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2. Linden Avenue Stomp (J. Rose, G. Jones)
3. The Longer You Wait (M. Haggard)
D. Charles Speer & the Helix came together through the common hearing of a certain inflection. Born from the heart and mind of David Charles Shuford, strains of glassine cruelty, broken glasses and ruptured knees mixed with memories of Chet Atkins lullabies and ZZ Top vids to generate a songcraft steeped in tradition but themed for the burned. An early century compulsion to stalk the David Freeman mail order record lists led to a group of home recordings in which D. Charles Speer emerged. A tribute to the ever loving and giving Louise Speer, here the shadows of history are both enjoyed for their shade and cursed for their reach. A band coalesced to perform the songs live, first manned by Robert Gregory on drums and then populated by more old friends. Setting stages alight since 2006, D. Charles Speer & the Helix are a force to be reckoned with where ever the nightlife reigns supreme. All having followed a coursing path chasing quicksilver forms, each member of the Helix feels the weight of the sky well. Years of soaking in the spirit of improvisation have come to rest in a deep grooved vessel bourne by 12 legs. A kind of reflecting chamber wherein the sonic heritage of Georgia, California, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Piraeus are blended into a fine barrel for the discerning boozer. Two albums were tracked at Jason Meagher's nascent Black Dirt Studios: After Hours and the most recent LP Distillation, released on Three Lobed Recordings in November 2009. Since this alchemical roots operation occurs in New York, the listener realizes quickly the band's edge remains sharp: the resonating geographic ghosts feel far from distant - instead their presence is made palpable. San Francisco and Bakersfield are collocated and felt close. One can imagine a scene wherein Moby Grape gets smashed against the windshield, but the Wipers make sure that Gary Stewart can find his way to San-Hozay; of course this is a musical sequence that should be seen to be experienced fully. The Speer gang feel right at home on the road and love to get heels kicking in clubs, house parties, bars, basements and VFW halls across the land
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This Chapel Hill five piece is at least superficially crafting big, noisy rock songs, with more than a passing nod to classic grunge, but with an approach that is closer in spirit to the free jazz configurations of Ornette Coleman than any traditional metal group. With hard panned dual drums, and bass and guitar segregated to left and right channels, respectively, the result is a highly structured racket that runs the gamut of rapid fire hardcore to slow, lugubrious sludge.
 
In many ways this is a "supergroup" of the Chapel Hill avant rock scene, with the band’s five members being involved in a multitude of other projects (Horseback, The Hem of His Garment, Mount Moriah, and a ton of others), but the guys gel together as a single unit here.The opener "You Want to Live, But We Will Die Free" initially starts with noisy guitar and bass drone, as drummers Jenks Miller (right channel) and Dave Cantwell (left channel) duel it out before all comes together in a surge of noise and drum freakouts, the intensity ebbing and flowing for the first third of the piece.Afterward, it launches into an adrenaline soaked propulsive take on krautrock, with gasped vocals bringing a bit of hardcore punk to the proceedings.The track eventually slows down and frays apart into pulses of noise and big, pummeling drums.
The "short" track (the only one less than ten minutes long), "For the Glory of Man" begins tentatively with amp hum and a bit of rhythmic interplay before quickly getting up to speed, a mostly straight-forward bit of bass driven, grunge tinted rock.Unsurprisingly a dense stormcloud of sound, it lurches towards the rapid pace of hardcore in its closing moments."And Remember the Good Times" is far less content to maintain a consistent style throughout its 15-plus minute duration:initially opening with a hard rock sound and vocals that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a dive bar somewhere, the track soon goes into a bit of funk, dissonant noise, and heavy metal pounding before finally settling in as painfully slow sludge rock that gets more and more drawn out as the track goes on.
