Bolas De Colores

Right. I'm back. Again. I should have known that would happen. A week or so after the 'flu fucked off, my immune system kicked seven bells of shit out of me. Not the full-on fucking evil of a few years ago, but enough unpleasantness to require some serious fucking painkiller/trank administration. Now I've never really hidden my fondness for temporarily rewiring my brain, but tramadol and temazepam is not a recommended combination. Not if you want to hang onto yr grip on reality anyway. I spent a week or so in a deeply weird state, bordering on hypnopompic* at times, and it wasn't nice**, not really able to think coherently, thoughts (such as they were) sliding out of my grasp like eels, the weird disassociated feeling that my conscious mind was just about alert enough to watch, but too fucking knackered to do anything, content to let the reptilian part of my brain take over unless absolutely fucking necessary. Not nice people, not nice at all. But I am properly better (and conscious) now, just in time for the appalling levels of gluttony and debauchery the next week or so will hopefully bring forth. And now I'm going to roll a fucking huge reefer and listen to Coloured Balls*** very, very loud. More shit later...

*I specifically mean hypnopompic here too, not hypnogogic. No matter what anyone says, they're qualiatively not the same. For as long as I can remember, I've experienced really long periods of both on many, many occasions, and nothing on earth, with the possible exception of DMT, can compare with the sheer fucking weirdness I've experienced getting stuck between being asleep and waking up. Getting stuck going the other way is nowhere near as strange.

**Ok, it was occasionally enjoyably mongy, but most of the time it was fucking unpleasant. Not as unpleasant as the pain and a complete inability to sleep tho.

***Early 70s proto-punk, proto-metal hard psych Aussie lunatics featuring Lobby Lloyde, one of the meanest fucking guitarists you've never heard, and a man who, like me, has a penchant for ring-modulating his guitar into oblivion. Not all their stuff is good, but when they got it right (the early shit), they got it so fucking right. Check out G.O.D. from Summer Jam with it's fucking magnificent Hawkwind vs Stooges riff and you'll get the rough idea. Oh wait, here it is:

Bajó Las Chimenea

Come to this good people, and revel in the excellent earfood served up by two of the Kosmische Krewe's finest whilst imbibing freely from The Mucky Pup's rather excellent selection of quality ales and other marvellous alcoholic treats. It's got to be better than the office party...

La Música De Diablos

I've found the perfect accompaniment to the whiskey. Go here, and feast yr eyes and ears upon four episodes of the BBC's landmark late-70s series, The Devil's Music. I don't really need to tell you what it's about, do I?

Oh, and Alexis Korner's* sideburns are really quite something...

*Thankfully he's presenting, not singing.

La Gripa

I've been a bit slack as far as posting goes. So it goes. I've been really fucking ill and in a right poxy mood (the two often skip along hand in hand, you may have noticed), too much stress and worry about stuff that I'm not going into here took it's toll and left me somewhat discombobulated*, but now I'm in a better frame of mind and body and capable of more than going to work, sleeping and being sick, I thought I'd pamper myself a bit. Which is why I'm sitting here with a very large tumbler of Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, a single malt which has spent 10 years in white oak bourbon casks, then another couple hanging around in ruby port pipes, and judging by the outrageous levels of depth and deliciousness this has imparted, it's certainly enjoyed it's time in the wood almost as much as I'm enjoying it slipping down my throat and filling my nose with spicy wonder and my belly with extremely boozy warmth. This stuff is fucking heavenly, sweet fire for the soul and a very good match for skunk and Skullflower, not to mention the epic bastard of a steak I devoured a little earlier, all of which are adding to my much improved mood no fucking end. Well, that and something that happened on Thursday which I'm not going to tell you about yet.

So yeah, I've had a really shitty month or so, (in fact this year's been pretty fucking hard work to be honest), but things are improving. I think. At least I fucking hope they are.

*Without a doubt, one of the finest words in any language, ever.

