Broken Face

2010-08-08T03:06:00.001-07:00

When I Am Dead

When I am dead, my dearest
Sing no sad songs for me
Plant thou no roses at my head
Nor shady cypress tree
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet
And if thou wilt, remember
And if thou wilt, forget

I shall not see the shadows
I shall not feel the rain
I shall not hear the nightinggale
Sing on as if in pain
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set
Haply I may remember
And haply may forget

- Christina Rossetti

Our thoughts are with you Tony. --- R.I.P Tony Dale.

2009-12-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Jack Rose R.I.P.

The news about the death of Jack Rose is still so surreal to me that I am not really sure what to write about all this. We will miss a remarkable musician but most of all a warm and caring friend. Rest in piece, Jack.

Here's a text I used in an intro to a Jack Rose interview back in 2003.

Ever since I had that frightening yet beautiful dream, seemingly generated from listening to Pelt’s Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky a few times too many my heart seems to belong to whatever sonic territory this American east coast trio chooses to tread. I’ve always felt that they somehow are capable of displaying things on the other side, haunting things that we’re too busy to see and maybe are too afraid to confront. I am in lifelong debt to Mike Gangloff, Patrick Best and Jack Rose for providing that view, and as if all this wasn’t enough Rose has together with a handful of other contemporary folk guitarists also brought back my faith in modern, skeletal guitar beauty along the lines of the legendary Takoma Records. But although his solo music indeed does recall Fahey and Basho in terms of crystal clear acoustic guitar genius and that he often revisits the chord progressions of delta blues and Appalachian folk, his expression is still very much one of a kind. The first widely available (I realize that I use that term loosely here) testament of all this was his Red Horse, White Mule LP on Eclipse that includes the music of shadows that stretch and creep across your sun-drenched front porch on a particularly hot summer day. Listen carefully and you’ll see how the album flows and ebbs in terms of mood and intensity, and before you know it you’ll find the front yard all covered in brilliantly colored fallen leaves in all shades of red, yellow and orange. Maybe I am just dreaming things up but as the album is over I can actually see footsteps in a light blanket of snow on the ground right in front of me. I guess what I am trying to say is that this completely gorgeous acoustic guitar performance recalls a walk through the cycle of the seasons. But although the whole thing strikes me as very visual I have a feeling that Rose is not really trying to paint an aural image reminiscent of a particular landscape, rather trying to express his inner feelings, foggy daydreams and wistful memories. The results reverberate with a kind of somber, distant contemplation that initially might strike you as dark and brooding but on repeated listens will reveal an unrivalled kind of beauty and calm. And the follow-up album Opium Musick on the very same Arizona label is just as remarkable with its brilliantly organic tone. It’s a heartfelt voyage that Jack Rose takes us on, and we’re honored to have a chance to talk to him...

2009-10-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #52

Mark Nelson, founding member of Labradford and general magic wizard when it comes to spacious and airily ambient electronica, is the man behind the Pan American wheels. Nelson binds together electronic leanings and organic washes with shoegazer minimalism and dub influences. The latter component is not quite as visible on White Bird Release (Kranky) as on some of his previous outings which make the whole thing even more graceful and soothing. It’s not the most original thing in the world but if you like your drones warm and rounded you can’t really go wrong.

More on the same label comes from Greg Davis who approaches the drone formula from a somewhat different perspective on his Mutually Arising release. We get two extended pieces constructed from synthesizers, effects pedals and computers that are all about sustained and subtle sound exploration. The sound moves glacially but over the course of the 27 minutes long opener “Cosmic Mudra” the patient listener can witness how it transforms from a sound that is barely there to a minimalist roar. Watching the static sound swell is a gorgeous experience and leaves us at the ideal starting point for “Bliss” which sounds quite a bit like its title with warm, floating drones seeping out of the speakers. Increase the volume folks!

I’ve been meaning to write a few words about some Bezoar Formations releases for quite some time now, but for some reason I haven’t come around to actually do anything about it until now. This San Francisco-based label seems pretty flawless if you ask me and Radiant Husk’s Several Totem is as good starting point as any with its quietly buzzing sax/tapes/keyboards swirl. Slowly enveloping tones that sound like a hill of mist-clad pines that hum in the wind makes this all too limited CD-R mysterious and very worthwhile.

Anemone Lodge’s self-titled disc on Bezoar is a chance meeting between Broken Face favorites Number None (Chris Miller and Jeremy Bushnell), The Opera Glove Sinks in the Sea (Gwyneth Merner) and the aforementioned Radiant Husk (Matthew Erickson).The hand-stamped packaging is worth the price of admission of alone and the sound is by no means less exciting. Dark, desolate warehouse drones float like waves across the ocean, meaning this is as natural as the cycle of days and seasons yet somewhat industrial in its droney approach.

Swedish Jonas Rosen’s Duo Senza Testa continues the droney approach of this column with underwater ceremonies that sound like Eyvind Kang and Folke Rabe dipping their toes in Tangerine Dream-tasting waters. At its very finest Fabula (Kalligrammofon) is music for the beginning or end of a world, and no matter how dramatic that may sound it's difficult to find any more suitable words. Clouds of cello and outstanding piano work color these washes of sound that seem to be stuck in a never-ending loop of atmospheric beauty.

Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia is a project of Italian composer/multi-instrumentalist Salvatore Borrelli, and his Burning with Your Old Joy in the Terminal Sun on Ikuisuus sounds like a chaplet of folk-inspired tones glued together to one stumbling entity, leaning as much towards improvisation as composition. Takoma-inspired guitar plucking blend with corrosive dulcimer drones and bouzouki and although I don’t think all of it is perfect enough is to make it an organic listening experience which takes a sound similar to Scott Tuma’s into the terrain of avant-garde music.

Other Thunders (NO-FI) from The One Ensemble Orchestra (featuring Volcano the Bear member Daniel Padden among others) approaches the folk sound from a completely different angle, displaying a somewhat Eastern European and chamber music-inspired take on the genre. This is a fairly up-beat affair and it offers at least eight different routes to aural enlightenment, and believe me, you can’t beat that at this price. I believe all these tracks are new but it wouldn’t be surprising if some of them were actually based on traditionals, because this music is festive and uplifting in a way that so many psych folk explorers today dare not to be, but that being said there’s sadness here, a sense of real memory alloyed with a deep-reaching transcendentalism that words can’t really capture.

The Stumbling Block is Liverpool-based Zukanican's second album and third release on the always-impressive Pickled Egg imprint. Like its predecessors it blends krautrock moves with jazz grooves and dub influences, but this one might very well be their best one yet. The opening “Scaling Wax” sets the standard with trumpet hovering over pulsating basslines and keyboard sounds aiming for the sun. It’s never fun to mention the same reference points as the press kit does but this disc does actually sound like it’s influenced by Can as much as Soft Machine and Art Ensemble of Chicago so what can you do?

2009-09-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

Some new stuff from Sound & Fury

Scotland’s Gayle Brogan has done a lot for the music underground through her consistently great and long-lasting Boa Melody Bar mail-order. Her own sonic contributions have not been as frequent but her previous involvement in the sadly neglected Electroscope and her own solo project Pefkin has always been top class. That’s very much the case for the nicely packaged and somewhat limited Zugunruhe (Sound & Fury) as well. It might not be as playful as the Pefkin debut but in terms of delivering tasty slices of spiraling guitar experimentalism colored by clouds of solemn, analogue electronics it’s just as high up there. This all results in an abstract avant folk platter packed to the brim with underwater ceremonies and bedroom experimentation vaguely related to the pop format.

More on the same label comes from Australian Felicity Mangan that constructs spatial sound collages that moves discreetly alongside nature-clad field recordings. The work of Loren Chasse and Joel Stern is definitely related to Lumetorm but this EP is slightly more clinical and less organic. The loops and collages gurgles and twist around its own sound but the overall effect is generally so subdued that you don’t really see this disc as out there as it probably is. My personal favorite is “Cuap Winter” which sees heavily processed wind chimes creating a stunning wintry effect. Overall it’s an impressive effort that shows a lot of promise but from time to time I miss a bit of the organic effect I am looking for in this kind of music.

2009-08-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Locrian Drenched Lands (Small Doses/At War With False Noise)

Admittedly I didn’t know much about Chicago’s Locrian when Drenched Lands arrived at my doorstep a few months back, but the darkly seducing sounds swept me away within seconds, or at least minutes. It starts slowly with desolate, grainy guitarscapes that moves into a drone that sounds like tumbleweed on its way to burst into fire at any given second. There’s so much energy packed within every segment that it makes me afraid that the involved won’t be able to stay away from the noise crescendo for much longer. But they stick to the tortured power drone for as long as it’s needed. We get shards of feedback from the wastelands and endless loops that seem to be conjured from dark wells, twisting around its own axis in the infinite darkness before briefly rediscovering the white light.

It’s been long since I heard anyone describing alienation in society with the same unrelenting force, but at the same time displaying so much emotion. Most tracks definitely nods in the noise/drone direction while others maintain the magically resonating damaged soundscapery but at the same time pirouettes into something a whole lot more organic. Sure, this is experimental and primitive in its nature but the feedback squalls are presented in such an atmospheric, melodic and even melancholic way that it despite its heavy origins strikes me as very emotional. Drenched Lands is a true masterpiece that manages to sound surprisingly original and it will for sure be on my top ten list when it’s time to wrap up the year.

2009-08-25T03:46:00.000-07:00

No Fun Fest

No Fun Fest in Stockholm is going to be a blast. Sadly, I’ll only be there fo the saturday shows but what a line-up!

THURSDAY 17 OPENING PARTY

Wolf Eyes

Skull Defekts

No Fun Acid(Carlos Giffoni)

Ectoplasm Girls

FRIDAY 18

Burning Star Core

Emeralds

Sons of God

Dead Machines

Astral Social Club

Regression

Sten Ove Toft

Family Battle Snake

SATURDAY 19

Wolf Eyes

Prurient

CM Von Hausswolf

Dror Feiler

Religious Knives

Oneohtrix Point

NeverSewer Election

Family Underground

SUNDAY 20

Hair Police

Enema Syringe

Hivemind

Testicle Hazard

Putrefier

Dylan Nyoukis

Noveller

Sudio SS

2009-08-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #51

What could be a better way to celebrate the return of the Broken Face blog than to take a deep plunge into the Last Visible Dog pool? It’s kind of strange that this well-established underground label is the same label that I started following about ten years ago, then operating on a very tiny scale out of Lincoln, Nebraska. After some years in Providence Chris Moon has decided to abandon the East Coast in favor of Valley Village, California. Given this bunch of relatively new recordings that’s not going to change the direction of the label in any considerable way as all of the items described below very much lives up to the LVD standard.

First out is a brand new album from Broken Face heroes in the Renderers out of New Zealand. Well, they have actually been staying in for a while Germany but I think Monsters and Miasmas (LVD) was recorded down under. To a high extent this is what we’ve come to expect from the Crook family: jagged squalling jams, hypnotic reverberations and forlorn folk tales that project introspective images of tormented souls onto a decayed canvas of mythical proportions. If you ask me it’s another stunner and it might even be my first choice after the essential Dream of the Sea album. I admit that’s one of my all-time favorite albums and that I am a fan boy when it comes to these fellows but don’t you think it’s about time that they get some of the attention they deserve?

Brian Crook is besides his duties in the Renderers also an integral member of long-lasting The Terminals and although I am a happy owner of the original ’95 recording Little Things I am the first to celebrate a proper reissue. Freaked out guitar buzz morphs with thick lava fields of synth sounds and on top we find driving drums and Stephen Cogle’s unmistakable voice; somehow dramatic, mystical and in your face at the same time. It’s as much punk rock as it is pop but depending on whom you ask I am sure goth and NZ noise are genres as likely to be mentioned. But most of all it’s simply the Terminals. No one has ever sounded quite like this and to tell you the truth I don’t think any band every will.

Saxophonist Valerio Cosi and percussionist Enzo Franchini’s Conference of the Aquarians is another stellar disc, but this one nods distinctively in the direction of free jazz. Well, actually free music is probably a better term as this one effectively avoids the trap of predictable avant-gardism. Cosi sure knows how to blow the horn but the noise is not just there for its own sake, rather as an important element of something a whole lot more grand. After a track of wailing horn noise and frenetic drumming we get careful drum patterns that move across a plane of oceanic horn sections that tell just about everything you need to know about longing and sorrow. Add to all this the addition of sitar, electronics, guitar and you get yourself a record that stands on its own feet without any obvious comparisons.

Kristallivirta is the result of a nearly accidental meeting when Aan met up with Eyes Like Saucers on the latter’s European tour. We have seen these fellows in outer margin bands like Kulkija, Uton and Eyes Like Saucers before, but I don’t think I have heard anything from any of them that have gone this far out of the way of the regular route to create something this otherworldly. Slow-moving clouds of harmonium bliss meanders around repetitive percussion and esoteric effects to stunning meditative effect. This is definitely not for those with short attention spans but fans of Uton and Angus Maclise stuck in some kind of nocturnal haze will probably adore this as much as I do.

2009-07-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #50

It seems like forever since I last wrote here and it probably is. I am not going to try to explain why I am so irregular at this thing these days but rather just dive deep into some stuff people sent me over the last half year or so. First out is an amazing collection of Algerian songs on the 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground LP (Sublime Frequencies). I’ve praised this label at numerous occasions but this just simply has to be one of their best outings. What we have here is classic tribal North African music dressed up with electric guitar, organ drones and shiploads of circling trumpets. The addition of the latter is what really sets these infectious recordings on fire but as often with these things it’s the combination of groove, soul and rawness that makes it so special.

More vinyl of the same striking quality but of an entirely different form comes from the star collaboration of Aaron Moore (of Volcano the Bear, Songs of Norway and much more) and Anla Courtis (Reynols). Brokebox Juke (NO-FI Recordings) is solemn rock experimentalism brought through a filter of ocean deep krautrock drones, urban psychedelia and breezy jazz textures. It’s all much more accessible than I first imagined it to be and I certainly mean that in a positive way. This mail collaboration is one of few that feel natural and actually sounds like the players are listening to one another, a somewhat rare feature these days. Any fans of the two involved or anything on the Last Visible Dog imprint will walk knee-deep in this finely textured sound mud for the rest of the week.

Sweden’s Testbild! is probably a household name to at least the Scandinavian part of the readership but for the rest of you I imagine that their sweeping pop collages still might be unexplored territories. Aquatint (Friendly Noise) is to tell you the truth not my favorite release (perhaps Imagine a House or The Inexplicable Feeling Of September are better entry points) but there’s enough goodies on this concept album of sorts to make it memorable and very much worthwhile to track down. The sound of dripping water, the crashing sea and underwater inspiration in general meet the band’s trademark blend of the ‘60s soft pop sound and the Canterbury scene. It’s a graceful and ambitious album that for some reason has me thinking about Astrid Gil and that can’t ever be a bad thing, right? In addition to the 68 minutes of music, this album also includes a 12-page booklet comprising a short story and a short film by collective member Pontus Lundkvist.

I haven’t really kept track every release of Astral Social Club release in the same way as I used to do with Neil Campbell’s previous bands, but I have never figured out why since everything I hear is stellar in its own way. Octuplex (VHF) is no different as it effectively combines shimmering loop-laced electronic drones, psychedelic ambience, techno pulses and synthetic rain showers in general. More on the same label comes from Æthenor, a combo that shares members with SunnO)), Guapo, and Shora with additional guests like David Tibet. Other people have always seemed more impressed by these cats than myself but I have to admit that Faking Gold & Murder is pretty effective at sounding like you wouldn’t expect, like some kind of alchemical psych prog mix that prefers distant and bumpy roads rather than the most noticeable ones. The tracks do occasionally veer off into wilder terrain; walking a circling road from walls of black riffage and free-wheeling drum kit work to ferocious soundscapes. No matter chosen volume and velocity the presence of Tibet adds a very welcome supernatural color to the four varied tracks. I think I might have converted…

The rumor says that Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden (Camera Obscura) is the final Black Sun Ensemble release. I’ve been a close follower of Jesus Acedo and Eric Johnson over the years and although I have fond memories of pretty much all of their albums none of them has ever struck me as fully developed as this supposedly last one. It’s not necessarily their best material but it’s been thought through, constructed and sequenced with an attention to details I rarely have seen before. There’s not as much of Acedo's hallucinogenic mantras of scorching guitars as on the previous albums but we get songs that are haunting in their own right, songs that with simple means actually go beyond the more out there stuff. The meandering guitar work moves comfortably around Eastern influences and jazz flourishes and the overall effect is entrancing to say the least. I have no clue how Acedo’s fight with his inner deamons is working out these days but if the sound presented here is any indicator I have to say that things are starting to look more optimistic. Whilst shopping from Australia make sure to get your hands on United Bible Studies’ The Jonah, a disc that in some ways mark a new direction for these Irish prog-folk masterminds. I guess that you could say that this is their way of doing the same thing Richard Youngs did with Ilk, his ultimate prog release. Apparently the band set out to do a prog album and although I think such a term is accurate I’d also like to stress that this still very much sounds like the ‘Studies, just of a slightly more...hmm..post-apocalyptic variety. Imagine a mix of Nick Castro, Espers and the band themselves and you’re getting close the essence of this recording.

On the lesser known side of the scale we have Kahl Monticone and his self-released Mistakes and Palpitations. As a matter of fact I don’t really know anything about this fellow besides that he’s from Brisbane, Australia and given my personal sonic connections to that city it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that this is right up my alley. Subtle piano playing and scattered bass walk alongside a meandering river of open-ended guitarscapes to stunning effect. The improvised sound sculptures form a gentle curve towards the delicate sonic equilibrium, but instead of taking the shortest route Monticone takes some time to fully explore the space within his pieces which makes these recordings work like a gravitational pull, glacially taking the listener to the conclusion. The whole thing is mournful and melancholic, but the beauty and elegance that lies within the guitar notes is just as impressive. This is the sound of an endless beach or of the morning sun slowly finding its way into the hidden valley. Very few are able to create this sort of sublime and eternal beauty with so little but if you need companions Loren MazzaCane Connors and Scott Tuma come close.

Another Brisbane musician with a taste for things experimental is film maker and sound artist Joel Stern, but where Monticone favors melodies Stern tends to focus on found sounds and objects in a similarly organic way as for example Loren Chasse. Objects.masks.props (Naturestrip) is to a large extent about forested field recordings playing with another or glued together to counterpoint one another. Stern’s slowly unfolding, yet detailed and somewhat grainy sonic landscapes, offer a sacred space for solitude, wonder and demented beauty which is difficult to pin down in mere words. It all sounds like some nearly lost memory that just hast to be remembered or like being trapped inside a dream that’s all about subtle disorientation. This disc is unquestionably one of the most demanding ones I have heard in a while but the reward for those who manage to let go and follow the vision of this man will be immensely rewarded.

UK's Ashtray Navigations (aka Phil Todd) has been spitting out CD after CD after tape after tape after CD-R after CD-R for years now. Close to 100 would be my guess. The sheer amount of releases makes it pretty difficult to try to point a newcomer in the right direction, but Sugar Head Record, a beautifully packaged dbl CD-R on Deep Water is definitely up there. Billowing clouds of thick chordal bliss, modal guitar-drone bliss, warbling drones, tape trickery, communal trance orientation and buzzing improvisations that range from the dissonantly beautiful to a sort of repetitive aural hypnosis are some of the components of this epic release but mark my words, these words don’t do this one justice. Look it up, folks!

I’ve said some very positive things about Houstonite Susan Alcorn in the past and that is not going to change anytime soon judging by the sounds of her latest offering, Curandera on Majmua Music. Curandera includes seven floating instrumentals for the pedal steel guitar, and as much as it is unusual to see this instrument used in this kind of beautiful and experimental context, it’s filling me with joy. Never underestimate the possibilities of making the sound of any instrument into something unique. In this case we’re served an emotional journey that sees currents of unease crashing into rock formations of endless sorrow and beauty. The technique is flawless, but ultimately it's beside the point. As with a handful of other modern guitarists Alcorn’s a woman who packs emotion into every little single note and even the spaces between seem to be there to evoke a specific feeling and mental state.

2008-11-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #49

When describing Steven R. Smith’s first disc under the Ulaan Khol moniker I wrote that it sounded “like an unholy mix of Fushitsusha, Smith’s solo work and Roy Montgomery at his most abrasive. Candles flicker in the night to help us remember the ones on the other side. Memories slowly fade away but just like the sun they'll keep coming back”. That’s still very much the case on 2 (Soft Abuse) and in this case more of the same is actually a great thing. If you’re a fan of any of the above or Ash Ra Tempel and Agitation Free you can’t really go wrong.

Christina Carter is another familiar name for avid Broken Face readers and although Original Darkness (Kranky) might not be my favorite of her recordings, it’s still rather impressive as it unfolds with an effective balance of loneliness, self doubt and improvisation. Like its predecessors it’s an honest and emotional sonic document that displays a wide-open soul with the aid of plucked guitar notes, clear mournful vocals, tinkling bells and the occasional keyboard. I hope there’s more to come.

Northern Valentine’s The Distance Brings Us Closer uses a familiar ultimate atmospheric minimalist drone aesthetic along the lines of Stars of the Lid to achieve its goal but I can’t say that I mind as long as the results go this far into the eerie depths of the Atlantic Sea. The always-reliable Silber label that put this disc out claims that drone, love, honesty and sound are the key words to describe what they do and I tempted to use the very same words to describe this disc. This husband and wife duo is apparently from Philadelphia but judging by the sound this was probably recorded with the imaginary view of a never-ending horizon or the sea at dawn in mind.

