#25
SUMMER/FALL 2007
by Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman (except where noted)
calendar excerpts fromYear by Angus MacLise (1962)
background by Kark (2007)

JUNE 1 2007 (DAY OF THE ROSE)

Wow, can you believe I once said I was gonna do daily posts? I wish I could tell you that this summer issue (#25) is going to be the "Reviews Issue" and that I might even increase updates to, I don't know, once a week. You never know -- right now I'm getting myself psyched by listening to the new Ex-Cocaine album on Siltbreeze. It's called Esta Guerra, and two tracks in I'd say it's a definite improvement on Keep America Mellow. That was a good debut for sure, it sat there and spread out nicely, but the sundazed Dead C-meets-Allmans Montana-raga style that was budding on that album is really blossoming here, adorned with strange weeds like the Milford Graves Percussion Ensemble and the thought of a completely twee-free Tyrannosaurus Rex. When they really get the songs moving it can be easy to forget they're just a duo of electric guitar and hand drums, and side two really nails it with the long album-closer "With The With The When The One."

Holy shit, this Futurians CDR with Mr. Spock on the cover is fuckin’ great. It’s probably almost a year old too, but you know sometimes it takes me a while. The first two or three tracks are just totally tranced-out sci-fi garage garbage rock -- I think each time they just pushed the button marked 'retardo dunt loop', turned the knob marked 'tempo' down until the sound got nice and fuzzy, and then kinda wandered out of the room for awhile. Eventually they came back with some beers and started yelling from across the room so it would be a ‘song’. And it definitely is. In fact, I've been walking around the city singing these songs all week. Strangers keep hearing me quietly yelp the phrase "pure green blood" over and over. You can imagine the looks I get, but it's well worth it. At least I'm not singing the nutso last track, which sounds like some boom-box outtake from the Flowers of Romance sessions, special guest Yoko Ono... Anyway, it's called Spock Ritual -- great black-on-silver silkscreen design on this thing too -- kudos to the Invisible Generation label for this edition-of-300 rock masterwork.

The Barge Recordings label put out an excellent compilation last year called Innature, and they've made a strong move with their second release too. It's a CD called Life-Sized Psychoses by a duo called The Fun Years. I knew nothing about 'em whatsoever but this thing had me within about 45 seconds, opening as it does with an exquisitely controlled aeons-wide endlessly-slowed-down sad soul music loop. I swear it just keeps going for a good 20 minutes, holding that same mood while all the oxygen slowly leaves the room and the world quietly dies. Not bad for a duo of turntable and baritone guitar. The whole piece/CD runs about 45 minutes, and even if 3/4th of the way through I'm starting to think these guys might still have a couple Tortoise albums in their collections, that first half is such a grabber that all is forgiven. (Hey, I still have one Tortoise LP in my collection, but I'm talkin' two or more here....)

I hardly ever listen to the Double Leopards and I think it's because they're too good and I'm actually a little afraid. I don't know if it's the fear that the sound will finally devour and dissolve my mind completely, or a fear that it will all come crashing down like a house of cards because after all aren't they mostly just groaning through pedals? Either way, I really didn't know what to expect when I warily put on this solo album by founding DL member Marcia Bassett, recording as Zaimph, but my first thought after the record started to sink in was, "Man, no wonder the Double Leopards are so good." These are four long soft hums of hymnal electricity, "live room recordings" from 2006, and for each track it's amazing to imagine any mere room, anywhere, ever sounding like this in real-time. It's just too mysterious and gorgeous, but yet here it is, in my room, somehow contained on 180 gram vinyl. It's called Mirage of the Other, and sure enough, I'm already a little afraid to listen to it again. Another new hymnal electric album from the same label (Gipsy Sphinx of Belgium) is Djid Hums by Bear Bones, Lay Low. It's not in the same league as the Zaimph, but not many are, and it's certainly still recommendable. It has a more 'computery' heaven-drone sound to it, not unlike Neil Campbell's recordings as Astral Social Club, with Burning Star Core/Carlos Giffoni/No Fun Productions vibes as well, especially on Side 1. Side 2 is more of a guitar maelstrom kind of thing -- real good, and if it runs a little long, it's still worth it for the space-froggy voice coda. Great cover art too on another fine 180 gram Gipsy Sphinx vinyl pressing. Bear Bones, Lay Low is one to watch, an 18 year old kid from Venezuela who moved to Belgium with his family to avoid social unrest in the wake of Chavez! Read all about it, along with due props to Tool, in this interview at Foxy Digitalis.

And sounding pretty good on the stereo right now is some heavy way-out free-rock destructo-jam action, lots of blubbering and rampaging low end with attacking drums. A single 15-minute jam. Blue Humans vibe, but coming more from the free noise tradition than the free jazz tradition. If I was in a blindfold test I might even guess this was Eloe Omoe, but I know that's not right (because that's a duo and this seems to be a trio). It's just that I'm making dinner while wife and kids are at the library, which means stereo-cranketh time is NOWETH, and this is the first thing that came up on the old CD shuffler. It's really blowing out some cobwebs, perfect for 15 minutes of house-to-myself after a stupid day at work. Of course, I might never play this thing again, but who cares? I'm not writing about all these hundreds of records so you'll buy them all and play them all in your home and/or rip them to your iPods (although that might all be cool), I'm writing about 'em to let you know WHAT'S BEING DONE OUT THERE. And what's being done right here is some variation on the basic heavy Blue Humans template by some free-thinking weirdos out there somewhere. (I still don't know who this is.) (Turns out this thing is a 3" CDR by the Western Massachusets group Grey Skull, recorded live in Providence, RI waaaaay back in October 2004, as released by Breaking World Records. I've heard a couple weird stripped-down noise-type releases from Grey Skull, but I believe this is the only time I've heard 'em play in a stand-up rock-trio style.....maybe they were indeed directly influenced by some Eloe Omoe shows.....they both live in Massachusets....or maybe they were directly influenced by, um, the history and legacy of rock music? In the world today?)

JUNE 8 2007 (DAY OF GAMMADION)

Album of the month(s) right now is Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes, by Charles Cohen and Ed Wilcox, an edition-of-500 CD release on the Ruby Red label from Portugal, intense and quietly active electro-acoustic synth/drums duo improv by two beyond-seasoned veterans from the fringes of Philadelphia. Of course the "beeps and boops" of antique space-age synthesizer and the urban rainforest tickle of post-free post-jazz percussion have always been a match made in heaven, but I can't think of another time they been so blended as what Cohen on "Buchla Music Easel" and Wilcox on "drums and gongs" have laid to tape here. Feel free to turn it way up, because both musicians employ an uncannily sympathetic light touch throughout -- in 10 tracks and 48 minutes, the music never agitates or explodes, it only ripples and patters and somehow, at any volume in any environment, seems to remain just under the threshold. Cohen and Wilcox also played together on one of my favorite rippling/pattering under-the-threshold mutant jam albums of the 1990s, the phenomenally wrecked Bullet In2 Mesmer's Brain! (Bulb Records, 1998), by Wilcox's long-running revolving-door concern Temple of Bon Matin. There were nine people in the band for the sessions, such a rarefied space-jazz-noise unit that when the CD came out, the band had been rechristened Laser Temple of Bon Matin for that album only. Wilcox's mix is unbelievable, multiple performances layered and separated and crossfaded with dubwise boldness through tiny sonic prisms into swinging mind-sized shadow paintings. Yeah, it's been good to pull out Mesmer's again, and good to have it spurred by Cohen and Wilcox's stunning new duo music CD. (And this just in: "Well over six hours worth of Charles Cohen on the Buchla Music Easel.")

