unconscious repeat

When I've moaned my last moan...

2008-05-17T13:19:00.003-04:00

The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi--Will My Jesus Be Waiting
The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi--Someone Watches Over Me

The Staple Singers--New-Born Soul
The Staple Singers--Gamblin' Man
The Staple Singers--New Home

2008-01-28T03:52:00.001-05:00

Krautrock legends, fine--but somehow too polite for me. That was always my verdict on Harmonia, even at their best (see Musik Von Harmonia's "Watussi"), not something I was ever really going to put on. But now Water Music has uncovered a live performance from 1974. Five tracks. The first is full of minimal, wanky guitar, if that's possible. It sucks, but the last four make up one of the best live albums ever released, arguably the best example of Krautrock, period (although the original Amon Duul will probably always have the edge for me)...

There are two 15+ minute epics. The first, "Veteranissimo", is the only track taken from one of their two albums, but the title is to be taken literally, because on Musik Von... it runs for less than five minutes. Here, it's a lot like techno--there's even a percussive synth thing totally reminiscent of those drills that used to take control of my E-cstatic teenage brain at raves. The difference, of course, is that it's spilling over with electric piano, organ, guitar--most of it sounding treated by the filter section of some heavenly synth--a perfect manifestation of mid-'70s warmth and the excitement of electronic music's fresh territory. This one actually does make me the man-machine. "Holta Polta" is even more intense, the most freakishly great thing on here, and so psychedelic it simply cannot be used for casual listening. The primary stress is still on rhyhthm, but the acid is kicked up to a higher level. On first hearing it last month, I actually found myself with my ear up to the speaker of my shitty boom-box at like one in the afternoon!

In between is a really sweet five-minute meditative piece, called "Arabesque", where Michael Rother's guitar finds a nice minor place and sticks there. At the end is "Ueber Ottenstein". As soon as this one begins, it drives home the fact that the electronic percussion throughout the album has been both dead solid, and supremely varied--some of the best percussion ever, period (that makes the third "best ever" I've had to resort to in this post...) But this track is really Rother's chance to redeem himself on lead guitar. He does all the damage he meant to do on the opener, laying out wave upon wave of refried, chunky tone over a nice reverbed keyboard lead, galloping rhythm, and, eventually, what sounds like the aural translation of a malfunctioning hologram trying to reproduce the image of a manic jungle bird. During the last four minutes particularly, everyone is in the God-zone at all once, and what that gives us is some kind of proto-electronica/space-rock dream you may have once had, but never thought you'd hear in a waking state...

Harmonia--Ueber Ottenstein

Blue Monday, part 2

2008-01-21T21:09:00.000-05:00

It's about that time...

The Beach Boys--I Went To Sleep

For nobody else...

2008-01-18T02:23:00.001-05:00

Blues is the only genre of music that takes its name from the range of emotions it seeks to express. Blues artists are supposed to be depressed about something, and that dissatisfaction can take on a variety of shadings within the music: wounded, plaintive, grave, resigned, wistful, desperate, angry, defiant, or even threatening. But we can already hear in some of the earliest blues recordings the emergence of an attitude that draws from all these feelings to create a kind of armor to protect against feeling any of them too harshly. It was a pose of exaggerated indifference, provocative and entertaining for the way it could make a performer seem to be floating above life, rather than being mired down in it like the rest of us. The desirability of this attitude is proven by the way it has managed to infect every form of popular music that’s development can be traced back to the blues, from rock ‘n roll, to reggae and rap (soul to a lesser extent, because of its tendency toward unabashed emoting). Then, as now, performers adopting this pose of indifference were most likely to earn the respect of an audience if they could imply that it was the result of having experienced more than their fair share of life’s ups and downs simply through their vocal, instrumental, or bodily presence, without needing to spell it out.

Robert Nighthawk (sometimes credited as “Robert Night Hawk“) embodies that approach as well as anyone in his singing and lead guitar playing--though few today can testify to his stage presence, as he succumbed to congestive heart failure in 1967. His chosen name, itself, gives the impression of a restless spirit, difficult to contain, and possessing a larger-than-life confidence or swagger. Born Robert Lee McCollum in Helena, Arkansas, 1909, he would earn his more poetic, adopted name the long and hard way. McCollum picked up guitar from Houston Stackhouse (who was possibly his cousin) in Mississippi, and went on to perform and record during the 30s and early ‘40s under a variety of names, before settling on Robert Nighthawk because of the continuing popularity of his debut record, 1937‘s “Prowling Night Hawk”. He would travel to Chicago periodically to record songs--and learn his famed slide guitar technique from the great Tampa Red--but he never stayed there for very long, preferring his home-town in Arkansas and, most of all, the open road to the big city. Because of his rambling nature and the infrequency of his recording dates, he never established a recording career or any amount of notoriety outside of blues circles, although during the course of his extensive travels he played with most of the famous blues musicians in the South and Midwest, and influenced a younger generation of more commercially successful Chicago blues performers, including Muddy Waters and Earl Hooker.

Like many bluesmen, Nighthawk’s style is best showcased live, and that’s why the “Maxwell Street” recordings conducted by Mike Shea for his documentary And This Is Free are an absolute goldmine. These recordings were first released in 1980 as Live On Maxwell Street, again, under the same title, on CD in the ‘90s, and in ’99, in extended form as a CD box-set called And This Is Maxwell Street (causing a bit of a controversy among Chicago blues enthusiasts, because it revealed the recordings as originally released to be incorrectly credited, and, in parts, surreptitiously edited). Either release demonstrates Nighthawk’s singular style of jagged, but hypnotic lead guitar--often dwelling on the same string for long runs in order to emphasize rhythm over melody. Not as celebrated--but just as unique--are his serene vocals, nowhere better employed than on the jaw-dropping medley of “Annie Lee” and “Sweet Black Angel”, recounting twin tales of sexual obsession with a lightness that contrasts brilliantly with the edgy guitar work, expressing satisfaction, compulsion, and desperation without ever resolving the three states--or breaking the majestic surface of the performance. It is a buoyant, seemingly effortless creative moment that was a whole life-time in the making, and it stands as the chief legacy of a man who refused to be pinned down.

Robert Nighthawk--Annie Lee/Sweet Black Angel

2007-12-13T21:54:00.000-05:00

Despite the title, this may be the best of the three Karen Dalton releases, through and through. Even the version of "Cotton-Eyed Joe" is devastating--you won't recognize it...

Karen Dalton--Every Time I Think Of Freedom

A dull wit will do at home...(time for the second phase to show)

2007-12-06T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've moved out of my parents' house for the second time in my life, and--after four(!) years--it almost feels like the first. What to say, other than that my twenty-six years have seemed like a long time already, without much having been accomplished? I'm hoping the next two can outstrip those first twenty-six...

Marvin Gaye accomplished plenty, although none of it ever meant much to me, aside from "Innercity Blues". Then, on a suicidal all-night drive I heard his "problem" record, a 1978 double album called Here, My Dear. The title was literal but heavily ironic--an alimony settlement required that the proceeds from his next two records be paid to his ex-wife, but I guess the exact phrasing of the judge's document was such that he could satisfy that obligation with one two-LP release. Gaye clearly had a lot to express during this time, and more of a motivation to make a non-commercial record than a commercial one, because what sweeter revenge to take on the woman than to produce a hitless monstrosity, generating as little money for her as possible? As he says in "You Can Leave, But It's Going To Cost You": "You have won the battle/But daddy's gonna win the war".

If these circumstances sound a little reminiscent of Sister Lovers, I'm happy to report that the resulting record is almost as fucked up, if not as amazing in the end. The songs have been composed and arranged to the point of rapture--he clearly wasn't trying to turn out something bad, he just had no need to cater to anyone--and that freedom is apparent everywhere. Unfortunately, some lax sonic decisions keep this short of perfection. Sax and synth sounds are the chief offenders here, often causing a clash between the '70s and '80s that'll have your ears wanting to somehow translate various parts into what they would have sounded like just a couple years earlier. In the right mood, with enough volume, these conflicts will mostly melt away, though, and I strongly suggest that anyone who's into the tracks below check out the whole album. I've been listening to it a lot the last couple weeks. It's filled with amazing moments and near-great songs.

On offer are the two best, over-all. "I Met a Little Girl" is slow and misty, especially touching when he starts naming off the years. "You Can Leave..." is very reminiscent of "Innercity Blues", and actually makes apt use of some blatant video game synths, as opposed to the less obviously '80s sounding but not-quite-as-deep-as-they-should be mellow synths on "I Met a Little Girl". I guess the moral is: sound can't hide; and this is illustrated further by "Ego Tripping Out", a shameless electro epic from the 1980 album that's been coupled with Here, My Dear on the remastered reissue. I had to cut some weak lyrics at the start, but the resulting four minutes are a bit like Neil Young's Trans mixed with prime Michael Jackson, and maybe LCD Soundsystem's Beat Connection (rhythmic but slow build to a big, anthemic release). The lyrics, when they return, have to be the best of Gaye's career. "I've got a sweet tooth/For that chick on the floor" is awesome enough, but by the time he gets to "Spread the news!" it's impossible not to freak out..."It ain't about money..."

Marvin Gaye--Ego Tripping Out (edit)
Marvin Gaye--I Met a Little Girl
Marvin Gaye--You Can Leave, But It's Going To Cost You

Thanks, again, to Ben...

Must be the weather...

2007-11-26T23:48:00.000-05:00

'The Old Weird America' is more interesting than 'The New Weird America', but Honey Owens/Valet is more interested in the Old Weird World, as in: "the idea of one's DNA code being accessed as eternal memory". Last week, scientists discovered a fossilized scorpion claw that was two feet long. They estimate its whole body was about eight feet long(!)--which only means it fit in with the giant dragonflies, cockroaches and spiders(!) that also flourished in prehistoric times. The cover art on Valet's forthcoming Naked Acid (front is like the rear, above, but with a giant, African tribal priestess drinking up that milky sea) suggests the most fundamental of all genetic memories: life in the ocean. But the sound has moved on from the eternal sensory-deprivation chamber of Blood Is Clean to a blown-out mutant universe where malfunctioning technology is some kind of virus, and ancient, incoherent dramas flicker on the skeleton of the future...I get all of that at least as much as "the Pacific Northwest landscape" and Honey's more obscure claims for inspiration, but neither my bullshit nor hers means much compared to her presence on vocals and guitar--in both cases stronger than anyone else's in music today. It doesn't hurt that the spirits still talk through her...the scary ones...

Naked Acid comes out next March, and it'll be very hard for anyone to best it all year. For a sample I've picked the most mysterious track, a scorched moonscape that is also a real space-rock song...

Valet--Kehaar

(more Valet)

I haven't done the things I should...

2007-11-20T03:17:00.000-05:00

This blog has never been afraid of clichéing itself in terms of track selection (or in plenty of other ways...), as long as the music is good enough. So here's an old southern gospel song called "Waiting at the River". It's not nearly as good or as weird as "Jesus Loves Me", though, so listen to that one first...

The Original Five Blind Boys of Mississippi--Jesus Loves Me
The Original Five Blind Boys of Mississippi--Waiting at the River

Unsichtbare Welt

2007-11-18T19:08:00.000-05:00

THE TRACKS FROM THIS POST HAVE BEEN REMOVED BECAUSE SOMEONE, I ASSUME KURT DAHLKE, COMPLAINED ABOUT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. WHOEVER IT WAS DIDN'T WRITE TO ME, BUT TO MY SERVER, WHO HAVE NOW THREATENED TO TERMINATE MY ACCOUNT IF ANOTHER SUCH COMPLAINT ARISES...WEIRD THAT HE ACTUALLY THINKS MY LITTLE BLOG IS DOING HIM HARM. THIS STUFF IS OVER TWENTY YEARS OLD AND OBSCURE. IT'S NOT LIKELY THAT ANYONE WHO WAS ALREADY SEEKING IT OUT WOULD HAVE BEEN SATISFIED BY THREE TRACKS, FROM TWO DIFFERENT ALBUMS, AND DISSUADED FROM BUYING THE ALBUMS THEMSELVES. I NEVER POST MORE THAN A FEW TRACKS FROM AN ALBUM, AND IT IS NEVER MY INTENTION TO CHEAT THE ARTISTS IN QUESTION. BUT ANYONE WHO DOES HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MY USE OF THEIR MUSIC, IT WOULD BE NICE IF THEY CONTACTED ME DIRECTLY INSTEAD OF GOING TO THE SERVER. WHATEVER, THOUGH, THE DUDE'S GERMAN...

Kurt Dahlke followed up the junky, DIY brilliance of his Der Plan project, with Pyrolator. As befits the new name, the tracks are more streamlined and the sounds cleaner, although he did manage to resist digital synths for the better part of two albums. "Ein Wienacht..." is a piece of catchy, semi-danceable German electro that occasionally taps into the analog drone ocean, in order to expand the boundaries of its funky little world. The other two tracks are all ocean, a few minutes each of the kind of directionless, late analog film-sound that people like me will fall for again and again. Less brooding than usual, but with a nice, raw this-was-out-there-and-I-just-tapped-into-it feel. "Der Volksmund der Beatnet" has more variation, while "Minimal Tape 1-8" simply is what it is...

Pyrolator--Ein Weihnachtsmann Kommt In Die Disco
Pyrolator--Der Volksmund Der Beatnet
Pyrolator--Minimal Tape 1-8

Grace Under Pressure

2007-11-14T23:52:00.000-05:00

This is so beautiful, I'd trade some great songs for it. No joke, in another age the guy would have been a prophet...Thanks to Ben for this, and to WFMU...

K-Rock Pavement Show, MC

Your messed up world still thrills me...

2007-11-10T22:13:00.000-05:00

Some bootleg-only Slowdive out-takes. "I Saw the Sun" is from the Souvlaki sessions. I prefer it to many of the songs on the album, but it probably shouldn't have made the cut because the mood is so different. The sound is very Souvlaki, but the vibe is more affirmative, even if all Halstead's affirming is "I saw the sun, ey, ey, ey..." In the ranks of shoegaze zen realizations, this is even slightly less affirmative than Ride's "Wake up, see the sun/What's done is done". I think what the song's about is an unknown amount of time lost on some very good depressants, with the dim memory of looking out a window to notice the sun in between night-time binges. And, yet, that's enough to clearly distinguish it from Souvlaki's impossible-not-to-drag-you-down undertow. But how do you not release this as a single, or at least a B-side? Alas, no perfect-quality version of this song seems to exist. This one is the best I could find...

"Like Up", on the other hand, sounds as good as you could want it to. And it doesn't really sound like Slowdive. Not only does this one fail to depress, there's hardly even any distortion on it (not at all on the "clean version"). But it's not acoustic like "Dagger" (shudder), or country/folk-tinged like Mojave 3. Probably more like one of those minor-place Primal Scream B-sides than anything...It's really hard to choose between the two versions, and if you kind of fall in love with this song as I have, then you'll want to check out both of them...

Slowdive--Like Up (clean version)
Slowdive--I Saw the Sun
Slowdive--Like Up

p.s. A little consideration for that line from "Alison" that goes: "With your talkin' and your pills/Your messed up life still thrills me". All the shoegaze bands get dumped on for having poor lyrics, but I nominate that as one of the sexiest lines ever. Not trying to be an image, and, so, sketching one more effectively than any amount of trying could..."TV-covered walls" is pretty good too...

2007-11-07T14:12:00.001-05:00

"Morning Song to Sally" finds the Texas "outlaw" in misty Leonard Cohen mode, although the lyrics, even at their most sentimental, always remain sensible--no "touched her perfect body with your mind" bullshit. Occasional steel guitar enforces Walker's country credentials, but the acoustic melody is pure aching folk, and that shaker...

"Louise" is back to country, his singing style a thick, lazy drawl on this one, oddly complemented by Nicolette Larson's drugged vocals. If he wrote the lyrics, they're probably his best ever, making for an unusually frank, lucid elegy--Texan in the way of The Last Picture Show, rather than kris kristofferson...

