Sonic Youth has released a series of records on their own SYR label, many of which consist mainly of improvisations recorded in their studio during rehearsals or between and among album sessions. Most if not all of these releases are labeled in languages which are not English. The reasons for this are obscure…
I own two of these releases (#1 and #2, I believe …) and I like them quite well. I’ve had #2 for longer and played it more often, so last night I got out #1 to listen to while reading a short story by Irvine Welsh (which mentions heroin only briefly so sppbt to his reputation … we’ll see how the collection progresses, but so far the writing is really solid good and I would recommend it, the book is called The Acid House).
The Sonic Youth record was mellower than I recalled, pleasantly droning and pulsating, and after a minute or two a little light went on in my brain and I realized it was one of those increasingly-common large-sized 45rpm releases, which I was playing at 33&1/3.
I let it go. It sounded good. I will listen to side two today in the same manner.
It has become typical that I prefer those large-size 45rpm releases when played at the wrong speed. This first came to light during Marc Cantlin’s visit to Los Angeles back in the spring of 2009… said visit documented here:
Right around that time I had purchased a record by Akron/Family called “Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free.” I sat down to listen to it and was really enjoying it a lot, really into it … and it took me half of side one (of four) to realize I was listening too slow. Or rather, the record was moving too slow. Perhaps I was listening too fast.
I returned the album to its intended speed and started over … to my great dissatisfaction. It was weak, lightweight, affected, even silly!* (On the other hand, I had discovered afro-grunge.)
Since that time I have found in my collection also a record by Omar Rodriguez Lopez called, I think, “Please Heat This Eventually” with guest Damo Suzuki which I’ve been playing on the wrong speed for years and never realized. It’s better that way, trust me.
* To be fair to Akron/Family, who are a worthy group, the album sounds pretty good, especially sides 2-4, if you have not just listened to it at the wrong speed first. Contrast is, in this case, everything.
I am greatly honored (again) to have my work listened to, dug, and raved about by the Arch-Drude himself, Julian Cope. You can read his rant here, about 2/3 down the page:
Among other things, he says that this disc “showcases both 5-Track’s role as natural instrumentalist freebluesman, but tends to overlook/underplay his excellence as a singer of freaked out-yet-enlightened field holler,” which is a WONDERFUL thing to hear. He also says, and this might even be better: “What I rarely get sent – and what makes 5-Track so unique – are songs of such calibre as ‘Floating Around’, ‘It Could Be Time’, ‘Hot Potato Pie’ or the be-all-and-end-all epic ‘He’s not Dead, He’s Just In Texas’.”
Current listening includes “Fight On, Your Time Ain’t Long,” a collection (sans liner notes) of acoustic gospel including a track by Bukka White and also a whole lot of amazing stuff I’ve never heard of with lines like “I wouldn’t mind dying / but I got to go by myself…”
This LP is fun to play GO to. Really. Just ask John Norwood. It’s on Mississippi Records, if that helps you any.
On cassette I am playing close attention to “Good As I Been To You,” an early-90s recording of acoustic folk-blues by Bob Dylan. Favorite tracks on there include “Blackjack Davey” and “Jim Jones” though “Froggy Went A-Courting” is hard to deny. Bob still using his ’80s voice for the most part. He settles back down through-out his next, similar, album, “World Gone Wrong” and has regained his fullness by “Time Out Of Mind” yea unto the present day. Go Bob!
And, of course, anything that sounds good in the rain is welcome on my turntable today. Time for coffee and staring into the clouds.
So there’s this little green record, and it’s been making me really happy.
I’ve been wanting to write about it for a while, but I wasn’t sure what to say about it.
I still don’t know what to say about it, except that I really like it, a lot.
The little green record is by TOMMY SANTEE KLAWS, and it seems to be called Apathetic Dental Technician 7″
Side A either has two songs or two titles, and they are: “Dead Leaves & Bumblebees” / “Crack & Chants”
Side B has one: “Methantiphon”
I think I’ve been listening to side B more … The music is slow and blissful, ethereal and also acoustically grounded. The human singing voices are unusual but lovely. The melodies are strong, timeless, and strangely un/familiar. The music reminds me of a way I’ve never felt. The vinyl format (and the green color!!) just add to to the vibration (I like to know something sizable is spinning rapidly while I listen … A CD doesn’t cut it, and mp3s don’t move no way nohow) …
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever got from a band with whom I happened to be sharing a bill (Amanda Jo opened for them at the Highland Park Legion Hall). (Other extremely cool things from people I know would have to include Spleek Speaks by Marc Cantlin and anything by Matthew O’Neill)
To get your own copy of the Apathetic Dental Technician 7″, please investigate this link:
I picked up a record by Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter … I’ve always thought it was a beautiful band name, but a little outside my genre of interest (don’t really dig “country-rock” … excepting certain exceptions … see below) … though I bought Jesse and co’s split single with Steve Turner on BURN BURN BURN a few years ago and really fell in love with their song, “Moon Over Troubled Town” (but it always sounds different every time I play the record, which I guess is a good thing. I blame it on the labels being pasted on the wrong sides of the vinyl) …
The one I just bought is a full-length, called “Like, Love, Lust, and the Open Halls Of The Soul” … and I’m not sure what, if anything, I was expecting.