Kemialliset Ystävät certainly loves the drone but they’ve always had a predilection for coloring their soundscapes with just about everything from tribal folk to industrial collages. On Harmaa Laguuni (Sectret Eye) we get a little bit of both and the results are definitely worth a better destiny than ending up on a limited tour only release like this one. Well, I am not really complaining as I was lucky enough to find a copy and I think the label still has a few left so act accordingly. Like you would expect we get mysterious collage-like recordings which tends to lend more towards the electronic side of things and odd vocal samples than free folk (or whatever it’s called these days).

I’ve been meaning to write about Concord Ballet Orchestra Players Flying Together (Froyen Foods/Insect Fields) ever since I first heard it at Terrastock 7 in Louisville earlier this year. But sometimes you just try too hard and end up with nothing. This three-track CD-R is well worth your time though as it dips its toes in heavily psychedelicised folk waters with an impressive ease and also adds a very welcome krautrock flavor to the mix which makes the end results sound as much as Faust as No Neck Blues Band. I am not necessarily saying that this is as great yet but they’re definitely showing a lot of promise. Primitive oscillations, repetitive guitar figures and tribal grooves hover over your head like some airplane out of control. The rumor says that there might be a full-length album in the pipeline on a well-established Swedish underground label and I just hope that they have the ability to spread the gospel about what these guys do, because they truly deserve some more attention.

2008-11-12T01:22:00.000-08:00

Interviews

Just a quick note to let you know that two interviews I recently did with Zelienople and the Goner have been published at the Deep Water site.

2008-10-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #48

Michigan-based husband and wife duo Windy & Carl is back with a new full-length album entitled Songs for the Broken Hearted (Kranky) and it's once again overflowing with mood and atmosphere. Every epic track seems to be the perfect tool to seductively pull you into their world of densely layered guitar and keyboard drones. Underneath a glacial hurricane of zoned out distortion and shimmering, slow motion washes of guitar bliss this duo tears off lovely traces of melodies. In some cases we get stretched-out, barely distinguishable vocals on top but it doesn’t really matter if that’s the case or not as it’s all shockingly full of emotions and small unsettling details.

More on the same label comes from multi-instrumentalist Benoit Pioulard, the musical pseudonym of Thomas Meulch. Temper is his second full-length album and like the predecessor it displays a wide range of musical influences, covering just about everything from electronica and dream pop to drone and folk. The overall feel is the one of gentle acoustics crashing gracefully with rain-soaked beats, ending up sounding like a mixture of Fennesz and Brightblack Morning Light.

Chicago’s Chandeliers (Pickled Egg) takes somewhat related electronic influences in order to draw their aural portrait but overall this is more like an ever-shifting palette of contemporary electronic composition, psychedelicised jazz, krautrock and Eastern-influences melodies. Imagine a mix of Bablicon and Kraftwerk and you’re in the right, unclassifiable ballpark. If it’s pretty difficult to describe what Chandeliers are about it’s downright impossible to grasp the essence of Finnish Raamtulliset Miehet’s Paavalin Kirjeitä Tiitukselle (Louvaja). Ritualistic spoken word in Finnish gives way to hypnotic pulses, cheesy keybords, guitar feedback, toy instrumentation and whatever idea that pops up at that given second. The overall result is messy and from time to time quite interesting.

2008-09-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #47

Donovan Quinn might still be best know for his work in the brilliant Skygreen Leopards combo, but given the way his solo music has developed in recent years that might very well have changed when it’s time to wrap up his career. Donavan Quinn & the 13th Month (Soft Abuse) finds insistent strumming and naked vocals floating right across psychedelic folk waters and like you would expect Quinn is rarely in a hurry, taking his time to suck out of the very core of his elegantly crafted folk songs. File somewhere between Dylan and the most structured side of the Jewelled Antler repertoire and you’re in the right ballpark.

On The Fabric of Folk EP (Static Caravan) we find The Owl Service and Alison O’Donnell deliver just that. This is folk at its very purest thrown into the folk rock kettle, which probably won’t come as a surprise for some of you given O’Donnell’s previous involvement in the legendary Mellow Candle. Two of these five tracks are willful renditions of traditionals and they are both just incredibly infectious in a folk rock kind of way. This a combo with the legs knee deep in ‘70s folk rock but it’s still very much here and not just a revival of what once was. More folk on the same label is presented on St. Just Vigilantes’ Pastor of Oaks, Shepherd of Stones but what we have here is decidedly more galactic and kaleidoscopic, although for most of the time keeping things on a structured note. Repetitive acoustic patterns make their way through drifting and scraped segments creating a folk approach that to a high degree is about damaged enlightenment. Far-reaching meditative ambitions and blurry aural photographs of delicate folk scenes make up this recording that will appeal to fans of The Tower Recordings, Beta Band as well as Grandaddy.

Antony Milton and Anthony Guerra should be familiar names to regular Broken Face readers but if you’re new to all this then I am sure their elegantly packaged debut album, Ash Field under the Paper Wings moniker (PseudoArcana/Black Petal) will win you right over. We're served four epic electric guitarscapes that includes sequences of ominous drones, crystal clear under-water guitar ceremonies and minimalistic sound layers that unfurl one after another before drifting off into feedback-laced trance-states. To describe these primal recordings as being all about minimal resonance would be a grave mistake, as they also tend to glide through squealing guitar episodes and then right into repetitive aural decay. As a matter of fact I’d go as far as to call this an improvised masterpiece that definitely gains from turning up the volume.

2008-08-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #46

The Declining Winter’s Goodbye Minnesota (Rusted Rail) is an ideal companion for entering the fall. As a matter of fact I think I’ve read four or five descriptions of this album and every single one of them pointed out the connection to this season. Anyway, what we have here is the solo musical project of Richard Adams, a co-founder of former Broken Face cover stars, Hood. Hood has always been the uncrowned tzars of finding the well-hidden gates between electronica, indie rock, dub and folk-induced pop minimalism. Goodbye Minnesota sounds quite a bit like mid-period Hood, like a mixture of Rustic Houses and Forlorn Valleys and The Cycle of Days and Seasons, which beyond praise basically means fall reveries draped in moody acoustic drone hypnotism. I am a sucker for this kind of rain-soaked, blurry soundscapes and if you like me still return to those Hood albums on a regular basis you can’t really go wrong with this one.

Robin Saville (one half of Isan) is another fellow with great sonic talent. Saville seems to share stylistic influences with Richard Adams and although Peasgood Nonsuch (Static Caravan) holds similarly strong visual qualities it’s also less organic and more clinical. Let’s just say that this lush, slow-moving disc is more of a winter record than a fall record. There’s some great stuff here though, like the minimal, repetitive melody of “…an Indoor Campsite” which I’d love to hear repeated in my head for the rest of the day. Electronics rustle alongside droning synth and from time to time warm, shimmering guitars comes gliding in to quite stunning effect. Not all of it is great but this one has been played a lot around here recently and that should probably tell you something.

Maine’s Arborea is the husband and wife combo of Shanti and Buck Curran and together they make classic British folk brought through an Appalachian filter. Although this self-titled disc on Fire Museum is all draped in forested history it’s still not too far away from the most traditional branch of the free folk scene that’s been bursting in recent years. It’s a desolate sound journey that sounds like the time of biting frost, cold northern winds, shining white snow and compact darkness. You can sense the weather slowly changing and suddenly it is here, another long winter. But the cold season that we like to refer to as winter is also something completely different. It’s the time of beauty, reflection and pondering.

The Australian Camera Obscura label offers another dive into the psych-folk waters with the release of Rusalnaia, the duo of Sharron Kraus and Gillian Chadwick. There are a lot of things to like about this record, but one in particular is the stunning vocal duets that really take these slightly ritualistic tales to an entirely different level. Not quite as haunting and trance-inducing as Comus and Spires That the Sunset Rise but they’re definitely in the same ballpark and it keeps growing with every listen.

I liked Canadian musician and instrument-builder Ryan Waldron’s Foxglove release under the Talugung moniker a lot but I think Under Humid Light (Harha-askel) might be even better. This is an exciting musical journey that goes from abstract, slightly folk-tinged drones to exotic string plucking and Sun City Girls-like field recordings from all over the globe. It’s a downcast sound affair overflowed with organic beauty that covers a lot of ground and change direction from track to track, but the overall result is simply pure genius. What we need now is some enterprising label to see the potential of this fellow and let him record and build weird instruments for the rest of his (and mine) life.

Bollywood Steel Guitar is another instalment in the always-amazing Sublime Frequencies series of peripheral folk music (if I ever use the term world music to describe this kind of stuff, can someone please remind me to shoot myself?). I guess the title and label pretty much says all you need to know about this but let’s just add that it’s surprisingly groovy and infectious. I am not going to single out any particular tracks, just strongly recommend you to do what you already know, get every single Sublime Frequencies release you can get your hands on before they’re all out of print.

2008-08-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

Pelt Dauphin Elegies (VHF)

I know that writing about Virginia’s Pelt probably means preaching to the already converted, but after seeing these guys’ phenomenal set at Terrastock 7 nothing can ever stop me from spreading the gospel about their work. Their most recent album on the always-impressive VHF imprint is a droning affair that moves across a plane of acoustic unease, devotional noise –improv and spiritual, corrosive resonance. The first two tracks display jarring gongs and drifting tones that give way to screeching strings, but what really sets the standard here is the epic third track, “Cast Out to Deep Waters”. This is 32 minutes of sonic enlightenment at its finest, with dense layers of slowly unfolding, slightly exotic drones that come packed with anxious beauty of isolation and doubt. It’s a spectacular procession of aural bliss that actually gets close to the live experience, and that is definitely saying something. When it’s time to move across the line to the other side I can’t think of a better companion than Pelt.

2008-07-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

Cloudland Canyon Lie in Light (Kranky)

This half-American, half-German duo delivers seven high and lonely krautrock epics draped in beguiling cosmic otherliness. The sound range from atmospheric droning buzz and wavering electronic gravity to relentless kraut grooves and homebrewed psych and although pretty much all of it borders familiar terrain, dating back to Germany in the ‘70s it’s still pretty stellar. Mainly so because of the band’s talent for combining and blending influences to something that in most cases sound like their own thing. There has been a wave of cosmic music recently and if the quality of this disc is any indicator that trend will probably last for a while yet.

2008-07-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

The Doozer Sheet Music (Pickled Egg)

A cpl of weeks back I met this fellow who claimed that he doesn’t like pop music. Given his impeccable taste when it comes to peripheral sounds, that’s kind of hard to believe. I simply assume that it’s more a matter of having different definitions of what can be referred to as pop music. In my world, UK solo act the Doozer is just that, although I am sure some would probably question using such a term. Anyway, what we have here is an introspective pop album bathed in seductive psychedelia, blurry images of the British countryside, unexpected loops and hazy soundscapes. File somewhere along an imaginary axis leading from Syd Barrett to Chris Knox and then on to Pumice.

2008-07-07T03:47:00.000-07:00

United Bible Studies Airs of Sun and Stone (Deep Water)

When Ireland’s finest ensemble played at Terrastock 7 a few weeks back I was stupid enough to not make sure to get to the venue in time for their set. Fortunately I was lucky enough to catch them playing an impromptu set the day after the show so I guess I am not the one to complain. And on top of that we have this disc, from the fine folks at Deep Water, that documents the ‘Studies in the live setting. Musically speaking it’s an intriguing sound journey that flows over the forest folk heavens like a circling bird looking for food. Beguiling musical tapestries constructed from a myriad of instruments unfurls with an almost indescribable sense of grace. For being music with such a strong transportive and visual quality it’s surprisingly complex and subtly chaotic. It’s a bit like a group of musicians having a quiet conversation where everyone is talking at once but where each contributor still gets plenty of room to breathe. As with anything wearing the United Bible Studies name, the beautifully titled Air of Sun and Stone comes highly recommended.

2008-07-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Preston Swirnoff Maariv (Last Visible Dog)

Preston Swirnoff is a San Diego-based electro-acoustic composer that expands the borders of said genre by adding substantial emotive elements to the mix. Where some talented folks tend to get stuck in technicalities and over ambitions we find Swirnoff doing it all right. He conjures hazy hypnotic soundscapes and minimalist pulsings of alien frequencies in a way that at first struck me as quite accessible, but which upon repeated listening revealed fragments of a pretty fucked-up dream. These fragments have been glued together by Swirnoff to something that goes beyond words as well as tedious genre names. Maariv is one of those masterworks that are destined to be forgotten by most and cherished by way too few.

2008-07-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Pumice Quo (Soft Abuse)

Stefan Neville AKA Pumice has produced splintered outsider folk/blues for a long time now and he’s finally starting to get at least some of the attention he deserves. Murky melancholia runs along every shaky guitar strum, displaying a somewhat confused take on every day life. Parts of Quo is surprisingly poppy in a Chris Knox kind of way, but there’s also plenty of space left for fractured noise and organic drones. This is cryptically descending, haunted folk/noise stuck in a lonely zone that’s intimate, beautiful and highly recommended.

2008-06-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Rory Storm The Sun Always Rises on Robot Morning (Cook An Egg)
The Lost Domain The Mystery of… (Cook An Egg)

New Zealand’s Rory Storm is back with a new album and like previous outings I’ve heard it’s very much unlike its predecessors. What we have here is a meeting betwixt catchy slow pop nuggets, Flying Saucer Attack-like walls of feedback drowsiness and pretty harsh NZ noise. It’s a fascinating cross pollination that works amazingly well. If you want to read more about this fellow make sure to check out the new issue of the always excellent Dream Magazine.

More on the same French label comes from the land of kangaroos. This country from down under continues to be a strong provider of things droning and essential. Brisbane’s The Lost Domain uses several different approaches into making varied and innovative musical shapes. These improv shamans take cues from pre-historic blues and brain-frying folk and puts the whole thing under the drone rock microscope. It’s all very dialogic and organic although we find the band focusing on the primitive and somewhat skronking side of their repertoire this time out. Overall an excellent addition to the Lost Domain library.

2008-06-18T02:04:00.000-07:00

Terrastock 7

Tomorrow morning I am off to Louisville, Kentucky for the seventh Terrastock festival. I hope to run into some of you on the other side of the pond…and if you think some of the band descriptions in the festival program suck go ahead and blame me and my partners in crime, Lee Jackson and Kevin Moist.

2008-06-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

Some vinyl action...

I’ve been meaning to write about Robert Martin’s The Long Goodbye LP (Yik Yak) for a long time but for some reason I’ve found it difficult to find words that can do it justice. This is apparently some well-hidden ‘80s recording that first saw the light of the day on some extremely limited CD-R in 2001. This is the first time it reaches out to a wider audience and if you consider yourself a fan of primitive outsider folk somewhere along the Barrett-Ayers-Jandek-Bailey-This Kind of Punishment axis I am sure that you just like me will consider this a lost classic. It’s all murky, skeletal, introspective, joyous and beautifully damaged but most of all it’s music that aims for the heart rather than the brain.

Shadow Music of Thailand is another of those stellar Sublime Frequencies compilations, this time displaying Thai pop influenced by Western music in general but most importantly all kinds of surf music. The suft guitar is all over this LP and I can’t say that I mind as it’s always been a musical style I wanted to explore more thoroughly and placed in these capable Thai hands we get something ecstatically groovy. Catchy melodies are draped in fuzzed out organs that wrestle with all sorts of buzzing guitars and it’s indeed liberating to hear folk/pop/psych bands that temper their traditional approach with a firm willingness to rock out in a spacey, drawn out kind of way.

2008-06-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #45

Hello, Blue Roses is the very capable duo of Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers, Swan Lake) and Sydney Vermont. On The Portrait Is Finished And I Have Failed To Capture Your Beauty (Locust) we find Vermont in the song-writing position and Bejar doing most arrangements. It’s a lovely little folk pop record that escapes the risk of becoming too fey through some pretty stellar guitar action. Sparkling choruses with female meets male vocals and ecstatic hooks echo the original crop of folk and pop in a quite impressive way.

Majessic Dreams is Jessica Breitholtz Björk and Mats Björk and what they do on Beautiful Days (Pony Rec) certainly have roots at the same places as the aforementioned Hello, Blue Roses but what we have here is probably more reflective in a day after Midsummer’s Eve kind of way. On the title track we find fem vocals hovering over repeated guitar patterns and strings like mist over some remote lake. The occasional addition of circling flute adds a bit of a prog feel and the way it’s done it’s most certainly welcome to these ears. “Cloaks” and “The Lake” are fine instrumental odes that have more of a distinctive experimental feel to them while “Wife’s Song” is more direct and even bouncy in a quietly disorienting way. Another fine meeting betwixt folk, pop and experimentalism.

A new Oddfellows Casino recording is cause for much celebration around these parts. That The Absence of Birds (Pickled Egg) just offers an EP’s length of music (plus a film track) doesn’t bother me much as David Bramwell and his collaborators once again display pure sonic brilliance. What we get is lush and soulful pop informed by elements of jazz, folk, haunting electronica, psychedelia and avante-garde accents. Bramwell’s gently melancholic voice gives life to his timeless sound and forlorn lyrics. There's a combination of almost fey qualities and haunting things that really defies my description and even though a few '60s legends comes to mind it still sounds so incredibly unique and modern.

2008-06-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

Scott Tuma Not for Nobody (Digitalis)

Discovering Scott Tuma’s solo material was one of my personal musical highlights during 2003 and this rather new disc from the former Souled American member is sure to have a similarly strong effect five years later. Tuma plays skeletal, repetitive guitar figures that loop and drone, seeming to go on forever with crystal clear melodies often hidden in the eerie depths, but every now and then it all gets up to the surface and it’s at these occasions the tension between complete darkness and skeletal beauty reaches lordly heights. The sound is blurry and hypnotic, tranced out and serene, slowly weaving between gorgeously organic instrumental parts, dark dissonance and cloudy aural landscapes.

Drowsy childlike vocals that move across the room like ghostly silhouettes start and end this emotional journey and bind things together in an absolutely stellar way. Between these two sister tracks there’s a lot of variation, but it’s more like moving from room to room in a decaying building rather than going from house to house. Every quiet track is in the right place and they’re all overflowed with warmth, abandon, nostalgia and winter darkness. Essential.

2008-05-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Renderizors meet the Terminals

I have to admit that the long silence from yours truly mostly is the result of lack of inspiration and energy. There have been times that I’ve questioned whether I’d ever write anything more on this blog. But after returning to a few items of the ever-increasing tower of new releases that I haven’t reviewed I just had to get to it again. I have no clue if this is a one-time thing and then I’ll return to the cave where I came from, but right now that doesn’t really matter as music is what it’s all about.

First out is a dream project of sorts where we find NZ country/folk/psych/rock heroes the Renderers teaming up with the equally great but quite different Sandoz Lab Technicians. Here we find them working under the Renderizors moniker and although the sum not might be greater than its parts in this case it’s still a mighty fine listen. On Submarine (Last Visible Dog) the wonderful state between fully structured pop song and shambling audio seepage of the Renderers is spiced with the multi-dimensional amalgam of noise, free jazz and drone of the ‘Technicians. It’s a filmic and organic journey that follows the axis of combination and often goes beyond metaphors. They bring us a kind of uncategorizable music that moves along a hidden trail from my heart to the Southern Island.

Next in line when it comes to my unconditional love for strangely seducing darkness from downunder is the veterans of the Terminals. I reviewed their latest disc quite favorably in these pages last year and on top of that “comeback” album Last Visible Dog gives us a reissue of what very well might be the most seminal Terminals release. Touch was originally issued by the German Raffmond label back in the early ‘90s and although it striked some as legendary at the time it certainly did’nt get the attention it truly deserved. Folks looking for slightly gothic psych rock with a slight NZ pop twist already have this one but the rest of you know what you need to do.

2008-03-12T03:31:00.000-07:00

A few new 7”s

Let’s begin this all too brief column with some vinyl on UK label, Static Caravan. The Accidental is the duo of Stephen Cracknell (Memory Band and Gorodisch) and Sam Genders (Tunng) and this 7” proves to be quite worthwhile, including mixes of tracks that’ll appear on the band’s debut album later this year. “Knock Knock (Tunng Mix)” is somewhat scracthy and beat-based while the flip is quite stunning with spacey synth pop sounds that manage to also be mysterious and abstract. File somewhere along a line starting with Pram and ending with Four Tet.

The Ass/Blood Music split 7” on the same label is actually even better. Here we find two Swedish one-man bands sharing space and although I’ve heard them both before this nicely colored wax display what they’re capable of at their very best. My favorite side is Ass AKA Andreas Söderström whose two folk and conutry-induced tracks work like string mysteries that evoke a walk through seasons with streams of pictures, stories, moods, rhythms and colors that I’d love to here in the full-length format.

2008-03-08T03:31:00.000-08:00

After the Goldrush #44 – the sun is back

Bicester, Oxon, U.K. brings us Talking Trees, a relatively unknown name in the psychedelic pop/folk heavens. The sunny vibe present on their brand new Revolation (Wildshine) works eminently well on a lovely spring day like this. There’s something about these guys’ take on Byrdsian pop, folk-tinged harmonies and intricate guitar patterns that has me smiling. Most of the classic ‘60s pop ingredients are present, but it’s all peppered with some nicely baked jangly Flying Nun pop and delicate twee pop. The whole thing clocks in at just less than 25 minutes and when it comes to this sort of sparkling pop that’s certainly for the better.