Jerry Jeff Walker--Morning Song to Sally
Jerry Jeff Walker--Louise

Mr. Nobody

2007-11-02T00:18:00.000-04:00

More lost Lee 'Scratch' Perry recordings come to light. If Perry's whole Black Ark period was his attempt at a kind of spiritual repatriation through sound, then the African Roots project gave him a chance to work with some real live, Africans, and he attached a good deal of symbolic weight to that fact. The sessions that produced Rockstone: Native's Adventures with Lee Perry at the Black Ark represented an opportunity for him to commune with another exploited indigenous culture, the North American Arawak tribe, and we know that he attached great significance to this as well. We know, because neither Wayne Jobson, nor anyone in his band, Native, had any Arawak blood in them, or any connection to the culture in at all. Jobson was of mixed English, African, Spanish, and Scottish heritage, and I guess his complexion suggested Arawak to Scratch, whose increasingly addled mind needed to run with that concept, and so he did--insisting despite all Jobson's protests, that the man was an Arawak. This fantasy fit nicely with the band's name, but of course it's more important that it was aligned with Perry's spiritual and emotional needs, because this was a very desperate time for him. His common-law marriage had broken up, and his relationships with collaborators, hangers-on, the music industry, and himself were disintegrating to the point where he would burn down his own studio in a paranoiac purge, and leave Jamaica, because, as he said "I realized I was a white man...The way black people was treating me, how could I be one of them?"...

The Pressure Sounds Rockstone release, isn't all Perry-recorded material, but about half of it is, and it's not hard to tell which half. The Perry productions seem to be quite literally disintegrating, or drowning in their own vinegar like celluloid when it starts to waste away. The wetness and woodiness, the quickened feel of his peak sound--channeling a jungle, pregnant and dripping after a healthy rain--has faded. What we're left with is the soul of a prophet losing connection with his voice, but driving it on--ironically enough--like a slave; the sound of a man not only glimpsing but diving into his own void. Both songs below bear witness to this state, as well they should, since they are likely some of the last pieces of music recorded at the Black Ark. "Meet Mr. Nobody" is probably a little better than "In the Land of Make Believe" because Jobson's lyrics never stray into "where children play" territory, and because Perry more completely subsumes the climactic guitar solo in that acid bath described above, but neither sounds like anything else on the planet.

Native--Meet Mr. Nobody
Native--In the Land of Make Believe

Manisch-Depressiv

2007-11-01T00:28:00.000-04:00

THE TRACKS FROM THIS POST HAVE BEEN REMOVED BECAUSE OF COMPLAINT ABOUT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT...

Poppy German synth experiments from 1980, ranging between New Wave-on-crack songs and dystopian sci-fi and whimsical horror soundtrack-type stuff. This guy Kurt Dahlke is a great producer. The sounds are alive and shabby, the opposite of cool and slick in a time when cool and slick were starting to spread like a disease. Bass and drum sounds are particularly impressive. "Adrenalin..." is quick and catchy, but so well constructed on a foundation of perfect, sequenced synth-bass and elegant drones that it never even approaches offensive levels of zaniness (the dude is German, so that's always a concern...). "Klein Grabesstile" is one of the little ambient ditties, but the vibe is neither nervy nor dark, it's pure alien luau, as visionary as one-minute interludes can be. "Generäle..." is back in song territory. About two minutes in, Dahlke works magic with what sounds like simultaneous pitch-bends in opposite directions, and just when it all seems to be headed for some crescendo or explosion, he sets a school of electrified outer space-tadpoles to devour everything and re-establish stasis. In the world of Der Plan, you learn that each extreme always anticipates the other...

Der Plan--"Adrenalin Lässt das Blut Kochen"
Der Plan--"Klein Grabesstile"
Der Plan--"Generäle Essen Gerne Erdbeereis"

The first image is an electron microscope's view of a tumor in the process of growing new blood cells. The second should be fairly obvious.

2007-10-28T23:11:00.001-04:00

A Donovan track from 2004(!), beautiful production, a great vibe, ranking with the best of his '60s stuff, no joke (though it's not at the level of "Colours, version III"). The song opens with a good, strong trad folk melody on guitar. A minute in the vibe properly kicks in with what sounds like a Hammond B3 muted in some uniquely fundamental way. If you'll bear with me, the tone is so special, the only thing it brings to mind is a little fiber-optic stone I got at some science-gimmick store as a kid: an actually naturally occurring, translucent white piece of rock with flattened bottom and top edges, so you could put the bottom on a wood table, say, and look into the top like a magnifying glass, only instead of the image of the wood-grain being magnified, it is transferred to the top of the rock so that the wood appears to be at that level, rather than at the bottom, where it really is. Basically, the fibers that run up the rock defeat your depth perception, seeming to erase their own length--and,, hence the distance between the table and the top of the rock--so that the rock, itself, looks to be permeated by the image of the wood in just this slightly spectral way...

If anyone followed all that, you deserve the Hammond tone, and the song as a whole. There's another textural bonus that comes in a little later, and then there're Donovan's lyrics, which don't get any worse than "Like a zephyr she's blowing...into my life...my life", and his vocals, which are surprisingly good, good enough to defeat the cringe-reflex I get from looking at those lyrics written out...

Thanks to Speck Mountain, and the massively stoned satellite-radio DJ who played this song during their post-CMJ drive. Check out the awesome new Burnt Brown Sounds website for more info about them, their tour dates, their debut full-length, Summer Above, and the second BBS release, Valet's Fire 7". Also look out for a non-album related single coming up soon, and a new album, to be recorded in December, and released sometime next year...

p.s. the best compliment paid to Speck Mountain in this little SPIN.com blurb is an unwitting one. The writer misinterprets the press-release's boast that no synths were used on the record to mean no "digital" synths, because its spacy textures are so defined by echo, he just can't bring himself to believe the only source instruments were guitar, organ, and piano...

Donovan--Whirlwind

2007-10-26T21:07:00.001-04:00

The title would turn me off too, but this is the most understated gospel song I've ever heard. Simple, sloppy acoustic guitar, the background noise of a mid-60s Chicago blues club, and Fannie Brewer's perfect, quiet grace, all add up to way more than another version of "I Shall Overcome". The way she delivers the chorus, alone, seems almost as if she doesn't want you to think that's what it is. I can't find a record of anything else she's done except two collaborative songs with her husband about the JFK assassination(?!), but based on this I think she could have run through about thirty classic gospel songs that night--picked at random--and come up with a double LP that destroys everything else in the genre this side of the Staple Singers. And as if making me think about all this isn't enough of a tease, the dicks who recorded the comp this came off of (And This Is Maxwell Street) only bother to include two minutes of the song, fading out on some particularly beautiful "ooo-oo-oo-oos", to a conversation between a righteous white guy and an "it's gotta be, it's gotta be" black guy about how the club is closing down. It would have been more poignant if you'd let us here the whole song assholes...

Fannie Brewer--I Shall Overcome

The image is the only one I can find--about fifteen years late--and she doesn't even have a microphone! I guess she gets to clap...

For fear of exploding...

2007-10-22T23:22:00.000-04:00

Anne Sulikowski is from Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton Wasteland, if you go by her myspace page, and whatever wasteland she has internalized, it is a real place--abstract, but almost impossibly detailed--in the mixes of "RoseDeToi(une Autre Fois)" and "Fixed". They sounded crazy and great when I first heard them through headphones on my computer, but when I burned a cd, and put the tracks on in my room, at around the three minute mark the air around me began to fill up with vivid forms (I didn't even have to close my eyes). They were tactile more than visual, but the visual was there as well. "Rose De Toi" has the ambience of a sci-fi movie too steeped in ennui to ever get made. An alien world where unseen beings always seem to be worshipping Slowdive's Pygmalion in another room (a random artifact from Earth?), there's lots of recycled black-and-gray technological uselessness under-foot, and, up above, the whole darkish sky is constantly traversed by massive streams of electrified debris, all of it lit up by enervated strobe flicks into one big, possibly holographic, swirl. I didn't adequately grasp the last couple minutes of the track on headphones, but lying there on my bed with those masses of electrified ether churning around me, I understood almost to the point of fear. I remembered something Survivorman once said about vampire bats--that their fangs are so sharp they can drain dangerous amounts of your blood without you even feeling it...

"Fixed" occupies the same wasteland, but its touch is not as light as those vampire bats. The middle portion of its twelve minutes is dominated by higher frequencies that stop short of being irritating, but I can see how they might try someone's patience in the wrong mood. Listen through though, because the last three or four minutes feel like transubstantiation by rock 'n roll. I can't tell what's generating any of the sounds, but they've been fused together with such a propulsive force that it feels like something vast is taking off and landing at the same time, and that you are caught up in both motions. It is one of the most amazing things I've heard in a long while, and I cannot stress enough that even those not partial to the middle section of the track have to hear those last few minutes at least once. It's something new. I haven't begun to wrap my head around it yet. Also, I should stress again that I don't think either track can be ideally experienced on headphones, but that you don't need a particularly good stereo (it seems to be about space, not sound quality--all of this was felt with mp3s on my cheap old boom-box!).

I don't know what or when these tracks are from. She just has them available to download for free on her website. The other track posted below is also from the website, and is---ironically--far shorter, as well as being more melodic and sweeter in tone. This link right here is to an earlier post of an Aidan Baker remix of one of her tracks that until recently I had labelled incorrectly as her remix of Aidan Baker. She has a new album coming out shortly on 9.12 Records, and lots of old albums that I think were probably self-released. A lot of the material is saner and songier, some of it with discernible guitars and even lyrics. She goes in for lots of different forms as well as moods, and I'm pretty psyched about all of it...

Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks--Roi De Toi (Une Autre Fois)
Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks--Fixed
Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks--Yes I Hate To Admit It But I Am In Love With You And Everything You Are

2007-10-18T22:33:00.000-04:00

As "Mosquito", the first track on Sun's I'll Be the Same kicks off, I get an instant shot of '90s Thrill Jockey nostalgia. But this is the "Pop Project" of avant-drone genius, sine-wave prophet, guitar-not-guitar god oren ambarchi, and I have to admit, this stuff has a few extra layers of sonic commitment to it. I don't really remember what the Sea & Cake sounded like, I just remember what they sounded like to me then: what "Mosquito" sounds like now. I'd be willing to bet Sun bring with them some advances in production nuance. Percussive ideas especially, keep this song from feeling stiff. Whereas the metronomic slap/strum on "Help Yourself" is resolutely a backbone, a grounding force for a more abstract bit of bliss-out that summons Jim O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway re-made by a suddenly capable Animal Collective with Robert Wyatt's voice guesting on a sunbeam...

Now I'm getting carried away, but the same voice(s?) that just manages to work on "Mosquito" is genuinely transporting on "Help Yourself", even if the build-up in woozy harmony-land takes up more time than the real song we eventually get to. But the record as a whole is caught somewhere between unfussy, familiar pleasures and pleasures deflected or withheld. And now I'm back to those flashbacks, when post-rock felt like more of a philosophy of life than an aesthetic...

Sun--Mosquito
Sun--Help Yourself

Dilation Time In Blue

2007-10-18T00:17:00.000-04:00

Only in music can people who promise "magical powers" and a "unique relationship to the Universe" actually be right. That's one of the things that keeps me in love with it. Take J.D. Emmanuel, self-described meditation guru, lover of jazz, minimalism, and the Rain Forest--and creator, in 1982, of the sommetimes-great electronic record, Wizards. A dolphin-happy Belgian outfit called Dreamtime Taped Sounds put together a vinyl reissue this year, and supposedly there's going to be a cd forthcoming, which would be nice because there are some problems with the vinyl copy I got. I don't know how many of the limited LPs are still available, but anyone who likes what's below should keep a look-out for that promised cd.

The general sound is like the sequenced synth theorems of Cluster's Zuckerzeit slowed down (although a couple of the longer tracks are at about Zuckerzeit-tempo) and with a warmer, less clinical feel, partially due to the heavy reliance on organ. On the three long tracks, in addition to Dark Side Of the Moon and Music Has the Right... vibes, some cheesier (always analog synth, sometimes digital delay) sounds invade the pristine world established on the shorter openers, but the patterns they are involved in are often so fundamentally gratifying, you probably won't care. "Expanding Into The Universe" is the test-case, if you can deal with that crumpled synth sound and the pitch bend orgy at the end, then you should be into most of the record. "Prayer" is the one, though--no qualifications necessary. Melodies and counter-melodies are locked tight in exactly the kind of meditative pattern this J.D. Emmanuel guy is going for. It's a tremendous compliment that I'm including this track recorded too fast, at 45 rpms, in addition to the normal 33 rpm version. Note the same magical trance powers harnessed to more manic ends but still coming off as smooth and architecturally sound as a crystal formation. Speaking of which, the effect is something like playing Legend of Zelda with the sound on, and listening to Zuckerzeit at the same time, while under the influence of a stimulant refined enough to allow the two to merge into one. Those of you who already spend your Saturday nights trying to make that happen can consider yourselves saved...

J.D. Emmanuel--Part II: Prayer
J.D. Emmanuel--Part II: Prayer (45 rpm)
J.D. Emmanuel--Part IV: Expanding Into The Universe

Water will always be, and so will I...

2007-10-15T00:31:00.000-04:00

I once bought a comp because it claimed to contain "ambient soul". That was a lie. This time it's not. It's called "Water Water". Fittingly, the organs are liquid, and the only thing that's not ambient is the singing...cause he means it...

Joe Hicks--Water Water

The best laid plans...

2007-10-12T22:08:00.001-04:00

Penguin Cafe Orchestra--Zopf: In a Sydney Motel

"'But what does it mean?'...

2007-10-09T22:25:00.000-04:00

... 'What does it mean? Nothing.'" That exchange between a horny, middle-aged cocktail waitress and Tom Cruise is the key moment in the movie Cocktail. He has just showed her and her equally horny, equally middle-aged co-workers an incomprehensible coin-trick/huddle exercise thing that I defy anyone to explain. The fact that one of the waitresses actually does ask him to explain it, and the nature of his answer are examples of why I can say the movie is special in not merely an "I love stupid trash!" kind of way...

There's been a lot of movie music lately, but don't worry, I didn't uncover a forgotten gem from the Cocktail soundtrack. I've only called on Cruise's TGIFriday's wisdom to help illuminate Nancy Elizabeth's "In the Morning". There aren't many lyrics in the song, and it's possible that I've missed one or two key words, but it really doesn't seem to be about anything. That emotive--just shy of florid--piano-break in the middle seems to be what it's all about. It's the main musical draw, and seems to be concealing something that happened 'last night' (from the narrator's point of view) that was so heavy she's not even going to get into it. She'd rather end the song after two minutes, and it's probably a good move, because I doubt whatever happened would be as revelatory to us as it is to her.

Judging by her new album ("In the Morning" is a B-side), not a lot has happened to her. But Leaf didn't sign her for reasons of grit or life-experience. Her record is lonely-bower music: vague, lush, bedroom-jams for suburban Rapunzels on both sides of the Atlantic. She isn't a total 19th-century pretender--the word "bower" wouldn't quite fit in to any of her songs--and yet there is something undeniably Victorian-feeling about her instrumentation and the generic loftiness of her song-writing. If the lyrics were a little better, the album could be better, but as it is it's not without interest.

"Weakened Bow" arguably outdoes "In the Morning"--the cyclic guitar, Indian harmonium, and deep double-tracked vocals are real nice to get lost in. But it does ask you to deal with the line: "Unkind actions melt me". Another song, "How Can I Stop?" makes surprisingly good use of a manic cello-drone by blurring/dampening its impact in the mix so it sounds subdued but conveys anxiety at the same time. In general she's able to make dramatic arrangement details work far better than they should, only the harp gets to be over-bearing at times...

Advice for improvement would be to let someone rescue you from the tower or whatever--especially if they have dirty things on their mind--it might give you something to write about next time...Hope it happens soon, too, because the hourglass is nearly run down on all things folky...

Nancy Elizabeth--In the Morning
Nancy Elizabeth--Weakened Bow

2007-10-08T23:02:00.000-04:00

Now five years old, Mapstation's A Way to Find the Day still sounds the right mix of past and future. This balance feels fundamental, like it's been encoded more than simply layered or arranged. Tension-and-release is being played with here, but--to an unusual degree--it's both at the same time rather than an alternation between the two. The result feels like warmth and abstraction fighting to get out of a rigged laboratory trap, the irony being that conditions are ideal in there--escape would only be a disappointment...

Mapstation--I Don't Know My Generation
Mapstation--When You Collide
Mapstation--Midnight Gegenlicht

The whole album is recommended, aside from two trip-hop style vocal tracks.

Sex is a proud, sad ocean. I don't know why...

2007-10-03T19:55:00.001-04:00

A bonus track from the latest cd reissue of The Byrds' Younger than Yesterday, this is closer to solo-Crosby in tone than any other Byrds song. And I guess no one else in the band liked it, cause there's no way Crosby wouldn't have wanted this one on the original album. Another one of those "it's still the '60s but it's almost the '70s" vibes...

