El Nuevo Modelo Quinientos

Oh yes. Pass the cleaning equipment, because I may need it quite soon. Juan Atkins, Living God King Of Detroit Techno, is putting out the first new Model 500 ep for 11 years on this coming Monday, and I'm slightly overexcited*, because the one track I've heard from it is a rather fine slice of electrocharged loveliness, because I fucking love Model 500, and almost all of my favourite Juan Atkins tunes have slid out under that particular moniker. Anyway, the reason I'm posting this, is that you should go here, and listen to the glistening marvellousness that is "Huesca".

*Yeah, like this is some new phenomenon concerning me and music.

Duende

Driving in London can be, to put it mildly, a somewhat aggravating experience, which is why I try to a: avoid it if possible, and b: tend to listen to the less, shall we say, psychotic bits of my record collection (or the radio) in an attempt to lessen the frustration levels of driving in our beautiful but wildly haphazard maze of a city. Well I had no choice in the matter, as some of the tools I needed for todays industrial lunacy are not allowed to be carried on public transport*.

So drive I did, and I do believe that there must be some sort of fuckwits convention occurring today, given the level of general ignorance and random insanity that I witnessed and occasionally dodged this afternoon. But, just for once, none of it annoyed me, and not just because of my vastly improved mood and outlook, but also because I flicked the stereo onto BBC Radio 3, and heard the first notes of what is undoubtedly one of the most wonderful pieces of music ever composed, Berg's Violin Concerto**, and I knew no matter how apallingly anyone drove, no matter how many times I was cut up by some badly-suited prick in a Mercedes, BMW or Audi***, that while the sound of that achingly beautiful piece filled the van, I was immune.

Because it's an amazing piece of music. It manages to infuse the often forbiddingly dissonant world of serialism with a breathtakingly elegiac lyricism, bridging the avant-garde and traditional tonality in a completely seamless manner which very few other pieces can match, not that dissonance is absent, or that the clashing timbres that the orchestral music of the post-Schoenberg lot were so fond of don't occasionally erupt with great power, that's all in here, but, because of the astonishingly precise way they are employed and arise in the course of the piece, the care taken over the balance of the instrumentation, the pacing, rhythmic shifts and sheer dynamics, it never becomes overly strident, the 12-tone process never overwhelms the emotional impact.

Which is what floors me about this piece of music. I'm probably fussier about orchestral/chamber music than almost anything else, I mean, no other spectrum of music contains a period of over 150 years where I hate almost every single fucking thing I've ever heard from that era§, and no other musical arena is so hidebound by rules, conventions and hierarchy as the classical world, three things which you've probably guessed get my goat a bit, but I digress. The emotional density of this track, the amount of meaning it manages to convey through it's luminous textures is massive, and moves me in a way that only Messiaen§§ can match in this sphere of music. It's a piece deeply infused with great love and compassion, a profound sadness and a huge amount of joy, and the sonic promise of transcendence in it's glorious end. It's a life in sound, stunningly realised.

*Best not to ask.

**Also, go here and have a listen.

***What is it with people who drive German luxury cars in this country? Do you get a special arsehole license with the car?

§Classical and a large proportion of the (particularly early) Romantic period. Can't fucking stand it. You can't begin to conceive of how much I loathe Beethoven. And Mozart. Everything I hate about music neatly encapsulated. At least it got good again when Debussy, Ravel et al turned up for the party.

§§OK, I'll give you Morton Feldman too.

Máquina De Plata

It's good to know Stephen Hawking can still wind morons up, particularly the sort of idiot who finds the concept of metaphor too taxing to get their tiny mind around, who make no attempt to understand what is being said in context, instead ramming it through the 2000 year old bullshit machine they wired their head to years ago because it makes things easy and comfortable and doesn't reduce you to an insignificant random speck in the great cosmic order of things. Go and read what he said again, in context, and come back to me when you've had the long words explained to you.

Una Sonrisa* De Oreja A Oreja, O, Muchos Gracias Señor Marrón**

Goddamn motherfucking holy shit YES. Usted consigue a veces el extremo correcto del palo, if you get my drift. You know that wall I've talked about before? Rubble.

*My favourite word in my slightly shaky second language, it means smile/grin.

**And no, I don't mean heroin. You fuckers.

Bestia Excelente Tres

Stoner Wombat

El Horror...

We're back. Again. It seems our notoriety has increased in our absence, and our nation's scrumpy reserves have finally reached a level able to sustain the space-rockin' beast that is Thor's Helmet once more. I've dusted down and oiled the 7-string. The Book Of Ylem has been opened for the third time and it's forbidden knowledge will once again seep into the world's unconscious. Get ready, because things are gonna get messy.

All Hail Malachandria!

