Electric Sandwich - China

I'd almost forgotten about Electric Sandwich and then that Head Music compilation came along and The Bevis Frond covered their 'smach hit' China... This has too much guitar... skronk/chops for me to really love it but in the right, er, frame of mind, these loplopping drums and the electric fizzles at the edges of the geetar work can be quite transporting...



This is a tiny sliver of Acid away from the Mother's Temple, and probably waaay farther out than those guys...

It was 1972, man... a year that is rapidly becoming a kind of recurring theme / totem for...

(there's no reason. I mean, I was, like, 1 year old for most of 1972... can't see those years being altogether formative unless you count that 6 months I was raised by mandrils...)

Stop needing reasons...

I hate them.

Roll The Dice

There'll be a full review of Roll The Dice's In Dust over at Freq soon (subject to Editor's approval, though to be honest, he lets me write any old crap) but this will do for now.

And, for anyone vaguely interested in what I might think about albums, there's also a review of Miminokoto and Billie Ray Martin's new project The Opiates which I'll probably get around the remixing on here when I get the time (at present that looks to be circa 2013)

In other news...

Moonlicking, Ekoplekzing

Image stolen from the mad mentals of R.K.Sloane

In the middle of a mini-renaissance of new music listening at the moment, mostly a result of moonlicking as a reviewer at Freq, the evergood fulcrum loined from Richard Fontenoy - a guy it turns out is good friends with some old Yeovil buddies and who I've also probably met way back in the times when I'd hump up the road to that London to watch The Revolting Cocks or whoever... small small world - ironically, I'd sent a chance email because I figured my own little Twitter/Blog circuit had become a little self reverential and I fancied dipping into another circle, only to find there are several tendrils coming this way and that way, like some terrible cross-haired Nyarlotho-step beat beast...

Anyway, my first 2 contributions are up at the Freq site now:

1) a doe-eyed Kraut's Corpuscle take on the new Mist album (c'mon... it's the guy from Emeralds, you know...)

and

2) a gulping shudder at the electronic pastoralism and arcane (device) buzz of John Chantler's The Luminous Ground

I've just got a bunch of other goodies through the post to review as well, including what is shaping up to be a Hawkwind-tastic classic by a Pikacyu from Afrirampo and Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers...



Finally, a slightly smeared lump of white vinyl goodness in the form of Ekoplekz's Live At Dubloaded album came and I've been listening to it while typing... sounds more restrained than other stuff I've got from Nick, not a million miles off the gentlest Throbbing Gristle stuff... the backside of In The Shadow Of The Sun...

...some great textures though, and some odd squeaks and whistles, some bent shapes in there, Nikolai, some way bent shapes...

I'm one side in, so far...probably should accumulate more thoughts before really committing to the page but... since, my first Ekoplekz review was real-time blagging/free-associating...

...these gulps and electronic groans seem like Nick's consciously trying to play himself out of a psychic corner; not give in to the pulse that I'll bet anything he can feel himself resisting... he's an old rave guy at heart and you can feel him holding back on the beats, conscious that he's always just a light teckstep to the left from balls-to-the-wall techno and wants to rein those tendencies the fuck in...

I'm guessing wildly here, it's just an impression... maybe this is partly a consequence of playing somewhere so bass and beaty, big and bouncy as Dubloaded? Maybe there's a need to counterpoint, or else just a desire to move away from the early CDrs and tapes (which Cabbed it up with all those neat washes and wah-wahed drum patterns and organ tinkles)...

...whatever the wresting and hand-wringing Ekoplekz has been up to (maybe none at all, maybe he's in the zone, is oblivious to even the rush of his own blood), he's pushing his machines in interesting directions... not resting on laurels, hardly resting at all... he's poured an awful lot out into the records he's released so far... the well must be getting dry... and it's interesting that, so far, ever release has been distinct, despite the relative sparseness of his raw materials...

where's he gonna go next?

is he gonna give in?