But I play in a few bands which include elements of country and also elements of rock, blues, funk, whatever … and that means those bands can be called, at least in part, “country-rock” … and that means it behooves me to find a place to stand in that alleged genre.
So I bought this Jesse Sykes album, thinking maybe a record by a country-and/or-Americana-inflected artist who I liked pretty well, maybe that could give me some ideas of how to position myself.
OK, well, it did that.
I’m a guitar player, but the guitar player on Jesse’s album isn’t the first thing I noticed (although he is wonderful). The first thing was her voice, which is astonishing. She sings like an old, old woman in a young woman’s body. She sings as if she lives in a burrow dug into soft earth in the roots of an old, old tree. It is wonderful.
And next I realized how badly the sounds were causing me to miss the Pacific Northwest. Bad enough to cry. It won’t leave my mind.
In this music there is rain, and pine-tree-lined horizons, distant mountains, and an awareness of mist. There is a cool humidity, a northern languidity, a massive heft of tone and a psychic impact delivered laconically but nonetheless with force.
The guitarist is Phil Wandscher. He’s great. I plan to study him closely in the future. And while I like what he’s doing quite a lot, I also know now how what I do is going to be different. Thank you, Phil, for the inspiration.
The production and mixing are very complimentary to this group. The musicians sound like epic stomping monster gods singing sweetly in the deepest darkest forests of the mythic overworlds. But the music itself is so intensely chill that I can only listen to one side at a time (there are four) lest I fall into a trance from which I will not emerge.
(And it’s solid background music, too … for Tai Chi, Yoga, feeding the cat, but a little too subtle to wash dishes to … that’s good, we need music like that)
…Exceptions being (”country-rock” that I like): “Exile On Main Street” and related Stones. Certain Bob Dylan records. Certain Neil Young records. Lots of stuff by Leon Russell. (I like just about everything these people ever did, but their output varies, as you probably know, in terms of genre).
And I like certain things (but not everything) by The Band, Ry Cooder, JJ Cale, Danny Barnes … the “country-blues” ie Robert Johnson, Skip James, maybe Elmore James (tho, yes, I know, that’s edging into a Chicago blues bag, but Elmore is early and influential enough that I think I can call his “blues,” “country”) … Things from the Harry Smith Anthology Of American Folk Music. Hank Williams 1.
Not sure what else I’d really put in this category to any major degree, tho of course there are elements in many and diverse places (Black Crowes, Earth, blah blah blah) …
Had the pleasure of a few days visit from Team Evan & Woody, roving Seattle musical tag-team.
In between playing a ridiculous amount of music with everyone we met, we stopped into Origami Vinyl and made some financially-ill-advised-but-aesthetically-sound purchases.
(Woody abstained from purchasing. Way to buck the culture!)
We started with Mr Bishop, whose tones are thick and mystic chops formidable. The first track is a lengthy unaccompanied rumination for middle-east-inflected electric guitar, featuring round, warm, diamond-edged tone that is just about everything I could want in a recorded guitar sound.
The band kicks on track 2, and from there on the songs are long and they groove mightily. Think about something between Medeski Martin & Wood’s “Shack-Man” and Marc Ribot’s 2nd Los Cubanos Postizos, “Muy Divertido” … but it is nothing like either of those, really. They are the closest reference points I can think of just now.
It was a brain-cleansing listen, from the beginning of side A straight to the droning, Joujouka-escent closing track on side B.
Then we threw the Tortoise platter on the table and basked in a whole big pile of oddly electronic sounding instrumental grooves for bass, drums, keys, and occasional sips of guitar, all of which was recorded PERFECTLY, the tones so big and round and warm that it could perhaps have been done on a 4-track. You could call that kind of sound “hi-fi lo-fi”. Totally amazing record.
We capped it with a listen to the “West Coast Post-Asiatic Sampler” record, vinyl edition. We were so caught up with examining the truly lovely multi-colored record itself that we failed to navigate the side-selection issue properly and listened to side 2 first. (Not that sides are anything like plainly marked on this release). But I think it was OK, and supplied a properly weird vibe to the end of the evening.
BTW:
A few nights later I stayed up with Woody listening to Tim Buckley’s “Blue Afternoon” and “Happy/Sad” records. I esteem “Blue Afternoon” highly in a wide array of ways, and although I have been intensely fond of “Happy/Sad” for years, I have generally thought of it as a gem made perfect by its very flaws.
Opinion revised. “Happy/Sad” is a perfect album. Period.
A couple of new-ish records have been making my life happier this week, and I want to tell you about them.
The one which I think has got the most spins (and the best album title by far) is “Free Your Mind And Win A Pony” by GOLDEN ANIMALS (http://www.myspace.com/goldenanimals). This is one of those weird little records that seems to have fallen through the cracks in the cosmic walls… And when I say “weird little records,” I should add that if I someday manage to make one of those records myself I will die a happy man.
