2/5
BZ: Ulonbay CDR (GÖZEL) Not
a lot of artists from Turkey getting hyped around here these
days, or in days past either (that aren't named Erkin Koray),
but here's a guy from Turkey (named Serhat Koksal) who's kinda
mixed up in the worldwide free noise exp. psych underground.
He had a track on that Color in Absence Sound comp
(Hell's Half Halo, 1999) anyway. This album Ulonbay
features tracks from 1992 through 1997, as well as another
album's worth of bonus tracks from as recently as 2002, including
a 1994 appearance on the John Peel show. "Sampladelic"
and "worldbeat" would be accurate if you can forget
that those words are lame, and with Mr. BZ's psyched-out and
in-the-red production aesthetic, you might just forget that
ANYTHING is lame as the soundbombing beats, sampled shouts
and chants, and difficult-to-delineate live instrumentation
all blast past. It has as much high energy as drum 'n' bass
music without ever really being drum 'n' bass, and when live
guitar kicks in, often wah'd out and wobbly as it navigates
ancient-to-the-future Middle Eastern melodies, I feel like
pumping my fist non-ironically. Sun City Girls fans take note
-- mix a little Ulonbay in with Radio Morocco,
Radio Palestine, and 330,003 Crossdressers From
Beyond The Rig Veda, go to a mirror, and watch your mind
explode. Oops, I mean expand! Then, put on the largest hat
in your closet, and go out to see this guy when he tours the
U.S. sometime this summer, dates to be announced on the Blastitude
events page.
A.M.:
Episteme; Strata CDRs (APOPLEXY;
HUMBUG)Speaking
of the fuck-you posturing that too many American puds have
recently (re-)embraced, hmm, ya think maybe that's why New
Zealand freenoise isn't in the headlines as much as it used
to be? When I moved to Chicago in 2001 I quickly realized
that if you're at a rock club and the people onstage do anything
drony, subdued, granular, meditative, and, heaven forbid,
low-key, the best they're gonna get from the audience before
all the Locust fans clear out of the room is maybe three or
four ironic fists in the air. It's like everyone in the 'scene'
decided to put their chain wallets back on or something .
. . I mean, come on, guys, I know you're not really that tough,
and here we were, on the verge of a breakthrough!
I guess it's kinda rare
to do it a rock club, but the best way to assimilate non-raucous
noise is to lay down when it starts, close your eyes, and
see what happens on the back of your eyelids. And A.M., a/k/a
Antony Milton of Wellington, New Zealand (see interview last
ish), is laying down some sounds that'll really make things
happen, and both of these discs are exemplary efforts. Episteme
actually starts with some rather normal guitar droning
and cymbal washing, and I was like, "This is okay but
it's so 1998," but track 2 is a whole 'nother beast,
and I was like, "Holy shit, now this is a fucked-up guitar-driven
drone-pop piece of scrap-metal that sounds like a malfunctioning
android spitting out attempts to play random cuts from the
first three Velvet Underground albums!" Other highlights
include "A Taut Whirling," which is aptly titled,
because it sounds like the musician isn't playing guitar so
much as whirling a heavily feedbacking guitar amp around his
head by its extension cord, capturing to tape every screaming
fizzle as the cable constantly shorts out, and then speeding
the whole thing up by a few, um, revolutions and mixing it
in the red. That's the thing -- A.M. does a lot of meditative
NZ type stuff but while you're checking out the back out your
eyelids he's not afraid to make sounds that might just (figuratively!)
peel 'em right off. And, he tries different things with almost
every track, and I'd describe a couple more, but I can't find
my copy right now for reference -- damn CDRs packaged in slip-bags
are too easy to lose!
As satisfying as Episteme is, Strata is
probably the better of the two albums if I had to pick one
-- it's all good, but a couple tracks on here are so gorgeously
ethereal, wispily woven by sparse piano and soft static, that
I'm not even sure they actually exist. Then there's "(Hutty..).,"
a 12-minute zoner that would be like that (totally sparse
piano and soft static) if it wasn't for a viola-type drone
that steadily saws throughout the piece, deep into your consciousness,
and not by being loud in the mix, either (because the soft
shortwave radio is just as loud), but by being played
really well. I'm telling you, even if you've heard a
track built around an amplified string saw-drone at least
once a week for the last 5 (to 35, depending on who you are)
years, I can still guarantee that you'll dig "(Hutty..)."
