La Langosta

What I said below about not posting until next year. I think the opposite's going to happen. This is probably not a surprise to my lovely regulars, but there you go. The last couple of weeks have been, shall we say, a little fucking stressful. In the same way that nuclear weapons make quite a loud noise. I feel like warmed-through shit, as I have for the last couple of months. Thing is, I know why now. It has nothing to do with the old Guillain-Barre shit, or any previous illness, and unless the docs hadn't been looking at something entirely unrelated through an ultrasound, I'd probably still be none the fucking wiser, and that in and of itself is fucking frightening. Yes, I know I haven't spelt out what it is, and I'm not sure I'm ready to just yet*. This is new to me, and it's bloody scary, and I'm still finding it somewhat freaky just thinking about being in this position and I don't know how to deal with this fucker yet. Fortunately, although this is probably more dangerous than GB, it's treatable and its progression is completely known, and I will get better, so there's a lot less of the genuinely terrifying staring into the fucking abyss whilst playing cards with Death in a game whose rules you don't know that came with GB's initial stages.

So there you go. Right now the morphine and it's cousins are keeping the pain at bay, and my friends are, in the main, being pretty fantastic. I'm not going to say anymore today, mainly because I don't want to upset myself, but you can guarantee I'll go off like a supercritical reactor in the next few days

*If you want to email me, I'll happily tell you all about it, I just can't do it publicly yet, simply because I'm still in a state of shock.

Medidas temporal

Hi everyone, just wanted to apologise for the lack of updates. I've been seriously ill for the last few weeks, probably will be for a couple more at the very least, and haven't really been in the mood for writing extended posts. Soon as I'm better, I'll be back, but right now, I simply don't have the fucking energy. Have a seriously magic xmas, or winter celebration of yr choice, and I'll see you all in the new year.

(You may have noticed I've edited this post slightly and, shockingly for me, removed an expletive. This is 'cos it sounded like I was being sarcastic, and I genuinely do want everyone to have a brilliant christmas, I know I can be a misanthropic bastard at times, but I'm not that much of a wanker, I promise)

Vete A La Mierde

Vatican Shadow. Really? You genuinely think this is good? Please. I mean, you have heard The Crackdown right? Cabaret Voltaire? Yeah, them, after Chris Watson left and they went shit. Seriously people, paramilitary uniforms and muggy, static filled military music, beats that a ham-fisted pig could render funkier, and dated, childish "shock" tactics allied to self-consciously retro 80s synth revivalism and a return to the completely outmoded industrial tactics of the 70s/80s. Do us all a favour and fuck off. Unless you actually want to be a third-rate Muslimgauze for the early 21st century, in which case you've succeeded in your quest by releasing (and then expensively rereleasing on vinyl when the original cassette edition has sold out) every fucking single insignificant fart you've committed to tape. You are not releasing samizdat bulletins of defiance from behind a totalitarian wall, you are a middle-class American with a relatively comfortable life who owns a record label, a distro, and a shop, who is doing nothing but preaching to the fucking industrial choir.

More soon...

Capaz De Producir Insensibilidad O Pérdida Completa Del Sentido

Hello lovely people. I know I haven't been around much lately. Sorry 'bout that. Not been very fucking well, to the extent that I've been suffering the worst fucking pain since I was in hospital several years ago. I'm halfway through several articles/rants on all sorts of things, but they're gonna have to wait a bit for me to finish, not to mention that I'm halfway through a fucking paper, because neither oxycodone nor morphine sulphate are particularly conducive to maintaining a coherent thought-train. Or remaining upright. Don't worry, I'm alright, it just hurts like a motherfucker. Hopefully I'll be off the heavy-duty shit in the next few days, and normal service can be restored once more.

El Arándano

Myrrh - Myrrh (Soft Abuse)
Sarin Smoke - Vent (Mie Music)
Cut Hands - Black Mamba (Susan Lawly)
Laurie Spiegel - Expanding World (Unseen Worlds)
Juju & Jordash - Techno Primitivism (Dekmantel)
Gato Barbieri - In Search Of The Mystery (ESP-Disk)
Birch Cooper - I Was A Teacher (Digitalis)
Matt Carlson - All Moments (NNA Tapes)
Matt Carlson - Particle Language (Draft)
Outer Space - II (Blast First Petite)
Detroit Escalator Co. - Excerpts (Peacefrog)
C. C. Hennix - Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage (Important)
Marion Brown - Geechee Recollctions/Sweet Earth Flying (Impulse!)
Ricardo Villalobos - Dependant & Happy (Perlon)
Pharoah Sanders - In The Beginning (ESP-Disk)
Henry Flynt - Ascent To The Sun (Recorded)
Infinity Window - Artificial Midnight (Arbor)
Plastic Crimewave Sound - Flashing Open (Eclipse)
Rara In Haiti - Street Music Of Haiti (Soul Jazz)
Ben Nash/Magic Lantern - Split (Blackest Rainbow)

La Nueva Edad

There's a lot of wibble in the air these days. We're in the midst of a veritable glut of synth music these days, and let's face it, most of it's either crap or sounds like it's fucking 1973, and in some incurable cases, both. Other that that, an awful lot of it is just so terribly fucking boring*. As ever though, buried deep in the shit are a few nuggets of electronic gold.

Like Matt Carlson's All Moments LP (NNA Tapes), or Akashic Record (Spectrum Spools) and II (Blast First Petite) by Outer Space, created by musicians who actually realise that starting the arpeggiator on yr modular and mucking about with the knobs just doesn't fucking cut it anymore (and frankly, was probably getting a bit fucking boring by the mid 70s). Synthesizers are amazing things, capable of generating genuinely new tonalities and modes of expression in the hands of a skilled user, but also well able to just act as sonic signifiers for lazy hipsters record collections and their urge to display their "knowledge" to other, similarly limited dickheads.

I'm not saying that every single sound and idea has to be new and unheard, but I do find it somewhat amusing that instruments designed to break free of traditional performance and timbral modes are now so often being used to recreate their own past, especially as so much of the synth/electronic music of the 60s and 70s that's been reissued in the last few years perversely manages to sound more modern and certainly more daring than it's modern incarnations, and not just because the old stuff was the frontier then. There's both an edge and a sense of playfulness to much earlier synth/electronic music, elements sorely fucking lacking these days, a fidgety restlessness born of genuine experimentation and the knowledge that an experiment can fail which I'm just not hearing nearly as much as I'd fucking like to.

But no, so comfy and safe has this world become we've even seen the rehabilitation of new age music. Let me repeat and expand on that, with added expletives; the rehabilitation of new fucking age music, the single most irredeemably fucking self-satisfied, up-it's-own-arsehole quasi-spiritual ooh-aren't-the-natives-in-touch-with-nature-on-like-a-totally-other-level tinkly floaty crap that only the sort of cunt who takes DMT and thinks they have genuinely communed with an astral intelligence could make, and only the sort of fucknut who thinks that orgone energy can cure cancer and make it rain would listen to. Fucking hell people, really? Torpid fucking musical cotton wool as a soporific for the world's rough edges and rose-tinted arpeggios from a non-existent past are not what I fucking want to hear from "the instrument of the future" in two thousand and fucking twelve.