The rhythmic conflict that opens "Workin' for Nothin'" initially encroaches on "numetal" territory without ever becoming as awful as that genre is before settling in on a more psychedelic rock sound.Between that and the mantra-like vocals, it starts to take on the spacey repetition of stuff from the Freek label from the 1990s, which eventually opens up and allows guitar squeal and noisier bits to take the lead.Closer "Using Not the Tools of our Trade" is propelled by monolithic bass leads, while the guitar is abused for textural purposes, all the while dual mechanized drumming pounds away.Eventually the noise and distortion is stripped away, going to a cyclic structure that’s rather conventional before being stretched out again to heavy and painfully slow noise that, in its dying moments, slams into grindcore blast beats and jazzy bass, ending the disc with an adrenaline rush.
Unabashedly happy to "rock", In the Year of the Pig does so with a more diverse approach than most, mixing the fluid structures of free jazz with hardcore, rock, and metal flourishes in a unique way, never feeling disparate or an exercise in forced genre hopping.Instead, it is complex, but simultaneously raw, coating the complexity of jazz in the raw power and sweat of pounding rock, to wonderful ends.
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Ashley Hutchings and John Kirkpatrick caused a rumpus of sorts with Morris On, an audacious electric folk treatment of Morris dancing tunes. Next they created this treasure, a project spanning about seven centuries of dance music in England. They broadened the folk-rock palate by focusing more on traditional instruments such as crumhorn, spinet and viol, and linked musical pieces with historically relevant spoken word passages read by actors such as Sarah Badel, Michael Horden and Ian Ogilvy.
 
If memory serves, the popular musical landscape of 1972 England was a peculiarly charming mix of post-psychedelic pop, easy listening, progressive rock, white-boy blues, hippy remnants and fledgling-glam rock. Enter Ashley Hutchings to do the most unfashionable thing imaginable: an aggressive but charming folk-rock album of Morris Dancing tunes. That album, Morris On, had a rip-up-and-reassemble aesthetic vision of Englishness which (with hindsight) was as ludicrous and revolutionary as UK punk rock. At any rate, the natives were revolting; if only temporarily and not quite into style. Several tracks, such as "Staines Morris" (featuring Shirley Collins) have a hard edge and no-nonsense feel which lets them shine as music, away from the dance. Equally, "Cookoo's Nest" is a bawdy ode to the vagina, if not quite a monologue. Both pieces show the razor sharp crunch of Richard Thompson's guitar and the matching economy of Dave Mattacks's drums.
The Compleat Dancing Master was released the following year and is a more varied affair, with a wider musical scope and esteemed actors reading associated texts from such writers as Chaucer, Dickens, Hogarth and Shakespeare. Taking its title from books of dances collected and compiled by John Playford, the atmospheres on the album are sometimes akin to Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract although not as up-itself or as nakedly pretentious. Hutchings, a cofounder of Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band, was originally seduced by the Morris after hearing William Kimber the concertina player of the Headington Quarry Morris. For The Compleat Dancing Master he and Kirkpatrick reflect such inspiration by augmenting the hard folk-rock sound even further with the help of country dance playing experts such as Bert Cleaver, Dave Kettlewell, and Alan Ward. Indeed, some tracks feature no discernable rock influence at all. I like the way that the spoken pieces set up the music which follows. Michael Horden's reading (as Dickens from Sketches by Boz) leads into two polkas "Bonny Breastknot/Double Lead Through". Bernard Hepton's spittle-flinging rant against dance (as the Puritan William Prynne from Histriomastrix) precedes the 17th century tune "Nonesuch/Cuckold's All Awry". Gary Watson (as Geoffrey Chaucer reading from The Romaunt of the Rose) speaks in an old tongue as appealing as the Stanley Unwin brand of gobbledygook most often heard on Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake.