And other A.M. stuff too.
ALPHANE
MOON/OUR GLASSIE AZOTH: Experimenting With An Amen/The Magician's
Heavenly Chaos CD (OGGUM) Anyone
into psych-folk who is a hipster should have to listen to
this album. Why? Because it's really good, and also kind of
punishing, as seemingly 90% of it is just totally instrumental
sci-fi drone noise, a lot of it pretty wispy but a lot of
it pretty harsh! And I'm serious about that 90% -- there's
a 9-minute noise track, a 14-minute one, and seriously a 24-minute
one, and as far as I can tell (I've only had the album for
couple weeks) there are actually only two songs on the album,
and those are literally like one minute apiece. It's almost
like taking home a CD reissue of Spirit of Love
and finding Metal Machine Music inside the case.
The two songs that are on here are both by Alphane Moon (it
all sounds like one band to me, but apparently this is a split
release with a few tracks by Alphane Moon and then a couple
by a different band called Our Glassie Azoth), sung in Welsh,
and pretty damn wyrd in a pretty good way. Anyway, if you're
into psych-folk but not for hipster reasons, these folks have
already been featured in Ptolemaic Terrascope, so you know
they're worth a listen. I bet some of their other albums even
have more songs!
ANGEL
CORPUS CHRISTI: Accordion Pop Vol. 1 (GULCHER) As
the title and cover suggests, this is a CD of pop songs played
solo ("no drums no bass no vocals -- just a little reverb"),
by a lady accordionist who looks like Olive Oyl. While I'm
having fun playing name that tune ("Sleep Walk"!
"As Tears Go By"! "Downtown"! "Little
Surfer Girl"!) I keep picturing her playing this stuff
in the middle of a bill full of hardcore bands, getting heckled
and laughed at but also laughed with, because the hardcore
kids enjoy playing name that tune too, and she has a dreamily
simple way of playing the accordion that slows down time and
makes you feel like you're 'on' something . . . and she's
kinda cute too. Anyway, I played this at work the other day,
on the community stereo, in between all the classic rock and
Air America Radio and Outkast, and time really did seem to
stand still for that 45 minutes, and people were still talking
about "that accordion CD" two whole days later .
. .
ANGEL
CORPUS CHRISTI: The 80's CD (GULCHER) Okay,
it's true -- she is cute! But she's taken, fellas -- married
to Rich Stim, and he's in MX-80 Sound, so you know you can't
mess with him. You can hear him play music though, on most
of this CD, which means, you guessed it, this time it isn't
solo accordion instrumentals, it's a collection of various
songs and ideas recorded from 1984-1989, mostly with a backing
band or a 'band concept.'
Funny story about this CD: I
put it in for the first time at work, and about a minute into
the first song, my co-worker asks, "Is this from the
80's?" And I'm like, "Yes. And not only is it from
the 80's, it's actually CALLED The 80's." The
reason she asked is because that first song, "John Cassavetes,"
has a severely synthetic new wave sound, complete with a drum
machine. It's a little TOO new wave for me, but the lyrics
are damn good, a still-prescient 1989 catalog of all the world's
ills, "Babies born addicted / Libya has a bomb / A killer
for president / The rain forests are gone / It snowed in Malibu
/ Yosemite burnt down / Planes are flying / Right into the
ground," with the chorus punchline, "But the thing
that made me cry is when John Cassavetes died / The thing
that made me cry is when John Cassavetes died / I cried when
John Cassavetes died / That's what made me cry."
Oh, and guess who else
plays on this CD? Bruce Anderson! He's also in MX-80 -- he's
the shredding guitar player. I guess he's only on one song
here -- a cover of "Blank Generation." It's a pretty
good cover, and the guitar is definitely a highlight, even
if Anderson doesn't really step out from 'doing a really good
Robert Quine.'
And guess who ELSE is on this
CD? Alan Vega! Well, I guess he's only on two songs, but they're
two of the best, a cover of his old band Suicide's "Dream
Baby Dream," and a cover of "Theme From Taxi Driver."
