This is the creme of the crop right here. Another great 2007 release.
Earthless is the brainchild of Mario Rubalcaba, Mike Eginton and Isaiah Mitchell. Rubalcaba, a prolific drummer, has worn the alias of Ruby Mars during his stint with Rocket from the Crypt, went on to bang away for the Hot Snakes, was the drummer for hardcore art-punks Clikatat Ikatowi and previously was in the Black Heart Procession… and prior to that? Mario was a member of Tony Alva’s Alva Team skateboarding crew. He now finds himself, along with bassist Mike Eginton and guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, knee deep in the near opposite direction of all things punk rock, ensconced in the world of jam, space and “cosmic nodding” a.k.a. Earthless.
The trio, based out of San Diego, met through mutual friends and a fondness for under the radar record collections. Mario explains how the band connected, “We discovered a mutual admiration for a lot of Japanese psychedelic hard rock bands, as well as primitive ‘60s garage music. After combing over each other’s record collections and lending out records, we came upon the idea of, ‘Let’s specifically start a Japanese-psychedelic-heavy-Kraut-rock-band.’ With the Japanese bands, it was always a really kind of heavy, blues, twisted take on Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. Isaiah is an awesome guitar player & Mike is an amazing bassist, playing with the both of them really sealed the deal. Magic happened in the room. Since then, we’ve followed that formula.”
One of the best releases of 2007. Two heavy jams by what is essentially Bardo Pond.
"Baikal is a new burner from Bardo Pond brothers John & Michael Gibbons along with fellow Bardo Pond members Clint Takeda and Jason Kourkonis. This time they ventured down the route of heavy free-improvisation and a Last Exit style hard rock approach coupled with a hard psych bend. With two tracks each weighing in at over 30 minutes in length it’s clear that Baikal is a deep voyage underseas with yet another Bardo Pond sideproject featuring Bardo brothers John & Michael Gibbons as your tour guide."
Seeing as we are knee-deep in Gong, I might as well bring out some Allen.
"Widely (and deservedly) regarded as the album that confirmed Daevid Allen's return to action at the end of his somewhat disheveled 1980s, Australia Aquaria is also the record that reaffirmed his own faith in the sounds and textures that made his earliest Gong work so fabulous. Rich in melody and sentiment (the gentle "She" is all but a universal love song) and drenched in moods that swing from ethereal to majestic, the album does not put one foot wrong -- a claim that Allen supporters had not truly been able to make since midway through the Planet Gong trilogy. Song lengths are especially impressive, generally ranging between seven and 14 minutes (the epic title track), but never outstaying their welcome. In fact, the only disappointment is that the album slipped past so unnoticed when it was first released."[AMG] WE NEED TEN THOUSAND MORE DIGIRIDOO'S!!!
"Inside the sleeve of Circle's umpteenth album Katapult (there have been more than 25 since 1991) and under the disc are the initials "NWOFHM." They stand for "New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal." This is the same band who've brought everything -- from their own version of a trance-inducing, circular, overdriven, droning update of classic Krautrock to restrained imaginative acoustic ambience (2006's Miljard), to rugged wily, punk ethos-infused boogie rock (2007's Arkades), to jazzed downtempo fusion à la Miles Davis' In a Silent Way and the sonic grooviness of Tortoise (2007's Tower). But this is no mere heavy metal recording -- death, black, progressive, power, or otherwise. Circle have too much of an individual ethos to downright ape anything. They have a "sound" that they've brought to every single record that bears their name, and even to some side projects of their individual members' (Pharaoh Overlord for one). That said, Katapult is yet another side of the band none of us has heard before. There are big repetitive rhythmic grooves, riffs, and psychedelic space rock moving ever forward toward nowhere but out. The pulse is constant and it breathes. But the vibe on this recording is downright dark and nasty. Hard and crunchy at the outset, "Saturnus Reality" opens with a full guitar throttle on a riff and a percussion throb powered by rumbling basslines you've heard in everything from early Hawkwind to Celtic Frost to Motörhead. But keyboards enter the picture as Jussi Lehtisalo growls à la Andrew Eldritch from the Sisters of Mercy at his most sinister, even as the backing vocals are sung in falsetto! "Torpedo Star Throne" picks up right where it left off, even as skittering snares, electronic loops, synths, and crunchy guitar start pushing from the back to the front and overtaking the tune, making the "circle" (no pun intended) spin faster and faster even as a big church organ plays at quarter speed to deepen the chill. And chill it does. There is something mysterious, and truly nasty sounding, about this album. Katapult is in some ways a return for fans of the old Circle, but it's something further out than the band has ever tried before. As the tracks move on -- all of them are relatively short, between three-and-a-half and six-and-a-half minutes (short for Circle in full-on pummel mode) -- alien sounds and deeper textures start to settle in. They never replace the guitars, bass, and drums, but they lengthen the shadows considerably and make themselves felt. What's left is a completely psychedelic, and seamless, mind blowing affair. Ambient soundscapes creep in on "Black Black Never Never Land," yet even as the title is chanted over and again, the six-string slash and burn and triple-timed drums never cease their incessant struggle for domination -- even as wafting vocals buried in the mix carry themselves forth to float just under the mix. Effects, textures, colors, shapes, and riffs begin to intermingle and entwine; they create a harrowing sonic journey for the listener in and out of tunnels of echo, reverb, weird '70s glam rock-style bridges to angular synth patterns (that are literally next to one another in the closer "Snow Olympics"), and so many other topsy-turvy flips and labyrinthine flops, that Katapult should be a mess. It's not. It's as tight a record as this band has ever pulled off while still sprawling into infinity. This is Circle at a whole new level in an entirely new direction and more focused and frighteningly intense than they've ever been. - Thom Jurek Skeletor
God bless Bongwater and those who sail(ed) with them.