More quality pop comes from the Puddle, NZ veterans that never have reached the same sort of recognition as most of their fellow Flying Nun companions. No Love – No Hate (Fishrider Records) is a comeback album of sorts, offering the first new recordings in over fifteen years. These ten songs employ the Puddle’s trademark homemade shambling pop formula to perfection. Clever and humorous lyrics find themselves riding on a wave of joyful bouncing pop that’s utterly hard to escape from. I wouldn’t place these cats quite on par with old-time Broken Face faves like the Clean or the Bats but that doesn’t mean that their simplistic, sing-along nuggets and psych-tinged guitar pop aren’t worthwhile. The opening “No Sequels” is particularly great and will find it’s way back into the stereo time after time.

2008-03-03T03:56:00.000-08:00

Sun City Girls You’re Never Alone With A Cigarette (Abduction)

Even though I’ve been a dedicated follower of the always-fascinating Seattle combo Sun City Girls for a long time, there is still so much stuff from their back catalogue that I’ve missed out on. With that in perspective it’s indeed great news that the Bishop brothers have decided to kick off a singles compilation series. This disc is the first and focuses on the short format releases from around 89-90, the time of their undisputed masterwork, Torch of the Mystics. Actually the whole thing was originally intended as the other half of songs which were originally prepared as a 2LP demo version of said album for Placebo Records in 1989. Placebo went out of business shortly after this proposed 2LP idea was presented to them but luckily Majora Records quickly stepped in to begin releasing most of the material.

Included here are five tracks from early Majora singles, one short piece from the triple 7" box set Bruce Lee, Heroin, and the Punk Scene (from a Bay Area label Massacre at Central High) as well as three unreleased studio tracks recorded the same day as much of the Torch LP. As expected this is classic SCG material with a pronounced psych slant, guaranteed to appeal to fans of any of their seminal earlier works.

The latest offering to an already extensive Sun City Girls catalogue is as usual another slab of charred splendor; combining improvisation, avant rock, ethnic rhythms, cinematic guitar instrumentals, desert jazz and Eastern psychedelia. As a matter of fact I’d probably place this collection in the top five of my own SCG collection and that’s certainly saying something. I am sure this fantastic collection will go out of print rather fast so act accordingly.

2008-02-29T03:59:00.000-08:00

Machinefabriek Bijeen (Kning Disk)

There’s been quite a buzz around Dutch sound manipulator Rutger Zunderveldt AKA Machinefabriek recently, which probably both has to do with the constant flood of releases wearing his name as well as the actual sounds presented. On Bijeen we get eight sweeping cinematic drifters that mostly stays on the ominous and radiant side of the drone spectrum.

“Borghesia Remix" is a hazy tidal wave of electronic drone abstraction wrapped in sheets of fuzzed out dreaminess aiming for the most introspective corners of your soul. “Piano.wav” displays a mournful melody of delicate piano notes that drift softly across a plane of barely there drones. It’s an almost perfect example of how to leave space between the notes and get every little segment of a recording to breathe and make a difference. Machinefabriek has an almost unequalled talent to move from whirring white noise to the sound of weightlessness. Dynamic is a word that often seems to come back in all kinds of music writing and in this case it’s actually true.
One could complain that this is a collection of compositions that span over a few years time and consequently covers a wide range of Zunderweldts different musical approaches, but as an introduction it’s difficult to imagine something better.

2008-02-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Jerry Johansson Next Door Conversation (Kning Disk)

It’s strange that we haven’t ever reviewed much from the Gothenburg-based Kning Disk label as pretty much everything they release is overflowed with exceptional visual quality and sonic artistry of highest possible caliber. I guess it’s just one of those things that happen, but that inexcusable fact is going to change right now. First out is Next Door Conversation, two engaging sitar ragas from Jerry Johansson. Both epic pieces are based around the sitar but there are enough lush string embellishments to keep things varied and to provide a slightly Scandinavian (and symphonic) touch to the otherwise Eastern proceedings. Johansson’s complex and innovative sonic expression is all about nuances that bends and disappears like the ocean ebbs and flows. Next Door Conversation won't appeal to everyone, as its repetitive tone undoubtedly will find the casual listener missing the unusual blend of otherworldliness and grace that the subtly shifting sonic colors provide us with. But if you're willing to let these aural structures seep into your skull, you'll find the company of Jerry Johansson meditative; with enough impressive organic features to make the hair on your arms stand up.

2008-02-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

V/A Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway
(Sublime Frequencies)

Sublime Frequencies is one of the most reliable labels in terms of exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers. This DVD is a follow-up of sorts to the monstrous Jemaa El Fna: Morocco's Rendezvouz of the Dead Night Music of Marrakech. Like its predecessor it’s primarily a document displaying the nightly activities at
Jemaa El Fna, the central square in Marrakech

I wrote the following about the DVD mentioned above: “holy shit, this is raw Moroccan folk music, often constructed from various string instruments I've never seen anything quite like, hand drums and vocal chanting, is in itself incredible and the visual addition of seeing the people making it, the crowds watching the night shows take place is just so honest and soulful that I'm not really sure how to describe it accurately. On top of all this there's the sense of the extreme in the air, strange people moving in and out of what seems like Marrakechian normalcy at night, but I think what you see in the jamming, public tea drinking and record playing sessions will completely depend on where you're from and your own view on things.” That’s still very much the case. As a matter of fact this is one of the things my four-year-old daughter asks for on a daily basis. As long as that reflects her sonic taste I am indeed a very happy man.

2008-02-27T02:08:00.000-08:00

Dream Magazine #8

Issue eight has longtime contributor Mats Gustafsson (late of The Broken Face) doing his inimitable interviewing journalistic thing on Los Angeles brotherly duo Antique Brothers, and New Zealand’s singular Rory Storm. Ned Raggett talked to guitar genius Ilyas Ahmed. Steve Sawada interviewed Portland, Oregon’s Plants. Brian Faulkner talked to Tom and Christina of the Charalambides, Mark Dagley chatted with Natalie Rose LeBrecht aka Greenpot Bluepot. I interviewed: The very wonderful Damon & Naomi, tripped-out vocal adventurer Dredd Foole, great guitarist Sir Richard Bishop of the late lamented Sun City Girls, legendary Japanese guitarist Michio Kurihara with translation by Alan Cummings, the deeply beguiling husband and wife acid folk duo Arborea, American singer songwriter Stephen Yerkey of the late great Nonfiction, Argentinian sonic explorer Anla Courtis late of Reynols, the great Swedish psychedelic band The Spacious Mind, the unique and brilliant British composer and vocalist Johnny Parry, I talked to Myc James lead vocalist of Nevada City band of yore Absalom, psychedelic home-recording Brit madman Reefus Moons, singer songwriter Lys Guillorn, ambient masters Stars of the Lid, Sacramento Valley’s own psych-pop wizard Anton Barbeau, and the truly wonderful The Handsome Family. We also feature artwork by the stalwart Peter Blegvad, the charming Andrew Goldfarb, and myself.

We recieved exceptional pieces for this issue’s complimentary CD from: Arborea, Rory Storm, Anton Barbeau, the Slow Poisoner, Natalie Rose LeBrecht, Rory Storm, Lys Guillorn, Reefus Moons, Absalom, Anla Courtis, Antique Brothers, M. Jarvis / A. Jarvis, Powell St. John, The Spacious Mind, and Ilyas Ahmed.

112 pages perfectbound$12
postpaid in the United States.
Payable to George Parsons.

George Parsons
Dream Magazine
P.O. Box 2027
Nevada City, CA95959-1941

geo@gv.net
http://www.dreamgeo.com/
mailto:CA95959-41geo@gv.netwww.dreamgeo.comwww.myspace.com/georgeparsonsdream

2008-02-22T02:08:00.000-08:00

Fricara Pacchu Midnight Pyre (Lal Lal Lal)

We were quite overwhelmed by one of these Finnish cats early cassette releases a few years back so it’s a pleasure to find them in the CD format. Not that I dislike tapes but for some reason I rarely tend to come back to them after those first few listening sessions, and this is indeed music that I want to come back to. We get groovy soul junk in the form of motorik krautrock, gurgling electronics, psychedelic techno and mind-puzzling polyrhythmic structures. It’s a grainy and buzzing mix of swirling thunderclouds and bubbly effects that oozes from corner to the corner of the room and really benefits from turning up loud late at night. Compared to the previous things I’ve heard from Fricara Pacchu this is a whole lot more electronically inclined and dare I say, extrovert and even catchy.

2008-02-21T02:08:00.000-08:00

Lead Sister II Interplanetary Craft (Ikuisuus)

The mysterious Lead Sister II sounds like a bunch of Tower Recordings intros that never switch direction in the middle of a song like those New Yorkers often used to do. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t entrancing. On the contrary we get a bunch of weird percussive elements glued together to a whole that’s repeated over and over again and has an incredibly calming, even healing effect on the mind. The outcome could from afar be considered a pretty fucked up racket with its eclectic instrumentation (including but not limited to the electric mailbox, weed eater violin, bicycle horn reed powered trumpet, bed springs, bobby pins and hacksaw blades) and unorthodox whims if it weren’t for the aura of beauty and far-reaching meditative ambitions that comes with every hypnotically repetitious note.

For whatever reason Interplanetary Craft is detached from reality in a way that it perfectly illustrates some twisted dream full of abstraction, improvisation and moonlight trance. It’s a kaleidoscopic pattern of aural illusions and stumbling drum circle folk that plots a quite remarkable track through the outer regions of damaged folkscapes, ghost symphonies and forested drones. Whoever Lead Sister II are they have found their own enigmatic niche of stoner folk, somewhere on the trajectory line between The Tower Recordings and Kemialliset Ystävät.

2008-02-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

Terrastock News - February 2008

Just one last quick reminder that Terrastock 7 tickets are available for just $55.00 per person until the end of February. This increases to $85.00 on March 1st 2008. The event is taking place in Louisville, Kentucky USA on Thursday June 19th to Sunday 22nd, 2008. Tickets are on sale NOW.

Click here for more information and purchase options: http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Terrastock7/main.htm

The full line-up of confirmed bands is as follows: Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno (Japan) + Antietam + Bardo Pond + The Bevis Frond (England) + Black Forest / Black Sea + Damon and Naomi + Grails + Hush Arbors + Ignatz (Belgium) + The Insect Factory + Kinski + Sharron Kraus (England) + Linus Pauling Quartet + Major Stars + Marissa Nadler + Dead Maids (England) + MONO (Japan) + Motorpsycho (Norway) + MV&EE with The Golden Road + Tanakh + Oneida + Tara Jane ONeil + Paik + Parlour + Pelt + The Photographic + Plastic Crimewave Sound + Jack Rose + Sapat + Rob Sharples (England) + United Bible Studies (Ireland) + Windy & Carl + Wooden Shjips

Terrastock 7 is located at the Mellwood Arts and Entertainment Center, 1860 Mellwood Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky USA. The building is is a refurbished industrial plant turned creative environment, housing over 180 artist studios, retail shops and more. There are THREE stages (2 indoors, 1 outdoors), and over 40 booths featuring record shops, visual artists and unique retail vendors.

There are unrivalled opportunities for setting up merchandising at Terrastock 7. Click here for more information: http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Terrastock7/Merch_Rates.htm

As always, we will be producing an exclusive Festival Program for Terrastock 7, which is being designed for us by our good friend Jeffrey Alexander - you may remember Jeffrey as the principal behind Terrastock 6. This is a fantastic opportunity to advertise and to help get news of your band, label, fanzine, website or other creative efforts out to thousands of like-minded music fans. Here is a link to the AD RATES along with payment options: http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Terrastock7/Advertising_Rates.htm

Phil McMullen (curator, the Terrastock Festivals)

2008-02-10T02:08:00.000-08:00

Son of Nailing Smoke to the Wall - 2007 in Review

If you’re interested to know what music that got Kevin Moist, Lee Jackson, Tony Dale and yours truly excited during 2007 you should point your clickers to the Deep Water site.

2008-02-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #43

Cane 141 is the music of Ireland’s Mike Smalle. Lost At Sea (Micropolis Records) is an atmospheric and quite evocative sound affair that originally was recorded to accompany an installation by visual artist Roisin Coyle. The apt title of the album is very much present in the music where we find snippets of spoken word about the vastness of oceans placed against a patchwork of swirling electronic textures, field recordings and delicate acoustic elements. There's a stark beauty to Cane 141’s frosty drones and oceanic minimalism that’s fragile and emotional enough to sink to the eerie depths of the Atlantic and set out to evoke the feel of a mist-clad Irish harbor at dawn.

Brad Rose’s amazing Foxglove CD-R series is no longer, but if I understand things correctly Digitalis Limited will play a similar role, serving us limited edition releases in handmade/silk-screened/painted covers. Anyway, some of the Foxglove releases are still available such as the self-titled disc from the lovely baptized The Magick Travelling Backpack Band out of Finland. What we have here is another Finnish underground super combo (with personnel from Uton, Vapaa, Keijo etc.) that invites us to attend a primitive forest manifestation circling around repetitive percussive patterns that will do what they can to make you loose your sense of location and direction. They’re actually quite good at it, building a kind of mysterious, skronking brand of psychedelic folk music that seems to be as much about ecstatic disorientation and primitivism as an invitation to a weird dream.

More on the same label comes from Dopo, a bit of mystery to me as I’ve never heard about them before and I haven’t been able to track down much info on who they are. I guess that doesn’t really matter as long as the results are this pleasing. Echoing guitars, organ, wordless vocals and probably more make up a sound world that is gentle and complex but the overall impression is definitely the one of floating above and about all things spacious.

Talugung aka Ontario resident, Ryan Waldron is another interesting new name on Foxglove. Waldron emits a controllable volcano of exotic ethnic instrumentation (including some of his home-built ones) floating together to an impressive lava flow, interesting not only for its mind-puzzling polyrhythmic structures, but also for its organic and perhaps surprisingly melodic characteristics. Out comes a kaleidoscopic pattern of aural illusions and dreams that are bound to leave you on the floor with a hypnotic grin glued to your face perfectly matching your blank stare of approval.

Whilst shopping from Foxglove you have to make sure to treat your ears to the last two volumes of the Wailing Bones compilations. As usual we get a bunch of long-format contributions from artists and bands on their way to something even grander. Favorite cuts this time from Danish Elektronavn and Stone Baby, but to tell you the truth all these are well worth your time and will make you want to track down some of the band albums so if finances is a problem, please tread with caution.

2008-02-04T02:08:00.000-08:00

Ulaan Khol I (Soft Abuse)

When you expect something to flat out blow you away it's not uncommon that you initially find yourself a bit disappointed. That wasn’t at all the case the first time I listened to Steven R. Smith’s new project, entitled Ulaan Khol. This a is a monster release that contrary to lots of other important music hits you already on the first listen and just continues to grow.

Steven R. Smith is a long-time fave here at BF headquarters, a reliable provider of some of the most spectacular underground music out there in the last decade or so. He was a key member of the incredible San Francisco noise/improv group, Mirza, whose Iron Compass Flux (Darla) remains a high-point in the genre, and he has continued to help re-chart the map of improvised psychedelia and fractured ambience as a member of the beautifully baptized Thuja. Smith has made contributions to the Knit Separates, as well as Glenn Donaldson’s Bird- and Ivytree releases on the Jewelled Antler label. Inspired by his investigations into ethnic and world music, Smith’s even made his own instruments and delved deep into Eastern and Central European folk music under the name of Hala Strana. But if you like us has followed this gentlemen through his solo career and enjoyed his contributions to bands such as Thuja and Mirza you’ll probably know that what we get is a somewhat droned-out and improvisational variety of the style. On top of all this there’s his solo records that are filled with beauty and mystery, meandering instrumentals spiraling through a withering topography of sound. Often driven forward by timeless guitar chords but always with scrapings, hums and drones from unidentifiable instruments drifting in the periphery.

Given his vast sonic background it’s somewhat surprising that Smith returns under a new name and goes even further out of his way to create something that connects to his previous work but still take things into an entirely different realm. I is comprised by bleak and dissonant guitar/drums/organ excursions that moan and crumble through its nine untitled tracks. Sure, this is experimental and primitive in its nature but the feedback attacks are presented in such an atmospheric, melodic and even melancholic way that it despite its heavy origins strikes me as very emotional. The multi-layered organic beauty of the closing organ ode feels like the sound of being in the middle of the ocean without a sign of land in any direction.

Ulaan Khol offers amazing music that sounds like an unholy mix of Fushitsusha, Smith’s solo work and Roy Montgomery at his most abrasive. Candles flicker in the night to help us remember the ones on the other side. Memories slowly fade away but just like the sun they'll keep coming back.

2008-02-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

Terrastock 7

I just bought my plane ticket to Louisville and the Terrastock pass. Can't wait! See some of you in a cpl of months time...

Here's the current line-up...

June 19, 2008 - June 22, 2008: Terrastock 7 @ Mellwood Arts Center - Louisville KY with....Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno, Antietam, Bardo Pond, Bevis Frond, Black Forest / Black Sea, Damon and Naomi, Grails, Hush Arbors, Ignatz, Kinski, Sharron Kraus, Linus Pauling Quartet, Major Stars, Marissa Nadler, Dead Maids, MONO, Motorpsycho, Tanakh, Tara Jane ONeil, Paik, Pantaleimon, Pelt, The Photographic, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Jack Rose, Sapat, United Bible Studies, Windy & Carl, Wooden Shjips

2008-01-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

2008

I might as well start with admitting that I am pretty drunk as we speak, but no matter what that might do to my judgement I have to say it's been one hell of a start of 2008 in terms of exciting music. I have already heard four albums that for sure will be candidates for the top ten when it's time to wrap things up in about 11 months. Here we go:

Of The Sun & Earth Together (Ultra Hard Gel)
Alastair Galbraith Orb (Next Best Way)
Ulaan Khol 1 (Soft Abuse)
Common Eider, King Eider How To Build A Cabin (Yik Yak)

You've been adviced. Now, back to that bottle of Arbeg Airigh Nam Beist...

2008-01-21T05:49:00.000-08:00

Elektronavn interview

I just finished an interview with danish Elektronavn. If you want to check it out proceed directly to the Deep Water website.

2008-01-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

Of The Sun & Earth Together (Ultra Hard Gel)

Founding Jewelled Antler member (he’s been playing with Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Id Battery and Ov to just mention a few) and public school teacher Loren Chasse is back with another solo album under his Of moniker, one of the most consistently irresistible sonic outfits out there today. Where a lot of improvisational music only briefly goes beyond being sonically interesting, Of takes the richly organic qualities to the quieter extreme. The sounds here are so closely knit with nature and environment, that if you just close your eyes you’re likely to see hints of waves rippling through the sea or the stillness of majestic trees. Chasse’s glacially unfolding, yet detailed and somewhat grainy sonic landscapes, offer a sacred space for solitude, wonder and beauty which is difficult to pin down in mere words. Not really sure what’s what here but there’s lots of field recordings, rusty guitar ambience, autoharp, stones, bowls, branches, quietly tinkling bells and zither to make up the graceful acoustic drones, swirls and tones that hover around distant clusters of manipulated field recordings.

The Sun & Earth Together is a somber and hypnotic listening, even when segments of tracks break out from this mold of quiet, organic growth, Chasse quickly returns to the life-giving drone connected with impressions and inspirations of nature. It’s very early and I don’t really like it when it happens, but I might already have heard the best recording of 2008. Utterly beautiful and essential in a way that my words never can capture.

2008-01-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

Testbild! Une Teinte Intense (Friendly Noise)

Concept albums are sensitive matters that easily can get out of hand and even miss its initial idea and purpose. When it comes to Testbild!, Malmö’s finest pop ensemble, that’s a minimal risk as they have dressed up pretty much every release in a theme of sorts so they’ve refined this form over the years and is slowly approaching perfection. This time out we find the band honoring Swiss-born (she lived in North Africa) writer and revolutionary Isabelle Eberhardt, who in many ways was many decades before her time in terms of challenging and questioning the current political views and systems.

The whole thing starts with a spoken word piece based on Eberhardt's writings, and although French isn’t my strongest side it’s delivered in such a profound way that it perfectly sets the tone for the celebrations that is to come. “Labyrinthine” is a quirky little pop melody bathed in lovely ‘60s sounding vocal harmonies and it also includes fragments of that perpetual cycle of North African instrumentation and mysticism that pops up here and there through the entire disc. The mostly instrumental “Maghreb” is a glorious desert whisper garnished with field recordings and embellished with a suggestive kind of melancholia. “Evening Star” is a windswept village by the Moroccan coast at sunset. As with a lot of the other tracks there is the occasional Moroccan drumming that adds a transporting element to the overall breezy feel, and that’s certainly welcome to these ears.

Generally speaking this is an album that certainly has its reference points in the Canterbury scene, the most colorful side of the ‘60s soft pop era and maybe I am just seeing the figure of a certain Robert Wyatt here and there because I know how important he’s been to the band. But most of all this is the sound of being trapped inside a dream that’s all about subtle disorientation, about being at the wrong place at the wrong time and not accepting the designated route. Nearly perfect.

