Tuesday 28 August 2012

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.

Wednesday 22 August 2012

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.

Sunday 12 August 2012

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!