What was I saying about BBC music documentaries? Well, how about...



"Rather than simply using the electronics to be a kind of an amplification for acoustics, we were actually trying to use electronics for their own sake. But without the kind of pretentiousness that tended to be around. I think I was proud that we were the only people who didn't say that we were influenced by Stockhausen." -- Michael Moorcock

"In each provincial town there'd be three or four people who had some kind of access to cannabis, or maybe a bit of LSD, or maybe some form of speed... when Hawkwind played, you'd see those four people right in front of the stage with a look of complete -- you know, just HOME AT LAST." -- Nick Kent

As tipped by WFMU's Beware of the Blog (warning: Samantha Fox content)

WEIRD BAND ALERT continued

I hadn't seen this before, a trio lineup of Kraftwerk playing a ridiculously heavy version of "Ruckzuck" on German WDR TV in 1970. Ralf Hutter is playing Hammond organ, or is it "a modified electric organ called a tubon (made by Swedish factory Joh Mustad AB)"? Florian Schneider plays the killing flute riff, and someone is doing a fine job keeping up back there on the drums... it's Klaus Dinger, right? (Another website said it was Wolfgang Flur.) When they lose the main groove it gets a little unfocused, but they certainly maintain the punk edge throughout. The crowd looks legitimately stunned, but also appreciative and interested.... and the trio sound is so killer, I initially thought it had been overdubbed later... but I really think it's live...

Quick shoutout to the BBC Network for making so many good music documentaries. I can't imagine ABC, NBC, CBS, or even the mighty FOX network itself have made any documentaries about the same era of American music that are this consistently good. I don't even think PBS has (but if someone can correct me with some YouTube links please do).

Krautrock:



Synth Britannia:



Prog Rock Britannia:



Jungle:



Here's a bonus embed of part 2 of the Jungle doc, just so you can go to the 2:43 mark and see some serious studio business by an MC whose identity I can't quite figure out other than "Rodney":



Not to mention other awesome shows like Julian Cope's Modern Antiquarian...



and of course...



(not to mention)...

SCORPIONS Virgin Killer

Thanks iPod shuffle for reminding me that all of those incredible lost 1970s private press hard rock albums that have surfaced on blogs and $19-$41 reissues the last few years may be cool but, at their best, are approximately half as good as Virgin Killer. I've been listening to this album since I was about 14 years old (replacement cover edition, thank god), at which time Duke Wisdom and I became (I'm assuming, probably correctly) the only two residents of Fremont County, Iowa to be full-fledged members of the Cult of Uli Jon Roth. Don't get me wrong, any Dieter Dierks-produced Scorps album is gonna be good... everybody in Fremont County and a lot of other places loved 1980s radio hits like "No One Like You", "The Zoo," and of course "Rock You Like A Hurricane." All fine tunes, and there were many more, but there was just something on fire about 1970s Roth-era Scorps... the tunes were punchier, and the guitar playing was far beyond other fine but notably more lethargic Hendrixians of the day such as Trower and Marino. Check out "Catch Your Train":



P.S. Here's Roth telling the story of how the album's striking title and beyond-dubious original cover came about [via blabbermouth.net]: "The lyrics incidentally were a take-off on KISS, whom we had just supported on a tour. I was fooling around and played the riff of the song in the rehearsal room and spontaneously improvised 'cause he's a virgin killer!' trying to do a more or less way-off-the-mark Paul Stanley impersonation. Klaus immediately said 'that's great! You should do something with it.' Then I had the unenviable task of constructing a meaningful set of lyrics around the title, which I actually managed to do to some degree." C'mon, Klaus... Paul Stanley impersonations are always fun and should be supported when in the practice room, but everybody (except Paul Stanley and the members of KISS) know that they should never be used for actual song ideas... maybe this wasn't yet common knowledge in 1975-1976.

P.P.S. You may already recognize Dieter Dierks as the producer of several krautrock classics... a whopping 13 out of Julian Cope's Top 50.

RIP SHIZUKA MIURA

I was just now doing the usual hasty three-days catch-up with my Google Reader feed when something made me stop scrolling... a Feb 16 post on the Root Blog referring to a Feb 15 post on the Ongaku Blog about the medication-related death of Shizuka Miura in late January. In this day and age when basically every week seems to bring a flurry of RIP tweets and posts and blogs and retweets of the news of the death of another great soul-touching musician, I couldn't believe that this particular news had taken almost a month to get to me. Her long-running band always was underrated. They were named after her; she played guitar, sang the songs, and was, I think, the principal songwriter. In 1994 they released a CD called Heavenly Persona on the venerable Japan psych label PSF, and during the following year came the album that really knocked my younger self out, Shizuka Live on the Persona Non Grata label. They really didn't have any other official releases, but both of these records are gloriously desultory documents of their blown-out and deeply melancholy acid-ballad sound. A lot of attention will be rightfully given to the beyond-explosive lead guitar by her then-husband and former Fushitsusha member Maki Miura, but it is Shizuka's guitar playing and singing that set the tone of the band absolutely. This video posted by the Ongaku Blog is an excellent example. If the band's stage presence doesn't grab you, just minimize the browser and let the waves wash over.....

