[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=a0t26-the-spoils-of-adventure.xml]

The last time I snapped a picture of it, which was after the second day of Desertfest in London, the CD stack looked like this. Not too shabby for a weekend’s haul. There’s some good stuff in that pile, and had I returned home that Monday after the fest with that batch of goodies, I’d in no way be able to say I lost out. Here’s what it looked like after Roadburn.

I don’t know the count exactly — I’m not buying for quantity, I’m buying for quality — and anyway, it seems superfluous. It’s a fuckload, and that’s as close an estimate as I need. It’s as epic a haul as I’ve ever had, and there are some discs in there that I happened into, people gave me to review or something like that, but there’s much more that was picked up specifically because I saw a set I liked, or it was someone’s album I was waiting to buy, or something along those lines. Purchases on purpose, in other words. Nothing in that stack wound up there by mistake.

Trouble is, with a backlog of albums waiting to be reviewed, I don’t get to just sit and listen to records much these days, so in a way, this podcast is me trying to squeeze in some of that, as well as share with you just what the title says: the spoils of my recent adventure to London for Desertfest and to the Netherlands for Roadburn. It’s a mixture of the lineups for both fests, and comprised almost entirely of stuff I picked up along the way rounded out with some performers whose records I already owned and so didn’t need to buy (Orange Goblin, YOB, Black Cobra, etc.). A lot of people at Roadburn were only selling vinyl — looking at you, Internal Void — but between the merch area and bands’ tables, I wound up with more than enough material for this podcast.

Great as they were, though, the fests weren’t the whole experience. I also included a track from 35007‘s Especially for You, which I picked up in Eindhoven at the shop Bullit Records, and at various intervals you’ll hear clips from the BBC audio collection of Michael Palin’s Himalaya, which I bought at the Music and Video Exchange in London, along with Paladin, who are also included here. I know it’s supposed to be about the shows, but this weekend having been Record Store Day, I didn’t think anyone would begrudge me a couple inclusions from these stores. They’re part of the adventure too.

And at more than three and a half hours of music, this thing is pretty much an adventure in itself. Still, I think it turned out to be a really cool mix and if you were also at either Roadburn or Desertfest in London, I hope you find it gives some flavor of either or both. If nothing else, it’s a collection of killer heavy tunes, with new stuff you might not have heard yet from Conan, Ancestors, Roadsaw, Stone Axe, Farflung and Trippy Wicked. You kind of can’t go wrong in checking it out.

Stream audiObelisk Transmission 026 by clicking play on the player above. Download the file here, or by clicking the banner at the top of this post. The complete tracklist, as always, is after the jump.

Read more »

Admittedly, I usually have to be several beverages into the evening before I’ll break out Uriah Heep, but I’m pretty sure if any alcohol at all crossed my lips at this point, my cranium would just explode in a mess of mucus and a pathetically little amount of brain matter. At this point, I’m far enough into having this post-Roadburn cold that I’m sick of being sick. If only Tilburg SARS would listen to reason and go away on its own. Wednesday was the worst, yesterday was better, today’s worse than yesterday.

I’ve been coughing loudly and persistently enough to piss of those with whom I share my office space, and it seems like no matter how much stoner rock I blast, there’s no mending that fence. I’ll look forward to a long allergy season of being ostracized, and if I have to turn to Mick Box‘s über-grandiose solo in the second half of “The Magician’s Birthday” for comfort, so fucking be it. Damn my swimming head.

Nonetheless: There will be a new podcast this weekend.

The theme is that it’s all stuff I purchased on the recent adventure across the Atlantic, and in that regard, there’s more than enough material to choose from. I also picked up a 5-CD BBC audio documentary of Michael Palin’s Himalaya, which I read the book of before I realized it was a tv special and am now stoked to check out the audio from. My original plan was to talk over this podcast, I guess basically to nerd out over the albums I bought, but that would require a voice with which to speak, and right now I don’t have one at all, for speaking or much of anything else. Maybe I’ll let Mr. Palin do the honors instead if I can find some samples worth putting in.

But before I sign off for the week to embark on a night that will, aside from doing laundry, also hopefully lead to some level of recovery from this plague I brought back from foreign shores (I should’ve checked that box on the customs form that says I’m traveling with germ cultures), let me say thanks once more to everyone who checked out the Desertfest, Roadburn and other travel-type posts. If you’re going to Desertfest Berlin this weekend, you have my envy.