"Kicking off with the great title track, a slow-chugging anthem with a sharp Magnuson lead and lyric, along with guest vocals from none other than the B-52s' Fred Schneider, Pussy pumps up Magnuson's vicious, intelligent feminism to an even higher level than before. From the barbed "What If..." and "Women Tied Up in Knots" to her incredible spoken word "What Kind of Man Reads Playboy" and more, she's on a very artistic rampage. Style, performance, sass, and rage combine brilliantly throughout. In general, Bongwater, with Licht back on drums in place of Sleep's rhythm boxes, continue as before, incorporating a more creepy sweetness at points. "Great Radio" is a standout, the group performing a slow, drony, and druggy piece with gentle power, while other songs like "I Need a New Tape" mix up the zoned psychedelic hush of past albums once again. Covers again crop up, both quite striking. The Weavers' folk standard "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" gets a lovely, haunting take, with guest banjo from roots music legend Peter Stampfel, while Dudley Moore's hilariously dismissive "Bedazzled," from the mid-'60s film of the same name, is tailor-made for a crackerjack Magnuson spotlight vocal. Throughout Pussy, pop culture is roasted over a slow fire in a multitude of ways. "Nick Cave Dolls," besides concluding with Magnuson's breathy, delicious whine about wanting one of said items, slips in everything from references to Hollywood and Dorothy Stratten to some of the notorious profane tapes of Buddy Rich abusing his band. The absolute hands-down winner comes right at the end, the lengthy "Folk Song." Tackling everything from wannabe rebels to corporate and political idiocy from the top on down -- not to mention a ripping dissection of then-recent hit-movie Pretty Woman that spares absolutely nobody -- Magnuson is in excelsis throughout." - Ned Raggett Nick Cave Doll
"Rotary Connection's psychedelic chamber soul continues to sound ambitious and progressive decades after the group's departure. Instantly recognizable from the dramatic string arrangements of Charles Stepney and the five-octave voice of Minnie Riperton, the group released six albums between 1967 and 1971 that combined rock, soul, and psychedelia to theatrical and occasionally transcendental heights. The racially mixed group never really broke out of the Midwest, a region in which they frequently played out. Their failure to become more than a regional cult act can be partly attributed to their management's decision to spurn a slot at Woodstock in order to play a more lucrative festival in Toronto. Despite some patchy albums and poor management decisions, Rotary Connection's status as an influential cult group has steadily risen since the '70s.
Marshall Chess, son of Leonard Chess, conceived Rotary Connection in 1967 for Cadet Concept -- an upstart subsidiary of his father's Chess label. Chess initially centered the instrumentalists around a trio of musicians from a rock group called the Proper Strangers: drummer Kenny Venegas, bassist Mitch Aliotta, and guitarist Bobby Simms. Sidney Barnes, Minnie Riperton, and Judy Hauf were added as the vocalists. Upon the group's formation, Barnes was already something of a vagabond; his resume as a songwriter, background vocalist, and solo artist was extensive. Riperton was a veteran of the Chess ranks; she worked as a receptionist in the label's Chicago office, had been a member of the Gems, and released material under the name Angela Davis. Chess musical supervisor Charles Stepney -- a legendary composer, arranger, and producer -- was brought in to direct the group. He would also implement the skills of studio musicians from the extended Chess family throughout the group's existence, such as drummer Morris Jennings and guitarists Phil Upchurch, Bobby Christian, and Pete Cosey.
