Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Nick Cave And the Bad Seeds - Kicking Against The Pricks


More from Saint Nick, this time it's their amazing covers album, tackling everything from Alex Harvey to Gene Pitney in salacious Bad Seed style. Want more Nick? Do a search and ye shall find.

motherfuck MGMT

.O. Rang - Fields And Waves


Talk Talk's rhythm section deep into Fourth World Electronics, eastern-tinged massive dub soundscapes, gamelan colours and techno-mystical rhythms. Fucking 90s ruled below the surface bwoy. Features Bark Psychosis's Graham Sutton on holo-guitar.

"Bassist Paul Webb and drummer Lee Harris were bandmates for a decade in the influential British band Talk Talk. A year after the band's final release -- 1992's critically acclaimed Laughing Stock -- Harris and Webb built a studio that they dubbed The Slug. Once the studio was up and running, the duo allowed all sorts of musicians to come in and improvise with them, using the resulting music as source material with which to create the music heard on 'O'Rang's albums. The band's recorded debut was the EP Spoor (1994) followed by two full lengths, Herd of Instinct (1995) and Fields & Waves (1996). The recordings were originally released on Echo Records and later picked up and reissued (except for the EP) in 1997 by Chicago's Hit It! Recordings, followed a year later by the new Remixes. 'O'Rang features Webb and Harris on a variety of instruments, incorporating dub rhythms, various percussion, and thickly layered atmospherics to create a rock music that has been highly praised by U.K. publications such as The Wire, The Times of London, and Melody Maker." - J. Lane

motherfuck crystal castles

5ive - Telestic Difracture


RIFF.

"5IVE - Like a swirling vortex spinning towards infinity in the far reaches of outer space, the bilateral commission known as 5IVE is perpetually stretching the outer limits of the hearing threshold, proving the sonic postulation that one may not be able to hear, but can definitely feel those sub-harmonic registers below 20Hz. Through a veritable fleet of vintage speaker cabinets and a drum kit that packs enough wallop to fell a herd of elephant, 5IVE's
Ben Carr (guitars, amps) and Charlie Harrold (skins) have achieved the kind of instrumental post-Kyuss density that sweeps across the continental divide with a sense of inherent purpose and analog fidelity, exposing "stoner rock" as trite and ordinary once and for all. Eschewing binary code for the warmth and tone of the two-inch reel, this Boston duo have published their first jeremiad via Tortuga Recordings (initial pressing on vinyl only) with subsequent transmissions (and rumored appearance from Milligram vocalist Jonah Jenkins) to follow later this year. Surrounded by an ocean of garish mixed metaphors and run-on sentences, 5IVE have turned out the backdrop for a seething fever dream, the soundtrack for the arrival of the four horsemen. Repent or burn. (Tortuga Recordings) - J. Bennett

Consorte

Gastr Del Sol- Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly


Fractured, cracked excursions into americana psychosis.

"At this point, Gastr del Sol was pretty much just David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke, though John McEntire was still around here and there on a couple of songs. There are a few other guests at points -- percussion from Steve Butters and clarinet from Gene Coleman, both on the lengthy, mysterious "Work From Smoke" -- but otherwise this was just the partnership going at it. Acoustic guitars were all the rage for the duo and that's what a listener will hear a lot of over Crookt's eight-song length. Other instruments and approaches do surface -- "Every Five Miles" adds electric guitar to the predominantly unplugged approach, while "Is That a Rifle When It Rains?" is actually a full-on rocker, with McEntire hitting the skins -- but generally electricity was only used for the microphones. Some numbers are near fragments, like the opening "Wedding in the Park," while others extend to over ten minutes. Anyone expecting, say, the fluid genre hopping of John Fahey or the more abrupt but still uncategorizable leaps of the Sun City Girls will find Crookt a different experience. Generally, there are abrupt, quick chord runs or soft, repetitive figures, often with plenty of pauses, over which Grubbs and O'Rourke do or don't quietly sing, as the mood takes them. One of the shorter numbers is among the most intriguing -- "Paranthetically," with only Grubbs and his piano over a minute and 20 seconds. Conversational in tone, it's an interesting if too brief approach. "The Wrong Soundings" ends the album on a nicely ragged note, starting with one of the calmer guitar leads on the album before moving into a seemingly random cutup of everything from full electric riffing to low-volume percussion hits and back. Indie obsessives who favor the Thrill Jockey stable will be pleased to hear "The C in Cake," the name of which indeed was the inspiration for McEntire's The Sea and Cake." - Ned Raggett

Pelabichos en bicicleta

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Roy Harper - Folkjokeopus.