The Byrds--It Happens Each Day

2007-10-02T15:26:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time Sean Penn was intense without being an embarassment, Christopher Walken had edge, and a Madonna song contained ambient perfection, if she just stopped singing and the beats got turned off. Pretty much the whole experience of being a teenager is present in this track. The sitting around, the unnatural depression, the uncertainty, the unnatural certainty that what you need is out there somewhere...It probably helps if you've seen the movie, and you should. The scene that directly follows the opening credit sequence alone would compel you to keep watching. Ideally you'd find it flipping channels at two in the morning. Expecting it to get cheesy or obvious, you'd instead become gradually mesmerized by all the empty rural space, the pervasive sense of damaged or hapless lives, and the reductive, very real monster lurking within Christopher Walken's impossible Method weirdness...

For Karl,

Patrick Leonard--At Close Range (Main Title)

P.S. The Madonna thing wasn't a joke. This is, more or less, the backing track to her song "Live To Tell".

Uses up more than it makes of me...

2007-10-01T04:46:00.001-04:00

After seeing Magik Markers play once in 2005, it was clear they were a great live band, and that Elisa Ambrogio was one of two people in the country who really knew how to front a band (and the other, Dead Combo's Harri, was a Finnish import). Their records at that time didn't get much across to me, but suddenly, on the new one, the noise is gone--a lot of it anyway--swallowed up by the expansive drone and genuine rock tendencies that formerly had only come through live. In fact, the best stuff on here are total songs. "Taste" might please fans of The Kills, "Bad Dream/Hartford's Beat Suite" is a ballad led by acoustic guitar, and "Empty Bottles" is a mid-tempo piano ballad that sounds like something you might've thought would be on White Magic's follow-up to Through the Sun Door, before you heard their still-born second record, and then stopped thinking about them altogether...

Breaking habit, I'm gonna do things the right way round, leading with the uptempo track and saving the come-downy one for last. "Taste" is fucking cool, and fucking dirty. No other way to say it--with sawing drones harnessed as tightly as those in, say, Broadcast's "Pendulum", but cast in a milieu of sex and people instead of weed and old records. It works so well, there's no guilt involved here, just pure pleasure--and no underestimating the drums' contribution to that. "Bad Dream" (the second part of the title feels like a personal reference, cause there're no beats, and no second part to the song) gets the nod over "Empty Bottles", mostly because I like the lyrics more. The acoustic guitars are backed by a nicely distanced drone that feels like it departed from John Cale's viola and got as close as it could to the charmed feedback on Big Star's "Kanga Roo". But back to those lyrics. They tell a story. And there are consequences...that don't seem to be ending...which is what makes bad dreams...

Magik Markers--Taste
Magik Markers--Bad Dream/Hartford Beat Suite

Note, Magik Markers are touring right now. I get to see them in a couple days. Just a little superstitious that now that the recordings are better, the performances are not going to be as strong, but that's stupid--go see them! Also, Lee Ranaldo did a great job co-engineering/producing/mixing the new record with a guy named Aaron Mullan. There's enough of a sonic ethic involved that I noticed it was severely neutered by my car stereo, so, I guess, watch what you listen to it on. Sounding great on headphones right now, though...

2007-09-29T18:52:00.000-04:00

I'm back. This time for real, as in: I'm going to post a lot of stuff in the next few weeks. First we have more vintage soundtrack vibes, this time from James Glickenhaus's Suicide Cult (aka The Astrologer), 1975. Brad Fiedel is the composer. He would go on to do the Terminator theme, which worked really well in the movies, but does nothing to prepare you for this stuff.

The excerpt takes top prize. The big synth-bass uncannily anticipates what John Carpenter would be doing a few years later, and the layers of keyboard melodies, birds (not intended as part of the music, but there on the soundtrack), and various other treats buried in the mix recall the best of nostalgic electronica a couple decades hence. Particularly the lead that kicks in at around 55 seconds, and the accompanying drone and horn-sound melody had me and Burnt Brown Karl on our knees when we first heard this. The search is on for the original tapes. For now, bliss out as best as you can to my recording from VHS. The end credits tune is almost as good. I wish both tracks were longer, but I had to fade out the first one before The Astrologer, himself--middle-aged, balding, stodgy--apologizes to his hot, young '70s wife for making her "put up with something no one could except", by refusing to make love to her because his computers told him she was to bear the second coming of Christ. But did she already?...

I might as well mention the movie is nothing special. Glickenhaus, though, would gain some serious form in the '80s, with The Exterminator, Shakedown, and McBain all well worth seeking out...

Brad Fiedel--Suicide Cult excerpt ("Time To Go Home")
Brad Fiedel--Suicide Cult (End Credits)

I am a strange loop...

2007-08-16T00:39:00.000-04:00

Isan--Cathart

2007-08-13T17:32:00.000-04:00

Back from out West. A few things to note:

1) Speck Mountain is on their way...
2) Oregon is more beautiful than California
3) The funniest things in the world now are things that are only kind of funny, repeated and varied obsessively until your resistance breaks down, and, suddenly, you get it (like drone music, I guess...)

On to business. Played loud, this track has, for me, nearly infinite power. It's the only thing I've ever heard that captures the tedium of serious illness, but somehow fashions something compelling out of that (see note 3 above?). "And I couldn't speak nothin'...And the doctor went home, and I still couldn't speak nothin'...And a new doctor came...When I couldn't speak nothin', I let the guitar do it..." What he lets the guitar do may be easy to scoff at (it really does sound like the instrument, itself, is doing it as much as he is), but if you've succumbed to the Reverend Charlie Jackson by this point, then it might just suspend your whole life before you--what did and didn't, will and won't go right, what it feels like when everything goes wrong, and how it's never the end of the world, even when it might be the end of yours...

Reverend Charlie Jackson--Testimony of Rev. Charlie Jackson

Felt the same today...

2007-07-18T14:10:00.000-04:00

Missed this one on Lindsey Buckingham's first solo album, actually the best song. All you have to get over is him laughing and making stupid sounds for a couple seconds toward the end. The mood of the song is so strong, it's hard to understand why he'd want to break it, and, luckily, he can't...Supreme poet of moneyed Californian ennui, which seems to feel better than just about any other vibe (see also John Philips' album John, The Wolfking of L.A.)

Lindsey Buckingham--I'll Tell You Now

Fire keep me room...

2007-07-11T07:56:00.001-04:00

The Burnt Brown Sounds label (of Speck Mountain fame), releases its first single this month, a limited 7" by Valet. This is more of a song and less of an incantation than anything on Blood Is Clean, and you won't be getting over it any time soon...Honestly, has there ever been a stronger single, period? "Good Vibrations"?...

Valet--Fire

Check out Valet on tour right now, most shows with White Rainbow. She'll be in Chicago in a few days, and Portland a week from tomorrow. The Portland show is with Speck Mountain, part of their West Coast tour. I'll be along for that--leaving right now in fact--but should be able to continue posting every few days. Needless to say, seeing either band is a must for any music fans within driving distance. Seeing both in one night is almost a frightening prospect...

p.s. Turntable issues prevent me from posting the mastered version of "Fire". I hope to have it up in a few weeks. But anyone with a turntable, email speckmountain@gmail.com to buy one...

2007-07-07T22:47:00.000-04:00

I really like that picture, but of course I've picked the least funky and good-timey thing on here (although it was tempting to go with the track "Na Na" by a band actually called Coke). "90% Of Me Is You" is a great idea for a song, written and awesomely produced by svengali-type Clarence Reid. Vanessa Kendrick was a young girl. Clarence was fucking her, and she claims the story of the song is pretty much the story of their affair. Treat her nice, tell her she's talented, tell her she's beautiful, then get rid of her--and suddenly she isn't any of those things any more cause you're not around to tell them to her. But, first, record her singing a song about all this, and write it from her point of view, laying the strings, reverb, and wah on 'til it sounds thick and slick at the same time. Gotta love dudes...

Vanessa Kendrick--90% Of Me Is You

Must be the season of the witch...

2007-07-05T22:33:00.001-04:00

More John Carpenter at his best. Halloween III has never been too popular, mostly because it has nothing to do with the other Halloween movies. The villain this time is an old Irish guy who wants to conquer the world with, if memory serves, TV and candy (not an unrealistic goal, when you think about it)...And the lead is one of those bottom-of-the-barrel alcoholic actors who are deeply pleasurable to watch: enjoying the young female co-star a little too eagerly; sweating through his lines; trying to will the rigor mortis that's claimed most of his face up into his eyes so his job'll be even easier...

John Carpenter--Halloween 3 (end credits)
John Carpenter--Halloween 3 (main title)

"The love that has milked me has left me serene...

2007-07-03T22:54:00.000-04:00

...I cannot be guilty of any old thing, except that forever, forever, forever I dream..."

Seeing as this blog stole it's name from him, I think it's time for another Turner Cody post. He's the best unknown songwriter in America, and I wouldn't argue with anyone saying he's the best, period, except nobody says anything about him to begin with (see "unknown", above). In the folk-happy climate of the last few years, this really puzzles me. He has so many songs that are so obviously good, and most of them only get better as you start to know all the lyrics, which is and always has been rare in music.

There's a new comp out called 60 Seasons. His myspace page will tell you all about it. It looks like you have to order it from Belgium or Germany (where he seems to have at least some kind of following) if you don't have eMusic. The track-list is good. It could be even better, but I'm not going to complain about anything that includes "Unconscious Repeat", "Forever, Forever", "When these Sands Are Beds Again", and especially "Words To the Wise", because that one's so burnt.

"The Range" didn't make the cut. But it showcases his lyrical abilities to such a degree that I'm still in shock about it after a couple of years. To geek out for a moment, his effortless, but always purposeful, command over rhyme and rhythm--not to mention such old-school poetic devices as assonance and consonance--is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the middle section of the song, climaxing with: "But I see them sadly staring at the water/Vainly mainly strangers to each other/With the seas at their knees and the fingers of disease/Like seeds in the breezes that blow..." The purpose in this case is relationship-dread, which probably shouldn't be made as casually intoxicating as he makes it, but fuck...

Turner Cody--Forever, Forever
Turner Cody--The Range

2007-06-29T06:34:00.001-04:00

Every description of this record mentions "8-bit" or "Nintendo". And the good news is, it's true. No mean feat, either, in this era of antiseptic production. Copy's shoddiness is as drunk as it is calculated--and, in every way, it does Portland proud...I can feel Hair Guitar will be a major road trip-jam on the way too, umm, Portland, in a couple weeks time...

Copy--Zipper Problem
Copy--Remembering Florida

P.S. Is electronic music experiencing a bit of a rebirth?

I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe...

2007-06-28T03:10:00.000-04:00

...or, "It is the Nobel Prize I want. It's worth $400,000." The first quote is Liam Hayes. The second is Klaus Kinski. Kinski may have had more cheek than Hayes, or Alex Chilton (or anyone else), but Hayes and Chilton definitely know what he was talking about. Some of the biggest heroes are so purely of, by, and for their art, they feel betrayed when it does not make them as rich as they think it should. Liam Hayes is better known as Plush, and you probably know how his story lines up:

Recorded would-be masterpiece Fed, with Steve Albini, John McEntire, and other famous names in Chicago production between '99 and 2001...

Somewhere along the way, Drag City pulled out financial support, and Hayes put at least a hundred grand of his own money into the project...

Which has never been released in America, purportedly because he won't let anyone have it until they agree to pay him back his whole investment...

But you can get it in Japan, for import prices because either (a) they paid him a large enough portion of that investment to make it worth his while, (b) he's just perverse, and understands that (c) there is a special gravitational law--affecting only objects containing recorded music and bands comprising touring musicians--that naturally pulls all mass towards Japan, first and foremost, whether or not it be distributed elsewhere...*

Some claim Fed is a masterpiece, others claim the indulgent arrangements smother the songs. Listening to all fourteen tracks on a good stereo, the first claim is true much more often than the second. If you skip the first few songs, it's one of the very best albums made in the last decade. And, what's more--heard on a good stereo--I'm going to say the best of it is the best produced record I've ever heard. He doesn't have Brian Wilson's songwriting genius, but the almost Pavlovian tension-and-release dynamic he uses on every track is reinforced by sounds and sound combinations at least one level more miraculous than anything anyone else has done. They don't fully come through on the AAC sound files I've posted**. So, if you like the songs, that's an extra reason to buy the whole album on cd. Then buy or steal a stereo good enough to hear it on, or bribe someone who has one by bringing over some weed and the best-sounding record ever...

The title track is the one for me. It goes first--even though nothing can really follow it--because I have to assume you all are fickle, and may not get to the third track unless you're totally blown away by the first. "Greyhound Bus Station" is the busiest of the three. If you're overly tired or soul-dead the PUNCHY horns may inspire you to side with Fed-haters, but if you've got all your senses, the guitar and tambourine alone should make you want to do some kind of ridiculous, manic dance that ryan reynolds or whoever would do in a contemporary comedy that a scary amount of people would tell me I "really should" see. "No Education" puts an awesome James Bond-gone-dark string arrangement behind another of Hayes' best songs...And, it's heartbrreaking to leave off "Sound of San Francisco" with its meteorite organ splashes, "So Blind", which juggles sonic diversity and supreme concision, and five or six others...

Plush--Fed
Plush--Greyhound Bus Station
Plush--No Education

*follow this link and scroll to the bottom of the page to get it in his own words.

**for those who care enough to email me, I'm willing to make available a perfect-quality WAV file of the title-track, and the title-track only, to show you what you're missing if you don't buy the album...

2007-06-27T01:07:00.000-04:00

the last month or so i've been having some health issues, so anyone who's into this blog, and put off by the recent lack of posts, don't think there isn't a good reason for it. i plan to get something up most days over the next couple weeks though, so keep checking...

2007-06-25T22:05:00.001-04:00

Play Fucking Loud.

Sonny Sharrock--Black Woman

He hit me and it felt like a kiss...

2007-06-22T22:22:00.000-04:00

I don't want to crowd out Abby G and Drop Earrings with too many words. For earlier praise, click here. The following are recordings from one of the shows referred to in the earlier post...

Let me just say Abby has a pure, pure voice combined with natural performer's instincts and a special talent for masochism. Not speaking of which...

Drop Earrings--Please Hurt Me
Drop Earrings--I Love You Eddy
Drop Earrings--The Kids Are Alright
Drop Earrings--Falling In Love
Drop Earrings--Will You Still Love Me

2007-06-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

From Honey Owens' (Valet) Yarnlazer label, comes an all-time great drone record, Acre's Candyflipping. The only other drone full-length I've heard that can compete is Folke Rabe's What??, from 1970, although that one was too intense for me back when I heard it in '05, so I only listened to it twice. Both album's are as subtle as ambient, but far too heavy to meet the "ignorable as it is interesting" criteria--I mean heavy in the sense of undertow, rather than, like, doomy, colon-jamming low-end. That especially goes for track one on Candyflipping, "Moth". Its textures are unbelievable, and it continues to evolve over its whole length, first picking up force with speedier bass tones around the half-way point and then widening the sound pallette a bit for the climax. A label-making part of my brain wants to call this stuff "power drone": it makes you feel like you're being charged by a current so elemental you can't tell if its healthy or unhealthy. If Kevin Shields heard this, I think he'd probably cry. Sonic Boom would definitely smile...

acre--moth

A couple more reasons why this Acre dude is a hero: he doesn't seem to need synths or guitars, mostly just "mixer feedback, sampler/loop, various filters, phase-shifters, tremelos and the like"; also, the most benign track on here is called "together we are poison"...

2007-06-14T09:01:00.000-04:00

On the trashier end of the shoegaze spectrum, we find the Teenage Filmstars. Lost classic claims have been made about their first album, Star. Not true, but this one song makes a fine missing link between shoegaze and acid house. If that Seefeel bonus track was channeling MBV's "Soon" on a purer wavelength than the original, this one takes it's early '90s almost-party spirit toward an unmistakably '60s hash haze. The wordless girl vocals are the true test, and they sound like the ghost of sex, so: A-

Teenage Filmstars--Flashes

2007-06-12T23:16:00.000-04:00

Alive pop dronology, complete with vocals. First one sounds like a river gradually breaking through a silt bank. Second one picks up more of a ritualistic feel towards the end. A band that continues to improve, and who knows where they're headed?...

Zelienople--Family Beast
Zelienople--Parts Are Lost

"I've got a disease...