Máteme (Lo Siento, Soy Justo Correrse)

Not that I actually want someone to kill me, but if I was going to be shot, I'd very much like her to do it. Bloody hell...

Rock Es Muerte, A Dios Gracias (Parte Una)

Over the past few months, I've noticed a serious shift in my listening habits. For the first time in my life, the guitar is no longer the centrepoint of my borderline obsessive music-hoovering. Sure, there are some astonishing guitarists out there, but I can only think of one guitarist whose music I've discovered in the last couple of years that blows my fucking stack like all the usual suspects*, namely Ninni Morgia**, and that's somewhat depressing for a guitarist in many ways***. But also liberating. Because I've found myself bored to fucking tears by 99% of new guitar-led music§, electronics have rushed in to fill the gap.

In some ways I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised by this, given that my guitar setup has gradually evolved to have more in common with a modular analogue synth than anything else, and that a lot of my playing comes from running as far in the opposite direction to anyone else as I possibly can, that my listener side would eventually catch up with my musician side. It's not that I've rejected my past loves in that sphere of music, they still thrill me the way they always have, it's just that there's fuck-all new to add to them at the moment, and I need amazing, beautiful, new music like the Earth needs the fucking Sun.

It isn't just me either, I can think of a fair few other musicians of my generation, with very similar musical backgrounds, who've expressed similar opinions to me, whose musical focus has shifted in a similar way (and no, I'm not going to name names, it's not for me to attempt to unpick their reasoning, or to relate private conversations here, musicians' equivalent of the Chatham House Rule applies), but a lot of us seem to be heading in a very different direction than I reckon our listeners would have suspected even a year or two ago, and the one music that seems to have backslid to a much lower priority than it used to occupy in our minds is Rock music.

Yes, I know the whole "Rock is dead" cliche has been with us for a good while, and previously I'd have dismissed it out of hand. But now, I'm not so sure. Rock has become so codified it no longer has any fucking meaning, the cliche has taken over, the map has become the territory, and that's the death of any artistic medium as far as I'm concerned. Rock has become Lego for lazy musicians, and, I now believe, the rot set in long ago, over thirty fucking years ago, and it's death throes have been protracted and increasingly unpleasant, not to mention enormously damaging to our shared cultures artistic health.

In the 60s, when Rock was born, the musicians who played it didn't start out playing it, mainly because it didn't exist before then. Yr average 60s rock group consisted of people who learnt their craft playing Blues, Folk, Jazz, Skiffle, Country, Classical, you name it; and the music those groups produced was a beautiful synthesis of those influences, their original ideas and the need to create something new, a music that was theirs. Simply put, you couldn't just be a rock musician because the concept hadn't solidified yet (and wouldn't really for a good ten years or so). Look at Rock'n'Roll. A glorious semi-electrified fusion of Blues, R'n'B§§§, Country, Western Swing, elements of Jazz± and all the other music of the Deep South, that swept the musical world in the early/mid 50s and was essentially a spent force within 5 years, because it failed to transcend it's origins, and allowed a sanitised, commercially driven imitation of itself to become the dominant popular music.

It's the same with it's idiot child, Rock, only worse, much worse. Because Rock wasn't killed by the sharkskin-suited hucksters of the music business like Rock'n'Roll, but by the musicians themselves, and the mindless cretins that followed in their ignoble wake. And not just any musicians, but the people I trace a goodly amount of my musical lineage from, the psychedelic musicians of the late 60s, baby-boomers one and all, that generation that managed to betray every single fucking ideal it ever held dear, politically, culturally, economically, ecologically in the space of a decade±±.

Rock, in the mid/late 60s, was a paradigm shift in the conception of what a popular music could be. The record labels couldn't control it the way they had previously because they simply didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. As far as the musicians were then concerned, everything was up for grabs, freedom was the name of the game, any source was fair game for transmutation, assimilation or transformation, and the listener was therefore exposed to an astonishingly wide range of music, even if they only listened to so-called pop stations.

Imagine listening to Radio 1 in the late 60s, for a DJ to go from Petula Clark to Jimi Hendrix wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence, it was all pop, whatever it's provenance, freak or square - this is the reason John Peel was the greatest Dj ever, he never fell for the idea that one kind of music was one thing, and another less valid, it was all good and to be judged on it's individual merits - pop simply meant popular then, not officially sanctioned for the edification of the great unwashed and ignorant, the default position of most big record companies and radio stations these days.

Even a band as accepted into the upper echelons of the pantheon of pop/rock genius as the Beatles (loathe them as I do), would probably end up on some obscure indie label these days, can you imagine a band which combined a love of R'n'B & Rock'n'Roll, Victorian Music Hall, 20th C composition and Indian music into a coherent music gracing the charts these days? No is the simple answer. Ain't gonna happen. Much as I fucking hate Revolver or Sgt. Pepper, they were pop albums then, but now? I don't think so.