2008-01-15T16:17:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #42 - entering the deep water

One can probably argue that being a regular contributor to Deep Water Publications makes it a bit difficult to review releases from their sonic brother, Deep Water Sonic Productions. But then on the other hand, this is not exactly the Rolling Stone we’re talking about so who can honestly say that they give a shit? And when something is as great as Anvil Salute’s This Is the Voice of Doom Calling I am not the one that’s going to shut up. This latest offering from Norman, Oklahoma’s finest is a nearly perfect slab of naturally evolving folk that might be too focused for some of the free folk fans out there and too fucked-up for the majority of the folk rock gang. I am not sure that’s why this band’s far-reaching meditative ambitions haven’t reached out all the way yet or not, but I do know that this inexcusable fact has to change. Free jazz inspirations work like ghost-like shadows that come in and out of the folky mix and there’s also a stunning angularity to some of these tracks that has me thinking about Velvet Underground. But the overall feel is definitely the one of cyclical music that is mesmerizing and hypnotic without being as primitive as many of the contemporaries. Beauty and inspiration rain down like manna in these instrumental folk sessions, recordings both wonderfully focused and distilled, yet free.

More on Deep Water comes from Flying Sutra, a new Philadelphia-based drums-guitar duo that glues together segments of frenetic jazz percussion with shards of feedback. Levitate and Dissolve offers plenty of the heavy goods but there’s enough variation and free jazz inspirations to keep things interesting. Some of the longer tracks veer off into some sort of heavy Soft Machine-inspired terrain and that’s certainly welcome to these ears. It might not be quite as essential as the releases from label mates in the Clear Spots but it’s still quite rewarding.

Whilst shopping from Deep Water you might also want to check out the split CD-R from Glasgow’s Pefkin (Gayle Brogan of the Boa Melody Bar mail-order and of the late Electroscope ensemble) and the Circle and the Point (a duo of Adam Richards of House of Alchemy fame and Grant Capes of (VxPxC)). Pefkin’s extended contribution is a hazy, mostly acoustic improvisation that manages to provide a warbling sonic journey from the heart to the brain. The Circle and the Point plays simple, repetitive guitar figures that fuzz and drone, with murky melodies of organ, bells and wind instruments providing a safe harbor to call home. Nice.

Last but not least comes Nessmuk, a solo release from Deep Water head honcho Kevin Moist. I think I might have overdosed on Roy Montgomery lately because a lot of music has recently made me think of this guitar maestro and Flies Free (Abandon Ship Records) does so too. Not necessarily because the end result is similar but Moist and Montgomery seems to aim for a similar kind of instrumental glory. What we have on this 3” CD-R is three murky guitar instrumentals that sound like the soundtrack for a road trip without a happy ending. The dark and beautifully motorik "Station Signals" drones, swirls and vibrates for no more than just over four minutes but those minutes are pure bliss. It reaches for the heavens with a fuzzy delay-steeped guitar drone interwoven with meandering guitar lines. It's almost like two different tracks that run separately side-by-side. Every now and then their roads criss-cross and it’s in these conjunctions the tension between darkness and skeletal beauty reaches impressive heights. The second track is a bit harsher while the closer starts and end things in the introspective corner but in the mid section there’s an impressive climax that might scare some of you so tread with caution. Can’t wait to hear more.

2008-01-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #41

My first introduction to Danish one-man band Elektronavn was through the amazing Songs of Impermanence CD-R on the Finnish Ikuisuus imprint. On this 7” (BSBTA) we find him teaming up with Exquisite Russian Brides and Elektronavn’s side as just as intriguing as the aforementioned CD-R. Gently hovering, folk-induced soundscapes and rusty ambience meld together to a glacial flood of darkly seducing free music, which will appeal to everyone reading this on a regular basis. On the flip we find another Dane knowing how to produce music with maximum meditative effect. Guitar, loops, bells and xylophone circle in the sky like an eagle searching for its next prey.

2008 promises to be a prolific year for Elektronavn but while awaiting releases on labels such as Qbico, Digitalis, Rural Faune, Students of Decay and Secret Eye you should definitely check out the cloth-clad Black Zurnai cassette on Not Not Fun Records. Compared to the other stuff I’ve heard from Elektronavn this is definitely the noisiest and most collage-like, but in the middle of the intoxicating amalgam of noise and drone there are also a chaplet of folky tones present that reveal a sort of beauty and isolation that actually is much more seducing than it is alienating. I am a big fan of what this guy is capable of and be sure to check out the Deep Water site sometime soon for an interview with Mr. Elektronavn, Magnus Olsen Majmon.

UK four-piece Safetyword’s new 7” on Static Caravan is a different cup of tea altogether. The alt-pop of the a-side doesn’t do that much for me but the flip, “Dandelion Clock” is quite a delight with its old-timey vocals riding on a riverbed of understated instrumentation and delicately plucked guitar.

Let’s finish this column with another slab of vinyl, the Static LP on (K-RAA-K) from Wellington, NZ ensemble Bad Statistics. Members from The Idle Suite, Cloudboy, Minit and more make up this combo that probably is coming from a rock background but what they do is to take those influences and drown them in improvised, psychedelic drone waters. On top of this there’s a pulsing krautrock vibe running through it all, but what truly sets it apart from your average New Zealand underground album is the vocal ranting from Thebis Mutante that truly defies my description. This is dense, groovy sound clusters constructed from synth and organ fuzz, drum circle tribalism, heavily phased guitars, vocal rants, motorik bass lines and clarinet that cover so much sonic terrain it’s difficult to grasp, but once you’ve been sucked in there’s no way out.

2008-01-10T05:49:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #40

Honey Owens (who have played with Jackie-O Motherfucker) AKA Valet paints aural pictures of the Pacific Northwest landscape on her Naked Acid album for Kranky. Valet presents a mixed guitar bag ranging from ambient washes and low end rumbles to dark cavernous clouds of distortion and on top of that there are loads of understated effects and gorgeously drifty vocals. The latter is used more as an extra instrument than a traditional vocal element and the results are dreamy and quite rewarding.

Hunted Creatures is the new sonic moniker of Ryan Emmett who last year released a disc as Droopy Septum on Mike Tamburo’s New American Folk Hero. Black Ash Lotus (Dynamo! Sound Collective) is a darkly ambient, yet quite forceful and unsettling, even disturbing drone affair. These five tracks mostly offer steady low minimal noise bliss resulting in a somewhat alien, bitter and cold soundscape, although it within its boundaries actually covers a wide expanse of sonic terrain. More on the same label comes from Nature Nasa who has more of a free improv/noise approach along the lines of folks like AMM, This Heat and to some extent bear resemblance with the outer regions of the NZ scene. You may have to move your head outwards and apprehend it to get maximum listening pleasure but it’ll definitely be worth the trouble.

The link to Andy Futreal goes through the New American Folk Hero label and what he does on Ophelia Wanders (Harha-askel) is to examine the emotional range and possibilities of the acoustic guitar. Gentle guitar structures flow over you and color your current view in different colors depending on what track you’re listening to. We get 15 guitar instrumentals that stroll along gently and in most cases remain in melodic terrain. Sure, Fahey is an inspiration but this has honestly more to do with folks like Bert Jansch than the Takoma scene. That doesn’t prevent it from being an impressive recording draped in talent, but more importantly also in emotion.

German Talvekoidik’s Silent Reflections (Brume Records) represents a musical genre I don’t listen to a great deal. It’s not because I don’t like what I am hearing, more due to the overwhelming amount of music that’s available these days and sometimes you simply have too choose. I am happy I’ve given this slice of rhythmic electronica a chance though as it’s overflowed with harsh beats and Baltic melancholia. The hypnotic effect when turning this one up loud is actually surprisingly great. There are times when things get a bit too symphonic and even neo-classical for my taste but the overall cinematic feel stays on the positive side, and how can you really go wrong with a sound architect describing the idea of his music “as to illustrate the point where the stones hit the water while falling into it, where the wind blows on the fields and bends the stems..."?

2008-01-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

Hamilton Yarns Search for the Underwater Town (Hark Recordings)

Back in the paper days of the Broken Face (I just found a handful copies of BF #18 so if anyone need a copy of that particular issue don’t hesitate to send me a note) we wrote a few things about the impressive underground scene in Brighton, UK. I am not sure what it is in their water pipes but it must be something quite special given the amount of amazing bands hailing from this relatively small town. Hamilton Yarns is a new experience to me but judging by the quality of these recordings I am guessing they’ve been around for quite a while. Search for the Underwater Town is quite the double platter of laid-back horn-laced pop segments, late-night jazz excursions and outsider folk. It’s true that this is a fairly low-key affair, with tempos rarely switching above second gear, acoustic guitar strum, damaged horn drones, minimal piano structures, cornet, harmonium, violin and Wurlitzer providing most of the musical backdrop, but it’s never boring.

Don’t let the first timid notes fool you that this is a quartet unsure of where they’re aiming; nothing could be further from the truth. These organically evolving improvisations provide a beautiful and innocent ride through fragile and quietly disturbing landscapes that make imperfection sound utterly compelling. The ear for detail and the way these Brits make every sound gracefully float around the next one is impressive, and the construction of the haunting and gentle yet abstract soundscapes that perfectly contrasts the traditional with something much more modern really defies my description. Recommended.

2008-01-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Linus Pauling Quartet All Things Are Light (Camera Obscura)

Houston, TX based five to seven piece “quartet” LP4 is back with their sixth album, this time a limited LP on the Australian Camera Obscura imprint. These guys have always been clever enough to play it real stupid, walking that fine line between dope-induced idiocy and genius and their sense of humor is definitely intact on All Things Are Light. The opening “Alien Abduction” offers a tasty slice of majestic Sabbathian riffdom and as more guitars are added to the mix it reaches some sort of groove rock momentum. It’s bombastic to say the least and it’s not surprising to hear that one of the band’s mottos is “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”.

The following “Southern Pine” combines two contrary sides of the LP4 sound universe as it starts as a sensitive, ‘60s sounding space/psych pop ditty before moving into a wall of Blue Cheer type riffs. “40 oz.” is a psychedelic country ode to 40 oz. malt liquor and I don’t really think I need to say how great/stupid it is. “Enchirito” is a stomping murky riff-feast where we find guitars wrestling with saxophone to stunning effect. Then comes the lengthy, hard-driving stomper “Waiting for the Axe to Fall” that is sure to keep the ass moving all the way through its seven minutes.

As always the different styles are flavored with tasty bits of feedback and guitar exorcism and all of you who question whether that's your cup of tea or not should try to catch the Linus Pauling Quartet live (they’re playing Terrastock later this year). There's not many like them when it comes to sheer class and energy.

2008-01-07T06:43:00.001-08:00

Uton & Valerio Cosi Käärmeenkääntöpiiri (Fire Museum)

Long-distance duo collaborations seem to be the flavor of the day in the Italian underground. This time we find Italy’s Valerio Cosi teaming up with Jani Hirvonen in musical circles best know as Uton. Käärmeenkääntöpiiri is a gloriously soft-spoken soundbath installation based around all things droning, but this is so much more than just another timeless drone so don’t let that scare you away. Exploratory and glacial, but ever-changing, soundscapes constructed from guitars, saxophone, electronics, organs, effects, strings, field recordings, percussion and all sorts of noises move like dark cosmic clouds across a dense galactic plane. It’s strange that these sounds somehow make me think both of some cosmic whirlpool and the unconditional love of a hidden valley. I guess what I am trying to say is that this disc manages to stand with both feet on the leaf covered forest floors but also aim for the stars. Blend all this with elements of psychedelia and distant traces of free jazz and you get yourself a release that touches deeper than most recordings ever will.

2008-01-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #39

There are times when you feel that you really should be somewhere else. After just a few notes of Anup Kishore Pradhan’s Hidden Nature Is Secret God (the horse and the mule is draped in lace) I realize that a summer-clad Maryland front porch probably should replace the rain-soaked Scandinavian winter outside our kitchen window. Pradhan plays acoustic guitar music that is wondrous and transcendent, music that meanders and flows in a way that makes it seem constructed purely to illustrate moods and nuances. There are obvious bonds to the Takoma tradition but this relatively short (and focused) album is more structured and less experimental than many of his contemporaries, thus providing a great start for newcomers to the genre.

Autistic Daughters is the musical vehicle of Dean Roberts, Martin Brandlmayr and Werner Dafeldecker and if my memory serves me Uneasy Flowers is their second one for Kranky. It’s a subdued sound affair that blurs the line between the topographic and abstract side of the sound spectrum and the song-based. Skeletal guitar and bass figures move in circles around computerized loops and slightly jazzy percussion while Roberts’ dreamy, barely-sung vocals provides the tension and anxiety of living in an earthquake zone. It took me a while to fully appreciate this one but the more I listen the more I tend to like it.

Maxime Primault is the head of the fledging French Crier dans les musées imprint, but he’s also a sound sculptor under the Enfer Boreal moniker. L´espace Des Éternités Possibles (Ikuisuus) is his debut and judging from the glacially moving improvisations presented here Primault is definitely a name to remember. Guitar, electronics, turntables, bass, radio, keyboards and voice are used to create a dense drone fog, which from a distance might seem static and minimalistic but on closer examination will reveal plenty of details and sonic development. It’s a somewhat dark sonic endeavor but at the same time it manages to be graceful, transcendent and quite successful.

2007-12-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #38 – Public Eyesore

Personally, year 2007 has been a year with a lot of bad conscience. As usual I’ve been privileged to have a lot of great labels send their stuff my way and although I’ve tried to keep up the best I could I have also found myself not being able to review as much as I would have liked to. So, here’s a collective excuse to those who feel they’ve been neglected. One reason for that bad conscience is a gigantic package including something like 60 CDs and CD-Rs from the always-fascinating Omaha, Nebraska label Public Eyesore. I am not going to pretend that I love everything that ‘Eyesore head honcho Brian Day chooses to release but enough is to make every listening experience an anticipating one. There’s no way on earth that I’ll be able to review those 60 discs but I’ll try to scribble down a few things about some that are particularly interesting. Look at it as an introduction or rather something that hopefully will have you point your clickers at http://www.publiceyesore.com/

Here we go…

First out is Japanese singer and guitarist Satoru Kadowaki who works under Ayami Yo-ko moniker. His folk-tinged rawness and psychedelic noise draws comparisons to countrymen such as Shuji Inaba as well as Keijo Haino. Effect-laden guitar beauty morphs into shards of feedback and in many cases we find Kadowaki’s lunatic (almost uncomfortable) and atonal vocals providing an intensely hovering spirit on top of it all. I think someone described these evocative sounds as a Japanese version of Jandek and to some degree I think that’s a very accurate choice of words. More Japanese guitar music comes from Masami Kawaguchi on Live in December and I guess this could be seen as the mellow side of the same folk-induced coin. Shimmering acoustic chords wrestle gently with Kawaguchi’s unsettling voice, forming a surprisingly mellow and contemplative mix. The organic flow and rural touch of these recordings are difficult to describe but there’s a timeless quality to it all, which makes it sound like a modern form of ancient Japanese music. Either way, it has enough to offer to keep my ears swimming in contentment for the rest of the year.

Let’s continue the Japanese thread with the pretty extreme The Machine Gun TV. What we have here is a noise combo that includes just about everything in their sonic suitcase. Utterly schizophrenic pop and song segments and a myriad of weird samples wrestle (not gently, this time out) with primitive layers of electronics, programmed rhythms and guitar attacks. It’s a noise feast to say the least, but it is also catchy and even danceable. Add to all this a welcome sense of humor and you get yourself a disc that will scare away just about everone you know, but the few that will stay around will be forever thankful.

On Live in Japan we find Monotract (Carlos Giffoni, Nancy Garcia, and Roger Rimada on drums, electronics and guitars) present another dose of spastic out there music. Equal parts distortion and frazzled electronics make up this noise concoction which depending on mood can strike you as either the ultimate improv rock album or an anti-rock manifest. Need I say that this is only for the seriously demented and adventurous listeners? The CD comes in brilliantly colored and strangely constructed cardboard packaging, which only adds to the overall feel.

I guess you could say that Shelf Life is the house band of Public Eyesore as it’s probably Brian Day's most prolific musical project. In Shelf Life we see Day teaming up with four fellow musicians to construct detailed minimalism, discordant drone, subdued noise or what about harsh ambience. It’s difficult to pin down their sound in mere words but I do know that the wavering minimal tones of their brand new Rheuma album seem to be made to create drawn out low-end drones so haunting that they are likely to affect on both a sonic and physical level.

Three slowly unfolding pieces make up guitarist Jorge Castro’s relatively short Cinética. It’s initially not obvious that we’re actually hearing a guitar as everything on the first track is heavily processed. On “Impulse” we get sweeping clouds of ambient guitar works that fills the space of a big hall in a second and then never really let’s go. It’s a bit like being stuck in time or traveling through the desert at dawn. Lovely.

Let’s end this with the ocean-deep funeral drone of Amy Denio’s Tasogare. If I am not mistaken this is all constructed from accordion and voice (besides the occasional guest appearance from Eyvind Kang on viola). This 45 minutes long one-track album sounds like music for the beginning or end of a world, and no matter how dramatic such a statment may sound it's difficult to find any more suitable words. Finely polished and achingly frosty drones stuck in a never-ending loop of atmospheric beauty. Essential.

There’s obviously so much more to choose from but this is a start and besides that you don’t really have the time to read this anyway. Time to do some shopping folks…

2007-12-10T06:43:00.005-08:00

Cones Ice Skating Elephants (Ikuisuus)
Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi Wildflowers under the Sofa (LVD)

Ice Skating Elephants is the debut for Ikuisuus from the duo of Cones. I don’t know an awful a lot about these guys except that Ulf Schütte is involved in the interesting German Aousuke project. Lots of different field recordings, tape loops and electronics construct thick webs of projections that somehow reflect into corrosive drones. The opener is a monstrous piece with a myriad of buzzing sounds and oscillating fragments glued together to an entity that moves from corner to corner of the room or just hangs in the air as if held there by invisible wires. Other tracks have more of the crackling and creaking direction you might suspect from someone using contact mics, turntables and whatnot. What I like about it is how nicely it’s all set against a minimal yet irregular drone, which will entirely absorb you, bore you to death or scare the shit out of you.

Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi are becoming regulars at the Broken Face headquarters and I can’t say that I mind as long as what they do is as genuinely transporting as Wildflowers under the Sofa (Last Visible Dog). These Italians uses old keyboards, laptop and guitars to weave their dense carpet of stones and shells on the ocean floor. This three-track album sounds like some lost interpretation of what underwater sound might be like. I hear the distant sound of the current, vibrating waves generated from fish moving out of my way. It’s repetitious and floating yet emotionally intense without ever getting to that full-on eruption. But that doesn’t mean that these drone-obsessed composers aren’t capable of creating some seriously out there ear massage. Highly recommended.

2007-12-10T06:43:00.004-08:00

Sun City Girls Dulce (Abduction)

Unconditional love is probably the choice of words that best describes my relationship to Seattle veterans Sun City Girls. It’s not like everything they do is brilliant but there is something about their uncompromising attitude that makes them so irresistible. Earlier this year the band called it quits when Charles Gocher finally had to give in from a long battle with cancer at the age of 54. The Bishop brothers said it would be impossible to continue without him and given his input to the band I can certainly see why. So it seems like the story is approaching its end but luckily there is still a gigantic back catalogue to dive deep into, such as the long gone Dulce LP from 1998 which now sees the light of the day as a CD on their own Abduction imprint. This is one of three (I have/will review the other discs elsewhere) reissues that are soundtracks to real or fictional films. With the ‘Girls you just never really know what’s true and what’s a joke. Anyway, the story goes as follows:

A nervous, stuttering Japanese gentleman phones me in the fall of 1995 requesting soundtrack services from Sun City Girls for his new film project about a secret underground alien base in New Mexico most commonly referred to as "Dulce." ...[T]he real kick for us came when our new Japanese friend finally announced his allegiance to the esoteric Aum Shinrikyo group most famous for the Sarin gas poisoning in a Tokyo subway not long ago. He also professed to be a former associate of Aum technical minister Hideo Murai who was killed by a Korean hitman in April, 1995. Murai...joined the Aum priesthood in 1986, becoming the head of its science unit focusing on the current state of electromagnetic weapons development including EM beams using lasers and plasma....

We flew to Japan to perform a few shows in April, 1996 and a clandestine meeting was arranged with our mysterious director friend on one of our days off in the electronics district of Osaka which happened to be less than a mile from where we were staying. So Doctor Gocher and I pretended to take a souvenir-gathering stroll down the hill and met "Hachiro Maki" (a pseudonym, I'm sure) nearby in a temple courtyard. After thirty minutes of reviewing rough cuts on his swivel-screen Hi-8 camera and discussing the necessity of anonymity in today's international fast lane, we were one million yen richer with an 8mm tape in my back pocket. Haven't heard from him since....

What we get music-wise is another slab of charred splendor ranging from Eastern toned floating beauty, distorted improvisations, harsh noise workouts, improvised patterns of percussion, ethnic weirdness, meandering Spanish guitar, distant ghost whispers, shimmering urban psychedelia, alienating drones and slow-crawling guitar jamming. It might not be essential all the way through but the highlights are absolute top class so this is not only a keeper but also one of those SCG albums I’ll return to on a regular basis.

