We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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Combining country, American surf music and the classic Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtracks, this album sounds like a lost gem from the '60s. However, this trio (supplemented by some seriously cool guest musicians) are not just an ersatz tribute to the past. This is a brilliant homage to these various styles of music that has buckets of enthusiasm and passion to make up for its lack of modernity.
This band is tight but they are comfortable enough in each other’s playing to not sound formulaic or over-rehearsed. The music flows in a way that brings to mind the rougher side of surf music, leaving The Beach Boys out in the sun while unkempt youths play their guitars in the shade. The guitar playing of Dick Dale ghosts through this album as the ragged but precise fretwork from Alessandro Stefana provides a treat for the ears. “Epiphany” puts a film noir spin on their music, sounding like Fantômas’ mutilation of Morricone’s “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion” (Stefana has worked with Mike Patton in the past).
The echoes of Morricone are more than just an influence, “El Divino” and “Bull Buster” feature the whistling talents of Alessandro Alessandroni who is responsible for those whistles in the Sergio Leone films. It is impossible not to think of these Guano Padano tracks as out-takes from the Spaghetti Western soundtracks as the group have created a very authentic sounding Morricone-tribute (“El Divino” may as well have a writing credit for Morricone beside it, so perfect does it sound). Another famous guest pops up on “A Country Concept,” namely Gary Lucas (formerly of The Magic Band and guitarist for countless other artists). Here Lucas plays a resonator guitar to add a more authentic Wild West feel to Guano Padano’s music; his bluesy ambience giving the impression that a gunfight is about to go down.
Yet another strand of influence runs through the album as Guano Padano appear to be as serious about American country music as they are about their other passions. A cover of Hank Williams’ “Rambling Man” makes an appearance later in the album, Guano Padano bringing fresh life to the song. Bobby Solo’s vocals are especially evocative; rich with years of experience, his vocals are like grit being blown against the corrugated steel roof of Stefana’s guitar. It is too bad that Solo only appears on this one song, an entire album like this would be something else.
Recently I have been getting more into surf music thanks to exposure to things like Neil Young’s early group The Squires and having a listen to an old tape copy of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. However, this renewed interest aside, Guano Padano would have struck a chord with me in any case as they are fantastic on their own. Granted their music is not exactly original but it is refreshing in its whole-hearted embrace of styles usually picked apart by modern bands in search of something new hidden in their corpses.
The world does not need another black metal band but the guys from Liturgy don’t care. This is fine by me as this is one of the best albums in the genre for a long time. Consolidating the ground won via their Immortal Life EP, the group has expanded in size and in scope. Instead of focussing on a scary aesthetic and not coming up with decent music, they have gone the opposite route of 99% of most modern black metal groups and actually made music worth listening to.
Starting softly with a short untitled track, Liturgy lured me into a false sense of security and as such the shattering whirlwind of “Pagan Dawn” hit doubly hard. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s vocals are a pained howl, incoherent screams that sound more like the snarls of beast being devoured than anything. The inclusion of a drummer gives the music a more visceral edge, Greg Fox hits the skins like a force of nature. This orientates the music towards the more traditional ground of black metal but Hendrix’s off-kilter approach to the genre prevents Liturgy from becoming another forgettable addition to the genre’s ranks.
It is a bit of critical stereotype for me to compare the sound of the band to a winter wind but Liturgy do manage to make the temperature drop. The twin guitars of Hendrix and Bernard Gann are like the bracing gusts of frigid air that whip through the northern fringes of civilisation. Embodying this freezing mood is “Beyond the Magic Forest,” which may be a bit of a wimpy title but the music could never be described as such. The grinding drums going from a funereal pulse to a frenzied blast beat drive the music into the back of my skull.
Interspersed throughout the album are a number of brief untitled pieces (like the one that opens the album) where the group change tact completely and focus on more ambient sounds. These tracks are reminiscent of prison-era Burzum and Ulver’s experimentations outside of black metal. The long vocal drones with electronic accompaniment add a ritualistic air to Renihilation and provide a fitting contrast to the harsher black metal tracks, reinforcing their already formidable presence.
The final two tracks form a one-two punch that will send any listener down for the count; “Behind the Void” and the title track combined make some of the best black metal to cross my path recently. While Wolves in the Throne Room would be the closest point of reference for Liturgy, in this case the wolves found on Renihilation are feral and hungry. Liturgy are on to something special here, reinvigorating a sound that has been abused and gentrified over the last decade into something resembling its former glory.