GRASS WIDOW

Thanks to a couple recent posts on the Kill Rock Stars blog I've been watching a bunch of YouTubes by this band over and over again. This is really entrancing stuff... hard-hitting, fresh and punching rhythms that underpin an ethereal triple-vocal attack. In an interview at the Brontosonix blog they say, "When we were first writing songs in Grass Widow we were like, "Are people gonna like this? These songs feel really good to play-but what does it actually sound like?" There was really no pre-conceived notion of how we wanted to sound. I guess our main focus was pushing the borders of our ability and that is what Grass Widow is."


The video for "Tattoo" is a cool in-the-studio documentary thing, and that live set at the Brooklyn Museum is excellent, with sound that is really present and intense. (Same two vids that KRS posted, but check out the related vids too.)

weird band alert: KRAFTWERK

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Danny By The River aka Winterlong aka Electric Prayers (BOOTLEG) 
PINK FLOYD Animals (COLUMBIA)
BASIC CHANNEL Octagon/Octaedre (BASIC CHANNEL)
EL JESUS DE MAGICO Scalping the Guru (COLUMBUS DISCOUNT)
DON CHERRY Live in Ankara (SONET)
NENEH CHERRY Homebrew (VIRGIN)
DESMOND DEKKER Rockin' Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker (RHINO)
ERIC B & RAKIM Paid in Full (4TH & BROADWAY)
ANNE BRIGGS s/t (4 MEN WITH BEARDS)
BOB DYLAN Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (COLUMBIA)
BROSELMASCHINE s/t (SPALAX)
COLLIE RYAN The Hour Is Now (SEBASTIAN SPEAKS/YOGA) 
ANNE BRIGGS s/t (4 MEN WITH BEARDS)
NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (REPRISE)

The Neil Young & Crazy Horse show is from 1969 in Cincinnati, the then-standard opening solo set by Neil followed by the then-standard closing electric set by the original quartet of Neil on guitar, Danny Whitten on guitar, Ralph Talbot Billy Talbot on bass, Billy Molina Ralph Molina on drums, all four on vocals, and I'm surprised to find that this is the second Crazy Horse bootleg in a row where I've preferred the acoustic set to the electric. I mean, it's still a good listen with plenty of good jamming, but for laser-beam live-band interplay you still can't beat the studio takes on the Everybody Knows LP. Sometimes that's just the way it is. On that night in Cincinnati "Down By The River" was 19 minutes long, which is maybe a few minutes too long, and nowhere do Whitten's rhythm guitar stabs snap the whole band to breathtaking attention like they did in at least two places on the LP version. Gonna have to put that one on later, as well as conduct further research on various other live NY hypotheses....

I can't let go of the El Jesus De Magico album, or maybe it won't let go of me. I never quite 'get it' when it's on or quite 'remember it' when it's over, and I'd even go so far as to call it 'uneven'... but yet there remains something really compellingly despondent about its slow-grinding, jammy, psyched-out grooves.

Wow, the iPod shuffle played a 1978 album by Don Cherry and followed it with a 1992 album by his stepdaughter Neneh Cherry. Both albums are terrific, the one by Don an easily overlooked live set recorded in 1969 at the US Embassy in Ankara (Turkey), with a local rhythm section, which is pretty cool when the drummer turns out to be the thunderous Ofay Temiz. Side two is really cool, all tunes segued, some spacy jamming on various Turkish folk themes giving way to a Cherry composition that gives way to a sweet version of "The Creator Has A Master Plan" (always good to hear Don sing) that gives way to a definitive DC two-flutes-at-once coda called "Two Flutes." As for the Neneh album, it was the thoughtful and delayed follow-up to her big-selling1989 debut Raw Like Sushi. I've been listening to it since the year it came out, and I still love every song, even when she and Michael Stipe himself fist-pump their way through "Trout," the ultimate show of Lollapalooza Nation camaraderie. Stipe is actually straight-up rapping on this one and I don't even care, it just makes me want to get a smart drink and check out information tables in a chill-out tent.

Having a nice evening with Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, which I just might be ready to declare the 4th-most-underrated Dylan album of all time. It first shuffled up at about 4:45PM, right as I was getting off the train and walking over to the grocery store, opening with a sweet ten minutes or so of instrumental three-chord tone-poem played by combinations of Dylan, Roger McGuinn, and Bruce Langhorne on guitars, with none other than Booker T. from the MGs on bass. And of course "Billy" is a great song in all its iterations, and of course "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" is one of the greatest of all songs, and hearing this stuff reminds me that I can check out the director's cut of the movie sometime soon, which is a nice feeling... James Coburn's finest hour...

Broselmaschine album remains incredibly deep... don't miss the track 7 "Schmittergung" with its near 10-minute kosmische spoken word extensions.