2007-06-11T22:17:00.000-04:00

...It's called L-O-V-I-N-G, it's killing me..." The soul of Alan McGee, the only man who could have written a song called "Baby, You Just Don't Care". In the early scheme of Creation Records, McGee downplays his own band, Biff Bang Pow. But the above-mentioned is some kind of minor, emotionally-wrecked epic, while "There Must Be a Better Life", and "She Shivers Inside", at the very least, outdo nearly anything else you can dig up from the C-86/anorak/twee scene. "She Shivers Inside" is the only one of the three not available on the Biff Bang Pow Best Of, which is insane to me, because--in the realm of cheap, '80s, reverby guitar sulk--it can't be improved upon.

There's something 'meta' about all of McGee's best songwriting. "There Must Be a Better Life" is like a snap-shot of how pop songs make you feel, combining the escapism he loved in '60s garage and pop with the sense of entitlement that excited him about punk. The man had a bizarre theory about the "6" year in any decade. '66 was Revolver, "All Tomorrow's Parties", A Quick One, and, of course, The Creation; '76 was "Anarchy in the U.K."; and, in the early/mid '80s, it was tempting to think '86 would be a new kind of breakout--one that he would lead or, at least, participate in. If McGee can be said to actually have presided over a revolution I would put it about five years after the prophecied date. Of course, in terms of over-all cultural impact, I have to admit it came with Oasis, four or five years after that (but you could argue that they peaked as a phenomenon in '96, with the famous Knebworth shows, so maybe McGee got his '6' after-all--even if he was post-nervous breakdown by that time, and unable to really enjoy it)...

"She Shivers Inside" finds him back in '87, running his label on little more than hype and the fumes of last month's pressings--although we shouldn't underestimate the place where drugs meet ambition and vision in the pit of his stomach. It is one of his quiet moments. The title almost embarasses me, it sounds like the fantasy of a dirty old man, and hardly seems less so when you realize he's trying to empathize with feminine fragility. But it has direct access to the pit of my stomach, with hopes, fears, and the still-burning scars left by them. Might as well call this a continuation of oxytocin's love hangover vibes..."Sometimes summer never comes..."

Biff Bang Pow--She Shivers Inside

Love in the middle of an afternoon...

2007-06-06T10:34:00.000-04:00

...rhymes with "just me and my spike and my arm and my spoon..." Probably the most seductive lyric ever about drugs, that line helped persuade me to do heroin as a teenager, along with "feel the warmth of the sun in me" and "warm as the dope running down my spine" (which i heard as "worms of dope..."). The real thing did not live up to the Spiritualized song--not even close--and, although other drug + needle experiences did get close, that line has always taunted me, a genuinely perverse, impossible ideal of emotional masturbation: what if you really could convince yourself--neurochemically--that you were in love, without any human relationship to facilitate the feeling?

I only had to wait about six years from the time I first heard the song (it's "I Think I'm in Love", by the way) to make my most ambitious effort at realizing Jason Pierce's metaphor. It was a particularly lonely summer for me, so I figured it was the perfect time for such an experiment. The substance I needed was a synthesized form of the hormone, oxytocin. I was briskly refused by a good many pharmacists in New York City--who thought I was trying to pronounce "oxycontin"--before I turned to the pharmacological candy-land known as Mexico-on-the-Internet. Within a week of placing the order, I received two vials of--so the bottle said--pure oxytocin. The dosage instructions seemed to indicate it was about a two-week supply, although I assumed that was for stimulating lactation, the drug's only prescribed usage other than inducing labor.

What I was after were the hormone's more lyrical effects. It seems to promote trust between people, dispelling doubts and anxieties. Higher levels of it are present in people who are falling in love--moreso in women than in men--and those levels will continue to increase, probably plateauing eventually, but not declining in the case of stable, long-term romantic relationships. In other words, it seems to be more of "I feel so safe with you" than a "You drive me crazy" kind of vibe. It is part of the hormone-and-neurotransmitter cocktail released after orgasm, although, again, women get more of it than men. No doubt oxytocin plays a key role in the greater emotional attachment that sex provides for women, and I find a certain evolutionary consistency between that probability and oxytocin's importance in motherhood--not only in the mechanics, but in the bond between mothers and their children (a creepy experiment introducing oxytocin antagonist agents into sheep and rats just after giving birth found that they failed to exhibit "typical maternal behavior", while its corollary found virgin sheep acting like moms upon injection of oxytocin into their cerebrospinal fluid)...

But getting back to my own experiment. I had access to a friend's air-conditioned apartment in the West Village, with makeshift-curtained windows nicely positioned to let in the late afternoon sun and an almost absurdly good stereo. So I piled some pillows and a light blanket on the floor in front of it, made a mix that included "I Think I'm in Love" as well as other Spiritualized songs like "Step Into the Breeze" and "Feel Like Goin' Home", the Spacemen 3's "So Hot" and "Come Down Softly to My Soul" (Jason Pierce again), Slowdive's "Blue Skied 'an Clear", and the Beach Boys' "In My Room", "The Warmth of the Sun and "Don't Worry Baby", and pulled out the "love drug" (which phrase tempted me to put The Happy Mondays' "Bob's Yer Uncle" on the mix, although it would have made no sense and I didn't).

I shot up the lactation-stimulating dose and felt a slight tingling combined with the merest sensation of heat, but, just as I thought the rush was really beginning to build, it totally subsided. Immediate disappointment caused me to immediately inject more oxytocin, a double-dose this time. Now the rush didn't even almost happen, I instead felt a vague sense of dilation--as if I was a glass of water filled to the brim, and one more drop had fallen into me, causing the surface of the liquid to swell and tremble for a moment like a gelatinous mass, but then assimilating it harmlessly into its over-all volume. I know that's an abstract image, but the sensation I was experiencing was basically that I was feeling abstract, without spacing out in the more intense way familiarly experienced with every drug from alcohol to Robitussin. Also, I wasn't having an emotional response...

More dissapointment, more "love drug". Another two or three shots finished vial number #1, with little change in my emotional state, aside from an increasingly desperate sense of dissapointment--I had waited years for this?!

As a last-ditch attempt to make good on this whole thing, I took the whole second vial in a single shot. This induced some rather extreme abdominal cramps that later reading would suggest had to do with my kidneys. After they let up a bit I tried to concentrate on the music, but, instead of being heightened, the music felt emotionally muffled to me--Jason and Brian and company were just going through the motions. I barely heard any of it, and, in general, the afternoon seemed to somehow disappear, although I wasn't daydreaming. If its possible to separate "spacing out" from "losing time", then this is a case of the latter without much of the former. There was no abstract chain of intuitive/nonsense thoughts; I actually was barely thinking at all. I just sat there and time seemed to melt away.

At a certain point, this sensation too seemed to subside, and I realized it would be dark in an hour or two. My disappointment was tempered by a great feeling of exhaustion, which is sort of the worst way to experience negative emotions because you can't exorcise them in any way; you're simply mired in the knowledge of them, and--even though you're numb--that knowledge burns. Knowing how awful the next few hours would be if I spent them alone--not to mention the rest of the night--I hurried across-town to Kim's Video, where a friend of mine would be getting off work soon and then going to see the Bergman movie Cries and Whispers. The theater it was playing in was actually closer to the apartment than the video store, but I needed to get out of there and be with people as soon as possible. I'm not a big Bergman fan (aside from Persona), but as I walked, my experimenter's brain thought this might be the perfect time to see one of his more celebrated films--when I was as supernaturally depressed as all of his characters. It was only then that I started to realize the full effect oxytocin had had on me.

I was in a state of total emotional exhaustion, but the drug had taken it's toll in secret, not seeming to put me through any ordeal other than my disappointment--at the time--that it wasn't putting me through the desired ordeal. Likewise, though time had seemed to disappear in the two hours or so since I'd shot the last of the stuff, I felt the opposite now that it had worn off--that afternoon might have been an entire summer. And, what's more, the illusion I'd been striving for had been achieved: this retrospective dilation of time corresponded with the feeling that I had been deprived of a great intimacy. As if I'd been abducted by a UFO, placed in a cage for months with a girl I developed strong feelings for, and then dropped back down to earth with my memory wiped. Of course, when I actively thought about it, I knew this was just an effect of the oxytocin. But if your baseline emotional state is heavy enough, no amount of directed thought can pull it up. I was simply stuck in that stage of heartbreak when you're past the shock, past the violent sense of need, and you just feel broken and drained. And lost. Most of all, I felt like, no matter where I might be going, it had nothing to do with where I really needed to be going, because it was impossible to get there now...

But I did know I needed to be around people at the very least, and in the company of a friend. I showed up at the video store, and waited in almost a mental-patient stupor for my friend Sean to get off work. But as he came out from behind the counter and we were about to head out, one of the other clerks called him back to help with some computer problem. I can vaguely remember leaning against him as if I was wounded or something while he stood at the counter talking to his co-worker and a waiting customer. He was excited about the movie, and just seemed to be in good spirits generally, which meant he was doing a lot of talking, and I just had to listen. Surprisingly, it was easy to pay attention to what he was saying, I think because I wanted to focus on anything outside of myself. I was parasitically eager to sympathize or empathize, but in a totally passive way--I wasn't going to actively respond to him any more than was necessary to ensure that he kept on talking...

As we approached the theater, it occurred to me this should be an ideal mode in which to watch any serious movie, and, again, I looked forward to getting psychically decimated by Bergman (in that Persona way). I was expecting this to be the most intense part of the whole day, and I deeply craved it: to be turned inside out so that my latent devastation could finally be felt in real-time, my emotional masochism satisfied at last.

The lights dimmed, the soundtrack came on with a pop--leading into vague, mournful classical music--and the credits ebbed out over some gorgeously muted shots of a large Swedish estate at dawn. The slow cutting from shot to shot, and the way the morning Bergman had chosen seemed to promise a change in everything and nothing at the same time, before any people or plot had appeared on the screen seemed like good signs. And they continued for a while. Although her character was a totally un-supernatural, spoiled rich girl, Liv Ullman was, once again, clearly the most real vampire ever put on screen--her weird ripeness coming off at least as much diseased as it did carnal--especially in the repressive environment Bergman and the rest of the cast had cultivated for her.

But, after a few minutes, I knew I would remember her more as a color than a character. The whole movie was just colors: empty exteriors I wanted to wander off into and die (or sleep, I couldn't tell which), peopled interiors I never, ever wanted to be in, mostly because the people were all proud as hell about not being able to deal with themselves or each other, and I couldn't imagine why I was supposed to care about any them. I felt as fragile, myself, as a leaf about to blow off the edge of the world, and all this sullen, exclusionary pride seemed like the most wasteful attitude anyone could possibly have about life. Why...?

My emotional masochism definitely wasn't satisfied during the movie, but I did get about two hours more tired, and, thankfully, the feeling of having been spiritually blue-balled began to pass. By the time I made it back to the apartment, I felt more like an inanimate object than anything--I couldn't even relate to the exhaustion in my limbs, or the stiffness in my back. Used up is used up...

The next two days were spent lying on the floor, mostly watching thrillers and westerns from the '40s and '50s--the fast pace and sing-songy speech patterns keeping me awake, and little else (although one about a wagon train in the Northwest nagged at me a little with its sense of purpose and achievement). A lot of Neina too. I didn't feel like seeing anyone, or doing a whole lot of moving, period, until maybe the third day. When I did go out again I ran into my friend Sean, and mentioned the experiment. He told me "So that's why you were hanging on me like you were gay or something..."

This is an apparently forgotten Leonard Cohen song (only Turner Cody remembers). It's on the recently reissued Songs From a Room, and in all the jizz-fest reviews I've seen of the album in the past month, no one has mentioned it. I guess because it's subtle. Because it sounds whimsical or even jokey at first. Because of the jew's harp + da-da-di, da-da-da coda--about as long as the whole rest of the song? Too bad, cause if you listen to the lyrics this might be the saddest song ever written...

Leonard Cohen--Tonight Will Be Fine

P.S. According to Wikipedia, the joke's on me, because the injectable form of oxytocin can only make it into your brain in minimal quantities. This is, supposedly, not true of the nasal spray...

Disclaimer: I don't feel this post is likely to encourage anyone to try this shit, but you never know. Let me point out that it's probably not a good idea, especially in that ridiculous a quantity in that brief a time-span. Oxytocin causes your kidneys to flush salt from your system like crazy, and this (especially if you drink large amounts of water at the same time) can cause a seizure and kill you. There was an episode of the old Star Trek where some alien hottie with a heavy salt craving and suction cups on her fingers tried to do the same thing to Captain Kirk, et. al., and even the '60s TV rendering of the process didn't look pleasant...

If a tree falls in Miami?...

2007-06-03T17:44:00.001-04:00

"Sloane Square" is from the soundtrack of an '80s Derek Jarman short film of the same name--I assume it's about how being gay = being political = being doomed = never having to wear a shirt, etc. There is one quick bit of spoken word (takes less than three seconds, something about "foreign policy" that couldn't have less to do with the vibe about to be conjured), shortly after that the nice, clean guitar starts to get weirder, then it really follows through about a minute later, and then it's over. Absolute Classic Masterpiece proto-gaze ditty...This is an edit from the version of the track comped on The Many Moods of Simon Turner. There is reason to believe that the track appears in this edited form on an impossible-to-find (hint: if anyone has this one...) LP called The Bone of Desire, and that the randomness that follows in the comped version represents the entire soundtrack of the short. So, in other words, this is probably more of a complete track--maybe the "Main Theme" to Sloan Square---than an edit....

Also off The Many Moods , "Isles of Spice" is, somehow, from a 1988 Japanese cologne commercial. It proves even cologne could feel apocalyptic in '88, at least in Japan..."Violet Crumble" is subtitled "Essay on Luis Buñuel". Thankfully, the spanish guitar stays just out of quotes. I guess this one's new agey, but it sounds fucking good to me--better than when Popol Vuh, say, got all self-congratulatory-zen on acoustic guitar...

Simon Turner--Sloane Square (edit)
Simon Turner--Isles of Spice
Simon Turner--Violet Crumble

p.s. This isn't the promised "important" post. You'll have to wait another day for that...

My weakness and your power made me play too rough...

2007-05-31T23:21:00.001-04:00

There's lots of new good music! Between that and some older stuff there will be a glut of heavy posts in the next week, starting tomorrow. Unfortunately I'm too exhausted now to finish one that's very important to me, so I offer the song below, because it's self-explanatory. Great lyrics. Great song, really. The only reason I spent a couple sentences apologizing for it just now is because it's country and I don't believe anyone really cares about country. But hopefully I'm wrong...Oh, does it make it hipper if I tell you this guy was Gram Parsons' hero?

George Jones--Wine (You've Used Me Long Enough)

Ice Resounds...

2007-05-29T20:56:00.000-04:00

Reissue of some unfindable '99 demo/relic by Swiss one-mand band Paysage d'Hiver. Band name and track titles all refer to winter, ice, or cold. The album title, Die Festung, translates as The Fortress, and this really is an ideal summer-denial jam to lock yourself up in. Find a sea-breeze, air-conditioning, or just go one-on-one with the sun or the compost-flavored (New Yorkers) convection currents of the city...

"Eishalle" translates as the title of this post. Vibe on the image above or watch the Discovery channel's daily "the polar ice-caps are melting" extinction-porn and use it as a prayer...Or, if you're extra bored/motivated, search out the Norwegian movie "Ice Palace"--don't worry about subtitles--concerning two teenage girls in a small village who almost have sexual contact, but one of them feels weird about it, and then guilty enough to wander off into a glacier and collapse. Most of the movie is her in the glacier, with absolute-zero melodrama, but plenty of the one-track wonder that happens when violently ingrown emotion confronts nature..."Eishalle", itself, is maybe two-parts Popol Vuh's Aguirre soundtrack, one-part Goblin's Suspiria, one-part something new...

Paysage d'Hiver--Eishalle

2007-05-23T23:52:00.001-04:00

I probably spoke to soon about Theodore and Hamblin being the best electronic record of the last couple years. Andrew Pekler's nostalgia goes back a lot further, and his production stays to true to his '60s library and Radiophonic influences, while managing to be less cheesy than the former and more melodic than the latter (this guy knows that if you stick a drone behind a melody you can have the best of both worlds). Listened to on drugs, could this shit get even fuzzier-sounding or is it already at the saturation point? If you like the tracks below, buy this--there're at least four more that are just as good, including some fucking sick twelve-minute thing called "Floating Tone"...another track is called "Pensive Boogie"...big thanks to Brian for sending this...