Part two in a few days. I thought it would be nice to end this part on a note that has probably surprised a few of my closest friends, namely mentioning the Beatles in a positive light.

*Matt Bower, Helios Creed, Gary Mundy, Jim Plotkin, Michio Kurihara, Matt Pike, I could go on (and on and on), but you probably know the drill by now...

**Big article about his last LP coming soon, so not going into detail today. Go here. Say hello. Buy his records.

***See here, here and here.

§Even my beloved Doom Metal seems to be spiralling ever deeper into a self-satisfied pit of regurgitation of past glories, Free Jazz now sounds exactly like Free Jazz then with a couple of new pedals, and don't even get me started on Improv; bloodless, sexless, devoid of any physicality§§, and a (very long) rant for another day. It's only the fucking noise/psych underground putting any guitar-led stuff out that's worth a fucking shit at the moment.

§§This is possibly the first time I've ever found myself in complete agreement with David Keenan. Fuck me, who'da thought it?

§§§Which soon became an essentially racist epithet for R'n'R played by black people, before mutating into the utterly meaningless term it's now become.

±Listen to Chuck Berry, then listen to Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker, notice anything?

±±Not that clinging to a fixed ideology is a particularly good way to live yr life or run a country, but there's a massive fucking difference between pragmatic flexibility and cynically licking yr finger to see which way the winds of power are blowing. No that I expect any better from people in general, I firmly believe 95% of everything is bullshit, but the joy of life comes from finding that other 5%, whatever that 5% is for you, I'm not quite the misanthrope I'm occasionally accused of being, just really fucking picky.

Pecados Olvidados

A while ago, someone wrote an article in Vice about how the interweb is an unparalleled resource for yr past sins being found out by others. They weren't fucking wrong. Whilst trawling the web a couple of days ago for manky 80s/ early 90s spacerock tapes* that I've lost through the ages, (and given what I was looking for, it really should have occurred to me that these fuckers would surface again), I inadvertently came across three albums from that dreadlocked era** featuring my dubious teenage speed/acid fried guitar and bass skills (such as they were then), that some crusty bastard has uploaded for all to hear. Some of it's fucking brilliant, some of it's really atrocious, but I hereby offer a very special prize to anyone*** who can find these records without my help.

*The Ullulators. Nukli. Webcore. Treatment. Krel. I could go on (for ages). Much as I (and any right thinking person) loathe the Ozrics, the spacerock/free festival scene actually included some killer fucking bands in those days. If I ever get my hands round the throat of the inventor of trance...

**Yes, I had dreads (anyone who's known me for more than 10 years can ignore this foonote, you saw 'em), and not yr fucking neat and tidy typical fucking whiteboy dreads beloved of shit vegan industrial bands and public school hippy Gong-worshipping arseholes everywhere, but a headful of past my arse length dirty§ waxy thick as yr wrist hairsnakes that would've made Rob Zombie shit himself.

***The nature of the prize depends on who wins it...

§Really, really dirty. Stunningly filthy. You don't know the meaning of muck until you wash 3 foot of matted hair that hasn't been washed in 13 years.

Módulo De Luna

Look at that fucking artwork. Looks like Luigi Serafini knocked up a cartoon self-portrait during a relaxing shroom break while he was creating the Codex Seraphinianus. That fantastic and ridiculous artwork, coupled with the fact the band are called Moon Unit, and the album entitled New Sky Dragon, probably has led you to believe we are back in the land of the deeply psychedelic. And you'd be right on the money.

This is, hands down, the finest fucking freakout (well, pair of freakouts) committed to vinyl in quite some time, a proper fucking rocket-ride through the universe's burning brain. Moon Unit are a trio comprised of Andreas Jonsson on synth, Peter Kelly on drums, and Ruaraidh Sanachan* on guitar. No bass player**, and none is needed here. In fact, the extra low-end a bass would have provided could possibly have rendered the whole thing a little more earthbound, weighing down the sunbound spacepod of sound instead of allowing it to accelerate up through the atmosphere to it's natural home, the cosmos.

Sonically speaking, this record had me nailed almost straight away, what with it sitting in a Lagrangian point perfectly balanced between the propulsive end of Krautrock and the singing, stinging, spiralling high-end mind erasure of classic UK underground blug. Think Electronic Meditation era Tangerine Dream (when they was vicious***) duking it out with Sunroof!, or Vibracathedral Orchestra with Jaki Liebezeit on drums. Ash Ra Tempel with a raga-noise boner.