If you were wondering, the list of albums at the top of this post is of the albums I listened to today, in order. The first eight came up continuously in one iPod album shuffle playing session, but after Eric B & Rakim I broke shuffle and played the sublime 1971 full-length debut Anne Briggs album because I overheard a co-worker upstairs playing it in passing and wanted to hear the whole thing back in my office downstairs. And now, after playing the Briggs once, and then starting the iPod back up a couple hours later with a fresh album shuffle, it has gone right into four more early 1970s folk albums, right in a row: first Dylan (1973), then Broselmaschine (1971), then Collie Ryan (1973), and then the fourth one being the Briggs album again! Okay, I'll call the Don Cherry > Neneh Cherry sequence a fluke, but this has gotta be taste-recognition software, right?

 

CONQUEROR Hammer of Antichrist (FIFTH DIVISION)
SUN CITY GIRLS Tibetan Jazz 666 (CLOAVEN CASSETTES)
GUNS & ROSES Use Your Illusion II (GEFFEN)
VIV Sea Shells Listening (PEBBLE)
COSMIC JOKERS s/t (SPALAX)
THE YOUNGER GENERATION "We Rap More Mellow" (BRASS)
SEQUENCE "Funk You Up" (SUGAR HILL)

Still mostly bored with black metal, but there is something about Canada (see also Wold), which would after all be an appropriate musical heir to Norway, another resource-rich decadent suburban caucasian lifestyle happening on the next harsh-but-lush wintry continental shelf just 3000 miles across the pond, and it was with these heavy latitudinal thoughts of the climes of the great northern earthen pole in mind that I had a good listen to the Hammer of Antichrist CD by the Canadian "BESTIAL BLACK DEATH DEVASTATION!!!!" metal band Conqueror just this morning. The disc compiles two of their records, the War Cult Supremacy full-length from 1999 and the Antichrist Superiority demo from 1996. War Cult Supremacy has a better recording and is a powerful album, but I just don't think the riff onslaught trances out as much as it does on Antichrist Superiority, and yes, it's probably because it's easier for me to get lost in the grimy depths of demo fidelity. Either way, it has an overall raw and hungry surging power where the full-length sounds just a little more clinical and well-fed.

Put on Use Your Illusion II just to hear opening track "Civil War" and took it off soon after... the Izzy Stradlin tune is okay, though not as good as the stuff on the Ju Ju Hounds album... I love "Yesterdays," but after that was just not in the mood to sit through the Dylan cover, even if the delirium of "Get In The Ring" did await on the other side....

That's Sea Shells Listening by VIV in the upper right, image from Sound Projector magazine)

VIV is a group from the Brighton, England area... they sent a 3" CDR two or three years ago (under the name of Vole) and it was good and fresh-sounding improvised music, essentially free jazz but with a strong folk and prog undercurrent, a group tone that has come even further to the fore on this superb new full-length called Sea Shell Listening. Standard instruments like saxophones and drumkit mix uniquely with marimba, tapes and electronics, folk-style acoustic guitar, and other intangibles for big long tunes that are in fact mostly swells of dynamics and tone, certainly as close as anyone else has gotten to late-period Talk Talk playing the sound of strong flower petals breathing quietly after a thunderstorm..... 

The debut album by the Cosmic Jokers is about as deep into pure ambience as 1971 kosmiche rock got while still sounding like a rock band (i.e. keys, guitars, bass, and drums, sometimes even vocals), more specifically a mean rock band... not overtly, but it's in there... with German rock, no matter how beautiful or celestial, the meanness comes via a certain starkness of instrumentation and tone.

I'd never heard of this The Younger Generation 12" before but it's from 1979 and features Cowboy, Kid Creole, Melle Mel, Mr. Ness, and Rahiem (aka The Furious Five without Grandmaster Flash being mentioned on the label, although he is mentioned in the lyrics). Melle Mel sez: "Rap like hell and make it sound like heaven." Sequence song is also a slammer, take it from someone who knows...

EEEEEEEE RECORDS

At first I thought it was another nondescript underground paste-on CDR noise label, but upon closer inspection of the xeroxed pasted-on artwork (and a clarifying e-mail from the label CEO) it became apparent that EEEEEEEE (that's 8 capital E's to be EEEEEEEExact) is a reissue label, digging up obscure cassette-only underground stuff from the 1980s and giving it a new strange life.

First disc I put in was by Exploding Head Trick, described as a Rock In Opposition band from Minneapolis, extant from roughly 1986 to 1993... now there's an undocumented slice of musical history. I've never really understood R.I.O... I've barely even listened to Henry Cow... I've never even read the R.I.O. wikipedia page. You might even say that I've always been in opposition to Rock In Opposition, which may be why Exploding Head Trick sometimes sounds to me less a part of an important lineage in Progressive Rock History, and more like they're in some sort of "all about science" musical that my kids might go to. It's mostly in the earnest vocal melodies sung by the main guy, but also the incredibly perky 1980s instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, and prog violin by the main lady, who also sings some nice Cocteau Twins style arias here and there). That said, the instrumental musical interplay can get surprisingly complex and even excitingly raw. I've listened to it three times already so it's certainly not terrible... but I still don't understand Rock In Opposition. 