Andrew Pekler--Roomsound
Andrew Pekler--Dim Star

This hurt I feel inside...

2007-05-21T11:23:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine who used to suffer from intense chronic anxiety was living in New York during 9/11. He once told me that the following semester was the most comfortable he'd ever felt there, because "everyone else was just as crazy and scared as I was". This Temptations song, as covered by some stoked Jamaicans in Canadian exile, envisions the same dynamic (in a far vaguer and less culturally loaded way, of course). And, really, music is all about trying to match your own inner state with everyone else's...

The Cougars--I Wish It Would Rain

2007-05-19T21:56:00.000-04:00

Perfection...Saw him recently live and it was beyond amazing for someone supposedly 20 years past his prime--it was one of the best shows I've seen, period. His new record is going to be awesome...

Spectrum--Indian Summer

All those words of gossip...the things you know are true...

2007-05-18T23:09:00.000-04:00

Not anything like the sad-sack title. You can tell it's going to be totally zen about a half-second into the song. "Only time can teach you what to do..."

Don Gibson--If You Don't Know the Sorrow

Robot futures were warm...part 2

2007-05-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

More Bochum Welt. This time from an out-of-print late '90s release. Same analog elegance. Great leads...

bochum welt--b2
bochum welt--lunakhod
bochum welt--paph
bochum welt--radiopropulsive

I took to hopping...

2007-05-16T23:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry, it's been awhile. Fun in Chicago, with the already great Speck Mountain continuing to improve. Anyone in Portland, Eugene, or San Francisco in July had better be alert to their tour dates. I'll be sure to post them. Oh and their debut record, Summer Above, has just been released on Burnt Brown Sounds. The distribution is still being ironed out, but you can contact the band through myspace, or just me if you want to buy a copy...

Moondog is one of those outsider musicians you hear about and assume he's annoying because he calls himself Moondog. His albums H'art Songs and A New Sound of an Old Instrument have some awesome stuff on them though, the former pretty piano-led songs with whimsical lyrics, the latter a bunch of organ-led instrumentals that, at their best, have a warm, mildly churchy flow to them. At first, "I'm Just a Hop Head" may not seem like one of the great drug songs, but Moondog's childlike enthusiasm sets up the closing line: "I´ve reached my limit; no wider worlds to be won. I´m so unhappy, I wish I´d never begun." "High On a Rocky Ledge" I take as an ode to sex, posing as an ode to romantic love. "Bug On a Floating Leaf" is the most perfect of the organ instrumentals...

Moondog--High On a Rocky Ledge
Moondog--I'm Just a Hop Head
Moondog--Bug On a Floating Leaf

2007-05-10T01:32:00.000-04:00

Despite the hype, this is their one and only great moment. Is it a coincidence that it happened on Creation Records--which Stephen Pastel would later denounce?...

The Pastels--Baby Honey

Where you've been is not a sin, it's where you're going...

2007-05-07T15:47:00.000-04:00

It might suck to be an ex-Byrd who's not David Crosby. But at least Gene Clark was Gene Clark. Roger Mcguinn had some solo albums in the '70s that give me the impression of over-earnestness--even though I've never heard them--like he was one of those guys who noticed the change in mood that the '70s brought but couldn't accomodate it with a suitable change in attitude or form. Chris Hillman, just seems to have hung around--with Gram Parsons, among others--and did what he could, about as unstarry as anyone of his musical pedigree could be, seemingly the Charlie Watts in every room. Even when he was in the Byrds he never seemed to think he was cool: he's the only one in the picture above that doesn't have any kind of swagger or pose (deer in the headlights doesn't count).

He did name an album Slippin' Away, though, and titles like that in the used bin are going to nab my three bucks every time. Unsurprisingly, Gram Parsons haunts his songwriting voice, and dwarfs it. Which is regrettable, cause there's a nice Fleetwood Mac-gone country vibe about a lot of this--great pedal steel/lead guitar interplay, opalescent gushes of electric piano and organ, handclaps--just an ideal production sensibility whenever the ARP synthesizer isn't around. But there's one track he has co-writing credit on with Parsons from the Flying Burrito Brothers days, "Down In the Churchyard", that breathes more freely than anything else on the album for the simple reason that the songwriting rises above the generic. He clearly needed Parsons for that, but the song needed seven years to grow into itself, and give Hillman credit for realizing it was the right place and the right time to try it again. Not that there's anything wrong with the original, but this version has that lived-in, fallible '70s feel to it, getting everything right...

Chris Hillman--Down in the Churchyard

2007-05-06T22:05:00.000-04:00

I must confess I have no idea what this guy, Daniel Patrick Quinn, is talking about. His lyrics seem to be a bookish imagining of an England more past than present. And yet somehow I'm reminded of Dziga Vertov's utopian silent movie-symphonies of Soviet life in the '20s and '30s: presenting a vision so rhythmic, creative, and intrinsically optimistic, they, in turn, have always reminded me of Walt Whitman. Quinn's voice is defiantly Northern English and he mostly uses it for speaking rather than singing (cue unavoidable Mark E. Smith comparison) but it feels like the music backing him up has caught sunstroke. Guitar is melodic but woozy, keyboard and horns lay down drones that're at once dense and wide-open, with the latter sounding like they've maybe fermented a bit, and backing vocals add one more layer to the happy confusion--only the drummer sounds like he could make it home on his own. An endless succession of parched hills, fields, roads and rail lines are what you see when you listen, and it must be summer cause that's the only time England feels like this (click on the image for a sample).

Quinn's band is called One More Grain, their debut album Pigeon English. I've also included one of his solo tracks from a couple years back--instrumental, with solemn strings instead of wonky horns--same ritually tranced melodics, different season.

One More Grain--Down Roman Roads
Daniel Patrick Quinn--Clock House

Standing on the verge...

2007-05-03T22:04:00.000-04:00

Funkadelic live in '71, at this place called Meadowbrook in a staid Detroit suburb near me. It's funny cause I've never considered the possibility of something real going on there. Just goes to show what I assume you all already know about the early '70s and music...I'm no expert on Funkadelic, mostly because I'm more apt to spend my money on "You've Got My Mind Messed Up"-style soul songs than funk. But I do know they were a lot more than just a funk band (capable, in '74, of sympathizing with a gay guy by pointing out that "even the sun goes down") and this one attests to that better than anything else I've encountered so far, with a sentiment not too far from "You've Got My Mind Messed Up". Other good news is that guitarist Eddie "Maggot Brain" Hazel is kept on a leash for the first eleven minutes--an early explosion only lasts a few seconds before he turns to soft, minimal blues that sound less self-impressed than 99%+ of blues guitar--and even during the climactic freakout, his playing is still totally sane. Building up the song's power slowly--especially through a matter-of-fact spoken word section punctuated by a repetitive Rhodes--George Clinton stays pretty low-key most of the time too. Maybe those would be draw-backs for some? Not for me...Let this one get into your bones, you won't be disappointed...(And play it loud)

Funkadelic, Live--All Your Goodies Are Gone (The Loser's Seat)

(The album-version on Parliament's Up For The Down Stroke sounds good too)

2007-05-03T00:09:00.000-04:00

My nostalgia for the best of '90s electronica continues, and, apparently, Theodore and Hamblin are with me. This stuff is new, but "Reico" gives me Richard D. James Album and "Port Rhombus" flashbacks...to my first experiences of that warm-but-remote analog melancholy, when it made me feel an emptiness that actually scared me a little in the way so many things do when you're a teenager because they seem to represent both a wider world and a future that you do not know. Your fears as a kid are a matter of all that you don't know projected onto what little you do, and I think in my mind the key to any city in the country was having every rave flyer in circulation on a given weekend; the key to the future lay in some other incredibly naive notion of peer acceptance through infinite, anonymous flux. Electronic music seemed like a good metaphor for whatever I and the world were heading into, and it wasn't all metaphor: no doubt I thought radio hits in the year 2007 would all sound like "Journey To Reedham"...I never really articulated any of this to myself back then, or thought of it since. But I guess the affect clung to me tightly--and now that my ego is far enough removed from it--I can decode it safely as little more than a museum exhibit on the absurdity of my own adolescent mind...

Theodore and Hamblin have helped with that, but it's not the reason why I'm recommending their music. I read a review of the album that was fairly unimpressed, basically criticizing it for giving us nothing special and nothing new. I can't argue with the second part. There are plenty of contemporary touches--mostly apt, aside from the pointless digital decay elements that slightly mar the otherwise very good lead-off track--but the record's soul was cultivated a decade ago, and it's not going to change anyone's life. Still, it has to be the best new electronic full-length I've heard in a long while, in that I've only had it for a day and I've probably listened to it all the way through four or five times already. My only criticism of a lot of the tracks is that they maybe end too soon--as if these guys are shy about their nimble little tunes, wanting to get each bit out of the way and move on to the next--and, seeing as how ignored they've been so far, who can blame them? (Although they could have increased their own chances for acclaim by choosing a better name for their album than The Scientific Contrast...)

As I said, "Reico" feels like classic IDM. "Hernd" opens with an uncharacteristic orgy of wanky synth effects, but the bass quickly cuts into it all with a clear sense of purpose, which governs along with a lazy/funky delayed lead, and cruder electro sounds for the next minute-and-a-half until ambient elements completely take over. It's more assertive than anything else on the record and less tasteful in some of its details, but the full listening experience should subdue any protests...

Theodore and Hamblin--Reico
Theodore and Hamblin--Hernd

Ceremony of Innocence Drowned

2007-05-01T23:46:00.000-04:00

You all might be aware that I'm not much impressed by Brazilian music. It's not some kind of ethic, it's just that--aside from Os Mutantes blowing my mind for a couple days when I was 19--none of it has ever done anything for me. This song is different though. It's two and a half minutes. The opening forty-five seconds are a moony chick singing over moony acoustic guitar and bass, no swinging beat or anything so I'm not annoyed, and it certainly is pleasant enough. But then she's gone suddenly, replaced by a subdued chorus and strings, mixed so well together you can barely tell them apart in one of those tender, hymnal vibes that Broadcast like so much on the Valerie and Her Week of Wonders--or whatever Ennio Morricone--soundtrack. About thirty seconds later, the percussion starts to take over, and now Nelson Angelo really proves himself as a producer: the drums are perfectly measured force, the triangle(?) sounds like it's being struck in liquid and if sleighbells(?) could slouch towards Bethlehem this is how they'd do it. I don't use the word badass too often here--and I never thought I would in relation to a Brazilian husband-and-wife duo's early 70s soft-pop record--but all the above plus that piano melody leave me no choice...

Nelson Angelo y Joyce--Tudo Comeca De Novo (edit)
Nelson Angelo y Joyce--Tudo Comeca De Novo

2007-04-30T15:59:00.000-04:00

If there's still more krautrock out there, why not shoegaze? The reissue of Seefeel's 1993 Quique takes me by total surprise, though. The whole is thing is a drone-sex paradise of guitars, beats and sometimes-sequenced, sometimes-ambient keyboards. Deciding which tracks to post was actually stressful, because they all bliss me out so much, I lose perspective. "Clique" sounds like My Bloody Valentine's "Soon"--a lot like it--but that's okay because that vibe was pretty much a one-off for MBV, and I'm glad there's more of it somewhere. "Plainsong" is probably the album's quintessential track. "Charlotte's Mouth" is more subdued, as befits its title. I want to think it's about making out with a girl named Charlotte--the kind of seriously substance-assisted making out where for long stretches you feel like you've fallen asleep in warm waters and then are suddenly jolted into slight consciousness by the instinctive dynamic you've been helping to play out all along, before sinking back into the vibe. All of three of these have girl-on-good-drugs vocals, although the tracks without them work plenty well on their own. Definitely buy this one. Especially in the heat of the next few months, it'll be real valuable to have around in your car, on headphones walking around the city, as subway-denial balm, etc.

Seefeel--Clique
Seefeel--Plainsong
Seefeel--Charlotte's Mouth

It's been so long since I heard one extremely boring Seefeel album and wrote them off altogether, I can't figure out which one it was. If anyone can help as to which of their later stuff is worthwhile and which isn't, please let me know. For now I've got to go check out the early EPs...

2007-04-28T23:31:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, there's still a few surprises left in the krautrock play-book. Deuter would go on to compete with Popol Vuh for the title of Who Invented New Age?, but this piece off his 1971 album D has as much attack as any krautrock I can think of. There're snarly, DIY-overdriven guitars reminiscent of Faust, synth squelch, and what sounds like sampled vocals sort of mimicking the synth. I think maybe the filter section of said synth got a lot of use on this one, cause the guitars sound treated, even apart from the overdrive. Deuter seems really excited about stereo as well, staggering a lot of sounds along the two channels--including bouncy-ball percussion--and plenty of panning. And there's one moment about 1:40 in that suckers you into a false sense of security, before springing everything back on you--even more relentless than before--until you feel like the bouncy-ball, in outer space or some reductive video game-land, whichever sounds better...

I'm coupling it with some early Cluster, from their Cluster II album of the following year. For those who only know the syncopated synths of Zuckerzeit or the toy melodies of Sowiesoso, this guitar-dominated vibe won't even sound like the same band. It could actually pass for the same band that recorded "Der Turm/Fluchpunkt", maybe on the come-down from that track's amphetamine spree? But if memory serves, speed come-downs were a unique "I feel as though I'm filled with quivering water" kind of melancholy, while this sticks to tranced-out zen...Oh, and I know I love pointing out echoes/pre-echoes of Spacemen 3 whenever possible, but it's pretty hard not to hear Jason come in on guitar just after the five minute mark...

Deuter--Der Turm/Fluchpunkt
Cluster--Im Süden

Last stop to glory land...

2007-04-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

Anyone ever have dreams that start off closer to nightmare territory, but when you wake up you feel exhilarated rather than scared, except with the sense of a dread unlocked and since re-repressed--because you can't remember what happened outside of a few images and vague notions, and it feels like that's because whatever did happen had heavy implications on your life? It feels more like you've had a vision than a dream--even more like you've just lived an important part of your future--and you are both charmed and threatened by the knowledge gained even though you don't consciously possess it...

Anyone who has dreams like that, that's what Ras Michael's "No Hoppers" feels like. The landscape is a dark desert railway and you are being strongly compelled along it. As the man says, "Only the feet of the fittest will survive this ride..."

I guess it's possible if you don't really care about reggae that it would seem unremarkable to you, and the same is probably true of "If They Only Knew", even though I don't think you can even technically classify it as reggae the way you can "No Hoppers". It's rasta gospel music, with Jamaica's greatest guitarist Earl "Chinna" Smith fully earning his Pops Staples-stripes on circular guitar (it may even give the lie to an earlier claim I made about his best moment). The vibe this time is more like an infinite summer road, so click on one or the other depending on your mood...

Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus--No Hoppers
Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus--If They Only Knew

These are both from Kibir-Am-Lak, which is well, well worthwhile even if it falls short of Dadawah, Peace & Love's perfection. Lloyd Charmers is missed as producer on otherwise perfect cuts like "Over The Mountain" (he would have done something to that saxophone). Whereas Charmers' haunted piano and deeply submerged ambience helps make Dadawah an album anyone even vaguely interested in Jamaican music needs to check out. As stated a year ago, it's slowed-down spiritual funk that comes off sounding like heroin and malign possession even though I know it was just weed + the Lion of Judah. If you have trouble finding it just get the Trojan Nyabinghi Box-set, which has the whole album--though out of sequence. There's not a lot of other great shit on there, but you can find it for $13 on amazon, so just pretend you're buying the album...

I think I made up my memories...

2007-04-25T15:40:00.000-04:00

In appearance, Matt Valentine these days resembles the middle-aged allen ginsberg (too unappetizing an image to post). His manner is some embarassing East-Coast attempt at a cheerfully post-apocalyptic hayseed hippie, with liberal doses of "I wanna be black" putting it over the top. But his impersonation(?) of brain-dead is pretty right on, as evidenced by the intro to the new cdr's "Cold Rain", when his girlfriend, Erika Elder, is telling a perfectly coherent anecdote about some old crazy they used to play with, and Valentine tries to sum it up with "He was really incredible...He was like the last--" but she senses she'll have to finish that sentence for him, settling for "...a brilliant guy"--while he flounders on trying to figure out what this guy was the last of...