And speaking of multiple performances layered and separated, crossfaded with dubwise boldness, that kinda talk reminds me of this new Excepter double-CD release called Streams (Fusetron), compiled from 36 hours of performance, all originally streamed over three years' time from their website and podcast. In an excellent interview over at the Sweet Pea Review website, Excepter's John Fell Ryan sez, "We use the tools of electronic dance music, but in the services of dissolving boundaries between different kinds of music." Taken out of the full interview's rich context, this might sound like a typical musician talk, but there are indeed countless actual moments of boundary dissolve throughout these two discs. For one example, I put on Streams expecting Excepter's one-of-a-kind foggy reimagining of electronic dance music as a confusing, bemused, and patiently ambling dérive .....and that I got. But I got lots of other things too, and the thing I noticed the most was lots of feral and fearless vocalising, nutso growling and yowling wolf transformation type stuff, reminding me of a New York City band from 40 years ago, The Godz, as much as any of Excepter's electronic-styled contemporaries. St. Julian was talking about the same thing over at his Head Heritage review of Streams, when he brought up "post-Amon Duul 1 protest chanting in a ‘Help Me, I’m A Rock’ free rock-style as orchestrated by two mush-mouthed Kim Fowley and J. Morrison types performing through Adrian Sherwood’s On-U-Sound filter." Hell yeah, and there's plenty more boundary dissolve waiting for you and me on Streams, or any other Excepter release -- always the same, always different, pick up any one and see.

Monotract has put out two albums less than a year apart. First in mid-2006 was the acclaimed Xprmntl Lvrs on Ecstatic Peace, which I missed completely, but on my stereo right now is Trueno Oscuro, their early 2007 followup on Load Records, and if this is what they're up to now it's no wonder Xprmntl was acclaimed. Opening track “Muddy Thunder” sets a great tone with a staccato electronic futuristic robot rhythm, doubled by live drums, accented by thoughtfully applied bursts of static and subtle Magic Band guitar clipping around the edges, all of which turns out to be a long prelude to something almost totally different, a big-guitar power-anthem with rad 80s punk vocals by Nancy. That's just "Muddy Thunder," but every track on this album ends up being a punk song, it's just that many different styles and approaches are used to get there, from the mysterio-femme tone-poem of "Under My Arm," to "The Ballad of Lechon" (vocals like Dave Byrne if he actually was weird, backed with ripping post-punk echo guitar), the heavy beat street funk (seriously) of "Big N" and "Cofu y Kaka" (you can really hear the Caribbean roots in these jams, almost like steel drums are clipping along with the infernal punk grooves), the amazing electric guitar freenoise coda of "Red Tide".... and so on. I can't tell you how many different weird musical styles from the last 20 years they brilliantly allude to on these seven songs, and it all goes down in a blistering 30 minutes. Yep, not counting the Red Tape, Trueno Oscuro has gotta be Monotract's finest release thus far.

Great split LP of solo guitar from the Belgium-based Glasvocht label, with Harris Newman (from Montreal, Quebec) on the A side, and Mauro Antonio Pawlowski (from Belgium) on the B. This is my introduction to Newman, having missed his opening set at a Six Organs of Admittance show back in March 2005. During the Six Organs set, Chasny called him "the future of acoustic guitar," and now over two years later I can finally see why. First track is an instant grabber, Newman laying down an unstoppable spooky bluesy theme which he proceeds to stop, restart, lead slowly into strange dead ends, stop again for uncomfortable silences in haunted echo chambers, restart again right back into the thick of it, somehow constantly developing it for over 10 minutes while still keeping it stuck in the same place. The title, "Onset of Tourette's," hints at what's going on, as if the song is a close examination of how a motif can become a tic. The remaining two tracks are also excellent compositions, one short and bluesier, the other sounding like a slower, more focused, and way intense reprise of "Tourette's." Really, a perfect album side. The Pawlowski side makes me think of a friend of mine who was getting to know free improvisational music. He thought Derek Bailey and a few others ruled, but he could never really get deeper into the genre. "I wanna like it," I remember him saying, "but it always ends up sounding like guys playing their instruments funny." And he meant it like 'funny peculiar', I guess. I never really agreed with him, but I can't help but think about his statement when going from the experimental but deeply idiomatic music of Harris Newman to the more quirky, atonal, and decidedly non-idiomatic music of Mauro Pawlowski on the flip. The good news is Mauro seems well aware that this music is funny peculiar, because he plays short pieces (ten in all) with titles like "The Emperor's Shy Bladder," "The Paranormal Olympics Cancelled," and "The Last Living Beatle." He has a nice humming and spooky guitar tone too, not unlike Newman's, and the end result is a pleasantly surrealist style that he calls "ethnical Belgian improvisation music."

JUNE 9 2007 (DAY OF COLUMBA)

LIVE ON WBLSTD (777.666 FM CHICAGO)
Davis Redford Triad "Into the Mist" (Holy Mountain)
Davis Redford Triad "Violent Stupid Friend" (Holy Mountain)
Air Conditioning "Where To Litter/Trash Burning" (Load)
Greg Malcolm "Mob Job" (K-RAA-K)
Mighty Baby "Virgin Spring" (Sunbeam)
Cherry Blossoms "The Wind It Blows" (Apostasy / Blackvelvetfuckere / Breaking World / Consanguineous / Hank the Herald Angel / Yeay!)
Poor School "[Voor Niets In Zijn track one]" (Cut Hands)
White Lichens "Stolas, or Stolos" (Holy Mountain)
Pink Reason "Goodbye" (Siltbreeze)
The Index "You Keep Me Hanging On" (Voxx)
Derek Bailey "Concert in Milwaukee (excerpt)" (Woodland Patterns)
Rod Poole "The Death Adder" (W.I.N.)
High Speed and the Afflicted Man "Zip Ead" (Rock Toilet Records)
Darkthrone "Det Svartner Nå" (The End)
Women in Tragedy "Lost in the Rays of the Sun" (Cut Hands)
Ex-Cocaine "With The With The When The One" (Siltbreeze)
Cherry Blossoms "Golden Windows" (Apostasy / Blackvelvetfuckere / Breaking World / Consanguineous / Hank the Herald Angel / Yeay!)

JUNE 11 2007 (DAY OF THE HEARTS RELEASE)

FOUR SUMMER TOURS..... 16 Bitch Pile Up and Warmer Milks, the co-stars of the Blastitude #19 cover, are both starting tours on June 12, La Otracina (great new CD on Holy Mountain) is starting one today, and the mighty Avarus is coming to the States from Finland in a couple weeks:

LA OTRACINA

Monday 11-Jun Floristree (6th floor H&H building 405 w. franklin st), Baltimore, MD with PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, VINCENT BLACK SHADOW, WOMANS WORTH

Tuesday 12-Jun Marvelous Record Store (208 S. 40th street), Philadelphia, PA with BURRS, MOUNT FUJI

Wednesday 13-Jun Cakeshop (152 Ludlow St) , NYC, NY cake-shop.com/ with CHARALAMBIDES, GHQ, SUGARBEATS

Thursday 14-Jun Velvet Lounge (915 U Street), Washington DC with BLOWFLY (seriously!), PLUMS, and more

Friday 15-Jun Spazzatorium Galleria (807 Dickinson Ave), Greenville, NC with DD/MM/YY, OICHO KABU, PONIES AND FLOWERS

Saturday 16-Jun Secret Squirrel (766 West Broad), Athens, GA with MUGU GUYMEN, 63 CRAYONS, SMOKEDOG

Sunday 17-Jun The Whig (1200 main street), Columbia, South Carolina with Jeff South Project

Monday 18-Jun TBA Nashville/Murfreesboro, TN with CJ Boyd and more

Tuesday 19-Jun Murphy's (1589 Madison Ave), Memphis, TN with TRUE SONS OF THUNDER, and more

Wednesday 20-Jun Spooky Action Palace (e-mail venue for location), St. Louis, MO spookyinfo@gmail.com with Ataraxic Ataxia, Sum Of Heroes

Thursday 21-Jun Lazer Mansion (133 54th street), Moline, IL with MONDO DRAG, LAZER MOUNTAIN

Friday 22-Jun Hideout (1354 W Wabansia), Chicago, IL with PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, Matthew Wascovich, DRUIDS OF HUGE

Saturday 23-Jun South Union Arts (1352 S. Union), Chicago, IL with Matthew Wascovich/PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE Duo, PLASTIC BONER BAND, FOLK & VIOLENCE

Sunday 24-Jun Basement Show (216 E Hillside Drive), Bloomington, IN with RESTING ROOSTER, HOT FIGHTER #1

Monday 25-Jun Skull Lab, (271 W McMicken ) Cinncinnati, OH with Ryan Jewell, and more

Tuesday 26-Jun TBA, Columbus, OH with Ryan Jewell, more

Wednesday 27-Jun Pat’s In The Flats (2233 West Third), Cleveland, OH with MOOTDAK, 9 YR OLD MUDFLESH, THE FLAT CAN CO.