Next on the stereo was Face In The Crowd and a reish of their 1985 cassette Sax And Drums And Rock And Roll, which the EEEEEEEE website promotes as part of the UK DIY movement, but I don't know.... just because it's post-punk and a British band is doing it (itself) doesn't automatically mean the music is essential listening. Other than weirder saxophone and some dirgier songs, this kind of sounds like a run-of-the-mill angry pub rock band to me. And maybe that suits them fine, except the "run-of-the-mill" part. I think it's a recording of a gig, kind of a boomy audience recording quality... again, not bad, cool artwork too (pictured at the top), and it does keep the label roster unpredictable, but it's probably my least favorite of the bunch. See for yourself, the whole album is available for download via the label website.

Actually, at least part of me would say that the most ambitious EEEEEEEE release, the Girls On Fire 5-disc anthology Girls Who Grew Up To Be Arts Administrators, The GOF Story Vol. 1-5 is my least favorite, which is funny because the label CEO thought that it "may be the most Blastitudinous" of his releases. Why do people think I only like the weirdest stuff? Hmm, maybe it's because I've been posting reviews of really weird music on the internet for almost a decade... either way I would definitely call it the hardest to listen to in its entirety, and not just because it's 5 discs. Girls On Fire is the work of Leslie Singer, who was a founding member of DC band Psychodrama and later decamped to San Francisco where she recorded and released five cassettes of her varied rants, over guitar tweak-out (I Think About Jackson Pollock), intricate and relentless drum machine terror (In My Blood), outright sheets of noise (Confessions Of A Shit Addict), and more (the other two discs I haven't listened to yet). Those descriptions might make it sound more listenable than it may actually be, as the ranting is pretty constant and the music rarely gets to breathe on its own, but with five long and involved releases that came out from 1983 to 1985, the Girls On Film oeuvre is no slouch in the history of solo power electronics. 



As for my FAVORITE of the EEEEEEEE bunch, it's gotta be the album by Harry Zantey, hardcore industrial solo EMS synth,"recorded live, one take, no overdubs," and released waaaay back in 1981 in Australia. He was a member of the original Sydney-based 1970s lineup of Crime and the City Solution, but this is a lot heavier, scorching and dark stuff.

And my second favorite has gotta be the 1986 cassette by Sons of Bitches. Synth industrial nerd weirdness from Providence, Rhode Island. You can't help mentioning Ralph Records when describing this because of the synth sounds and sardonic approach, and these guys are vocally and textually even dorkier than the Residents. Thing is, they do it in a very musically interesting way. The vocals are not of central importance, and they know the secret of good synth/industrial/noise music; that it must not only contain the sound, but be aware of the silence on the other side of it. There is a novelty pop feel that may be too much for some, with totally silly keyboard tones plinking away while a guy named Oblivion David Stomach grumbles in a joke grumpy voice about syphilis and other stuff, but it's a surprisingly varied album, with a lot of extended instrumental forays, so stick with it. It also made me think of The Terrifying Sickos... first time a record has done THAT in, well, ever. (Probably because I read about them earlier today in a Hattiesburg, MS scene report WFMU blog post by DJ Brian Turner.)

Anyway, get in touch at http://EEEEplusEEEE.bravehost.com if you'd like to check this stuff out.

OTHER HITS OF TODAY:
RICHARD YOUNGS Beyond The Valley Of The Ultrahits (SONIC OYSTER)
HAIR POLICE Strict 7" (TROUBLEMAN UNLIMITED)
MICHAEL MAYER Immer (KOMPAKT)
KEITH JARRETT Dmitri Shostakovich: 24 Preludes & Fugues op. 87 (ECM)
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING Primary Colours (AARGHT!/GONER)
CONQUEROR Hammer of Antichrist (FIFTH DIVISION)
JUAVVES "Muy Aburrido"  ("Sounds Like: if you were to like smoke weed then go surf and like while you're on top of a sick wavve you were to take a sick bong rip and smoke more weed.")

J.J. CALE Naturally (SHELTER)
FATHER YOD AND THE SPIRIT OF '76 Kohoutek (CAPTAIN TRIP)

Love J.J. Cale, here with his 1971 debut album, featuring songs that were better-known through inferior cover versions, like "Call Me The Breeze" and "After Midnight." My favorite song right now is the honey-sweet ballad "Magnolia."



Here's a sweet live version that seems to be from sometime in the 1980s...
all hail The Tulsa Sound...



The debut album by Father Yod and company is frustrating. The instrumental work on it is pretty great, featuring the long-running Djin/Sunflower/Octavius gtr/bs/drums trio augmented by excellent keyboards and surprisingly accomplished R&B-style female backing vocals. Ah, but then there's the singing/preaching of Father Yod, crashing through all of that atmosphere about 2.8 times louder than the rest of the band combined. Believe me, I have a lot of respect for the man and his teachings, I just wish he had some volume control. I think progressive.homestead.com says it best: A little bit 'incredible strange' or over the top of odd singing vocals, not always with the best voice in an improvisational manner.

