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There are very real reasons why Cyclobe albums are so infrequent, as Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower seem to deliberately eschew or expertly conceal most of the tools that similar artists rely upon (improvisation, chance/randomness, repetition, etc.) in favor of a constantly shifting and deliberate abstract narrative. There is a purposefulness and articulation to Cyclobe’s brand of psychotropic mindfuckery that is very much their own. Their best work (such as this album) feels like a twisted, meticulously composed infernal symphony or an ambitiously nightmarish film soundtrack for a film that no one could possibly make. Wounded Galaxies evokes something far too extreme and abstract to capture with words and images: a deep, timeless, all-consuming cosmic terror.
It is both fitting and remarkable that Brown and Thrower met through their associations with Coil.On one hand, there are enormous similarities between the two groups: a deep fascination with both the occult and obscure transgressive art, overlapping collaborators like Thighpaulsandra, the use of similar electronic textures, and so on.On the other hand, however, Cyclobe has wound up in such a completely different place that it is almost difficult to imagine that the two were ever intertwined.Cyclobe sounds like Coil's id allowed to run rampant.Ossian and Stephen certainly display a predilection for all things eerie and nocturnal, but they seem to be chasing an altogether more difficult, disturbing, snarling, and visceral vision.No one will ever confuse a Cyclobe album with ambient music.
That said, however, the first side of the album begins with some deceptively haunting and beautiful synthesizers that suggest otherwise.That feeling doesn't last long though, as "How Acla Disappeared From the Earth" quickly grows darker and more uncomfortable as more and more sounds fade in.It is one of the shorter works on the album, so it doesn't have much time to evolve; yet it features some truly wonderful gurgling and shivering weirdness in its periphery.The next song, "The Woods Are Alive with the Smell of His Coming," completely eclipses it though.
Cyclobe’s "17-minute Pagan opus" was actually debuted on its own last year as part of an exhibition at The Tate Gallery St. Ives and it is easy to see why: it is not only the centerpiece of the album, it may possibly the defining moment of the duo's career.It is built upon a simple, yet darkly exotic backbone of kalimba and Michael York’s pipes–a foundation that doesn’t change that much over the course of the piece, serving mostly as a rhythmic anchor for the surrounding maelstrom. The real excitement lies in what unfolds on top of it, as I am amazed at how many ingenious variations of "all hell breaking loose" Thrower and Brown are able to unleash: violent, discordant cello solos from John Contreras; squealing strings that sound like the swirling spirits of the damned; horrific orchestral cacophonies; and a deep creaking like the very fabric of the universe is straining and about to rupture.It is, quite simply, an utterly staggering work.
The album's second half again begins in much calmer, uncharacteristically droning fashion with "We'll Witness the Resurrection of Dead Butterflies," but its opening motif is quickly subsumed by Cliff Stapleton’s Arabic-sounding hurdy-gurdy permutations.The piece eventually reaches a bit of a lull before being torn apart by a violent series of apocalyptically crushing stabs of ugly harmony separated by quivering aftershocks.It feels like the actual earth is shuddering in terror–loud, unexpected, visceral, and awesome.
Gradually, the relentless bludgeoning gives way to some less alarming subterranean moans and rumbles and a delicately haunting piano theme takes shape over a buzzing bed of squiggling electronics.The piano piece is "Sleeper," but it is difficult to tell quite where it officially begins due to my inability to pinpoint the moment of segue."Sleeper" is something of an aberration for the album, as it actually features some odd and creepy childlike vocals from Ossian Brown.In all other respects though, it fits in quite nicely, as the piano gradually becomes more chromatic and unmoored and the underlying music begins to lurch and swell thunderously.The title piece follows, perfectly closing the album by mangling a simple drone piece into massive swells and jarring paroxysms of dissonance.It actually has a disturbingly post-coital feel to it at times.I am curious about whether or not that was intentional, as Thrower has stated in the past that he feels that there is a "capricious sensuousness" to Cyclobe's music.It is difficult and a bit unnerving to try to imagine sex as deviant and alarming as Wounded Galaxies though.
The whole thing adds up to a rather overwhelming, unnerving, and utterly absorbing listening experience.I am fairly certain that my heart rate increased quite a bit over the course of the record, as there was no way to remain calm in the face of such disturbed content and violent dynamic shifts.It was kind of like being attacked, actually.That probably isn't an experience that appeals to most people, but Wounded Galaxies is certainly one of the most immediately striking and singular albums that anyone will release this year (and definitely the only album that can be described with phrases like "rapturous cosmic convulsion").I don't think Brown and Thrower are particularly concerned about appealing to "most people" anyway.Despite all of its more overt charms, however, I suspect Galaxies’ greatest achievement may lie in its sheer depth and complexity: there are all kinds of layers and textures that I was far too shell-shocked to appreciate during my first several listens.This is a very hard album to fully process and I don't expect to get tired of it anytime soon.
