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This nine-track, roughly half-hour pestilence of disguised horrors and nervous tension is about as close to arcane as a musician can be without fully diverging the measure of their madness. While Sweet's other projects range from gloomy metal to sound artifacts stretched across the face of H.P. Lovecraft's grave, Boduf Songs is a deceptively bright arrangement of suggestive colors, all of which point away from the disease and corruption that rides just under his folk impressionism. The opening piece begins much like Skinny Puppy's "Love in Vein;" a succession of reversed strings slide gracefully towards their origin and in every way mark the path forward with anticipation. The comparison is useful because Sweet likes to sound welcoming, but also named this opener "Puke a Pitch Black Rainbow to the Sun." His sometimes dense writing combines gently plucked guitar with the uneasy whir of distant explosions and abrupt interruptions. He uses what can't be heard and what can't be seen to his advantage. His words often sink into the music only to revel in key clearings: words like "slaughter" and "bones" or "trembling" stand out among a slur of words that might otherwise hint at innocence and good fun. "This One Is Cursed" is especially haunting, the use of this technique, perhaps unintentional, makes the lovely melody Sweet uses all the more sickening and absurd in the face of the album's other, more clandestine contents. Aside from his skillful and cunning manipulation of mood and setting, Sweet's compositions are outright beautiful. "Grains" and especially "Ape Thanks Lamb" rely on good songwriting and little else. It's an added benefit that they also burn and spirit away with all the decorations of Sweet's ambivalence. The sweep of stringed instruments (is it a cello or modified violin?) and the swell of their deep bodies fill the album with a grandeur not heard in other acts rediscovering the deep and sweeping beauty of folk-related music. Where others might try to go strictly psychedelic and experimental with an old style, Sweet updates it and makes it his own without straying too far from its inherent attractiveness. He is picturesque and pastoral, using little more than his voice and guitar to create a vivid picture of the world around him. Only Sweet sees a world populated by very dark happenings and very dreadful ideas, all swirling, massing, and waiting to descend on the world.
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The melodies and soundscapes thatemerge from the meshing of his guitar and processed vocals acknowledgesome eastern influence, but also fall somewhere within the Americanfolk tradition, wandering without being lost. The Psychic Nature of Beingbegs for a cerebral consideration of Lowe's music; the title of thesongs and the mood established within bubble over with philosophicaland mystical musings, each one equally appropriate for quietmeditation, writing, or sleeping. "Kirilian Auras," named after acontroversial photographic technique that claims to capture auras onfilm, begins with the moan of electricity and life, slowly escaping thelungs and distorting in the air, fractured into phrases and loops thatbeing to roll over one another. Soon Lowe adds his gentle guitar, itseems to mimic that vocal patterns crashing into one another, but italso offers a reference and a kind of solace in its easy rolling. Thecombination of his choral, digital sounds and his acoustic picking arehypnotizing, producing the image of rain falling, the soul escaping itsshell, or the long journey between unfamiliar cities, the rhythm ofwalking and observing in accordance with peace. At times the flow ofmusic sounds like the low piping of Japanese flutes and the whistle andbend of impossible instruments break over them, holding the compositionin place and freezing the moment of music in an unshakable lift. Thebrilliantly titled "You Are Excrement If You Can Turn Yourself IntoGold" closes the disc and offers a glimpse of the eastern world Lowesurely must've envisioned in the process of creating this album. Aguitar, played as though it were a gong being struck, tolls underneaththe trill and snap of a slippery melody. Softly the piece fades into anocturnal scene, populated by bells and the easy manner of eveningactivities. Lowe builds the song into an echoed mesh of melody, noise,and simple flucuations until its weaving body harmonizes as a constantin and of itself. Nothing could be removed or added from the song, asit stands it is the perfect picture of a misty landscape and doesnothing short of photograph peace as a movement. It isn't meant to begold, it's object isn't to be beautiful, but to be. Thus Lowe avoidsexcrement and utility and ascends to pure music, reaching for anessence and doing everything possible to represent it as something anyear will find familiar. It might be argued that drones have little elseto do but die away as a tried and true means of recording the ephemeralhappenings missed by so many, but Lowe's use of the constant sound issomething else; when his tones are stretched out, they do more thanjust provide a space for sound, they mix intimately with his moremusical work and create a sound that's entirely unique and far moredeserving of the association with old America and its story-tellingtradition than any other "weird" American outfit. In fact, the term"lichen" refers to symbiosis, relationships of mutual benefit. Toachieve the level of intimacy he has on this record without lyricsrequires a level of sophistication and nuance, and that is exactly whatLowe has done on his debut by mixing and considering two very differentworlds and finding that they aren't so distant.
