HALTERED GROANS DOT COM presents CHILL PROTO-HYPNAGOGIC BEACH-WAVE FIND #2!

"TODD IS GODD"

ALTERED BONES DOT COM presents KILLER PROTO-CHILLWAVE FIND!

Dig these Manuel Gottsching zones, yo...

"SORT BY PLAY COUNT"

Got a new computer in January and for the last 4 months I've been loading up the iTunes, 1723 songs and counting. I thought I'd post some "Sort By Play Count" rankings because it's actually very accurate to what my favorite tunes have been so far this year, and I like how 4 out of the top 5 all ended up being records by great lady singers of today. Of course, these are not necessarily the albums I've listened to the most because I still listen to lots of LPs and CDs and whatever. Anyway: 

1. CELEBRATION  Electric Tarot (9)
2. CRAZY DREAMS BAND War Dream (7)
3. KURT VILE He's Alright 7" (7)
4. THE BREEDERS Last Splash (5)
5. GROUPER/ROY MONTGOMERY split (5)

6. (tied with 4 spins each, in alphabetical order) EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING Rush To Relax , JAY TEES & BRENTFORD ROCKERS "Buck Town Version", KURT VILE Childish Prodigy, KURT VILE God Is Saying This To You, KURT VILE Live on WFMU, KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS The Hunchback EP, LOW THREAT PROFILE s/t, LUNGFISH Pass And Stow, LUNGFISH Sound In Time, NAMELEZZ PROJEKT Winter, Alchool, Benflogin, NO BALLS Come Clean, SARCOFAGO "INRI", SCISSOR GIRLS We People Space With Phantoms, SCORPIONS Fly To The Rainbow, SWELL MAPS A Trip To Marineville, U.S. GIRLS Go Grey, WELTON IRIE & SOUND DIMENSION "Chase Them (Ver.)"

CELEBRATION's Electric Tarot project is an ongoing concept where the band is recording a song for each card of the Tarot deck, and then posting them online for free. When they decide to release an album or EP of the songs, or some of the songs, they will do so on vinyl, and so on... sort of a slowly evolving internet-only concept album, and you can hear and/or download what they've done so far at the website. Sounds cool to me, especially if it keeps leading to beautiful and majestic rock songs like "I Will Not Fall," with its suspended and then surging yearning, beautifully sung by Katrina Ford. I've been clicking on this song over and over... 9 plays on iTunes and several more on YouTube itself, where I first came across it, I think via the indefatigable Arthur Magazine webpresence. Like this:



I definitely got swept up into the new CRAZY DREAMS BAND album, or pulled into its undertow, right when it came out and on through doing the interview for the new ish. Haven't listened to it so much in the last month, just once or twice, but both times it immediately got me right back in the thick of it.

GROUPER's last full-length Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill was her best one yet, but the 4 newer (?) songs (aka the Vessel EP) on her side of a split LP with ROY MONTGOMERY are yet another huge leap forward/inward into hushed/chilled quietude... this time mostly backed with solo electric piano? Roy side is also great, a 18-minute in-concert solo guitar raga.

Oh man, THE BREEDERS Last Splash. Can you believe that album? Did you know it went Platinum less than a year from its release date? I wonder if they really made a lot of money with that... we all know record companies aren't necessarily quick to pay... but I digress from the main point, which is that Last Splash is an album of beautiful rock music that a million people have heard. I like it better than Pod (but I do need to revisit Pod). Got it back out to spin "Divine Hammer" a few hundred more times (meaning I guess 5) and I love that song just as much as I ever did. In the process, I remembered how much I also loved every other song too, especially the fever dream free fall opening number "New Year"and the surging, album-framing King Crimson riffage of "Roi" and "Roi (Reprise)." (After all roi does mean king.)

Still lots of KURT VILE getting played around here. What can I say, the songs are as good as the sounds are as good as the songs are as good as the sounds. It doesn't happen as often as you might think. All of his records have been good so far, they really have, and the 7" on the Matador label, released with his Childish Prodigy full-length, really is a perfect three songs... and none of it is on the LP. The A Side, "He's Alright," is included as a bonus track on the CD version, and it's another dreamer in the "Space Forklift" vein, but in a more major key, with lyrics getting into new brotherly places ("The silhouette kid swinging on a swing/Scrapes his knee and blood it brings/He shows his friends he's alive as he brags and he jives... hey/He's alright, he's alright, he's alright.........yeah"). On side 2 we start with one of Vile's trademark Frip Jobs, that is a short interlude for heavily treated electric guitar, and this one, "Farfisas In Falltime," is one of the most beautiful and dense ones yet. Last song is another KV trademark, the wry and sweet solo country-style acoustic number, this one called "Take Your Time." Some fine post-Jansch guitar playing going on here.

Reggae hasn't gotten a huge foothold yet like it has on my old computer's iTunes. But it will. Most played track so far is JAY TEES & BRENTFORD ROCKERS with "Buck Town Version", the B-side of a Studio One 45 release of "Buck Town Corner" by the Jay Tees. Can't find a youtube but maybe this link still works.