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Smithsonian Anthology Of American Folk Music (SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS)
HORNER PARK JAZZ BAND live at Horner Park, Chicago
KURT VILE Childish Prodigy (MATADOR)
MUDBOY Mort Aux Vaches (STAALPLAAT)
TELEVISION #3 ("Little Johnny Jewel" 7" & assorted demos, bootleg) (CHICAGO MEDICAL SOCIETY)

"Kassie Jones" by Furry Lewis seems like it's 10 minutes long, with a totally circular feel as the guitar part cycles and lyrics come and go, always changing while the rhythm stays the same, occasionally landing on a refrain ("On the road again... I'm a natural born Eastman on the road again") while interesting little chestnuts bubble in and out of consciousness. ("I ain't good lookin' but I take my time" . . . "Memphis women don't wear no shoes" . . . "Gonna shake it like Cheney did, like Cheney did.") It is over 6 minutes long, which makes it the longest song on the Anthology, I think. Here's the first half of it:



And here's a version he did 40 years later:



The Horner Park Jazz Band, a 14-or-so piece big band of all kinds of delightfully casual veteran amateur musicians, really made my day today at a fall/harvest/pumpkin type festival in Chicago's own Horner Park. Two guitars (one lady who strummed chords the whole set, couldn't really hear her, and a guy who played some sweet leads here and there), plenty of brass (including crucial baritone sax), a guy playing a well-miked piano that had been wheeled outdoors... I would say the (excellent) drummer was a good 70 years old, and the kit he was playing might've been even older... honestly, hearing them interpret swing classics reminded me of a Sun Ra band doing the same, the better players carrying along the lesser players with a lot of soul/spirit/fun.



New Mudboy album is a good one, to these ears his most solid long-player yet. Does not come across as a solo keyboard album quite as much as This Is Folk Music did, but yet still hits hard with plenty of heavy solo organ. A couple quirk-threatening 'carnival' moments, or at least one early on, but he stays the course with focused material, does some interestingly evil-sounding things with heavy vocal breathing, and then builds that bridge from the 1960s to the 2000s with pulsing celestial monochord zone-out for most of the last half of the album. Comes in an tri-hinge plywood deal. (Oh, I guess Mort Aux Vaches is a series Staalplaat releases in collaboration with the Dutch radio station VPRO. The name is French for "Death to Cows," which is the French equivalent to "Fuck the Pigs" and it comes from May 1968.)

Speaking of casual, still can't believe how casual Television's 1975 debut record "Little Johnny Jewel Parts One and Two" was and is. And how much great jamming it exudes regardless.

DON CHERRY 1978 Swedish Documentary

POPOL VUH In Den Garten Pharaos (THINK PROGRESSIVE)
TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR Mors Mors (1/2 SPECIAL)
PINK FLOYD The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (CAPITOL)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Siamese Soul - Thai Pop Spectacular Vol. 2 (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
GRATEFUL DEAD Two From The Vault (GRATEFUL DEAD RECORDS)
TOWER RECORDINGS The Galaxies' Incredibly Sensual Transmission Field Of The Tower Recordings (COMMUNION)

For some reason I think I still prefer the early synth/percussion duo Popol Vuh albums (Affenstunde and In Den Garten Pharaos) to the devotional rock/chamber music albums with guitars and Djong Yun on vocals (like Hosianna Mantra and Einsjager & Siebenjager). Here, let's have a little battle of the bands:



VS.

TOM KARLSSON: Pojknacke LP (LYSTRING) Not sure where this LP is from, but it came fairly anonymously, in a stark white gatefold sleeve adorned with meticulously repellent hand-drawn artwork, at least on the inside sleeve and the labels, and I kind of wanted to listen to it once and get it out of the house... but the music is excellent. Having lost the one-sheet, I was thinking it was an album by sort of mysterious harsh industrial/power electronics band or project called Pojknacke, but the internet tells me that Pojknacke is the title, and the artist (musical and presumably visual) is actually Tom Karlsson. Hey, at least he was helpful enough to draw "A" and "B" as part of his label art, no one does that anymore! (And his name is on the spine, along with title and label, I just hadn't checked yet.) Anyway, this really is some sort of early-style harsh industrial album, but with a welcome profusion of quiet space, room for some jarring off-kilter samples, obscure but agitated European speaking voices that may even be samples themselves but mostly probably not... eventually some serious subtle (on side B not so subtle) heavy avant-rock improvisational jamming... a couple out-and-out tunes with goofy ranting punk vocals... it doesn't all work equally well, and it's maybe 10 minutes too long, but it's still really good.