And it doesn't have to be like this. Like I said earlier, there's some beautiful stuff out there, and the albums I mentioned earlier are examples of that. I purposely chose them to highlight, because they aren't free of the presence of earlier musics, but neither do they slavishly adhere to previous templates, the synthesis of the past, the ubiquitous influences of Kosmische music and 60s tape music and whatnot are still there, but they don't constitute the whole, they exist as echoes, recontextualized in an unexpected fashion and embedded in a contemporary framework, allied to genuinely original compositional and sonic ideas. Outer Space's II is a case in point; it's liberally smothered in Mellotron, an instrument which screams loon pants and wizard hats louder than almost any other, but because the person playing it actually has a functioning, creative brain, it drags that archaic beast of an instrument kicking and screaming into the present. I have no problem with history, I just don't necessarily want to fucking live in it...

*That Steve Hauschlidt LP on Kranky manages to combine all three of these traits. I have heard Edgar Froese's Aqua you know. Please try harder. Or maybe not bother. Don't even get me started on Dolphins Into The Future. Even the fucking name annoys me.

Mirra

Take one part Parson Sound/International Harvester style slo-mo mong rock, one part prime, blown-out UK psych/noise dirge (think pre-Carved Into Roses Skullflower) and stir in the ecstatic string work of Agathe Max or Henry Flynt, and you have the rough makings of my record of the year (so far): Myrrh, by Myrrh (Soft Abuse).

It really is a fucking beauty. An electric viola and drums duo whose crawling feedback mantras don't so much ascend into the sky as burn a fucking hole through the planet. This record presses more of my buttons than anything I've heard in a fucking age. Blues sodden modal viola riffs, plucked and bowed, slowly rotate round a granite-hard core of saturated drum thud (courtesy of Andie Mazorol), the like of which I've only previously encountered when Stuart Dennison was still a fulltime member of Skullflower, each beat landing like the foot of a very stoned elephant, raising huge clouds of tape dust that coats every surface in volcanic ash before Jackie Beckley kicks in the feedback afterburner and cuts the viola loose with a high and lonesome chainsaw wail, a screaming, roaring, beautiful wall of scorched earth fuzz that sends shivers up my fucking spine every single time I hear it. This is psychedelic mountain music people, and I urge you to seek it out. In the meantime, there's a couple of tasters here to be going on with...

Dårlig Og Ugudelige Mennesker

Ok, one more, and this is such a fucking killer version, and I'm particularly fond of the high-pitched whine which runs through this clip. You may not agree...

El Túnel De Dulce

Talking of riffs, people really don't fucking write 'em like this anymore do they?



Sorry, I'm having a bit of an early 90s evening.

Desvaríos

I know the vocals are fucking crap, but I'm really not joking about Blues From The Red Sun. If more so-called stoner rock sounded like this instead of their later albums we'd have all had a much fucking better time. Ignore the fucknut on vocals and just wallow in the riffs...



Yeah, I know, John Garcia is a massive git, but, what a fucking band. Here's some more, in the marvellous form of Allen's Wrench and Mondo Generator, two songs which are pretty fucking hard to argue with.





See, good innit? Next time I might tell you how I ended up with a lovely new double-barrelled surname...

Borracho Y Colocado Y Contento

Now there's doom, there's Doom, and there's DOOOOOM. In the latter category, in the select company of Sleep, Warhorse, Ufomammut and early Electric Wizard, there's a band which way too fucking few people seem to have heard. Possibly because they're Dutch, and Holland doesn't really get a look in musically, even in Metalworld, but probably because they have the worst name I've come across in fucking years: Toner Low. Yes, they named themselves after a warning light/message on a photocopier. Now I've spent the better part of the last twenty years stoned, and I'd have thought that was a shit name for a band even if I was more fucking twatted than I am at the moment, which is very*.

Seriously tho, Toner Low fucking kill, their last two albums are simply fucking awesome, properly psychedelic mucky doom with a side order of foolish samples (see also Ufomammut) and (latterly) some properly Hawkwind style wibble. Hard to argue with that combination really, especially when it's allied with some serious songwriting/arranging nous. Of all the doom that's passed through my head in the past fifteen years or so, their last couple of LPs are up there with Sleep's Holy Mountain and Come My Fanatics in the stoned, heavy and simply fucking wonderful stakes. The last one, II, is a particularly juicy slab of earfood, four songs all hovering around the 15/20 minute mark, but with not a note, a noise wasted.

But it's a track from the self-titled LP I'm going to leave you with, the excellently named opening track; Evil Machinery On The Rise, featuring Ripley's waldo**, and the best entrance of a fantastically fucking loud bass I've heard for fucking years. Oh, and Dalek vocals.



Now that is the fucking shit. It's what Kyuss might've sounded like circa Blues For The Red Sun***if they hadn't had that fucking twat on vocals and even less regard for their record label.

*I'm listening to Motorhead at the moment, specifically 1916, a seriously fucking underrated LP in my opinion, but one which, even if it was complete shit, should reside forever in the pantheon of rock genius just for Lemmy's opening line on I'm So Bad (Baby I Don't Care); "I make love to mountain lions". Now that's fucking class. You may have noticed this footnote has fuck all to do with the main text. Oh well.

**Aliens, when Ripley's in the robotic exoskeleton kicking the crap out of the alien. All the mechanical samples are from that scene. Yes, I'm a fucking nerd sometimes. What of it?

***Don't knock it, that album fucking rocks. Sounds like a bluesier Fudge Tunnel with a Can fetish in its best moments, admittedly John Garcia is singing on it, but there's not as much of his macho caterwauling, and the lyrics aren't quite as laughably fucking juvenile as on the next two albums. Put it this way, BFTRS had almost as much of an influence on Boris and Green Machine as Earth and the Melvins did. Make of that what you will.

Postre

Right, who's up for a freakbeat Arnold Dreyblatt?

Segundo Plato

And to follow, some really fucking stupid music from the 60s:



That drummer is a fucking outrage.

Para Mi Tranquilidad

Weird week. Good one tho. I finally have a chance to rest my screaming nerves, and not just for a day or two. Stressed is not a strong enough word to describe how I've felt for the last year or so. But no fucking more of that shit*. Suffice to say I have some breathing space. So now I can actually make all the music I've been meaning to for the last fucking couple of years, I can study without my brain doing fucking star jumps over *redacted* shit. I can walk for fucking miles and miles when I fucking want to, and not walk miles and miles when my nerves are screaming for fuck's sake stop. Christ, I might even get a decent fucking night's sleep without the aid of temazepam or one of it's amusing relatives, or experiencing completely fucking batshit mental nightmares**. Oh fuck, the joy.