Thursday 28-Jun House Show (114 1/2 Erie Street), Edinboro, PA with DROOPY SEPTUM, TUSK LORD, FOREST DWELLER

Friday 29-Jun Garfield Artworks (4931 Penn Ave), Pittsburg, PA with TBA

Saturday 30-Jun Test Pattern Gallery (334 Adams Ave), Scranton, PA with THE MARSHMALLOW STAIRCASE, THE ULTRA VIOLET RAYS

Sunday 1-Jul Helderberg Palace (96 Sycamore St) Albany, NY with BURNT HILLS

Monday 2-Jul Brilliant Corners (163 water street), Keane, New Hampshire with KENDRA, Ian Joseph and The Toys

Tuesday 3-Jul Grow Room, Providence, RI with XERXESX, BARNACLED, CINNAMON ANEMONE

Wednesday 4-Jul off

Thursday 5-Jul Soundfix Records (110 Bedford Ave), Brooklyn, NY in-store performance

16 BITCH PILE UP

Tue June 12 ROCHESTER @ A/V SPACE with Pengo, more TBA

Wed June 13 TORONTO @ Smiling Buddha Bar w/ Disguises, gastric female reflex and the Flynns. Our first show in canada EVER!!!!!!

Thu June 14 MONTREAL @ Au Friendship Cove w/ the TDK C 90 Analogue Summer Ensemble and Hyena Hive (our second show in canada, EVER!!!!!!!)

Fri June 15 BROOKLYN @ Glasslands with Monotract, Religious Knives, Alan Licht

Sat June 16 NEW BRUNSWICK NJ @THINISU 138 Easton Ave New Brunswick, NJ 08901 w/ deep fried radio static for a new american century, ASPS and Panther Modern

Sun June 17 PITTSBURGH @ Belvedere's w/Natura Nasa, Cock Scene Investigator (edgar um, joe roemer)

MON June 18 LEXINGTON @ the frowny bear with cadaver in drag and caves

Tue June 19 CINCINNATI @ Skullab with Kevin Shields, Tik///Tik, Hentai Lacerator, Jor Dan, DJ Thumper, Evolve

Wed June 20 CHICAGO @ ENEMY with burden and magic is kuntmaster

Fri June 22 COLUMBUS @ skylab with Sword Heaven, fat worm of error

WARMER MILKS

06/12/2007 - LANCASTER, Pennsylvania - KEPPEL BUILDING W/TBA

06/13/2007 - BROOKLYN, New York - SILENT BARN W/ BLUES CONTROL, NONHORSE, PURIRI, WEIRDING MODULE

06/14/2007 - MONTAGUE, Massachusetts - MONTAGUE BOOKMILL W/ MV/EE AND CHARLAMBIDES

06/15/2007 -BOSTON, Massachusetts - TWISTED VILLAGE W/ SUNBURNED

06/16/2007 - BALTIMORE, Maryland - CURRENT W/ HUMAN BELL

06/17/2007 - WASHINGTON DC - WAREHOUSE NEXT DOOR W/ TBA

06/18/2007 - CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia - TWISTED BRANCH TEA BAZAAR W/ NED OLDHAM (ANOMOANON)

06/19/2007 - COLUMBUS, Ohio - CAFE BOURBON ST. W/ SWAMP LEATHER, TIME AND TEMPERATURE+TBA

06/20/2007 - CHICAGO, Illinois - S. UNION ARTS W/ TBA

06/21/2007 - LEXINGTON, Kentucky - THE FROWNY BEAR W/ CAVES, WALTER CARSON AND EVERYONE LIVES EVERYONE WINS

06-29 Ridgewood/Queens, NY - Silent Barn
with Manbeard, Fursaxa, Vanishing Voice and Watersports (Blues Control folks)

06-30 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's
with Manbeard, Bardo Pond

07-01 Baltimore, MD - Floristree
with Manbeard, Jack Rose, Sri Aurobindo

07-02 Asheville, NC - Harvest Records
with Manbeard

07-03 Knoxville, TN - The Pilot Light
with Manbeard

07-05 Nashville, TN - Springwater
with Manbeard, Taiwan Deth, The Cherry Blossoms

07-06 Louisville, KY - Lisa's Oak Street Lounge
with Manbeard, Caboladies, Deep Pockets (Son Of Earth, Sapat folks)

07-07 Cleveland, OH - Parish Hall
with Manbeard, Thee Scarcity Of Tanks, Terminal Lovers

07-08 Chicago, IL - The Hideout
with Manbeard, Spires That in the Sunset Rise

07-09 Cincinnati, OH - Skull Lab
with Manbeard, Wasteland Jazz Unit

07-10 Pittsburgh, PA - Belvedere's
with Manbeard

07-11 Washington, DC - Velvet Lounge
with Manbeard, Kohoutek, Insect Factory

07-12 Point Pleasant Beach, NJ - Om Baby Yoga Studio
with Manbeard, Phasmida

07-13 North Adams, MA - Robot Mansion at Mass MoCA
with Manbeard, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, Aethr Myth'D (Sunburned, Feathers folks)

07-14 Providence, RI - Foo Festival at AS220 - Annual FREE street festival with 20+
bands on two stages (inside and outside), artist booths, games, craft/record/book
vendors and more more more. FREE FREE FREE all day/night from 12pm to 1am. Other artists include Chinese Stars, Neptune, Stinking Lizaveta, Aa, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, Pwrfl Power, Lazy Magnet, Alec K Redfearn + The Eyesores, Japanther, etc.

JUNE 28 2007 (DAY OF THE HEARTS BLOOD)

Goddamn John Bender rules....listening to the I Don't Remember Now album from 1980....like a Midwestern Suicide, sure, but with a distinct 'gentle German' influence tinging through that cold and bitter Clevelandness.... Harvey Pekar fronting Harmonia?? Robert Crumb (greeting card era) fronting Cluster?? On deck are Bender's two followup LPs, Plaster Falling (1981) and Pop Surgery (1983), and no, none of these are originals, strictly .rar..... but the real reason I'm posting is to answer a challenge. In the latest newsletter to the No Doctors mailing list, Elvis DeMorrow claimed that their new LP Origin & Tectonics "has already caused Larry Dolman to stop updating his BLASTITUDE site in sheer awe." Well, it's not the ONLY reason I've stopped, but there's no doubt that the advance copy I've received has left me rather speechless, and at first it was because it sounded so slick. It took 'em awhile to put this thing out (their first release since moving to San Francisco in 2004), and it sounds like they spent that time meticulously learning to be a massive, clean-cut, and undeniably pro-sounding rock and roll juggernaut. They've also learned how to really sing melodies and enunciate their lyrics, and I'll be honest, these were unexpected developments. Remember the non-stop yowling garbage-fi chaos of their last full-length, Hunting Season from 2003? Those blighted and decrepit streets have been completely cleaned up, as if some kind of pro-rock Rudy Giulani took over and redeveloped the neighborhood into a futuristic metallic factory complex that slowly crafts a high-tech and burnished reamalgamation of the history of rock. I'm telling you, sometimes they sound NORMAL on this album, like South by Southwest or Kemado Records normal, until you listen closer and realize that's precisely why they are now weirder than ever. Again, their always bold and wiggy lyrical concepts are now clearer and more pronounced, which can be especially disconcerting on acoustic numbers like the extra-catchy campfire song "For You," which goes "Wishing on a woman / wishin' she would strip / Take me to the ocean / wanna skinny-dip," seriously, and then asks a "fire-breathing lady" [sic] to "smoke me like a peace pipe / If you wanna end the war" [sic!]. But then after each one of these preposterous verses they pull out a sweet instrumental turn-around, driven by guitar filigree and melodic bass, and we are reminded that their motives are utterly sweet and pure. And there are other songs on here that are just plain monumental -- "Invisible Clopes" and especially "AAO" take the tempo and weight of doom metal and apply it to some new style that is just as slow but poppier, proggier, and stranger, driven by CansaFis's 'saxophone army' designs and yet more of those bold lyrical concepts. (Apparently the track sequencing reflects "the path from earth to jewel to love at the circus," and I think I'm almost getting it -- definitely getting the "earth" part because some of these lyrics, like "Yardin" and "Tuning the Sundial," are just plain eco, and around here that's a GOOD thing, OK?) "Lost in the Fog" takes the 1950s balladry that was overtly referenced on "Floating Woman" (from the ERP Saints CD EP, 2004, No Sides Records) and makes something more covert, yearning, and intense out of it, a seriously heartfelt lament for a stupefied leisure society. And that's the key -- even with all the goofin' and yardin' and perceived slickness on display, this is a seriously heartfelt record, which is why I keep listening to it.

