on Foxy Digitalis

burning with your old joy in the terminal sun

The angular accelleration of light...

time of love doesn't converge with...

fractal psych-obsession for rural chaos

Luciano Cilio - Dialoghi del presente

2011-03-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

From The Wire :"Originally released under the name Dialoghi Del Presente in 1979, Dell'Universo Assente (The Absent Universe) is a posthumous release with extra tracks from Neapolitan composer Luciano Cilio, who committed suicide in 1983 at the age of 33. As Jim O'Rourke says in the sleevenotes: "... you can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found... this enormous weight that is bearing on its creators, the absolute need to exorcise it from their lives. This does not mean that it is necessarily an outpouring of angst or bereavement, but a moment in time where you are invited to hear artists truly in contact with their existence."
These recordings sound as they feel self contained, introspective, and determined, you can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, as in Bill Fay's "Time of the Last Persecution", or in Nick Drake's "Pink Moon": this enormous weight that is bearing on it's creators, the absolute need to exorcize it from their lives, a moment in time where you are invited to hear artists truly in contact with their existence. Luciano Cilio holds that moment in time, an authentic emotional testament, something to be cherished (...) from Jim O'Rourke liner notes

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TwinSisterMoon - Then Fell the Ashes... [Blackest Rainbow, 2010]

2011-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Brand new full length vinyl LP from Natural Snow Buildings’ Mehdi Ameziane’s solo project. This is the third vinyl release from Twinsistermoon since last summer’s The Hollow Mountain LP and Bride of Spirits 7″ which were both released on the excellent Dull Knife label. Following on from these two gems, as well as various obscure self released discs and CDs on Digitalis and Students of Decay, Ameziane’s sound has grown somewhat darker at times with this brand new LP featuring nearly 50 minutes of new material. The A side features 6 tracks, where as the B side is a huge almost 25 minute track. The opening track ‘Black Nebulae’ is a gorgeously textured psychedelic drone based piece, followed by a short, quieter, guitar plucked piece with vocals, but no words entitled ’1976′. ‘Ghost That Was Your Life’ is a stunning beautiful layered guitar piece with Ameziane’s astounding beautiful vocals shining through. ‘Big Sand’ opens as one of the darker pieces, with an occult feeling to its sound, swirling vocal drones, almost like a choir at times, and in come those stunning warm and distinctive gutar sounds with layered ghostly sound scapes, that haunt much of Ameziane’s solo and NSB recordings. Half way through this track it fades into layered field recordings, drones, and distant chimes, the sound of this track at this point just has a real melancholy vintage sound, the last two minutes are again a change of sound with a slow plucking of guitar strings. ‘Desert Prophecy’ returns of the sound of just Ameziane and his guitar, with some lo-fi electric riffing distrotion in the background. Its pretty incredible to hear this and think that its from 2010, and not from the 60s or 70s. The sixth and final track on the first side is ‘Trailer’, another beautiful somewhat lighter folk sound, which is interesting considering the following is the albums title track ‘Then The Ashes Fell’, a side long track which is a considerably darker and heavier than much of the rest of the LP, but it weaves in some beautiful lighter more reflective moments. Heavyweight vinyl housed in deluxe heavy thick card tip on jackets. Edition of 979.

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Gastr del sol - The Japanese Room At La Pagode (Table of the elements, 2005) // The Harp Factory On Lake Street (Table of the elements, 2005) // Mirror Repair (Drag city, 2004) // Twenty Songs Less (Treenbeat, 2004) // Camoufleur (Drag city, 1997) // Upgrade & Afterlife (Drag city, 1996) // Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly (Drag city, 1994) // The Serpentine Similar (Teenbeat, 1993)