Sample:
 
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This trio's approach is similar at times to the musical cubism of the Magic Band but at others they go into overdrive to create a maelstrom of sound without ever completely abandoning melody and rhythm. The group's name evokes the devil, Freemasonry, and Doctor John R. Brinkley's testicular transplants.
Udders collects songs from previous vinyl releases and adds one new track. Even the shortest of the nine pieces contains an intriguing range of pace and mood. "Derek & Dot" for example, goes from brooding splutter to accelerating guitar to a meltdown crescendo of bass, drums and guitar. The mood throughout is intense and anxious. I particularly like the way that the bass guitar is sometimes used almost like a bell, to keep time, while the other instruments flow around it. "Varicose Jibs" is one of several wonderfully punishing slaps around the ears. A sort of relief, or contrast, comes on "Jipper Flow," with a slower pace, scratched guitars and fluttering drums.
Honey Ride Me A Goat’s website provides a sense of humor to go with the intensity and uncompromising turn-on-a-sixpence nature of their music. There are many pictures of curry and odd messages such as "due to certain circumstances we can’t play in Sheffield any longer." Another picture shows one member of the group in an apron: obviously a reference to Freemasons who are said to use the initiation practice of "riding the goat." Greek and Roman versions of Pan depicted a goat which Christianity then adopted to depict Satan, who in The Middle Ages was rumored to appear at witch orgies riding on a goat. Goat imagery was thus transferred onto Freemasons to taint them as evil in the common, suspicious, superstitious mind. I suppose modern day conspiracy theorists could easily point to the fact that the President of the USA was reading "My Pet Goat" while the Twin Towers were attacked to perpetuate the notion that "evil" won't rest until Earth is destroyed by Babylonian Gods of War and the victorious goat resides in heaven. All of which might explain why the bees are disappearing at the same time as swarms of bald guys with goatees seem to be everywhere.
Musically, Honey Ride Me A Goat attack their instruments with true skill; they have the chops to bash out an unholy racket and (instrumentally) quote from the wilder side of musical history. Their music ends up balanced, unpretentious, and pretty accessible. Overall, the most jumbled and tangled sections of this album are the most relaxing since there is a sense of utter abandon to those parts. Ordinarily, I prefer short, sharp shocks of the sort of aggressive, wild sprawl and quasi-mathematical structures which we can hear on Udders. Longer pieces such as "Ethel," however, work well and have enough engaging twists and turns to satisfy. There are even some wordless vocals at the end of that song.
If Honey Ride Me A Goat ever broaden their sound with some lyrics I hope they consider the advertising devices of Doctor John R. Brinkley. In the US Depression he made millions by adding slices of goat gonad to the scrotums of willing rich suckers wanting to get back their old potency. Profits from his nuts-into-nuts transplants were used to fund his mega-watt radio station blaring music and ads for his services (laced with biblical verse) from Del Rio on the Texas/Mexico border all the way to New York City. The limp wealthy flocked to shower him with cash in the hope of returning to youthful vigor. Accusations of blasphemy and quackery poured down upon the goatee-sporting Brinkley. His station was once the most powerful on Earth, a million watts which drowned out everything else. On a clear day it reached Europe and people complained they could pick it up in their tooth fillings. Honey Ride Me A Goat's music is potent and life-affirming; and may well rattle a few fillings before they are done.
samples:
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Over the course of ten days twelve railway stations were visited and at each a thirty second sound recording and photograph were taken. During the train journeys, compositions were sketched onto scores and later recorded at one rehearsal evening with The City of Exeter Railway Brass Band. The twelve short tracks reflect those brief encounters, hint at the unrealized possibilities and fleeting nature of human life, and seek majesty in insignificant events. Less than eight minutes long and organized into two sections, a reissue of Twelve Stations is overdue.