Xylitol

Loving the latest Xylitol double 3", one of my favourite things released so far this year. It's not a remix album. It's a reimagining. It's a remix album in the same way that Aphex Twin remixed Nine Inch Nails on Further Down The Spiral i.e. it's not a remix album. It sort of is a remix album, even though I don't generally like remix albums (that Neubauten one put me off forever). It is maybe perhaps isn't.

It's varied but it's more or less all wonderful... though see here for a review of a track (not saying which one but you might be able to guess) by my wife (she's right, and i like it because it sounds like that...)

Lots of unusual suspects here, all on top top form: Nochexxx, Kek in Intangible mode, Belbury Poly, Pete Um, Woebot and many others...

Highlights: The NWW circa Rock N Roll station snare tumbles w/added Groove Is In The Heart bounce; the odd choirs, violin scratches and Cosey Cornets; the glacial kosmische melting soundtrack; the ever-so-slight Trance touches; the snatches of detourned Krautrock - a little feathering of rock era Kraftwerk added to the lunatic electo fizz; the stuttering vocals, eating themselves whole; the gentle Radiophonic loping; the supremely mental rapping; even the pops and crackles between the lines of some of the more superficially straightforward tracks...

sleevnotes, gutter press ramblings from Martin, photographs (apparently, I can't see any!) by Nina Power...

The 2 x 3" format is a slight bit annoying but I'm guessing this is either a) a deliberate attempt to engage the listener with the music by forcing them to confront the lack of symmetry on the 'sides' or b) a consequence of someone winning the 'shed load of 3" CDs' item on eBay...

Still, I've already listened right the way through four times and I can't think of many recent albums that I could say that about.

Tiny little moments of genius lie here.

Kraftwerk at The Johnson Hall

Kraftwerk played my old home town Yeovil? OK, so I'd have been 3 or something so didn't go but still... Kraftwerk played Yeovil.

Psychic Ills

Old news now perhaps but absolutely loving this motorfed, spazzling of an EP...

Faustbits sounds half good again (people keep telling me about this album or that track but Faust often seem pointless and directionless and old-fashioned these days), whole-good, immense and kraut, depth-defying - more like this please.

Gibby Haynes reworks like The Jack Officers never stopped happening (in fact, like they ought to have sounded and didn't). This makes to completely spazz but remains restrained, Jet Li in Unleashed, just before the shit is about to hit the fan... That said, restraint is Butthole-based; it's not the restraint of most people... Someone get Gibby some more time on the remix desk. Someone send him some Panda Bear tracks...

Juan Atkins does something I'd listen to again despite not being club-bound. Model 500 always bawed me; fundamentally impressive but thin, groovey but not relentless enough... But this... this is what I want him to sound like.

This clubs similar remix projects over the head, sucks the life out of them... Psychic Ills never sounded so good...

Old Is New Is

I like the oldWave creepings from OneOhtrix, Dylan Ettinger, Raoul Rorschach etc. They've sometimes added steel, other times they've smoothed/gritted tracks. They've broken machines and fixed them. They've addled information and occasionally come up for air. All good. But this year I've used these bands more than I've bought them (some are on my Christmas list). Used them to relisten to their antecedents, in fact used them to find more of their antecedents...



The new kosmiche is as good as the old, in parts. The old was only good in parts too.



The spread of gatefold LPs is welcome too. Friendly. As of Summer 2010, I stopped buying CDs and only bought albums again (this was mostly to do with having a new house and new daybed looking out into the garden and new positioning for my record player, now dusted and looking brilliantly old, nee retro).



I've had a little less time for music but I've given it more time. I've listened a little more intently, let it press as many buttons as it could. There's maybe 10 albums and 12"s now which I can hear phrase for phrase, swirl for swirl. In MP3 shuffle era that seems like a lot.



And the old stuff, rediscovered and reformulated, really seems like it was predicting the future...



One thing though. From what I've heard this year, I don't think Eno did any of the Kosmiche guys any good.