Released a few months prior on cassette (continuing the underground’s fetishization of that unreliable magnetic media format), this live recording appears on the wider CD format, remastered to take better advantage of the digital media, and continues this new but prolific band’s trek into dense, heavy drone that somehow manages to keep lighter, airy ambient moments appearing in the otherwise gray mist.
Essentially a single, hour long track split into two parts (mimicking the cassette’s original A and B sides), Rain of Ashes brings in even more elements to the duo’s normally guitar/electronic sourced metal tinged drone/doom. The introduction’s shimmering guitar feedback over a simple electronic bed is not far removed from the band’s earlier works, but the building complexity of guitar tone is extremely dynamic, alternating between melodic post-punk tones and shrill piercing feedback, all the while the frozen wall of electronic textures stay in place. Eventually the noise shifts away to allow the subtle low end electronic sounds to move forward.
The most drastic change happens when the darker ambient electronics pull away and is replaced by a simple 8 bit digital melody and rapid guitar plucking that, at first, sounds gentle and nostalgic (but perhaps that’s just my childhood memories of playing Nintendo speaking). This turns from nostalgic to sinister as soon as the digital ambience comes back, thrusting the lo-fi melody into some creepy rendition of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. This returns again towards the end of the entire piece, but first is quickly cut up by chugging metal drone guitar before falling apart into pure red-lined harsh noise.
Now, it is somewhat of a cop-out when the second half starts, as it is simply the first 30 minutes again, just now in reverse. The nature of the sound, however, belies this fact. Without careful study, it does just seem like structurally the track mirrors itself, but the individual tones and textures take on a different quality once played backwards. The reversed guitar tones from the introduction (now at the conclusion) change the most distinctly, now resembling the best moments of The Cure playing doom metal.
Rain of Ashes once again demonstrates Locrian’s combination of metal drone and noise, but continues the infusion of more meditative ambience and a subtle hint of post-punk rock that isn’t usually referenced in the heavier stuff. Personally I’d like to hear it become an even more dominant part of their sound, and their always evolving sound leads me to believe there could be a drone metal Echo and the Bunnymen cover someday. Maybe.
In interviews leading up to this release on Mark Kozelek's (Red House Painters) label, Justin Broadrick said he had intentionally set out to make a "pop" record. Considering many of the prior Jesu EP’s (Silver, Lifeline, Why Are We Not Perfect) were already creeping into this territory, the fact this might be his most conventional release is not shocking. However, with Broadrick’s return to organic guitar sounds, the combination puts this surprisingly as close to Godflesh as any of his recent releases have been.
Broadrick has stated before that many Jesu releases are collections of songs recorded at different times that simply work well together. Given this was a specific conceptual recording, the sound is quite consistent throughout, almost to a point of same-ness. Across an entire album, this would possibly get tedious, but in this sub-30 minute format, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
From the opening swell of guitar feedback that introduces "Losing Streak," the intentionally organic sound is light years away from the electronics heavy split with Envy and the Lifeline EP, instead there’s a guitar sound that could be off any classic Godflesh record. While they had a reputation as being “metal” at times, classic tracks like "Slateman" or "Don’t Bring Me Flowers" had a notable undercurrent of pop music that is allowed to shine more here.
"Opiate Sun" and "Deflated" both follow a similar blueprint to the former, slow, intentionally repetitive structures with vocals that don’t stray into the metal realms the ones on Infinity did. All of the tracks here also put a greater emphasis on simple, yet beautifully melodic guitar solos that too often were ignored in favor of low register chugging riffs. "Morning Light" initially focuses on the monolith guitar tones, but as it winds to a close more melodic guitar work takes the focus.
A few notable consistencies exist across the four songs on this album. For one, Broadrick has chosen to incorporate harmony into his vocals, which is something he rarely did prior. Most of the tracks have double tracked vocal lines that work, giving the entire disc a more melodic, melancholy sound. Secondly, the organic sound stretches beyond just the guitar tone: few keyboard parts are to be heard, and there is live drumming (by Broadrick) on all tracks. While his drumming remains somewhat rudimentary, his former band Head of David griped he kept trying to play the first Swans album on every track (a criticism that is still relevant to this to some extent), it does keep the sound from becoming too stiff and simplistic.