My favorite LUNGFISH album is Sound In Time but my favorite song is "The Trap Gets Set" from Pass And Stow. (Actually it might be "To Whom You Were Born" from Sound In Time...)  

No idea how the NAMELEZZ PROJEKT got in there but they're a "black metal/alternative" two-man band from Brazil that chooses goofy names for their demos, not to mention their band. I mean, I know where I got the mp3s, I downloaded them on a whim from The Cosmic Hearse, I just don't know how they got ranked so high. Wait, I know why it is... because whenever this weird-ass 21-minute demo comes on shuffle, I never turn it off or jump ahead. Ever. No matter how inept a drum hit, how thin and boring a guitar tone, how meandering the song construction... I just can't turn off their crude 2-man basement riffage. It's entrancing. They really do create a unique sound together. Always trust in the Hearse... for example, one of the best appreciations of Cirith Ungol ever written...

NO BALLS is a Brainbombs side project, I think? Don't have this record, only the mp3s. (I would like to point out that out of the 20 records mentioned above, I do physically own 9 of them, which I think might actually be a high percentage for this day and age.) It's okay, not bad in the Brainbombs' repetition/grind department, but frankly what it seems to be missing is their deadpan shock vocals. Not as good as Coloured Balls, anyway.

I am digging the U.S. GIRLS album. A notable step forward from her first, which was also good. Also dug this interview on Pitchfork... don't miss the embedded video for "Red Ford Radio" -- both song and video are great.

NOT A COINCIDENCE

So yesterday I'm on the internet and I hear Hank Shocklee say this to the Red Bull Music Academy (starting around the 50 minute mark):



"I'll tell you a really cool trip: Go back and take a cassette, nobody fucks with cassettes any more but you can get some really, really cool distortion effects from cassettes. You take a piece of music, record it on to a cassette, and then distort the shit out of it, and then rerecord that again. That’s a different sound as if you were to go in and put a plug-in on it that had an effect. You are not going to get the same sound. There is a warmth to that distortion that’s there, there is a certain amount of enjoyment that you are going to listen to when you hear that. That’s the reason why rock 'n' roll is not doing very well right now as a music because the compression techniques are not the same."

And then, a mere 10 hours later, I'm reading the wikipedia page on that 1968 song "Jumpin' Jack Flash," by that band the Rolling Stones, from a time when rock'n'roll was doing pretty well. Keith Richards says this about how the song was recorded:

"I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals - but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."  

NOW PLAYING

V/A Men With Broken Hearts CS, or at least mp3s of it. This is a mix of old country songs released by or with the help of Mississippi Records of Portland, Oregon. Great to hear an earlier version of "Tennessee Stud," a song I previously only knew from its 1994 version by Johnny Cash. Here it's by one Jimmy Driftwood, who as far as I can tell is the writer, and who recorded this in the 50s or early 60s, and who almost sounds like Eugene Chadbourne in his subdued/reverent mode. And it's followed by some proto-Alan Vega drunken reverb yowling from Tex Ritter on "Rye Whiskey" -- hey, that's John Ritter's dad! -- which is followed by the even more deranged "Mule Train," this one by "Tex" (quotation marks theirs) which I can only guess (and hope) is Tex Ritter again... voice sounds the same. And definitely don't miss, just a couple tracks later, Pete Drake's "Forever," a beautiful "talking steel guitar" performance that got up to #22 in 1964, a good decade before Mssrs. Frampton, Walsh, and Perry used the device in a more hard rock setting... speaking of beautiful, it was also Pete Drake who added so much dream tone (sans talk box) to Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" 2 or 3 years later.


Here's "Forever":



And this is just a reminder:



6/20/10 EDIT: That was supposed to be Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" from Nashville Skyline, but I guess you'll have to look it up yourself. Or buy the CD. Or a beat-up used copy of the LP for 5-10 bucks. Plenty of people bought the 45 of the song when it came out in July 1969 and went #7 US, #5 UK. Not only did Pete Drake play the pedal steel, but Charlie Daniels himself played bass and guitar on the track. Kenny Buttrey is on drums, and studio janitor Kris Kristofferson held the cowbell for him. Wikipedia also tells me a hilarious story about this song:

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers has stated in interview that Dylan offered the song to them backstage after an appearance by the duo at the Bottom Line in New York. [citation needed] Phil asked Dylan if he had any new songs that they might record, and answering "yes", Dylan picked up a guitar and proceeded to sing the song so quietly that the Everlys thought they heard Dylan sing "Lay lady lay, lay across my big breasts, babe." Thinking it was a song about lesbians, Don Everly declined the song, saying "thank you, it's a great song, but I don't think we could get away with that." [citation needed] Dylan did not question them about it and went on to record the track himself. Months later, they heard Dylan's version on the radio and realized they'd misunderstood the words. The Everlys felt they'd missed a big opportunity and later recorded the song on their EB 84 album.

BLASTITUDE #28
NEW ISSUE ONLINE NOW / APRIL 11th, 2010
CRAZY DREAMS BAND / BULBS / M AX NOI MACH / SIKHARA / REVIEWS

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.