This song is fittingly bittersweet, evocative and mysterious, making a far cry from the angular confusion of their early years. It's the final song on Moonshake's third/final album, Dirty & Divine, and I think it lives up to the album title.
Dave Callahan (ex-Wolfhounds) finally learned how to sing on this LP, replacing his snarl with a more relaxed, melodic delivery. Mary Hansen and Katherine Gifford, both of Stereolab, provided some vocals on this album; someone named Kate Blackshaw is credited with the female vocals, specifically "South Pacific vocals," at the very end of this song. Moonshake were named after a mediocre 1973 CAN song. Their 1992 debut album, Eva Luna, is a fractured masterpiece of post-punk rhythms, illegally funky basslines, sampler-based hijinks and edgy, surrealist lyrics, with vocals split between Callahan and Margaret Fiedler. Their 1993 EP Big Good Angel is even better. Here's the video for the punk-funk onslaught that is "Capital Letters" from Big Good Angel:
Fiedler and (mind-bogglingly amazing) bassist John Frenett then quit Moonshake to form the band Laika. Moonshake's sophomore album featured vocals by friend & frequent tourmate PJ Harvey on five songs. Since Dirty & Divine featured neither Fiedler nor Frenett, most fans don't consider it to be a true Moonshake album, but as it's the first one I bought, in March '99 for about $3, I'll always have some loyalty to it. I had first heard about Moonshake in a summer '95 issue of Alternative Press on this list, a list which sort of changed my life.
Eye-catching vertical typography on the back cover & spines
This "sleeveface" randomly self-generated in my computer room, so I had to take a picture of it, after chuckling at it for a few weeks each time I walked by it:
The Scott Walker album cover reminds me of the somewhat famous (at least if you've been on a message board in the last year or so) "exasperated Jerry Seinfeld" meme, which people post in response to a dumb statement:
I got an amazing grilled Mediterranean chicken pita sandwich for lunch today at this restaurant & coffee shop in Arabi called Touché Cafe, which opened in January, right down the street from Chalmette Battlefield. I'm kind of sad that I'm missing a big family reunion up in Vinalhaven, Maine this week. I went there for my uncle Tom's wedding in '84, then in '95 and '97, but not since then. So... sorry, fam.
Planets with similar climates: Rip Rig + Panic - "Sunken Love" (1983), The Werefrogs - "Between Tomorrow & Sleep" (1992), Primal Scream - "Higher Than The Sun" (1991), Massive Attack feat. Liz Fraser - "Black Milk" (1998), Bush Tetras - "Rituals" (1982), Tipsy - "Space Golf" (1996), Moloko - "Boo" (1995), Poem Rocket - "Contrail de l'avion" (1994), Morphine - "Whisper" (1995).
The palindromically-named To Rococo Rot shared bassist Stefan Schneider with the band from the previous post, Kreidler. In addition to being based in a differrent German city, Berlin (through which my sister may be wandering at this very moment), TRR were much more electronic, and rarely funky or rock-ish like Kreidler, instead mining a more clinical, laboratory-friendly vein.
This track, from their album The Amateur View, transports me away to some sort of beautiful, near-empty house or art gallery, or any kind of empty, sanitary building with white walls and lots of glass, located in a cold place. The album cover might have something to do with that, as might the fact that the track is literally named after a famous art museum.
Cassette version, released only in Poland
If you listen closely, it sounds like there's some harp buried low in the mix, or maybe just a simulation of a harp on a synth. For such a minimalistic song, there's really a lot going on in it, and it rewards repeated close listenings. The real bass guitar lends a smoky jazz café feel, and some of the drumming sounds real too, though the backing track is clearly digital drums. Check out these photos of the band (+ guest I-Sound, a.k.a. Craig Willingham, who played on "A Little Asphalt Here And There") from the CD booklet:
Yep, lots of white space... so very Euro. Even the bars are all called "Bar" over there.
I got into this album in '99, around the time I got into Kreidler, simply because I liked Kreidler and hence had to check out their sister band. This album is definitely not as great overall as Kreidler's The Amateur View, but has some nice little gems on it, such as "I Am In The World With You" and "This Sandy Piece." The album is apparently considered a classic amongst those who are experts in the genre, so go figure. The single "Telema" starts off pretty weak, but becomes decent:
(Warning: Cute cats at the 2-minute mark.)