As per usual, the Japanese pressing on Daymare adds an additional track, in this case a demo take on "Deflated" that does have a thinner overall sound: the guitar is less effected and has a far more jangly tone than Broadrick’s usually known for. The biggest difference is the more melodic guitar soloing that comes in midway through, which eventually gives way to some rudimentary piano playing that was probably removed to give it a more "rock" sound in the final take. Personally, I prefer this more delicate, gentle take on a track that was already rather soft.
While I’m not sure how this disc will stand the test of time, given that I return to Conqueror quite a bit, but the more pop-oriented Silver EP doesn’t get played as much, on the surface it is a rather beautiful piece of music that continues Jesu’s mission of creating the heaviest shoegaze music possible admirably.
This second volume of Analog Africa's excellent Orchestre Poly-Rythmo career retrospective is yet another treasure trove of lost Afro-funk gems. While a bit slicker than its predecessor, the heavy voodoo grooves remain and should serve to further cement the Orchestre’s new-found international reputation as one of Africa’s most exciting and innovative bands.
Much like the Vodoun Effect before it, Echos Hypnotiques focuses largely on material from the group’s ‘70s prime. However, the recordings collected here are culled from the Orchestre’s more professionally recorded releases for Albarika Store. As such, it is marginally more “mainstream” in that it is smoother and less quirky than the secret lo-fi recordings from the first volume. Not by much though—all of the elements that made the Vodoun Effect so infectious are here as well (yet I definitely miss some of the more unhinged organ parts).
There are a couple of things that the Orchestre truly excel at and the main one is turning out some taut, rhythmically complex, and killer grooves. This is best executed by the infectiously propulsive cowbell beat of “Agnan Dekpe,” which also features some nicely arranged brass and understated organ riffing. The second element that sets OPR apart from their peers is their seamless and ravenous assimilation of disparate and wide-ranging influences. For example, “Malin Kpon O” combines clean highlife guitars, a straight funk rhythm section, and psych-tinged organ. Incidently, that song is the one that initially convinced Analog Africa's Samy Ben Redjeb to track down the rest of the band's oeuvre. “Minkou E So Non Moin," on the other hand, seems to borrow liberally from both disco and reggae. A Latin influence is also fairly pervasive at times (such as on “Zizi”), but the group’s primary reference point is almost always the traditional ritual percussion of their native Benin.
Or course, the Orchestre definitely have some conspicuous weaknesses too. The main one is that a lot of their material more closely resembles an extended vamp than a tightly structured song. This is a mixed blessing, as when they lock into an incredibly funky rhythm like that of “Houne Djein Nada,” I’m more than happy to let it continue uninterrupted. Unfortunately, when the groove is not so compelling, songs can seem very flabby and tedious. “Mede Ma Gnin Messe” is probably the worst offender, as it is relentlessly cheery and repetitive and drags on for an excruciating nine minutes. There also seems to be an inability to cut loose extraneous instrumentation at times, which results in a substantial amount of clutter, meandering solos, and distracting noodling.
That said, such shortcomings merely mean that Orchestre Poly-Rythmo is a “singles band.” There are a lot of great songs here, they just aren’t frequent enough to justify regularly playing the entire album straight through. At their best, the Orchestre’s rhythm section is as funky, vibrant, and exhilarating as nearly anybody. It's good to see them finally get their due.
This consists of five relatively lengthy works culled from an eclectic array of recordings by this renowned Aussie experimental guitarist. The unifying theme seems to be that all are rare or out-of-print, which should make completists quite happy (especially ones without record players). Those new to Ambarchi should probably go elsewhere first, but casual fans will likely find many pleasantly diverting (though not revelatory) moments here to tide them over until Oren's next album emerges.
The opening piece, "Intimidator," is from a 2006 collaboration with Anthony Pateras, who contributes prepared piano.It originally appeared as a vinyl-only bonus track on In The Pendulum’s Embrace and it certainly has a very "bonus track" feel to it.While not bad by any means, it is not particularly attention-grabbing either.The entire track is essentially just Ambarchi’s guitar quietly feeding back with occasional disruptive plinking and clanging metallic stabs from Pateras’s piano.Of course, the feedback subtly oscillates and Oren unleashes some of his trademark sub bass droning, but it is too understated to make much of an impression.