2007-12-10T06:43:00.003-08:00

Dramady Better Forever (North Pole Recordings)

Dramady is a new duo from the fertile musical lands of Portland, OR consisting of Amanda Mason Wiles (Rollerball, Six Foot Sloth) and Zac Stanley (Narwhal vs. Narwhal, Miss Massive Snowflake). Given the involved this is surprisingly melodic, structured and not the least rhythmic pop rooted as much in the folk tradition as in outsider rock. The concept of combining accessible pop with hypnotic beats and well-placed bits of experimental arrangements is the link that binds this multi-faceted disc together. Dramady is capable of dressing up their groovy melodies in mind-massaging strangeness and whimsical unpredictability that is both consistent and quite convincing.

2007-12-10T06:43:00.002-08:00

After the goldrush #37

The clear blue winter sky outside our kitchen window is the perfect companion for starting the day with some celestial minimalism and oceanic drone music. Zac Keiller is a Melbourne-based guitarist and sound alchemist who on Line displays slowly eroding sound particles saturated with a weeping kind of melancholy. Its impressive organic sustain makes it sound like a hymn for someone lost at sea. Blissful hums rise and fall in an evocative topography of sound. Not much point in singling out actual songs, as it’s a gorgeous ride from beginning to end. The darkly serene tones of Broken Signals falls into the same category but it’s more sonically detailed and relies less on entering a specific mood for full enjoyment. Clusters of feedback shadows tear holes through droning keyboard landscapes on an empty road stretch that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, or maybe it’s just one of those endless roads to the Australian outback.

Austinite Derek Roger’s work under the DR moniker is as minimal as Keiller’s but a whole lot more abrasive. On the all too limited Apparatus, Field CD-R (Last Exit Recordings) we get to ride across a minimal, dusted sonic plane suggestive of the quieter moments of the Dead C. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is plenty of corroded noise hidden under this thick sound blanket. What makes this one of a kind though is the blending of these styles with surprisingly emotional, meandering acoustic guitar explorations and even noise pop. All in all it’s a challenging manifestation of hypnotic electronics meeting all kinds of guitar abstraction, ranging from the tranquilizing to the frazzled. Fans of the New Zealand underground will love this.

More peripheral sounds from Texas (this time Denton, TX) come from the Zanzibar Snails on KRAKKTOWIAK, a one-track 3” CD-R on Mayyrh Records. I don’t like this quite as much as their full-length recording from 2006 (which got a glowing review in these pages) but the combination of wiggling sax explosions, primal percussion, electronic buzz, shards of feedback and AMM-sounding freeform aesthetics does after all the overall trick quite well.

2007-12-10T06:43:00.001-08:00

John White s/t (Last Visible Dog)

I am a huge Last Visible Dog obsessive but as much as I admire the vision and the taste of label head Chris Moon things can come to a point when you know what you’ll hear when a new pack of recordings arrive at your doorstep. It’s such a relief that John White’s self-titled debut for LVD has just about nothing to do with the label’s back catalogue. Well, there is one thing. Sonic quality. White constructs dreamy, melancholia-soaked folk pop ditties flavored with raspy, whispered vocals. This disc is apparently a compilation of two earlier recordings dating back to 2000 and 2003 and don’t ask me where my mind was at when missing these gems first time out.

The album screens a downcast but kaleidoscopic sound, spanning desolate folky ballads, bittersweet slow pop and slightly up-beat numbers. Imagine a combination of Syd Barrett, the criminally neglected Illyah Kuryahkin and Jamie Barnes of Silber fame and you’re in the right ballpark. Highly recommended.

2007-12-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

Mike Tamburo Language of the Birds and Other Fantasies
New American Folk Hero/The Music Fellowship

Quantity is not always synonymous with quality. When Merzbow released 50 records wrapped in a suitcase a lot of people were fascinated by the concept, but I honestly don’t think many people were that impressed by the actual sounds. One of my friends who is a true Merzbow fan came as far as to the 34th disc but after that didn’t have the energy to continue any further so decided to sell the whole thing, with a substantial profit one can assume. When multi-instrumentalist and film maker Mike Tamburo out of Kensington, Pennsylvania releases seven CD-Rs, one DVD with eleven films and two live shows and one 72-sides long booklet with his texts it is initially the stunning packaging, the passion and the sheer amount of art that impress.

A deeper exploration of the sound world presented displays Tamburo’s indisputable talent of mastering both the primitive American folk tradition, melodious minimalism, classic winding guitar playing and Indian ragas. This is alternated with organic, slow dragging sound landscapes that exude equal parts drone and noise. In many cases we find Tamburo using an expression that has a lot to do with contemporary guitarists such as Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Sir Richard Bishop, Steffen Basho-Junghans and James Blackshaw. But Tamburo rarely only investigates the frameworks and boundaries of the guitar, but also employs lots of effects, clarinet, bells, organ, cymbals, metal items, electronics, harmonica, dulcimer, exotic wind instruments, harp, accordion and probably more than I can imagine. It is an ambitious musical adventure that despite its wide range holds together amazingly well and along with Tamburos sour realistic poetry and abstract film art constitutes an unknown, modern masterpiece that in some ways maybe is suitable for an edition of 250 copies, but that should be heard and experienced by many more.

2007-11-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #36

Book of Shadows is an experimental band out of Austin, Texas that among other things features members from classic space/psych rock heroes ST37. …And Then We All Woke Up (Ethedrone Muzac) is something entirely different than those cats though with its bewitching drones, Krautish sound clusters and entrancing, slightly psych-tinged, ambience. A lot of names, such as Tangerine Dream, Gong, Fursaxa, Ash Ra Tempel and Popol Vuh come to mind but these darkly seducing soundscapes manage to transcend their influences and create something that sounds their own. As a whole the album might be a bit too long but on the other hand this dreamlike space whisper constructed from electronics, keyboard, guitar, theremin and vocals, needs its time to display its entire shape.

New Zealand super group The Stumps is back with another stunner, this time with the apt title The Black Wood (Last Visible Dog). The inward-spiraling darkness of the rocking drift-scapes presented on the first couple of tracks transcends many of today's musical boundaries and limitations. It's relieving to listen to a band that's not afraid to investigate new cosmic territories with the interest and curiosity of a child, while also never completely forgetting their noise rock roots. This is definitely at its best when you can witness the roots in a distance, thus flavoring the sonic goods with the anxiety of what an approaching thunderhead on the horizon might hold in store for the ones that are bold enough to further explore.

Belgian Przewalski’s Horses’ self-titled CD-R on Ikuisuus might not be easy to digest but it’s one hell of a ride for those willing to dive deep into this unsettling lava flow of radiant free music. The buzzing improvisations range from the dissonantly beautiful to a sort of repetitive aural hypnosis that brings to mind Sunroof! and that’s never a bad thing, right? I am not quite sure what’s happening musically speaking, apart from that there is a whole lot of distortion, droning flute and a wide range of field recordings like the sound from rain and throbbing helicopter wings holding it all together. I don’t really care what’s what though as long as the claustrophobic noise mantras are this frantically insane and captivating.

The opening few chords of The Phantom Family Halo’s The Legend of Black Six (Cold Sweat) has me thinking about Beta Band and in terms of providing capable song writing and folk tendencies bathed in repetitive psychedelia they do seem to operate in parallel universes. But these Louisville, Kentucky musicians are to be honest as likely to dive deep into some Sabbathian riffage, epic field recordings or Hawkwind space odysseys so I guess that comparison is not really working out after all. It should give you an idea of what these guys are capable of though. I like a lot of what’s going on here but as a whole it might point in a few directions too many. My favorite track is probably "In the Back of My Head" which is a low-key folk pop tune armored with wonderfully whispered vocals and oozing atmospherics. As a whole it’s difficult to rate this disc but there are enough interesting things going on here that’ll guarantee repeated listening sessions. I am just not sure I’ll play it all.

2007-11-08T02:04:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #35 – the museum is on fire

Fire Museum is building a reputation of being one of the most reliable purveyors of interesting music from unexpected corners of the world. The latest addition is Indian Nathamuni Brothers’ Madras 1974. The ‘Brothers were a large ensemble that played their own unique variant of South Indian classical music on instruments such clarinets, alto sax, baritone horn, and trumpet, along with tavil, talam, and harmonium drone. The result is a fluent and trance-inducing folk/jazz album that is as natural as the cycle of days and seasons and which in a stellar way displays what’s possible in that zone between Indian, Eastern and Western culture. The percussive work is inventive and groovy and the brass instrumentation is played flawlessly all the way through but the one thing that strikes you the most is the sonic interplay. It's like the different players exist as one spirit that guides them through their ethnic jazz structures. No player takes too much space; everyone is at the center of this fascinating sound journey. These nine tracks have been drawn from recordings made by musicologist Robert Garfias in 1974, and it's frightening to realize that these immortal sounds have been kept from me for nearly 30 years.

More on the same label comes from prolific Keijo out of Jyväskylä, Finland who rarely disappoints and Whose Dream We Live In? is no exception. As a matter of fact I think this is one of my Keijo favorites and that’s definitely saying something. What we get is a surprisingly psychedelic disc that blends a myriad of styles: ranging from rumbling drones, jazzy skitter, dark cosmic sound clouds, meandering free folk, psychedelia, acid-fueled rock and abstract free noise to impressive tribalism. All these styles are branches of the Keijo tree and I am happy that now there is an album that manages to display them all without falling to pieces.

It seems like only Italians can get away with choosing a band name like Comet III and naming their debut album Astral Voyager (Fire Museum). Or maybe it’s as simple as that they don’t really care as long as it sounds cool and reflects what they’re up to musically speaking. Comet III is the duo of Delfo Catani (guitar, percussion, field recordings, flute, sitar etc.) and Carlo Matanza (various synthesizers) and their music sounds a lot like its name; like the soundtrack for some particularly meditative space odyssey. The ethereal guitar sound and pulsing, oscillating synth work achieves that perfect balance between alien wonder, peculiarly dissolving space whispers and sheets of hazy elegance which reaches its cosmic zenith with the help from haunting, non-word fem vocals in “Part 1.” Listen to the sounds sink into gravity, try to remember the seamless supernatural dreams it generates, get a glimpse of that wide horizon that comes along with such sonic vision. Let it dissolve time into a languid stupor or simply sit back and relax.

2007-11-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Group Doueh Guitar Music from the Western Sahara (Sublime Frequencies)

The Sublime Frequencies label has been covered in these pages before and although I am sure that’ll happen again I question whether there ever will be a recording I am as excited about as this Saharan sandstorm, Group Doueh’s Guitar Music from the Western Sahara.

The whole thing started when Alan Bishop heard some squealing lo-fi guitar blasts on Moroccan radio and then went on an expedition for the origins of that particular electrified sound. Seeking out numerous cassette dealers, he was still only able to identify the music as Sahwari and to locate the region as the Western Sahara, a disputed territory situated on the Atlantic Coast of North Africa between Morocco and Mauritania. A few months later, Bishop's colleague, Hisham Mayet, equipped with Bishop's recording traveled back to Morocco to continue the quest, ending up in the last settlement of the Western Sahara, Daklha, where through the help of the Sahwari shopkeepers was finally led to the maker of the strange music himself, Baamar Salmou, or as he is known in Sahwari, Doueh.

What we have here are chosen tracks from Group Doueh personal archive, a massive slab of home-brewed, hallucinogenic mantras of scorching guitars effortlessly meshing with trance mysticism to one of the most beautifully acid-fried rock records I've ever heard. It’s all heavily distorted, primitive, intricately groovy, complex and deranged and the fem vocal delivery from Doueh’s wife only adds yet another dimension to the already timeless and meditative effect. This is one of those rare moments when a recording manages to be gut punching and heart warming at the same time.

This LP is apparently just about sold out so I won’t dive deeper into more ramblings explaining why this is one of the most amazing things I’ve heard all year, but I can guarantee that the reward for tracking it down will be fruitful to say the least.

2007-11-07T00:48:00.000-08:00

After the goldrush #34

A few great compilations have arrived here recently and the finest one is probably Cris Et Chuchotements, the first release from the French Crier Dans Les Musees imprint. Sonically speaking this could easily be a Digitalis/Ruralfaune/267 Lattajjaa/Foxglove or mymwly compilation since they seem to share a lot of ground with those nice folks. We get tasty bits of droney experimentalism from familiar names such as Peter Wright, Valerio Cosi. Alligator Crystal Moth & Taiga Remains, Black Forest/Black Sea, Kuupuu, Aan (Uton & Kulkija) and White Rainbow, but also contributions from relatively unknown French artists. The involved create all kinds of slowly evolving soundscapes and densely tangled drone webs but not a single track is quite on par with the opening "Music for Flying Carpets" by Valerio Cosi, which sounds exactly like its apt title. This compilation is a mesmerizing and beautiful sound excursion that is overflowing with mood and atmosphere.

Million Ways to Spend Your Time (Quasi Pop) is a Ukrainian compilation focusing on experimental sounds out of Norway, Germany, France, the US, Poland and well, Ukraine. I guess that’s the world of globalization, right? This disc also includes tasty drifting clouds of heavenly organic textures but it’s to be honest as likely to dive deep into harsh noise (Lasse Marhaug and Andreas Brandal), blurry underwater ceremonies (Black To Comm), post rock grooves (Peel Off The Bass), crackling/bubbling electronica (Continental Fruit and 8Rolek), laptop minimalism (Alexey Petrov), carnival experimentalism (Jorgen Knudsen), avant-pop/techno (O. Lamm), bluesy guitar instrumentalism (Origami Epileptika) and drone-oriented electro-acoustic improvisation (Andrey Kiritchenko). It took a few listens to understand this multi-faceted disc but the more I listen to it the more I tend to like it.

Binary Oppositions (Static Caravan) is a compilation that accompanies an exhibition that addresses the contrasting pairs of analogue and digital. Both the visual and sonic artists hail out of Birmingham, England and when listening to this 21 tracks long album I can’t help but to be impressed by the vibrant scene of this English city. Beat-based electronica moves into avantgarde and then across a wide plane of folktronica and bittersweet, polyrhythmic electronic pop. But as if that wasn’t enough there is also bouncier pop, feather-light melancholia, minimalism, ominous drones and music seemingly made to accompany some particularly haunting film script. It’s a varied mix that works surprisingly well but mostly so when the concept behind the comp clearly is as at display. Familiar names such as Broadcast and Pram blend with mostly new, but still mighty impressive contributors. This is another one that is difficult to grasp but still a mighty fine one.

2007-11-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

Matt Zaun RIP

Matt played drums in Salamander, Skye Klad, Blitzen, Di Dollari and several other bands and was truly one of a kind. Matt's design skills and music can be sampled here, though just a tiny sliver of his massive body of work is on display.

This is a real shock to me. I just don't know what else to say than that we're thinking of Matt's family and his fellow band members. What a great loss!

2007-10-24T01:23:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #33

Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher’s To All Dead Sailors (Camera Obscura) is a concept album of sorts that explores the mysteries of the sea. Acoustic and electric instruments are combined with field recordings to create a wide palette of oceanic colors. We get the sonic equivalent to its brutality and we get the hard-explained beauty of the crashing sea in its eternal struggle to create physical shapes beyond the world of imagination. But most of all we get tracks that overflow with longing over people lost at sea or people being away from home for too long. It’s an intriguing sonic document that goes from airy fogbanks of sound experiments to graceful, soft-spoken, folk-tinged melancholia with impressive ease. This is one of those hushed, heart aching, and utterly timeless moments when the sum indeed is greater than its parts.

Serafina Steer’s Cheap Demo Bad Science (Static Caravan) is another subtle musical affair, this time constructed around Steer’s traditional singing and her impressive harp work. Comparisons will inevitably be made with Joanna Newsom but Steer comes from a British folk background rather than classicism if that makes any sense. Nice, and definitely on par with the aforementioned Appalachian-meets-avant-garde harpist.

Bostonian Eric Dahlman’s Ripped Echo (Space Walrus Records) is another disc that has been played a lot here recently. Dahlman is mainly a trumpeter but plays a myriad of instruments on this intriguing hybrid of jazz, Appalachian folk, ethnicism, country and classical music. The opening “Pahasteteeko” is spiritual to say the least and comes off as some lost ceremonial anthem from the border between Tibet and China. Other tracks are jazzier but there is always enough sonic surprises going on to prevent it from becoming just another jazz album. Ripped Echo is jazz that aims at the stars and is more likely to travel to some exotic country for inspirations than to the jazz club around the corner. Dahlman utilizes various Boston and Chicago based musician but luckily no player takes too much space, everyone is somehow at the center of this telepathic sound journey, although Dahlman’s smooth, decorative trumpet work admittedly is the one thing that holds it all together. I love just about everything (minus the artwork) about this album and I think you might as well.

2007-10-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #32

There’s been a lot of minimalism and drones here recently so I figured that today’s column should try to cover a slightly broader range. First out is the incredibly bizarre Rain in Skull (musicyourmindwillloveyou) by Australian Charles Curse (Greg Charles to friends and family). Fragments of disjointed folk melodies move across a plain of wheezing chords, tape hiss, children's voices, ambient washes, amp buzz, electronic glitch and bits of buzz in general. The contrast between downcast guitar playing and the physical claustrophobia-inducing weight of sound is equally perplexing and intriguing. It’s all presented in a decidedly lo-fi environment but the sound construction is anything but simple, this is a complex sonic stew, which sounds unique in the true sense of the word. Recommended to people who like their noise screwed up with enough structure to puzzle just about everyone. I love this, but I know that quite a few of you probably won’t.

Bolt of Apollo (Camera Obscura) is Black Sun Ensemble's 11th studio release, and one that to a large extent returns to the band’s previous instrumental focus. Once again we find Jesus Acedo's hallucinogenic mantras of scorching guitars effortlessly meshing with trance mysticism, prog rock tendencies and Eastern ragas to one impressive acid-rock record. This blazing set of ten tracks is an odd mutation of traditional folk and heavy guitar goodness and goes from the intense to the intricate with impressive ease.

We have been fans of idiosyncratic avant-garde singer/song-writer Marianne Nowottny ever since the late ‘90s when she at the age of sixteen released the indescribable Afraid of Me, but I still don’t think I’ve enjoyed any of her previous outings as much as I dig What Is She Doing? (Abaton Book Company). She's been called "a teenage Nico" and "the new PJ Harvey", but this one is actually quite different from such comparisons, as Nowottny apparently “set out to construct a homemade R&B/pop album.” That might lead to the wrong conclusions but please remember that this is the Broken Face you’re reading and you can probably guess how we would use such a term. What we get is tasty chunk of beat-laced, dreamy electronic pop that is quite primitive but at the same time catchy to say the least. An arsenal of synthesizers and keyboards are employed to form the melodic water surface which Nowottny’s inimitable vocals hover over, float on and dive deeply into. It's an intelligent and sophisticated, yet naivistic sound, which makes me genuinely happy. Just listen to the swirling synths and the dreamy harmonies of the opening "What Would I Do" and you'll see exactly what I mean. There are side excursions into free jazz, exotic themes and glorious space whispers to keep things unpredictable, but this is foremost a pop album that’ll have me dancing the next time I drink too much.

2007-10-18T01:37:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #31

As you probably have figured out by now I am desperately trying to catch up in terms of writing reviews. Here’s a quick rundown of a few things that have been sitting in the review pile for too long. First out is Isle of Man resident Mike Seed’s A Boy Mistaken for a Crow (AntiClock Records), an introvert album packed with 20 naked and haunting folk miniatures that tend to look inwards rather than outwards. Beautifully picked guitar and Seed’s affecting voice are at the center of things but the icing of cake is probably when droning organ enters the mix in “Sleep In My Melody,” perfectly illustrating some sad moment, saturated with an inconsolable sense of loss.

Electric Bird Noise’s Fragile Hearts…Fragile Minds (No More Stars Records) is another pleasant surprise, displaying Brian McKenzie’s subtle guitar experimentalism. He seems to be determined to further develop the hypnotic minimalism and atmospheric drones of Brian Eno and Cluster and in most cases does so quite successfully. There’s a lovely directness and spontaneity written all over this album that just glides along its sad melodies but also provides a warm, dense blanket perfect for tucking you in at night. This is rich and emotional tone abstraction celebrating the fall at its very best. Nicholas Szczepanik out of Washington DC is another fellow interested in experimental minimalism but in this case it’s more in the vein of folks like Alvin Lucier and Philip Jeck. Astilbe Rubra (Small Doses) is not quite as easy to enjoy as Electric Bird Noise but it has a fair dose of organic qualities on top of the creaking electronics, field recordings and avant-garde tendencies that prevents it from becoming merely an interesting experiment. Self-described quite simply as “resourceful,” Szczepanik refers to his debut as a collection of ideas and directions he plans to explore in the field of sound design and composition. Everything is allowed, one track finds him scraping a slab of vinyl on the concrete floor, then wrapping it in aluminum foil, and proceeding to forcefully play it on his turntable. I quite like this one.

Japanese Naoki Ishida also resides in the minimal corner of the music world, but this is once again something completely different. Fragmentized field recordings of urbanity in its most quiet forms blend with improvised acoustic snippets, iridescent synth waves and carefully strummed chords to quite meditative effect. The press sheet describes Tone Redust (Quasi Pop) as deconstructed “digital” folk ballads and that term fits him nicely. Imagine what it would sound like if Giuseppe Ielasi lived in Osaka or if Tape would focus on lowercase and you’re getting close to what this one is all about. Häpna would as you probably imagine be a very suitable home.