On Monday, I dropped off some pups from my amazing agave which I've had for about 5 years. Pups are the little baby plants that some plants, and most desert plants, put off at their bases, as a way of asexual reproduction; they can be removed and stuck into their own pot, and presto, you have a new free plant. I gave one to Hebert's Nursery in Thibodaux and another to Starke's in Houma. I also brought the mama plant, as I always do when giving pups from this particular plant, which I believe is either an Agave parryi or an Agave potatorum, or a subspecies of either of those, or a hybrid between the two. I took a photo of the parent plant that morning:
This plant is really solidly built, even for an agave. It practically feels like it's made out of concrete, especially the center spear/rosette. You can see the outlines of the teeth on adjacent leaves, from when they were pressed firmly together for months before opening. As with all agaves, it will die after flowering, but that should be more than a decade away. This thing is my baby, so I can't even bear to think about that. Here are two articles about agaves by an expert in the subject: Introduction to agaves Selected large agave species
After visiting the nurseries, I got this 7 oz. little thing of booze called Alcatraz Sour Apple (by some company called Johnny Bootlegger) at a Shell station. Then I got two little cacti at Lowe's. They had this nice portable walk-in 8'x6' greenhouse set up, for $200, and I decided to get one in the fall for my exponentially-expanding collection of desert plants, rather than lugging them all inside or into the carport. Then I haggled down the price on a big Serenoa repens (Saw Palmetto) at the Home Depot across the street (yes, Houma is growing rapidly) which I plan on returning to buy next week, then found a basketball court in Gray that was too covered in rain puddles to play on. But I was psyched to find it, and will be playing there a lot. Then I drove back up to Thibodaux and played some hoops on a very puddly court. This guy ran up to me and asked if I wanted to play him, so I said yeah and he squeezed my hand so hard during the handshake that I thought he might've broken it. He said he hadn't played basketball in a few years, but had boundless confidence. We played 21, and I beat him 21-0, then he thanked me and went back to sit with his two female companions under a gazebo, so I shot around some more, then he comes running back and I thought he was going to stab me or something, but he told me that I had to let him redeem himself, so we played again and I won 21-4. Then I shot around some more and went home, stopping along the way at Chackbay Nursery to right this big juniper that always tips over in the wind. This nursery has been pretty much abandoned for a year or two, but they left a lot of big trees & plants there. This being the "country," there's no front gate or anything, yet no one ever steals anything from the place. Can you imagine any store doing that in New Orleans? I made a note to bring some bricks down next time to put in the juniper's pot to prevent tippage. On this trip I listened to The Cure's Wish twice, specifically to a spare copy of it that I got at the Record Raid on Saturday for 50 cents. I heard a few people talking about Amy Winehouse's bucket-kickage the previous night, but no one exactly seemed surprised. Some other good or potentially good stuff I got:
Christian Scott - Rewind That CD ($3)
Chet Baker - Career 1952-1988 2xCD compilation in a mini box ($3)
Pharoah Sanders - Love Will Find A Way LP ($4)
Sade - "Never As Good As The First Time" 7" (free)
Psychedelic Furs - All Of This And Nothing compilation CD ($1) (already had it on CD & cassette)
Mats Gustafsson & David Stackenäs - Blues CD ($0.50)
Dayna Kurtz - The Beautiful Yesterday Sessions EP CD ($0.50)
U2 - 18 Singles compilation CD ($3)
Terence Trent D'Arby - Symphony Or Damn CD ($1)
Crowded House - Crowded House CD ($1)
Lous Armstrong - Louis' Love Songs CD ($0.50)
M83 - Before The Dawn Heals Us CD ($3)
I passed on a copy of Faith No More's first album on vinyl for $15, and I kind of regret it. I was vaguely planing on going to see Jolie Holland at Tipitina's that night (Saturday), but I decided her voice still annoys me like it did the last time I skipped her, ca. 2007, so I passed and drove back home, stopping first to buy a baby Dracaena draco at a Home Depot, even though I swore I would never get one. Then I stopped at the WalMart in Boutte, which was the first time I'd gone to a WM since deciding to boycott them in '05. The reason is that I wanted a new pair of the black Brahma boots I'd gotten there, and apparently no other store carries Brahmas. The desire for a specific product can sometimes win out over idealism. I was impressed by their gardening section. I listened to the Christian Scott CD twice in my car that night; look for its first track to be posted on here sometime soon.
Planets with similar climates: Not sure yet; maybe some Autechre, Bark Psychosis or Seefeel
Kreidler - "She Woke Up And The World Had Changed"
(Mute Records / Kiff SM Records, 1998)
Kreidler (pronounced "CRIED-lur," not "CREED-lur") was a post-rock group based in Düsseldorf, Germany, which seamlessly combined "real" instruments with electronics to create retro-futuristic music that can appeal to both club kids and serious avant-garde music geeks. For some unknown reason, the album is called Appearance And The Park. The strange, glitchy beat/riff of this track always amazes me, with its sort of tropical feel, maybe because it reminds me of steel drumming. Seriously, why are cutting-edge rappers not sampling beats like this? Every song on the album is instrumental, except for two versions of "Coldness," which was apparently their jokey attempt at writing a pop hit:
I first heard Kreidler while we were drawing in an art class at Loyola called Foundations 2, in March '99. (I was a biology major and art minor.) That probably sounds really pretentious or made-up -- American art student hears obscure German electronic band on college radio while in class -- but it's true. (The class consisted of me, a gay dude, and 13 females. The gay dude literally overdosed on GHB that semester during class one day, and had to be taken to the hospital, but that's another story.) That was the month that this album came out in the U.S., after having been released the previous year in Germany. We were allowed to play the radio sometimes, and I usually made sure it was tuned to WTUL, the station of the college right next door, Tulane. The song was the rubbery and strange "Au Pair," whose video I discovered about a decade later:
Kreidler's drummer, Thomas Klein, is one of the best to ever pick up a pair of sticks, period, and is obviously massively influenced by his fellow countryman Jaki Liebezeit of CAN.