Listening to this recording is like walking along a dark street in winter and hearing a band playing in a hall half a mile away, or removing one brick from a wall in a rain-swept cemetery and straining to hear faint echoes of sound trapped for half a century. But my enjoyment of the brass band sounds, the chuff chuff, platform announcements, tracks clattering, unknown sounds fading, and the clever short duration of this piece, is one thing; context is quite another. I hesitate to compare Twelve Stations with Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma, but it can belong in a context also containing Flanders and Swann’s "The Slow Train" — that of a lament. David Chatton Baker's effort is a more abstract encapsulation of time passing, whereas Flanders and Swann are specifically lamenting the closure of many small railway stations in the UK as a result of a government report (March 1963):
"No one departs and no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives
They've all passed out of our lives."
Those closures arose from what I refuse to call the Beeching Report since Ernest Marples better personifies the Conservative government, with clear conflicts of interest to road construction projects. who had it drawn up. "The Slow Train" was written in July 1963 and it depicts perfectly the sense of loss which was widely felt. On August 8th, 1963, an equally infamous Great Train Robbery occurred of an overnight from Glasgow to London with 72 people on board sorting the mail by hand. The robbers, who grabbed the equivalent of $75 million, had downed phone lines in the area and escaped in getaway cars. One brave rail-man got off the mail train and onto a passing goods train before raising the alarm at a nearby town. The gang, tuning in on VHF police radio heard "A robbery has been committed and you'll never believe it — they've stolen the train!"
Twelve Stations is also comparable with Edward Thomas's poem Aldestrop which gives his impressions of a brief unscheduled stop at the tiny station there on June 24th, 1914. But whereas Thomas leaves an indelible picture of peace and nature,Twelve Stations visits larger stations (including Crewe, the very epicenter of railway existence) and is a celebration of human activity and industry, fleeting but consequential. It also celebrates the late Owen Huxham (trombone player) and The City of Exeter Railway Brass Band that was formed just after World War Two. Aldestrop stands in vivid contrast to the coming carnage of World War One. In July 1915, aged 37 and married with three children, Edward Thomas enlisted to fight. Perhaps he felt his beloved land was somehow in danger. He was killed on April 9th, 1917, a Thursday, at the Battle of Arras. The enemy was arguably within, as British Railways closed Adlestrop to goods trains on August 26th, 1963 and to passengers on January 3rd, 1966. The signal box closed on April 27th, 1964 and the sidings made redundant. Incidentally, it just occurs that you might consider reading the rest of this review while listening to the brass band playing in the summery haze and bitter-sweet melancholy of Roy Harper's "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease."
Everyone has a movie scene or perhaps a real life incident around trains. Mine is the end of Billy Liar where small town dreamer Tom Courtenay deliberately misses getting on the London train with Julie Christie by pretending to buy milk. In real life, Labour governments did not overturn the railway station cuts, perhaps due to ties to unions with strong links to roads. In any event, later Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher would treat the railways with about as much care Billy Liar treats the milk he tosses away in mock disgust. Thatcher preferred to import car-centric ideas from the US (where they make sense) and British roads are clogged beyond moderate solution. The cost of meeting renewed demand for train travel is astronomical and not all the previous tracks are even available. In another land, l ride the clean bybanen train which announces each separate stop with a distinctive tune, some days bringing my partner oat milk.
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This latest collection continues Sublime Frequencies' impressive hot streak of releases this year, as Hisham Mayet has curated a selection of elusive instrumental pieces from "a towering figure in Arabic cultural history." Unsurprisingly, I have not knowingly encountered Hamdi's work before, as SF is always way ahead of the curve in digging up revelatory artists unfamiliar to most western ears, but Mayet and the songs he selected make a convincing case that Hamdi was indeed behind "some of the hippest music coming out of the Middle East from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s." It was rare for Hamdi's work to surface under his own name, however, as most of his success and influence came from composing for a host of famous Arabic singers or scoring films, plays, and television. This collection, however, focuses on a very specific era of Hamdi's career in which Mayet believes the composer and his Diamond Orchestra perfected a modernized "international music" that elegantly combined "Eastern tinged jazz, theremin draped orchestral noir, and mid-east and eastern psychedelic exotica." Naturally, most of the original albums are exasperatingly elusive and expensive, but the rarity of these songs is secondary to their quality. This scratches roughly the same itch as other classic SF "pop" compilations like Bollywood Steel Guitar and Shadow Music of Thailand.