His vocals aren't the best part of that one, either, those
would be Angel's vocals, reciting the opening Travis Bickle
voiceover in a perfect monotone over an excellent '80s noir'
backing.
So yeah, good album, with
at least two (and maybe five or so) great songs. But I think
like the solo accordion one better!
ANIMAL
COLLECTIVE: Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They're Vanished CD;
Here Comes The Indian CD (PAW
TRACKS) I
loved these guys live twice, bought a tour-only LP of live
recordings that was pretty darn good, and I loved the ultra-mellow
Campfire Songs CD. But when it comes to these two acclaimed
Animal Collective long-players, the truth is I can't seem
to manage listening to either for more than about 9 minutes
tops. It seems to be right there in the mix, a little voice
saying, "just don't listen to me." I mean, I'm all
for weird mixing techniques, but on both of these albums I'm
hearing a shot-through electro-scree monotone that may give
them noise/experimental cred but strikes me as flattening
and vulgar. The first one (Spirit They've Gone, Spirit
They're Vanished . . . . didn't notice that second one
was a "they're" instead of a "they've"
until . . . last Tuesday) seems like it has a lot of potential
as a collection of wildly creative and ornate symphonic pop/prog
songs, but the harder I listen the less I hear songs, and
the more I just hear a bunch of tinkly
digital piano. It's as if the music is indeed great and beautiful,
but my only option for hearing it is to have it trapped under
an upside-down twinkly little 80% sound-proof champagne glass
or something. And as for Here Comes The Indians,
well, on that one I just plain can't hear anything. If there
are any songs on here, I dare you to sing one for me. Again,
it's something about the mix -- that same flatlined 'digi-scree'
effect. I'll admit I'm just grabbing at vague terms here,
but I do know that when I turn it up, it's too loud to hear
anything, and when I turn it down, it's too quiet to hear
anything. Hmm . . . maybe there's nothing there! As with Spirit,
I can tell that the singers are singing, but I can't hum you
a single melody. Actually, I can hum a little bit of about
three different songs on the Spirit album, but that's
it. It's the better of the two albums, and I'm going to give
'em one more chance with that upcoming Sung Tongs
album, 'cause I hear it's their best work yet, and really,
if anyone's at all interested in these guys, don't miss the
Campfire Songs CD . . .
ANIMAL
COLLECTIVE: Sung Tongs CD (FAT
CAT) Earlier
this ish, while vilifying a couple different Animal Collective
albums, I promised I would check out their then-upcoming and
already highly touted followup Sung Tongs. I finally
have, and hey, it's really good. In fact, it's almost perfect,
just the album I knew they could make, combining the grandiose
pop of the Spirit album and the noise electronics
of the Indian album, all played and orchestrated
with the fragile shivering delicacy of the Campfire Songs
album. And this time they've come up with a bunch of great
hooks, like that "rabbit or a habit" one. There's
also a track that sounds like it could've come right off Nuno
Canavarro's Plux Quba album. But I really like the
whole thing -- good work, Panda Bear and H.R. Pufnstuf and
all you guys!
AYAMI
YO-KO CDR (PUBLIC EYESORE) Put
this on and the influence of Keiji Haino is immediately in
the room with you. One Japanese man strumming an electric
guitar with effects on it, singing high lonesome songs from
some void of solitude, occasionally breaking into loud guitar
heaven-leads from hell. Then again, the tone of the voice
goes into different territory than Haino, less like a (fallen)
angel crying, more like a human crying. In that sense, this
is more 'normal' than Haino, a little poppier, if you could
say that, but then again the songs are all around 10 minutes
long, which isn't poppy at all. And I don't know what's going
with track two, where he actually seems to mewl the entire
song, and quite a lost ballad it is.
THE
BAND LP (CAPITOL) I
just wanted to point out that this album is overrated. The
reason I'm blurting this out all of a sudden is that I just
read the new Chunklet, in which they once again publish a
cover story in which an exhaustive list of sacred sleeping
cows is stood upright in order to be loudly tipped over with
a single idea. In this issue, the single idea is "These
Bands Are Overrated," but when they get to The Band,
the only album they mention is Music From The Big Pink!