Whatever your plans might entail, a great and safe weekend to you and yours. Don’t forget that the podcast will be up before Sunday’s out (I have a wedding reception to attend tomorrow during the day, so I’m not sure exactly on the timing yet), and I’ll see you on the forum and back here Monday for another slew of riff-loving hijinks. All the best.

In terms of establishing charm in the eyes of a stoner rock loyalist, covering Lowrider goes a long way, and on their recorded-live debut, Polish trio Tres Perros not only take on “Caravan,” which opened Lowrider‘s 1999 riff-led epic, Ode to Io, but they make it the only song in their entire set with vocals. True, the singing is a little rough, so maybe that’s part of it, but you have to admire the effort, and anyone who’d incorporate a cut like that into what they do, you know their heart’s in the right place.

Ditto that sentiment for the rhythm section. Tres Perros comes from former members of desert-minded rockers Luna Negra, and while there are some commonalities in their fuzzy approach, Tres Perros seems altogether more jam-minded in their instrumentals, guitarist Mushroom leading the way through nine-minute Live at Jagerklause opener “Sonar/Echo Elephant” with wah-infused psychedelics while bassist Chris McDope and drummer KaVa hold down the Nebula-style grooves behind. True, by the time you get down to “Universal Leaf Land,” the band has tipped the vast majority of their plays, but the charm endures all the way through the finish of “Spacecraft (Groove),” aptly named in both its title proper and parenthetical.

It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but my fascination with the Polish stoner scene endures, and if Luna Negra wasn’t going to pan out, it’s good to know that some of those guys are still moving forward with Tres Perros, whose live demo is a brazen move for a first outing but enjoyable all the more for it. If you’re so inclined, you can check out the band on their Thee Facebooks or Bandcamp pages. You’ll find the entirety of Live at Jagerklause in the player below, courtesy of the latter:

If the question is, “What are Pelican doing on their new four-song Ataraxia/Taraxis EP?” then the answer is, “Whatever the hell they feel like.” The Chicago instrumental foursome, now marking more than a decade of existence, have successfully interwoven post-rock atmospherics into doomed guitar crunch, and over the course of their career, helped set the stage for what we now think of as post-metal while never quite conforming wholly to the aspects of that or any other genre. Ataraxia/Taraxis finds its release through Southern Lord, and like the band’s label-debut full-length, What We all Come to Need (review here), did in 2009, the latest studio outing seems to be bent on keeping the band’s urban escapist atmospheres alive while measuring them against noisy tonal heft. It’s interesting that the title, which comes from the opening and closing tracks, respectively, would refer to first a state in which anxiety is absent, and then to the opposite – one in which it’s very much present. One might expect that to coincide sonically, the four tracks of Ataraxia/Taraxis – those being “Ataraxia,” “Lathe Biosas,” “Parasite Colony” and “Taraxis” – would also get progressively heavier or more frantic, as we move from one state to the next, but that doesn’t seem to really be the case. Although there’s no shortage of heaviness, particularly as the build of the five-minute closer comes to its head, Pelican’s flow isn’t so cut and dry as that, and listening, that’s probably to the benefit of the individual pieces themselves, as each has its own stylistic and structural agenda apart from the service it does to the 18-minute EP as a whole, beginning with the gradual arrival of “Ataraxia” and the intertwining of acoustic and electric guitars and other ambience that makes up its progression.

The inclusion of acoustics itself is notable within Pelican’s back catalog, though it’s not the first time they’ve come up, but they do seem to be more of a focal point on Ataraxia/Taraxis than they’ve ever been, and it’s enough to make me wonder if the band came into this recording thinking they were doing their version of the proverbial “unplugged” release. If that’s so, they’re still very much plugged in, whether it’s the sweet electric notes and underlying noise rumble of “Ataraxia” or the distorted riffy chug of “Lathe Biosas,” which answers the relative stillness of the preceding track with an unabashed heavy groove made all the more potent by drummer Larry Herweg’s changes between straightforward and half-time measures. The arrival of “Lathe Biosas” acts as what “Ataraxia” has been building toward – it’s the payoff, in other words – but if “Ataraxia” is an intro, it’s certainly one with a progression of its own. In any case, the guitars of Laurent Schroeder-Lebec and Trevor de Brauw carefully shift from the opening riff of “Lathe Biosas” into lead and rhythmic positions before meeting again in what serves as a sort of music-only chorus, until about halfway in, a break offers airy post-rock noodling skillfully kept grounded by bassist Bryan Herweg’s progressive maintenance of the build. The “chorus” returns, and “Lathe Biosas” reveals itself to be something of a pop song, structurally, right up to the repeated chorus and the chugging outro brought to a halt by Herweg’s punctuating snare. Where What We all Come to Need seemed to patiently revel in its atmospherics, to dwell more in its parts, Ataraxia/Taraxis moves quickly – perhaps that’s the shift that inspired the title – but there’s still a decent amount of space imbued into “Parasite Colony.”