While Hamdi is technically the star of the show here, he is actually only one of two legends on these recordings, as Sublime Frequencies favorite Omar Khorshid was one of the many luminaries recruited for Hamdi's Diamond Orchestra. Naturally, there are plenty of cool guitar parts as a result, but no one member of the Diamond Orchestra stands out as particularly virtuosic or essential. Instead, the beauty of these pieces primarily lies in their deft blurring of modern and traditional styles, their inventive arrangements, and the tightness and fluidity of the ensemble. The opening "Ghada" provides an especially impressive example of Hamdi's "modal pop" vision, achieving a delightfully propulsive and swinging blend of surf guitar twang, Bollywood dance party, and bittersweetly soulful Arabic melodies. Obviously, getting all of those elements to fit seamlessly together in the first place was the most revolutionary part of Hamdi's vision, but the execution is also rather dazzling in a general sense, as melodies are constantly traded between instruments while the band nimbly navigates exacting rhythmic variations without breaking a sweat.
For the most part, "Ghada" is very representative of everything that follows, so if that one does not connect, the rest of the album will probably hold no further appeal. Similarly, anyone who loves "Ghada" will likely be thrilled to find eighteen more bangers in a similar vein awaiting them. Within that rich vein lie some delightful variations, however, such as the swooningly romantic strings of "Mawal," which approximates the soundtrack to a imagined Bond film where he teams up with sexy Egyptian dancer/double agent. Elsewhere, "Chaka Chico" initially sounds like the theme for a Spaghetti western ghost story due to its theremin melody, but fluidly shifts tones until it sounds like a love story set in an Middle Eastern cabaret. The closing "Love Story" is another surprise, as Hamdi and his ensemble gamely spice up Francis Lai's famous melody with Arabic instrumentation and inventive fluorishes until it resembles an Egyptian mariachi band crashing an Italian wedding. Beyond that, I was also delighted by the pieces where the orchestra abandon rock rhythms in favor of more Arabic-inspired percussion, as they do on "Gazairia." Just about everything here is great (and fun) though, as Instrumental Modal Pop of 1970s Egypt sounds like some of the coolest and most forward-thinking musicians around teamed up to unknowingly make a flawless and hook-filled surf/exotica/Bollywood masterpiece. I can certainly understand how Hamdi came to be so revered in the Arab world if he brought this level of heat to even his non-hits.
Samples can be found here.
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I am a bit late to the party with this project from "NYC-based, Iranian-Canadian brothers" Mohammed and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh, as they have been steadily releasing oft-killer music since 2017. This is their first album for Important, however, and it makes for a perplexingly unrepresentative introduction to their work, taking their more industrial tendencies in an unconventionally jazz-inspired direction with mixed results. That said, the brothers make a conscious point of attempting to "present new ideas" with each fresh release, so a truly representative album may never exist. Instead, each album is a snapshot of their thoughts and inspirations at one particular stage of their evolution. Similarly, the brothers are unswervingly devoted to making their music personal by rooting it in their own stories. Conceptually, that makes To Live A La West the Saint Abdullah album inspired by the time the brothers were allowed to attend a dance after their sixth grade graduation. The album is quite a bit harder to define stylistically, however. While the brothers cite Jon Hassell's Fourth World aesthetic as one major source of inspiration, I cannot think of any artists who explore similarly eclectic territory to this album’s curious mixture of free jazz and industrial-tinged experimentation mingled with shades of electronic pop and Iranian music. To my ears, this album could not be much further from the sights and sounds of a middle school dance (even filtered through psychedelic sensibility), but the best moments achieve a kind of strange beauty akin to Carter Tutti Void teaming with up some Egyptian jazz guys to record a very strange and unconventional film soundtrack. The other moments are considerably harder to explain, as they resemble industrial jazz vamps made by an AI whose primary influence is '80s arcade game sounds.
This is one of those albums that starts out extremely strong, then gradually unravels and yields diminishing returns as it unfolds. If To Live A La West began and ended with "A Lot Of Kings," however, it would be damn near perfect. The duo are joined by trumpet player Aquiles Navarro and someone named Kol for a wonderfully simmering and smoky reverie of industrial-damaged and static-strafed jazz noir. The first hints that something has begun to go awry appear as early as the second piece, however, as it sounds like someone is throttling a modular synthesizer over an erratic, subdued, and ramshackle drum machine beat. It still ends up being a strong piece, as it is achieves a kind of jabbering, go-for-broke catharsis of squiggling electronic bloops, but I definitely felt that lack of a solid melodic component. The brothers next hit the mark again with the stomping, mechanized juggernaut of "Like A Great Starving Beast," as guest John Butcher enlivens the proceedings with a fiery sax solo. From that point onward, however, the brothers are on their own and they definitely chose a mystifying sound palette. Historically, Saint Abdullah are at their best when they aim for something akin to an Iranian Esplendor Geométrico with a strong taste for dub and sample collage, but they largely repress those tendencies on To Live A La West. In more concrete terms, that means that this album has plenty of cool grooves and foundational motifs, but they are almost always pushed to the background to focus on trilling sprays of blooping and bleeping melodies that elude any familiar scales or patterns. While the mechanized dance menace of "Furthermost" is a notable exception, the rest of the album lies somewhere between "chromatic free jazz shredding on a keytar," "someone loudly playing theremin over a '90s Aphex Twin album," "a Herbie Hancock album jarringly interrupting an S&M show," and "a modular synth player trying to mimic bird songs." Strange choices one and all and rendered even stranger by the existence of companion cassette of the same name on Cassauna. I am not sure why the brothers chose to release two similarly uneven albums in the same vein rather than a single solid one or why they did not enlist more collaborators for their ambitious jazz foray, but I do not feel they put their best foot forward here. In any case, Saint Abdullah is a great project and "A Lot of Kings" is a great song, but this is probably not the best place to start for the curious.