I end that sentence with an exclamation point because I think
they've got it all wrong: Big Pink is one of the
greatest albums in the history of rock, and is in fact the
only great album that The Band made. The 'brown album' isn't
bad, but it only has three songs that hold a candle to anything
on Big Pink: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie
Down,"
"Up On Cripple Creek," and "Whispering Pines."
The first two songs are The
Band's best-known numbers, both solo compositions by Robbie
"J.R." Robertson. The
civil war imagery is appropriate, as these tunes were indeed
J.R.'s
last stand as a potent songwriter. The lovely
and haunting "Whispering Pines" was written by Robertson
in collaboration with Richard Manuel, who was the real heart
and soul of the band, and as his collaborative energies with
the group declined, so did the quality of their output. Music
From Big Pink was their last great album, and The
Band was their last album that was even good at all.
(Maybe you could include Stagefright, but not really.)
Manuel just didn't have the drive that Robertson
did -- he wasn't hungry for the spotlight and he wasn't a
born leader. He already knew he was as good as Ray Charles,
but he didn't feel the need to prove it to Jann Wenner and
Bill Graham, or anyone else, because he was too busy partying
and dissipating while occasionally and offhandedly giving
some of the greatest white soul performances of our collective
lifetime. On Big Pink,
Manuel is still there 100% -- you can hear and feel his mystical
melancholy soul, his late-night moan, his good-time grin,
in every single song. His lead vocals for "Tears of Rage,"
"In A Station," "Lonesome Suzie," and
"I Shall Be Released" have so much naked soul upfront
that it's almost too much to bear. On The Band, Manuel's
presence is already diminished, and you can hear Robertson
trying to compensate with overly ambitious songs like "Jawbone"
and "King Harvest," awkwardly stitched together
out of hastily rendered snapshots of tokenist Americana. They
go by too fast and end before a listener can ever really figure
out where the tune is. Still, somehow, the brown album gets
all the credit, marking as it does Robertson's ascendancy
as the full-fledged (media-ordained) leader of the band. I
can't believe how many people seem to agree with this -- y'all
have been fooled by Christgau and the Holy Greil! (Don't feel
bad, I've fallen for their tricks too; Marcus fooled me into
thinking I was going to read more than the first 125 pages
of Lipstick Traces, and Christgau fooled me into
thinking that what he writes occasionally makes sense.)
BEHOLD
. . . THE ARCTOPUS: Arctopocalypse Now . . . Warmageddon Later
3" CD (EPICENE
SOUND SYSTEMS) This
might be the first band I've ever reviewed that has an ellipsis
in their name. You'd think someone else would've done it by
now. But, what does Behold . . . the Arctopus sound like?
Well, over-the-top super-shred metalloprog that is even goofier
than their name. They make Mahavishnu sound like The Godz,
they make Orthrelm sound like The Process of Weeding Out.
I get Buckethead vibes! Actually those were all jokes (except
for the Buckethead part), but I am serious when I say this
is a really good little 2-song 11 minute EP. I don't know
what it's 'listing' for, but if it's 5 bucks or less I say
grab it. I haven't heard a band do something this listenable
with these kind of blatantly Guitar Center-approved tones
and theories since . . . . . maybe ever. It's as prog metal
as Dream Theatre, but much less emo. (Oh shit, I just learned
that it 'retails' for six bucks, but get it anyway, because
I also just learned that the lineup is guitar, drums, and
. . . . . . . . . . . Chapman Stick.)
BLACK
MASS OF ABSU: Demo 1995 CDR (SELF-RELEASED) This
album gets the "man I need to get new batteries oh wait
this is my home stereo it plugs into the wall" award
for this issue. Which means that it's really slow and crushing
death grind. The recording style makes the songs sound like
Profanatica on 16 RPM, and like Profanatica, Black Mass of
Absu come from upstate New York. (Buffalo, to be exact.) This
is what my band Stoned Corpse is supposed to sound like. We
haven't gotten together to practice yet, we just have the
name, but when we do practice, if we're not this heavy, we'll
just quit. Anyway, I believe BMoA is another one-man band
by the one man who also performs and records hard industrial
nightmare funk (while wearing a ski-mask) as Ski-Mask. Everything
this guy does is heavy, and I really suggest you check some
of it out. Start anywhere.