So yeah, I'm in an unqualified good mood, and frankly, I think I fucking deserve it. So I can once again rant unfettered whilst drinking red wine§ at three in the morning after banging my brain against the more fiendish end of differential topology should I so wish, safe in the knowledge I can skip Monday and come up smiling on Tuesday. Can you tell I needed a break?

Anyway, more soon, here's some stupid music from the 70s:



Yeah, UFO were good once. Mick Bolton plays the same guitar solo on at least four songs on this one album, beating Tony Iommi's previous record§§. For some perverse reason, this appeals to me immensely.

*Don't ask, can't say. Let's just say that something has happened which couldn't have happened at a better fucking time.

**The 3-part*** utterly relentless apocalyptic zombie gorefest featuring almost everyone I know and a Mwandishi-era Herbie Hancock. Remind me to tell you about it one day when I'm less traumatized. I'm not fucking kidding, if I'd have been watching this on video it would have been fucking awesome, but it was in my brain and it was downright fucking terrifying.

***Seriously, a trilogy in a night, unless I dreamt I was awake in the bits between the bits. Sorry for the accidental Ozrics reference there.

§Why didn't I fucking know about Amarone della Valpolicella before? Fucking nectar.

§§Check Black Sabbath (the song) and War Pigs if you don't know what I'm on about.

Loto, Planta Acuática

Another record which I don't think really gets it due is Santana's absolutely fucking astonishing early 70s live album, Lotus. I hadn't listened to it for a while until someone mentioned it on Twitter a few days ago, and I'd almost forgotten just how fucking good it is. Face-meltingly intense at times, this is not the swinging latin west coast sound of the earlier stuff, but a fearsomely psychedelic jazz rock meltdown which has more in common with Dark Magus and On The Corner for much of it's duration than any of their own back catalogue.

I mean, it opens with a huge Alice Coltrane cover (Going Home), then slams into the more than a bit electric Miles 'A-1 Funk' in the midst of an echoplex ring mod laser battle and doesn't take it's foot off the gas for more than a few seconds at a time. It's six or seven minutes in that it really starts to kill, Carlos Santana's guitar scything into Every Step Of The Way's brooding funk with seriously violent intent. Fuck it, I could write about it all fucking day and still not convey just how fucking storming this record is, so here's the whole two hours...





And yes, that is Leon Thomas on vocals and percussion.

No Me Arrepiento

I'll warn you right now, the level of guitar and moog wank in this clip is off the fucking scale. But it rocks like a fucking mountain, which is why I'm posting it. Yes, I know it's Journey, but, and this is the important bit, it's long before they went pop (although most of the early stuff is still hideous) and not long after Greg Rolie and the other bloke left Santana*, probably because Carlos wouldn't let him play his moog like he does in the second song here. There's no excuse for this sort of behaviour really, but when it's done with this level of intensity, and accompanied by some of the funniest fucking facial expressions of profound ecstasy in the history of music, it's irresistible, like a dirty kebab after fourteen pints of scrumpy.

Skip ahead to 4.20 and 9.30 for the really good shit...


Christ, it's like a fucking cross between early ZZ Top and Goblin.

*The bass player and rhythm guitarist were previously in the sorely fucking underrated Frumious Bandersnatch, psych fans!

Jugoso

So, Ardbeg has a contender for my heart when it comes to one of my very favourite things, single malt whisky. Not that their fucking outstanding Uigeadail has been toppled from it's podium (yet), but, over the past couple of months I've encountered a few whiskys from another Islay distillery, the fiercely untraditional Bruichladdich, and they've been consistently fantastic and most definitely worthy of yr close attention. The first one was Waves, which was salty, fruity and smoky with just a touch of seaweedy iodine and spice to lift it, shot through with just enough of that madeira cask sweetness, complex and long lasting and rather fucking lovely.

Next up was Rocks, which is, unusually for a single malt, finished in shiraz casks. It's also unpeated, unlike Waves, and the months in those red wine casks have imparted a beautiful ruddy hue to it which follows through to the nose. Fuck me this stuff smells good. Fresh raspberries and barley sugar with a slight note of the sea which all carry on into yr gob, first as the background to a torrent of malt and vanilla then coming through like a disco string section, filling yr mouth with spiced summer pudding and cream, outrageously smooth and never cloying thanks to that hint of coastal saltiness. I quite liked this, as you may have gathered, and compared to the considerably pricier Isle Of Jura 16yo Diurach's Own* we'd been drinking earlier it was on another fucking level in terms of depth, complexity and sheer deliciousness. It instantly became one of my favourite whiskys and further samplings have done nothing but reinforce my opinion. Fucking fabulous whisky, and for under thirty quid a bottle, insanely good value.

You may have noticed I haven't given ages for the first two whiskys. That's because Bruichladdich aren't averse to mixing identical recipe whiskys of different ages to create the desired expression. None of the malts in Waves or Rocks are more than 8yo as far as I'm aware, but you'd never know it from tasting either of these two excellent whiskys. At the moment, I'm enjoying a glass of The Laddie Ten, which, unsurprisingly, has been aged for ten years in American oak and is proving to be a rather fine, more complex and citrusy drop than the Waves or the Rocks and which I shall tell you about next time. For now I'm just going to savour it.

*Which was delicious, but somehow anonymous, Elixir is a superior (and cheaper) expression of Jura's strengths for me. And what's with the caramel Jura add for colour? I like my whisky to be the colour it comes out the cask. I know, fussy fucker.

El Chocho

Right. There are a number of rants coming soon, on various topics, but that's not the point of this post. No, this post is to alert you good people to the terrifying fact that I have just opened a twitter account. Expect pithy record, gig and book reviews, gratuitous swearing, alcohol and chemically fuelled nonsense, booze recommendations, more swearing, randomness, sarcasm, miniature rants and, just for good measure, extra swearing. Plus anything else that I can cram into 140 characters or less. Just search on twatter for Drwommm, if y're so inclined...

Pregunta

Why is there so fucking little J.B. Hutto on the web?
 

 See? There should be a lot fucking more.

Azul

I am appallingly fucking drunk. So here's half an hour of Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers, live in Ann Arbor in 1973, also very, very drunk.