It's always hard to come up with a title when I post an instrumental song. This one comes from the strange bit of writing on the back cover:
Uh, okay. Richard Brautigan would be proud... I think the coffee & tea bit might be a reference to CAN's "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea" on their seminal LP Tago Mago.
Yesterday, during some rain I finally joined the local library, which is only a few blocks from me, but not exactly a bastion of modern literature, this being a town of 6,000 people. It's one of those little country libraries whose parking lot is usually empty except on days when there are a few school buses due to a school scheduling a field trip to it, which always gave me the impression that it was some sort of children's library.
"Hi, I'd like to join."
The chubby, flaxen-haired, somewhat cute, twentysomething girl at the front counter under the fluorescent lights looks at me with a blank, bored expression. I remember that she was sitting in that very spot the only other time I had come here, 3 or 4 years earlier.
"You mean get a library card?"
"Yeah. [Pause] ...What else would I mean?"
I felt kind of bad about that last part, but I mean, come on. Do I want to join your swinger's club, or your African safari group, or your fondue workshop? No, probably not, I mainly just want a library card.
I picked out three books, then drove down 20 miles to Thibodaux, got a little white-spined Mammillaria cactus and some dwarf cattail bulbs at Lowe's, and then shot hoops after the rain had ended there, which had brought the temperature down from about 95 degrees to about 80. This gangly blond kid of about 13 rode his bike up and started shooting on another goal. I never watch other people play while I'm playing, because I like to be the center of attention when it comes to basketball, my all-consuming passion; but I couldn't help noticing that he shot the way that most people do before developing enough arm strength to shoot the right way, meaning above one's head rather than off of the shoulder. So when one of his bricks careened over to my court I said "Can I give you a suggestion? You should start shooting the ball over your head, because when you shoot it from your shoulder, the ball blocks your vision as it passes in front of your eyes." He didn't say anything, and went back and kept shooting the same way as before, and bricking as much as before. I was like: "The fuck?" So I just went back to draining three after three, hoping that my actions would speak more clearly than my words. I understand the whole "Don't talk to strangers" thing, and I didn't talk to strangers when I was a kid, but this kind of annoyed me, thought he fact that I was shirtless probably played into his lack of desire to talk to me. I then went to O'Reilly's auto parts and got some wiper blades, and then went to the Rouses grocery store, and weirdly enough, while I was walking in, he was walking out with his parents. Probably thought I was stalking him or something... I wanted to ask his parents, "Didn't you see Scott Loeffelholz play?" See, the thing is, I used to shoot from the shoulder. In 8th grade, I practiced with the high school team every day (after my middle school team's practice got out), and started on the JV team. So on game days, I played the 8th grade game and then the JV game. After one 8th grade or JV game that season, in which I went 14 of 15 from the line in an overtime win, my best game of that season, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Joel Loeffelholz, father of the high school team's star player, Scott Loeffelholz (one of my idols), pulled me aside and... you guessed it... solemnly told me that I should start shooting from over my head. He told me the same damn thing I told this kid 20 years later, the only difference being that I actually realized the importance of his suggestion and actually started shooting from over my head, which changed my life. Joel was/is a lawyer, and helped get me out of a minor traffic ticket a few years later, so I owe him doubly. His son Michael, one of my classmates (we moshed together at the aforementioned Tool / Flaming Lips / Failure concert in '94), now apparently works for Atlantic Records. The weird thing is that Scott is 6'5" and Michael is like 5'7", supposedly due to his bad asthma. I think he's the one who got me into Quicksand in spring of '93, but that might've been Ryan Massey or Blake Massey. I know Michael first told us to check out the band Morphine, in early '93.
Sent to me by my sister the other day:
Remember Razr phones? The rest of it reads "Raveonettes, Church, and...Kele haha)"
Weird novel I checked out from the library
Well, I'm off to the Record Raid at Siberia & the Hi-Ho Lounge now.
Update, 8/14/11: Printed at the bottom of my library receipt: What did the sheet of paper say to the pencil ? You've got a good point !
Planets with similar climates: Euphone - "Newscast" (2000), Trans Am - "American Kooter" (1996), Kraftwerk - "Nummern" ("Numbers") (1981), Oval - "Shop In Store" (1994), Stu Phillips - "Knight Rider Theme" (1982), Schema - "We Think We're Sane" (2000), Harald Grosskopf - "So Weit, So Gut" (1980), FCS North - "Things Will Change" (2003).