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Mallard Lake
While A Way's work here was recorded way back in late 2003 it still holds an intimate fresh appeal with its foggy strummed harmonics, underwater percussion, drones and inner ear clacking. It's pleasant enough listening even if the four tracks all pull from the same source moves and material, and even with this capable daub of autumnal hum over four offerings they're shunted into second place by the sheer glorious weight of Jazzfinger's "The Sun is my Enemy, the Wind is my Friend." Kicking off with what for a few seconds sounds like a corroded Slayer riff, the trio take a steadily stunning craggy drone and let it unwind, crackling feedback and bad electrics as it unspools into the sound of a constantly burning oppressive scouring Sun. Even when the ferocity fades a little with unexpected lulls the music still burns with a quiet fire and whether the elemental nature of the track is intentional or nothing more than imagination fired by the title the heat is palpable. But its not all blistering temperatures as influences of a more Middle Eastern / Indian nature show up in repeated melodic passages of spoiled notes. Skirting a
predictable structure these parts still move around the tightly strung higher end of the scale with considerable intent. A Way never really stood a chance.
- A Way - Around Under
- A Way - First Wind
- Jazzfinger - The Sun is Your Enemy, the Wind is Your Friend
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Sometimesit shines like a well polished Sunn amp and other times the sound is asdull as the stuff that Earth take their name from. Having never seenEarth live I have to wonder is there something missing from some of therecordings as they seem dreadfully hollow. Carlson’s guitar sometimessounds thin and lacks the menace of the studio releases. Instead ofbeing gut wrenching it is more of a nasal whine. However 070795 Live is a far better release than Earth’s other live album this year, Living in the Gleam of an Unsheathed Sword. The song “Dissolution III” appears on both albums but on 070796 Liveit has more vibrancy and sounds fuller, the previous release was tootinny to really get into the music. Unfortunately it still sounds likesomething is missing from the track. “Dexamyl” and the title track aremore like what I expect from Earth. It is the sound of a band flexingits muscles before delivering that punch that will knock down allpretenders to the throne. The remix (or reconstruction to use the linernotes’ parlance) of “070796” tacked on to the end of the album destroysall of its might and instead waters down Earth’s strengths. On Legacy of Dissolutionall the remixers hit the nail squarely on the head but James Plotkindeserves to be hit on the head himself. I would have thought he wasmore than suited to the job with his metal credentials but alas I waswrong. Had this album been released as a two track EP I would besinging Carlson’s praises and slapping the people at Autofact on theback but thanks to some awful remixing and poor sound on half the albumI am reluctant to go near any future releases of Earth’s live shows.Hopefully the forthcoming studio album on Southern Lord will allay myworries about Earth’s legacy.
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Covering the early portion of their career, Singles. Period. focuses on exactly that. From 1980 to 1990, The Ex released a spate of vinyl-only singles that, as the liner notes suggest, hinted at what was to come on future albums. The chronological sequencing of this album proves beneficial, as The Ex develop from a sloppy, Oi-inspired band of rabble rousers to a precise, angular machine. Early singles like “Human Car” and “Stupid Americans” are rough hewn and amateurish. It seems that at this early stage, the band was very much inspired by the inflammatory spirit of the Clash and other early anarcho-punk bands like England’s Crass. These early singles are really only notable in that they place the evolution of The Ex in context. The first really great song here is “Weapons for El Salvador,” where the drumming is slowed to a marshal shuffle, and a stubborn guitar figure is repeated throughout. Meanwhile, vocalist G.W. Sok spouts lyrics seething with rage and discontent. The following track “Dust,” features guitar playing during the verses that is not unlike DNA or other no-wavers. “When Nothing Else is Helpful Anymore” features some truly inspired guitar playing while the rest of the band engages in a stubborn reggae jam. This song, along with the rest of the songs that formed the Gonna Rob the Sperm Bank single seem to be the first real peek into the future for listeners. Whereas earlier works aped the spirit of ’77 for both message and sound, this single found the band placing much more emphasis on rhythm and texture, something that would begin to inform much of the group’s later work. While many may question the point of a singles collection for this particular group, for the band’s fans it is a real treat. Many of these singles were out of print and nearly impossible to come by. While the music may be spotty at times, it is nonetheless worthwhile in that it showcases the evolution of a band who would go on to make some of the more confrontational and challenging punk rock of the 1990s.
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Petitions will be delivered to Congress starting Friday morning so senators and representatives will hear what you think the very next day.
Click here to sign the petition to demand an independent Katrina Commission.
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- Gary Suarez
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Petitions will be delivered to Congress starting Friday morning so senators and representatives will hear what you think the very next day.