The Golden Animals generate open-tuned desert psych that has a kinship to the first Doors lp, the second Beefheart record (”Strictly Personal”), The Rising Sons (with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder), and the first album by the 13th Floor Elevators. There are two humans in the band, Tommy Eyes and Linda Beecroft. Tommy covers the guitar work with four semi-hollows that chill on a stand behind him, each in a different tuning. Linda plays the drums like she’s possessed, or dosed, or both.
The record is fine to hang out with, and live they can really pull the energy together…
The other big number on my stereo right now is “Evolutionary Squalor,” by LIQUORBALL. Liquorball includes guitarist Grady Runyan. Grady’s guitar playing makes me very happy. Delays and wah-noise and things that I usually only hear on acid come yammering out of my speakers and fly in small circles around the living room couch, underpinned by a thick bass carpet, clattering drum grooviness, and a flock of saxophones, not to mention a lot of weird electronic noise. Things like this have been done before, and I’ve even done it myself (KAOS NITES, anyone?) but this one is definitive of the form.
If you want one, you have to email the band. But you can’t do that, cos they exist off the web-grid. Another band which includes Grady (The Bad Trips - http://www.thebadtrips.com) provides slightly more information (and another amazing record!!). Check out this blog for more info: NEW LIQUORBALL RECORD
WOODEN SHJIPS “Volume 1″ - which is really great but, being a collection of singles, sort of an odd listen. Side one starts with the adrenaline rush of “Shrinking Moon For You,” which is sort of the reason anyone would want to own this record as the original single is long out-of-print. It doesn’t rip quite as hard on 33 1/3 as I think it must on 45rpm, but what the hell, it sounds great. I play it a lot. LOUD, too.
The middle of side one is very spacey and strange, though not unpleasant, and then there’s another burn-em-up jam at the end.
I played side one over and over for a week or two and then forgot I even owned this record. I just finally discovered side two the other day. It has two tracks. The first one is dominated by a loud and pleasantly piercing lead guitar. I wish for more bass, but I know it doesn’t matter. When I want bass I will go and listen to, oh, LIQUORBALL or OM or something. This record is for what it is, and it is a fine guitar sound that they have delivered, and anyway track two (which goes on for years and could be twice as long without annoying me any) is mixed just the way I like. It sounds like a triceratops that got into the mushroom patch, singing as it stumbles around the brush.
By the way: WOODEN SHJIPS is a DANCE BAND. They say so, anyway… and not only do I believe them, I dance to their record.
This is essentially an album of electric mbira music, cascading and polyrhythmic and full of light and danceable and deeply dense, and in that way it is much like the other discs in the series. Disc 1 was devoted to a band called KONONO 1, and disc two was a compilation which included a terrific DVD. The backstory was that these bands came out of the jungle with their music and found that if they wanted to be heard over the traffic they had to build some amplification. The substance of the music was preserved, but the tones became mangy and electronic. Perfect for a certain kind of taste… and lucky me, I like stuff like that.
Although I believe there is more depth to some of the music on volumes 1 & 2, there is something about this new disc that is making me want to play it again and again. It may be one of those cases where lightness ends up being a virtue - unlike certain Royal Trux records which I love so much but can not bear to hear too often… cos it weighs too much, and I can’t take it.
But maybe not. Maybe this is just some good music at a good time. I’m thinking it might be the point where western music and traditional African music collide, in that a certain element of societal substance is sacrificed for proto-disposable jive listenability. But I could be wrong, and I hope I am, and I hope I still like this disc this much in 20 years.
‘cos I only like bands with Howl in the name, anymore. Not so much true this year as it was in 2007, I guess. Anyway…
I wasn’t sure about this record when I first got it. I played it a few times, it was pleasantly reminiscent of the live shows, the songs seemed a bit more anonymous than those on album #1, and the overall tone felt strident and histrionic in a slightly forced way - whereas a more blatantly (properly?) strident and histrionic band never feels forced.
OK, but whatever, all that is in the past. Side one and side two work better, for me, when I don’t play them quite exactly right in a one-after-the-other row but rather wait at least a few minutes if not half a day in between. But the tones are much floatier than I had been giving them credit for, and that undercuts the histrionics in a very good way. Emotionally tense but sonically creamy. I’m not going to call this the second-coming of classic rock or anything, and I probably still like the Black Crowes better most of the time, but there’s a meaty swirl to this record that does something very positive for my mood. The afro-beat textures seem a little out of place… But hell, there’s a learning curve with anything, and they give the album some spice. Also the way the songs stretch out, you tune in after a minute or so (wash another glass, put some soap on the sponge) and, whoa, what a cool different spacey riff that is now! (wipe a plate, fish some spoons out of the bottom of the spagetti pot) whoa, back to that little rocknroll groove from, like, five minutes ago, nice (step in water spot on floor and trip over the cat while drying foot) … damn, is this the same song? This part’s, like, HEAVY!
As always, buy the vinyl. It weighs more, but it sounds better