JUNE 29 2007 (DAY OF THE SMOKING PLAIN)

An Unholy Fountain of CD Albums From HOLY MOUNTAIN
That's right, so far in 2007, Blastitude HQ has received SEVEN brand new CDs from the Portland, Oregon based Holy Mountain label. I could be totally predictable and say that the best one of the bunch is the s/t by Blues Control, because everybody loves Blues Control, and it is another goddamn good album by them. It's not as perfect as Puff, of course, but that's a good thing, because not having to be perfect allows the band to goof around a little, have fun, change things up. Not only are they are able to open this self-titled album with the self-titled title-track "Blues Control," a 2-minute broken/stupid distorto bass and drum sample groove with absurd imitation-talk-box fog-vocals, they are able to follow that goofery up with one of their finest works ever, the languid and utterly pleasant instrumental murk-pop of "Boiled Peanuts," a perfect '2nd album' lead-off single. (See the band's MySpace page for other 'singles' and 'B-sides.') They're having so much fun on this album that they not only title a song "The Blue Sheep," they make it sound like the kind of keyboard-led cheese sandwich that someone would sing karaoke over at a restaurant/bar actually called The Blue Sheep -- and it's still a killer psych track. "Frankie's Problem" shows up again, maybe or maybe not the same version that was their MySpace 'debut single' and/or on their first cassette. Is this song gonna follow 'em around forever? Has it always had those insane clocktower bells in it? And just when you think they've tried everything, along comes album-closer "No Sweat," a 9-minute multi-suite epic in which they try everything else, complete with surprise two-minute astro space drums coda. So yes, out of all these new Holy Mountain releases, Blues Control covers the most ground -- but it's the self-titled disc by White Lichens that digs the deepest. This band is the Chicago trio collabo between Lichens, the heavy drony solo guise of Robert A.A. Lowe, and White Light, the absurdly heavy drone duo of Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos. Not that the results are summarily heavy on this disc -- the musicians are smart enough to pull back a little and let the bombs detonate in slow motion. Take the moment from the track "Stolas, or Stolos" (don't ask, they're all named after demons from an occult book, with entire pages reproduced for the track listing) when, after almost a minute of huge silence, someone plays a chilling and crawling slide guitar riff that kinda makes the whole album all by itself as a sort of centerpoint, a locus of control for everything before and after. Too bad the track is only 4 minutes long, but at least opener "Cimejes, or Simeies, or Kimaris" and closer "Bael" are both well over the 15-minute mark, and both made up of exquisite low amp burn tone blend, with more where that came from..... And for a whole different way of mining the vein of extended heavy rock jamming, there's the Zodiacs and their album Gone, so raw-fi and obvious in its lack of pre-composed music that at first I was surprised that an actual label released it. But on my second listen, I could no longer deny that what the guitar and organ were doing had some serious burn/fire/damage metaphorical capability. The sound is basically maxed-out biker blues and who cares if the players (James "Wooden Wand" Toth, Keith "Hush Arbors" Wood, Clay "Davenport" Ruby) actually ride motorcycles or not, there is metaphorical motor acid in this music and it will fuck you up when you metaphorically drink it..... The Shining Path (San Diego, CA) and La Otracina (Brooklyn, NY) have also served up albums of fried and heavy mega-extended jams for Holy Mountain this year, but where Zodiacs come at it from 'biker rock' these two are more 'krautrock' and 'fusion prog', respectively. The Shining Path are the "rock" guise of the experimental duo Monosov/Swirnoff (who have records on Eclipse), and from the experimental world they import a lot of twisting thickets of strange electronics. Of course it's mostly backed up by plenty of pedal-to-the-floor highway-star drumming, because this is a "rock" project. That's why the LP edition also comes with a free copy of the CD inside, because "it's what you'll want to listen to wielding a golf club with your upper body outside the sunroof of your car as you steer with your feet." Their music does fly the freak flag, with memorably loud electronic settings driven by various rockin' beats, edited into five or so medium/long crusher/scorchers, no problem there -- it just errs on the side of 'great sounds, no songs', without the frothing commitment of the Zodiacs. La Otracina, on the other hand, have got the sounds, songs, and the froth, and they've really gone for something massive with their album Tonal Ellipse of the One. Not only is it far more composed than the Zodiacs and Shining Path CDs, it's composed in an extended/exploded 'fusion jazz' sense that ends up being just as wrecked. These five long tracks are credited to the duo of Adam Kriney on drums and Tyler Nolan on guitar and bass. They are joined on every track by Ninni Morgia on guitar (if I'm understanding this interview correctly, his parts were overdubbed later), and a couple other musicians on a couple other tracks, but it all really rolls together as one constant duo/trio prog jam, with the band taking great care to develop its transitions, and also willing to play around with some rather thrilling Teo Macero-style edits. Nolan's bugged-out heavy echo-bass guitar plays slowed-down Keith Emerson riffs that grow into melodic-prog drool crescendos, which Morgia wails over like some sort of wild Richard Pinhas Jr on a made-for-cable film soundtrack. Meanwhile, Kriney bats it all along with unflagging fiery-muso free-jazz drum accompaniment, and it builds and builds into a big oceanic bubblebath of prog excess with appropriate titles like "Nine Times The Color Red Explodes Like Heated Blood" and "Sailor of the Salvian Seas," and I'm telling you, it all really grows on you. 3rd best of the batch, to say the least.... and two more to go, both in a more classic song-based style: Mammatus with some progressive hard rock songwriting from the Santa Cruz scene, and DJ Cherrystones, aka Gareth Godard of London England, with a DJ mix of various bad-ass pop/prog/psych eclecticities from the last 30 years. These are both very enjoyable albums, though The Coast Explodes, the second album by Mammatus, did take a couple listens to grow on me. At first I was comparing 'em to their wild and loose neighbors Comets on Fire and Residual Echoes, and they sounded a little stiff to me, their long and weighty compositions requiring more rigor and patience than I expected. But pretty soon I caught on to the intelligent intricacy of their songs, and how they balanced it with a steady beach-stoner rock undertone that stoked the familiar. And finally, as you may have guessed, the Cherrystones Word compilation by DJ Cherrystones is tons of fun. His liner notes are great fan testimony, like when he talks about playing some Lard Free during one of his sets and making the on-tour Wolf Eyes guys do double takes. There are also lovingly selected tracks on here by Dead Moon, The Deviants, Chrome, Nosferatu, 1980s George Brigman (just to prove that it's as good as 1970s George Brigman), and other epic progressive bands that I've totally never heard of before, like Fusioon, Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue, Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest.... you get the idea. Hot stuff from one record lover to many others, and the same goes for all of this generous fountain from the Mountain. (And for some more Holy Mountain-related record love, i.e. fan testimony, dig all the 'playlist' style record reviews Mr. HM has been posting in the "news" section over at holymountain.com....)