Club De Jazz

I suspect most of you out there are familiar with the Jazz Club sketches from the Fast Show. For those of you aren't, go and look it up on youtube and then come back, otherwise you may not giggle as much at the following as you might. Last weekend, on Radio 3's Jazz Line-up programme I heard the following announcement, delivered in the traditionally hushed Radio 3 jazz presenter style:

"...and tonight, we feature performances from Empirical, Trish Glove's Tangent, and Aquarium."

Nice.

Bestia Excelente Quince

The geometric llama with the very tiny head. Excellent for wool and checking yr shelves are level.

Siniestro

Goth. The influence that dare not speak it's name. I'm not talking 90s-onwards gloomy sub-metal bollocks here, but the proper stuff, yer Bauhaus, Nephilims and, most gloriously of all, The Sisters Of Mercy. I may have mentioned my penchant for the Sisters before, but I'll say it again; when they were good, they were fucking brilliant, a lo-fi concoction of equal parts Suicide and Hawkwind with a dash of early Stooges for bouquet, which is a damn fine cocktail in my book. The reason I mention this is that the latest, and possibly greatest, Robedoor LP, Too Down To Die (Not Not Fun) is pure, unadulterated proper goth worship*, and yet not a single review I've read picks up on this. Maybe because the reviewer doesn't want to damage their hipster credentials, or maybe they're just too young to remember when goth was actually a vibrant, musically distinct offshoot of post-punk less concerned with a certain look and attitude than creating a (then) modern reconfiguration of psychedelia, a darker vision which nevertheless sought to offer some escape from the rotten, decaying state of Britain in the early 80s.

But, just for a change, I've wandered off my own point, which is that Too Down To Die is the best goth album of the last 25 years, bar none. Imagine crossing Blood On The Moon/3rd From The Sun-era Chrome with early Sisters and you've got a pretty fucking good idea of what this record sounds like. Spindly, endlessly flanged guitars coiling round a super-mechanical rhythm section, icy synths slowly rise and fall, creating an ever shifting landscape of bad-trip dread, minor-key spacerock bass leads you by the hand through this shifting, monochromatic haze as the low, deadpan voice whispers and croons things in yr ear you don't really want to know. Beautiful, epic and happily, wallowingly world-weary in a way I haven't encountered for a very long while.

Note to hipsters: If y're gonna rip off the 80s, at least try to do it as well as this.

*See also the latest Religious Knives album, Smokescreen (Sacred Bones). I think they should just be fucking blatant about it and cut a split 7" with Robedoor doing "Lights" and Religious Knives doing "Kiss The Carpet"** (both from The Reptile House EP, the greatest goth record ever). Just a thought...

**It's always good to see the penny drop when an over-serious goth finally realises what this song is about.

Hecho Jirones

I know I haven't posted much except other people's music lately. Sorry about that, I've just been in an up-and-down frame of mind which isn't that conducive to (relatively) linear thought processes, but there will be more ranting soon, I promise. In the meantime, try not to piss yrself laughing watching the clip linked to below (the uploader disabled embedding for some reason), which is the funniest fucking thing I've seen and heard for a while, with the exception of the Lou Reed & Metallica album*, which I can't even begin to take the piss out of as much as it deserves in my current mood. Soon tho, when I can listen to more than a minute without needing my inhaler. Meanwhile, go here and enjoy...

*Worth the price of admission just for the moment where James Hetfield yells "I am the table!", for reasons best known to Lou Reed.

Dique Para Detener El Agua

And speaking of the late, great Jack Rose, here's the man himself knocking the shit of Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground. This is the fucking version*.



And to follow, some fantastic live footage from 2008. This is what acoustic guitars are for.



*Yes, even including the Blind Willie Johnson original. Don't even think of mentioning Ry Cooder.

Flipado Suplemento

If the video below whetted yr appetite for more of Dr. Shankar's magnificent slide playing, the get yr arse to this here website, where you can stream the whole of her (only, as far as I know) album*. It's pretty fucking stunning, to say the least, and has the added advantage of a tabla player who doesn't drown out the fucking lead instrument. Jack Rose would have fucking loved this.

*If anyone, anywhere knows where I can procure a copy, please fucking tell me, because I'm stumped and that doesn't happen often.