BUNNY
BRAINS: Holiday Massacre '98 CDR (PUBLIC
EYESORE) I
didn't really know what to expect from this, but it certainly
wasn't this. Only other real album I've heard from these guys
is the Sin Gulls one, which had clear-cut songs,
production, and energy. This, on the other hand, is nothing
but burnt-out lassitude translated barely into sustained psych-rock
jams. Sounds like the drugs really caught up. If Liquorball
tried to set a record for longest non-stop jam, this is what
they'd sound like on the eighth day. The singer doesn't scream
anymore, he just intermittently mumbles into the mic, using
his regular voice. Someone -- a roommate, a neighbor, a parent
-- has turned the band's amps down considerably, but they're
too wasted to get up and readjust. In fact, they're all laying
on the ground, barely conscious, their hands keeping the riffs
going somehow as their eyes stare blankly into the ceiling.
The bass player, "Davo," seems to have the most
fight in him, and the drummer also might not be medicated,
and the two of them keep the jams moving with harmolodic (or
is just out-of-tune?) drive, keeping the door open for the
other players to join or abandon the song-form at will, jabbing
and weaving and missing completely as they start to trip out
out on the floor. Seemingly a live show, with between-song
banter and tuning-up sounds, but there really doesn't seem
to be a crowd, and it doesn't matter anyway, so deep is the
band and singer into their own spaced-out world. In fact,
I would call it focus, and despite constant absurd asides,
tuning problems, glaring mistakes, lost and aimless builds,
and a general decrepit aura, this focus never wanes. Stuff
like "Sister Ray" and "It's My Life" by
the Animals and I swear "Dem Guten, Schoenen, Wahren"
by Amon Düül II bubbles up and passes, harmolodically,
and the band just keeps moving like it's not even happening.
The result may be thirteen tracks but it's really one long
song, deep within the zone, and I've been enjoying it a great
deal.
VASHTI
BUNYAN: Just Another Diamond Day CD (SPINNEY) I'm
sure you're already planning your own personal backlash against
the new psych-folk explosion, but even as the hype continues,
remember that folk music is a timeless form and you might
as well lash back against the wind, and please don't overlook
this classic album, even if it gets name-dropped in/on Pitchfork
sometime soon. The day I got Just Another Diamond Day,
the whole Dolman family was driving around town on errands.
I loved it at the wheel, my wife loved it beside me, and my
baby loved it there in the back and fell asleep to it. Had
the player on repeat and listened to the whole album six times
straight -- this is total dream-kiss soft-spin music like
miniature ballerinas from twenty different countries singing
and slowly pirouetting at once and I could've listened to
it six more times if it had taken us that long to get home.
Another album produced by Joe Boyd -- man, that guy was good.
(I just looked up his bio and wow, I knew about the Incredible
String Band and Nick Drake and Fairport Convention but I didn't
know he also produced the early sessions of The Pink Floyd,
was one of the co-founders of London's infamous UFO club,
and, in the 1980s, stayed current, and presumably in some
money, by producing albums by R.E.M. and 10,000 Maniacs, as
well as co-founding the slick Hannibal label, now a world
music boutique.)
Not
a lot of artists from Turkey getting hyped around here these
days, or in days past either (that aren't named Erkin Koray),
but here's a guy from Turkey (named Serhat Koksal) who's kinda
mixed up in the worldwide free noise exp. psych underground.