Read more »

If you didn’t get to hear Barr‘s 2008 debut LP, Skogsbo is the Place, it was one of that year’s subdued highlights (general appreciation here), full of beautiful and sweetly melancholic acid folk, driven by a less postured than “neo-pagan” worship of nature and all things organic, but still mostly about the songs themselves and what melodies and harmonies can accomplish in a setting thoroughly human. The sophomore outing, Atlantic Ocean Blues, arrives next week (04/25) courtesy of Sakuntala Records, an imprint of Transubstans.

Recorded in the band’s native Sweden, Atlantic Ocean Blues is no less pastoral than was its predecessor. Rather, the six-piece band adds more to the psychedelic aspects of their sound, so that opener “The End of the Road” and closer “Hanoi Haze” envelop the traditional songwriting between them in an early-’70s sepia of bright hopefulness. Among the most curious of the album’s tracks is “He ain’t a Friend, He’s a Brother,” which it just so happens was also included on Skogsbo is the Place.

And really, the reason I asked to be able to stream “He ain’t a Friend, He’s a Brother” over any of the other tracks on Atlantic Ocean Blues is because, for anyone who heard the first record, it makes for a firm summary of the changes in sound from that LP to this one. That said, even if you didn’t hear Barr‘s debut, the song has an appeal outside of the curiosity of its being a remake, and that lies in its gorgeous melody and lushness of feel.

Whether or not you’ve heard it before, I certainly hope you enjoy the track in its new form on the player below:

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=barr.xml]

Barr‘s Atlantic Ocean Blues will be available on Sakuntala starting April 25, 2012. For more info or to pre-order the album, click here. Patrik Andersson (guitar/vocals) sent along the following input on remaking the song:

The idea behind bringing along “He Ain’t A Friend…” is that we reworked it when we started trying out the new sound in the rehearsal space. We listened to all of these Senegalese and Nigerian psych compilations from the ’70s and tons of Tinariwen and wanted to aim for a more primitive rock sound, like a nomad-blues kind of sound, and as soon as I started playing the originally rather complex guitar figure in that song — you know, it’s played on an oddly-tuned six-string acoustic — with only two tones — we where there. We got into the most effective groove and felt that it was simply was too good not to be recorded for the next album. We also wanted to feature an Arabic-style psych solo with tons of space echo in order to bring the listener further out in the desert moonlight, and worked on that one for many days. Personally, the song is very dear to me, since the lyric’s about a family member gone haywire. So it all made sense. Hope you dig it!

Continuing Elektrohasch Schallplatten’s streak of supporting high-grade next gen fuzz and heavy psych, Dutch trio The Machine’s fourth album, Calmer than You Are points its Lebowski-referential finger right in your face and challenges you to prove the title wrong. Good luck. Led by guitarist/vocalist David Eering and filled and thickened by the rhythm section of bassist Hans van Heemst and drummer Davy Boogaard, the band has grown more over the course of the five years they’ve been together than the four records they’ve put out in that time can tell. Calmer than You Are is comprised of seven varied tracks for a total of a bit under 46 minutes of jam-based songwriting, very much driven by Eering’s fuzz and wah. He is a stellar lead player and constructs engaging grooves in his riffs, and as eight-minute opener “Moonward” shifts from its subdued, sitar-infused opening to the more raucous final third (there’s a clear divide at 5:39, you’ll pardon me if I don’t give the actual percentage of the song that makes up), it’s clear The Machine are ready to join the ranks of Sungrazer at the fore of their country’s fuzz rock scene. Indeed, Calmer than You Are shows the two bands have a lot in common stylistically and atmospherically, though The Machine’s production is a bit rawer and the songs as a whole less directly reliant on echo to sustain their tones. Not that The Machine are lacking for echo or reverb – Eering’s vocals on “Scooch” alone fill any quota that might crop up – but especially for Boogaard’s drums, the overall sound of Calmer than You Are is somewhat more stripped down than was Sungrazer’s Mirador, whatever else the two records might share between them or however well they might complement each other.