Nuevamente

Yes people of Brighton (and Hove), it's back. Same name, new venue. Louder, longer and later. Five quid, four acts, three of whom are very good indeed, and one who I've never heard but sounds pretty cool, plus myself and some other good people (not sure who, otherwise I'd tell yer) playing records at you at high volume; I believe the kids refer to this as "DJing"

All the details you need be here

αMT - La Banda Sonora

Can - The Lost Tapes (Spoon)
Sunflare - Ghetto Blast (Batshit)
Crystal Syphon - Family Evil (Roaratorio)
Ricardo Villalobos - Any Ideas (Perlon)
Tyndall - Traumland (Sky)
Ben Nash/Magic Lantern - Split (Blackest Rainbow)
Eleh/Duane Pitre - Split (Important)
Actress - R.I.P (Honest Jon's)
The Psychedelic Aliens - Psycho African Beat (Academy)
Otis Spann - The Biggest Thing Since Colossus (Blue Horizon)
Ultramarine - Acid (West Norwood Cassette Library)
Doubleheart - Salsa Apocalypso (Nonplus)
Jon Convex - Radar (Nonplus)
Conrad Schnitzler/Ricardo Villalobos/Max Loderbauer - Zug Reshaped (M=Minimal)
Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - s/t (Honest Jon's)
Chicago Underground Duo  - 12° Of Freedom (Thrill Jockey)
Shockabilly - Colosseum (Shimmy Disc)
Cristian Vogel - The Inertials (Shitkatapult)
Jim Plotkin & KK Null - Aurora (Sentrax)
The Orb - Okie Dokie, It's The Orb On Kompakt (Kompakt)

Blog De Ahora

Just a quick post to let you lovely people know that Now have a blog which can be found here and which is most informative. Do check the releases section as there are some rather fine records there which can be downloaded for the extremely reasonable price of bugger-all. Public service announcement ends.

Mente Errante

Sorry for the recent dearth of postings, I've just been a little uninspired to write lately. But I seem to have regained the urge, so here I am. I'm halfway through a massive musicological appreciation of the superlative* reissue of Sleep's Dopesmoker - you can hear what notes Al's playing! it doesn't sound like slurry anymore!! - still, for my money, the benchmark against which all Doom/Sludge/Thingy should be measured and by an accident of fate, was reissued in the same week as my birthday, a coincidence which slipped me by but was pointed out as very appropriate by a number of my good friends. I'm quite sure I have no idea what they mean... Fuck me it's good tho'.

One reason I haven't written much is music. After the smoking demise of my old (hi-fi) amp, it's replacement** proved to be so fucking amazing that every time I've sat down to write, I've been dragged back to the sofa by the music, so clear and beautiful is the sound, unable to concentrate on anything else, and then found myself completely unable to remember what the fuck it was I was going to write. Well, at least I've got a good soundtrack as Europe sails inexorably towards the economic event horizon lurking somewhere in the near future...

Eleh's Radiant Intervals is filling the room at the moment. One advantage of the place I live in now, is that it's fucking old, proper brick shithouse military architecture. I mean, the place was originally part of the Royal Artillery and is located in the parkland the army used to train people to lug and fire massive battefield artillery pieces, so unless you throw open every window, there's almost no leakiness at all, and that means I can listen to Eleh at the correct volume level. In other words, stupidly fucking loud. I love Eleh's music, ultra-minimal, like a sub bass obsessed cross between Elaine Radigue and Alvin Lucier, and the way it works as much on a physical level as a sonic one, absolutely filling the listening space with palpable density, seemingly giving the air that it's moving weight and substance, a thick, gooey sonic treacle permeating every corner of the room, making the whole place thrum as the high end oscillations tickle yr eardrums like starlight twinkling through the atmosphere. You can almost see and taste the waveforms. And (Dopesmoker has this effect too) when it ends, it feels like the pressure in the room has actually lowered, like the molecules of the air itself have been allowed to fly loose again, the sensation that a huge, unseen presence has left the building. It's akin to the delicious way the air feels after a massive thunderstorm, uncanny and wonderful and unusual.

The other thing I admire about Eleh is their? her? his? insistence on, and ability to maintain, absolute anonymity in this multiply-connected world of ours. Eleh have been around for 13 years, put out a fair amount of records, and still no one seems to have a clue who's behind it all. No websites, no interviews, no photos, no names, no nothing except the music itself. I like that.

Also, did you know that if you watch four Resident Evil films in one sitting, yr intelligence level slips lower and lower by the minute. I had to ring someone to find out how to work the fucking kettle after the third film...

Anyway, enough of this rambling foolishness, I've just got the first series of Archer on blu ray and I feel like laughing until my lungs fall out.

And one last thing, Dr C, tak for de lægemidler og solbriller, du kender mig for godt.

*Not a word I bandy about with great frequency, and certainly not towards Southern Lord, whose shit to good release ratio clocks in at around 10:1 (and growing) these days. They did this right though.

**It's a Rega Mira3, in case you were nerdy enough to be wondering. I won't have any other make of stereo gear in the house (speakers excluded - it's Tannoy all the way for that side of things).

Bestia Acuática Excelente Cuatro, Cinco Y Seis: Manos De Jazz

Behold the winner of the Semi-Translucent Seabeast category of the 2012 Benthic Jazz Hands awards. The runners-up were none too fucking pleased, as the photos below show:

Scale worms!

Coming soon: The most disgusting, unnerving creature this world has ever seen. If you don't like segmented legs and exoskeletons you will have nightmares...

Música Para Los Maestros De Reptiles

Portraits - Portraits (Important)
Mad River - Jersey Sloo (Shagrat)
Anna Själv Tredje - Tussilago Fanfara (Silence)
Herbcraft - Discover The Bitter Water Of Agharta (Hello Sunshine)
Herbcraft - Ashram To The Stars (Hello Sunshine)
Sunflare - Young Love (Cubic Pyramid)
Morkobot - Morbo (Supernatural Cat)
Boddika - Acid Jackson (Swamp 81)
Yob - Atma (Profound Lore)
Head Boggle - Headboggle (Spectrum Spools)
Moloko - I Am Not A Doctor (Echo)
Franco Falsini - Cold Nose (Spectrum Spools)
Chicago Underground Duo - Age Of Energy (Northern Spy)
Ufomammut - Oro Opus Primum (Supernatural Cat)
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. - 1970-73 (Cuneiform)
Shackleton - Music For The Quiet Hour/Drawbar Organ (Woe To The Septic Heart)
Duane Pitre & Pilotram Ensemble - Organised Pitches Occurring In Time (Important)
Bitchin' Bajas - Water Wrackets (Kallistei Editions)
Bitchin' Bajas - Vibraquatic (Kallistei Editions)
Tyndall - Sonnenlicht (Sky)

La Locura Italiano

I've completely lost my fucking voice. All that comes out is this weird bassy rasp which sounds more like a broken EDP Wasp than a human voice, accompanied by a sensation akin to some fucker forcing a cheese grater down my gullet. Still, laryngitis aside, I'm actually in a damn good mood, and not just 'cos my throat-soother of choice, Isle Of Jura Elixir*, is so fucking delicious...

One of the reasons I'm in a good mood is because one of my favourite bunch of doom-mongers**, mad Italian space cadets Ufomammut, have got their act together again after a couple of disappointingly Isis-esque (or fucking boring, if you prefer, as far as I'm concerned the two terms are perfectly interchangeable) albums*** and remembered what they're fucking good at, namely riffs that sound like the Sun collapsing, incomprehensible cosmic bellowing, and huge swathes of wibbling analogue synths. Colossally dumb space doom of the highest fucking order, and essential listening for connoisseurs of heavy and stupid. Oh yeah, it's called Oro - Opus Primum and it's on Supernatural Cat, in case you were wondering.