According to Lois Ellfeldt, Morris dance probably has a Moorish origin and is similar to some of the Basque dances; dancers take turns before returning to their position in either a square, circle, or longways set. Exact dates or origin are open to dispute and there are also conflicting reports (at least from the UK) as to the health or otherwise of the Morris. Some suggest that young people aren't taking up the practice and thus obsolescence beckons. Paul Reece, chairman of the Advisory Council of the Morris Ring, has said: "There is still time for new blood to get ready for the Spring fertility offensive". Certainly the pastime grew in the 1970s and if the participation of women is encouraged perhaps extinction can be avoided. For me, as long as the Abbot's Bromley Horn dance persists, all will be well, and I am confident it will be. In what other forms the Morris dance may survive is open to question. In a relatively new twist, groups distinct from the traditional Thomas Hardyesque figures have emerged, gathering in rural solitude to bring their own hue to the Morris. With blackened faces and clothing more akin to Goths at a Cure concert, these groups are accentuating the Pagan fertility aspects (not just holding sticks but making quasi-lewd motions with them) and reflecting a post-industrial urban sensibility. Rather disturbingly they are ditching the old tunes and writing their own minor key compositions. Reports suggest that these Pagans have day jobs in offices, in the probation service and pharmacies and that they heartily reject the Christian, Imperialist, xenophobic notions of England in favor of a more ancient, shamanistic version. It may be cynical to wonder if they aren't actually inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld. No word yet if their Christmas trees are black.
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This split single presents two very different takes on art damaged rhythm music. While both cuts are rooted in popular dance idioms (Dub, Afro-Beat, Drum & Bass), Urick and Willet seem more interested in demolishing genre conventions than cultivating them. They share a penchant for wobbly, amorphous productions that incite more head-scratching than ass-shaking.
 
If names were all that counted, "All Night Moisturizer" would stand with my favorite tracks of last year.At once banal and suggestive, the title would be perfect for some slick piece of electro-funk. As it is, Willet’s track is more belligerent than seductive. He piles up skittering break-beats over piercing, needle-like bursts of sound. Superficially, the rhythm programming recalls Squarepusher or Aphex Twin’s more aggressive moments, but Willet never assembles his electronics into anything as clinically precise.
The flip side, "Si Na Min," emits a more laid-back vibe, but in a way that emphasizes its rhythm instead of blunting it. Urick lays down a thick cloud of audio haze where muffled voices shout and grunt in some kind slow-motion abandon. The track is in fact a remix of a song by the West African group El Rego et Ses Commandos, from the excellent compilation African Scream Club. Eventually, a portion of the original groove emerges, built from interlocking horn and drum samples that undulate beneath a heavy bed of metallic reverb.
Both Urick and Willet make fresh noise from established genres, but the results are more tantalizing than satisfying. Both cuts work towards a kind of rhythmic crescendo, but within the short format of the single, there isn’t enough time for them to build tension. The two seem to be reaching for some dissociative groove where the mind moves as much as the body. For that, they need a larger canvas.
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Pianist Espen Eriksen’s debut album with his trio stands out but not in a good way. The insipid compositions are more at home in the background of an expensive restaurant or bar rather than on my stereo. Monotonous and emotionally detached, this collection of instrumental jazz fades into the background far too easily. The term "audio wallpaper" gets thrown about far too freely but You Had Me At Goodbye certainly deserves this classification.
 
Rune Grammofon have always been at the forefront of Norwegian jazz; bands like Shining, Supersilent and Elephant9 all pushing the boundaries and expectations of jazz further and further afield. Therefore, hearing the piano bar style jazz of the Espen Eriksen Trio was a shock to me. Unlike the shock of the new that accompanied my first time hearing Supersilent, this is a shock of the banal. The main problem with You Had Me At Goodbye is not that the music is not pushing any boundaries but that it fails to connect with me on any level.
Credit where it is due, the trio all play perfectly well. The clinical execution of their music is textbook technical proficiency but ultimately sterile. From the opening notes of "Anthem," I feared that there had been a pressing error and some muzak had been mistakenly labeled as the latest Rune Grammofon release. However, the hotel lobby piano melodies that Eriksen employs are meant to be there. The accompanying drums and bass are equally pretty but shallow, the music ending up beige in comparison to the rich hues of traditional and contemporary jazz. "In the Woods" brings to mind the works of Ludovico Einaudi but feels bland in comparison.