Samples can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
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This latest release from Aleksandra Zakharenko is a "selection of soundscapes created by throughout various stages of last year" described as "subliminal moments, suspended fragments, caught between time zones." While that description could admittedly fit quite a lot of Perila's music, 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 has a far more intimate and informal feel than this year's previous release on Smalltown Supersound (How Much Time It Is Between You And Me?). That uncluttered, sketch-like approach suits Zakharenko quite well, as it brings out a bit more distinctive character than her more layered and produced work. Given that Perila is one of the more consistently intriguing artists in the ambient-adjacent abstract electronic milieu, there is plenty to like (or love) about that more produced side too, but I found this more stark and simple side easier to connect with on a deeper level, as these six songs distill Zakharenko's vision to its most pure form without sacrificing any of the beauty.
The opening "long dizzying air through a balcony door" sounds exactly like I would expect Perila to sound when filtered through the beautifully murky melancholia of Vaagner's house aesthetic (or at least curated with that aesthetic in mind). It is one of the more minimal pieces on the album as well, as it is essentially a spoken-word piece over a little more than a ghostly hum that rises and falls like a slow exhalation. The words are compellingly poetic and vaguely confessional, as it Zakharenko seems to be haltingly recounting fragmented and enigmatic memories from a past spring burned deep into her psyche. It strikes quite a mesmerizing balance of eerie and sensuous and is easily as strong as anything I have previously heard from Perila. In fact, I would have been thrilled if it was followed by five more pieces in the exact same vein, but only a fool would expect that, as Zakharenko's music has long featured a strong element of unpredictability. In keeping with that theme, the following "amorphous absorption" sounds like deconstructed dub techno sourced from dripping stalactites and chopped, hallucinatory voices, while the blearily melodic reverie "haven't left home 4 4 days" evokes the melancholy of a rain-soaked and cloud-darkened afternoon. A similarly drizzly atmosphere returns for the two pieces that close the album, but "this story doesn't make any sense" detours into a gently seething and bubbling experiment in disjointed, deconstructed, and unconventional percussion that feels like it is fading in and out of focus. It is an enjoyable piece, but the two pieces that follow even more impressive. I especially enjoyed “Crash Sedative,” which feels like a stoned and stumbling twist on classic Bill Evans-style jazz piano. "1 room" delves into a similarly noir-ish jazz vein, but feels too haunted and texture-focused to exist outside an especially creepy David Lynch film.
Nearly everything on the album is both good and distinctively "Perila," however, which makes this modest release an unexpectedly satisfying and absorbing album. On a related note, Vaagnar has also issued a considerably shorter sister EP (Memories of Log) that compiles strays from one of Zakharenko's stronger collaborators with Ulla. I expect anyone who likes 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 will enjoy that one too, as I certainly did (particularly Ulla's sublime closer "falling water lullaby").
Samples can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
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This enigmatic Illinois collective has never been particularly keen on revealing much about themselves, but they do have something of an origin story in which the project was birthed when they fatefully discovered a section of a film trailer in an abandoned drive-in theater back in 1983. While I do not believe they ever specified which film they found, all signs point to a George Romero or Lucio Fulci film, as "sounds from films about fake corpses constitute some of the earliest material used by Fossil Aerosol Mining Project." In fact, the project nearly always sounds like a hallucinatory collage of badly distressed VHS tapes of Dawn of the Dead, but the project has also released several explicitly zombie-indebted releases over the course of their long and macabre career, some of which were eventually compiled on 2014's digital-only Zombi Traditions. As befits the subject material, those already remixed, remastered, and revised pieces have been cannibalized once more for this definitive edition. As the previous incarnations of these songs have been purged from existence, I cannot say how well these latest versions stack up against the earlier ones, but I can say that this is easily one of the best Fossil Aerosol Mining Project albums that I have heard. To my ears, this album is the embodiment of everything I love about this project, as it perfectly captures the imagined ambiance of a late '70s/early '80s mall where the only remaining signs of life are strains of kitschy muzak and cheery announcements of incredible bargains eerily reverberating around the ransacked, rubble-strewn, and desolate halls until the electricity eventually fails.