Also on Supernatural Cat are another bunch of marvellous loons who go by the names Lin, Len and Lan, and are collectively known as Morkobot. They may be Ufomammut under another name, they may not, I have no idea, mainly because they have metal cubes for heads, as you can see...

A bass, drums and synth trio, they specialise in angular, convoluted space/noiserock and vaguely remind me of an instrumental Supernova-era Today Is The Day, albiet without the gun fetish and raging misanthropy, and their latest, Morbo, sounds (a bit) like a King Crimson loving spider jamming jazz-rock hardcore with Tar§. In other words, very bendy and very good. Goddammit, they even chuck in lashings of slide bass, and apart from Mark Sandman and me, there really aren't many practitioners of that dark art around. And Mark Sandman's been dead for years, so if you crave the injured elephant call of bottleneck bass you know where to go. They're also so tight it fucking hurts, chucking odd time signatures around like it ain't no thang and they never, ever veer into the dread zone of prog toss. If you like NoMeansNo, you'll fucking shit yrself over this lot. Fucking brilliant.





Right. More later, but the painkillers are kicking in and my brain wants to take a power nap.

*12yo, sweet, fruity and honeyed. Get thee to a Sainsbury's and grab a bottle. You can't buy it anywhere else as far as I know.

**With the emphasis on the mong.

***Eve and Idolum. Really fucking boring. Unlike the preceding three LPs, Godlike Snake, Snailking and Lucifer Songs which are simply fucking sublime.

§Another brilliant AmRep band no one seems to remember any more.

Una Consulta

What twat at google redesigned the Blogger interface?  You dipshits, you've managed to make it both less intuitive and less user-friendly. Thanks for that.

Alto Tiempo

Three tracks into the new High On Fire album, De Vermis Mysteriis, something wonderful happens. After Des Kensal's mid-paced tattoo has rolled round a few times, without warning Matt Pike's guitar scythes in, the drums hang suspended for a heartbeat or two, and then... Fuck... I mean FUCK, there are riffs, there are High On Fire riffs, and then there's this. This song, Fertile Green, is everything HOF have threatened to be, a time-threshing relativistic switchback, hurtling unstoppably through the Metalverse, dragging and ripping space in it's wake. Take Devilution's time-bent riffery, ally it to Silver Back's outright fucking ferocity*, stir in a touch of that 'bars as long as the breath required' thing that you'd normally associate more with Conference Of The Birds/Pilgrimage-era Om than this Mach 10 dragster, add one of Mr Pike's most unhinged solos for a quite some time and you have this, an actual goddamn future fucking classic. Now go bang yr head.



*This LP is more in the Blessed Black Wings mould than the last couple. I am most definitely not complaining.

Río Loco

It's hard to express just how much I fucking love this song. It is, quite simply, a motherfucker*. I'd advise turning this up very, very loud and playing it at least twice.



Quick note for anyone whose appetite has been whetted by this and wants to check out Mad River's glorious first LP, do not buy the double cd reissue that's got the inferior second album, Paradise Bar & Grill, in the same package. The reason Mad River sounds so weird and wired is that it was accidentally mastered at slightly too high a speed, giving it a sharp, edgy, bad trip vibe, and someone decided to remaster the fucker not only at the correct speed, but in such a way as to dull the hugely trebly impact of the three (oh yes, three) guitarists, rendering one of 'em almost inaudible on some tracks. It's a fucking disgrace, and I urge you to seek out an unfucked-with copy.

*And the theme song of my late teenage years. But we'll say no more about that.

¿Rachel Khoo, Puedo Ser Su Espátula?

Anyone who's known me for some time has probably heard my "why rabbits* are the ultimate embodiment of evil" theory**. They've probably also noted my deep and abiding (and to some, inexplicable) love of Moloko, a band whose music has always instantly filled me with idiot glee and the urge to dance like a tit because they manage to be funky as fuck, poppy as all hell*** and deeply odd all at the same damn time, which is not an easy trick to pull off. And, of course, the incomparable Róisín Murphy§ was one half of 'em, and I fucking love Róisín Murphy. Not just because of that smoky voice which does things to me I'm not going to discuss in a public place, or that uncanny elastic phrasing of hers, the way she can twist and wrap a vocal line around a skewed rhythm section in a manner which is somehow percussive and slinky at the same time, but also for her utterly batshit lyrics, which I've only just realised, 17 years after the fact, are responsible for the aforementioned evil rabbit theory§§. And this, Killa Bunnies, is the song solely responsible:



Fear them...

*As in rodents.

**When my brain is idling, especially if I'm off my face, I've always enjoyed thinking a ludicrous idea right through to it's ultimate conclusion, just for shits 'n' giggles. I once came up with an entire religion based on analogue synthesizers and kittens purely because I was a bit bored and very, very stoned.

***And given that poppiness isn't really a trait I look for in music, or even respond to very often, the fact that Moloko did pop so fucking well that I love 'em all the more for it is a high and very rare compliment. Their first two LPs, Do You Like My Tight Sweater? and I Am Not A Doctor are just fucking wonderful and I won't have a word said against 'em.

§In the pub a few days ago, someone asked me which singer I would most want to collaborate should such a ludicrous possibility arise. Well, here's yr answer.

§§They don't make any fucking noise. I don't trust an animal that doesn't make a fucking sound unless you sit on it, especially when there's billions of the buggers running around under our feet in their hollowed out catacombs, they've got some sort of fluffy bastard hive-mind going and they're just biding their time...

Puro Kvlt Idiotez

Oh yes. I like this idea. Go here and find out what it is. And join me in voting. The world's first Black Metal airline is within our grasp...

Bestia Acuática Excelente Tres: ¡Plato Voladors!

Is it in the sea? Is it in the sky? Who knows? The silent invasion of the Benthocodons continues apace...

Space jelly!

Alemáns

Keeping with the spacerock theme, here's the band that arguably invented the whole thing*, Amon Düül II, knocking seven bells of psychedelic shit out of their classic Phallus Dei sometime in 1968.



*Their bass player, Dave Anderson, undoubtedly invented spacerock bass. There's a good reason he ended up in Hawkwind a couple of years later...

Dave Brock Es Una Verga

I fucking love Hawkwind*. We know this. And I've always been inordinately fond of the album Quark, Strangeness & Charm, I mean, it may not be the last word in brain-destroying spacerock like Space Ritual, but it does contain Bob Calvert's greatest moments with them and an emphasis on motorik that tends to go unremarked, not to mention a certain stylistic similarity to early Roxy Music. So it is with great delight that I present this clip of Hawkwind doing Quark, Strangeness & Charm in, I'd guess, 1977, on the Marc Bolan show of all fucking places...