Well, as you may notice, I've decided to stop doing the little embellishments to each song title, but it was exciting while it lasted. Flying Saucer Attack, named after a terrible late '70s New Wave hit by the Rezillos, was masterminded by a guy named Dave Pearce. In a current music scene populated with band names like How To Dress Well, Pissed Jeans, I'm From Barcelona, LMFAO, and Pygmy Lush, it's good to know that there used to be bands with names like Flying Saucer Attack, one of the few truly tattoo-worthy band names ever. Based in the rugged multicultural seaport city of Bristol, famous as the birthplace of trip-hop, Pearce had initial help from Rachel Brook, who was later in ambient slow-poppers Movietone. FSA released a huge slew of music in the early to mid '90s, but only performed live about a dozen times, probably due to the logistics of recreating all the strange tape loops & noises from the studio recordings. The maelstrom of ambient feedback and noise seems to be on the verge of overwhelming this song's delicate melody, but the melody stays strong and wins out. In addition to Pearce's beautifully enunciated vocals, the throbbing bassline is what really puts this song over the top and into an unclassifiable genre. The weird thing is that, having been reared on Sonic Youth, I didn't even notice all the noise in this song at first, but several years later I realized "Whoa, dude, that's a lot of noise."
"While the more experimental parts of New Lands aren't really Pearce completely trashing his general aesthetic and trying something new, they do show him attempting and often succeeding at introducing further variety to his murky, intriguing field. Thus, 'Up in Her Eyes' has a very familiar vocal and guitar style, but the obsessive, upfront yet still shadowy percussion -- sounding more like a chugging train engine than anything else -- dominates the track, at least up until its slightly more ambient, free-flowing end... Through it all, the combination of Pearce's tender, dark folk vocals and skybursting guitar provides the central point of the experience, making for some fascinating, entrancing results."
I borrowed this CD, New Lands, from friend Andrew Mister in '99, around the same time I bought FSA's self-titled '93 debut album. About ten years later I found out that "Up In Her Eyes" was originally released as a free 7" flexidisc in issue 6 of Stop Smiling magazine in 1995. The album version is a re-recorded one, since its liner notes say "album recorded late 96 / early 97." I got a huge-ass fold-out glossy promo poster for New Lands on eBay in 2005, surely the biggest promo poster I've ever obtained, and I have hundreds of promo music posters and concert flyers up several art portfolio folders in several closets in multiple area codes. The cover art of this album is particularly unsettling, yet Zen-inducing. A page from the CD booklet:
Drag City Records' fall '97 press release:
the long-awaited follow-up tofurther has been a long time coming -- over two years, to be honest. since that acoustically-tinged offering, the sound of fsa has revolved into metallic pastures...
this new fsa sound steers through the past pop music into the direction of rhythmic loopery. bass anchors the familiar guitar fuzz, edgelessly felt through the wall of sound and giving it a beat where one was only imagined before.
previously only hinted at, this pulse booms forth in a bigger way, although still obscured by clouds. phase two. the beat is the new thing. previously only hinted at, this pulse booms.
A photo I took of my Philodendron, var. 'Burle Marx,' leaning towards the sunrise on Tuesday at about 7 AM:
(Restless Records / Rough Trade Records [Germany], 1990) ¬¬¬
Band Of Susans formed in 1986, and were fronted throughout their 10-year history by Susan Stenger (vocals, bass, lyrics) and Robert Poss (guitar, vocals, lyrics, production), along with drummer Ron Spitzer. They originally did have three Susans, but, thanks to some freak organic gardening accidents, were down to one Susan by the time of this album, though they did manage to add an Anne. This is yet another song that I considered for the first-ever post on this blog, due to its seismic impact on me, its addictively technicolor feel, and its overall vastness / timelessness, not to mention the fact that it's just a great pop song at heart. The bassline is all but unsurpassable, and when you play it on a bass, you can feel the earth being thrown briefly off its axis under your feet.
I've decided to post the original 1991 song rather than the "1994 Remix" (just beefed-up via mastering) version on the band's best-of compilation (2 CDs / 3 LPs) entitled Wired For Sound: 1986-1993. That version basically just has beefed-up guitar sound, which unfortunately drowns out the vocals, since the vocals were stupidly not beefed-up. I point this out because BOS were known for mixing their guitar parts louder than any other band, and they used a triple-guitar attack. That means three guitarists, holmes. They were also known for their excruciating attention to sonic details, particularly as pertained to guitar tone / sound / effects / feedback, making them arguably the ultimate "guitar band" for guitar geeks with an ear for melodic noise.
Right from the opening guitar feedback, to the police siren, to the ultra-sinister bassline, to the krautrock-y drums, you know you're in for something that is more badass than just about anything you have ever experienced. Since this was the first BOS song I ever heard, it made quite a dandy first impression on me, and now I'll say what I always say: "Amazingly, this song was not released as a single." Stenger just destroys on this song, and on most of the other songs on this album. I love how she starts off by just singing the phrase "Still life," and then pauses for a long time while the instruments use the breathing room to do their thing. It's a subtle and effective thing that very few bands do, and it always makes me think of Dark Side Of The Moon-era Pink Floyd (e.g. "Us And Them"). It's also cool how the opening two guitar notes which kick in at 0:28 foreshadow the "Still life" lyric, even using the same exact notes. Black Sabbath were relentlessly mocked for having their lyrics follow the same notes as the guitars (think "Has he lost his mind..." from "Iron Man"), but BOS do it in a much more tasteful and sleek way.