2010-12-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

Gastr Del Sol, an evolution of Bastro's last line-up, i.e. the trio of David Grubbs on guitar, Bundy Ken Brown on bass and John McEntire on drums, gave new meaning to the word "subtlety" with The Serpentine Similar (1993), which inherited from Slint the grammatical mistakes but replaced the hardcore energy of Slint with an anemic nonchalant flimsiness. Despite the mood swings, the music bordered on free-form "slo-core" and John Fahey's transcendental suites. Jim O'Rourke joined the ranks for the chamber lied Eight CornersThe Harp Factory On Lake Street (1995), both monopolized by his ambient dissonances and derailed by anarchic jamming. Gastr Del Sol became basically a duo of Grubbs and O'Rourke for the alienated scores of (1994) and the chamber concerto of Upgrade And Afterlife (1996) and Camoufleur (1998), that virtually reinvented the format of the "ballad" for the post-rock generation (dissonant chamber music loosely anchored to an off-key melody).

Gastr Del Sol's research program was basically continued by the solo albums of David Grubbs, beginning with the solo sonatas of Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange (1997). The Thicket (1998), recorded with a supergroup featuring John McEntire on drums, Josh Abrams on bass, Jow Bishop on trumpet, and Tony Conrad on violin, was an exercise of angst-filled settings for a new style of story-telling, of mixing timbric exploration and folk melody. Its compositions betrayed and fused Grubbs' influences: Red Crayola, Pere Ubu, John Fahey and John Cage. After the avant-jazz jams of Apertura (1999) and Avocado Orange (2000), Grubbs returned to the idea of his masterpiece with The Spectrum Between (2000), although in a simpler and lighter tone.
David Grubbs (guitar player in three of the most important bands of the '80s, Squirrel Bait Bitch Magnet and Bastro) along with bass player Bundy Brown, formed Gastr Del Sol.
The first EP, The Serpentine Similar (Dexter's Cigar, 1993), with the collaboration of John McEntire, is a deeply experimental record. Apart from a few scant touches by McEntire on percussion, the tracks are arranged for guitar and bass only or for piano and bass (in rare exceptions voice too). What sets this music apart isn't so much its bare arrangements, but rather the ambiguous incongruities in its harmony.
The lengthy A Watery Kentucky (nine minutes) is more of a "slowcore" piece, that catatonic and slighty shoddy rock, whose mawkish cords and slow rhythms veer towards the ecstacy of acidrock. Its course is infused with unsettled chords, its dialect layered in scores of sub-linguistic fragments.
Even The Odd Orbit is a free excursion of bass and acoustic guitar, that alternate with nervous jolts and impressionistic touches.
A Jar Of Fat (a rendering of Sketch For Sleepy by Bastro) is an improvised piano solo in the style of Thelonious Monk.
Grubbs even indulges himself by doing an imitation of Duan Eddy's "twang" in Ursus Arctos Wonderfilis, unsurprisingly producing that atmospheric tone in simple arrangements and dynamic structures that recall the inspirational jams by John Fahey.
Grubbs recruited by Jim O'Rourke to compose the single 20 Songs Less (Teen Beat, 1993) and the acoustic Crookt Crackt Or Fly (Drag City, 1994). Both are radical works, although of different kinds. The latter is, first and foremost, a study of guitar deconstruction. The 13-minute Work From Smoke squeezes a pastoral ballad between dissonant flamenco picking and the country-raga fantasy of a drunk John Fahey, which then fades into free-jazz jamming for the subconscious. Every Five Miles is an even more abstract stream of consciousness, in which the guitar is consistently plucked at the limit between harmony and noise, the tempo is ever changing, and the tones get harsher and harsher. The longest piece, The Wrong Soundings
Grubbs also collaborated to records by Codeine and Red Krayola, showing himself to be one of the more creative minds of his generation.
Grubbs' distinctive style has few precedents in the world of rock music. Throughout all his guises he has always shown the good taste to remain true to himself and wise even in the light of the major clashes. If anything it makes sense to dust off the rural watercolors of John Fahey, for perhaps the sole reason that they also share in an almost inspirational sense of what is to come of music, a natural propension for free improvisation.
With Brown out of the picture, but going strong with Jim O'Rourke, by now a fixed asset, the mini-album (15 minute), is propelled by hardcore spasms but in between the music is shapeless magma of guitars and percussions. The shorter pieces of the album are throwaways, but the longer ones contributed to define a new vision at the border between rock, folk and jazz.Mirror Repair (Drag City, 1994) is another sequence of staggering experiments, moderated by the lyric sensitivity of Grubbs. The protracted Eight Corners tests the dimension of the piano romance in minor tones, interspersed with lean roars and screeches of wind instruments. The two merge with the guitars in Dictionary Of Handwriting, starting in the vein of Henry Kaiser's free form aphorisms and ending with a more energetic pace.