Under Stepney's guidance, Rotary Connection recorded and released their self-titled debut album in late 1967. The group's spacious sound was leavened by Stepney's often gorgeous and lilting string arrangements. The album featured both originals (co-written by Stepney and a number of other songwriters, including Barnes and future Riperton spouse Richard Rudolph) and radical covers of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." This became the blueprint for what would follow from the group and, as a stunning (if flawed) debut, the album falls into that old rock trap of being viewed as the only essential one the group made. That's an unfortunate fact, because the group's key factor -- the voice of Minnie Riperton -- wasn't truly given a chance to shine until the second album." - Andy Kellman
"Oneida have become one of the more rewarding groups in experimental music in the mid-2000s, since they're so unfailingly curious about all their detours. Catatonic psych-rock, heavy blues dirge, post-punk, garage, the anxious blipping of a vintage keyboard -- it's all fair territory for them. 2005's Wedding is no different. Hanoi Jane, Kid Millions, and Bobby Matador drop some inventive pop with "You're Drifting" and "High Life," two songs with real melodies that still manage the unlikely instrumentation and the misdirection you've come to expect. A violin punctuates an exalted ending chorus, blurry organs wail, and -- of course -- someone pisses in Prospect Park. Both songs are like more lucid versions of those Eric Gaffney contributions on Sebadoh's old albums. ("Holy Picture" on III being just one example.) But that's only one facet of Wedding. Speaking of violins, the album begins with "Eiger," where the Swiss mountaintop becomes a place for proclamations to pretty German girls and a full chamber quartet. "Run Through My Hair" matches a brittle mandolin to electric guitar stabs and treated drums for some great psyche weirdness, while "Heavenly Choir" is some clammy sewer drain version of 1970s boogie rock, like an alternate universe Edgar Winter Group. None of these tangents sound forced, or made for the sake of being screwy. Instead they're twisty vines off a central root. So when Oneida opens the nearly eight-minute "Beginning Is Nigh" with a light saber warble and some steadily building organ, you know you're in for a ride. Unfortunately, you're not -- there's a guy mumbling, and a guitar making some noise, but nothing really happens. That's okay, though. Oneida come right back with "August Morning Haze," which brings the strings back to match wits with the liquid tones of a Rhodes and some more impressive vocal harmonies. Wedding might not be Oneida's most way-out album, but it's as satisfyingly restless as anything in their catalog. " - Johnny Loftus
For Felix, second album by these Northwest psychonauts.
"The title of Hovercraft's second recording for Mute is wholly appropriate, given their tendency to treat the recording studio as some kind of laboratory. Nearly impossible to describe, the instrumental sounds here are never soothing, even though Sadie 7 (aka Beth Liebling, aka Mrs. Eddie Vedder) certainly is capable of playing a lush bass guitar. But the screeching, scratching sonics of Campbell 2000's guitar takes her lullaby rhythms and turns them inside out. While not a sign of conformity by any means, Below finds Hovercraft offering up more structure, orchestrating stronger dramatic climaxes than their previous work and knowing when to pull the plug on the atonal moments. Some songs, like the ghostly "Phantom Limb" or the static-embraced "Transmitter" even cry out similarities to the blackened spirit of Joy Division in their most saddened state. This is challenging music that certainly has its rewards for those patient enough to hang around." - Jason Kaufman
This group has been largely forgotten these days (aside from a few good friends of mine and me), and unfairly so I might add. They conjure up tense, taut and razor sharp space rock/psych instrumental constructions, filled with a spot-on sense of experimentation and drama.