Page Hamilton left BOS right after their previous album, Love Agenda, to form the way more famous nu-metalers Helmet, whom I completely worshipped in the early to mid '90s, and saw at Tipitina's in Jan. '95, but my point is that BOS didn't suffer at all from his loss, and actually bounced back stronger.
1990-96 lineup, clockwise from left: Mark Lonergan, Ron Spitzer, Anne Husick, Robert Poss, Susan Stenger
I had heard about this band for many years as stalwarts of the NYC melodic noize scene alongside Sonic Youth and Live Skull. I finally bought this album on cassette in Dec. 2000 in the dollar clearance rack at a local Wherehouse Music (formerly Blockbuster Music, originally Sound Warehouse). I also bought its equally great follow-up, 1993's Veil, on cassette that day, and just about wore both of them out in my car over the following few years before I got them both on CD. Someone put up some nice pics of the cassette packaging, including full lyrics, here. I'm not sure if I've put any song on mix tapes/CDs more than "Ice Age" over the last decade. There was a point when it was so automatic that it wasn't a question of if I'd use it, but rather a question of whether to make it the first song or the last one. While writing this post, I realized I had already written a big song-by-song analysis of this album for the "Lost Classics" section of my old online zine in 2002 or 2003, so I'll try to post that somewhere, sometime.
Susan Stenger & Robert Poss, 1988; photo by Michael Lavine
The cover designs of The Word And The Flesh and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless are suspiciously similar, but I know the BOS album came out slightly earlier, I think only by a few weeks or months.
vs.
Both albums were actually recorded in 1990, so it's kind of a moot point. After hearing "Ice Age," it goes without saying that fans of Loveless will find much to like on TWATF.
In the movie Empire Records, there's a BOS poster right outside the office of the boss or manager guy. The legendary Leo Fender, creator of the Fender guitar company, was a big BOS fan and invited them over for a tour of his G&L guitar / amp factory. (G&L is the company he founded after leaving Fender.) That's a G&L on the cover of this album, and several of them on the cover of Wired For Sound. It's a shame that Leo died right before this album came out... I could list tons more factoids about Band Of Susans, but I'll let you seek that stuff out. I don't like writing a whole lot about bands on here, and I usually end up deleting a lot of what I've written in order to make the posts shorter. But I'd suggest checking out some of their live posters over here, including gigs with A.C. Temple (astute readers will remember that this blog is named after an A.C. Temple lyric), Dinosaur Jr., Live Skull, Rollins Band, Throwing Muses, Butthole Surfers, and other notable rock acts. Members of BOS got their start in the experimental guitar-drone orchestra of Rhys Chatham, a.k.a. the guy that Glenn Branca ripped off.
1989 or '90 video for the awesomely pummeling "The Pursuit Of Happiness," with the band's tour of the G&L facility starting at the 3-minute mark:
Planets with similar climates: Bleach - "Seeing" & "First" (1991), My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow" (1990), Bailter Space - "Now I Will Live" (1987), Verve - "Slide Away" (1993), Juned - "Kyuss" (1995), Jawbox - "Savory" (1993), Catherine Wheel - "Black Metallic" (1991), Tamaryn - "Mild Confusion" (2010).
I've still never heard this whole album (The River), but I've listened to this excerpt so many times over the last 5 or more years that it's part of my DNA by now. I downloaded it from one of William Basinski's own webpages, or from the Raster-Noton website, when it was being given as a free taste of the album; it does not appear to be offered anymore. It is apparently the first three minutes of the album's first track, meaning the beginning of the first CD of this double-CD album. Both tracks are untitled, and hence are generally referred to as "The River Part I" and "The River Part II." I find this music to be incredibly eerie and illicit, yet somehow sensual, like the famous blood-elevator sequence in The Shining:
That movie never actually shows anyone being murdered, yet is rightfully considered one of the greatest horror flicks ever. By the same token, much of Basinski's music contains an implied sense of danger lurking around the next corner, even if that danger never materializes outright.
Summary of this album's history:
1983: Recorded in NYC
2002: Released as a 2xCD on German electronic label Raster-Noton
2007: Released as a 2xCD on Basinski's own U.S. label, 2062
2008: Remastered (presumably) & released as a digital file by Basinski on 2062, as The River (Alternative Mixes)
I'm not sure why there was a two-decade delay in getting it released, but I guess that fits in with Basinski's methodical, perfectionist style. The River is nowhere near as legendary and influential as Basinski's 2002 album The Disintegration Loops, which has one of the most interesting backstories of any album in history. But it has a similar genesis and a similar overall sound of unsettling, decaying elegance, so it deserves to be more widely known. Raster-Noton says:
"The River is the culmination of William Basinski's shortwave music experiments. It was recorded in real time in 1983 using tape loops and shortwave radio static. The loops were all culled from the airwaves, short bits of string melody taken from the muzak radio station, slowed down and mixed live to cassette from two 50's Norelco reel-to-reel decks with a random accompaniment of shifting shortwave radio static."