"Iron Waves" is a previously unreleased "remix" of a song by Paul Duncan.It’s a bit more interesting than "intimidator," as Ambarchi wrests some submerged-sounding bell-tones from his ax, which, coupled with the escalating feedback dissonance and an ominous low drone, evokes quite an atmosphere of menace.It ultimately becomes a pretty odd and confounding work though, as it is basically a decent, by-the-numbers Ambarchi soundscape that is intermittently (and somewhat purposelessly) muddied by guitar and vocal interludes from the original.Duncan is generally a likeable vocalist, but his singing here is too dour and overwrought for my taste. The two clumsily intertwined aesthetics yield less than the sum of their parts; I'm not quite sure why this exists.
The final three songs are sans collaborators and seemingly the better for it."Moving Violations" (from Touch’s 25th anniversary compilation) is a dense, buzzing, and crackling foray into deep, quivering bass drone that gradually coheres into a dissonant repeating riff of sorts."The Strouhal Number" is an early live recording (from 2000), yet strangely, it is the most immediately gratifying, melodic, and composed-sounding piece on the album.Naturally, Oren’s omnipresent subterranean drone and quiet crackle are on display, but he pleasingly augments that groundwork with a floating shimmer of bell-like tones (as well as some Pole-esque clicks and pops).It is quite a dream-like and beautiful ambient piece, and conspicuously divergent in tone from everything that surrounds it.
The closing track ("A Final Kiss on Poisoned Cheeks") is a much more recent live recording (from 2007) and, unsurprisingly, sounds entirely different than its predecessor.As always, the piece’s backbone is a low drone, but it is buried beneath a thick, vibrant, squirming morass of garbled bells, buzzes, and bleeps.It is the album’s longest track (at 20 minutes), and gradually increases in density until it becomes a chittering, grinding industrial roar.Around the halfway point, most of the cacophony drops out, leaving only sustained, clashing feedback tones and an erratically shifting pulse that gradually winnows down to a quiet coda of hissing metallic cymbals, murky swells, and somber bell-tones.
Intermission, aside from "The Strouhal Number," features very little in the way of melody and depends almost entirely on density and texture (and occasionally raw power).This (along with a similar aversion to rhythm) can make Ambarchi much more difficult to embrace than other experimental guitarist luminaries (such as Fennesz or Jim O’Rourke), as his pieces often lack conspicuous differentiating traits. Nevertheless, his understated mastery is amply evident to those that listen close enough to find beauty in oscillation.
This is nothing short of perfect mood music for breaching the walls of reality. This is music for that dark hallway you have to walk down from time to time, every step an uncomfortable one. Feelings of unease and vague fear permeate both sides of this cassette. Sounds fall, trip up and collapse in on each other. Nothing is what it seems to be; everything changes in the darkness into the unfamiliar and alien.
This is the first of three planned collaborations between WM. Rage, Stan Reed and Matthew Waldron (this cassette will be followed at some point by an LP and a CD of all new material). Overall, the raw materials for these pieces sound like they have come from the boys in Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, but the construction of the music has Waldron’s signature all over it. Skeletal Imposition has more in common with older irr. app. (ext.) releases like Perekluchenie than with Waldron’s more recent albums, however.
“Skeletal Imposition Pt 1” is a fuzzy, grainy journey through the darker corners of sonic spectrum. Layers of dust clog up electronic noise, waves of sinister rhythms and blankets of unsettling drones give way to strange screams and moans, none of which sound like any living creature but perhaps something else that couls only be found in a story by H.P. Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgson. On the second part of “Skeletal Imposition,” a beast has arrived and guttural, animal vocals howl, trying to communicate across an unfathomable void. The sense of dread that I feel is very, very strong.
This is a terrifying record and a great introduction to this series of collaborations. This sort of dark mood music gets under my skin and leaves a powerful impression. It is not dark ambience; this is as far from that clichéd and dull genre as possible. I have only played this in daylight so far because I do not trust that I would be safe with it once the sun sets.
Amberhaze is the solo project of an Italian expatriate currently living in Singapore, which seems to be an unexpectedly fertile ground these days for warm electronic music such as this. However, Giulliano Gullotti also exhibits quite a healthy (and well-justified) passion for early ‘90s English shoegaze (which obviously Singapore is not as known for). Despite that substantial temporal and geographic disadvantage, this debut album combines those two loves with a sometimes stunning degree of success.