Given this project’s mystery-shrouded nature, I cannot say for certain what their working methods were back in 1983 or if they have evolved at all over the ensuing four decades, but it definitely seems like the collective has an extremely purist approach to how they use their material. It seems fair to say that one of the project’s self-imposed constraints is that all of the sounds they use must be scavenged, so the difference between a middling album and great one lies in how well the fundamentally non-musical material lends itself to musicality (and how ingenious the collective can be when the material does not). In practical terms, that means that the essence of Zombi Tradition's aesthetic is murky ambiance conjured from hiss, garbled samples, and industrial hum, but that foundation is often enhanced with enigmatic vocal fragments, snatches of ads, and bits of repurposed muzak.
When they hit the mark, the results can be wonderfully creepy, immersive, and hallucinatory in a very unique and distinctive way. In the case of this album, those moments mostly tend to be the longest pieces. For example, the seething slow burn of "Damaged Years Ago" steadily swells to a haunted crescendo of inhuman-sounding backwards voices and a promise of "all the most popular brands." Elsewhere, "Italian Resurrection" evokes the swaying industrial ambiance of a massive engine slowly churning in an enigmatic miasma of footsteps, tape hiss, and eerie vocal fragments ("help me") that bubble up from the depths. Later, "The Shopping Mall Has Long Since Flooded" sounds like a broken radio playing flickering, unintelligible, and creepily reverberant emergency dispatches to a long-abandoned and partially submerged food court. A couple of the shorter pieces are excellent too though. I especially love the hiss-ravaged muzak phantasmagoria of "1983," which has the creepy, sad, and playful feel of some recent Aaron Dilloway albums. That said, the whole album casts a wonderfully unbroken spell and the execution is unusually strong for FAMP (presumably because the material has been reworked so many times). Given the grisly and oft-schlocky source material being repurposed, I was pleasantly surprised by the bleak beauty and subtly morbid humor of these pieces, as they never err into oppressive darkness or easy kitsch (even when a cheery voice is encouraging me to "visit often"). To my ears, this is one of the true jewels of the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project discography (if not the project’s culminating achievement).
Samples can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
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I probably do not follow the contemporary psych-rock scene as closely as I should, so this 2019 side project from Sweden's Hills managed to elude me for a couple of years. On one level, the leap from Hills to Centrum is not exactly a dramatic one, as För Meditation arguably resembles a Hills album with the electronic guitars and jammier tendencies excised. On a deeper level, however, the spell that Centrum casts is very different from that of most modern psych bands, as För Meditation feels like a lost classic from the late '60s/early '70s nexus where hallucinogens, Pandit Pran Nath, and eastern religion collectively transformed the more adventurous fringes of rock forever. In more practical terms, that means that För Meditation is full of droning, chanting, and raga-damaged psychedelia great enough to earn Centrum a place in my personal pantheon of Swedish psych/free music titans like Parson Sound and Träd, Gras och Stenar. They clearly also learned a trick or two from more recent bands too though, as they do an impressive job of sidestepping the genre's more indulgent tendencies and beautifully channel the killer ride cymbal grooves of classic Om (albeit opting more for hypnotic repetition than muscular intensity and virtuosic flourishes).
The album's description begins with a quote from David Lynch about transcendental meditation and its tenet that "true happiness lies within," but Centrum seem to enthusiastically embraced the Zen ideal of ego death as well, as the band's enigmatic line-up is given only as "members of Hills and Weary Nous." That anonymity admittedly makes sense here, as the focus is not on individual performances so much as it is on the band members seamlessly converging in perfect harmony for a series of great droning grooves. Or, as the label puts it, "beguiling tapestries of drone-based hypnosis, mantric vocal chants and ritualistic folk along with field recordings" (the latter made by the band in India). The opening "Vid Floden" is a representative introduction to that aesthetic, as a slow, heady groove of pulsing Shruti box swells, muscular bass riffage, hazy chanted vocals, and a cool flute hook unfolds for ten straight minutes with minimal evolution. There are some subtle effects and a decent amount of guitar soloing (both clean and distorted), but the magic primarily lies in how the various musicians interact and embellish the groove without ever breaking the spell with indulgent missteps. Instead, elements like the smoldering guitar solo in the following "Sjön" serve more of a textural and dynamic purpose than a cathartic or melodic one. That said, that solo does inject a soulful intensity that plays a significant role in making "Sjön" one of the album's strongest pieces. Of course, the warbling wah-wah improvisations and heavy ride cymbal beat play crucial roles as well (especially once the tambourine kicks in).