There are some moments where the trio do get some life into them; "Masaka Tsara" sees them let loose a little but they never go anywhere thrilling. "On the Jar" has a nice beat to it and it comes the closest out of all the pieces here to being warm and inviting. Eriksen’s piano motifs are lifted on some very nice bass playing, all the while Andreas Bye creates a gentle but engaging patter on the drums. However, the piece does slip into cliché too often and I wonder if "On the Jar" would stand out as one of the better pieces on a stronger album.
I think it says it all when my mother, whose usual tastes run to Michael Bublé and his ilk, commented at how much she liked this album. You Had Me At Goodbye is inoffensive and unexciting. In a restaurant, I would barely notice its presence as it formed part of the background noise. Sitting here and giving it all my attention, I cannot help but feel that this album has arrived through the wrong letterbox.
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This album has been sitting on a shelf for 15 years but it sounds as vital today as it would have had it seen the light of day back then. Featuring the kind of rhythm section that can be charted on the Richter scale and pose the danger of serious structural damage, this is one of the best "lost" albums to surface in recent years.
 
Fuckface’s massive sound was down to their penchant for drummers. A quick glance at the list of players on this album makes them look like Spinal Tap but all these percussionists were playing at the same time. The primordial power of the beats was reinforced by the group’s refusal to use snare drums or cymbals; the only concession to something remotely like cymbals was Karl Paloucek’s use of junk metal which was always more indebted to Einstürzende Neubauten than to any drummer with a standard kit. "L.A. Song" barrels out of the speakers and steamrolls over the listener, the thumping percussion driving some glorious buzzsaw guitars and Dave Szolwinski’s vocals.
The group continue their assault across the album with tracks like "Thorn" and "Snitch" pummeling us senseless. "White of the Eye" is a swampy mess of growling guitar work which implodes into a fantastic extended quote of The Stooges’ "T.V. Eye;" all the menace of The Stooges amplified and exaggerated through Fuckface’s lens. "Black House" sees Fuckface slow down considerably as they generate a massive, defiant noise: "It’s my house and you can’t make me go!"
The album finishes with a recording of a riot that occurred during a Black Sabbath show in Milwaukee in 1980. The disturbing shift from audible annoyance and discontent to outright violence is captured with impressive quality. I know this has been long available as a novelty bootleg but it is unclear whether any member of the band played a part in recording it or whether they were there (Fuckface were based in Milwaukee, after all). In any case, it acts as a crushing closer to the album; the weight of mob violence going hand in hand with Fuckface’s pounding music.
As well as the original album, this CD also contains a bunch of bonus tracks including both sides of their Thorn 7" (although no other previously released material is included). The bonus tracks maintain the standard set by the main album and apart from the case of "Buffalo Bill" which surpasses everything else on this album. A tribute to the serial killer of the same name in Silence of the Lambs, co-opts one the film's best lines as the chorus: "It puts the lotion on its body, it will eat its food or it will get the hose!"
It is a shame it has taken it so long to make it out of storage and into my ears.
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Tucked within the psychedelic and synthetic lo-fi of Shawn Reed's Night People label is an album that is as much an anomaly to the label as it is a sibling to it in its reimagining of classic sounds. Broken Water, a trio from Olympia, Washington, tap into their region's roots to dig up the blue collar crunch of a past as quickly forgotten as it was widely embraced. Whet touches every stepping stone of grunge without falling into the tar pit of predictability, not only proving rock and roll is still a powerful genre but that it can be as weird and untamed as the bands that call Night People home.
Whet is an unapologetic blast from grunge's past. The album spills over with the distorted crunch once recognized as the Northwest's calling card. Yet nothing created by Broken Water seems disingenuous, rather Whet is perhaps the most authentic artifact of an era gone by from a new generation that couldn't give a damn about what once stood where grunge's tombstone now casts its shadow. The touchstones of Broken Water are immediate and the wave of nostalgia that initially greets the ears is soon surrendered with the band's own spin on the blue collar music of the '80s and early '90s.