Many thanks to my friend Dax for hooking me up with the Harper discography. Here's an offering from this masterful mongrel which contains such beautiful songs such as the wailing "she's the one" and a tribute to one of the best TV series of all-time: The Prisoner (sorry Lost), a 17 minute diddy called "McGoohan's Blues"

hopes ya like't.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The Necks.


"The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia. Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums), and Lloyd Swanton (bass) conjure a chemistry together that defies description in orthodox terms. Featuring lengthy pieces which slowly unravel in the most mesmerising fashion, frequently underpinned by an insistent deep groove, the fifteen albums by The Necks stand up to re-listening time and time again.

The deceptive simplicity of their music throws forth new charms on each hearing. Not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz, the music of The Necks is possibly unique in the world today." [www.thenecks.com]

In other words, The Necks are the shit. Get this, you should've by now.


















Links removed by guilt trip:
"Do you guys know that actually, with a band that operates at this level, up-loading and sharing all this music does great damage to the possibilities in the future for the band to record and make new albums. Maybe it's becoming a boring subject, but with income from our records being severely dented by this stuff, it does make it really hard.
Glad you like the music. How about supporting us and buying some music from www.thenecks.com
Cheers, TONY (The Necks)"

Please support the artists that are worth supporting.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Liquid Liquid - s/t


Continuing our explorations into Unquestioned Rhythm, here's the mythical Liquid Liquid. Just listen to "Optimo" or "Cavern" and hear the birth of a thousand musics.

"The angular, bass-propelled funk grooves of Liquid Liquid laid the groundwork for post-rock bands like Tortoise and Ui more than a decade before the fact -- stripped of all excess and artifice, their hypnotically dub-like sound offered a starkly minimalist counterpoint to the prevailingly lush production of the concurrent disco movement, in the process impacting the development of everything from hip-hop to drum'n'bass. This superbly packaged, 18-track retrospective collects the sum of Liquid Liquid's official output, recorded between 1981 and 1983, and all things considered, it's remarkable just how prescient and modern the group's music really was. Although only the standout, "Cavern" (the basis for the Grandmaster Flash rap classic "White Lines"), is even remotely familiar in any strict sense, the remaining material, with its thickly fluid basslines and circular rhythms, will undoubtedly strike a chord of recognition in anyone versed in the sonic motifs of post-rock and electronica. Ui's Sasha Frere-Jones is thanked on the sleeve, but in truth he's the one owing the debt -- for all intents and purposes, post-rock (and a whole lot more) starts here. "- J. Ankeny

katyusha

Sunday, April 4, 2010

James Brown - Nastiest Meditational Funk




These three albums by Soul brother No.1 contain some of the most mind-numbing, skull-crushing grooves ever recorded. The Godfather strips his blasphemous funk until only the skeleton is left, but motherfucker those bones are made of lustrous fuckin' adamantium. For freaks of trigeminal-nerve shattering repetition like yours truly, this trilogy represents some of the purest examples of Unquestioned Rhythm. Fitting too, on Easter Sunday. Let's see what St. Julian has to say about "The Payback":

"And so, as we close The Payback down and wonder where all the time went, we consider had we not better just put it back on again and stare at the Moon for another hour. Obviously, I have a belief that real deep exploration of this period of James’ groove could bring finely tuned shamanic results. Of course the huge use of James Brown samples in modern music is evidence enough of our current need for this timeless rhythm. But, like the motorik Neu! groove which propelled much of the Krautrock-inspired late mid-90s music, the groove of The Payback, once-discovered or re-located, is there for us all to use not in a dance setting but as one of the accepted propellants of the modern urban meditation music."

Three albums in one file.

I don't know karate but i know krayzeee