"Perhaps everyone and their mothers -- assuming the moms were into such things -- were indeed raving endlessly about post-rock in all its supposed forms throughout much of the '90s, instead of that seeming like an involved indie rock dream. Where Hovercraft fits into all this isn't so much in style and scene as it is in direct participation -- if not quite as freaked out as, say, Main -- the trio on Akathisia did a fantastic job of whipping up five dark, engrossing instrumentals that avoided any pretense of commercial acceptance. The inclusion of drummer Dave gave the group a touch more traditional rock punch without otherwise sounding too traditional, though he does have an ear for the steady post-psych tribal drumming doom approach that must have scared a few folks taking bong hits in 1972. One can almost audibly hear the three members testing each other out with their experiments; jam sessions turned into creepy alien soundtracks, the end descendants of everyone and everything from Ash Ra Tempel and instrumental Pink Floyd to Joy Division, and even Wire at its most unsettled-but-calm. Perhaps by default Ryan is the most openly exploratory member; while the rhythm section finds its own paces and subtle rhythm shifts, Ryan freaks out in his own way, wailing guitars shooting up, down, and all around, with mixed brief, repetitive parts that obsessively focus on rhythm as well. But he doesn't dominate, and indeed Beth Liebling and Dave are often the most prominent in the mix -- consider "Angular Momentum" and its steady, just doomy enough crawl forward towards the end. "Haloparidol" plays around with some Arabic scales here and there to attractive effect, while "De-Orbit Burn" is a killer ending for the album, with some seriously noisy feedback damage from Ryan and Liebling throughout." - Ned Raggett
"4th album from 1994. ...chocolate synthesiser was the boredoms second major-label album + while it bears little or no resemblance to their new stuff its absolutely essential listening & very much in the same ecstatic spirit. it's very raw but also sophisticated - blending elements of speed-core, punk (there seems to be a tribute of sorts to the electric eels at one point), dub, psychedelia, biker rock, the gross-out too-muchness of the butthole surfers at their lunatic best. Ace." - Boomkat
We venture into the heady terrain of Japanese Psychedelia with one of Ghost's greatest albums, "Lama Rabi Rabi".
"The incipient fascination with and appreciation of Tibetan culture by Batoh started to fully emerge with this album, in both title, design (the title is shown on the cover art in the style of the Tibetan alphabet, while art from that culture appears on the back) and similar other signifiers. Not that Lama Rabi Rabi is strictly about that country or its situation - Ghost would wait some years more for its specific effort on that front - but it does showcase the sense of depth Batoh brings to his art, evident throughout this strong album. The lengthy, fascinating "Mastillah" starts Lama on a striking high, with a series of percussive instruments meshed with acoustic drones and low, wordless mantras, leading to a steady rhythm pace from Yamazaki through a shimmering combination of the above, mixed with flute and stringed instruments. The immediately following "Rabirabi" makes this sense of religious celebration even stronger, with Batoh's slightly distorted vocals carrying through a rhythm-driven number, at once rock (thanks especially to the bass) and not, punctuated further by a chorus chanting the title. From there on in the majority of Lama addresses the heavier jam side of the band, where acoustic instruments easily have the force of their electric counterparts and often predominate. The banjo/flute/booming drum combination of "Mex Square Blue" and the more conventionally psych-fried "Bad Bone" are two fine examples. The more stripped-down, hushed folk side of Ghost emerges as well. "Into the Alley" is stunningly lovely, Batoh and his acoustic guitar accompanied by a variety of subtle background shadings from other instruments, while the brief "My Hump is a Shell" combines piano, guitar and what sounds like a musical saw to rich effect. Most striking of all would be "Agate Scape," an eleven-minute piece with both quiet beauty and echo-laden instrumental builds." - Ned Raggett
Like Fushitsusha, Harry Pussy, Mainliner, Skullflower and Chrome, Gravitar took Rock to its logical conclusion of utter extremity, enveloping their massive onslaughts in debauched, raging Sonic Miasma. True Motherfuckers of the netherworld, opening your Third Eye to unfathomable, Blakean visions. Respect.
"A set of rarities and unreleased tracks from 1996 make up You Must First Learn To Draw The Real (Monotremata, 2000), a collection that often matches the power and intensity of their masterpieces. These improvised jams transcend psychedelic rock. Often they sound like a guitar transcription of John Coltrane's and Sun Ra's cosmic-jazz suites. Geoff Walker's epic guitar runs the gamut of Hendrixiana. Eric Cook's drumming is sometimes the cathartic destruction that allows for rebirth and sometimes the quiet observer of a cataclysm of biblical proportions. The other guitar's carpet bombing sets a background for the act. Night Dub is a hypnotic piece that lays a steady, disjointed rhythm for the guitar to drop cascades of metallic tones. The band exhausts its cacophonous repertory in the sublimely raw Blues For Charlie. The ferocious, frenzied, propulsive maelstrom of URR ranks among the most intense rock and roll attacks of all times. The sixteen-minutes opus Rocket To Dearborn is an ever fainting raga that centers on one guitar's wall of reverbs and squeaks. Contrary to first impression, these are carefully orchestrated pieces that employ guitar effects in a scientific way and match it to mathematically calculated rhythms. The ebullient psychedelia of the early albums has been supplanted by a far more refined, even pretentious, art." - Scaruffi
Primal Swedish protodronerocking dementors that penetrate your frontal lobes with aural icepicks.