JULY 1 2007 (SECOND DAY OF THE CAT)

The latest from one of my favorite tape labels of all-time, White Tapes, is a heavy piece. It's by Id M Theft Able, the alias of strange Maine assemblagist/musician Skot Spear, an act that I've been following on and off for I swear something like 8 years now. The last thing of his I listened to was a couple years ago, a terrific CDR called i'm on flourescence, sounding like years of junk noise practice accumulated and finally streamlined into perfect little calm dream-stream miniatures of brain-sound. And now here's a tape called Blue Jay, and it starts even more chill and distant than flourescence, with quiet hums that fade in and fade out for what seems like a good 10 minutes. After maybe 17 minutes you might notice that the piece has been evolving, very slowly, into what could almost be the sound of something or someone singing, and after a few minutes more it really could be the whistles of a bird breaking through the murk, and the whole thing is like some structuralist film where the sound and image both start completely out-of-focus but fade in slowly over the course of 30 minutes, or just an early morning in the woods where the sun has risen just enough between the branches and leaves for you to actually find the bird that is singing and wonder if the murk that its song emerged from was the vast silence of the natural world or just the vast noise inside your own brain.... like I said, heavy piece. That’s just side one, please don’t let there be anything on side two, because this is perfect. (There is something on side two, called "Standish." It's much more minimal than even "Blue Jay." The sound of a nervous system, any living nervous system. Still a perfect tape.)

Animal Disguise started as a great Michigan tape label in the early 2000s with 'flagship act' Mammal joined by an excellent regional roster. We wrote about A.D. in Blastitude six years ago and it's still going today, having expanded into vinyl and CDs over the years, with acts coming from all over the place. They've always kept the faith with plenty of cassette releases too, such as this one from Sick Hour, which is Beatty and Tremaine from the Hair Police playing in 2005 as a synth duo. I've told you before that "Lexington rules" and jeezus, it just doesn't stop. Of course you know that these guys can get harsh, but as always (see also Beatty's Three Legged Race project) their synth style is set apart from the herd by an ability to get beautiful, elegaic, and melodic, and that's during the heavy parts, not just the 'interludes'.... there are no interludes, this music doesn't need 'em....

And how about a tape that seems to be called or is by Puik. (Maybe self-titled?) Cool art and sew job. Starts with an entertaining collage of a whole buncha movie bad-asses saying “FUCK” in various creative ways, and then it goes right into what sounds exactly like a track off of the first s/t Alvarius B record, i.e. raw go-for-broke solo acoustic guitar. I honestly thought it was someone else who had the Alvarius B style down cold, until a couple more killer pieces later when the musician started tuning his guitar right there on tape while mumbling and monologuing about it, and, shit, it was unmistakably the voice of Mr. Alan "Alvarius B" Bishop himself, and you know he's always one to do weird shit on wax (although I have NEVER heard him do the 'tuning up and mumbling about it on a studio record' bit before). So, to get it right: the LABEL is called Puik, it's from Belgium, run by visual artist (et al) Jelle Crama, and it has released an excellent cassette of ALL-NEW solo guitar music by a completely uncredited Alvarius B. Sorry I brought it up, though, because the tape is already out-of-print and not even mentioned anywhere on the Puik website OR suncitygirls.com. Oops.

Oh, and another thing, Sun City Girls 7-inches rule. I randomly pulled out their 1993 double 7-inch Borungku si Derita, and suddenly realized for the first time that it is every bit as good of a release as Torch of the Mystics -- or, at least, just as recommendable to the SCG first-timer. With six hefty songs it's a good-sized EP, and could very well be their most completely accessible release. Each number is quite seriously heartfelt and downright melodic -- yes, SCG can do it when they want to, and yes they are very good at it. Then, to hear a few other things they can do, check out their other 1993 double 7-inch on Majora, Three Fake Female Orgasms, which is a little on the harsher and more improvised side but with a strange tunefulness still breaking out of the murk, and of course you've gotta hear their one-act play (I mean comic book) Napoleon and Josephine if you haven't already......

JULY 3 2007 (DOG DAYS BEGIN)

Pink Reason
by Steve Kobak

Pink Reason breathed new life into underground music last summer with their debut single, Throw It Away. The homemade seven-inch appeared out of nowhere and dominated turntable time around the United States, filling speakers with basement-recorded gothic post-punk. The slab of vinyl contained within the photo-copied girl-picture sleeve seemed to be constructed by a local scene vet finally breaking into the national underground limelight. When the needle hit the grooves, a classic-model seven-inch blasted through speaker cones with the A-Side sporting a catchy-as-hell lo-fi post-punk burner and the two B-Sides showcasing weirder but just as compelling gothic-industrial tunes. Along with Cheveu, Car Commercials, Home Blitz and Tyvek, the band spearheaded the comeback of the seven-inch single, as christened by Blastitude.

One would think the masterminds behind Throw it Away had released many singles before hitting a stride this glorious but, in truth, it was the first release from one man, Green Bay native Kevin DeBroux. Though DeBroux stockpiled his four-track recordings throughout the years, self-doubt and general indifference from the local scene kept him from releasing the recordings to the public. He received minimal local support throughout his four-year career under the Pink Reason moniker. Promoters refused to book Pink Reason; partly because of DeBroux’s rumored antagonistic behavior but also because his music was, in their eyes, “too difficult.” This paired with an ever-rotating, unsteady cast of bandmates stirred self-doubt deep within DeBroux.

Friends say DeBroux’s notoriety in the local hardcore scene caused negative local attitudes towards Pink Reason. As he waded his way through the ranks of fucked-up teenage thrash bands, psychedelic noise outfits and straight-1980s hardcore groups, he developed an outsider’s mindset and a friend group comprised of “the real fuck-ups.” In bands like Zone 13 Rejects, a band DeBroux claims was “more conceptual in nature,” he provoked and attacked audience members, earning him lifetime bans from some clubs. Todd Kellner, operator of Trick Knee Records and DeBroux’s friend, relates the first time he met DeBroux was at a hardcore gig where DeBroux kicked one audience member in the face.

“He had an aura about him where people were kind of afraid of him,” said Kellner. “It’s kind of funny, especially looking back now.”

During a show with hardcore punks Hatefuck, DeBroux and company traveled to Winona, Minnesota. After a five-hour drive to the town, wasted locals, angry punks and gnarled three-legged dogs greeted them by leading them into a commandeered park. Inside the park, DeBroux found “the ultimate punk rock experience” with townies huffing rubber glue and mohawk-brandishing kids starting fights with crusties. The show ended and the locals gave the band three dollars for their troubles. A few kids asked DeBroux and company to chip in the three dollars on a keg. Soon, the crowd dispersed and left the band with no money or place to stay. The band wound up sleeping on an island between Minnesota and Wisconsin and breaking up soon thereafter. He wrote the first Pink Reason song, “Winona,” about this experience. DeBroux began to write and record songs on four-track soon thereafter and embarked on three unsuccessful years of creating CDRs and trying to rouse local attention.

After the town towed the car he lived in and crushed it, along with his personal possessions, he decided to move back in with his parents. He acquired a construction job, saved $500 and exacted his revenge on the local scene. He plotted to send his three favorite songs to United Pressing Plant and retire from music altogether. The resulting seven-inch would be a testament to and a panegyric for the power of Pink Reason.

He cannot remember the exact date he received the records but he said it took the record a short while to gain attention. He gained distribution through S-S Records, a label and distro center for a small niche of obscure art punk records. Within a couple weeks of sending copies of Throw it Away to S-S Records, the distribution’s operator, Scott Soriano, asked for more copies. Eager bloggers sang the praises of the 7” and his MySpace friends doubled. He said he felt vindicated, as people finally recognized his talent. He believed critics should like his record but, at the same time, one of these reviews humbled DeBroux. The Siltblog entry, written by Siltbreeze records associate Roland Woodbe, praised Throw it Away as “The best record of it's ilk to ooze outta Wisconsin since Hollywood Autopsy slithered into exile...”

“That was the first review that really blew my mind, to be honest,” he said.

Soon, Siltbreeze head Tom Lax sent DeBroux e-mails asking if Pink Reason would like to record for the label. DeBroux spent days sifting through recordings, listening to masters and picking the perfect song sequence. Still, he felt timid about sending the songs to Lax because of Siltbreeze’s storied history with bands like Dead C, Strapping Fieldhands and Harry Pussy.

“I was afraid to send him the masters,” DeBroux said, “but he kept on e-mailing me and saying, ‘Yeah, dude, whenever you’re ready, just send the masters.'”