O'Rourke's environmental dissonances dominate the 17-minute piece of the EP The Harp Factory On Lake Street (Table Of The Elements, 1995), basically divided into three parts: eight minutes of loud and soft excesses for small ensemble that evokes the atmosphere of an expressionist kammerspiel, a melancholy piano-based lullaby a` la Robert Wyatt, a lengthy and disjointed piano solo. The intricate chromaticism and the absurd dynamics of this piece further up the ante, pushing the Gastr del Sol project to the border with classical music.
On UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE, Gastr Del Sol's David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke carry most of the load themselves, in contrast to the more collaborative nature of their earlier albums. Although John McEntire and violinist Tony Conrad do make appearances here, Grubbs and O'Rourke are engaged in a continual joust with a bevy of sophisticated found sounds. The Sea Incertain is the best example of this cut-and-paste style, blending slow-moving piano figures with the hiss of a low-register clarinet.
The monotonous guitar tolls of Hello Spiral, which move lazily into a crescendo, are highly musical compared to the long pauses and lean sounds of The Relay. To create confusion, Grubbs and O'Rourke throw in simple songs for voice and guitar along the lines of Nick Drake, such as the gorgeous Rebecca Sylvester, whose lengthy guitar repetition makes a strong emotional impact. These songs couldn't be more out of place in the overall scenery of UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE, but the instrumentation works in perfect harmony with alienated tone of the parts. The noise becomes luxury furniture, to be arranged with taste in the (sonic) space which is available.
Grubbs' Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange (Table Of The Elements, 1997) is an avantguarde record along the lines of Loren Mazzacane Connors. The album is made of three solo numbers: one for piano, one for electric guitar, and one for acoustic guitar. But Grubbs' well-mannered and static style brings to mind the work of Morton Feldman and the meditations of Japanese classical music rather than Mazzacane's experiments. Grubbs gives vent to some whims of his own with the last two tracks, Potato Lettuce (twelve minutes) and Onion Orange (sixteen minutes), that skirt Cage-like silence. Ideally, this album represents the end of a long journey through the labyrinth of sounds, a journey launched with Squirrel Bait, continued in Bitch Magnet and Bastro, and perfected in Gastr Del Sol.
O'Rourke and Grubbs are in top form on Camoufleur (Drag City, 1998), a makeshift meeting of abstract art and pop music, and, in a way, the alter ego of Upgrade And Afterlife. Two ballads tower over the album. O'Rourke's Mouth Canyon is languid and hypnotic. The texture is apparently simple but actually quite complex. Grubbs' Blues Subtitled No Sense Of Wonder is a masterpiece of restrained dynamics: piano, noise, organ, cello and trumpet behave like voices of a crowd, then soar together to accompany the human voice, and finally fade out, leaving a plaintive piano to spill out anemic notes. There is a sense of apathy and futility that envelops and warps these ballads.
For better and for worse, the other tracks reflect what the two musicians know how to do best. Season's Reverse deconstructs funk, soul and jazz (and maybe even gives a glimpse of a more "popular" side of Grubbs' music). The instrumental Black Horse deconstucts folk dances, western soundtracks, and salsa, and ends with a three-minute guitar duet that updates John Fahey to post-rock. Fahey is the main inspiration behind Bauchredner, a seven-minute guitar dream that surprisingly closes with a triumphant trumpet-driven theme.
A Puff Of Dew is both the most surreal and the most apathetic track on the album. Here the two musicians hardly play and sing: they behave as if they were forced to sing and play. Sounds float around, rather than being organized in a song.
Each Dream Is An Example is a subdued brass fanfare punctuated by piano that sounds like a Frank Zappa ouverture played at half speed.
In many ways, the album showed that the project was impossible. Not because of lack of meaning. On the contrary: O'Rourke and Grubbs had too much to say. It was impossible precisely because those ideas could only partially be squeezed into the song format. Credit must be given, actually, to Oval's Markus Popp for keeping at bay the centrifugal tendencies of the two.
It wasn't a coincidence that the album by Gastr Del Sol came out right after O'Rourke's Bad Timing, a work as revisionistic as this one, if not more.
Unfortunately, O'Rourke and Grubbs parted ways after the recording of this album.(by Piero Scaruffi)

