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...