Pink Reason embarked on a summer tour with Dear Astronaut in late July of 2006. Self-booked and financed, the bands often played in front of small crowds at art galleries, house parties and dive bars and generated enough gas money to slough to the next date. DeBroux pulled double duty, donning an acoustic axe and iBook accompaniment with Pink Reason and plucking a bass in Dear Astronaut. The tour stretched from Green Bay to Missouri and back to Maine. In between, DeBroux finalized the Siltbreeze deal during his Philadelphia date, even acquiring $20 in drinking money from Lax. (I think that's what they call an advance! -- ed.) He planned on handing Lax a CD of material for the Siltbreeze album but the label’s reputation daunted him.

After the tour, he sucked up his fear and send Lax the six songs which would become the 2007 LP Cleaning the Mirror. DeBroux constructed the songs on record during a “tough period” in his life; one that saw him living out of cars, on floors and in friend’s closets. He attributes the length of the tunes from these sessions to his speed habit. When he could access recording equipment, DeBroux often stayed up for days at a time, perfecting each song’s sound by recording and rerecording guitar solos and bridges while jacked on crystal meth. Seven-minute recordings felt like pop songs to the geeked DeBroux.

“[Cleaning the Mirror] represents a pretty rough time in my life,” said De Broux. “It’s kind of weird that sometimes, when I think about what I want to do next and shit like that, I’m just in a completely different place than I was in when I was recording that stuff, you know.”

Darkness infests the album and DeBroux lowers his easy-going Midwest vocal tone when relating tales from the period. One of his many stories involves grabbing a few friends and some possessions and heading to New Orleans in an attempt to forge a career for his hardcore band. On the way, the only people with money spent it on truck stop beef jerky and other “nonsense,” so the crew sold most of their belongings to survive in the Big Easy. DeBroux worked temp jobs in the day and eventually saved enough money to travel back north. The band broke up soon after.

Another finds him spending six months living with and apprenticing under a meth cook and practicing guitar in his vast amount of free time. While moving the meth cook’s heroin-addled girlfriend into a new apartment, DeBroux stumbled upon her diary. Unable to restrain himself, he flipped through the pages. Some of the words stuck with him and reworked versions of the diary passages slipped into a few lines on “Up the Sleeve.” The gothic-folk feel of the song reflects the bleakness of the lyrics, its tar-pace steadily creeping along until it reaches a lackadaisical boiling point.

“It doesn’t make me feel bad, listening to it,” he said. “I don’t regret my experiences or anything but, when I hear that, it takes me back to times I don’t necessarily want to relive at this point in my life.”

“Up the Sleeve” also demonstrates his instrumental approach, as it was orchestrated on the spot using whatever instruments were available at the time. He varies his attack on the song, thrashing about on banjo, saxophone and organ as opposed to the usual cheap Casio and guitar attack. After recording the song, he quickly forgot its chords. DeBroux, who taught himself to play guitar by playing along to Russian punk songs, wings it with many other instruments on his recordings. On “New Violence,” he bounced a big exercise ball for percussion. DeBroux constructed the rhythm guitar line on “Sleight Train” by strumming on a broken toy guitar he found while dumpster diving.

“A lot of the instruments I use on the recordings I don’t even technically know how to play,” he said. “Once you’ve been fucking around with shit as long as I have, even if you’re not playing it right, you’re still getting what you want out of it.”

Though recordings mainly feature DeBroux, Pink Reason concerts feature an ever-rotating cast of musicians. As of May 2007, he claims six members left the band, including Shaun Handlen, an original Pink Reason member who moved to China. He seems to snag whoever is around for each tour. Before the spring tour with Psychedelic Horseshit, DeBroux assembled a band from friends who had moved back in with their parents or were living in cars. At a Cleveland show in March, DeBroux drafted Alex Teder to fill in on drums after his drummer abruptly quit a few dates into the tour.

“A lot of people, I don’t think quit. I just think they play with him for a couple of weeks and then go back to their day jobs,” said Teder. “It’s not like a conflict of interest with anyone not getting along with anyone else.”

DeBroux recently shipped off to search of a backing band in Columbus, where record stores already stock Pink Reason records in the “local” section. His success with the LP generated a need for a permanent band. To support his self-professed “transient nature,” Kevin embarks on a national tour this summer with a full backing band in support of Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones. He will have a rotating cast of characters in tow for the trek. DeBroux could not tell whether his new supporting band will rock with the loose garage feel or his recordings’ structured basement groove.

“I never consciously set out to do anything specific,” he said. “It kind of just happens.”

PINK REASON w/HUE BLANC'S JOYLESS ONES
2007 SUMMER TOUR

7.12 Fargo, ND
Aquarium
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, They Shoot Horses Don't They & more

7.13 Missoula, MT
Higgin's Hall
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, Ex-Cocaine & Eyes Like Candy

7.14 Seattle, WA
Funhouse
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, A-Frames & Kount Fistula

7.15 Olympia, WA
Le Voyeur
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones

7.16 Portland, OR
Rotture
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, Tall Birds & Argumentix

7.17 Oakland, CA
Stork Club
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, Wooden Shjips & Red Nurse

7.18 SF, CA
Hemlock
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones & Sic Alps

7.19 Sacto, CA
Fools Foundation
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones & San Kanzagaskar

7.20 Salt Lake City, UT
Red Light Books
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones

7.21 Denver, CO
The Office
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, Temples & Littles Paia

7.22 Omaha, NE
O'Leavers
w/ Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones & The Terminals

(For more by Steve Kobak see his Apples and Heroin blog at satanrulez.blogspot.com)

JULY 4 2007 (DAY OF EIKON)

JULY 11 2007 (DAY OF HELLGATE)

Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:49:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Send an Instant Message "Neal Schon (no relation)" <caravanserai2012@y*****.com>
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Subject: Avarus / Spires That In The Sunset Rise / Manbeard @ The Hideout, Chicago, 7/8/07
To: larry@blastitude.com

Hey Larry -- sorry you couldn't make it to the Avarus show. It was pretty good. The openers Manbeard were...I don't know. They were 'goofy'. They were one of those bands that thinks their band name is really funny, you know what I mean? They said it about 200 times from the stage. In fact, they had a loop going throughout the set of an eerie woman's voice saying "Maaaaaanbeeeeeard" over and over. They were a pretty large band, with two guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and a guy who did all kinds of things like flute, violin, sax, handclaps, interpretive dance, he actually was a good musician. They were all pretty good musicians. Their first song was pretty cool, it reminded me of Raymond Pettibon and Supersession! Kinda tranced-out garage-y groove that went on a long time, the recorder flute actually worked well, I think it was Jeffrey Alexander of the Secret Eye label on guitar with a really big beard and he was playing excellent wah-wah guitar... but it kinda got sillier as it went on, theatrical and vaguely operatic 60s-ish psych rock, sorta like trying to do really early Mothers of Invention Freak Out-style pop songs, but it coulda used more Absolutely Free-style extended jamming in my opinion. I did chuckle a few times, I wasn't NOT entertained, but ultimately I just couldn't share the band's enthusiasm over how funny their name was and stuff. Spires on the other hand played a pretty fantastic set. Haven't seen them in what, four years now? Damn. I'd say they're toning down the "shrill harpy" aspect, it's still there but in just the right amount. They were doing things with like looped cello and guitar feedback that I couldn't believe, really otherworldly scraping sounds and judders that accented the acoustic stringed stuff they've always done, with great vocals, really strong stuff... I would close my eyes to listen and just about fall over every time, and I only had three beers the whole night. I don't know, it was rad. And then Avarus came on (it's pronounced ah-vah-ROOS by the way) -- while they were setting up, two of the guys from Manbeard played a wild sax duet on the floor in front of the stage while another one of 'em played percussion on a folding chair -- it was actually really good and, I'll be damned, the show felt like a HAPPENING for a few minutes there. Then Avarus played, 30 or 40 minutes straight, I'm guessing entirely improvised except for maybe the first few minutes, and then they stopped, no encore, all done. The Arttu guy was on drums the whole time -- a very good 'free rock' drummer. Well, he did stop for awhile to play some weird toy electronics, and I think he did some vocals too, but he never left the drum chair. Not much vocals at all, what they did was pretty tentative or just really low-key growling kinda stuff. I think the bassist was the same guy who played bass with Islaja a couple years ago when they were at the Bottle, but now with buzz cut instead of really long hair. I think he's also Sala-Arhino, who did that great CD on Last Visible Dog a couple years ago. He looked pretty fuckin' tough up there, he really dug in and WORKED on that bass. It was him and Arttu bringing the heft all the way. Other than that there were two guitarists and an electronics guy, and everything those three did was kind of... shy? Well one guitarist was pretty good, he would play actual riffs and melodic bits, and he combined with the bassist for some good low end droned out stuff in the middle, but the other one was practically inaudible -- he fiddled with his amp knobs a lot and seemed to play mostly scrapes and noisy twiddles, quietly, and I'm not sure I heard the electronics guy at all. Maybe I'm clueless, maybe they're just that good at blending (hiding?) into the sound and adding something intangible -- I mean, it was definitely more than just bass and drums and one guitar... or was it? Like I said, weird. After the set the bartender put on Ege Bamyasi by Can and it was just like, "Wow, THAT's how you jam with a bass and drums and guitars and electronics" -- like there was so much space and room for articulate subtle chatter in the Can music and there was NO space in the Avarus jamming, just big thick walls of bass that the timid guitar and electronics couldn't penetrate. Or how about this, if the bass and other low end sounds are the SOIL, the role of the higher-end stuff like guitars and electronics is to work as a TILL, to get in there and aerate those thick slabs of earth so the imagination of the players and listeners can seed and grow together. Like wow man, but seriously, I feel like that should've been happening a little more. BUT at the same time I've been thinking about their set a lot, obviously, and admiring it -- they definitely have a spirit and a drive that you don't see every day, something that's unique to them. I liked the way they dug deep into themselves and brought out these walls of heavy psych-drone-groove, there was a real PHYSICAL aspect to it. But it might not have been one of their best shows on the tour. Who knows?