the japanese room at la pagode

the harp factory on lake street

mirror repaired

twenty songs less

the serpentine similiar

crookt, crackt, or fly

upgrade & afterlife

camoufleur

Lionel Marchetti - Red dust (Crouton, 2005)

2010-12-26T04:16:00.000-08:00

There are no marks on this collection suggestive of product or capital. The music, packaged in a jewelry box with five heavy stock cards, bares no trace of greed or dishonesty. The entire package is, on all counts, a work of art far removed from concerns about ownership or illegal practices. The simple act of opening this package is a joy, a revelation of personality and craftsmanship and the importance they still carry in the world of music.

Not since I bought my first LP has a package seemed so stunning. The artwork may be small and the presentation austere, but it carries a personality all its own. This is the work of an individual whose personality shines through his music and his choice of medium. With him comes an entirely new world, a place reshaped in the name of sound and forged beneath the idea that sound is transformative, musical, and everywhere all of the time. Lionel Marchetti is a student of Pierre Schaeffer, a composer whose heart belongs entirely to the uneven pulse of musique concrète's open arms. Both music and musician are welcoming on this collection, enticing listeners to open up the box and travel somewhere for an hour or so, forgetting, in the process, whatever notions might influence the way Red Dust could be heard initially.

The collection is broken up into three 3" discs, each described as a separate movement in a "study" on musique concrète. Do not let the academic language be deceiving. Although Marchetti might be a student of the art, his music is a living mass of people, places, musicians, and ideas. This is not a work of art that belongs in the stuffy atmosphere of a museum or in the halls of an egocentric art gallery; Red Dust is alive, stirring up memories and reanimating old sources of inspiration in its movement. Each disc has an accompanying card included in the set. These cards list the track titles, the musicians responsible for each piece, and in some instances the names of musicians or artists from whom Marchetti has pulled samples or ideas. Included in the collection are the names Fritz Lang, Marcel Duchamp, Pierre Schaeffer, Henri Chopin, and some other, slightly more surprising names: This Heat, Keiji Haïno, The Residents, and PanSonic. It is obvious that Marchetti truly believes music is everywhere and in every time as his choice of sources reflects an expansive appreciation for music in many different forms. Each of the three discs are, in fact, quite distinct, but form a loose narrative in the same way that some cubist art approximates movement. There is room for the listener in this box, plenty of space for him or her to communicate with the sounds and inform where it will go next. The very act of listening changes the outcome of this collection, but every act of listening will also exact a trace of stunning beauty and perverse movement in the brain of the participant.

The first disc, entitled "Livre Maudit," is described as a three part performance in ten movements. Many of the pieces on this disc are less than half a minute long. Four of the tracks, in fact, occupy well over half of this disc. The mood is overwhelmingly dark, the industrial sounds used generating a repressive and dangerous atmosphere. With the inclusion of either hysterical or serene vocal parts, Marchetti creates a pool of ever- changing emotions. The use of romantic, nearly Caretaker-esque samples only strengthens the sense that Jack Nicholson is on the verge of bringing some of his dead friends back from the grave and putting them all in the most grotesque of ballroom dances. Instead of occupying a haunted hotel, however, they're all going to travel by way of electricity and warp every corner of the industrial world. Pierre Schaeffer's train stations and Keiji Haïno's guitars are equally in danger of being haunted and cursed by these apparitions. At the same time, Marchetti includes some exquisite vocals and gentle silences in his compositions. The sense that this disc is, in reality, cursed increases with each listen. Moving to the second disc will only reveal just how dense and manic the first is.