All together now:

 Copernicus had those renaissance ladies crazy about his telescope...



Oh, where's Dave Brock I hear you cry? Chucking a strop because he's not the frontman. He's not even playing the guitar on this version, it's Adrian Shaw (bass) as Brock didn't even bother turn up to play on the version they'd be miming to because it was on a kids show. Twat. Ah, the 70s.

And yes, Bob does have a hawk attached to this wrist. No, I don't know why either.

*When I say Hawkwind, I mean pre-1980, when, let's face it, it all went tits-up and stayed there except for the very rare nugget of spacey brilliance amongst all the crusty dung. Ginger Baker in Hawkwind? Fuck off. They were never the same after Levitation, an album many people inexplicably seem to like.

Aprender Húngaro

I did write a really long post about struggling with pain and whatnot, a positive one for a change, as I've conquered a few demons that have been royally fucking with me all year, but I deleted it. Because when it comes down to it, I'm finally in a good fucking state of mind, most parts of my life seem to be going rather well thank you, and I'm not sure that huge blog posts analysing what's going on with my fucked-up nervous system and it's attendent effects on my inner life are actually that fucking helpful. So instead, here's a song which I think sums up my current mood quite fucking nicely...



Heh.

Música Roedor

I fucking love this record. It's genuinely fucking bonkers. Especially as the preceding album (Sorcerors) was pretty standard vaguely psychy folk stuff*. Not sure what happened in the intervening couple of years, but it sounds like it involved a Soft Machine album and a fuckload of acid. This is the shortest (and heaviest) track, a mere eight minutes compared to the expansive weirdness of the nineteen minute opener, Sun Symphonica, or the jazzfolkpsychprogfroth they work up over thirteen minutes on Call Of The Wild, but what a fucking eight minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mice And Rats In The Loft by Jan Dukes De Grey.



*Not my bag, too much fucking Donovan and Tull in the mix for me.

Ahora

More fun at The Bird's Nest, as the rather fine Now* are having a bit of a shindig to celebrate the release of their new lathe cut 10"+ cd on $500 Dollar Limit**, my old mucker Marcelo Madrid and me good self will be trawling through our respective record collections to bring you only the finest in sonic delights in between and after sets by Now, Alex Charles, and Now + Alex Charles.

And it's fucking free. Not on a school night either, so you've got no excuse for not coming down and joining like-minded and lovely people in alcohol-fuelled bacchanal, dancing like a tit should the mood take you and buying some rather beautifully put together limited edition records for an extremely reasonable price.

More info be here

*The only band I've ever been in that has proper songs and stuff. They kick serious arse and have done for some considerable time, and if you haven't heard 'em yet, I suggest you get yrself over to their Soundcloud and remedy the situation immediately.

**Don't have an url for 'em yet. Stay tuned.

El Gato Y El Hippy

Revelling in schadenfreude is wrong, I know, but sometimes it's just so fucking hard not to kill yrself laughing at a minor misfortune, such as the wonderful example recounted in the bottom footnote of this post. And a few days ago, when I was in desperate need of a giggle, I was idly gazing out the window, down onto the courtyard where the resident hippy happened to be doing his morning tai-chi and two of the many excellent cats who frequent our gardens were out for a leisurely perambulation around their territory*. So, I'm sat at the window, coffee and spliff in hand, enjoying the first proper sun of the year, wondering if the decidedly not meditational music I was listening to was interfering with the hippy realigning his chi, and watching the cats doing cat things, when one of them decided that the hippy was the most interesting thing in the yard and sat down to watch. After a minute or so, the cat started to creep forward, just like it had seen a fascinating piece of string and was certain the string had not seen the cat. Closer and closer, lower to the ground with each step, eyes fixed on the oblivious hippy who was carrying out a manoeuvre which looked like someone dropkicking a smurf in very slow motion. Then, cat leapt at hippy, burying it's claws in his outstretched leg, eliciting an alarmed cry that quickly ascended into the ultrasonic and causing the hippy to crumple to the ground in an amusing heap while the cat, curiosity satisfied, sauntered back off to join their mate and see if there was anything interesting in the bins.

*Or possibly playing Cat Chess.

La Cavidad

Riff. Singularities. Excellent meth reference. And a lyric demonstrating an understanding of the implications of General Relativity. That'll fucking do for me.

I do like me some Cavity. Insert yr own joke here.

Sobredosis Del Sonido

Frak - Musika Electronic (Digitalis)
Moebius - Blue Moon OST (Sky)
Fabric - A Sort Of Radiance (Spectrum Spools)
Nackt Insecten - Reality Bridge (Blackest Rainbow)
Tlaotlon - Squirt Image Flex (Trensmat)
Harmonia - Deluxe (Brain)*
VCMG - SSSS (Mute)**
Cluster & Eno - Cluster & Eno (Sky)
Cluster - Soweisoso (Sky)
Panabrite - Soft Terminal (Digitalis)
Suzanne Ciani - Lixiviation (Finders Keepers)
Total - Eternity's Beautiful Frontispiece (VHF)
Revenge - Scum.Collapse.Eradication (Osmose)
Chris Forsyth - Paranoid Cat (Family Vineyard)
Roy Montgomery - Silver Wheel Of Prayer (VHF)
Chris Forsyth & Koen Holtkamp - Early Astral (Blackest Rainbow)
Flying Saucer Attack - Flying Saucer Attack (VHF)
Red Electric Rainbow - Dark Days (Aguirre)
Sunlore - Sunlore (Tequila Sunrise)
T++ - Wireless (Honest Jon's)

*Possibly the greatest Krautrock record of them all.

**Vince Clark and Martin Gore getting their techno wiggle on. It's fucking fantastic.

Hiperinflación

Oh, and if one of you lucky bastards who's actually managed to get their hands on a copy of Homage To The Pointed Waveforms by Eleh would be nice enough to stick a rip up somewhere... The fucking thing sold out in about an hour, and is already going for seventy fucking quid.

Más Allá Ubicado El Wub

One, no, two other things about the book below. Firstly, it's published by Penguin, but they've resurrected the Pelican imprint for science and whatnot for this and lots of other books* which also look fucking excellent, and I was always very fond of the old blue Pelican paperbacks, which, along with the old orange Penguins, sort of makes them the Blue Note and Impulse! of book cover design, and I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff. The other thing is the paper the cover is made of. It feels really fucking nice. Sort of a fine mossy sensation but not as bouncy, or alternatively, vaguely like suede. Maybe it's wub fur. Yes I'm very stoned, but I noticed this when I bought it, when I wasn't stoned at all, and was instantly struck by it. Oh fuck it, Eno would know what I mean. Where's my bloody lighter?