The remaining two pieces are unsurprisingly devoted to variations on the same themes. The brief "Stjärnor" is the closest thing to a single, as it distills the Centrum vision to a tight five minutes and enhances it with a melodic violin theme, but it also breaks the hypnotic spell a bit with a very prominent wah-wah solo in its final moments. The closing "Som En Spegel," on the other hand, heads in the opposite direction and stretches out for twelve epic minutes with little threat of derailing. Initially, it feels a bit too fast and too muscular to quite hit the raga/drone comfort zone, but it gradually blossoms into a masterful slow burn with the addition of tambourine, serpentine flute melodies, and a very cool finale of dub-inspired percussion flourishes. Aside from the mixed success of "Stjärnor," För Meditation is a damn near perfect album in my book. While it is not terribly hard to find other psych-rock bands who look to the east for inspiration, very few are able to match the natural chemistry and sublime execution that Centrum bring to the form.
Samples can be found here.
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If you hang around enough basement shows, if you listen to enough record collector shop talk, if you read lists of your favorite obscure musicians listing their favorite obscure musicians, then you just may have heard of the Dead C. Two decades into the game, the band has not swerved from their distinctive brand of tangled, noisy improvisational rock. To that end, Patience delivers no surprises, no attention-grabbing gestures towards a wider audience, just a steady devotion to raw, monolithic sound.
The Dead C have, at least to my knowledge, never been about quick thrills.In that regard, any of their albums could be titled Patience for the heavy, slow motion dynamics the band specializes in. Two lengthy tracks, each about a quarter hour long, comprise the bulk of the record, with two short tracks in between. The opener, "Empire," is built around conventional, doom-metal style groove provided by drummer Robbie Yeats.Squalls of feedback rise and fall, howling over the beat, the variety of pitches tones resembling synthesizers as much as guitars and amps.
It’s not until the last half of Patience that the band flirts with the coarse formlessness for which they are infamous. "South" begins sparsely, with slow, muffled guitar strumming buried in high pitched amplifier hum. Shards of loopy feedback crop up, followed by metallic, detuned guitar riffing. Just as the song is about crest in a spasming crescendo, Yeats joins in with a standard, punk-rock beat, except that his kit sounds stifled and distant, unable to overcome the noise around it.
It may be asked why a band like the Dead C would continue plugging away in near obscurity for decades.Peer respect and cultish fans help, but these things alone aren’t enough sustain a band, and we may as well just forget about album sales entirely. The only cogent answer seems to be that the band has little ambition but to make the kind of music that appeals to the mainstream. Throughout all the changes in taste that have come in the last two decades, their dedication to improvised rock remains almost singular. Patience indeed.
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After over two years of recordings, swapping files and reworking each others' material, this collaboration between Steven Stapleton and Larsen has been long awaited. Regrettably, the end result is not uniformly great as the album has a number of pieces which do not reflect the best capabilities of either party. Yet, all is not lost as there is gold here amongst the debris. Some brilliant sounds are sandwiched between other less exhilarating pieces.
 
Featuring Eberhard Kranemann (a.k.a. Fritz Müller), "Tickety Boo" is a terrific slice of krauty, Nursey psychedelia. There are shades of Stapleton’s collaborations with Stereolab running through the piece but it also strikingly resembles some of the more upbeat material that ended up on Coil's posthumous albums, particularly "Algerian Basses" and "Princess Margaret's Man In The D'jamalfna" from The New Backwards. It is hard to hear exactly what Kranemann is contributing to the piece (though he is credited with a band’s worth of instrumentation) but his impact is significant; this is far removed from Stapleton’s recent output. The druggy, exotic beats begin to break down and melt into each other as the music takes on a new character halfway through the piece. Slide guitar and lysergic vocals reinforce the tyranny of the beat even as strange metallic percussion tries to chip away at the rhythms.