Both the second and third discs, "Livre Magnétique" and "Livre D'Eos," are given more room to stretch. Instead of occupying either of these "books" with a spattering of very short pieces, both contain a series of longer compositions that reflect more than attack. The inclusion of robotic voices over the duration of the remaining music instills a strong sense of narrative omnipresence. Both "Saturne" and "Visionses Nocturnae" on the second disc contain robotic conversations that include the composers name and, supposedly, his own explanation for the work he does. Not only does this put the music in an immediate proximity to the listener, but it bestows a sense of purpose, interrupting what might be considered a purely abstract collection and interjecting cause and effect or even history into the project. The robot asks questions like "Do you like my music?" and situates the recordings by addressing them as "modern." It's an almost comical moment considering much of what Marchetti does is rooted in a past that may seem more distant than it really is. All the while an exquisite drone passes by in the background with only the most subtle of thunderous rumblings interrupting it. Piano, static, radio signals, and marching bands all press together and by the end it feels as though Marchetti has opened the temple of his body and invited everyone inside for the remainder of the show. It's a stunning moment where the artist and the observer switch places, where the artist is forced to address the fact that he has an audience that he must listen to and understand as an artistic group. The artist can, after all, only compose to the extent that he is hindered by other, perhaps invisible factors. An audience is a perfect example of this kind of censorship and it seems to me that Marchetti is aware of that.

The final disc is my favorite; it is a sprawling work composed primarily of two compositions. The atmosphere is nocturnal, slow, and organic. "Penombra" features guitar and percussion as well as some seductive, near-operatic vocals, but is also satisfyingly abstract, floating hazily in the distance and slowly releasing the pressure that was built over the previous 40 minutes or so. It is amazingly beautiful and strikes me as the most musical piece in the collection. By the end of the disc, Marchetti has traveled from the dense, layered affairs that were characteristic of many of the earliest experimental recordings, to the open and free compositions that typify the work of many drone artists and other sound collage enthusiasts. "L'incendie" closes everything with the ringing bells of a church, the movement of ideas, information, fears, and problems passing below its incessant vibration. The piece seems to ring on forever, the inclusion of screams, radio interference, and other strange sounds only increasing the power of its hum. Marchetti affects this change subtly, allowing it to occur slowly, almost to the extent that it is unnoticeable. The melodic phrases that appear on the final disc seem to chart the end of abstract composition, but do not rob it of its grandeur and its ability to travel through time and reveal the music that is the world. On the other hand, perhaps these pieces reveal that everything is essentially musique concrète. All the music of the world has, in one way or another, been influenced by sounds that already existed. Composers simply structured them according to what they had available. Compositions are often written before they are expressed in sound, but perhaps sounds has always been there before the composition. There is no escaping the world as music.

There are very few boxed sets, much less records, that seem as well thought out as this one does. There are very few abstract recordings impressing me anymore, their weight and power seemingly fading away due to over saturation. Marchetti, however, has invigorated my belief in this medium and its ability to remind the listener that music is more than a product or a way to pass some time in an entertaining fashion. Music is ultimately an art and art ultimately informs, challenges, and provokes. There can be little doubt of that after listening to Red Dust. It strips the musical world of barcodes, FBI warnings, and greedy punks, and places music firmly in the realm of the listener's ears and mind. There are 300 copies of this collection available from Crouton and they are not asking a lot for it. This is highly recommended, as both a cerebral experience and a musical one. (from Brainwashed)

red dust