The page also quotes Basinski himself as saying:
"Growing up in the 70's, with a love for the lush sound of the Mellotron, but not having the pocketbook to own one, I decided to try to create my own. I had heard that the sounds were recorded on tape loops, so I began recording small bits of lush strings from intros and interludes in muzak songs to use as my 'keys.' The aspect of pulling all the sounds from the airwaves, to create something from nothing, fascinated me. With these elemental, organic loops that I had saved aside for The River, I was attempting to record 'the music of the spheres.' The 90 minute length was decried [sic] by the length of the two sides of the cassette. The idea was to have a piece which could repeat endlessly, creating an eternal, meditative womb of tranquility."
This is true ambient music, since it lacks drums or rhythms of any kind, which forces the listener's brain to create some sort of rhythm to go along with it, often the beating of one's own heart, which is of course about 60 bpm, or the sound of an air conditioner unit rattling, or anything in earshot. "The River" reminds me of Seefeel's 1993 track "Signals," but was obviously recorded a decade before it:
I've heard the genre "Isolationism" used to describe this type of warm, womb-like, slightly claustrophobic ambient music, and I wish it would've caught on, at least outside the U.K. To explore this kind of music further, read a very interesting 1995 article on it here. It's by the same talented music critic (I rarely use that phrase) whom I mentioned in the Bark Psychosis post as having popularized the term "post-rock."
From Basinski's own MySpace page; captioned "hymns of oblivion days, NYC 92?"
At his NYC performance space called Arcadia, 2001; photo by Charlotte Corday
Sorry ladies, but I found out in the last week or two that Billy B. is gay. I also found out he has been longtime friends with weirdo balladeer Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons, which at least gives him points with the mopey transvestite hipster crowd. Basinski has rightfully become an ambient star in the last decade, joining the select company of the likes of John Cage, Brian Eno, Zoviet:France, Geir Jenssen (a.k.a. Biosphere), and Steve Roach. Well, he's not in Cage or Eno's realm yet, but he could get there someday, if he keeps traveling slowly enough.
I recently found a stash of four U.K. mags with the band Curve on the cover, from '91-92, which I had bought as a lot on eBay five years ago during one of my many periods of Curve infatuation. I have to transcribe this hilarious review of Slayer's Decade Of Aggression from the Oct. 26, 1991 issue of Melody Maker, credited to The Stud Brothers. ("Mong" is apparently slang for Mongoloid.)
Welcome to the kingdom of the Mong.
Decade Of Aggression begins with a thousand, ten thousand, maybe a million monkey-men baying the words "SLAY-YAH! SLAY-YAH!" And on it goes, on and on, this simian mantra, oblivious to the all-too-audible fact that Slay-yah have long since taken to the stage. How did these people find their way to the venue? They are morons. Even Slay-yah's singer, Tom Arraya, the Slay-yah himself, knows they are morons. Just ten minutes in he has to warn them to stop beating one another up in their thoughtless haste to bond with each other (and the front of the stage and the beer-soaked floor).
Ninety minutes later (this album is so painfully long) the Slay-yah is still failing to control his loyal but unruly acolytes. These people are instinctive in the most ignoble, grubby, lemming-like way. They bay, bash, crash, hurt one another. And for what? To what? Slayer are the most boring band on the planet, unless of course you find the atonal racket of a pneumatic drill accompanied by the squeal of a car-alarm and the earthly grunts of overweight-workmen in any way compelling. Okay, so it's interesting for somewhere between two and five seconds, like in "What the f***'s going on?" But this album is over five thousand seconds long.
With a normal Slayer album you might be momentarily distracted by the thesaurus of mutilations masquerading as lyrics. Slayer live, however, lack even this dubious subtlety. Words such as "strangulation" and "cancer" are reduced to an incoherent single syllable: "WHUUURGH!," delivered in Tom's inimitable catatonic roar. No single track is worth mentioning as every one of the 21 here is identical to its predecessor. We honestly doubt there's ever been an album as comprehensively, endlessly inane and repetitious as this. In that sense, Decade Of Aggression is the ultimate Slayer album, perfectly illustrating their astonishing lack of imagination.
They are heartrendingly cretinous. Pity them.
Planets with similar climates: Tangerine Dream - "Sequent C'" (1973), Seefeel - "Signals" (1993), Brian Eno - "Lizard Point" (1982), Plexi - "Bunny" (1996), Main - "Crater Scar (Adrenochrome)" (1995), Panther Skull - "Slothwave" (2005), Biosphere - "Chukhung" (1997).
Jeff Garber, mastermind of National Skyline (see previous post), moved to SoCal in the early '00s and became active with the band Year Of The Rabbit, and soon after that he co-founded The Joy Circuit. This band is not to be confused with the '80s band also called The Joy Circuit; both bands presumably named themselves after the Gary Numan song of the same name.