"Like a Swedish version of communal krautrockers, Amon Düül [I], the ominous music saunters around the room, occasionally breaking into political slogans or stage play recitations, not unlike The Mothers of Invention or the improv scenes by The Committee in “Billy Jack.” You may also hear the seeds of the more avant garde, psych/folk bands emerging from Scandinavia today, such as Finland’s Kemialliset Ystävät and Avarus or Norway’s Origami Republik. In either event, it’s certainly not “musical” and it’s a very antagonistic listen combining sloganeering, stage plays, Scandinavian folk melodies, documentary-styled sound bytes and a totally wigged-out, 60s’ political vibe not unlike Ya Ho Wa 13, with Persson assuming the mantle of Father Yod. Nevertheless, it is a key artefact from the formative Swedish psychedelic scene – just be prepared to have your brain pulled in 40 different directions at once!" - Digitalis
Mani Neumeier's barbarian rock horde in one of their more drug-blasted, wigged out efforts.
"'Hinten' was the second album by the three-piece Guru Guru comprised of: Mani Neumeier (voice, electric drums, cymbals, gong, contact microphone, kalimba, sounding being, zonk machine); Uli Trepte (bass, radio) and Ax Genrich (guitar.) And here they sound less lumpen/trudgin' than on their stellar "UFO" LP but every bit as Frei-Rock and exploratory. But unlike "UFO","Hinten" exhibits a more flexible and plastic structure: it's loose, yet tight. It's free flowing, yet scripted enough to accommodate a freefall of freak outs and it allowed themselves all the space in the universe yet managing to combine together with such effectively precise riffing JUST off enough to allow all concerned to wander off the path as many times as they liked without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind AND NEVER GETTING LOST. There are also more vocals present here, but only if you can call murmuring song titles over ten-plus-minutes' worth of an ensemble jumble of detuned, skittering guitars shrieking and groaning feedback with an overlay of contact microphone hi-jinks with jarring percussive strikes "vocals". And this was presented in a far clearer sonic image than ever before, courtesy of its self-production ably assisted by engineer Conrad Plank.
Even though the performance was several notches up on the tightness scale from "UFO", the chaos remained unchecked to an extreme because for all its pre-planned boundaries (which they wound up pushing through or just plain ignored for most of the time) the end result was a loose and gigantically sprawling, avant-proto-metal improvisatory monster that for all its audio strength caught the trio completely in the raw...And speaking of which, the cover's got that, too. What cheek. And when I say "cheek" I mean that literally cos it's a four times repetition of a photograph of a guy's backside with the word "GURU" painted twice across his bared glutei. Although it seems a long way round to go just to riff off the album's title, it did effectively scream "FREAK" before anyone got to hear it and the music sealed the whole deal with so many instantaneous stops-and-starts, false endings, guitar solos and outright freakery it both roots you to the spot and sends you off into a zone of anarchic mind-warp all at once. Makes you crack up at inopportune moments, too." - The Seth Man Bo
Hail Mayo Thompson, Texan Psychonaut and founder of The Red Crayola/Krayola. "The Red Crayola were one of the greatest psychedelic bands of the 1960s and probably of all times. They played extremely wild and cacophonous music that was decades ahead of its time. They predated Germany's expressionistic rock (Faust) and the American new wave (Pere Ubu). Their "freak outs" were closer to John Coltrane's free-jazz and to Jackson Pollock's abstract paintings than to rock and roll. Their leader, Mayo Thompson, is a composer who ranks among the greatest living musicians (classical, jazz, rock). His revolutionary compositional style had few stable coordinates. His pieces float not because they are ethereal but because melody and rhythm are left "loose". They are organisms that rely on supporting skeletons that are falling apart as they move. Thompson placed his art firmly in the iconoclastic tradition that Frank Zappa had just founded, and simply increased the amount and the speed of noise. Parable Of Arable Land (1967) is one of the milestones of rock music, a carousel of savage harmonic inventions/sabotages. God Bless (1968) was even closer (in spirit if not in sound) to the likes of Edgar Varese and John Cage. It is not a coincidence that Thompson was rediscovered by the new wave ten years later: his Soldier Talk (1979) could have well been the album of the Pere Ubu (the band he eventually joined). As of 1997, none of the major encyclopedias and histories of rock music published in Anglosaxon countries mentioned them. " - Scaruffi
FIIIIYAAAHHHH! Arthur was one fucking madman, and this, his first effort, proves it beyond a doubt. Sublimely excessive psychedelic soul produced by Pete Townshend. And of course who can forget that famous single: FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! On the Dementor Hall of Fame fo' sure.