VOID Live at the 9:30 Club
TOWER RECORDINGS Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles (SILTBREEZE)
BLANK DOGS Mirror Lights (DRONE ERRANT)
ROXY MUSIC Stranded (VIRGIN)
ARBOREA s/t (FIRE MUSEUM)
MORBID December Moon demo
DON CHERRY Eternal Rhythm (MPS)
DUTCHESS AND THE DUKE She's The Dutchess, He's The Duke (HARDLY ART)
RUSTED SHUT Hot Sex (DULL KNIFE)
TERRY RILEY Persian Surgery Dervishes (MANTRA)
BOB DYLAN Self Portrait (COLUMBIA)
DIALING IN The Islamic Problem (MUSIC FELLOWSHIP)
TOM KARLSSON Pojknacke (LYSTRING)
ENUMCLAW Opening of the Dawn (HONEYMOON MUSIC)

Having the Tower Recordings album come up on shuffle this morning was quite synchronicitous (if that's a word), as just the other night at the Kurt Vile show the Os Mutantes song "Delmak-O" came over the PA in between bands, and as its lovely tones and incongruous mid-song raveup emerged through the bar noise I remembered what a great song it was, literally the only Os Mutantes song I've ever liked, and how I was introduced to it in 1998 by a Tower Recordings cover version, track two of the Furniture Music album, and how I should pull that album out and listen to it for the first time in years. Well hey, thanks iPod, no pulling necessary... but it's funny about Tower, I did listen to their Fraternity of Moonwalkers album a couple times recently, and it didn't really hold up for me. In the mid-late 90s, when I listened to it a lot, it was pretty exciting, I guess because Matt Valentine was, as Dave Keenan would have it, "inventing free folk"... still, MV then was more of a sketch artist, a ringleader, a sweet guitar player, but not exactly a strong tunesmith, not the kind of guy who takes hold of a song and stuffs it into your soul, more like a guy who makes cool flickering patterns when you close your eyes. Which is cool, but not too deep or heavy, and to me it hasn't stood the test of time. This is still their best album though, or 2nd best behind their would-be swan-song big-band six-song jam-out released on LP and CD in 2004 as The Galaxies' Incredibly Sensual Transmission Field Of The Tower Recordings.

Okay, okay, I enjoyed this Blank Dogs cassette EP alright. It ended 45 seconds ago, and I think I can still remember how one of the songs went, which is a first.

I love it when I'm listening to a Roxy Music album and random Bryan Ferry lyrics pop out like "Through silken waters my gondola slides/and the bridge... it sighs." Not to mention, "Tous ces moments/Perdus dans l`enchantement/Qui ne reviendront/Au Jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais..."

Arborea album is still holding up very well. Eerie husband & wife folk music from Maine.

May not've checked out Dutchess & the Duke but the main Termbo guy was so genuine in his year-end love for their debut album that I went ahead and did it. I don't think I'll ever like it that much, but there is some undeniably good songwriting here, however indebted to Jagger and Davies it might be. The "You fucked me in a phonebooth" hook really works. Haven't heard their new album, Sunrise/Sunset, which came out last month.

Brief thoughts on a few more new records... Dialing In is one Seattle woman doing some field recordings/loops/pedals/vocals overlays with a wild dark atmosphere, powerful and interesting but also kind of all over the place and confusing. For example, I'd like to tell you the name of one really good track with this grinding looping low-end, and I think it's on side B, but the sides don't have any text on the labels, or even "A" and "B" in the run-out etchings, and both sides appear to have 3 tracks (judging from banding) but there are 7 titles listed on the sleeve... so I really don't know what the track is... that's what I mean by confusing. But it's 'good confusing' enough that I want to listen again. [Though it's now a couple months later and I can't say that I have - ed.] The Tom Karlsson LP is really good, rather disturbing, and reviewed elsewhere. Enumclaw is a member of the Philly synth/kosmische band Niagara Falls playing solo. His LP, like the parent band, is extremely faithful to its inspiration, which is 1970s synth-based German cosmic music, no more, no less. So still no points for originality, but the album does get some for beauty, with long tracks that sit in a nice simple compositional space that's a little more tranquil, direct, and memorable than the most recent Niagara Falls LP, Sequence of Prophets.

PUBLIC ENEMY Fear of a Black Planet (DEF JAM)
CLOUDLAND CANYON/MYTHICAL BEAST split (NOT NOT FUN)
VALET Blood Is Clean (KRANKY)
AFRIKA BAMBAATA & THE JAZZY 5 "Jazzy Sensation (Bronx Version)" (TOMMY BOY)
USTAD AMJAD ALI KHAN Indian Classical Maestros Vol. 2, Sarod (KITCHENS OF INDIA/VIRGIN)
CREAM Strange Brew: The Very Best of Cream (POLYDOR)
BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE II The Globe (COLUMBIA)
THE FROGS My Daughter The Broad (MATADOR)
OUTKAST "Phobia"
PAVEMENT "The Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence"
BEASTIE BOYS "It's The New Style (live)"
ABBEY LINCOLN "You And I"
ORNETTE COLEMAN "The Alchemy Of Scott LaFaro"

Side B of Fear of a Black Planet, at least Side B on the cassette, is such a serious run of burners. Super experimental helter-skelter Bomb Squad madness but still completely slamming.

Was impressed by the Silver-Tongued Sisyphus 12", and here's another nice head-turner of a track by Cloudland Canyon, uniquely wispy cosmic drone with eerie/airy vocals. I was a little surprised by the other side of the split, on which Mythical Beast kinda sound like Sinead O'Connor replacing Jean Smith in Mecca Normal to sing a heartfelt ballad. I was also surprised that I kinda liked it!

"Uniquely wispy cosmic drone with eerie/airy vocals" describes the Valet stuff pretty well too... also a haunting, intriguing, not-run-of-the-mill drone/song album. Kind of has a more digital than analog edge to it, with the song aspect emerging in surprising ways.