Two twenty minute tracks, Internal Future and No Money No Nothing, is what you get. Both ever-ascending whirlpools that start slow, guitar and synth stalking each other, circling and intertwining like dancing cobras as the drums lay down rolling, metronomic rhythms which push the lead instruments to twist ever higher, picking up speed like a rocket pushing itself slowly off the launch pad and just accelerating harder and harder, imperceptibly at first, seemingly crawling towards the sky on a flame of modal fuzz, faster, higher until it hits escape velocity and bursts through the Van Allen belt, careening toward the stars until finally the engine cuts out and we're in freefall, weightless, awestruck by the synth nebulae and guitar novae that fill the sky from here to there.

*AKA the loon behind the fantastic, but very different Nackt Insecten, who I recommend unreservedly to all devotees of cosmic mung.

**No fucking Doors jokes please, this is real psychedelia.

***Seriously, TD's first album is a masterpiece of freeform psychedelic fuckyou that has been rarely equalled since, particularly by themselves. If you haven't heard it, well, y're in for a shock, no wibble, no sequencers, no synth at all, just awe-inspiring fuzztone murder (Edgar Froese) with rolling, smashing meth-drums (Klaus Schulze), lashings of organ, and gratuitous globs of electric cello abuse from the genius that is Conrad Schnitzler.

Mi Aerodeslizador Es Lleno De Anguilas

Moritz Von Oswald Trio - Live In New York (Honest Jon's)

Demdike Stare - Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love)

Astral Social Club - Happy Horse (Happy Prince)

Iibiis Rouge - s/t (Not Not Fun)

Moon Unit - New Sky Dragon (Krayon)

High Wolf - Ascension (Not Not Fun)

Actress - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)

Growing - Pumps (Vice)

Pelt - Heraldic Beasts (Eclipse)

Total - Here, Time Is Space (Majora)

Sunroof! - Reborn In Jets Of Rainbow Water (Giardia)

La Otracina - Reality Has Got To Die (Holy Mountain)

Fire! - You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago (Rune Grammofon)

Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald - Recomposed (Deutsche Grammophon)

Autechre - Move Of Ten (Warp)

Eleh - Location Momentum (Touch)

Scuba - Triangulation (Hot Flush)

Isolée - We Are Monster (Playhouse)

Pan Sonic - Gravitoni (Blast First)

Virgo - Virgo (Rush Hour)

Literatura Barata

Found here, along with this one below, featuring the shittest walrus fiend I have ever seen. Not that I've seen many, but the Mickey Mouse nose does not convey evil in any way. Best not to even mention the tusks. So I won't.

And this one too, "A Thrilling Publication" according to the bottom right corner. I'm not so sure. Captain Future looks like he might be a bit of a cock.

Perfección Psicodélica (Ligero Devolver)

Because I am lovely, you no longer need to search for the song about which I waxed rhapsodical in my previous post. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Stereo Shoestring with On The Road South...

And, as a bonus, here be Defecting Grey by The Pretty Things. If you don't want to skip around spangled paisley gardens with a flower in yr bum, the good bit starts at around 53 seconds...

Perfección Psicodélica

40 of the greatest seconds in psychedelia begin with the moment in Defecting Grey by The Pretty Things where the hippy nonsense abruptly transitions to one of the most savage freakbeat/garage psych riffs of the 60s, replete with one of Phil May's snottiest deliveries ever and a viciously treble heavy lead guitar that'd take yr face off at twenty paces. It's fucking fantastic, but, as I said, only lasts 40 bloody seconds before the flower children reappear and piss all the good work up the wall. Which is why On The Road South by The Stereo Shoestring is my favourite moment of blatant rock thievery ever*, not to mention one of the greatest fucking tracks of the psychedelic era. They took the few brilliant seconds of an otherwise hopeless piece of 60s folly, and turned it into 2.16 of the most balls-out speed-driven acid mayhem, giving even Blue Cheer a run for their money in the fuzz overload stakes, and outdoing everyone in terms of wah wah abuse until their ears bled. The singer doesn't quite reach Phil May's level of spitting disdain, but with the fuzzgun explosions detonating all around he doesn't really need to, he's a little more melodic, more flowing, interspersing the original riff with frantic spoken word during the one part of the song they actually wrote to break up the repetitions of the original. It's a total fucking drag race of a song, encapsulating an awful lot of things I love about the music of the 60s with none of the fucking shit and I urge you to seek out it's magnificence forthwith.

*cf. Can's Father Cannot Yell and the Velvet Undergrounds' European Son.

Usted Consigue A Veces El Extremo Incorrecto Del Palo

And sometimes, someone else gets the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes you both do, and instead of awkward and weird, it's actually funny and doesn't matter. Sometimes you don't get what you want but end up somewhere really good anyway, and why has it taken me 37 fucking years to realise this?

Ah, fuck it, who cares, all I know is I've knocked a permanent crack in a wall that's been standing for two damn long, and one good crack is all it takes to make it start to crumble and fall, and that makes me so damn happy, and calm in a way I haven't felt for a very long time.