*Several of which I was intending to purchase until my ancient but beloved amplifier (stereo, not guitar, if it had been the guitar amp I'd probably have fucking heart failure) started to show signs of terminal burnout a day or two ago. Which given the bugger's 20 years old and has had to put up with my record collection and amazing ability to spill Guinness** for all that time isn't a bad innings. Still pissed me off though, which is why I'm so battered and typing this bollocks on the internet.

**The only drink I regularly knock over, normally near electrical equipment. I should only drink it outdoors

Sugerencias De Lecturas Suplementarias

This is a book I urge you to read. Not just because it's beautifully written and deeply fascinating, which are reasons enough to splash the cash, but because I think it's a particularly important and timely book, acting both as a riposte to the current climate of suspicion cast upon both science and Islam and as an antidote to the simplistic, monolithic attitudes so often displayed towards these subjects, their intertwined histories, and the huge disservice which all too many histories, be they from a cultural or scientific/mathematical perspective, often pay this crucial period of time.

All too often the vast contribution to science of the cultures of the Middle East is dismissed as one of preservation and translation, keeping the secrets of the Greeks safe while Europe wallowed around in its own shit for a few hundred years until it got it's act together during the Renaissance. This is an important book, not only because it redresses the lazy Euro-centric bias of all too many historians and scientists, but because it may make a few, otherwise intelligent people think twice before dismissing an entire culture based upon the actions of a few fucking fanatics. Just brilliant.

Melocotón Ahumado

I may have mentioned how partial I am to a good cocktail once or twice in the past, and when it comes to such alcoholic delights, I tend to favour rum or gin based concoctions. But I recently tried and fell in love with a cocktail based on two things I'd never normally let near a cocktail, one of which I'd normally refuse to drink just on principle. The two drinks in question are single malt whisky, and a heavily peated one at that (a drink which, under normal circumstances, should only be mixed with very pure water*) and vanilla cognac. Yes, I did say vanilla cognac. I know, it sounds fucking horrible**, and it is, on its own anyway. But mixed with the right whisky and one more ingredient some form of alcoholic alchemy occurs and you end up with something that's both deliciously smoky-sweet and has a boozy kick that would make Bruce Lee piss himself with fear.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, may I present the recipe for the most unexpectedly, uncannily delicious drink you've never tasted: The Smoky Peach.

2 parts vanilla cognac***
1 part peaty as all hell single malt§ (if over 50%abv use a little less)
Dash of peach bitters
Ice

Mix the cognac and whisky. Add bitters. Stir. Add ice. That's it. Fucking wonderful, like a honeyed alcoholic barbecue. And remember, on no account drink the vanilla cognac on it's own, no matter how drunk you already are.

Oh, and one more thing, easy on the bitters or you will fuck it up.

*Some people seem to think putting water into whisky dilutes the taste. When it's a 65% cask-strength bastard it enables you to actually taste the fucker properly.

**That's the polite version. It's actually much worse than you think. Like collecting Satan's arsecrack sweat and distilling it before mixing it with saccharine. Actually worse than that fucking "cherry-infused" abomination Jim Beam make. I can't remember what it's called, it's just too traumatic.

***Make sure it's real vanilla in there.

§Some form of Ardbeg or the peated Penderyn§§ or... I could go on for hours.

§§The only Welsh whiskey. Fucking awesome stuff. Particularly the madeira cask version. Try it as soon as you see it.

Los Frutos Secos

This record, Muzika Electronic, is the fucking nuts, no two ways about it. A veritable compendium of squelchy, bleepy, clonking loveliness which presses so many of my buttons I feel like a drum machine. Frak, for it is they, have created the finest slab of electro-goo I've heard for ages, and Digitalis are to be congratulated not only for releasing it, but pressing it on the most lurid bright green vinyl I've ever clocked eyes on. I'm not even listening to it at the moment, but I'm almost bouncing in my seat just thinking about it. So what does this bugger sound like then?

Fucking brilliant is what. It's practically everything I love about dance music all rolled up into one exceedingly toothsome cake of fun. Take some proper acid house, stir in a big lump of Detroit techno and a soupçon of new beat, add a dash of Blue Monday/Video 586 style New Order, whizz in a blender with some euro minimal synth stylings and some Krautrocky playfulness, and garnish liberally with Radiophonic sprinkles. And, this is one of the most perfectly cut, beautiful sounding records I've heard in a fucking long time. And it's very, very green indeed. Buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy if you've got a dancing bone in yr body, I guarantee you'll fucking love it. I'd write more but I need to listen to it again. And probably dance like a tit.

Go listen immediately

Globos

The new Terry Riley album is fucking shit. It's an absolute, unmitigated ballbag of a record, and the only reason for releasing it that I can see is that Terry Riley's name on the cover might make a few bob for the label (Tzadik). It's being cynically touted as a triumphant return to his 60s/70s methods, all modal riffs and looong looping delays, shifting patterns of phrase and phase, and while it's methodology is superficially similar, the result is not. Ladies and gentlemen, this is most definitely not the mixture of In C and Persian Surgery Dervishes that the hype seems to promise, but what feels like a pitiful attempt to cash in on the popularity of 60s/70s minimalism by going back to a compositional style TR abandoned over 20 years ago and whacking out almost two fucking hours of parping toss utterly lacking in conception, conviction or purpose, and is possibly the most pointless fucking piece of music I've endured in many years. It's certainly the most boring.

It ultimately falls flat on it's face in two main areas; sonically and musically. Musically this adds nothing to his body of work, coming across as a cynical, slapdash rehashing of old tropes, especially in the light of where other artists have taken these ideas in the previous forty-odd years, twisting the Riley methodology into unexpected new shapes and making it as much if not more a part of popular music practice as the avant-garde milieu which spawned it. Riley's influence is everywhere these days, has been for a long time now, and that's what I find so puzzling about this record; is it just an exercise in nostalgia, the sound of an old stoner having some fun, or an attempt to reclaim, to reassert ownership or provenance of a process for making music?

I can't imagine it's the latter. Terry Riley just isn't that sort of über tight-assed academic composer, he's way too much of a hippy and he's always been way too inclusive in his worldview and musical outlook to suddenly get all uppity about getting ripped off forty-odd years down the line. So, if not a fit of artistic control-freakery then what about the other angles? Nostalgia? Fuck I hope not, 'cos there's no worse reason to make a record than to relive past glories as that's either the subconscious passive-agressive equivalent of the above or wanking in the mirror. So, discounting those unedifying propositions, we're left with the old stoner hypothesis, which is fine in and of itself, I mean, that's how I (and an awful lot of other musicians) practice at home, but it doesn't necessarily lead to music anyone else would need or want to hear...