Album opener "Say What's On Your Mind" takes a cue from Northwestern neighbor, Phil Elverum. Combining the black wooden push and pull with a lazy Dinosaur Jr. melody, the track is both catchy and ferocious. That old crick in your neck from your headbanging days is bound to ache after the song has run its course. The mix of unhinged urgency and stoner cool that permeates "Say What's On Your Mind" seeps into the roots of Whet as it crawls deeper into the forests and mountains of the Northwest. "Dead Light" is a sleepy bong hit after a night of second shift shit and your last call bourbon has left you with little energy for anything else but slumber.
The comfortable juxtaposition of mellow vibes with loud guitars and pounding drums is one that is as old as time but Broken Water's take is surprisingly fresh. With the spotlight returning to the Northwest in the face of reunions and rediscoveries, Broken Water proves able to carve their own niche without relying on a scene revival. Rather, the trio from Olympia seems poised to take the scraps of old and build a style anew—away from hot lights, designer suits, and the A&R buffet.
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Beginnings are sacred, even for punk rockers. Whatever path they may follow later, musicians carry their formative experiences with them like a talisman. The Endtables carry that kind of sacrosanct aura. Their influence trumps any concern about style, recognition, or even competence. For a few freaks in Louisville, Kentucky circa 1979, they were the most important band on earth.
 
Prior to the omnipresence of digital media, the phrase "Do it Yourself" was often a bitter necessity. After all, who was going to write an anthem about circumcision but the Endtables themselves? They were Kentucky’s own salvo against the creeping provincialism of their era. Though most of their lyrics deal the workaday punk-rock themes of that time (greed, militarism, conformity, et cetera) lines like, "his penis is a grossity/it hangs to the floor/streachy and formless, but it’s clean" still have bite to them. It isn’t surprising that the band is discussed thirty years on; they still come off as genuinely unhinged, even now, in an age when taboo-breaking has become cliché.
For all their crude energy, the Endtables could never form musical personality distinctive from their peers. The majority of the tracks keep to a trebly blues-influenced sound common among Midwest punk bands of that era.You can hear premonitions in the snarl of Ron Ashton’s guitar work for the Stooges and singer Steve Rigot’s bleating voice can sound very similar to David Thompson’s singing in Pere Ubu and Rocket from the Tombs. Occasionally, the band will break into something a little less uncommon, such as the heavy riffing in the intro of "Process of Elimination (live)", but the lack of musical idiosyncrasy confirms that the they were of their time, not ahead of it.
Yet retrospective criticism never does full justice to a band like the Endtables. In their era, pop had become desiccated from arena tours and pre-programmed radio playlists. It took hundreds of bands in dozens of cities to convince a generation that live, self-produced music was winning proposition. While bands such as the Ramones and Black Flag continually gather praise for reviving street-level enthusiasm for rock and roll, it was the lower profile bands that kept regional music alive.During their short existence, the Endtables established a scene in Louisville that would eventually produce artists such as Squirrel Bait, Slint, King-Kong and Palace Music. While they never achieved the same artistic variety or creative influence of those groups, precedence alone should assure the Endtables some kind modest legacy.
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Galaktika is an album full of welcome surprises. A miasmic mish-mash of otherworldly electronica it ranges free form through a whole gamut of seductive sound. A narrative arc can be traced through the way the songs unfold sequentially while still brimming with unpredictable squelches, pitter-patter, and bizarre vapor trails. Richly layered and tightly woven it never feels too dense, but is rather evocative of the ever changing astral imagery of a serialized dream, each sound expertly placed to tantalizing effect.