He had a track on that Color in Absence Sound comp
(Hell's Half Halo, 1999) anyway. This album Ulonbay
features tracks from 1992 through 1997, as well as another
album's worth of bonus tracks from as recently as 2002, including
a 1994 appearance on the John Peel show. "Sampladelic"
and "worldbeat" would be accurate if you can forget
that those words are lame, and with Mr. BZ's psyched-out and
in-the-red production aesthetic, you might just forget that
ANYTHING is lame as the soundbombing beats, sampled shouts
and chants, and difficult-to-delineate live instrumentation
all blast past. It has as much high energy as drum 'n' bass
music without ever really being drum 'n' bass, and when live
guitar kicks in, often wah'd out and wobbly as it navigates
ancient-to-the-future Middle Eastern melodies, I feel like
pumping my fist non-ironically. Sun City Girls fans take note
-- mix a little Ulonbay in with Radio Morocco,
Radio Palestine, and 330,003 Crossdressers From
Beyond The Rig Veda, go to a mirror, and watch your mind
explode. Oops, I mean expand! Then, put on the largest hat
in your closet, and go out to see this guy when he tours the
U.S. sometime this summer, dates to be announced on the Blastitude
Speaking
of the fuck-you posturing that too many American puds have
recently (re-)embraced, hmm, ya think maybe that's why New
Zealand freenoise isn't in the headlines as much as it used
to be? When I moved to Chicago in 2001 I quickly realized
that if you're at a rock club and the people onstage do anything
drony, subdued, granular, meditative, and, heaven forbid,
low-key, the best they're gonna get from the audience before
all the Locust fans clear out of the room is maybe three or
four ironic fists in the air. It's like everyone in the 'scene'
decided to put their chain wallets back on or something .
. . I mean, come on, guys, I know you're not really that tough,
and here we were, on the verge of a breakthrough! 
As satisfying as Episteme is, Strata is
probably the better of the two albums if I had to pick one
-- it's all good, but a couple tracks on here are so gorgeously
ethereal, wispily woven by sparse piano and soft static, that
I'm not even sure they actually exist. Then there's "(Hutty..).,"
a 12-minute zoner that would be like that (totally sparse
piano and soft static) if it wasn't for a viola-type drone
that steadily saws throughout the piece, deep into your consciousness,
and not by being loud in the mix, either (because the soft
shortwave radio is just as loud), but by being played
really well. I'm telling you, even if you've heard a
track built around an amplified string saw-drone at least
once a week for the last 5 (to 35, depending on who you are)
years, I can still guarantee that you'll dig "(Hutty..)."
And other A.M. stuff too.
Anyone
into psych-folk who is a hipster should have to listen to
this album. Why? Because it's really good, and also kind of
punishing, as seemingly 90% of it is just totally instrumental
sci-fi drone noise, a lot of it pretty wispy but a lot of
it pretty harsh! And I'm serious about that 90% -- there's
a 9-minute noise track, a 14-minute one, and seriously a 24-minute
one, and as far as I can tell (I've only had the album for
couple weeks) there are actually only two songs on the album,
and those are literally like one minute apiece. It's almost
like taking home a CD reissue of Spirit of Love
and finding Metal Machine Music inside the case.
The two songs that are on here are both by Alphane Moon (it
all sounds like one band to me, but apparently this is a split
release with a few tracks by Alphane Moon and then a couple
by a different band called Our Glassie Azoth), sung in Welsh,
and pretty damn wyrd in a pretty good way. Anyway, if you're
into psych-folk but not for hipster reasons, these folks have
already been featured in Ptolemaic Terrascope, so you know
they're worth a listen. I bet some of their other albums even
have more songs! 
As
the title and cover suggests, this is a CD of pop songs played
solo ("no drums no bass no vocals -- just a little reverb"),
by a lady accordionist who looks like Olive Oyl. While I'm
having fun playing name that tune ("Sleep Walk"!
"As Tears Go By"! "Downtown"! "Little
Surfer Girl"!) I keep picturing her playing this stuff
in the middle of a bill full of hardcore bands, getting heckled
and laughed at but also laughed with, because the hardcore
kids enjoy playing name that tune too, and she has a dreamily
simple way of playing the accordion that slows down time and
makes you feel like you're 'on' something . . . and she's
kinda cute too. Anyway, I played this at work the other day,
on the community stereo, in between all the classic rock and
Air America Radio and Outkast, and time really did seem to
stand still for that 45 minutes, and people were still talking
about "that accordion CD" two whole days later .
. . 
Okay,
it's true -- she is cute! But she's taken, fellas -- married
to Rich Stim, and he's in MX-80 Sound, so you know you can't
mess with him. You can hear him play music though, on most
of this CD, which means, you guessed it, this time it isn't
solo accordion instrumentals, it's a collection of various
songs and ideas recorded from 1984-1989, mostly with a backing
band or a 'band concept.' 