2007-10-15T04:31:00.000-07:00

When receiving the new issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope in the mail today I realized that my interview with Glen Donaldson regarding the Skygreen Leopards (and more) wasn’t included. This one has been sitting in my computer for more than two years but I figured it’s better that at least someone get to read it. Better late than never…

Glenn Donaldson interview (from January 2005)
by Mats Gustafsson

There are probably not more than a handful of contemporary bands and artists that with ghost-like precision somehow manage to epitomize what my sonic taste is all about. One of them is without any question of a doubt Glenn Donaldson, a multi-talented San Francisco-based psychedelia/folk/drone/improv musician who is an integral part of so many fascinating musical projects (Skygreen Leopards, Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Ivytree and Birdtree to just mention a few) that you can’t really blame those with difficulties to keep up. When setting up this interview it was mainly with the intention to investigate the organic roots of the beautifully layered and loosely structured psych pop/folk of the Skygreen Leopards, a duo that besides Donaldson features Verdure mastermind Donovan Quinn, but after getting in touch with Donaldson I soon realized that there’s so much beauty, intimacy and uniqueness in everything this man is doing that it wouldn’t feel right to focus on just one corner of his creative output. I guess that the way I see his different combos and monikers is as differently colored rivers that unite in one impressive stream of sounds, and depending on where you decide to dip your toes you’re as likely to hear elegantly crafted outsider psych/folk, distant blankets of intoxicating drones and subdued collages, mournful guitarscapes, hillbilly minimalism, dank organic noise and clattering forest ambience as ecstatic tribal damage. I got in touch with Donaldson via email for the discussion that follows.

Tell us a bit about your personal background. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in suburban southern California, hanging out in parking lots, going to the beach, skateboarding, listening to punk records. Music was an escape, something to get excited about. Punk was the big folkart movement of that time...

Do you remember when music really caught your attention for the first time?

I sang in church when I was very very young; I have vague memories of watching John Denver and Alice Cooper on the Muppet Show. I remember schoolteachers singing folk songs while playing autoharp. My best friend's older brother played in a KISS cover band and performed at his birthday party when we were 5 years old. That blew my mind.

When did you start listening "seriously" to music?

Aww I'm not serious. The first band I really loved was the Monkees, because it was playing in re-runs at the time. I also dug the Beatles and the Byrds; I got into 60's music and punk at around the same time. I was in elementary school, pre-teen. I jumped around a lot in my bedroom pretending to be a punk singer or 60's psychedelic guitar player. I didn't have much money to buy records, so I would go to the record store, stare at the cover art and imagine what the band would sound like. I bought the Ramones "Leave Home" and the first Velvet Underground album for $2.99 each on cassette from a big bin at a local bargain department store.

I grew up in Fullerton, so there was The Adolescents, Social Distortion, Agent Orange and many more. Another friend's brother was in a group called Medicine Man (a Green on Red/Dream Syndicate/rootsy type of band). We used to hang out in their practice space and bash away on their gear when they were gone.

Was it around this time you went from being a listener to actually play music? Or did that come later?

I've been making music my whole life. My parents had a big electric organ and I used to create a big droning racket on it, messing with all the knobs and switches. I imagined it sounding like a symphony. My friends and I would make tapes, playing harmonica and drums or with someone playing two notes on a cheap electric guitar. Not much has changed really! But I mainly sang in a church choir in public school, then in garage bands playing songs like "Gloria" and then punk music. I didn't really start playing guitar until I was 21.

What made you pick up the guitar?I wanted to write my own songs.

When starting playing music I guess punk was a natural choice, right? Tell us a bit about your early musical development.

I took a few piano lessons, but I wanted to do things the 'wrong' way, make new sound, just bang on things and have fun. I think this is the natural way to create music. Structure and theory comes after the fact. I want total freedom, and then ideas can flow and maybe form motifs or themes appear and then you can get engergised by them as well. I have a voracious appetite for hearing new music; punk is what originally sent me off into the stratosphere. There's so much energy and feeling, art and style in it.

There is so much beauty and space in the music you do today that I often tend to come back to the landscapes when writing about it. How important is this side of things and your geographical location for you as a person and as a musician?

Thank you. I love a big spacious sound. Like an epic movie, a vast desert expanse, an enormous cavern...I love reverb especially, natural and artificial; it gives the music a certain topography. I also like dry upfront sounds contrasting with spacious, formless ones and having multiple layers, like soil strata or dense underbrush, different species of plants intertwining. The landscape literally has an influence on the sound when I record outdoors with Loren Chasse in the Blithe Sons or on my own when I do the Ivytree. But more than that, I love San Francisco and the Bay Area, the history, culture and the parks and the people. This must have an influence on my life and therefore the music I make.

Concerning the environment of recording-- that's a connection among most of your releases and something that truly sets them apart from most other stuff out there. What do you think is added to a recording when recording parts outdoors and including various field recordings?

Playing outdoors is a humbling experience. You don't want to play too loud and disrupt the silence or the birdsongs. That's part of the reason why sometimes we play so quiet and minimal. If you play fewer notes, more of the sound of the space can seep in. Field recordings add a visual element. You can see with your ears.

Where does your interest in the nature come from?

Years ago, I took a lot of LSD and mushrooms and roamed around out in the woods down in Santa Cruz, out in the Mojave desert and up north in Eureka. The combination of drugs and overwhelming natural beauty was very potent. I imagine this had some influence, but really experiencing these types of places before I took any drugs was just as intense.
Can you tell us a bit about Mirza and its formation?

Mirza was Mark Williams, Brian Lucas, Steve Smith and me. Steve and I have played together since we were 15 and we met the other two guys in college at Santa Cruz. We started in 1994 playing pretty structured music. Listening to stuff like Pharoah Sanders "Tahuid" and Pink Floyd "Echoes" and Sun City Girls and those jams on Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxters", helped us loosen up a bit. Also 3/4 of the band was smoking a lot of marijuana at the time, so things started to get more fucked up. I started getting bored with electric guitar, so I started incorporating field recordings, casio, banjo, tape loops. Brian Lucas used to "play" a reel-to-reel machine like Eno used to in Roxy Music or Martin Swope in Mission of Burma. The band split in 1998 just when Brian moved to NY and Mark to Spain.

What lead to the decision to start Jewelled Antler? Was there a point at which you thought "we could do this better ourselves"?

Loren Chasse bought a CD-R burner and asked me if I wanted to collaborate on a CD-R label, a novel idea at the time. I think this was 1999/2000. The CD-R label idea gave us total artistic freedom, and we didn't need a lot of money. Indie labels got kind of conservative for a while there I think. CD-R labels can exist for 4 people or 400 people. It doesn't really matter either way.

What role do you think Jewelled Antler is playing in underground music today? Has that role changed over the years?

I don't know. Hopefully a few more people stop and listen to the wind in the trees for a moment.

What's the story behind Thuja's birth? Why the name?

Mirza was incredibly loud. Our ears were tired, and we wanted to incorporate more acoustic/unusual instruments/field recording etc. Mirza had these elements, but it was more difficult to do live in the context of a loud rock band. So after the other two guys split, we asked our old friend Rob Reger to play with us. He had a huge warehouse space covered in vine-y plants and cacti. Kind of a beautiful decaying industrial garden which had an influence on the aesthetics of Thuja I believe.

I saw Loren Chasse play in an amazing band called Ohm-A-Revelator (with Greg Saunier from Deerhoof and Cole Palme from Factrix), and I took note of the unconventional way in which he played the drums. A few years later he showed up at a party at our house. I struck up a conversation with him because he had a Magma belt buckle on. A few months after that, he joined our group.

I named the group Thuja after the plant. The word was written really large on a jar in an herbal medicine store I used to go to. Also the break-up of Mirza was disappointing, so I think we consciously wanted Thuja to be loose and unlike a "real" band, so there would be no pressure to practice or put out albums. We played with no expectations at all, and it all developed rather at its own pace.

Although Mirza is no longer you’re still involved in a number of groups, some of the better known being Thuja, the Blithe Sons, the Franciscan Hobbies, the Skygreen Leopards, the Ivytree and the Birdtree. Care to give us a brief description of each combo/moniker?

Thuja: 3 or 4 people listening to each other more than playing.

The Blithe Sons: two people attempting to merge 19th century Transcendentalism with 20th Century Minimalism and folk music, but mainly just an excuse to get outdoors.

The Franciscan Hobbies: a myriad of friends and ex-friends having a sound-picnic.

The Skygreen Leopards: two people strumming 200 year-old-guitar chords and trying to discover a new mythology of love, hope and dreams.

The Birdtree: collages with bird-headed figures with sad music.

The Ivytree: yet more of those collages and sad music with thin rays of light coming through the branches.

What do you want people to experience from the Skygreen Leopards’ music?

Love, sadness, humor, passion, confusion, joy.

Tell me about the Skygreen Leopards’ debut album? How did it come about? What was the response like?

We recorded two CD-Rs in 2001 and then late 2002. Then the Leopards went to sleep for a bit. Donovan really wanted to get some Verdure albums out. I was doing Birdtree/Ivytree/Blithe Sons/Thuja and a million other things too. But I really wanted to make more Skygreen music, because it is such a joy to work with Donovan; he inspires me; he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever encountered. Chris Berry from Soft Abuse offered to re-issue the CD-Rs, so I convinced Donovan to record some 'bonus' tracks with me, and within a month we had a new album. People seemed to like "One Thousand Bird Ceremony", we got some very kind reviews and emails.

Are the first two Skygreen Leopards CD-Rs still going to be reissued?

Yes, but I'm not sure when or how yet.

Does each release have a different unifying idea, or goal behind it? If so, what would you say makes “One Thousand Bird Ceremony” on Soft Abuse so special?

I don't know if it's special, but thanks for saying that. We pull our lyrics from the unconscious, Donovan is a Freudian and I am a Jungian. So our songs have a mythological quality to them, but at the same time they are very personal stories about our lives and experiences. We are very sincere and serious about making good music, but also we don't want the whole thing to be ponderous. We want to make pop music, inspired by the AM radio psych-pop/folk of yore, but we can't help but make it a bit strange, because we are a bit strange. Each release does tell a story. It's a non-linear saga. Like Life itself, we're not sure where it's all going. The albums are about us and the people we know, our histories and dreams.

Earlier you described the Skygreen Leopards as some sort of new mythology of love, hope and dreams. How important are dreams to you? Do they play any kind of role in the creation of your music?

It's hard to 'know' the meaning of a dream intellectually, but it's a poetic hint at understanding yourself. The lyrics might come from the same place. Being aware of dreams certainly influences my life and therefore the music I make.

When I'm making collages, I feel like I'm in a waking dream. I always learn something in the process. Also I sometimes dream about music, impossible instruments and sounds. I once dreamt that I had my hands in a shallow creek and discovered that if I lifted these small smooth stones in the creek-bed, a watery organ tone would be emitted. So in my dream, I could actually "play" the creek-bed like a primitive pipe organ. I tried to recreate that sound on some instrumental passages of the Ivytree CD.

How did you get in touch with Jagjaguwar?

Soft Abuse sent them "One Thousand Bird Ceremony" and Chris Swanson wrote me an email saying come join us, and they've got Nagisa Ni Te who is the greatest band in the world, so we had to say "yes". Also they told me that next up they were working on a Supreme Dicks box set. I took this as a sign from the almighty that we should join their roster.

I totally agree with you on Nagisa Ni Te’s excellence. Don’t you think it is kind of odd how relatively unknown they still are? I mean, they should have conquered the world by now.

Yeah. Well maybe the tastemakers just haven't caught on yet. They are just brilliant, emotionally majestic songcraft...also the audio design of their albums conveys so much vastness and beauty.

How does your two Jagjaguwar albums "Child God in the Garden of Idols" compliment "Life and Love in Sparrow's Meadow"?

Sparrows are amazing singers; their notes are so pitch perfect, an orchestra can tune to their songs. When Sparrow sings it summons the Child-God. The Child-God brings wonder, mystery and confusion. In other words, the arrival of the Child-God represents the birth of creativity (and thereby of everything).

I hear a great deal of Nikki Sudden and the Jacobites influences on "Life and Love in Sparrow's Meadow." What were you inspired by when making this record?

It's nice to be compared to Jacobites, that stuff is truly amazing, the Swell Maps too! I love the first two Jacobites albums and stuff like "Dead Men Tell No Tales". I think the similarity comes from the fact that Nikki was into the same things we are: Dylan, Bolan, Stones, Small Faces, Big Star and Neil Young. Donovan Quinn never actually heard Nikki Sudden till recently.

It's hard to pin down influences for "Life and Love". When we met we bonded over the West Coast folk-rock and pop, the Monkees, the old Grateful Dead LPs, Donovan's father's band Country Weather, the Byrds, Gene Clark, Kaleidoscope etc. and other worlds like ESP-Disk, old Flaming Lips stuff and Television Personalities. But that's just the launching pad. I mean we listen to a ton of music. The basic structure for Skygreen music is pop or folk music, but at the same time, I'm free to weave in field recordings, noise, whatever.

I’ve never really heard Country Weather. What are they like?

They played heavy psych-rock, some of their stuff sounded like a West Coast take on Cream or early Pink Floyd; then later they had more of a country rock vibe.

How do you and Donovan work together when creating music as the Skygreen Leopards?

We work very spontaneously. We both sing, so often there is a second song within the main song. Nothing about it is random though. We consider it "Pre-cognitive Songcraft", aka "Backwards-shadowing". Each song is a remembrance of a song not yet written. As Donovan Quinn once told me, "we need to travel backwards through a forest twice in order to find our way back."

We spend a good amount of time drinking espresso and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Holy Modal Rounders together and discussing Art Nouveau paintings and other foppery. Donovan is a bit of a country-dandy. Most of the last two albums were recorded in his trailer on the back of a horse ranch. The animal sounds you hear at the beginning of "One Thousand Bird Ceremony" are right outside his window.

Care to tell us more about the “so much is humored, in love” motto?

The four humors are blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy aka black bile. Our lives are influenced by the flow of these liquids, and love creates an intense "humoring" in the body. This is only one interpretation.

What is a Skygreen Leopards show like? Any European dates on the horizon?

We play shows as The Skygreen Leopards Skyband with Christine Boepple on percussion, floor tom, bowed banjo, fuzz guitar harmonica, flutes etc. I play 12-string acoustic/harmonica and Donovan plays acoustic guitar and mandolin. I think live our country-folk side comes out more. It's pretty strange and sometimes haphazard but mostly we enjoy it. I think the Skyband is getting pretty good live considering it was previously an all studio thing. We are starting to sound more like us if that makes any sense. We are talking about more touring, but we haven't set anything up yet.

What do you see coming round the bend?

I try not to see past right now. Thinking about the future is a kind of black magic. If you mess around with that too much, the demons will come and take you away.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I'd just like to add that I'm grateful for all the wonderful people who I've met through music. I've travelled farther and did way more than I thought I'd ever do. In the USA, there are evil forces at work, very wealthy criminals who want to crush culture and self-expression and kill innocent people in other countries. It's a sad time really and that's part of the reason why we make this music. So here's a big fuck you to George Bush from "new weird america" or whatever it's called this week.

2007-10-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #30

I am a true Sublime Frequencies fan boy, much because they give me a chance to hear music from countries that I probably never would have come across otherwise. My favorite release are probably the ones with a North African origin but that doesn’t mean that their two new Thai releases, Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s and Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan Vol. 2 are any less great. Thai Pop is indeed spectacular, displaying a confusing blend of largely groove-based, funky pop armored with hooks worth killing for. It’s all equally catchy and bizarre, and if you ask me that is exactly what great pop music should be about. Fuzz organ, cheesy beats, amazing horns, wah wah guitars, bouncy bass lines, impressive percussion and all sorts of vocals are key ingredients of this soulful introduction to Thai pop. Molam is the multi-faceted folk music that came from rural areas of Thailand and Laos. The term literally translates into “expert singer” or “expert song” which is very suitable given the outstanding vocal delivery throughout. It’s like the vocals follow their own melody on top of the already musically complex rhythms. The result is generally over the top and groovy to say the least but this disc has more of a spiritual and even ritualistic vibe to it than the one described above. Yet another impressive addition to a kick ass series of compilations.

San Franciscan duo Barn Owl owes a great deal to the gently drifting folk-psych tradition of Six Organs of Admittance but this self-titled disc for Foxglove proves that they’re very much capable of standing on their own legs. Fluid acoustic and electric guitar beauty meanders over a riverbed of droning lo-tech minimalism constructed from primarily synth, effects and organ to stunning effect. It’s all a very organic trek through pagan ambience, psychedelic drone primitivism and homebrewed folk. Some of Brad Rose’s previous recordings under the North Sea moniker have explored similar territories and although On the Endless Golden Skyway won’t be found Miles away it’s still a step sideward to something tenderer and more song-based . Wonderfully focused and distilled, yet free acoustic folk songs constructed from a myriad of string instruments such as banjo, guitar, bouzouki and autoharp. As always when it comes to the impeccable Black Petal label the CD-R comes wrapped in absolutely stunning homemade packaging.

The Phoenix Cube’s Let the Summer Come to You aims for a similar mood and does so with a very soft-spoken folk-psych approach, with a discreet progressive touch, which strikes me as ghostly precise on a misty fall day like this one. This is timeless, multi-layered folk music that makes me want to stay in bed all day.

2007-10-11T01:29:00.000-07:00

For Barry Ray New Days (Room 40)

When getting a disc like this one in the mail I realize how lucky I am when it comes to receiving promos out of the blue. Sure, not everything is great but I am happy to wade through some crap to find new exciting musical projects like Carina Thorén and John Chantler’s For Barry Ray. The opening ”Through Holes, Glass & Stone” is a stunning piece of harmonium bliss stock full with starkness and loneliness. “David” is a spacious tone floater that despite its downcast and restrained atmosphere strikes me as very conversational and dialogic, much due to the inclusion of some lovely clarinet playing.

In the following ”A Dark Blue Heat,” ”Aurora, Dancing...” and the closing “Blending Light” vague organ patterns, ghostly guitar whispers, unsettling ambience, austere experimentation and becalmed drones form glacial underwater ceremonies and dreamtime musings packed in a beautiful aura of emptiness and vastness. Not everything between these obvious highlights is as amazing but enough is to make it a very intriguing listen.

2007-10-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #29

Silver Tongued Sisyphus (Kranky) is a new CD EP from German psych/krautrock/drone/minimalism duo Cloudland Canyon. While dozens of bands are producing 10 minute long pieces of drift and drone, few of them has at the same time managed to return to the real psychedelic freak out, which makes this a very refreshing and highly enjoyable EP. The whole thing aims for some sort of Teutonic kosmische sound with dusty clouds of droning electronics that swells to a throbbing wall of guitar repetition, not at all far from Ash Ra Tempel at their prime.

Droopy Septum AKA Ryan Emmett aims for a similar place on his Howling Lands, Whispering Leaves CD-R (New American Folk Hero) but does so with less of a krautrock approach and more of a noise methodology. Well, this is really not noise in the traditional sense but the thick lava flow of droning buzz and carefully layered gusts of hiss and screech most certainly nod in that direction. To my ears it sounds a bit like Sunroof! on valium, and if anyone wonder I do consider such a comment to be a great compliment. More on the same label comes from Alexander Turnquist and his Sleep Chapter 3", which does the extended and resonating guitar drone in a traditional way (as in Stars of the Lid for instance) but it’s all performed in an immaculate way which makes it suitable not only for subtle background listening but also enjoyable for its precise details. Andy Futreal’s Like Twilight Bleeding 3” is a different cup of tea altogether as it’s a collection of improvised acoustic guitar pieces that has nothing to do with big gestures but still manages to capture the very essence of emotion and quiet beauty. We get three instrumentals that stroll along gently and always remain on the melodic and structured side of things, but this never gets dull or uninspiring. On the contrary every little note lives its own life and just listening to how they resonate and carefully build up intimate sound clusters is alone worth the price of admission. It’s easy to mention the Takoma influence but there is to tell you the truth as much influences taken from both the North African and Eastern folk tradition. Eric Carbonara’s This May Be The End/Long Hallway, Three Slightly Open Doors (once again on New American Folk Hero) is another guitar album but this one is more effect-laden and relies heavily on repeated guitar patterns, or guitar loops if you will. Add to all this brilliant synth washes and you get another small format disc to add to the forever-swelling 3” collection.

2007-10-10T00:53:00.000-07:00

Charalambides Likeness (Kranky)

At one point I think I counted how many Charalambides-related reviews I’ve written over the years and I have to say that the amount scared me a bit. After more than 25 reviews one might rightly wonder why bother writing another one. There is only one simple answer to such a question: Charalambides are still one of a kind and they continue to find new peripheral sonic corners that yet haven’t been explored. Likeness is their new one for Kranky and is no exception from that rule as it displays a blend of the band’s early folk/noise albums and their more recent guitar minimalism. The lyrical content (largely derived from public domain American popular song from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries) and Christina Carter’s lush vocals are in podium position throughout and dances beautifully around surprisingly delicate and chilly guitar work. It’s all a startling window to the unseen worlds that hover just below reality. Hazy fall afternoon diversions don’t get more serene, or eerie, than this. When reviewing last year’s A Vintage Burden I described it “as some sort of concluding document, somehow signaling that things might come to an end, but given their past I am positive that all involved are going to continue to surprise, challenge and fascinate for as long as they live”. Now I know that I was right. Not really sure this one is officially out yet, but I am guessing it will be any day now. Absolutely essential.