Crawling To Lhasa

Found this album via the cosmic/kosmichings at the brilliant Tonton Mahood - here, in fact - and it's been on a light rotation ever since. Pretty, occasionally threatening, odd combinations of firethrottled acoustic guitar and pan-pipes. Comus is perhaps as good a reference point as any; the deity and the band. I hear that bar/club from Fire Walk With Me during Tante Olga and the whispering nasties from Current 93 in Nearby Shiras... there's morsels all over this album, tasty bits of meat, plucked from teeth...

Ritualistic and Golden. Thrown from shadows. Gongs and bongs.

Trust me, if you're normally a cynic about these kinds of wig-outs, these little Golem tangles, these nonsense psychbits then forget all you know... this is as good as Krautrock gets and it's a little hard to believe that someone hasn't re-released it. Maybe they have.

If you find it, buy it.

HF Ghosts / Kraftwerk treats

From The Wytch Machine...



For no reason, other than something to listen to while you baitbreath for the boys to send out some HF/Junkcrunch audio, here's a little Kraftwerk treat to get yer pulses racing...

Go here and download to death.

Vluba Tunes

Yeah, Vluba... A Ruined sound; occcccasional voices like deeply scratched wood. There's maybe lots of stuff like this, lots of drone and grist and mill and krautrock moans but, I dunno, Vluba seem a little more... entrenched? I'm sure loads of people mean it but these guys/girls/whatever really mean it... there's no other reason for some of the musical decisions they seem to make, at least on the stuff I've heard... YES, I mean this as a good thing... i hate realness, authenticity makes me come over in a postmodern rash but when it's applied to Vluba, when it means that they really can't sound any different, I'm thinking.... yeah...

There's some squeaks that come in.... you'll see what I mean, the second side of



About half way through....when you think it might start coming over all Vibracathderal Orchestra or even attempt something some full-pelt Kraut's Corpuscles... then in come the creaks and the squeaks.... mocking....

You'll see...

Vluba give off an odd feeling. A not right. Unheimlich.

But don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently creepy about the sounds, least not to anyone even vaguely driven by drone.... this isn't Lustmord or Burial Hex creepiness... more the creepiness of the abandoned office block, the empty room with a child's toy at the edge of the carpet....

It's their choices, I think. The sounds they put together.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I've gone and it's coincided with my going, made some associative tangles that I can't unknot. Maybe tomorrow I'll be back again and this will make no sense and Vluba will just be another cosmic no-thing, a blip, a thing worth dropping or not mentioning. In which case, I apologise. Maybe I'm leading you down some bad tracks here, maybe these trails won't be worth your while... God Knows I've followed some bad 'uns in the past. I mean, I guess 20 Jazz Funk Greats has been a favourite of mine since it first came out and those fellahs describe things so well the music only occasionally matches up to their fantastical vision of it... they hear better than me... much better...

But....

There's definitely something about Vluba.

Something.

I'm sure.

...you'll see what i mean...

before my endless qualifications and my hesitancy rolls me up...

The Pyramid Album (Side 1)

The Pyramid Ablum (Side 2)

Sourced from the ever-wonderful depository of soft and shiny things at The Tanzprocesz Internet Archive... found, in label form, here

Sonic Sanctuary & The Faust Tapes

Everyone's favourite semi-Sonic Sludgtronic Death Rattling Drone Duo, Ice Bird Spiral are playing at this, so perhaps you'd like to go and sing along. Don't think I can make it but I'll be hanging around the rafters in spirit, and listening on my eeriephones...



In other news, I bought an only slightly smudged original vinyl copy of The Faust Tapes in Bridgey yesterday and was immediately sucked in all over again - I've already got this on CD but listening again on record I had that kind of anti-amnesiac gnosis that made me come over all Copey, especially when the chaos and improv separates off into tiny little pop masterpieces...

Wonderful stuff...

Industrial Strength

Heard the Kraftwerk and Faust covers from this on BBC 6's Freak Zone...the way the tunes fold out is not unlike the Sufjan Stevens Christmas stuff...if you're not sure what you're listening to it works better; the tunes are well known enough to gradually reveal themselves but not not well known enough (Well, neon lights excepted) to pop out at you with a hammer... worth a look, I reckon and proof that the spirit of C86 (this guy was in The June Brides) is oddly alive...