I
loved these guys live twice, bought a tour-only LP of live
recordings that was pretty darn good, and I loved the ultra-mellow
Campfire Songs CD. But when it comes to these two acclaimed
Animal Collective long-players, the truth is I can't seem
to manage listening to either for more than about 9 minutes
tops. It seems to be right there in the mix, a little voice
saying, "just don't listen to me." I mean, I'm all
for weird mixing techniques, but on both of these albums I'm
hearing a shot-through electro-scree monotone that may give
them noise/experimental cred but strikes me as flattening
and vulgar. The first one (Spirit They've Gone, Spirit
They're Vanished . . . . didn't notice that second one
was a "they're" instead of a "they've"
until . . . last Tuesday) seems like it has a lot of potential
as a collection of wildly creative and ornate symphonic pop/prog
songs, but the harder I listen the less I hear songs, and
the more I just hear a bunch of 
tinkly
digital piano. It's as if the music is indeed great and beautiful,
but my only option for hearing it is to have it trapped under
an upside-down twinkly little 80% sound-proof champagne glass
or something. And as for Here Comes The Indians,
well, on that one I just plain can't hear anything. If there
are any songs on here, I dare you to sing one for me. Again,
it's something about the mix -- that same flatlined 'digi-scree'
effect. I'll admit I'm just grabbing at vague terms here,
but I do know that when I turn it up, it's too loud to hear
anything, and when I turn it down, it's too quiet to hear
anything. Hmm . . . maybe there's nothing there! As with Spirit,
I can tell that the singers are singing, but I can't hum you
a single melody. Actually, I can hum a little bit of about
three different songs on the Spirit album, but that's
it. It's the better of the two albums, and I'm going to give
'em one more chance with that upcoming Sung Tongs
album, 'cause I hear it's their best work yet, and really,
if anyone's at all interested in these guys, don't miss the
Campfire Songs CD . . . 
Earlier
this ish, while vilifying a couple different Animal Collective
albums, I promised I would check out their then-upcoming and
already highly touted followup Sung Tongs. I finally
have, and hey, it's really good. In fact, it's almost perfect,
just the album I knew they could make, combining the grandiose
pop of the Spirit album and the noise electronics
of the Indian album, all played and orchestrated
with the fragile shivering delicacy of the Campfire Songs
album. And this time they've come up with a bunch of great
hooks, like that "rabbit or a habit" one. There's
also a track that sounds like it could've come right off Nuno
Canavarro's Plux Quba album. But I really like the
whole thing -- good work, Panda Bear and H.R. Pufnstuf and
all you guys! 
Put
this on and the influence of Keiji Haino is immediately in
the room with you. One Japanese man strumming an electric
guitar with effects on it, singing high lonesome songs from
some void of solitude, occasionally breaking into loud guitar
heaven-leads from hell. Then again, the tone of the voice
goes into different territory than Haino, less like a (fallen)
angel crying, more like a human crying. In that sense, this
is more 'normal' than Haino, a little poppier, if you could
say that, but then again the songs are all around 10 minutes
long, which isn't poppy at all. And I don't know what's going
with track two, where he actually seems to mewl the entire
song, and quite a lost ballad it is. 
I
just wanted to point out that this album is overrated. The
reason I'm blurting this out all of a sudden is that I just
read the new Chunklet, in which they once again publish a
cover story in which an exhaustive list of sacred sleeping
cows is stood upright in order to be loudly tipped over with
a single idea. In this issue, the single idea is "These
Bands Are Overrated," but when they get to The Band,
the only album they mention is Music From The Big Pink!
I end that sentence with an exclamation point because I think
they've got it all wrong: Big Pink is one of the
greatest albums in the history of rock, and is in fact the
only great album that The Band made. The 'brown album' isn't
bad, but it only has three songs that hold a candle to anything
on Big Pink: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie
Down,"
"Up On Cripple Creek," and "Whispering Pines."
This
might be the first band I've ever reviewed that has an ellipsis
in their name. You'd think someone else would've done it by
now. But, what does Behold . . . the Arctopus sound like?
Well, over-the-top super-shred metalloprog that is even goofier
than their name. They make Mahavishnu sound like The Godz,
they make Orthrelm sound like The Process of Weeding Out.