His solo releases and collaborations with her, their crew The Bummer Road, and his earlier collective, The Tower Recordings, usually have titles like Alien Raga Sputum or Mother, The Moon, Gives Milk of Caramel Sky. Most of these records are harmless noodle-fests, but last year's much-lauded Green Blues was maybe the most affronting example of "the underground"'s over-compensatory need to out-stupid and out-crass the stupidest and crassest rock 'n roll. But on that one, as elsewhere, MV & EE are ultimately too abstract to win the crass war against a band, like, say, Warrant. They arguably win the stupid war, though--at least when Warrant sang "Cherry Pie", it worked on the grossest, most reductive level. When Valentine sings about his "cherry pie" he just sounds utterly clueless, as if he doesn't even know what the phrase is supposed to mean...(See much of the Royal Trux' 3-Song EP, Cats and Dogs, or Singles, Live, and Unreleased for a shambolic, abstracted take on classically ridiculous rock 'n roll values that actually convinces...)

And, yet, Valentine, Elder, and friends definitely have something going for them. Live, they can be revelatory, and if Green Blues pissed me off, it was more the fault of the underground rock press than MV & EE. They constantly record stuff, and people are constantly releasing it, seemingly without discrimination. Thus the zero-hyped live cdr Goodbye Moonface turns out to contain easily the best stuff I've heard from them on record. "The Burden" and "Cold Rain" are prime space-folk/blues, the former more direct, the latter taking its time--even in edited form--but with the most beautiful vocals on the record (courtesy of the dude, for once). The edit of "Tea Devil" is my favorite guilty pleasure of late, mostly because of EE's strict observance of the Gospel According to Apothecary Mary. It mines large chunks of dubious gold along that retardo-rock axis Green Blues never properly finds. If anyone told me it sucked I wouldn't know how to argue, but I've wanted it on a lot lately...

MV & EE--Cold Rain (edit)
MV & EE--The Burden
MV & EE--Tea Devil (edit)

2007-04-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

A long time ago when Four Tet wasn't just an academic jack-off (collaborating with 70s free-jazz dudes?!)...Yey that Lo Recordings stuck this on some comp, cause I never thought I'd hear it again. Click on this earlier post for a suitable image--it's not like I'm gonna top it...

Four Tet--Rivers Become Oceans

and this earlier post if you've got a spare half hour to have your mind blown...

2007-04-20T18:21:00.000-04:00

She's lost her light touch, but still...

Islaja--Pysähtyneet Planeetat

2007-04-19T20:02:00.000-04:00

When this comp originally came out in '04, I thought I was over shit like that, or it was too cool for me or something. But I bought last week's repress and don't regret it because it's really fucking good. Vibes range from moody/abstract synths with French people singing over them, to moody/abstract synths with French people talking over them, to John Carpenter on an up, to John Carpenter on a down (and the most learned among you may notice snatches of Beverly Hills Cop and Gremlins as well). Much of it is danceable, some of it isn't. Bass-lines are generally awesome-to-sick, and there's a good deal of post-punk guitar that I appreciate cause it's never the prime focus. Great music for driving...

"Wallenberg" is definitely my favorite track. At first, it seems to have some of the least compelling vocals on the whole comp. Once the saxophone and extra drones kick in, though, it all heads into "Oh my fucking God!" territory--with even the talking French dude playing his part. "Switch On Bach" is human + vocoder electro that tiptoes around the "Computer World" melody (except it was released a year earlier!). And Brit-lost-in-France Tim Blake's lyrics on "Lighthouse" are pure sci-fi-cheese, but the bass is so sick and the textures never stop evolving--so, again, resistance is futile...

The (Hypothetical) Prophets--Wallenberg
Moderne--Switch On Bach
Tim Blake--Lighthouse

If you go down to Hammond, you'll never come back...

2007-04-17T22:41:00.000-04:00

This one is probably more genuinely psychedelic than most of the stuff I've posted. And I can tell you in precisely what way:

You're a nineteen year-old girl in college, but over the summer you've fallen in lovei with a "dangerous" guy who lives half-way across the country, and you're thinking about dropping out of school to go be with him--fuck the consequences. Only trouble is a cousin you used to be really close to is having a wedding, and you can't quite bring yourself to skip it. You've already mentioned your plan on the phone to one of your three older sisters, so the whole family's buzzing about it. But your parents know how willful you are, so it's been decided that your sisters will try to talk to you about it first. You know full well what you're gonna have to deal with, and on a whim you decide to drop some mescaline (you're nineteen) on the train upstate.

The ceremony is equal parts funny and intense. The intense part cause your cousin is really getting married, and cause you're a girl, and you can remember all the times you thought about what your wedding would be like when you were a kid. But during the reception the wolves strike. They corner you on some picturesque veranda, and the next-youngest sister--your confidante--grabs your arm and says she wants to show you the beautiful garden. You know there's no point in resisting, and the mescaline tells you nature is your ally: you'll get more support from the trees, flowers, and shrubs--even clipped and arranged as they have been--than some bourgeoiy portico that you were trying your hardest to see as ancient ruins, but it wasn't quite working out. On the way to the garden, you're tempted to finally drink from the champagne glass you've been holding for two hours and haven't touched, but the thought seems so impure you immediately dash it out on the ground. Sister #3 is smoothly, roundly closing in on the predestined subject, probably chalking up your distracted air and roving head movements to you being skittish about what you know you're all about to get into.

Suddenly she stops--she's got your arm, you stop too--and you feel like you're on some elaborate stage set that's just swung out so that you're facing the audience head-on. But instead it's three interrogators, who all feel like they know you well--which at this moment feels physically invasive (sister #3 has relinquished your arm at this point, but that's little comfort). The words are really flowing now, a surging cascade that they are all trying to contain, but it becomes impossible because they're all feeding off each other as well as their disease-like concern for you. The only good thing about this is that you haven't had to say much at all. Luckily you can feel the breeze through the trees, the insects and birds, the summer sun in its early-evening languor. Everything feels possible, and that capacty is so much more real than the limitations your family is trying to infect you with--half of your mind is seeing "family" in quotes. You wish you had another dose to give to Jess (sister #3), but you know she wouldn't take it. Slowly but surely some of their words are starting to get to you. It's not anything particular they've said, but a deeper ache that seems to permeate your sisters, squeezing the words out of them--even as you know it represents much more than them alone. And it's diffusing over into you. You're starting to wonder now...wondering about this sense of freedom you feel, if maybe this infinity does have borders. Worse, you can feel the fear inside yourself--where it's come from, and how it's been playing out in your mind. Another disease? The same one?...

The Roches--Hammond Song

I took myself for a strong and loving soul...

2007-04-16T00:36:00.000-04:00

The Nolte image lets you know there's a "but" coming (and I, for one, will never get tired of this shot). Plus, since Robert Downey Jr. seems to have finally gotten himself together, I can't think of a better one for a song called "Backslider's Wine". Still the song doesn't quite live up to Nolte. Do you see any sign of contrition in that face?

Jerry Jeff Walker--Backslider's Wine

You could make me believe with your lying tongue...

2007-04-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

...that the sun rose in the west.

Anne Briggs--Go Your Way
Anne Briggs--Blackwater Side

Limbic Bath, part 2

2007-04-12T19:40:00.000-04:00

Why is "Little Lazy Daisy" a good decade ahead of its time? Can't deny the swooping pans of those processed, child-like vocal loops. But the true visionary touch is that smeared Spacemen 3-guitar, periodically threatening to dissolve into the greater tape-delay drift, but never quite succumbing. It keeps the track from being truly ambient, and yet has a humility to it that, say, Robert Fripp's guitar loops totally lack. All the same goes for "Sister Crazy Maisie", except the guitar is more fully dissolved even as it pulses more quickly, synths loom larger, and it sounds like something other than just children is trying to communicate--until darkness swallows everything like a sudden revelation of the deep below warm, surface waters...This stuff is from 1980, by the way..."Blue Guitars" is from four years earlier. Despite the title, I really didn't think it was guitars--he got them to sound so weightless and free--but it's been confirmed by Mr. Harrison himself, so "blue guitars" swelling and falling, as unlabored as unconscious breath...

Kevin Harrison--Little Lazy Daisy
Kevin Harrison--Sister Crazy Maisie
Kevin Harrison--Blue Guitars

Suspicion

2007-04-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

In the movie of that title, Cary Grant is a flighty, perpetually broke British playboy, who marries a sweet, somewhat shy, plain Jane-type who happens to come from a fairly rich family. She doesn't know Grant is broke until after the marriage, but, when she finds out, initially decides he didn't marry her for her money because he "could have done better elsewhere." Oh, since she's Hollywood's idea of a plain-Jane, she is of course very pretty, and yet Grant calls her "monkey face" because he doesn't like what she's done with her hair on their first sort-of date--which is almost closer to a kidnapping. The rest of the movie catalogs her growing frustration at his irresponsibility and, more to the point, her growing suspicion that he has murdered his best friend for business reasons and that he not only did marry her, but is planning to murder her, for her money.

Though it's my favorite Hitchcock film, it's usually written off as a failure because his original ending was changed. He wanted that milk to be poisoned, and for her to drink it despite strongly suspecting this, through some cliched Gothic-female conviction that if she drinks it and it's not poisoned, then she'll be able to finally get the suspicions out of her mind, and, if it is--well, she'd rather die than have to face the fact of his betrayal. The Hitchcock "zinger" would have been the final scene, after she drinks the (yes-poisoned) milk: the following morning, Grant, under the auspices of just thinking she was sleeping late, dutifully/sociopathically mailing a still-sealed letter she had written to her mother the day before which--the viewer knows--explains that, in the event of her death, he was responsible (incidentally, this ending would have just barely conformed to the Production Code of the day, which forbidded murderers from getting away with it).

The studio rejected this ending because they didn't want to make Cary Grant a murderer, so the ending actually used puts all his shady behavior and some seemingly damning acts down to a combination of coincidence and his chronically undependable nature, but not before their marriage nearly breaks up, and he becomes increasingly bitter and hurt by her clear lack of faith in him. There's a particularly harrowing scene in which she tells him she wants to go away for a few days alone because she can't sleep, and he nearly explodes at her, before noting miserably that she used to have trouble sleeping when he wasn't around. But his reactions to her doubt, and even fear, of him aren't touching until the very end, because, until then, you think he's just a murderer--nervous that she's onto his plot. So, at the end, it suddenly strikes you with something like the mixed rush of guilt and relief that's hitting her as she realizes she has wrongly believed the worst possible things about the man she loves. Without the thriller-ending, it has become a film about relationships, about the difficulties of trust, about personality conflict, and, most of all, a magnification through melodrama of all those little moments that are so significant to you that your partner doesn't notice, of all those little tests you put each other through on the way to building any kind of lasting confidence. Whether that's worth more or less than a cleverly macabre mystery is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder...

This song reminds me of Suspicion, the last couple, heightened minutes of the Elvis version, in particular, recalling the last half-hour or so of the movie when you are made to identify almost totally with the wife--caught up in the increasingly baroque spiral of her fears. Of course you at least know they're not unreasonable, while, in the song, you're supposed to assume the girl's jealousy is unreasonable--although all you have to go on is Elvis' word that he's "never lied" to her. But there's no point in thinking about it that much, when you can just bathe indiscriminately in the emotion, fall for that sucker-fade that leads right back into the fervent horns and Elvis' "I'm all shook up" testifying, because you know he's "caught in the trap", and he's not going anywhere. Just as later, less mechanical, filmmakers would expand on the blue-print for psychological exploration provided by Suspicion and other Hitchcock films, "Suspicious Minds" has found itself covered many times, in every imaginable form. Because over-kill only makes it stronger, I'm including my two favorite later versions. The first finds a subdued My Morning Jacket live in 2002 (when they were at their best). It's hard to deny Jim James' voice was made for this song, especially on the "never lied" line. The second is a 1971 Lee Perry production of Hortense Ellis (under an assumed named) in a girl-group-sounding rocksteady mode similar to, but not quite in the league of, Phyllis Dillon...

Elvis Presley--Suspicious Minds
Jim James--Suspicious Minds
Mahalia Saunders (Hortense Ellis)--Suspicious Minds

2007-04-10T01:13:00.000-04:00

These two were in Throbbing Gristle without being Genesis-P-Orridge, but I've never even heard Throbbing Gristle, to tell the truth. This shit certainly isn't industrial. "Cowboys in Cuba" and "The Gates of Ancient Cities" are moody electronic tracks from 1982 that are pretty awesome despite being from 1982, and despite one of them being called "Cowboys in Cuba". That one makes good use of some dry and metallic sounds by adding depth with lots of other sounds--especially after the beat kicks in--including really nice unseen-snaking/clicking-animal percussion (if you've seen any sci-fi or horror-creature movies you should know what i mean). "Ancient Cities" is four-and-a-half minutes of mesmeric voice/synth/guitar ambience with a subdued tribal rhythm, and new synth textures unexpectedly deepening things past the half-way mark. "Lament" is sort of Chris & Cosey's "After Hours", fragile and charming--the atmosphere is pretty, the percussion doesn't get heavier than a triangle and a click-track, and it's the only song with proper vocals. "Her knee (de goět spécial)" is long and wayward, but there're way too many interesting things going on for that to bother me. The vibe of this one is like John Carpenter remixing the Black Dice's "Creature" in feral-future, desert soundtrack-land...

Chris & Cosey--Lament
Chris & Cosey--Cowboys in Cuba
Chris & Cosey--Her Knee (de goět spécial)
Chris & Cosey--The Gates of Ancient Cities

Like I were in a dream...

2007-04-08T18:07:00.000-04:00

Rasta Communication is pretty much the only Keith Hudson album I've never heard anything about. Flesh of My Flesh..., Playing it Cool, and Pick a Dub have all been tipped as masterpieces of one kind or another. I've even heard claims made for Too Expensive, as sort of the Sister Lovers of reggae--a big piss-take on the record label that still merits great interest. Flesh of My Flesh has a uniquely dark, tribal feel to it, Playing It Cool really is fucking cool, catchy roots music that you would never guess was recorded in '81--ironic, in that '77's Too Expensive sounds more grossly '80s than a lot of '80s reggae. This wide variance in sound is one of Hudson's most admirable characteristics. Other than Lee Perry, I can't think of a Jamaican producer more willing to experiment with his style. But only after hearing Rasta Communication am I willing to put Hudson up there in my pantheon of Jamaican producers, along with Perry, Niney the Observer, and Lloyd Charmers. And although it's fatuous to judge Jamaican music on the basis of proper albums, I have to note that Perry's nearly perfect record, Super Ape, has that annoying whistle or fife seriously marring the last track, while the only flaw in Rasta Communication is some occasional laziness to the "cultural" lyrics in songs that are entirely listenable otherwise. With Charmers' Dadawah... falling clearly outside the scope of reggae, that leaves it as possibly the best reggae album I've heard...

Recorded in '79, during Hudson's New York period, it benefits greatly from the playing of British steel guitar virtuoso Wild Willy Barrett. I know that last statement is unlikely, but Barrett's steel guitar is the dominant sound on every track but one, mingling with synth on some of them to the point where it becomes almost like a languid, echoey call-and-response that disorients you, suspended in space. That happens most of all, perhaps, on the latter half of "I'm No Fool", which is fairly typical of the album's blanched-out, almost alien vibe. It was a difficult call between posting that or "Felt We Felt the Strain"--with subtler, gorgeously manipulated synth--but "I'm No Fool" wins out cause of the supreme synth/guitar duet. "Musicology" and "I Won't Compromise" are the brightest tracks, but also have my favorite lyrics. Both nearly make me delirious, the first with an anthemic piano melody, backing girl vocals, and the lyric "I found the temple that keeps you rockin'", the second probably with the over-all sentiment and with backing vocals that have that shimmery-wet "Amber Canyon Magic" of said Brightblack song. Every time I put them on I want to march somewhere...out of the opium-cloud wastes of the previous half-hour, while keeping their obscure lessons intact. Those last two also make a perfect prelude to the bonus track, an epic single using ray-gun synths to carve out a war-path that has room enough for both love and anger...

Keith Hudson--Musicology
Keith Hudson--I Won't Compromise
Keith Hudson--I'm No Fool

Thank you so much to the Greensleeves label for reissuing this. Although less celebrated than Blood and Fire or Pressure Sounds, they have lots of really good stuff in their catalog, and most of it is available on eMusic...

Wherever I may be, it's overwhelming me...