AVARUS: (L-R) riff guitar, (way in back) don't know, bass guitar, inscrutable guitar, (in mirror) drums, (holding bag) electronics

JULY 13 2007 (DAY OF MIDSUMMER NIGHT)

I too was avoiding them just because of their name, but a few people I trust think they're pretty good, so I've finally given a few listens to Raccoo-oo-oon, their acclaimed and reviled album Behold Secret Kingdom. No doubt they do amass a hell of a sound: swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Cool, let's see what's going on with the next track.... okay, swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Okay, okay, what else have we got here..... a decent Torch of the Mystics rip on solo guitar, that's cool, and now the rest of the band is coming in, turning the song into..... swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Hmm, if you don't mind I'm gonna jump ahead a couple tracks -- oh, what's this? A solo electric guitar playing quiet chords for two minutes, that's cool, a nice interlude, and oh, there's the hanging pause.... something heavy's going to happen right about HERE...... and it's swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Okay, I'll stop. It's not that I think bands have to "change things up" every five minutes in order to be "interesting," but if they're going to do the same thing on every track (and interludes don't count!), they should do it the way a river always does the same thing, constantly regenerating itself from a greater source, distinguished by side currents and various eddies, steadily evolving with the terrain around it. Listening to this album is like being shown a snapshot of a river, over and over. It's a mighty river, but pretty quickly I realize that nothing's gonna change. The CD does look and feel nice, in a gatefold digipak from Release the Bats, which seems like a fine label, with a Warmer Milks album coming up and lots more. They also have the rare distinction of not being from Belgium, although they are from Sweden, which may in fact be the 'New Finland'.

For example, there's Jakob Olausson, that guitar-slingin' sugar beet farmin' folk-singer from near the town of Landskrona (the press loves this stuff). If you've made it this far, you've probably at least heard about his Moonlight Farm LP, as released a year or two ago by the Destijl label, because it's really something. David Keenan may occasionally go a little over the top in his record reviews (my favorite was the time he compared a Wooden Wand album to no less than US Saucer, Loren Mazzacane Connors, The Rolling Stones, MV & EE, Comus, Sun Ra, International Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar, and Tom Rapp, all in a mere two sentences), but when he calls Olausson's LP "a modern classic," he's not exaggerating one bit. It's a beautiful and haunting psych folk record, simple as that, with songs that spread out like sweet dark honey and blend perfectly into the fabric of both day and night, shaped by deep drowsy lyrical intonations that wander into unforgettable hooks, like the first song's "If we all could say / what tomorrow brings...." or, in the second song, the weary dusted way he sings "Perhaps I should testify...." You might think "psych folk" is a lame media catch-phrase or something, but I personally use the term to describe albums of psychedelic folk, and this is simply one of the best such albums I've ever heard. It's honestly right up there on my shelf with Oar and Emerges and Furniture Music for Evening Shuttles and the first Six Organs of Admittance and whatever else. The vinyl seems to be more or less sold out but it's just been reissued on CD so jump on it......and don't forget that Olausson's pre-Moonlight Farm recordings under the name Joshua Jugband 5 are just about as good. Two self-released CDRs came out under that name, a self-titled one in 2002 and one called Damascus Doldrum in 2003, and both have been compiled on one new s/t CD from Gulcher Records. The Jugband music is markedly different than the Farm LP, most obviously because it has no singing, but also because where that LP drifts, this one pounds, like some even-cruder early-period Spacemen 3 demos that extend via loose overdubs into desert-caravan modalities and tranced rhythm-shuffles so unstoppable that I'm practically thinking of Bo Diddley over here......and as if that wasn't enough, not only has Olausson just put out another LP with his girlfriend under the moniker Sus & Jakob (has anyone heard it? is it as good as Moonlight? Sus is on two Moonlight songs, credited with flute and voice -- is it more of the same? Or did I really read somewhere that it's an LP of.... free jazz?), he's also released an odd solo LP of sci-fi instrumentals under the name Renegade Scanners, on Finland's always-hairy Lal Lal Lal label. The title is Hands On Future, and it is not psych folk, falling more on the Jugband side of things and beyond into weird synth-punk territory. I'm gonna call it the third most essential of these Olausson-related albums, mainly just because I think it's a little too enamored with its blooping UFO sounds. They're cool but kind of constant and basic and loud in the mix -- everything else about the record is pretty great, especially when the motorik drumming comes in, and the silk-screen sick-art feel of the sleeve is just right.

And speaking of Lal Lal Lal and its documentation of some of the sicker sounds of new Sweden, they've also gone and released a gatefold double LP by the one and only Ray Pacino Ensemble. Their Be My Lonely Night cassette was one of the best things Lal Lal Lal put out in 2006, and that whole thing has been reissued here as the first record, with all new songs on the second slab. I'm not quite sure how to describe this band from the village of Järna except to say that they sound like 2000s post-punk weirdos possessed simultaneously by the spirits of a 1930s Scandinavian dancehall oompah band and some cracked 1960s folk troubadours. Ten listens later and I can't do any better than that, but no matter how strange it gets, TRPE is always there to play another song, and they're all surprising catchy and avant-garde and inexplicably effective. As is the hand-sewn gatefold sleeve, with its art by Jelle Crama and totally incomprehensible liner notes....

And as long as we're on Sweden, of course we have to mention Hudiksvall's finest, the Brainbombs, because we just got their latest singles anthology CD in the mail, and of course it rules. Released by French label Polly Magoo, this disc compiles five singles from 1998 through 2007 and adds four previously unreleased raw-nerve live songs from 1993, which is pretty choice considering they've only played live three times or something like that. When I sit down and listen to this all the way through, the recording methods and guitar sounds may vary over the years, but never once do the Brainbombs stray from the mission of repetition, of hammering down THE RIFF over and over while the singer nails every single one of his constantly psychopathic one-liners, totally obsessed and totally deadpan. My favorite one to shout over and over right now is "I NEED SPEED!!!," as originally released in 2006 by the Big Brothel label. My wife usually leaves the room when I get to the next part of the verse though -- I think it's very offensive also, but it's just so catchy....