I get Buckethead vibes! Actually those were all jokes (except
for the Buckethead part), but I am serious when I say this
is a really good little 2-song 11 minute EP. I don't know
what it's 'listing' for, but if it's 5 bucks or less I say
grab it. I haven't heard a band do something this listenable
with these kind of blatantly Guitar Center-approved tones
and theories since . . . . . maybe ever. It's as prog metal
as Dream Theatre, but much less emo. (Oh shit, I just learned
that it 'retails' for six bucks, but get it anyway, because
I also just learned that the lineup is guitar, drums, and
. . . . . . . . . . . Chapman Stick.) 
This
album gets the "man I need to get new batteries oh wait
this is my home stereo it plugs into the wall" award
for this issue. Which means that it's really slow and crushing
death grind. The recording style makes the songs sound like
Profanatica on 16 RPM, and like Profanatica, Black Mass of
Absu come from upstate New York. (Buffalo, to be exact.) This
is what my band Stoned Corpse is supposed to sound like. We
haven't gotten together to practice yet, we just have the
name, but when we do practice, if we're not this heavy, we'll
just quit. Anyway, I believe BMoA is another one-man band
by the one man who also performs and records hard industrial
nightmare funk (while wearing a ski-mask) as Ski-Mask. Everything
this guy does is heavy, and I really suggest you check some
of it out. Start anywhere. 
I
didn't really know what to expect from this, but it certainly
wasn't this. Only other real album I've heard from these guys
is the Sin Gulls one, which had clear-cut songs,
production, and energy. This, on the other hand, is nothing
but burnt-out lassitude translated barely into sustained psych-rock
jams. Sounds like the drugs really caught up. If Liquorball
tried to set a record for longest non-stop jam, this is what
they'd sound like on the eighth day. The singer doesn't scream
anymore, he just intermittently mumbles into the mic, using
his regular voice. Someone -- a roommate, a neighbor, a parent
-- has turned the band's amps down considerably, but they're
too wasted to get up and readjust. In fact, they're all laying
on the ground, barely conscious, their hands keeping the riffs
going somehow as their eyes stare blankly into the ceiling.
The bass player, "Davo," seems to have the most
fight in him, and the drummer also might not be medicated,
and the two of them keep the jams moving with harmolodic (or
is just out-of-tune?) drive, keeping the door open for the
other players to join or abandon the song-form at will, jabbing
and weaving and missing completely as they start to trip out
out on the floor. Seemingly a live show, with between-song
banter and tuning-up sounds, but there really doesn't seem
to be a crowd, and it doesn't matter anyway, so deep is the
band and singer into their own spaced-out world. In fact,
I would call it focus, and despite constant absurd asides,
tuning problems, glaring mistakes, lost and aimless builds,
and a general decrepit aura, this focus never wanes. Stuff
like "Sister Ray" and "It's My Life" by
the Animals and I swear "Dem Guten, Schoenen, Wahren"
by Amon Düül II bubbles up and passes, harmolodically,
and the band just keeps moving like it's not even happening.
The result may be thirteen tracks but it's really one long
song, deep within the zone, and I've been enjoying it a great
deal.
I'm
sure you're already planning your own personal backlash against
the new psych-folk explosion, but even as the hype continues,
remember that folk music is a timeless form and you might
as well lash back against the wind, and please don't overlook
this classic album, even if it gets name-dropped in/on Pitchfork
sometime soon. The day I got Just Another Diamond Day,
the whole Dolman family was driving around town on errands.
I loved it at the wheel, my wife loved it beside me, and my
baby loved it there in the back and fell asleep to it. Had
the player on repeat and listened to the whole album six times
straight -- this is total dream-kiss soft-spin music like
miniature ballerinas from twenty different countries singing
and slowly pirouetting at once and I could've listened to
it six more times if it had taken us that long to get home.
Another album produced by Joe Boyd -- man, that guy was good.
(I just looked up his bio and wow, I knew about the Incredible
String Band and Nick Drake and Fairport Convention but I didn't
know he also produced the early sessions of The Pink Floyd,
was one of the co-founders of London's infamous UFO club,
and, in the 1980s, stayed current, and presumably in some
money, by producing albums by R.E.M. and 10,000 Maniacs, as
well as co-founding the slick Hannibal label, now a world
music boutique.) 