The Joy Circuit in L.A., ca. 2005; L-R: Solomon Snyder, Tim Dow, Jeff Garber
Official press/promo photo; photographer unknown
(This photo is sometimes incorrectly labeled online as being of National Skyline)
TJC consisted of Jeff Garber on vocals & guitar, Tim Dow on drums, and Solomon Snyder on bass, all three of whom were in Year Of The Rabbit. Hence, after learning what they look like via the pic above, you can observe all three members of The Joy Circuit in YOTR's video for the shoulda-been-hit "Last Defense":
YOTR's singer was Keanu Reeves lookalike Ken Andrews, former lead singer of the space-grunge band Failure, whom I saw live in '94 (opening for Tool & Flaming Lips) right after their album Magnified came out. You probably remember Failure's huge (only) 1996 alterna-hit "Stuck On You," or at least remember its distinctively cinematic video:
I downloaded TJC's untitled demo EP when it came out in late '04, as it was posted on TJC's website as a free download. I was totally blown away. The synths of Nat Sky had been stripped away, reconfiguring the engine to run on pure guitar adrenaline and spiky, bombastic drumming. Garber reasserts himself as a guitar god on this song / EP, after the sometimes guitar-free soundscapes of National Skyline. It was really startling to me to hear Garber shredding his vocal cords on this songs, as opposed to the "clean" and almost androgynous voice he used in National Skyline. But it makes sense when you keep in mind that he started off as the singer for the angular indie rock / emo-ish band Castor (whose recordings I don't personally recommend checking out).
I think the name of this song is taken from The Church's stunningly beautiful little 1983 gem "Fly," which has the lyric "Trapped inside her painted eyes / Takes herself into the new sunrise." Here's the video, the last 20 seconds of which are sorta NSFW:
"Fly" uses a lot of guitar harmonics to give that plinking, spine-tingling, xylophone-ish, church-bell-ish sound, a technique I mentioned a few posts ago, so please go look up how to do it and go play some harmonics on your guitar already.
The four songs that make up TJC's demo EP are simply incredible, enough to reaffirm one's belief in the power of music. Some wise record label needs to release this EP on an actual physical format, such as 10" vinyl. The Joy Circuit went on to release an awesome, and more shoegaze-y, EP in early 2005, simply titled EP 1. My hopes were sky-high for this band's certain dominance of the indie rock scene, especially with the whole post-punk revival going on, but they never recorded, or at least never released, anything else, and hence faded into complete obscurity with only nine songs to their name. All nine of them are keepers, though, meaning they made more great songs in a few months than were spewed forth by the entire careers of most other bands. They'll always be a towering tornado of rock to me. Someday I'll also post "Run In Circles" from this EP, and something from EP 1, so hold onto your hats, because it could be a white-knuckle ride, a ride for which you'll probably need a hat.
Update, Aug. 7, 2011: On my old computer I found a copy I had saved of the press release that announced TJC's existence. It was posted on 6/29/04 at http://discussions.elektra.com/wm-yearoftherab/messages at 11:09 PM:
"Hello all,
While the Rabbit seems to be in deep hibernation for now, there has been some related activity.
In January 2004, Tim Dow, Jeff Garber, and Solomon Snyder began jamming in a small Los Angeles rehearsal space. After a week or two had passed, it was apparent that a new band was forming.
The band took the moniker THE JOY CIRCUIT, and over the past few months the group has written at least 30 new songs.
The Joy Circuit has booked some studio time for the end of July, and the band hopes to have something released before the end of the year.
THE JOY CIRCUIT will perform on July 8th at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. (...)
Check out www.thejoycircuit.com for more info and music.
thanks"
So there's 21 other songs?!? Oh man, now I'll never be able to sleep.
Planets with similar climates: Swervedriver - "Son Of Mustang Ford" (1990), National Skyline - "Reinkiller" (2001), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), The Church - "Reptile" (1987), U2 - "Like A Song..." (1982), Prosaics - "Teeth" (2004), Feverdream - Vortex (1995).
National Skyline began as a "supergroup" of Champaign / Urbana indie rock dudes in the mid-'90s, whose alleged goal was to write one 45-minute masterpiece song. Apparently they actually recorded it in '97, but it was never released. The group's core members were Jeff Garber (ex-Castor) on vocals, guitar and other stuff, and Jeff Dimpsey (ex-Hum) on bass and other stuff. I think they've always used drum machines rather than real drumming. Much like the band Idaho (see post on them from a few weeks ago), Nat Sky later was winnowed down to be essentially a one-man project, helmed by Garber. He later joined Year Of The Rabbit as a guitarist, and fronted the short-lived but amazing band The Joy Circuit. After years of silence on the Nat Sky front, he has revived the moniker and released a slew of music in the last four or so years. Garber is pretty much a musical genius in my mind, or at least a master of amazing melodies. "I love you in the shape of swirling gas" is one of the most strangely romantic lyrics ever written.
I love how the song starts off with just a primitive, muffled drum sample and minimalist, almost womblike keyboards, and then come in the vocals, then louder, more complex drum machine beats, then piano. The combination of slow vocals and relatively fast beats messes up the brain's ability to keep time. Lots of Nat Sky songs have incredible guitar parts (especially "Reinkiller"), but this one is so rock-solid and perfect that it doesn't even need any axe. My only complaint about it is that Garber doesn't unleash his celestially gorgeous falsetto voice in it, as he does on, say, "A Night At The Drugstore" or "Air." This song is from the 2001 EP Exit Now, which also features the absolutely staggering 12-minute shoegaze-tronic space-drone-noize opus "Karolina II."