2007-10-09T06:10:00.001-07:00

Ray Off Nothing Like A Ribbon Around A Parcel (Black Petal)

Ah, Ray Off. Ray Off. Say it again, with reverence, like you really mean it. I’ve praised these New Zealand cats before and judging by the sounds presented on this all too limited CD-R that’s not going to change anytime soon. The band is fronted by James Currin who runs the United Fairy Moons label but also features Pamela Poppins, Katrina Thomson and Tim Cornelius of Sandoz Lab Technicians fame. Traditionally, the Ray Off approach has been one of damaged folk enlightenment, and that tradition is definitely honored here as well, but it does seem that the tracks might be more coherent and accessible than before, while still maintaining the most far-reaching meditative ambitions. “Nothing Like A Ribbon” sets the tone with melancholic melodica and subtle string patterns woven together into a stunning otherworldly intro. Then evocative female vocals make an impressive appearance on the minimal noise sculpture of “And You Take” before “Mouthful of Feathers” proceeds further into improv terrain with sawing violin, corrosive drones and cello. “Glisters” is silently haunting and repetitive, like a secret blend of Tower Recordings and Movietone. The epic “We Love To Laugh” is noisier and more collage-like before “Round A Parcel” close things with subtle disorientation, stylistically related to the opening piece. It’s a perfect outro for an album that has just about everything I tend to want from music these days and as a consequence surely will end up on my end of the year list.

2007-10-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #28

In recent years I have constantly had problems with my vinyl players. One problem has often replaced the previous one. Kudos to my lovely parents for finding a new one, which by far is the best one I’ve ever have had. Due to this, today’s column is all dedicated to vinyl. Let’s start with Susan Alcorn’s And I Await…The Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar (Olde English Spelling Bee), an album that illustration-wise looks like a mixture of those early Charalambides albums we love so much and something Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystävät etc.) probably could churn out on a daily basis. The whole thing looks amazing which is great given that the sonic quality of the six floating instrumentals is just as high up there. The temporary sense of isolation in time and place helps these minimally structured and stretched out chords construct vast and spatial guitar landscapes. It's like these heavenly guitar compositions, somber melodic fragments and quietly unfolding soundscapes come out of the Texan environment itself, just hanging in the air before finding their way into my ears and then returning to the wide-open flatlands again. I remember once describing Alcorn’s meditative music as something you can actually feel moving in a never-ending loop between your mind and your heart. That’s still very much the case. You know what to do, folks.

The German Dekorder label has a very nice habit of releasing excellent stuff on vinyl. Finnish Uton’s Alitaju Ylimina is no exception. If you've been a fan of Uton's (AKA Jani Hirvonen) previous outings on labels such as Jewelled Antler, Pseudo Arcana, Last Visible Dog, Digitalis and Ikuisuus it goes without saying that these electro-acoustic sound collages and noise-clad drones will feel right at home in your record collection. Droning strings wrestle with lo-fi electronics, minimal guitar scratchings, shamanic folk structures and distant traces of jazz ideas, and although definitely remaining on the difficult side of fringe music, this multi-faceted piece of beautiful vinyl still works like balsam for the warped mind. More on the same label comes from label head Marc Richter under his musical alter ego, Black To Comm. His slowly unfolding, almost static organ/electronics/effects feast is quiet by nature but totally blows my mind when turning it up loud. This is an ambient noise mantra and circular groove that keeps repeating itself for the entire first side and the overall effect is both cavernous and mesmerizing. Black To Comm shares space on this LP with Hamburg duo, Aosuke. This is a new name to me but if these three tracks are any indicator of where they’re usually at I am sure we’ll here a whole lot more from these guys further down the line. Tobert Knopp and Ulf Schütte throw in a bunch of influences into these ambient proceedings, ranging from the quieter side of Krautrock, pulsing synth traumas, meandering guitar explorations and spaced-out drones. The final result is surprisingly melodic and quite meditative.

On the I See a Sign Defined 7” (Pickled Egg) we see John Cavanagh AKA Phosphene teaming up with Bridget St John, Isobel Campbell, Bill Wells as well as members from Nalle under the name Phosphene and Friends. On”See a Sign Defined” we find St John’s lovely vocals leaning against a warm and rich tapestry of sound, melodic and with an impressive attention to sonic details. The flip is the title track of Bridget St John's debut album, and the somber version presented here features three of Cavanagh’s favorite people, Hanna Tuulikki, Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy of Nalle. This one explains exactly what it is that makes the 7” format so appealing.

D+D is Derek Higgins and Dino Felipe and on this pink 7” for Public Eyesore we find these underground luminaries being a whole lot more restrained than I initially imagined them to be. There are plenty of space left between the guitar notes, mutated electronic buzz and subtle samples and one thing that strikes me after listening to these two rather short tracks is that the whole experience feels a bit like seeing a sculptor at work that add (and remove) layer after layer until it’s reached it’s intended format. Nice.

2007-10-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

Bevel Phoenician Terrane (Contraphonic Music)
Pulga Pulga Loves You (Fire Museum)

Bevel is the solo project of Chicago-based musician Via Nuon and Phoenician Terrane is his fourth solo album to this day. What we get is a soft-spoken glimpse into the world of sad balladry and rich folk, bathed in a distant feel of ancient times. What lifts it up above most exploring this familiar terrain these days is the wide breath of instrumentation, the use of strong guitar arrangements, violin, flute, clarinet, synth, electronics, vibraphone, saxophone, upright bass and loops (all played with help from members of Califone, Boxhead Ensemble and Manishevitz), mixed within a dense wall of narcotic beauty and warmth. Imagine a blend of Nick Drake, Rachels and Dirty Three and you’re in the right ballpark.

Italian/Texan Pulga explores similarly moody terrain on the densely layered Pulga Loves You but does so in a more experimental way. All sorts of sounds seep in and out of the mix and what at times first might seem as merely another great drone is soon transformed into something whole lot more grand, with the addition of wailing saxophone, shamanic percussion, electro-acoustic experimentation, subtle sonic chaos or unexpected beats. The icing of the cake is unquestionably “Raga Pulga,” the 19 minutes long dynamic closer which manages to transcend both time and space with some truly otherworldly saxophone playing, bowed strings and clusters of droning splendor.

2007-10-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

White Rainbow Prism of Eternal Now (Kranky)
Eyes Like Saucers Still Living in the Desert… (Last Visible Dog)

Adam Forkner should be a familiar name to avid Broken Face readers due to his involvement with fellow space voyagers in Surface of Eceyon and Yume Bitsu. White Rainbow is Forkner’s solo moniker and although Prism of Eternal Now also tends to gaze at the Big Dipper this one points as much in the direction of progressive rock and the whole shoe-gazer movement. An ocean of delayed guitars dances around waves of fuzzy keyboards and at its best the overall effect is quite seductive and even meditational.

Eyes Like Saucers’ Still Living in the Desert (But Mostly Inside My Head) is just as inspired by space and admittedly even more out there. It’s the solo effort of a former urDog member and one can definitely sense the relation, although this one turns inwards much more than any of the urDog albums ever did. What we get here is an absolutely essential piece of music constructed from bleak song fragments interspersed with shimmering waves of haunting Indian pedal harmonium bliss and electronic bedroom experimentation. It all sounds like some nearly lost memory that you wish you could get rid of, but no matter what you do will be with you in one way or the other for the rest of your life. These mostly instrumental tracks creep up on you like an unexpected madness so reading that the whole thing was recorded when jeffrey k spent most of the year 2006 living within a Volkswagen van in the northern Arizona desert with nothing but his dog, harmonium and 4-track recorder doesn’t really come as a surprise. When traveling through this desert almost ten years ago I fell in love with the place and listening to Still Living in the Desert is a bit like playing those scenes for my eyes again. The slightly Nico-inspired dish presented here is not easy to digest but the reward is plentiful for everyone willing to make the effort.

2007-10-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #27

Astralis is the latest addition to the hopefully forever-swelling discography of the German husband and wife duo Fit & Limo. They’re still on September Gurls, and they can still be found somewhere in the midst of late-night acid-folk songwriting and rich psych/prog compositions. Fit and Limo take the late ‘60s work of the Incredible String Band, Comus and Pearls Before Swine as a starting point and add their own unique voice in the form of various exotic instruments and intricate male/female harmonies. The end result is transcendental bliss of the highest order, easily ranking with the band’s brightest moments.

The self-titled disc from Glockenspiel (Krayon Recordings) is similarly hypnotic and entrancing but manages to be so with more of a “less is more" aesthetic. Intensely meditative and ambient textures created from tapes, bubbling electronics, haunting percussion and effect-laden guitars washes build swirling melodies that are destined to orbit around your head over and over until you finally give in to the sonic splendor. Rich emotional depths, adding so much contrast that it’s heartbreaking, highlight these insular drones. The whole album is very dream-like, mystical and fascinating, like being in the middle of a fog bank and totally loosing your sense of direction.

Mofongo is the moniker of Puerto Rican José Ayala and on the Tumbao EP (Aagoo Records) he offers an intriguing sound collage constructed from found sounds, samples, field recordings and drum tracks from Broken Face fave Keith Fullerton Whitman. Incessantly pounding beats move across a plane packed with experimental details and fragments. Imagine a mix of outer limits electronica, quiet white noise and stray sounds in general and you’re getting close to what this one is all about.

2007-09-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

RST Axes (Last Visible Dog)

You may have heard claustrophobic drones, frost-clad sound clusters and windswept tone fluctuations before but if you haven’t heard New Zealand one-man combo RST you simply haven’t heard it all. There are probably a handful of drone practitioners that are capable of shaping similarly powerful guitar sculptures, but I can’t think of anyone doing it this precise. There’s a gravitational pull in RST’s music that simply has to be heard to be believed. RST dips his toes in a stream of electric sparks and slowly waves his arms in a gust of static electro-magnetism. The results are so electric that you can see those wavelengths right for your eyes, but instead of solely turning inward RST flavors his dense drone layers with enough organic qualities to make it not only digestible but also existential.

2007-09-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

Grails Burning Off Impurities (Temporary Residence)

My first thought when listening to the opening “Soft Temple” was that this sounds a bit like a combination of Hochenkeit, Davis Redford Triad and Cul de Sac. When reading that Steven Wray Lobdell helped producing this sprawling album it’s not difficult to see why. Grails seems to share Lobdell’s love for Eastern psychedelia, organic Krautrock ambience, space and high-octane riffing. The results presented here are a whole lot more structured than the aforementioned ‘Triad but you can definitely sense that they’ve been to the same places.

What Grails does which is so great is to create an instrumental rock album with shiploads of dynamics that never gets predictable. On the contrary this is a disc, or dbl LP, that continues to surprise all the way through its eights tracks. This might very well be one of those rare occasions when something truly great actually gets hyped. Just like with any Agitation Free album this is music that is ideal for long train rides or for laying down at the deserted beach staring at the ever-changing sky.

2007-09-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Autumn Galaxy Emperor’s Garden (House of Alchemy)

Autumn Galaxy is Brad Rose and Ville Mosquiitto and Emperor’s Garden is another all too limited CD-R on the impeccable House of Alchemy imprint. Carefully created drone webs of the dense variety seeps in and out of your conscience with thunderously powerful physicality. The buzz of the opener is replaced by guitar strum and spectral folk in “In Your Silver Secret” while the nightmarish “Lighthouse on the Open Sea” makes me long back to that remote hostel/lighthouse we recently visited in the northeastern part of Scotland. “Book of Spells” has more of a fractured folkscapes vibe to it while the closer sounds like a postcard that never got sent. These simple foundations of primitive repeating motifs are pure magic and a brilliant way to end a very complex and intriguing album.

2007-07-30T06:23:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #26

The eminently titled The Stones Know Everything from Fabio Orsi and Gianluca Becuzzi on Digitalis is not only a difficult album to describe, it’s also a bit hard to grasp. The latter is partly due to the sheer length of the recordings presented but also because of the complex ambience we’re served. Although one probably could draw comparisons to folks like Stars of the Lid and the likes I can’t really think of anything sounding quite like this. It’s intense and ambient; droney and microscopical at the same time.

The press kit described Soft Location lead singer as a combination of Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and Sinead O’Connor. I’m tempted to agree and more importantly it’s the one thing that holds together the light folk pop of Diamonds and Gems (MuddyMitten). Some tracks don’t really go anywhere but the title track is worth its feather lightweight in gold.

If someone would have snuck Eluvium’s Copia (Temporary Residence) into my CD player without my knowledge what it is I would never have guessed it’s the work of talented Matthew Cooper. There are virtually no guitars this time out; well actually there are no guitars at all as far as I can hear. What we get instead is a solemn symphony of strings, brass and keys that beautifully investigates hazy memories of love and loss. Words that come to mind while listening to these organic drones: oceans, heartache, the other side and longing.

I’ve praised Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words (AKA Thomas Ekelund) before and although Fall, Fall, Falling (Kalligrammofon) is quite different from its predecessors, it’s most certainly equally great. Melodybased drones build up to harsh walls of sound as well more organic sound affairs. To say that the melodies are at center of things might be to exaggerate but there’s always something for the darkly brooding, anxiety-laden drones to hold on to. File somewhere between Birchville Cat Motel and My Bloody Valentine.

Reading Sounds on Luovaja is an interesting concept compilation inspired by classic literature. Lots of lesser-known Finnish ensembles give way to more familiar underground bands such as Alligator Crystal Moth and Robert Horton. Favorite tracks include Santtu Hirvikorpi’s “Komako” which sounds like snow-clad pine forest turned into sounds and the rainy, primitive bedroom folk of iamheard.

I don’t know much about Southern Man+Pykete (Phaserprone) but it’s perfectly clear that this is not for everyone. Sounds rustle and hiss in a way that makes me think of industrial music as well as minimalism and avant-garde. Difficult music that comes wrapped in simple but great looking packaging.

I’d like to think that the name the Friday Group means a bunch of friends that get together every second Friday or so to drink a bit too much and record. Even though that might not be the case it sure feels like it since the loose improv present on Crystal Eunuch Reversal (Wholly Other/Twilight Flightsound) strikes me both as friendly and even social. I’m not quite sure what social free music is but if your musical friends share your obsession when it comes to abstract, guitar-laced improv featuring folks like Tom Carter, Shawn McMillen, Matt Martinez and Brian C. Smith I know what I’d suggest for Friday night.

More radiant free music can be found on Finnish Vapaa’s self-titled Foxglove disc. It consists of nearly 40 minutes of stumbling improv that stays in the quiet corner almost all the way through. Industrial creakings hide between distant folk shadows and organic free jazz excursions and the outcome is hypnotic to say the least.

Dig psychedelic guitar exorcism bathed in sludge? Then you don’t want to miss the Zodiacs, a band hailing from the same muddy waters as folks like Comets on Fire. We get some serious shards of feedback riding just under squelching guitar lines and impressive drumming. It’s all somewhat melody-based although I realize that I use that term loosely here. Gone (Holy Mountain) is definitely one for fans of high-octane acid/blues rock and seriously disjointed guitar mess.

San Francisco’s Transitional Phase existed for one evening back in 1999, comprised by member of SubArachnoid Space and Gravitar. This self-titled disc for Last Visible Dog displays a space odyssey that tip toes gently over beds of flowing psychedelia and then veer off into sonic dust storms and free-form freak-out mode in general. The aforementioned ‘Space comes to mind as well as the hypnotic spacious spiritual distance of Ash Ra Tempel.

Another member of the Terrascopic family is Saint Joan, a UK combo that creates equally mournful and catchy folk/chamber pop. They have a very sweet accessible aspect, and a darkly seducing side as well; the blend between these tendencies and Ellen Mary McGee’s lulling voice are what push these rain-soaked melodies forward. When McGee is singing “why is far away so far away?” four hours away from my daughters feels like the end of the world. It took me a few listens to fully appreciate The Wrecker’s Lantern (Camera Obscura) but when it hits you, it’s destined to hit you deep both on an emotional and sonic level.

2007-07-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

The Terminals Last Days of the Sun (Last Visible Dog)

Most bands tend to come and go but then there are long-running combos that no matter what always end up doing the right thing. The key to the success of New Zealand super group the Terminals is probably that Last Days of the Sun only is the band’s fifth album despite the fact that they’ve been around for more than twenty years. It can hardly be called a comeback album since they never really went anywhere in the first place, but it sure feels like one.

Given my long-lasting love for New Zealand rock along a murky trail that begins somewhere around Pin Group and Scorched Earth Policy and leads up to the Renderers and the Terminals it’s somewhat difficult for me to stay objective but this sure is love at first glance. The title-track is particularly pleasing with soaring guitars and swirling organ dancing around Stephen Cogle’s dark tenor like a wild animal around its prey.

“Blue Moon” is a typical Terminals ballad overflowing with anxiety and the sense that it might explode at any given second. “Creeper” is another brooding highlight with absolutely glorious guitar/organ interplay. “Premonition” finds Brian Crook at the vocal podium and does as a consequence sound a bit like the Renderers. I can’t say that I mind.

The Terminals crashes and stumbles through twelve tracks of darkly seducing beauty. Near the end there is a sort of resolution and if you listen closely you can actually hear that the earth begins to tremble.

2007-07-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

3” format

I am pretty sure I already told you how much I dig the 3” format. It’s a format that somehow forces all involved, both the musicians and the people responsible for packaging, to be focused and distill their ideas to their purest form.

Phosphene AKA John Cavanaugh does this very well on Phoenix Trees (Rusted Rail), a five-track recording ranging from frail tone puzzles and ghostly ambiguity to TV show themes and spoken dreamstates. There is some sublimely dreamy transportational stuff going on here and it comes highly recommended for anyone reading this. The same goes for label mates Phantom Dog Beneath the Moon that blends a forested folk atmosphere with a gauzy haze showing surprising traces back to folk like Bark Psychosis and even Spaceman 3. This is ultimately a folk album but there is something about Aaron Hurley’s vocals and the appealing slow motion progression that also sends nods in other directions. Captivating and actually quite essential.

House of Alchemy enters the 3” world with Amber Lions’ Pink Panther Blood, a joint project of Valerio Cosi and the Solo Joint (Toni Ruiz and friends). Ominous atmospheric conditions first transmutate into mesmerized melodic strum and then first walks through fogbanks of subtle hiss and beautiful sax loops on this one-track album.

2007-07-28T11:26:00.001-07:00

Pelle Carlberg In A Nutshell (Twentyseven Records)

Former Edson lead singer Pelle Carlberg writes middleclass pop bathed in sweet harmonies and intimacy recalling those Belle & Sebastian albums you’re still returning to.

In A Nutshell is love at first glance and is fantastic at providing a summer soundtrack with enough twists to actually last the entire summer. It’s probably the kind of summer crush that’ll fade away once the leaves start changing color but who cares as long as we get tracks such as the bouncy “I Love You, You Imbecile,” the sunshiny “Pamplona” and the bittersweet melodicism of “Crying All the Way to the Pawnshop.” The icing of the cake is without question “Middleclass Kid,” an up-beat folk pop number that has me humming along more than I probably would like to admit.

In A Nutshell is packed with harmonies, humor and above all makes me feel good. We all need that from time to time, right?

2007-07-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

Area C Haunt (Last Visible Dog)

Although I only caught about ten minutes of Area C’s performance in the sales room at the last Terrastock festival, I instantly knew that this was a name to keen an extra eye on.

This Providence duo opens Haunt with a successful slice of mournful harmonium bliss flowing over introspective guitar ripples. It’s a slowly unfolding drone with much variation and significant attention for details. “Star Names” sees pulses of farfisa spreading out over a riverbank of smooth, cloudlike farfisa and the end result is static, monotonous and quietly disturbing. The same goes for the 20-minute closer “Circle Attractor” which on top of its murky drone bottom displays a melodic element that flows in and out of the mix and thus provides a strong meditative quality. This disc ranges from silent to quite intense but is no matter what packed with so many interesting details that you should use your headphones for maximum sonic pleasure.

2007-07-14T11:23:00.001-07:00

Discolor Bitrsuites (Apilraun Recordings)

Swedish one-man combo Discolor should not be mixed up with the German Fit & Limo-offshoot with the same name. The only thing these two have in common is sonic qualities and in this case we get ocean-deep melodies bathed in fuzz, crackles and Warp-inspired beats. Imagine a mix of Aphex Twin and Flying Saucer Attack at their most controlled and you’re in the right ballpark.

Every now and then droplets of subtle and surprisingly structured pop elements flow out of the speakers like fall leaves on their way to the ground, but around the corner there’s another buzzing crescendo. It’s at these crossroads that Discolor impress the most, but to tell you the truth, the whole thing is quite lovely in a blurry electronica meets pop/noise/ambient kind of way.

2007-06-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Phoenix Cube Walking the Shore (Barl Fire)

This disc is worth the price of admission alone for the fantastic “Love Is An Anchor,” a catchy downcast lo-fi pop nugget that I could play for hours without ever getting tired of it. Simon Lewis aka The Phoenix Cube shares my love for hazy bedroom psychedelia and forested folk brought through an abstract drone filter such as on the lengthy opener “And Spirits Awake”. This eclectic piece wraps up what The Phoenix Cube is all about, a combination of windswept folk, field recordings, chimes, repetitious beats, spaced out drones, shamanic percussion and spoken word. I’ve enjoyed Lewis (who also is reviews editor for The Ptolemaic Terrascope online) previous outings as well but this one might very well be the best.