Flipado

Continuing my twin obsessions of slide guitar and Indian classical music, here's an absolutely stunning performance by Dr. Kamala Shankar on the Shankar veena (her own design, essentially a hollow-neck hawaiian guitar with 12 sympathetic strings and two drone strings*) which contains some of the best slide playing I've ever heard in my life, and I've heard a fuck of a lot, believe me.



Fuck I wish I could play like that. There's another three parts to this performance at youtube which are also very good, but the tabla player is too fucking loud which is why I haven't posted them here.

*Yes, of course I want one.

El Color De Ruido

Oh fuck yes. I'm really looking forward to this. It's a documentary charting the rise and fall of Amphetamine Reptile Records, and I don't think I really need to point out the esteem in which I hold AmRep. Currently in production, you can watch the trailer here, and follow it's progress here.

Comida Para Orejas

Astral Social Club - Generator Breaker (Dekorder)
Decoy & Joe McPhee - Oto (Bo Weavil)
Cian Nugent - Doubles (VHF)
Nirmala Rajasekar - Song Of The Veena (Innova)
Skullflower - Fucked On A Pile Of Corpses (Cold Spring)
Ashtray Navigations - Electronically Rechannelled Band & Street Choir (Apollolaan)
Truant - The Truant Accord (Memoirs Of An Aesthete)
Barn Owl - Lost In The Glare (Thrill Jockey)
Eric Carbonara & Jesse Sparhawk - Sixty Strings (VHF)
Debashish Bhattacharya - O Shakuntala! (Tugboat)
The Haxan Cloak - Observatory (Aurora Borealis)
Prince Rama - Shadow Temple (Paw Tracks)
Up-Tight - The Night Is Yours (Sloow Tapes)
Robedoor - Too Down To Die (Not Not Fun)
Hey Colossus - RRR (Riot Season)
Whitehouse - Bird Seed (Susan Lawly)
Human Eye - They Came From The Sky (Sacred Bones)
Richard Youngs & Simon Wickham-Smith - 20 Years (VHF)
Birchville Cat Motel - Came A Great Stallion Whose First Leap Sparked The Celestial Star (Don't Fuck With Magic)
The Piss Superstition - A Themepark For Whatever Happened Before (Memoirs Of An Aesthete)

Quiero Una Veena

Ideally I'd like two, a vichitra veena and a rudra veena, but then again, I'm a greedy fucking bastard sometimes. Anyway as I don't own either of those two fucking astonishing instruments, and would probably do something deeply fucking wrong with them if I did, here's some proper masters of Hindustani classical music giving it the beens* on those venerable instruments. I should say, if you lack patience you may not want to stick around for the alap sections as they can make Earth sound like speed kings, and fast forward to the fireworks in the latter stages of the performances as they are quite long... Me, I love the snails pace abstraction of the alap, and chance it gives the musicians to dig deep into the sonority of their instruments and the chosen raga before the slowly accruing acceleration and increasing density of the playing and almost telepathic interaction between the musicians makes the listeners head explode at the level of speed and invention on display.

First up is Gopal Shankar Misra's** beautiful rendition of raga Multani on the vichitra veena, the ultimate acoustic bottleneck/slide instrument (on this planet anyway), and the one I covet the most. One day... Anyway, sorry there's no actual footage, but all the vichitra veena videos I can find are pretty short, and this is music so fucking good I can't justify just posting a little bit.



Fortunately, youtube is a little more forthcoming with fantastic rudra veena performances, especially these fucking beauties from Bahauddin Dagar*** and Asad Ali Khan, who both approach the (insanely unwieldy) instrument in very different ways, but both share a fondness for an almost motorik intensity and drive when things get fast.

So here's Bahauddin Dagar playing raga Kousi, one I'm particularly fond of ripping off as there's something inherently spacerock about it when you really go to town on it, and also because, well, just listen to the sound of that fucking thing, the man is a fucking genius. And he does sport a superb gentleman thief's moustache. This is in three parts unfortunately, and whoever uploaded it missed the end, but fuck it, this is way too fucking good not to post, and I couldn't be arsed to download 'em and stitch 'em together.