Listening to the sweet old-school hip-hop breakdown in the middle of Afrika Bambaata & the Jazzy 5's "Jazzy Sensation (Bronx Version)" got me and co-worker talking about how such breakdowns might be a disappearing art, which turned into a bit of a "kids these days" rant, about how contemporary hip-hop is so wall-to-wall produced, with excitement/energy/breathlessness/showbiz/compression, that nothing as casual as a breakdown can ever happen again... we decided that "It takes patience and humility to play a breakdown." (I actually said this.) Of course, maybe there's tons of sweet breakdowns in contemporary hip-hop... ultimately I just don't listen to enough of it to say. Haven't even listened to the latest Raekwon or Ghostface albums.

Anyone else peep these CDs that came for free with the grocery store purchase of delicious microwavable Indian food on the Kitchens of India label? Virgin Records has their name on the CDs, and the music is incredibly choice... it all sounds like it was recorded a while back, before MIDI and Pro Tools, before hip hop and techno and pop hybridization, just straight classical music played masterfully on acoustic instruments. Not sure exactly when it was recorded, but there is this on the fine print of this particular CD: "C & P 1996 N A Classical Audio Cassette Co. Mfg in India by: Jet Speed Audio Pvt. Ltd. 111, 7 Udyog Nagar, S.V. Road, Goregaon (West), Mumbai - 63." Looks like they were hitting the cassette vendors, Sublime Frequencies-style.

Heavy line: "I'll stay with you 'til my seas are dried up." Goes well with heavy riff. And whoah, check this out, I feel like I'm at a really good (and well dressed) Cream practice:



The Globe by Big Audio Dynamite II is such a guilt-free guilty pleasure, that somehow holds up very well in 2009. Wait, I know how: good tunes, fun experiments. Everything Sandinista was too out of shape to get to is on here. I never got into the Happy Mondays at all but I sure like it when Mick Jones tries to be them.

Co-worker dusted off The Frogs My Daughter The Broad but I can't really talk about it right now. Suffice to say that I can't believe how much we still lol'd at just about every song. What I'd really like to mention is the sweet mix-tape I made 12 years ago to round out Side B, after the 5 or 6 Frogs songs it took to get the whole album on a C90. Incredible opening with literally the only good thing about the entire Higher Learning movie, the song "Phobia" by Outkast from its soundtrack. Here's a youtube... check out the intense spoken intro and then the way that beat finally drops in at 1:23 underneath Andre's funky-ass creepazoid rapping. This ain't "Hey Ya"... I was actually scared of him then.



Followed that up with this humorous Pavement classic... I must've been cleaning out good tracks on otherwise lame comps, looking for an alternative to No Alternative. I'm not a huge Pavement fan, couldn't care less about this upcoming reunion or whatever, but I always liked 'em fine and not only do I still chuckle at this song, more importantly the guitars sound awesome.



Yep, the comp theory is correct, as the slammin' live Beastie Boys song is from some Free Tibet benefit type thing also from No Alternative, and the Abbey Lincoln cut is a wonderful Stevie Wonder cover from this 1992 Enja Records compilation. This all comes from working in a record store that had a lot of promos laying around in the early 90s. The Ornette track isn't from an otherwise lame compilation, I just put it on here because it's bonkers, recorded in 1961 by Coleman/Cherry/Lafaro/Blackwell.

Oh, here's that Beastie Boys track, it's awesome.

We'd go and check out the Rasta sound systems, and the message to us, which we heard through sound systems like Jah Shaka, Moa Ambessa, Coxsonne was so compelling that my political and spiritual consciousness was increasing. We'd hear these messages in the music through sound system, and we'd want to go and check them out deeply, seriously. This is what roots and culture does, it's literally, musical reportage, African talking drum culture transported within the inner cities, Griot culture. Sound system has this way of IMPARTING INFORMATION, informing, spiritually, politically, culturally. It raises awareness in all these ways, and as young black British guys, we were especially sensitive to these messages, these modes of communication. I have to say, the young white kids, the punks were very open to it too. We had our strong messages in the music, "Burn down Babylon" "Dub down Ian Smith rock", "Babylon fall", "Wicked man drop", and the punks had their own strong message too, so there was a common ground in these respects. Listen to those early Pistols tunes: Both were interested in some kind of destruction and regeneration, a reinterpretation of the "reality" that had been presented to us.

from Don Letts interview at 3AM Magazine

DARKTHRONE Ravishing Grimness (MOONFOG PRODUCTIONS)
SUN CITY GIRLS The Handsome Stranger (ABDUCTION RECORDS)
CIRITH UNGOL Frost and Fire (LIQUID FLAMES)
ASH RA TEMPEL Best of the Best of the Private Tapes (FM SHADES)
REACTION BAND on YouTube
THE OUTLAWS "Green Grass & High Tides" (ARISTA)
all JOHN FAHEY on shuffle
KURT VILE Childish Prodigy (MATADOR)
all KURT VILE on shuffle



Ravishing Grimness was the first Darkthrone album I heard, and now, almost ten years later, it might just have turned out to be my favorite of theirs, which means that it's more or less one of my favorite of all black metal albums. I realize that's a controversial opinion... this album probably isn't even considered black metal... where's the style police when you need them? Anyway, it's got epic tunes, most of them up around 6 and 7 minutes in length, and most importantly with a rock-solid and simple low-end riff approach as opposed to the tinnier tremelo-picked atmospheres of some of their other releases (and black metal in general).