The melody of TG's 'United' was always Indie-pop in waiting.

Spiderman of the Rings

Boardroom, Maxwell House, midnight, 14 February 2007:

Geologist, Panda Bear, Avey Tare and Deakin are trapped on the boardroom table in large purple-glazed vases, just their heads and shoulders visible. Davis Bradley CEO, Roger (not that one) Daltrey and Erol Alkaloid are discussing the latest Animal Collective album. It can be heard from a stereo in the corner of the room.

Daltrey "I dunno... I just get this feeling that there's something, well, evil about this..."

Erol Alkaloid gives out a long audile sigh (later recorded and packaged by Touch records in a triple CD with fold out sleeve) "It's hardly a giant centipede, Rog..." He glances over to Davis, who has remained, eyes closed, in a meditation posture for the last seventeen minutes.

"I know, I know... but it's still a little spiky..."

"This coming from the guy who didn't even hear the first two albums"

Panda and Avey blink in sync. Deakin flexes his shoulders. He thinks he can detect a slight weakness.

Daltrey smiles, holds his hands up in the Masonic sign of distress that he only recently learned (cf Daltrey Does Diptheria). "I'm just saying that my guy might put up more of a fight. These guys, " he indicates the captured Collective "can come along if they wish... I like the chanting and the kids, kids are pretty zeitgeisty..."

"There's no children on-" begins Panda Bear before being silenced with a withering stare from Erol.

"Your guy? You mean Mr Deacon?"

"Dan, yeah. Has the same sort of Sesame Street vibe but, I dunno, smoother edges..."

Erol's head sneers so hard his neck almost snaps. "You're going to mention Kraftwerk again aren't you?"

"Kraftwerk, Cluster... yeah, why not? That 80s sound is very now."

The Animal Collective open and close their mouths like guppies.

Erol smiles. "Zeitgeisty."

Daltrey senses atipathy like bees sense hairspray. "Ok, how about Chris Carter, that track on TGs Third and Final report, AB/7A. Would you be happier with that reference?"

"You know I would," Any mention of Throbbing Gristle always sends Erol into minor paroxyms. He kissed his first living girl at a Throbbing Gristle gig and got no bite-backs whatsoever. "But I don't see how you think 12 minute songs are going to-"

Davis Bradley stands up, thumping his fist on the table (later, he'll recoil from this blow with coriander poultice and goat's milk enema but not now, not now.), "The figures coming in say the kids'll pay up for 12 mins quicker than they will for 3. Same price, quadruple the value... Download only. We're thinking of putting every song we do into this kind of format. Blow the competition out the water. Think of the market, gentlemen. Forces, gentlemen, forces."

Davis sits back down, resumes his meditation.

Roger senses there's an initiative to grab. "That's just it...song-cycles. Wham City is really three songs, ebbing and flowing, chasing each other's tails..."

Erol sits back. "We could give it a go, I suppose. Don't get me wrong, I like Mr Deacon it's just... well you don't think he could come up with a, mmm, groovier name?"

"His Mum won't be happy. Have you met her? Fierce lady. Nought to a hundred in three seconds."

Erol laughs, glances up at the Animal Collective boys. "What do you reckon guys? Fancy a sing along on this guys record?"

"We just want to go home."

"That's settled then. Roger, can you make the necessaries? I'll cancel the Tuvans. I want these two records coming out simultaneously, rough twins, like two drawing pins..."

Amanda Barrie, PA to Bradley emerges from under the table, still scribbling in shorthand. "Sorry, I've forgotten how to do vowels again. Could you repeat that last bit?"

"Eh?"

"Starting from," she flicks through her notepad, "Ah yes 'hardly a giant centipede'"




Listen to Dan Deacon here or here or here or here or anywhere here

Wham City on the latest album is my favourite track of the moment; if I was young enough I'd giggle and wriggle but nowadays I just raise a single eyebrow in appreciation, close the curtains and try to remember how to do a headspin.