Don't Burn The Fires

... On a more wholesome note, I give you the crowning couple of the husband-and-wife band trend, which has spread like wildfire throughout indie scenes since. Toody and Fred and their various drummers still wear the belt for hardest working, most solid and sonically consistent performing, producing independent artists. With a recorded output that didn't quit for eighteen years, Dead Moon have left in their tombstone shaped shadow a legacy of life changing and heart breaking anthems. The legacy began with this record, packed with ballads of rock 'n' roll's seedy past and foreboding future. From the opening twang and drum hit of In the Graveyard to the chillingly somber singing and dreamy guitar of Dead in the Saddle, from the meddling drones of Don't Burn the Fires to the bitter sorrow of I Hate the Blues, In The Graveyard is the prototypical Dead Moon trip, and a fantastic introduction to one of Portland's longest running music/culture institutions.

I'm never comin' home

More Power to the People

Rounding out the scintilating trio of 1971 freak outs (see Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse & There's a Riot Goin' On) is this, Funkadelic's LSD-drenched manifesto. This masterpiece takes the shape of an entropic epic in retrograde motion and like those other two apocalyptic sonic documents of '71, Maggot Brain comes off as generally rapped up in post-60s disillusionment. Opening with George Clinton's prophesizing "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up. I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe, I was not offended for I knew I had to rise above it ALL, or drown in my own SHIT" we are swiftly swept into Eddie Hazel's sludgey six-string trascendence. Clinton's bold production choice to drop all accompanying instruments but guitar arpeggios and snare drum tell us from the start who is in the driver's seat for this experiential trip of an album as well as what a visionary he truly was. With an acoustic guitar riff we're chimed into the upbeat ode to capitalistic love, "Can You Get to That" only to headbang that lesson away to the promiscuous "Hit It and Quit It". Closing the first side is the nursery rhyme derived plea for the virtue of community amongst classes "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks. "Super Stupid" provides a heavy-rocking reintroduction and a sound that Lenny Kravitz would make a career out of in the inverted 60s. Following is "Back In Our Minds", a deranged return to consciousness setting us up for the domestic degeneracy, street rioting and ultimate nuclear devastation of the thoroughly corporealizing "Wars of Armageddon". In just six numbers Funkadelic manages to take you on a journey from your cerebral cortex to your bowels and through every facet of humanity in between.

I've linked for you here the reissue with the incredible bonus tracks "Whole Lot of BS" and "I Miss My Baby" as well as the unmixed version of the Maggot Brain jam, replete with acid fried backing track. Go on Hit It an' Quit!

AfroFuture

This needs no introduction nor petty bantering text soon to be lost in the vortex of the internet. What you need to know: Black History Month is here, it has been here. Black Americans are here, they have been here. They have changed things greatly and for so much the better. You need to appreciate them, my posts this month are going to give you some musical examples of why. You are now entering an outerspace.

Space is the Place

HAVE A HIT

The first PSF Tokyo Flashback compilation was my teenage introduction to the long and devote tradition of Japanese musical pyschedelia. Not sure, but it seems like at the time this was released it must have been a pretty exciting little pu pu platter of unearthed recordings obscure enough to make at least the western enthusiasts salivate. It was here that I got a formal penetrating of my virgin ears to the disturbing utterances of one Keiji Haino, both alone in a large room and with his longstanding ensemble 不失者 (Fushitsusha). What this little sampler does particularly well is present both the rocking, wanking (High-Rise, White Heaven) and the dark, mystical (Ghost, 不失者, 光束夜, 灰野敬二) sides of the early Japanese scene, as well as those that are the summation of both (Marble Sheep , Verzerk). As far as personal faves go I needn't go on about the importance of Haino or his veteran act (whose 1990 live session here will fuck you up), however I cannot speak highly enough of Verzerk or 光束夜 (Kousokuya). The former, although somewhat trad, deliver a crusher of fuzzy lead heavy psych bordering on metal which the internet claims to be their only work. This is perhaps explained by two of the members evidently pictured literally behind bars in the liners. Kousokuya on the other hand yield what seems to be a characteristically suffering and broken performance that gets at a drunken and deeply depressed emotional interior to pysch rock's posturing facade. Though, really, I love every track, its hard not to also give High-Rise honourable mention for their contribution (notable namesake to the illustrious Japanese outfit from my last post) and clearly being way too cool, and loud, to hear anyone who accuses them of a dated aesthetic. Through live and studio representations, this comp communicates superbly the religiosity with which long-haired Tokyo-ites have practiced their duly inherited craft for decades. Although we weren't there, and we missed the acid, we can still have the Flashback.