2007-04-07T03:57:00.000-04:00

It's rare that I get enthusiastic about a dance record, or pretty much any electronic record from the last few years. But, it's rare that sound is paid attention to as thoroughly as it is on Gudrun Gut's I Put a Record On (not the most inspiring title, I admit). Every sound on this album is swathed in a saturated warmth that would shame virtually any recent ambient record, and the arrangements are extremely varied and creative even underneath that base-level production glow. Really, there is no genre people generally appropriate these days that Gudrun doesn't throw into the mix, and yet it all coheres with a naturalness that is shocking, once you think about it. The weak link is the often banal lyrics, but, to these ears, they outweigh the music only on one of the album's eleven tracks. The rest varies from more-than-interesting to downright rapturous. This girl is so charmed, she even pulls off a crib from fucking "Frère Jacques" without being precious--I swear.

"Rock Bottom Riser" is a smog cover. The half-pretty-good, half-pretty-bad lyrics (way better than average for that lucky bastard) eventually are about liberation, and it feels liberated the way a song only can when its been transformed from the original, impotent performance of its writer and into the vision it always should have been. callahan's semi-ditty serves Gudrun's sensibilities so well, only fools will bother to remember the smog version. "The Wheel" has streamlined, ambient/lounge-pop vocals, and just a really good vibe. "Pleasuretrain", the big crowd-pleaser here, has enough loose, narcotic guitar, and other sonic goodies that its easier than you think to get over that title and the fact that it's also an occasional lyric...

gudrun gut--rock bottom riser
gudrun gut--the wheel (edit)
gudrun gut--pleasuretrain

p.s. After dissing recent ambient records above, I should note that what I've heard of the new Stars of the Lid seems about as good as pitchfork says it is...

Way Down Deep Inside

2007-04-05T13:49:00.000-04:00

Burnt Brown Sounds has been taken down, which really sucks for anyone who hasn't downloaded every song posted there. Track for track, I'll wager it was the best mp3 blog ever. I'm not going to rehash too much of it here, but there are a few tracks I feel should always be available on the net, especially vinyl-sourced stuff that has never been reissued. Foremost among them is "One Way", from Annette Peacock's 1971 album, I'm the One. Absolute love-fucked, tweaky white moog-soul: if you haven't heard it yet, get ready--it's one of those songs that seems to suck up all the air in the room as you listen...too intense to subject yourself to very often...

Annette Peacock--One Way

I'll make another I'm the One post pretty soon, cause there are other great songs on the album--from fucked-out slow funk, to her cover of "Love Me Tender"--but this one is best digested on its own.

I'm sad but I'm true

2007-04-02T13:29:00.000-04:00

Jackson C. Frank was the best folk artist of the '60s or any time. His sole record, Blues Run The Game, proves that, especially with the five unreleased '70s tracks appearing on the cd reissues. Either of the two one-disc reissues are so essential I nearly want to use the word perfect. The two-disc is loaded with tons of later material that is just sad--and should never have been released--but it's greatest sin is in breaking up the running order of those 15 songs on the earlier cds with an embarassing "rock" single version of the title track. I'm posting the only worthwhile track ("Cryin' like a Baby", still not on the level of the album) that's exclusive to the 2-disc, so there is no reason for anyone to buy it! On the other hand, there's no reason to even think before buying the 1-disc reissue...

Between "Milk and Honey" and "Relations", you get an idea of the breadth and depth of this guy. The first is simultaneously a statement of freedom and helpless alienation, with such an inexorable, melancholy pull to it, it took me five years to notice that when Frank psychically defines the seasons he just skips summer as if it never existed. He actually says "All the seasons--one, two, and three", and I still didn't realize summer was missing until probably the thousandth listen! "Relations" contains the line that titles this post, enough said. An earlier post has another song, too personal to say anything about at all...

Jackson C. Frank--Milk and Honey
Jackson C. Frank--Relations

Jackson C. Frank--Cryin' Like a Baby

Because a fire was in my head...part 2

2007-03-31T16:20:00.000-04:00

Two earlier Terry Callier posts (here and here) are devoted to his interpretations of traditional folk songs, done in a traditional, though highly idiosyncratic, style. I've made clear my preference for those couple of perfect moments--and some other very good early trad stuff--over his later, more celebrated style that mostly strikes me as extra-easy easy listening. Maybe I need to give some of it a second chance; I probably will. But for now there's "Yo Goin' Miss Your Candyman".

It's an original song, although the lyrics could just as well've been lifted from an old soul or blues tune. The true originality, and the power, is in the arrangement. He starts with another of those cyclic/unresolved acoustic guitar melodies that feels like it's been around as long as music has, but puts it together with an anthemic, funky bass-line, bongos, tambourine, and--eventually--a mingling of scorched R & B horns and irradiated string drones. Thus, the lack of electric guitar--and the spaciousness of the mix in general--ends up having a heavier effect than a heavier sound possibly could have. And then there's his voice, serving the 'my woman don't give me want I need' routine with the kind of stark, compacted sense of strength it's always deserved...

Terry Callier--Yo Goin' Miss Your Candyman (unconscious edit)

You may be drinkin' hard, like the fish that swim...

2007-03-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

It's spring[something between a period and an exclamation point belongs here]

Pentangle--Sweet Child

I know you know what's on my mind...

2007-03-29T17:45:00.000-04:00

A serpentine way of saying "I want to fuck"? Yeah, but really straight up at the same time, a trick Scott Adams must have learnt from Alex Chilton (who produced this stuff) during the mid-70s, although he's just as apt to abandon it. "Games" wins out over "Mojo Man" cause it's not called "Mojo Man", but I rate "demon of love" from the former roughly equivalent to "what you got between your knees?" from the latter, so both songs are on about the same level of mildy embarassing, moderately Chiltonized Memphis blues-rock. Oddly enough, "Games" at times echoes Simply Saucer in both vocals and guitar dynamic.

The William Eggleston photo above, called "Untitled (Memphis)", leaves me no choice but to include the Chilton song, "Hey! Little Girl". Though nothing revelatory, it's a nice song. His horniness is only implied, but the implication is as bald as it gets, and there's something subversive about using an almost straight-Beatles guitar melody for these purposes...

Scott Adams--Games
Scott Adams--Mojo Man

Alex Chilton--Hey! Little Girl

Sound Restores Young Men

2007-03-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

A couple of enigmatic songs from self-styled enigmatic girl, Cynthia Dall. The title of this post is the title of her second record (released four years ago, a full six years after her first), and in another song on it she remarks "when you talk about her I feel like I've been in her myself". On "Extreme Cold", arpeggiated bass and synth sounds are pretty quickly subsumed in haze--not the gorgeous kind of haze but actually hazy haze--and nicely melodic post-rock guitars that resist the chunky crescendos you start to worry about as soon as they come in. Song title and chorus aside, the over-all feeling is like driving through one of those Midwestern spring days that mixes fog, sun, and almost-dry mud, but feels hopeful after the winter you've just been through. A minute in, you'd have to kick yourself to remember the first few seconds seemed to promise some motorik electronic vibe. Again, title aside, the "Dead Children" one is in an even better mood, with vocals and drums especially hinting at that same feared crescendo, which comes closer this time but, again, never materializes. Okay...

Cynthia Dall--Extreme Cold
Cynthia Dall--Nest of Dead Children

Now it's all up to you...

2007-03-26T20:56:00.000-04:00

Today I got a few promos in the mail, including a new Kompakt cd called From Here We Go Sublime, by some German producer willner, who calls himself "the field". I looked it up on the net to see what it was supposed to be, and found a really stoked new review of it in pitchfork, the headline suggesting Boards of Canada-style nostalgia, electronic record of the year, etc. Putting the cd in, it turns out to be little more than a laid-back, sugary conflation of trance and house. But I skim through the review anyway, until the writer gets to his cum-shot: "If Willner doesn't hit at least some of your pleasure centers, well, forget your ears--your nerve endings might actually be dead." On a day when I was sort of wondering this about myself anyway, that sentence made me smile, and inspired me to post some ideal neurasthenic-loser jams:

As promised, my favorite geri-soul vibe from Disc 3 of the Sound Stage Seven Story comp, Willie Hobbs' "Judge of Hearts". It's notable in so many ways, but all you should need to know is the title. Also, here's the real best ballad on the Geater Davis comp that I didn't post originally cause I was so excited about everything on it. This one is ragged...

Willie Hobbs--Judge of Hearts
Geater Davis--Why Can't I Cry

New Romantic Denial

2007-03-24T20:11:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the recent lack of posts. I haven't been feeling so well, but hope to be getting something up most nights again, now...

House of Love are a bit of a nostalgia-trip for me, and I'm sure even moreso for anyone who was of age in the late '80s when they were, briefly, a big noise in the U.K. independent rock scene. Alan McGee was their manager for a while, until they left Creation for a major, went nuts on each other, and completely fizzled out--all in about a year-and-a-half. "Shine On" is from that Creation period, and McGee even supervised the recording sessions, his sole contribution being a continual request for "more reverb". Anyone who's heard this version and the major-label re-recording of the song will appreciate McGee's reductive wisdom, as well as the way ego and money can pollute a good thing in no time at all. The other song is from one of their Peel Sessions. The lyrics are less absurd and the sound less spacey but it contains the same sense of moodily restrained I-used-to-be-a-tranny drama--probably because singer Guy Chadwick used to be a tranny, at least on stage during the New Romantic days...(a fact for which the picture above seems to be trying to compensate by making him look like a convict out of Dickens)

House of Love--Shine On
House of Love--Destroy the Heart

Something's got a hold on me, and I don't know what...

2007-03-20T17:31:00.000-04:00

Beyond the admission that "Candy" is a catchy song with good lyrics--and I really felt it one day when I was drunk--I'm not too impressed with the El Perro Del Mar album that everyone was raving about last year. eMusic got me excited with their claim: "Party music for a party of one", but I hear too much pop and not enough depressed. Burnt Brown Karl's instincts win this time, though, as they usually do. He liked it enough that he went to see her live a couple weeks ago, and came back saying how awesome it was: just like three guitars and sulky Swede Sarah Assbring's (I wonder if she got teased as a kid...) vocals several degrees more forlorn than on the record, especially when she sings "I Found A Reason".

Well, thanks be to YouTube. Out of the dozen or so live clips posted there, by far the best-sounding one happens to be "I Found A Reason". The dude who posted it didn't put up any other songs, but at least he picked the right one, cause El Perro Del Mar's "I Found A Reason" lives up to the hype. So does "Candy", although the sound quality on that one isn't as good.

And yes, it's true. I've posted an actual Velvet Underground song. It's not even a rarity or anything--it's right there in the middle of Loaded--although I've never heard anyone say a word about it. El Perro Del Mar's "I Found A Reason" made me want to go check out the original, so I dug out Loaded, but very quickly it just became all about "New Age". I felt the need to put it up here cause I haven't been able to get it out of my car stereo for the past week--that's one song, over and over again, for a whole week.

When I went through my big Velvets phase, as a teenager, I didn't get "New Age" at all. Those of you who don't already know it might be a bit skeptical at first, too. It starts in a sentimental Lou Reed-mode kind of like "Coney Island Baby"--I was gonna say "except a little faggier", but I think it's up for debate which is a gayer sentiment: "I wanna play football for the coach" or "And when you kissed Robert Mitchum/Gee, but I thought you'd never catch him". Anyway, much of the first part of "New Age" revolves around how Lou thinks this older, washed-up, "fat, blond actress" is really poignant. At one point, he tells her he's seen every movie she's been in, "from paths of pain to jewels of glory"--but you should resist the urge to stop listening after that line, cause the lyrics start to improve almost immediately, and pretty soon there's no more mention of the actress, but instead you get a couple minutes of pure musical transcendence. By the way, once you know the song is building to that, the first half becomes good somehow--if any part of you needs shattered-soul music then you'll synch up with the slow, broken pace, the luded-out guitar, and the slow trail of the lyrics leading, eventually, to redemption...

El Perro Del Mar--I Found A Reason (live, ?)
El Perro Del Mar--Candy (live, Bowery Ballroom, 3/1/07)
The Velvet Underground--New Age

Vamos Rafa!

2007-03-19T04:03:00.000-04:00

In honor of Rafael Nadal, links here and here to earlier posts featuring Spanish bands. For the precious few reading this who might possibly care, I want to stress two points: (1) He's Back; (2) the clay season is coming up...

p.s. You may note that in the "Dios del Sol" post, I describe the sun in the cover image as "healthy-looking", but if you look at it, that doesn't seem like an apt description. The interesting thing is, there is no real way to describe what that sun looks like. Possibly it's wearing lipstick and blush on one side of its face, but it doesn't look like a girl, and not quite a tranny, or gay. It doesn't look particularly calm, or reflective, or wise. The "healthy-looking" claim was a cop-out because I couldn't--and can't--say what the sun's face is expressing. It's like some ancient proverb/unsolvable riddle kind of vibe. Anyone who can solve it, by the way, earns respect, and maybe a private musical bonus...

Everything is weird...Turnin' out just like I feared...

2007-03-18T01:57:00.000-04:00

There're just too many really-good-to-great songs on Hi Fi Snock... and Armchair Boogie, and for those who don't deal with Zip-file packages, it's not fair that you can't hear them. As i said previously, these two records are far superior to Michael Hurley's other stuff, even though they're the only two that haven't been reissued.

"Open Up" has a bit of a nasty snare sound, but, aside from that, it's a woozy mix of metaphysical and lascivious so perfectly achieved, it's impossible to separate the two moods. "Open up eternal lips and swallow me...", and "Take me to the tit of the heavenly body..." The only other thing I need to say is yey for more girl backing vocals, as on "Oh My Stars". He didn't do that enough.

"Twilight Zone" is something else. It starts as an ideally harried piece of post-psychedelic folk-blues, progresses through a long middle section where Hurley's standard-issue fantasy friends like the Wolfman and Dracula come wandering through in a slowed down world in which his casualness, itself, starts to become scary. It convinces me for the first minute or so as a metaphor for the bland, open-eyed horror of the less spectacular forms of mental instability, but I feel like it lasts a little too long, so that the spell breaks, and it's revealed as the trick that it is. And then the more emotional style of the beginning of the song kicks back in and I realize how perfect it would have been if he'd never bothered with the Wolfman and Dracula in the first place. So I have mixed feelings, and have decided to post the original along with an edit that takes the whimsical elements out of the song altogether. I'd say the song both gains and loses something in this form, and you can decide for yourself...

As for the rest, "Uncle Bob's Corner" and "Jocko's Lament" are more light-hearted again, awash in the deceptively infinite wisdom of the seasoned drunk. The first is about six hundred times better than its title--among its many virtues is a defense of drinking in the morning. "Werewolf", I feel, has an edge on the starker, less polished version widely available on two different reissues of his earliest material. I'm not gonna knock that version, it definitely has its strengths. But I'll take this one.

Again, I'm very much indebted to Grown So Ugly for posting this stuff.

Michael Hurley--Open Up
Michael Hurley--Twilight Zone (edit)
Michael Hurley--Jocko's Lament
Michael Hurley--Uncle Bob's Corner
Michael Hurley--Werewolf
Michael Hurley--Twilight Zone

2007-03-17T02:03:00.000-04:00

It's ironic that there've been more good folk-influenced releases in the last few years than electronic ones. Possibly this is the result of music being about escapism--and as our lives become more electronic and less folkie, we all go for what we can't have. The greater factor, for me though, is that the large number of electronic releases during that time have been increasingly dependent on sterile computer generated and recorded sounds, and that vintage-leaning folkie types are obviously going to be less susceptible to those evils--although, in the case of recording, only just.

Hence for my spacey/electronic fix, I again return to earlier sounds, in this case 2002, and a record that was acquainted with computers to some extent in the production process, but manages not to be at all ruined by it. In fact, most of this record is worthwhile, very much alive and full of surprises (I'd also like to thank another electronic musician who, shockingly, uses beats well). Aside from "Lila Regen" which is the gaziest cut, it was tough to decide which ones to post. Dig the way "Eistrompete" starts off sounding like it's gonna be too fast in that particularly German way that usually leads to goofiness, before a seriously hypnotic combination of gorgeous synth melody and deep rumble takes over--the whole thing even changes again after that, and it's not a bad idea, especially in the context of the album, but that rumble is so mind-altering, I feel good about my choice to end the track there...

Harald Sack Ziegler--Lila Regen
Harald Sack Zielger--Flugbahn
Harald Sack Ziegler--Eistrompete (edit)

Oh, in case people are interested, the image is a stained electron micrograph of dinosaur bone cells (sorry to any six year-olds out there, but i don't know what kind of dinosaur). No computers involved.