This article is starting to go on forever, but as long as I'm doing this I might as well mention that I was at Reckless this week with the usual used credit burning a hole in my pocket, and on a whim I picked up a used copy of the most recent CD by Träd Gräs och Stenar, who are ALSO FROM SWEDEN. Called Ajn Schvajn Draj, this is the album of brand-new material that they released in 2002 on the Silence label, not too long before they came to the US and did a few shows with the No-Neck Blues Band, TWO of which I saw in one night at Chicago’s Empty Bottle (one all-ages, one 21+). Those shows were so good, "a very heavy mellow" as I wrote at the time, dusty downtempo acid-rock jams from the school of the Horse, not a lot of vocals, possibly completely improvised. And this CD has indeed captured a few takes on what they were doing there, but not without twisting the knife a little -- Träd Gräs has always had a stubborn streak -- back in 1970 it was changing their name every two years and playing the riff from "Satisfaction" for 10 minutes at a time, and here in 1998-2001 (when this material was recorded) it takes the form of a lot of shorter tracks that are almost like moody FM radio 'modern rock'. At first I thought Midge Ure or maybe even Bono Vox was gonna start warbling over their shoulders, but they never do, and once you get used to their presence these are actually some powerfully moody songs, fully imbued with a real 'older and wiser' emotional weight, and either way they're outnumbered by those killer instrumental jams, two of which clock in at over ten minutes. Hey, it's an excellent album, and definitely recommended if you've already checked out a couple of their vintage 1970s releases.

And no, this article is never gonna end, because I just remembered an album from Sweden I've been meaning to review for like four years now. It's by The Spacious Mind, and it's called Live Volume One: Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Ours, Skogsnäs 26/10/99. I've always liked the story of this album, the band travelling up to the commune village of Skogsnäs, "in the middle of the deep north Swedish forests," and laying down this endless slow and somber heavy psych-rock jam, giving it a nice 'testy hippie' title to boot. Compared to the austere aumgn of their obvious forebears in Träd Gräs, the Spacious Mind play more solos and use more e-bows and are more likely to dive into purple wah-wah passages, but that's true of most self-proclaimed "psychedelic jam bands," and very few of them have the stoic Träd Gräs-worthy control that the Spacious Mind exhibit here. Do Your Thing is one of several releases on the band's in-house Goddamn I'm A Countryman label, all of which come (came?) in high-quality digipaks with nice psychedelic photography. Also recommended are the cosmically somber I fell but Andromeda rose to the stars by Moon Trotskij, and a self-titled CD by Råd Kjetil and The Loving Eye Of God that is possibly the best thing from the label besides Do Your Thing, zoned-out melancholy drone-rock imbued with that gloomy Kosmische glow.

Wait a minute, let's go back to Lal Lal Lal for a second....there's one more album that I've got to mention, the debut release by the one and only Nuslux. This is the solo work of label CEO and Avarus member Roope Eronen, and he's really hit upon something brutally simple and special with this concept. The instruments are "oscillator, synth & oscillator, ancient sampler, multi effect board & violin." They are "touched by Roope and mostly built by Tomas," and importantly, there are "no overdubs." This all leads me to believe that Mr. Eronen is just kind of setting things in motion and standing back and listening, and the sound bears that out, with a bunch of short tracks that are, for the most part, harsh-but-humorous wind-up machine-drone miniatures. They sound static and unrelenting from far away, but up close they are loose, animate, and teeming with playful activity, and always deeply weird. It's like the deep-immersion approach of Lal Lal Lal comrades The Skaters applied to the tonalities of No Wave and Noise. And every now and then he changes things up with a track like #13, which is very gorgeous hall-of-mirrors-in-a-cathedral wordless hum-and-echo, still tantalisingly brief. Pay attention -- Nuslux just might be a true original from the Next New Weird.

JULY 16 2007 (DAY OF THE TWO DAUGHTERS)

Last Visible Dog has put out their latest nature-themed 'few artists, long tracks' compilation album, this one called Crows of the World. The back cover says "First in a 10 volume series of important new studies detailing the family Corvidae, including first-hand observations of flock formation, nesting habits, plumage, egg-form, distribution, food, behavior, field marks, voice, enemies, winter habits, range, courtship procedures and migratory habits," which is pretty funny because it's obviously from the back of some ornithological field guide, but there's probably still people out there going "Wow, I can't believe they're going to put out TEN of these." Then again, the way LVD puts out CDs, they probably actually will. Anyway, Crows of the World is a mere two-disc compilation, only one-third of the glory that was LVD's Invisible Pyramid box, but it is damn near just as good. Standouts among the 11 compiled artists include some excellent late-night twin-synth droneout by Finland's The Free Players.... great (Sandy) Bullish banjo raga backed with hand-drumming by The North Sea.... weird lonesome drone-fluppery by Western Automatic, which is a guy from one of Chicago's finest bands, Zelienople.... chord organ droneout by the Ilya Monosov/Preston Swirnoff duo.... scary and epic doom-guitar feedback duetting by Paper Wings, which is New Zealand's Antony Milton and someone from somewhere named Anthony Guerra.... great low-end guitar steam-chug duetting by Northern Cross, which is Providence, Rhode Island residents Geoff Mullen and Kris Lapke.... and a closing track by Oaxacan that is totally intense, sounding like gigantic galactic furniture movers working in deep space while, down on earth, vocals by "Amy" keep getting louder and heavier until the movers can totally hear her....even though the liner notes say that it was "recorded live" in "Sacramento"....I don't know who or what to believe here....

Actually maybe Oaxacan really are from California -- that's what it says on their MySpace page anyway. I'd like to talk about their untitled self-released CDR from 2006 (pictured), but I can't do it without talking about the Vampire Can't CD Key Cutter (also 2006, on Load Records). It goes like this: one night in the recent past, I loaded up the ol' five-disc changer with all kinds of new stuff from the review pile. It got to spinning, and pretty soon sounds awesome and terrible were emanating from my speakers. One particular group that shuffled up from time to time was really catching my ears, someone working some kind of subdued and silence-imbued guitar-drums skronk-patter forward-motion thing, and doing it very well. The drums were skilled enough for jazz, but the guitar kind of destroyed that possible context with various bluntly disruptive moves that were nonetheless musical and creative instead of merely antimusical and destructive. I started noticing electronics and vocals in the mix too, female vocals singing weird syllables and voice sounds, no words that I could tell, and, oh shit, I realized, this must be that new Vampire Can't disc, Key Cutter, on Load Records! It is in the player, after all, and the one-sheet for it did compare it to the ESP-Disk label, and here I am getting definite Sea Ensemble vibes. Sure, yeah, it's gotta be . . . there's a guitarist (Bill Nace), a drummer (Chris Corsano), and the electronics and vocals must be Jessica Rylan . . . wow, nice move by them, lots of subtle stuff here, I've never heard Rylan sing quite like that, etcetera. Then, maybe another full day later, I realized that this group I was digging wasn't Vampire Can't at all, it was a completely different group called Oaxacan, from a completely different part of the country called Oakland, CA. They've been playing for a couple years now, and I already knew about 'em because their name is almost the same as what Blue Oyster Cult was once called (Oaxaca, for about five hours, as named by Richard Meltzer), and because their guitarist Derek Monypeny once wrote a great article on Sun City Girls that you can read here. I mean, I already thought I was gonna like 'em, but not half as much as I actually did like 'em when I heard 'em, got me? I really thought I would like Vampire Can't that much too, but after being convinced that they were capable of the subtle and deeply involved weird/noise/jazz fluency of Oaxacan, the reality of the Key Cutter album just kind of sounds bashed out without being hashed out. All the players are very good -- everybody knows Corsano is good, a lot of people know Nace is good, and of course Rylan puts out amazing hushed-noise epics like that New Secret picture disc, and I hear her newer stuff is even better. As I listened to Key Cutter, I kept hoping they'd go more in Rylan's hushed and epic dream song noise direction, and indeed they do with the last track "No Strings," which is over 11 minutes long, and my favorite thing on here. Most other tracks are within the 1 to 3 minute range, with that "if we keep 'em short we can call it hardcore" approach that isn't really working for me here. I know, I'm sorry, it's all Oaxacan's fault for being so good!