And now we get to the even bigger problem with Aleph. It sounds like crap. Not lo-fi, just crap. Sterile and digital and cold in all the wrong ways*. And it sounds this way for two reasons: 1. the horrible fucking preset synth sounds which sound exactly like a shit cheapo 80s rack module but apparently derive from a synth which cost 5 grand when new** which Mr Riley has tuned to a particularly inappropriate form of just intonation*** using some of the most unconvincing simulations of real instruments I've ever experienced (and this isn't from a modern perspective, the technology was in place and easily cheap enough to achieve infinitely superior results years before this was recorded), which in tandem with the circumstances of recording results in a thin, shrill, genuinely unpleasant acoustic completely at odds with the deep, detailed sonic environment music of this type deserves.

And what were those circumstances? Turns out this record was recorded as an mp3. A format so completely inappropriate to music so heavily dependent on tuning and harmonic relationships because in compressing the file from it's raw form the data that's lost cannot but be essential to the correct presentation of the music, every sliver of 1s and 0s sliced away thinning the frequency soup still further until all y're left with is this unsatisfying, unwholesome gruel. You can master and remaster all you like, and believe me they've tried, but you can't replace what was never there in the first place, and I don't want to listen to a sketch or a storyboard, I want the whole fucking thing.

The real shame? If this had been recorded using better instruments, on a medium more suited to the music, it would probably have been fucking brilliant. But it wasn't, and it isn't.

*I should point out here that I'm not the analogue fetishist that many think I am, what I insist on is the appropriateness of the gear to the sound that is sought. The only question that should be asked of a mix is does it sound right?

**Korg Triton Studio 88. Very powerful, very shit.

***Can't be arsed to go into the maths at the mo'. I finished writing several thousand hard-fought words on non-standard analysis last week and would like a couple of mathematically minimal weeks to decompress.

Bestias Acuática Excelente Uno Y Dos: El Cerdos Del Mar

I think it's fair to say that aquatic bacon is not going to catch on.

And if anyone still doubts that more fucked-up shit lives in the sea than in the most fevered imagination, check out this Lovecraftian monstrosity...

Sea Pigs!

Arggh

Play this loud. Really fucking loud. Because this is how happy I am right now. I'll tell you why in a bit. Right now my brain feels like John Fogerty's throat. In a really, really good way.

La Lucha Del Funky Brujos

Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh, Köhntarkösz and Üdü Ẁüdü. Three albums which prove that my theory that the brilliance of any Magma LP is in direct proportion to the number of umlauts and whatnot in their given titles. But, towering citadels of idiot genius those LPs may be, sometimes you need funky, moogy Magma. Specifically, you need Attahk, the most foolish of the 70s albums, and within its Giger on a spliff-break cover art* you will find this beauty, probably the only piece of cyberdiscoprog about wizards battling a demon sung in an invented language**...



*Which, disappointingly, is the only 70s Magma album not to feature their distinctive logo, which shares its font with two of the other most 70s things ever, The Goodies and Spangles.

**Details here

El Tejedor

This is fucking brilliant. I can't overstate how much of an influence John Martyn has had on my guitar playing. This may surprise some people, but bear with me, this will make sense when you've seen this fucking fantastic version of Skip James' I'd Rather Be The Devil, from 1973.



Bastard. That's just so fucking good. It doesn't matter how many times I hear that song, I'll never, ever tire of that echoplex guitar. And I'll happily and shamelessly rip it off wholesale when I'm in the mood, because unlike so many echo/loop pedal fiends who (consciously or otherwise) use the Göttsching/Hillage/Fripp/Pinhas style of looping and layering, John Martyn never wasn't much of a looper, preferring to use the percussive nature of the dying echoes along with what is possibly the greatest left hand of any guitarist I've ever seen to create a shifting, pulsing forward motion that has more in common with a conga player than the usual billowing tonefloat associated with heavy delay abusers. And that, in a nutshell, is why I love his guitar so much, he took the same tools as so many other contemporary musicians, went completely his own way with them, and in the process created a whole new perspective with them, one which was decidedly not ambient and slowly evolving, but simultaneously driving and fluid, so you don't hear the tapestry, you hear the shuttling of the loom, and trust me, that's way fucking harder to do.

El Aeroembolismo

Takehasi Kosugi - Catch Wave (Phoenix)
Richard Youngs - Amaranthine (Mie Music)
Richard Youngs - Core To The Brave (Root Strata)
Rrose - Artificial Light 1969-1909 (Sandwell District)

C.C. Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord (Dieschatchel)

Up-Tight & Anla Courtis - Hamamatsu Power (8mm)

Matsuo Ohno - I Saw The Outer Limits (EM Records)

Henry Flynt - Purified By The Fire (Locust)

Henry Flynt - Glissando No.1 (Recorded)

Cut Hands - Afro Noise EP (Artecnico)

Function - Ember (Sandwell District)

Majutsu No Niwa - Sylvania 7027 Live (8mm)

Temporal Marauder - Makes You Feel (Spectrum Spools)

Joan La Barbara - Voice Is The Original Instrument (Lovely Music)

F.C. Judd - Electronics Without Tears (Public Information)

Lula Côrtes & Zé Ramalho - Paêbirú (Shadoks)

Dominique Grimaud - Les Quatre Directions (Locust)

KPLR - Untitled (Digitalis Recordings)

Marijata - This Is Marijata (Gapophone Records)

Chief Brigadier Olu Oni & His Marathon System - Juju Marathon System Vol. 1 (Klimt)

Inspiracións Uno

Still not really in the mood for writing properly at the moment, even though there's a fuckload of ideas whirling around my head that I will somehow have to get into some coherent form to make room for the next load of weird shit to fill the space again. In lieu of anything sensible from me, I'd like to present two wonderful programmes (which, admittedly do occasionally draw on the same material, but seriously, don't let that put you off) on one of the greatest non-musical inspirations and influences on my warped little mind*: Richard Feynman; iconoclast, prankster, safe cracker, strip club afficianado, bongo player extraordianaire, and, oh yeah, the greatest physicist of the second half of the twentieth century...





I firmly believe that every fucking anti-science luddite fuckwit on Earth should be sat down and forced to watch these programs, if only because I'd enjoy watching their comforting stereotypes of science and it's practitioners slowly and carefully dismantled by a man whose intelligence, compassion and all-encompassing, outrageously open-minded worldview is a lesson to us all. Oh, and he has almost as much time for philosophy as I do.

For more Feynman-oriented awesomeness, go here.

*I don't really do heroes, but this is about as close as I get.

Condenado

The last few weeks have been bloody hard work, for the usual (and a few unusual) reasons. But instead of moaning at great length, I'm going to watch this fantastic early Sabbath gig for about the 86th time. You should too, as not only is this probably the fucking finest Sabbath gig I've ever seen or heard, and, and this is important, it sounds a damn sight fucking better than their records of the same era*, and, all you Sabbath geeks, quite a few of the tracks from Paranoid have vastly different (and considerably nastier) lyrics compared to their studio counterparts.



*I love Paranoid to death, but it does have one of the shittiest drum sounds in the history of recorded music. Bill probably wasn't wearing his lucky pyjamas when they recorded it...