Some like to go by plane...Some just like to go insane...

2007-03-14T21:47:00.000-04:00

So I was about to get those un-reissued Michael Hurley records on ebay, but Grown So Ugly has already posted both of them, so no need. It turns out that they represent Hurley's best period, with about ten songs that rise above his usual combination of slackness and whimsy into something soulful and consequential. Armchair Boogie is the one with the original of "Sweedeedee" and a version of "Troubled Waters", two stand-outs on the Cat Power Covers Record. "Troubled Waters" just isn't felt enough, and it's probably best left as a girl's song. But "Sweedeedee" is no disappointment, it's as authentically "folk" as anything I've heard. Here, Hurley's conversational style mixes with the starker, songier parts to make you feel like he's talking to you because he can't talk to his girl, or find direction in his life--and there's nothing more "folk" than a loserly drunk talking too long about his problems in some weird mix of clarity and muddle to a stranger in a bar or a park. The Cat Power version is stripped to the core--like many of her covers it's more of a distillation than a rendition--and in this case, the contrast with the original couldn't be more drastic in that Hurley's version benefits greatly from the accumulation of incidental detail.

Anyway, both complete albums are available in zipped format here and here. I'm posting my favorite tracks. "Sun Is Slowly Sinkin'" is a downer drinking song. Any fan of this blog shouldn't be too surprised that, finding there's a song called "Water Train", I had to include it. It's another drinking song, a bit less "'bout the girl I left behind", a bit more bemused and simply tired. You know, those times when drunk + tired = almost mystical...

Michael Hurley--Water Train
Michael Hurley--Sun Is Slowly Sinkin'
Michael Hurley--Sweedeedee

Robot futures were warm...

2007-03-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

...and cool at the same time. Ever notice that? Analog synths feeling warm and comfortingly remote at once--like light in space from a distant sun? These tunes have a vintage of...2003. But they're really, really good, with a sound somewhere between Aphex and Boards of Canada. "GTE" and "MVS" are more ambient, with "MVS" the sweetest. "Vectors" marks the high point, though, with a John Carpenter-lite bass-line and some great little sputtery beats (and I'm increasingly crabby about beats); it manages to be a bit more tweaked than the other two without breaking from their sedate elegance. Even just four years ago people still knew how to make classic-sounding electronica...

Bochum Welt--Vectors
Bochum Welt--GTE
Bochum Welt--MVS

2007-03-11T23:07:00.000-04:00

The following song--one of those Lee Hazlewood-type vibes somewhere blissfully between country, folk, and psychedelic pop--has nothing to do with The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, although it vaguely reminds me of the scenes between Hogue and the girl. Cable Hogue has its own music, the ballad of the title, and, more notably, a little song called "Butterfly Mornings" dueted, I think, by the actors themselves, Jason Robards and Stella Stevens. That song was covered by Hope Sandoval on her solo album. Both versions are nice, but I'm not gonna post them...

The movie is worth checking out for anyone who can deal with westerns, anyone who can deal with Sam Peckinpah, or anyone who usually can't deal with Sam Peckinpah and is interested to see if I can be telling the truth when I say this movie comes without his usual misogyny even though the girl is, staight-up, a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, and the scene that introduces her is a Boing-O! montage of successively closer close-ups on her tits. Oh, it's also Peckinpah's warmest movie...

Arthur Gee--Love song

Ludes + Speed?

2007-03-10T00:37:00.000-05:00

Who the fuck are these guys/Can I get an amen?...

Sapat--Fante
Sapat--Lovely and Free

*Note, yesterday's post, I put up a Mick Turner track called "Rosa II" instead of "Moth 6", as intended. The mistake has now been corrected. I like the real "Moth 6" better, but I've left "Rosa II" up as well, with the right title now...

2007-03-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

The landscape speaks...

Mick Turner--Moth 6
Mick Turner--Rosa II

Was it easy, was it hard...not to be a part of it all...

2007-03-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

Club 8--She Lives By The Water

more Club 8

In this world no more...

2007-03-05T12:46:00.000-05:00

Back from vacation. Internet was impossible, so apologies. I was happy to note that I didn't care though. When the internet goes out at home, it affects me to a scary degree, I start to feel kind of like HAL 9000 during that long sequence when Dave silently goes about disconnecting him. But in a more naturey place with sunlight and the ocean I didn't miss it at all, which is good...

Of Montreal is a band I've always stayed away from because of their name, a decision which their new album title, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?... would seem to justify further. The title is funny as shit though, as are some of the lyrical highlights, courtesy of a dustedmagazine review that manages to work in the word "genius" alongside: "'I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway/I felt the darkness of the black metal bands'", "'Even apocalypse is fleeting'", and "'I saw her, a girl kissing girls/What a shock/She said she must be an artist...Eva, I'm sorry, but you will never have me/To me you're just another faggy girl/And I need a lover with soul power/And you ain't got no soul power'". I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the answer's yes, the hissing fauna want you dead dude...

On to the business of the day, which involves Ellen Fullman and her Long String Instrument. There are several variants of it, ranging from 90-145 feet in length, consisting of sometimes a hundred strings--played by up to four people at once--reverberating richly in drone. For her collaborative album with Konrad Sprenger, she came up with a smaller version, like twenty feet long or so, and decided to do actual songs, with the accompaniment of guitars, bass, and percussion. She may be an avant-garde visionary, but I'm afraid she's no songwriter, as most of this record bears out. The cover of Woody Guthrie's "I Ain't Got No Home" is pretty great, though. The song was his sort of piss-take on the Carter Family's "This World Ain't My Home", which he thought had an opium-of-the-masses type of effect on poor rural people who loved it. Forty years later in the decadent suburbs, listening to this blissed-out version of it I pretty much respond to it on the same gospel = opium level that offended Guthrie in the Carter Family song. Some of the lyrics I can't relate to, but maybe that's cause I'm not a sharecropper and Ellen Fullman isn't either. But sorry Woody, this shit is so thick and shimmering, and such a salve for ears that've become increasingly resigned to the thin sounds of contemporary music, I'm afraid your song has been hijacked/corrupted. Didn't Marx say something about aesthetics being the morality of the future?

Ellen Fullman & Konrad Sprenger--No Home

I've also put up her best ambient track, played on the 145 foot instrument.
What's nice is that, though the sound is appropriately epic, with seemingly infinite over- and under-tones, it doesn't all mass up together into some impenetrable wall. The accidental subtleties--or i should say inevitable, since, after all, she designed and built the instrument with intent--are awesome, but there's a lot of intent in the playing too. It's music, not gimmick, and for drone-heads it's something you haven't heard before. Feels like it's gonna grow through your ears, into your brain, and change things...

Ellen Fullman--Work for 4

My turn has come...

2007-02-24T11:28:00.000-05:00

I'm off on holiday the next week, with limited internet access. I'll try to make as many posts as I can though...

The vibe will be tropical, so in honor of that, here's one of the sunniest, most casually soulful reggae tracks ever. I've tried to hate the lead singer, mostly because he was fucking Lee Perry's common-law wife, and because he sings stuff like "We were best in sports and music/And still best in all activities/Whatsoever I do must prosper..." It's impossible, though. I get why Perry's wife was fucking him. This guy is pure soul and charisma, and this song is just beautiful. Another supreme winter denial track...

The Meditations--Turn Me Loose

I can't count on my feelings...

2007-02-23T22:39:00.000-05:00

The first ten times I heard this song I heard those words. It's really "fingers", not "feelings". I know that now both because Mavis clearly sings "fingers", and because it makes sense with the subsequent line, while "feelings" does not. Sometimes, though, you mishear a lyric better than it actually is, because you need to hear it that way--and your particular need is so strong that it penetrates deeper in that one spot than a songwriter's efforts at over-all coherency can allow. I still hear "I can't count on my feelings" much of the time when I listen, and it's not even a betrayal of what the song is about. Her feelings are what kept her in this shit relationship long enough to be disrespected more times than she can count on her fingers, and even if she now feels a righteous crest of anger commiserating with an instinct toward self-preservation and probably a voice of reason as well, it doesn't mean those old feelings aren't still inside her, fighting with this new and fragile alliance for the temporary possession of her mind and influence over her actions. "I can't count on my feelings" is the soul of the song really, even if "I can't count on my fingers" is an important part of its conveyance...

All the other parts are in order, too, the one time in her solo career when nothing let Mavis down--not instrumentation, songwriting, or production. A perfect a piece of Southern soul construction, the intensity of which Mavis fully exploits while managing to stay somehow understated at the same time. If you don't hear that, I suggest you listen to any other soul vocalist, and then come back to her. When she's at her best, none are her equal. And, of course, the trick is that the intensity and the understatement reinforce each other. It's like the difference between ham acting and the better kind. Or between bullshit people in life, and those you can deal with. William Blake put it best: "To be in a passion you good may do/But no good if a passion is in you..."

Mavis Staples--How Many Times

They must have something in mind...that I've never had...

2007-02-22T21:12:00.001-05:00

By now it should be clear that I'll chase down the ghosts of Sister Lovers no matter where they lead me. In this case, it's just about the least likely place imaginable: the final, 1977 album of a British, formerly country-rock band called Unicorn. Unicorn are almost entirely forgotten, but when remembered at all, it's for their mid-period albums, which Dave Gilmour played steel guitar on and produced. One More Tomorrow is supposed to be their most confused, failed recording, after Gilmour had jumped ship. On the best songs they've abandoned pretty much all suggestion of their wannabe country origins. More to the point, on those tracks, the lyrics have jumped about twelve levels in terms of originality/ambiguity, and the over-all sound mimics to a fascinating degree the two best bands of the '70s.

"So Hard To Get Through" is the Alex Chilton soundalike. Absolutely no reason to think Unicorn had ever heard Big Star, so it's all the more uncanny when lyrics and vocals combine to very nearly make me believe I'm listening to Alex Chilton--especially on the lines "I'm learning fast these days/But not fast enough", "I've heard of bearing up/And stiff upper lip", and "I wonder sometimes what we're trying to prove". But even aside from my Chilton obsession, I don't think it'd be going overboard to call this one a totally lost '70s classic.

"The Night" is one part Sister Lovers, two parts Fleetwood Mac--or, to be more specific, those weird, loping, coke-drunk (don't ask me how he got drunk on coke, but it's undeniable) Lindsey Buckingham tracks on Tusk that no one remembers, other than "Save Me a Place". No one remembers them for good reason, cause the only other one that's worthwhile is the great "Walk a Thin Line", and that's almost at the end of the (double-length) album. "The Night" doesn't equal either of those, but it beats out all the other Buckingham songs on Tusk, and should prove irresistible to anyone who ever deeply wanted that album to be the masterpiece that he wanted it to be--and especially to the one or two freaks out there aside from myself who have ever imagined some kind of geriatric burnt marriage between it and Sister Lovers...

If "So Hard" inspires no guilt in me, and "The Night" only a hint of it at one or two moments, then "Disco Dancer" is the full-on guilty pleasure included tonight. How do I convince anyone to check out a song with that title? I guess the test should be if you're into "So Hard" at all, then check it out. "Disco Dancer" is even poppier, and it dates from the Dave Gilmour period, so you get his gorgeously played and self-produced guitar. The combination of slide, delay, tremolo, and panning during the chorus would nearly justify the song even if it didn't have any other charms, which it does. And, surprise, these include another soundalike vibe: anyone remember the second Phoenix album? It was a case like Tusk, where I wanted it to be way better than it was (it did have the incredibly strong "Everything Is Everything" and the tweaky-fun "Victim of the Crime" though). "Disco Dancer" reminds me of all the laid-back, would-be idyllic pop songs on that record, except it gets closer to the mark, even if at one point you have to endure the line "Disco dancers start to twitch"...

Unicorn--So Hard To Get Through
Unicorn--The Night

Unicorn--Disco Dancer

Oh, and do I even need to say anything about the album cover?

That is if you're crazy too...

2007-02-22T01:15:00.000-05:00

David Crosby's first, nearly perfect solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, was reissued again late last year. Go ahead and click on this link to some tracks from the old reissue and see if you like it, but if you do, be sure to buy the new one, cause it's probably the best remastering job I've ever heard (and remastering often pisses me off). The natural echo--as in "this room is big", rather than "this tape contraption can do awesome things", or "this computer thinks it can"--is absolutely staggering, as is every aspect of the sound.

That gets Crosby's solo credentials out of the way, for everyone who only associates him with the Byrds or CSNY. His hedonism, though, is even more legendary. He freebased cocaine all day and night for the better part of the '70s but still managed to gain prodigious amounts of weight during that time. I think this fact alone proves he is the most indulgent person of his day, and probably ever--cause I don't think earlier eras of human existence can offer anything to compete with freebasing cocaine. We may also take note of all the women that were available to him, and his odd way of looking at it that he was the sex object, and not them. Along these lines, the following song is a live version of his heartfelt plea--uh, I won't spoil it...

David Crosby--Triad

2007-02-21T00:35:00.000-05:00

A whole album of Hank Williams covers may seem a fool's errand--in 1964 as much as today--but Del Shannon not only pulls it off, he puts down a few versions that're arguably more essential than Williams' own. This one is the best, as bleak and wintry as country can be, but with that impassioned fatalistic drive Shannon brought to his immortal rock hit, "Runaway". He's even managed the impossible, beating Cat Power's recent version hands down...

Del Shannon--Ramblin' Man

Human truths have left me cold...

2007-02-20T06:13:00.000-05:00

In David Cronenberg's Scanners, babies born as the result of a certain fertility drug have grown up with telepathic powers, and they cope with these in varying ways: from causing other people's heads to explode as a preamble to outright revolution, to the harmless creation of the rather anguished sculpture above. I Am Spoonbender once did a record that puts portentous, early 80s soundtrack-style ambient music to texts from some very early Cronenberg films, and, even their more upbeat, dancey stuff like this, they aim for somewhere between prophetic and paranoid--territory that feels heavily indebted to early Cronenberg, up through the totally amazing Videodrome, and perhaps a few other movies from around that time, such as Michael Mann's slightly later, and equally amazing Manhunter.

These tracks come from a free download off the I Am Spoonbender website. They're very proud to offer their music only in the superior (and space-consuming) WAV format, and, though I like the sound on these--ray guns and all--I'm still posting mp3s as always. Also, I've hacked up their original twelve-minute track, removing an aimless opening passage, isolating what sound to me like two distinct songs, and, finally, flipping the order in which they play. Anyone wondering whether an injustice has been done can#$$587%$73767756%$%#^586---------EDITS HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY THE ARTIST'S REQUEST. YOU CAN STILL GET THE TRACK IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM AT IAMSPOONBENDER.COM

I Am Spoonbender--Slowly Replaced In Mirrors (part 2)
I Am Spoonbender--Slowly Replaced In Mirrors (part 1)

Dusted in Memphis

2007-02-17T00:24:00.000-05:00

Yessssssss! More awesome Alex Chilton. Of course I like the first Big Star record. And Sister Lovers somehow happened, and keeps on happening over and over for me more than just about anything else...But he hasn't given me another moment to love until now. Like Flies on Sherbet has some pretty good stuff, but nothing else even comes close to catching, and nowadays his albums are literally wedding-band level performances of wedding-band material. Thanks to Spin magazine(!) for turning me onto this, cause "She Might Look My Way" and "The Walking Dead" are as close to Sister Lovers as anything else is gonna get. The drunk mellotron from "Kanga Roo" is even back for "The Walking Dead". And this version (not to be confused with the awful glammy one on Bach's Bottom) of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" is the swamp that all rock 'n roll aspiration might fall into if it managed to keep on falling...

Who the fuck but Chilton could have sung "I don't wanna fight and lose", and made it sound so anthemic? Who the fuck else could have done any of this? What is it that Chilton had--only for a short time--that no one else has ever had, before or since? I will never know, so I'll come back again and again to his moments of impossible, messed-up grace. They make me feel more human. I guess music can really do that...

Alex Chilton--She Might Look My Way
Alex Chilton--The Walking Dead
Alex Chilton--Take Me Home and Make Me Like it

I'll add an extra note of heartbreak here. "Take Me Home..." and "The Walking Dead" were recorded in Memphis in '75--close enough to the Sister Lovers period that I can still tell myself there was just something irreplaceable about that time and place for Chilton (which would include Jim Dickinson's hand at the console). But "She Might Look My Way" is New York, 1977. It came back and touched him...for one more night? What, the right combination of booze and pills and laid and a certain color of sky? I mean, how does that happen?!--and then gone again. Forever...