Frost and Fire is the debut LP by Cirith Ungol, self-released in 1981. It's good, but not as doomy overall as their 2nd album King of the Dead. In fact, there's a post-Aerosmith proto-G&R rat-skank funk-metal undercurrent on this one, at least in a couple places, most egregiously track 6 "Better Off Dead." Not that there's anything wrong with that... and there are other good and better tunes on here, too ("Frost and Fire" and "I'm Alive" are great crawling Tim Baker screech-power anthems), but even with the 7-minute absurdly-titled two-guitar instrumental ballad "Maybe That's Why" being a particularly nice, gross, and uncalled-for album closer, it is still the King of the Dead that reigns supreme.

DC Go Go music doesn't really make it out of the DMV (that's D.C./Maryland/Virginia, I read it on urbandictionary.com)... here in the Midwest you have to go and seek it out. Last time I checked in was 2002, when this documentary called The Pocket, made by a couple DC hardcore/indie guys, played at the Gene Siskel Film Center... I don't think it's on DVD. It was a pretty good film, though next time I'd like to see more music and less Rollins and Mackaye... you know, "less talk, more rock." What I remember from the few occasions where a performance clip broke the 2 minute mark was something a lot different than the upbeat and bouncy EU/Trouble Funk stuff that made brief pop-chart appearances in the 80s, more like a lumbering beast emerging from shadows like an unholy cross between rap music and stoner metal with absolutely nothing to do with the Judgment Night soundtrack. Maybe it somehow came from the same place DJ Screw was coming from when he slowed hip-hop down into a dark dank beast around the same time in Houston. Tonight I was thinking about that sound (still haunting me 7 years later) and started poking around for it on YouTube, and got into this Reaction Band stuff, which is going on right now, and it's even crazier, that world's-slowest-steamroller feel developed into something progressive and symphonic, like an epic pop music, without sacrificing any of the brutality. Forget any kind of hip-hop related head-nod backbeat, groove or tempo, this is surging music with a life of its own that seems to follow the heavy chanting and swaggering of the vocalists. Throw in all the percussion that has always marked the style, heavy psychedelic echo on the mics, over the top church/soul singing shot through with super-raw sex lyrics, cinematic keyboard interludes (and sharp horn-section stabs once the rhythm gets going), an uncanny ability to layer tempos (double-time bounce on top for the dance floor and that monstrous half-time underneath, really a doom backbeat if there ever was one, for working the room), and then take it all to the stage, "every Friday night":



Love this "swag beat" with the flute hook, it surfaces throughout the Le Pearl vids... kinda reminds me of Kraftwerk "Ruckzuck"!



For some reason I have "Green Grass & High Tides" on my iPod, and nothing else by The Outlaws. Wait I know why, it's because the song rules. During my youth I always appreciated when this song came on late-night deep-cut classic-rock radio out of Omaha. Hell, I always appreciated it when ANY song longer than 9 minutes came on the radio. Still do, on any station, anywhere.

As I previewed in yesterday's post, seeing Kurt Vile & the Violators live last night really got the Childish Prodigy album to click for me today. I was already coming around to it, as early as the second listen, but man, now it just sounds perfect, from the slow, bellowing new version of "Hunchback" that opens it (including the lines "slither up just like a snake upon a spiral staircase," borrowed from another Kurt song "Beach on the Moon," which is itself a melancholy solo reworking of Kurt klassik "Freeway"... what kind of fractured mosaic is this guy putting together?), to the weird fingerpicking shouter "Dead Alive" that follows it ("You tell me a good man is hard to find, what was that??! YOU BETTER REWIND!!!!") to the lovely "Overnite Religion" and it's Jimmy Page undercurrent (an overcurrent in this performance), to the epic trance anthem live favorite (and debut video!) "Freak Train," to another Zeppelin III style solo ballad called "Blackberry Song," to the rather gloriously shoegazey Dim Stars cover "Monkey" (never heard the Dim Stars, always thought it would be more aggro than this), to "Heart Attack" which opened last night's show so well, to "Amplifier" (more Zep 3, this time with some of that trumpet he didn't dump), and then the key late-album head-turner, the 6-minute plus "Inside Lookin' Out," which floats the album home on a Bo Diddley-beat magic carpet, powered by Trbovich's spacey harmonica and Vile's serious blues shouting. The way he sings "GOT THE BLUES SO BAD!!!!!" and how well it works makes me wonder how Vice Magazine could call this album "blues rock" as an insult.

RIP DICKIE PETERSON

Like King Coffey sez "The man invented psychedelic punk." And as classic as Vincebus Eruptum is, Outsideinside is even better.