Click here to sign the petition to demand an independent Katrina Commission.
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Alien8 Recordings
The flimsy materialof a blindfold does nothing to restrict vision apart from making things a littledarker. Dispensing with the blindfold I decided to just listen to theCD in the dark. What the piece of cloth does for blindfolds, Lopez doesthe opposite for music. Live in Montreal is mesmerising. A lowhum pervades the piece, creating an atmosphere of warmth and danger. Itsounds like heavy machinery working deep beneath the ground and indeedthe room tremors like there is something pulsing from below. Lopezinterweaves other hums and deep booms on top of the main sound, attimes I felt I was in a deep cavern and something was coming towards me(think of HP Lovecraft writing the scene with the trembling cup ofwater in Jurassic Park). When Lopez finally lulled me into somesort of security he releases the odd unpredictable clamour orunexpected silence to shock me back into paying attention. Lopez usesthe old combination of found sounds and drones in a refreshing manner,what appears to be a recording of rain on a metal roof is processedsubtly to become what I imagine electricity firing through your nervoussystem would sound like. The one caveat with Live in Montrealis that it needs a decent stereo system, the range of sounds Lopez usesis immense. At times the graphic equaliser on my stereo couldn’t evenregister the sounds. Lopez is incredibly skilled in creating sonicsculptures and this album has captured his talent very faithfully.
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Matador
Vancouver's super-group has released their third album of jangly,beautiful, meticulously-crafted pop. It's joyful. It'sheartfelt. Every note is perfect, every beat is in lockstep,every instrument has been equalized for maximum integration; it's likelistening to a warm diamond, or an outtake from a George Martinrecording session...one starring a lot of musicians with endless ideasand a fondness for diluted psychedelia. But when theperfection of it all becomes cloying (especially the crispness of theinstruments and the hey-hey "sing-along" style of the vocals), or whenthe lyrics get too annoyingly ambiguous and arty-farty, it's still hardnot to enjoy what Twin Cinema strives to be and achieves: an album ofpop songs which just plain sound good.
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Merge
People will pan this record. The title is pretty bad; even the bandtitle I don’t really like. Probably it should have been called “ChrisLopez” because this is Chris Lopez’s music, just like all thosebrilliant Rock*A*Teens albums. The Rock*A*Teens who haunted my youth,who like O’Connor and Faulkner and Walker Percy and Barry Hannah had anew world language to create but hadn’t yet because everything from theSouth happens that way. Who came from some imagined Cabbagetown outsideAtlanta with nothing but burned-out cars, streets full of shingles andthe only roofed structures the empty airplane hangers where teenscovered in reverb blasted science fiction rockabilly up to streetlightsmistaken for spotlights that were in fact searchlights, as theDestroyer’s one-sheet would have it. Eventually the teens grew out of“I’m Your Puppet” covers and into reinterpreting the classics throughan even foggier lens, meant to include southern soap opera romantics,abstract car accidents and huge aerial visions of the American state,macro-dramas condensed into 18’s white-boy soul stretches and yelpedout as if this-here-were the last song he/I will play and you/I willever hear. The band was struck down, and Lopez stayed on. Once he was“doomed,” as Bejar would have it again, but today he is still alive.Tenement Halls are no teenage tenement film reel. There is notelevision; no one is hunched over bad cooking; no one is beaten orbeating; no corpse goes weeks without being noticed. It sounds like theRock*A*Teens woke from their dream, Lopez got sad about it, so he’swriting songs to ignore it. Every song here is about love and duration;every voice in every song is love-sick. There is less of the teenagecamaraderie gung-ho-we’re-doomed! atmosphere, less concern for what’soutside that window. Songs about Charlemagne and swifts coming homecover a man’s version of love, fitted to Memphis traditions, with theair of Byzantine myth. Lyrics are simpler, much less ambitious thatLopez’s days with the Teens, even at their youngest, but, somehow, theyfeel more genuinely desperate. There are less theatrics and lessreverb, but you can hear the voices of teens grown up and still in thesame place; it’s sad but an essential part of that legacy. It’s lessfun; there’s less escape, less songs about AM radio, death jazz orCherry Red compilations, despite the title’s easygoing. Maybe havingextreme reverence for the Rock*A*Teens is necessary for enjoyingKnitting Needles; maybe it is a maturity issue. All I know is that timeis such a part of these lyrics that it’s impossible not to think abouta past with this music, any past. That’s fine; I wouldn’t have wantedit came without a fight anyway. Keep on, Christopher Lopez, you arestill needed. Bonus: even though the record was played and producedalmost entirely by Lopez, it’s still got some of thatwall-of-sludgy-reverb-Rock*A*Teens sound.
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