Back in '95

Mellow Out

"Now that's a HIT!"

 Brooklyn ZOO!



Just saw that I only had four posts for January and started feeling guilty. Well, what do these three disparately legendary recordings have in common? They are all OLD and DIRTY... and DIRTAY! Just as aesthetic similarities can be drawn from Eric's Trip and Ulver's 90s four-track masterpieces, Mainliner, GBV and ODB formed these seminal works through seemingly similar DIY approaches. While four-track tape portastudios are likely implicated in each of these records, it is a whole other common element to these artist's worlds that each manages to capture on disc: dirt. Grit, degradation, imperfection; the creative influence of the presence of such qualities in these musicians' artistic environs shape their output and are readily acknowledged and, in one way or another, transformed. For Mainliner, dirstortion, fuzz and minimalistic repetition are a direct route, through hynoptic sonic immersion, to obscure subconscious realms. GBV's Robert Pollard understands the importance of the spontaneous recording (and beer) to capturing great melodies and pop sensibility. For Dirty, existence in the world's underside is the longest and most intensive scholarly experience and yields knowledge that is tangible through its universal cultural applicablity. Get dirty.

  

Reverse Crystal

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan is a very cool art collective, I suggest you read about them on the interwebs. They also became a cool band this year and put together a simply amazing S/T record that invokes sounds reminiscent of gamelan, garage rock, Deep Purple, Can, Cure, Soft Machine, Amon Duul II and Cocteau Twins. Sounds pretty fucked right? It is. This psychedelic black noise soup is best served chilled with a heaping side of mind fog. Truly one of the more original projects active in the Montreal scene at this time. Bravo!

Sea of trees

joke's on you

 

In opposition to every other blogger without an opinion I refuse to dismiss this minor masterpiece of psych dream pop as simply an homage to The United States of America. While the influence the latter had on this album is audible, the discrepancy between the two is very significant: one is the ultimate example of where the term "psychedelic" is obligatorily but fairly inaccurately applied and the second is the total realization of the values the term has come to imply. In my understanding of it, psychedelia is, to an extent, the merging of aesthetic and experience. The connection the genre has with drugs is obviously integral and it is easy to go the route of saying "if it's not trippy, it's not psych". However, this approach presents several problems; not everyone finds the same things trippy when on certain drugs and not everyone does drugs (nor needs to, necessarily) to enjoy psychedelic or 'trippy' music. In fact, I argue that the litmus test works better with those not so fried as to just find any shitty jamming trippy. And Broadcast's Haha Sound passes with flying, swirling droplets of colour. What we find here is the perfect marriage of sonic texture and tonal content. At no one moment are you asked to sacrifice form to focus on content or vice-verse. As good friend and extraordinary artist/bouzouki-ist Peter Nevins put it, in so many words: Trish Keenan has a way of leading you with her haunting vocals and melodies, through even the most twisted, acid-drenched, fuzzed-out passages. She takes you on the long cut and sometimes leaves you lost in their depths. Knowledge of her untimely and cachet-free death adds a dimension of the disillusioning to these warm yet cold embraces. Free of the invasive orchestrations and other 60s pop-kitsch that mar artists like The U.S.A. pour moi, Haha showcases a band with a great grasp on what elements worked in the early days of psych updating them with ease and a blotter full of musical talent.

  

Colour Me   

My New Soundtrack to Raising Children on the Commune as an Acid Burnt-Out Hippie Farmer

YETI

A classic, straddling raucous fuzz-tone garage rock and psych with all the musical scholarship that made the krauts known for their rock. This pines less for analysis than simple, stoned, couch-sunken appreciation... ahh yea.

Psychsquatch