2007-06-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

The Zanzibar Snails Introdewcing (Mayyrh)
IDI*amin B.C.E (Mayyrh)

Thank god for Texan underground music. The list of Texan musical discoveries that in one way or the other have changed the way I look upon music is very extensive. I wouldn’t say that the Zanzibar Snails’ Introdewcing album has that sort of effect but it’s still a really inspiring listening experience. The opening “On An Oblong Plane” is a 29 minutes long number that is a constantly evolving composition with some beautiful sax staggered alongside washes of guitar abstraction and crackling electronics. Its alienating, enveloping sound, seemingly devoid from any notion of sense, wanders freely like a drunk trying to cross a busy city street.

The unexpected use of saxophone gives the dark, unsettling noise/drone sculpture a slight free jazz touch but that’s just an additional flavor as what this is all about is to continue along that trajectory line towards bliss-out spectrum with a static electronic drone feast garnished with enough personal twists to make it stand out as something very unique, even in an abstract corner of the music universe.

IDI*amin shares some members with the Zanzibar Snails and given its sound I’d call them their slightly more rocking cousin that spends most of his time lying down staring at the Big Dipper. That means that we get squealing and drifting guitars going for the stars but this one doesn’t just follow the usual intergalactic track, as oscillator, keys and sax also are important components of the mix. In every crossing and in every bend these guys are loosing the most convenient track and are diving deep into bubbling hotpools filled with corroded noise destruction. The result is a damaged extended sound sculpture spread out over a dusted sonic plane suggestive of many a fine New Zealand free noise/rock/drone champions.

And as if all this wasn’t enough, both these gems come wrapped in outstandingly beautiful cardboard sleeves. You’ve been advised.

2007-06-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

Sandoz Lab Technicians The Western Lands (Last Visible Dog)

I just wrote a glowing review of this disc for a Swedish on-line publication so I am not sure I’ll write one in English as well. But all you need to know is pretty much to grab this one asap as it very well might be my favorite recording of 2007. Essential stuff to say the least.

2007-06-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #25

It’s time to check in for one of those all too sporadic After the goldrush columns. First out is Up Two Sticks Road (Last Visible Dog), a brand new outing from New Zealand improv rock super group The Idle Suite. We get dizzying clattery free rock driven forward by two amazing drummers (James Kirk and Greg Cairns) and lots of guitars and the occasional keyboard side trip. The structured dissonance at hand has that hard-to-describe New Zealand feel to it that from time to time makes it quite irresistible.

Sheffield’s Chora and Leeds’ Lanterns team up for an interesting split CD-R on Screetching Snowflake. It covers Chora’s loose acoustic improvisations and fractured folkscapes as well as Lanterns’ dark, guitar-based drone miniatures. Very nice.

I’ve praised New Zealand one-man band Pumice (AKA Stefan Neville) before and his new Pebbles album on Soft Abuse is no exception. It continues where the predecessors left off but somehow manages to take that Galbrathian outsider vibe to even more powerful territories. Skewed folk blends with Flying Nun-inspired pop concoctions and the overall feel is despite its melancholic vibe slightly less dark and more uplifting than some of his previous outings. Quite accessible and very sweet in an Xpressway meets Pip Proud kind of way.

It pains me to only write a few lines about Stone Baby’s Black Blossom Blues (House of Alchemy) as it’s such an impressive foray into the world of black drones garnished with shiploads of tape manipulation. Stone Baby creates a twisted noise sculpture, emitting at various times hum and drone-scapes, fractured string grinding, primitive oscillations, squashing guitars and so much more. The all to brief “Closed Door” offers a surprisingly straightforward close based around a simple melody embellished with a suggestive kind of brilliance and a great sense of melancholia. Whilst checking out the brilliant House of Alchemy label make sure to also place a order for Grant Capes (VxPxC, Thousands) solo project Sleepwalkers Local 242. His Dreamlands sounds a bit like the title suggests, shimmery guitar washes and massive drone clouds that do just about everything they can to re-unite with the horizon.

Last out, but by no means least, is a new album from The Spacious Mind, by far Sweden’s finest space/drone/psychedelia/krautrock/prog-rock explorers. The new Gentle Path Highway album on their own Goddamn I’m A Countryman imprint might not be my personal favorite (maybe due to its more evident prog tendencies) in their catalogue but it’s still such a fine listen. The group has an unequalled talent to glacially build up a mystical and powerful atmosphere that no matter chosen sound level strikes me as deeply spiritual and even mind-cleansing.

2007-05-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

Tanakh Saunders Hollow (Camera Obscura)

Tanakh’s Saunders Hollow is supposedly a sister record to last year’s Ardent Fevers and given its solemn take on drowsy renaissance folk, soft but dusty jazz structures, wide-open Americana, scorching psychedelia and darkly seducing drones you can most definitely see why. Here we find former back-up singer Michele Poulos taking over as lead vocalist and although I am a big fan of Jesse Poe’s voice it’s still a welcome change, if not for anything else for sheer variation. One can almost sense that this has given Poe more time to concentrate on the musician/producer side of things, as I can’t remember ever hearing a Tanakh record with this attention to details and deep textural scope.

The eclectic instrumentation includes, but are not limited to: bass, electric guitars, tablas, ukuleles, electronics, violins, vibraphone, harpsichords, organs, pianos, saxophones, acoustic guitars, lap steels, drums and although that might give you a rough idea of what to expect it won’t quite prepare you for masterworks such as the swelling splendor of the slightly ethnic title track. Tanakh carry heavy weights of folk history on their shoulders but somehow they make classic song writing sound their own and at times even unique.

2007-03-30T04:43:00.000-07:00

Chris Smith Bad Orchestra (Death Valley Records)

I’ve been a fan of Australian guitarist Chris Smith ever since hearing his magical but neglected masterpiece Cabin Fever album in the late ‘90s. It consists of fractured mini-symphonies that walks the tightrope between droning noise and manipulated semi-pop with stunning ease. It still stands out as an album on par with New Zealand soundsmith Alastair Galbraith’s finest work.

It’s been a while since we last heard from Smith but when he gets back he does so in an absolutely remarkable way. Bad Orchestra is an album that adds a strong song-based element but without loosing the sense of aural claustrophobia that comes wrapped around every dark ambient tone. Imagine a mix of Galbraith’s abstract drone noise pieces and astral ghost fog, the Dead C's abstruse ambient noise and thick streaks of fluttering feedback, meandering Morricone-like sound sculptures recalling the open vistas of the never-ending outback and soaring Neil Young-inspired country/blues jams and you’re in the right confusing ballpark. Add to all this the occasional lilting piano ballad and organ snippets and we got ourselves an equally perplexing and inspiring album.

Smith himself describes his influences as “the razor-fine line separating yourself from the babbling hobo you cross the road to avoid. Post- Roman Catholicism/LSD, the Devil and the deep blue sea.” If that description sounds even remotely interesting you owe it yourself to check out one of this time’s unknown legends.

2007-03-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

Evening Fires s/t (Deep Water)

From the same label that brought us the amazing Clear Spots discs comes this killer CD-R, an mostly instrumental forest exploration that offers up little snippets of some long lost forest folk album. Shimmery and pastoral, hypnotic and transcendent free folk that spin a repetitive sound web that seems to unite the MYMWLY collective and the Irish Deserted Village label with some of the finest things on Digitalis. The sounds fly majestically over sun-drenched meadows and summer-clad forests like a flock of birds playing in the wind. Evening Fires, that includes members of the Clear Spots and Peacefeather, weave a delicate world of surprisingly structured folky clatter and Appalachian countryside, simply strummed guitars, lilting finger picked melodies, little bursts of primitive percussion, weary flute, bits of hazy drones and organ that wheeze out short mournful melodies that float just above the whirling background ambience. This is a stunning album that is likely to be criminally neglected.

2007-03-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #24

In some ways I guess I have this strange love and hate relationship to Texas, but when it comes to Texan music with a certain psychedelic flavor there’s nothing but love. That’s very much the case for Houstonite Kay Bonya a k a Kable who is back with her fourth album for the Fleece imprint. It’s been five years since we last heard from Bonya which is a shame given what she presents on Boar of the Forest. It continues along a similar reckless folk-psych-indie rock-noise trajectory as Tardy All the Time, Chlorophyll and 3 but here she takes things even deeper down those psychedelicised waters. In most cases there is a rough skeleton of a folk song that works as some sort of sonic platform, but to different degrees these structures are buried in fuzzy guitars, Texan noise and psychedelic production. Beautiful and primitive outsider music created from an armory of guitars, banjo, mandolin, keys, percussion and all sorts of homemade instrumentation. Don’t let us wait this long next time, ok?

John Weinland’s Demersville (John Weinland) offers, despite its well-known tone, something new and something familiar for those who have followed folks like Cat Power, Smog, Neil Young and Elliot Smith. Not really sure if there’s actually a specific element that is new but there’s that “something” about this country-tinged melancholia and nostalgia that has me asking for more. Demersville’s emotional roller-coaster folk/country-pop is flavored with a convincingly seductive voice and the use of piano, strings and pedal steel. This might all be classic ingredients for subdued folk pop, but to make it sound human and real and not just like one more self-loathing cliché is the real achievement here. Music rooted in darkness is to tell you the truth not something that works that well on a warm spring day but if I know the Swedish spring there will be more rain and snow coming this way. Can’t wait.

John Weinland links to Rollerball through their hometown Portland, Oregon. Apart from this they don’t have much in common, but given our regularity when it comes to writing about these cats you have probably guessed that we dig what they’re up to. All music that transcends time and culture while at the same time treading over new sonic territories is well worth a listen in my book, and it’s hard to think of anyone doing just that more than Rollerball. I haven’t loved all of their dozen full-length albums but this cross-pollinated musical hybrid on Wallace Records displays the band’s talent for diversity, but at the same time all ten tracks pulse with a kind of organic energy I am not sure I have heard from the band since their stellar Trail of the Butter Yeti album. This is jazz for the ones who enjoy staring at the sky, exploring the space from a comfortable distance, the kind of slightly deranged, jazz streaked expeditions I’ve come to love so much.

We all love Keith Wood’s Hush Arbors project, right? If not, it’s time to start tapping into his dreamy folk world and what could be a better way than with a re-release of his first full-length for Digitalis, Under Bent Limb Trees. This two CD set, housed in a lovely gatefold cardboard jacket, shows a lot of Wood’s wide musical repertoire, ranging from delicate folk melodies and old forgotten tales of what’s hidden under those moss-clad stones to heavily-delayed repetitive guitar lines and soft, dense clouds of psychedelic drone primitivism. Can and will be filed next door to Six Organs of Admittance and that my friends, is nothing but praise.

Giant Skyflower Band is a new project featuring Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Thuja etc) and Shayde Sartin (Flying Canyon) that according to Donaldson himself is his answer to "bummer psych". I leave it to you to decide what to include under such a tag but the stoned psych-folk-pop nuggets present on Blood of the Sunworm (Soft Abuse) has a stumbling and somewhat fractured character that seems to fit the description eminently well. The heartfelt and honest music of The Skygreen Leopards comes to mind but this is somehow both more damaged and poppy at the same time. Definitely one for fans of the aforementioned ‘Leopards, Skip Spence and Syd Barrett.

2007-03-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #23

Philadelphia musician Margie Wienk’s debut album under the Fern Knight moniker sure had its bright moments but it’s not even near the sonic genius presented on the aptly titled Music for Witches and Alchemists (VHF). What we get here are some beautiful fusions of delicate British folk and dreamy psychedelia filtered through a prism of surprisingly rich arrangements and endlessly deep emotions. Primarily constructed from guitar, voice and cello but definitely one of those album where the sum is a whole lot more impressive than its parts.

I’ve been impressed by a lot of Robert Horton’s work but I don’t think there’s a single album I’ve returned to as many times as this collaboration album with Dax Pierson. Like the title suggest Pablo Feldman Sun Riley (AA/Nosordo) pays tribute to Morton Feldman, Pablo Augustus, Sun Ra and Terry Riley and although that blend might seem a bit far-fetched each of these individuals shines through on these brilliant recordings. The dominant instrument here is unquestionably the melodica and top of that Horton spins drone webs delicate and subtle as a breeze or a whisper. The album has a strong meditative effect, and I have no problem what so ever seeing people falling asleep to this record, and I don't mean that as criticism in any way. On the contrary its darkly serene tones are destined to create some amazing dreams, and if there ever was a safe way into the unconscious, the sounds of Pablo Feldman Sun Riley might very well be the perfect choice.

Live In Mimer (Ideal) captures Gothenburg-based Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words’ dark minimalism, quiet static ambience, metallic drones and low-end rumbles in the live setting. These tracks were recorded at the Norberg festival in 2004, a festival held in an abandoned mine and the historic traces of industry, machines and long working hours is something that is very much present throughout. Possibly my favorite recording from this solo outfit, and that my friends, tells a lot.

I’ve never been a fan of Dredd Foole (aka Dan Ireton) to the same extent as some of my friends but I have to admit that Daze on the Mounts (Family Vineyard) makes me question my previous impressions. In collaboration with Matt Valentine and Erika Elder he displays soulful avant folk of the traced-out variety, that lands somewhere between Tim Buckley, Jandek and MV & EE. Very nice.

There are some albums that you just never grow tired of and one of those is In Gowan Ring’s The Glinting Spade, so hearing new material from B’eirth is always of great interest around these parts no matter if the end results are called In Gowan Ring or Birch Book. Fortune & Folly (Helmet Room Recordings) is less gothic, droney and apocalyptic than In Gowan Ring but the more structured and song-based material presented here is still dark in a Leonard Cohen kind of way. It gets a bit repetitious after a while but this is overall genuine, heartfelt and unforgettable.

2007-03-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

After the goldrush #22

Over the last cpl of months I have seriously started to consider writing an excuse letter to labels sending stuff in my direction as I’ve had a very difficult time to find much time at all to write. So, let’s start with another one of these After the goldrush columns to get the ball in motion.

First out is Alan Sondheim’s Ski/nn (Fire Museum), a recording of solo acoustic guitar and alpine zither songs. I am not sure if it’s the alpine zither or Sondheim’s musicianship, but this disc keeps displaying new corners of the primitive guitar spectrum with every new listen. In a way it has me thinking of avant-country-jazz-sci fi guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and that’s indeed high praise. Sondheim shares Chadbourne’s predilection for exploring the traditional American styles in a highly improvisational and unorthodox way. We get a kind of guitar playing that’s created by someone who obviously is technically skilled when it comes to his instrument but who manages to leave theory and concept behind in favor for emotion.

Poland’s The Magic Carpathians have been covered in the pages of the Broken Face on numerous occasions and their new Mirrors (Vivo) album is just as mesmerizing as any of their previous work. We get Central European folk, nature-clad drones, rural psychedelia, fiery free jazz sections and surging storms of found sounds and field recordings of nature that blends with very unorthodox and varied vocal techniques. This might seem like a very mixed bag but while the record jumps from one idea to the next, it always maintains an incredible listenability.

Richard Skelton’s new project is called A Broken Consort and it proves to be just as exciting as his previous drone explorations under the Harlassen and Carousell monikers. The Shape Leaves (Sustain-Release) creates a sonic plane in which such earthly considerations as time and space quickly melts away. Add to this a welcome folk flavor and you are onto something quite remarkable. This is an equally contemplative and challenging foray through delicate folk, visceral sonic abstraction, corrosive overtones and tasty minimalism all bathed in a mysterious pool of bowed strings. Lovely.

I’ve find myself taking a long time to full absorb Californian Starving Weirdos Father Guru album on Azul Discografica. Not necessarily because it takes a lot of time to get into their music but it depends on having some spare time on your own without too much distraction. We get three epic and minimal, slightly AMM-ish tracks that sure takes its time to reach its goal but that’s sort of the point when it comes to this sort of glacial electro-acoustic improv. Imagine an improv version of Double Leopards and you’re in the right ballpark.

Fulborn Teversham is a new name and just the fact that they show up with their debut album on the fine Pickled Egg imprint is enough to get me interested. Count Herbert II is an eclectic sonic stew that idea-wise has me thinking of the genre-defying Bablicon, but this is also decidedly more electronic and poppy. Elements of post-punk and catchy electronica move right into joyous experimentation and slow-moving jazz structures of highest possible caliber. On top of all this there’s even some prog flourishes and although this could be a bit too much for some to handle I am most definitely in love. It’s been long since I heard such a playful and downright fun record. Definitely one for parties with an audience asking for more than background music.

2007-02-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

More bad news

There seems to be no end when it comes to bad news these days. My condolences to friends and family.

"With deep regret, we must announce that Charles Gocher passed away yesterday in Seattle due to a long battle with cancer at the age of 54. He is survived by the two of us who adopted him as a brother 25 years ago and his many friends around the world. He will be missed more than most could ever know. Our thanks to everyone for their support and encouragement during the past three, very difficult years. Many of you were not aware that Charles was ill and that’s because he wanted it that way. Details of a memorial in his honor will be announced soon."
---Alan and Richard Bishop

2007-02-07T05:17:00.001-08:00

Astral Social Club s/t (VHF)

Leeds' finest drone machine operator Neil Campbell recently decided to quit the consistently amazing Vibracathedral Orchestra. Long-time fans of his work will be happy to hear that there are a number of Campbell-related releases in the pipeline though, including a few under the Astral Social Club moniker.

First out is a self-titled disc for VHF that compiles Campbell's favorite tracks from some of the long out of print CD-Rs under this name. We get an hour of music that truly defies most existing genres, coming off as a strange mix of shimmering loop-laced electronic drones, psychedelic ambience, techno pulses, rousing noise mantras and the kind of thick lava flow of radiant free music that characterizes the aforementioned VCO. This disc offers a blurry (and fascinating) gate to a new corner of the UK drone/screech/fuzz/hiss universe.

2007-02-05T04:35:00.000-08:00

Mike Tamburo and His Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge
The Ghosts of Marumbey
Music Fellowship/New American Folk Hero

This starts with lingering guitar notes seeping out of the speakers like smoke rings slowly spreading in the air. All sorts of guitar sounds are key ingredients throughout but don’t let the subtle, delicate start fool you to believe that this disc offers nothing but meandering reflection. As things progress more and more effects and droney experimentalism are added to the mix. Grace and business side by side, like tumbleweeds approaching urbanity. I’ve only listened to this complex sound affair a few times but I already know that this is one of those growers and definitely on my retrospective top 2006 list.

2007-02-03T23:56:00.001-08:00

Roy Montgomery Inroads: New and Collected Works (Rebis)

There are probably only a handful of bands and artists that I’ve been truly obsessed with, and one of them is unquestionably New Zealand folk/noise/drone guitarist Roy Montgomery. Given this it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this collection of singles and unreleased tracks works as true balsam for my soul. After receiving this disc a week ago or so I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes Montgomery’s music hit me so deep, and after reading Bill Meyer’s liner notes for this double disc release I think I know the answer. Meyer writes that “Roy Montgomery’s sounds do the trick because he’s infused them with the power of his own memories and emotions, by drawing on his, he summon yours.” It’s obvious that you don’t share his memories but that doesn’t really matter as the minimalistic guitar explorations run through a squadron of effect boxes does an impressive job at transporting the listener wherever he or she feels it’s necessary to go.

As for myself these two discs makes me see two entirely different things, first of all the heart and soul of a friend that recently passed away. He shared my love for Montgomery’s music and to hear these classic singles played again is like walking on a vibrating guitar string straight to the place where he currently is. It’s saddening but also powerful and intensely beautiful. On a happier note these sounds makes me revisit the dramatic natural vistas that my wife and I explored in New Zealand in the late ‘90s. Until we find the time to go back to what simply has to be the most beautiful part of the world, I am happy to relive those scenes from the south island and memories from the rugged coastline through the eyes and ears of Mr. Montgomery. Or as Meyer puts it: “This music carries a fade-resistant charge, it’s ready to spark your own mind and help you map a life with sound. Time to hit the road.”

2007-02-03T23:44:00.001-08:00

Hototogisu Chimärendämmerung (De Stijl)

Matthew Bower and Marcia Bassett’s power duo Hototogisu shouldn’t be a new name to most of you although I believe that I (surprisingly) never have written anything about them in these pages. Given their background in bands such as Sunroof!, Double Leopards, Un, GHQ, Skullflower and Total you can probably guess the overall theme of these recordings, the one of being repetitiously thrown into a hotpool of boiling psychedelic waters. Roaring guitars wrestle with cascading viola tones (and overtones) in a tunnel of electronic claustrophobia. We get extensive explosions without any obvious beginnings and ends. Just like with Bower’s Sunroof! the one thing that pulls me in time after time is the monolithic mantras at hand. This is repetition in its most damaged and fascinating form.

2007-02-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

The Servant Sun Cold Harbour (House of Alchemy)

The Servant Sun is an underground dream project including Peter Wright and Brad Rose, which sounds like ghostly folk whispers and nature-clad drones hovering like mist over urban meadows. Peter Wright’s music has always struck me as oceanic while the aural pictures of Rose often have had more of a forest feel to them. I guess you could say that Cold Harbour is a combination of both and in that way this is indeed a very successful collaboration. Majestic frozen lakes and abandoned settlements by the sea are placed right next to juniper trees and meadows packed with blossoming flowers. It’s in the midst of these scenic contradictions that you’ll find the true beauty of this somewhat limited gem. This is yet another proof of these guys’ talent and the fact that House of Alchemy is one of the most interesting micro-labels around.