The second piece continues where "Tickety Boo" leaves off but the lights are dimmed as Nurse With Wound and Larsen begin their approach. "Easin' By" begins well, a bell-like drone slowly developing into a landscape of vibrations as lighter drones and distant chimes begin to add color and life to the music. The drone becomes thicker and foggier, a pink haze like a smog made from marshmallow vapors. Distant trumpets are barely audible, maybe someone is playing a Miles Davis record in the next apartment or maybe it is part of the act but in any case it adds to the dreamy effect.
Unfortunately, once "Easin' By" ends, the album stumbles and never fully regains its stride. "Rock, Baby, Rock" and "Bug Vaudeville" has roughly the same material being treated by Stapleton and Larsen respectively. Neither version is particularly inspiring; the presence of both on the same release seems like a redundant gesture to me. Both Stapleton and Larsen assemble their pieces along similar lines and in each case there is not a lot to write home about; an inert bass line and meandering, processed guitar melody start in the middle of nowhere and do not get far. Neither "Rock, Baby, Rock" nor "Bug Vaudeville" are bad per se and granted they are a move away from the norm for Nurse With Wound but they sound too much like some of Larsen's weaker moments to be even something novel.
In fairness to Larsen, there are a couple of their pieces (i.e. the ones where they have done the most shaping of the material) which they can be proud of. "Call Me, Tell Me" is up there with my favorite works by Larsen, recalling the finer moments of SeieS or Abeceda. Their distinctive repetition and pretty melodies snowball into an avalanche of driving noise. Marco Schiavo’s drumming provides a focal point for the music; his fluid, precise and beautifully phrased percussion acting like a frame for the other members to hang their contributions on.
Considering A Selection of Errors has been in the pipeline for so long, I have a feeling that this cake is over-baked. When it is good, it is stellar but the presence of what seems like filler material detracts from the album as a whole. Reduced to an EP this would have been awesome but, as it stands, it lacks enough focus to make it a classic.
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Originally a series of 7" split singles released on the Trensmat label, this compilation collects all the original releases on one CD and also includes a few covers not previously released as part of the series. Featuring a fantastic selection of bands (this is not a collection of also-ran bands doing a crappy tribute album) which for me are mainly an improvement on the originals. Hawkwind are one of those bands whose influence I appreciate more than their original recordings and to hear some bands I truly love interpreting their music has given me a new found enthusiasm for Hawkwind themselves.
 
Mugstar have been the driving force behind the album and they are represented twice, once with "Born to Go" (originally on the split with Mudhoney) and again with the previously unreleased "Paradox" from my favorite Hawkwind album Hall of the Mountain Grill. They take a fairly straight reading of the music but play like there is no tomorrow (and there just might not be if they play any harder). Elsewhere Moon Duo and White Hills put more idiosyncratic spins on the songs; the former taking a minimal electronic approach and the latter start from a place that closely resembles Hawkwind but push through the invisible boundaries into something more resembling Japanese psych like Les Rallizes Denudes or Up-Tight.
Bardo Pond’s interpretation of "Lord of Light" from Doremi Fasol Latido combines Hawkwind's interstellar drive with Bardo Pond's own smoked aesthetics; the cosmic synth sounds traditionally associated with Hawkwind marrying perfectly with the chunky guitars and Isobel Sollenberger's flute. Mudhoney do an equally good job of putting their own spin on Hawkwind's music. Their version of "Urban Guerilla" could have come from Superfuzz Bigmuff; they completely deconstruct Hawkwind’s space mystic vibes and transpose the song to the American northwest. This is plaid shirts and weed rather than glitter and LSD.
Not all the songs are as successful as the ones mentioned above, Magoo's cover of "Space is Deep" is a bit flat in comparison to the blissed out sounds that can be heard throughout the rest of In Search of Hawkwind. It sounds like they are trying too hard to capture Hawkwind’s superficial sound without fully engaging in the spirit of the music. The same cannot be said for Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno who have made a career out of continuing where Hawkwind left off. Their take on "Brainstorm" lives up to the song’s title; the music rages through my mind like a supernova.
I tend to be more critical of tribute compilations than any other form of release. Along with bad split singles, bad tribute albums bring out the worst in second tier artists and the worst in me. However, In Search of Hawkwind is an almost perfect example of a tribute album. The bands included all exemplify the influence of the original artist and most of the pieces chosen are executed with love, care and tonnes of enthusiasm.
samples:
- Bardo Pond, "Lord of Light"
- Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno, "Brainstorm"
- Moon Duo, "Hurry On Sundown
 
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