And finally, the late, great Asad Ali Khan playing ragas Asavari and Dabari, and presenting a more percussive, jawari laden approach than Dagar's almost feedback-like use of resonance and low end. This is also fucking jaw-dropping, I mean, I am in total fucking awe of all three musicians I've featured here, but this is scary fucking good.





I hope you enjoyed the first episode of Yes, I Am Obsessed With Veenas, What Of It? Coming next time, southern India and, wait for it, more types of veena.

*This is both the shittest, and most obscure pun I've yet used in a post. I'm not sorry and I'll do it again.

**If you like this, get his only album, Out Of Stillness (Real World). Yes, it's on Real World, and yes, the cover is a truly horrible 90s oversaturated "spritual"/new age cackjob, but the music is truly fucking sublime.

***A surname in Indian music which pretty much guarantees that the music will be astonishing, regardless of instrument.

Esforzarse Más

Noise (as a genre) is so often for me an example of a really fucking good idea done astonishingly badly. Even though an awful lot of my favourite artists get lumped with that particular label, the reason I tend to love their music so much is because it almost never conforms to the expected norms of what noise bands are supposed to do, noise being an ingredient as opposed to the aim, process as opposed to result. Making a fucking racket is a piece of piss, creating something meaningful, emotionally resonant, beautiful even, from such ingredients is a little harder. The musical counterpoint to Abstract Expressionism if you like, anyone can splat a load of paint around, but it took a Jackson Pollock to take that method and apply it in a manner which elevated his anti-technique (for want of a better term, I know it's clunky) beyond simple negation or refusal into a communicative, interrogative art.

Which is exactly what Noise should do, transcend it's obvious role as a genre of transgression, actually strive to be more than just a sonic middle finger, a dumb, meaningless roar of impotent fury, because that's too fucking easy and it isn't fucking 1980 any more. I'm so fucking bored of gigs that sound like nothing more than the sound of a ZX Spectrum tape loading at 160 decibels played by a Linux developer with a laptop and a chip on their shoulder, and I'm even fucking more sick of "shocking" titles and cover imagery*. Oh goody, Pissflap Deathcamp have a new cassette out? In a limited edition of 23? Fuck off you morons. Admittedly, I'm exaggerating for effect, but there's still enough of that mentality left around these days to rankle. As I said, it ain't fucking 1980 anymore, and imagery that worked as an immature, teenage roar of disgust at what was a fucking shitty country to be that age in at that point in time looks pretty fucking silly when it's still being employed 30 years down the line by socially retarded fuckwits who once heard a Whitehouse record and got completely the wrong idea.

Noise is no longer the supposedly clandestine, esoteric genre it once was, and so many musicians are using it's methods to create stunning music. Think of Campbell Kneale's wonderful Birchville Cat Motel and Our Love Will Destroy The World projects, where the squalling and scraping walls of noise don't just sit there but are corralled into huge, ascending psychedelic vortices cut through with subdued barely shifting clouds of minimalist tonefloat. Or the many guises of Matt Bower, a man capable of running the gamut from the beautiful, starlit, folk and kosmiche-tinged Sunroof! to the most furious, mind-destroying walls of guitar lunacy ever fucking heard, I mean, if it's sheer fucking noise you want, recent Skullflower is absolutely untouchable, because behind the (at first, seemingly) stuck-throttle intensity and total fucking amplifier obliteration lurks a fucking brilliant musician, who knows exactly what (and why) he's doing, is actually capable of channelling such brutal base material into something both beautiful and forbidding, dragging you in as opposed to just smacking you round the ears. These are just two examples, but there's so much more good shit out there, it's just that you often have to wade through huge piles of crap to get to the gold.

And don't fucking get me started on Merzbow...

*It also totally devalues music which actually explores uncomfortable or disturbing themes in an intelligent manner. I fucking love Whitehouse, and their last three albums in particular represent a pinnacle in this area, barbed, vicious and harrowing they may be, but they're a whole lot more than that because they take you somewhere difficult, somewhere you didn't necessarily want (or think you were going) to be, make you actually think and feel something as opposed to just bellowing in yr face, which in the end is no different than pissing in the wind for all it communicates.