 
Lingering throughout the album are the ghostly voices of disembodied monks who continue to haunt the living. I get the feeling there is something sinister about them, or maybe just insane, as if they had lived on an isolated space station instead of in an earthly cloister. The common thread stitching the album together is that of space, its vastness, and the incredible distances separating the orbiting worlds, stars, clouds, and man made junk floating in the blackness. While by no means a new theme in electronic music, it is one that continues to be rewarding as qualified sound artists like Jake Dangers (with Music for Planetarium), and Nurse With Wound (on Space Music) continue to mine the territory. Now Moscow-based Alexey Devyanin, the man behind Gultskra Artikler, adds his contribution to the fold and he more than holds his own.
Sometimes it is hard to distinguish where one song lets up and another starts as they flow, for the most part, seamlessly into each other. The title track opens the album on an esoteric note with the deconstructed chants, both somnolent and abstract, that recur throughout. "Nanorobot" begins with timpani rumbles and the clinking shakes of a shamanic rattle before primitive wind instruments sidle their way in. I perceive the nanorobots as molecular glitches inside the keyboards, like they are eating at the circuitry, in the process of breaking them down. "Saturn" is a brilliant end to the first side. An intricate and melodious pulse drives through what has become a soup of ectoplasmic speaker sludge and crackling electricity.
The second side mixes things up even further as metallic electro-acoustic scrapings are merged with warm synthesizer washes, as on "Sputnik." Further precious moments are offered on "Asteroid" where a more symphonic approach is taken with a focus on the achingly lush synth strings that eventually fade out under the influence of gated tremolo. "Niti" continues with harmonic bell tolls softly reverberating, unmoored and set adrift. The strength of these two songs is in their emotional resonance, which makes for a nice touch amidst the otherwise recondite manifestations on this album. "Asteroid" and "Niti" also remind me of the power electronic music can have for touching the soul.
Great care has been shown in the creation of Galaktika. As a listener I am happy to travel with Devyanin for he is a courageous explorer. This release is presented in two forms, as a limited run of colored vinyl (mine is rubber duck yellow), and as an MP3 download, showcasing what I think are two ideal scenarios for listening. One is at home in the evening with the lights darkened and the hi-fi ready to go as I close my eyes and get comfortable for a bit of armchair voyaging. The other is while lying in bed with my headphones connected to a portable player for a completely immersive session. Either way there is one thing I can be sure of before take off: Gultskra Artikler has prepared an artful itinerary.
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Pat Maherr, the man behind this project, has assembled a large, intensely atmospheric collage exclusively from old recordings of Richard Wagner’s works. Weighed down with history, it is sometimes hard to separate Wagner’s music from the man and the events which occurred after him to which he has become linked (the rise of anti-Semitism, in case it needed spelling out). Maherr has reclaimed and reduced Wagner’s music into its barest form, only the faintest whisper of recognition remains. Yet, like the composer’s original works, this album seems to go on for an eternity.
TypePlays Wagner sounds ancient. It sounds far older than even the legends that Wagner based his original works on. The grainy old vinyl recordings obtained by Maherr have been processed and re-recorded to tape. The cassette master was then used to create this CD, giving a ghostly hiss and gently adding a layer of saturated to distortion to the music. The end result is a haunting and dismal sound collage that at times brings to mind the drones and soundscapes that pepper David Lynch’s soundtracks between the ersatz 50s rock and roll and jazz.
While I like the concept and I like the general aesthetic of the musical outcome, an entire album of processed Wagner recordings is too much. Unlike other found sound artists like Philip Jeck, Maherr’s approach does not add much to the sounds he has co-opted beyond what sounds like some time stretching and reverb. Equally, the sounds he has amassed and mutated end up becoming drab audio wallpaper or a game of "spot the composition." I am not meaning to sound so dismissive but listening to this in one go is harder than an opera novice sitting through a complete cycle of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. I have found that dipping in and out of Plays Wagner is much more rewarding, defeating the ear fatigue I was getting from listening to the full album.
A more judicious edit of this album might have been preferable but overall Plays Wagner is not a bad album. Yet I cannot help it would have made a much better EP.
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