This album opens in a very odd and counterintuitive way, with a pleasant (but very brief) piano piece that segues into seemingly yet another sparse, melancholy piano piece. That second song, “Blossoms,” slowly begins to build in intensity, however, as a majestic synthesizer melody gradually fades in alongside some bombastic, slow-motion drums. Not much else ends up happening though and I found my interest rapidly waning. Thankfully, Gullotti starts to show some promise with the third track (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped”), which tweaks the formula of the previous track with increased density and exuberantly stumbling, off-kilter drums. It is remarkable how much a difference great drumming can make, especially with sad, slow music like this, which can easily be plodding and dull. Giulliano, as it turns out, is an excellent percussionist. Or at least very good at programming a drum machine.
The near-prefect fifth song (“A Certain Affinity”) was the one that finally grabbed me. Gullotti combines a catchy and propulsive synth pop foundation with an extremely cool, subtly dissonant, and oddly-timed guitar riff, then tops it all off with an endearingly burbling keyboard motif. As it steadily increases in intensity, the guitars grow noisier and the drum machine begins to stutter more and more before it all downshifts into an achingly beautiful bridge. It is difficult to think of a more bittersweetly memorable instrumental pop song, as literally everything is arranged and presented for more maximum impact and emotional power.
Thankfully, that mid-album infusion of momentum hardly dissipates at all for its remainder. While “Affinity” is definitely the best song on the album, nearly everything that follows it is pretty excellent and instantly gratifying. “1994,” which follows immediately afterwards, is similar in epic feel to “Blossoms,” but with a much better groove and infinitely more explosive drumming. “Crush” stands out as yet another killer song, closely resembling a collision between the best elements of Labradford and Slowdive. The wheezing synthesizer, shuffling rhythm section, and lazily gorgeous guitars of “There is a Way” make for yet another clear highlight (though the tortured Swervedriver/MBV-inspired guitar wailing in the middle certainly doesn’t hurt either).
While it is extremely obvious who Amberhaze’s primary influences are, Giulliano definitely combines them in a way that is uniquely his own. I’d love to know what this guy was doing before this, as Gullotti displays immense, fully-formed talent for writing catchy songs and great melodies, as well as great deal of instrumental and orchestration prowess. Then We Saw the Stars Again certainly has some serious faults, but they are largely the result of sequencing faux pas and lax self-editing rather than any lack of skill or vision. At his best, Giulliano Gullotti has no trouble standing with all the great bands that inspired him.
This reissue of the trio’s only album together fills in a gap in my Krautrock collection but unfortunately does not live up to the quality I expect from any of the artists involved. Heavily inspired by African rhythms, this 1983 album has dated badly and sounds and upsettingly reminds me of one of my most hated albums of all time (Paul Simon’s Graceland, a more harrowing record I have never encountered). However, there are still moments of brilliance shining through but overall this is an album that might have been better left in the vaults.
Dieter Moebius and Conny Plank already had two collaborative albums under their belts by the time they got around to Zero Set. Adding Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier to their party should have been a stroke of genius; if anyone’s drumming should fit with Moebius and Plank’s electronic sounds it would be him. Yet listening to Zero Set it never feels like the trio are actually communicating with each other. The end result for the music was obviously to organically unite the electronics with Neumeier’s human beats but much of the album feels cold and a little contrived. Granted it all sounds perfectly captured and mixed and listening from a more objective standpoint (and assuming one has no idea who the people are behind the music) it is impossible to say that this album was made by artists who did not know what they were doing.
The problem I feel is that of timing. This kind of music reminds me of my childhood (not that I was listening to the likes of Cluster when young) in that it sounds like something from the past that I have completely forgotten about and never really cherished. This is not a nostalgia but a feeling that the world has moved on so much that an album like Zero Set seems very much out of place in 2009. Nevertheless there are merits to the album, the seeds for techno (both straightlaced and the more out there variants practised by the likes of Autechre) are planted in pieces like “All Repro” which sounds as much like background music for an old Nintendo game as it does a studio experiment by some of Germany’s top musicians. The off-kilter rhythms and melodies of “Load” also echo on in the works of artists such as Squarepusher but I feel this is convergent evolution on the part of modern artists rather than any kind of direct influence.
Comparing Zero Set to Kraftwerk’s Computer World (which pre-dates this album by a couple of years) and I cannot help but feel that Moebius, Plank and Neumeier had created something out of date before it even hit the shelves. The baton had already been passed from Germany to the rest of the world in terms of innovative and paradigm-shifting rock and pop music; post-punk taking rock to new places and electronic music expanding in all fields to catch up with rapidly developing technology. Overall, this is an oddity that is good to have and hear after being out of print for so long but is by no means essential listening.