Exit Now
National Skyline were famous for the elaborate light show at their concerts and for their obsession with sonic detail. They once arrived at a club which had booked them for a show, checked out its sound system, decided it wasn't up to snuff, and then simply left. If I had gone to that show I would've been pretty furious, but, eh... rock stars.
I obtained this EP, and the band's incredible debut album This = Everything, from download service eMusic in 2003, back when you had unlimited downloads, so I just downloaded untold hundreds of albums, ending up with only a few diamonds in the rough. After becoming completely obsessed with Nat Sky that summer, I later bought both of those releases on actual CD, for a dollar each on eBay. I vividly remember blasting this song as loud as my truck's stereo would go while surveying the damage in New Orleans' City Park a few weeks after Katrina, as though it would somehow make the trees grow back and make people feel more optimistic. To be more specific, I was standing on the empty golf course (I've never played golf in my life) by Tad Gormley stadium while my Suburban was parked on the street next to it, playing this song. No one else was there, in this normally-crowded park. I had lost my sweet little '94 Integra in the flood, so my dad passed on his big lumbering '95 Suburban to me. It had a significantly more powerful stereo, as well as a CD player. The Integra only had a tape deck, which is part of the reason why I have amassed so many cassettes.
Jeff Garber
This song's piano solo, beginning at about 3:30, is the most stunning one I have ever heard. I could live in it. It is surely the most heart-stoppingly beautiful thing ever created, and my entire body still gets covered in goosebumps whenever I hear it. You should see me play every note of it with absolute precision while driving. (Yes, using both hands.) The piano in this song slightly edges out the piano in: "Lloyd's Register" by Rachel's "When The Winter's Gone (Song For A Stranger)" by David Benoit & Jennifer Warnes "Frou-frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires" by Cocteau Twins "1/1" by Brian Eno & Robert Wyatt "Chloe Dancer" by Mother Love Bone "The Cutting Edge" by The Comsat Angels "Litany Against Fear" by Christian Scott
"Telegraph Hill" by Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble) "Swingset Chain" by Loquat "October" by U2 "February Sea" by George Winston "We Float" by PJ Harvey (piano by PJH & Rob Ellis)
"Speechless" by Liz Story
On the topic of ghosts, I've always been an atheist, and always will be, but I believe in ghosts / spirits / souls and the like, including the concept of "guardian angels," since I believe I was saved from a car crash in Nov. '07 by one. Blah blah, just listen to the song again. But after that near-crash, I drove over to, guess where... City Park... and sat in my car under the oaks and thought about a lot of things for a few hours.
Exit Now
Note: "Ghosts" (as well as "Karolina II") was included as a bonus track on the Japanese CD edition of This = Everything, on a label called Stiff Slack.
I've recently really gotten into the song "Regret" by New Order, to the point where I sing it to myself constantly, and a week ago found & bought the CD single for $2, and today even heard it in a Lowe's, so in order to get it to quit stalking me, here it is:
I'd say it's their second-best song, after "Shell Shock":
Obviously, National Skyline, at least in their early-'00s incarnation, were quite influenced by New Order. I never really took New Order seriously, but like I said, I've recently been giving them more of a chance and am starting to understand why they were so mega-influential.
As for Casey Anthony being found not guilty today, someone on TV right afterwards (I think Jane Velez-Mitchell) pointed out something very interesting, which is that America hates to execute celebrities, or even to send them to prison. I then thought about the fact that we (by which I mean the overwhelming majority of Americans who wanted to see her get the death penalty) all unwittingly made this anonymous skeezer into a star by the simple fact that we followed her case for three years and put her on countless magazine covers. So we unwittingly saved her life, even though we all wanted the opposite. If we hadn't paid so much attention to the case, she would've been more likely to have been found guilty. D'oh.
Casey throwin' up what is presumably a failed Wesside. The only way this
photo could be any more white trash would be if that were an Ed Hardy shirt.
This photo brings to mind only one song... No, not ELO's "Evil Woman," silly... I am referring to Billy Reid's "White Chicks And Gang Signs":
Planets with similar climates: The Comsat Angels - "The Cutting Edge" (1986), Radiohead - "Fake Plastic Trees" (1995), Over The Rhine - "Jacksie" (~1990), Verve - "On Your Own" (1995), Bark Psychosis - "Absent Friend" (1993), Mogwai w/ Aidan Moffat - "R U Still In 2 It?" (1997), Ova Looven - "Invisible Triangle" (2003), Placebo - "Without You I'm Nothing" (1998).
Currently enjoying the concept of: Motorcyclist Dies On Ride Protesting Helmet Law In New York This reminded me of the time Flavor Flav, who at the time was fresh off the success of the single "911 Is A Joke" with Public Enemy, one of the few songs of theirs on which he sang lead, got in a car wreck and had to call 911 to come save his ass.