Sometimes I have to wonder how much life is left in rock and roll. How long before every possible note is exhausted? Then I think, who cares as long as albums like this exist. It is rough as sandpaper and about as original as any other retro-styled artist but this album rocks very hard. This is not surprising considering it is the work of Michael Polizze of Birds of Maya but this solo album has clicked with me even more than his main group already has; its guitar-heavy mix and hypnotising riffs tap into a primeval feeling of rock and roll abandon and it feels like a living fossil from a time when Blue Cheer and The Stooges were punk kids shaking things up.
“Almost Washed My Hair” erupts from the stereo like some bastard child from a universe where Iggy Pop fronted The Velvet Underground and the only song in their repertoire was “Sister Ray” but they could never remember how to play it. This ear-splitting and cacophonous rock sounds as raw and powerful as anything else in my record collection. The deafening guitars dominate everything; only ghosts of vocals and a hammering beat are perceptible under the overloaded amplifiers. However, this is nothing like the amplifier worship of Sunn O))) or other volume friendly bands. Purling Hiss instead goes for that swaggering, sexual rock rhythm that has been strangely absent in a lot of new music (or at least not as swaggering and sexy as it used to be).
Purling Hiss turn things up even more (beyond what would be considered polite for sure) on “Purple Hiss.” At a quarter of an hour, it is a sweaty and blistering journey through the impossibly loud. The guitar solos are electric and contain everything that a guitar solo should: false starts, fits, duff notes, wah and enough amplification to make us all feel a little sick. The final tune, “Montage Mountain,” recycles the recordings that make up the rest of the album. Polizze does not make anything spectacularly new out of the recordings but it is another chance to bask in the glow from his six strings which are burning white hot at this point.
Maybe it is the adrenaline talking but this album is a serious contender for my rock album of the decade. Like any latecomer to a party, Purling Hiss do not give a toss about you or your friends but they are hear to drink your booze and have a good time. Instead of asking where they have been for the last while, make the most of it and party with them until you get blind drunk, throw up and ruin the carpet. It will be worth it, trust me.
Dean McPhee’s debut EP takes a divergent path from the current prevailing solo guitar trends, venturing into neither Fahey/Basho-inspired steel guitar virtuosity nor pedal-stomping soundscapes. Instead, Brown Bear quietly captures the sound of a man simply playing a guitar extremely well, with little ostentation or outside artifice.
Brown Bear consists of three songs of varying lengths, all of which were at least partially improvised and recorded in just one take. I am not much of a process fetishist, so that did not strike me as especially impressive in and of itself. However, McPhee’s nail-it-in-one-take artistic purity is probably responsible for much of the EP’s endearingly loose and spontaneous feel, so I appreciated it nonetheless.
The brief and mournful “Sky Burial” opens the record with gentle minor arpeggios, insistent bass notes, and a clear, clean melody, which McPhee deftly twists and dances around. The following piece takes a more minimal and static approach, but McPhee employs his arsenal of old analog effects for some unusual colors and textures. While not as lean and focused as its predecessor, it is instead packed full of captivatingly baroque passages and inventive harmonies. The piece has a bit a hallucinatory feel as well, as it quavers and glistens with heavy chorusing and expertly utilizes delay to give the central melody a ghostly after-image.
The entire second side of the record is taken up by the lengthy title track, which I initially found to be deceptively underwhelming. In fact, its first half could easily be mistaken for a variation of “Sky Burial” with the addition of a chorus pedal. Though certainly enjoyable, it caused me to wonder if McPhee had exhausted his ideas after just two songs. Thankfully, however, my pessimism was premature and ill-founded, as “Brown Bear” soon transforms into an extremely cool and completely unexpected foray into elegantly warped psychedelia. The bass line from the opening motif remains in a slowed-down form, which keeps things coherent, but a hazily repeating, thickly harmonized loop suddenly begins to lag, squirm, and lurk ominously beneath its melody. Eventually, all of the more straightforward elements of the piece fall away entirely and leave only a sublimely spacey ambient coda. It's quite a neat trick and Dean manages it quite seamlessly, resulting in the record's clear highlight.
Solo guitar albums are not generally my favorite thing due to their inherent limitations, but I enjoy Brown Bear quite a bit. This is a very promising and assured first release, as McPhee displays a rare combination of technical skill, simplicity, and subtle unpredictability. A full-length is due next spring.