The Machine’s third album and Elektrohasch debut, Drie (review here), was nearly 80 minutes long, so it’s worth noting that they’ve significantly cut the sheer amount of material that makes up Calmer than You Are, and predictably, that works somewhat to the benefit of the individual tracks. Both “Scooch” and the more blatantly stoner rock start-stop riffing of “Grain,” which follows, are clearly jam-based, but The Machine have gone so far as to distill the jams down into discernible structures. There’s still room for Eering to rip into soulful solos for a few bars, and other tracks take that further, but “Grain” in particular proves excellently that The Machine have more to them than just tonal warmth and a propensity for grooving. It’s the work of burgeoning songwriters beginning to come of age as a band. On “Scooch,” it’s van Heemst’s bass that most shines, but whoever’s in the lead of the trio – Boogaard does his time out front of the mix as well – they’re showing a sense of diversity in their approach and not so much bending their sound to make and album as bending an album to fit their sound. The eight-minute “DOG,” which rounds out side A of Calmer than You Are is a standout and one of the best songs of the bunch. Akin in its beginning rhythm to Sungrazer’s “Common Believer,” it soon pushes into the LP’s most memorable hook and fullest-sounding chorus. Eering shows how far he’s come as a vocalist since the band’s 2007 debut, Shadow of the Machine, found them getting their bearings very much in a fashion after Colour Haze, and a lengthy instrumental jam in the midsection bridges a gap between the verse/chorus tradeoffs and what The Machine has previously shown of themselves on their prior efforts. Grandiose heaviness ensues and with great skill, Eering and company bring the chorus around once more before giving in to a minute-plus of warm feedback and noise to fade out to wind noise to close the first half of the album.

Read more »

Right now, on my rather lengthy reviews-to-do list, there is a double-disc live release from German heavy jam trio Electric Moon. This is a situation to which I’ve become rather accustomed over the past several months, as it seems the mere act of keeping up with the band’s output would require a full-time staff working around the clock. Their music, almost always captured live, is vibrant, colorful, dynamic and hypnotic in a way that most improvisation based material simply isn’t. You want to try as hard as you can to get lost in it.

They make that easy. Recently covered albums like The Doomsday Machine (review here) and Flaming Lake (streaming here) and their split with Glowsun (review here) are extended trips to some psychic “otherplace,” they ensnare the attentions and proceed to zone out the mind’s eye. Guitarist Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (also of Zone Six and the head of Sulatron Records), bassist/vocalist/visual artist Komet Lulu and drummer Alex offer a guiding hand, but really, even they’re not sure where the journey is going to end up, and they’re as much riding the crescendo as you are.

It only serves to make the music more exciting, and while you can put on an Electric Moon album and know you’re going to be there for a while, the spirit with which those albums are constructed and the ultra-organic processes from which they come about provides more than enough impetus for multiple visits. And unlike a lot of jam-based heavy psych, with Electric Moon, the songs never come off as wholly redundant or all pointed in the same direction. Sure, a flow is established, but the structures that exist (you’ll note I say “structures” and not “boundaries”) are open and more dependent on the whims of the players than vice versa.

As they continue to mine the visible spectrum and interpret it freeform into music, I recently hit up Sula Bassana and Komet Lulu for some insight as to how the project came about, their reliance on improv, Lulu‘s artwork, Sula‘s upcoming releases with Sulatron Records, and more. It’s kind of a short interview, but if you’re not familiar with Electric Moon or how they came to be the endearing, fascinating band they now are, it should be well enough to give you some idea of where they’re coming from. In a word: Space.

Complete email Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

Predictable? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely! This week’s Wino Wednesday clip comes courtesy of this year’s installment of the Roadburn festival in TIlburg, the Netherlands. If you’ve checked out the site in the last week, you might have heard a thing or two about it. If not, one of the highlights of the weekend was unquestionably a reunion of The Obsessed‘s The Church Within-era lineup of guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, bassist Guy Pinhas and drummer Greg Rogers.

It’s unknown at this point if they’re going to do anything else as a band — certainly Wino isn’t lacking for other projects at this point — but of course, since it’s the future, no way this wasn’t going to end up all over the TouYubes. Something like The Obsessed getting back together for a one-time-only (to date) gig is too cool to let go undocumented, and fortunately there were several kind souls there with quality video recording capabilities.

As such, it’s my hope that you enjoy this clip of one of doom’s most powerful power trios performing the song “Neatz Brigade” from The Church Within from over this past weekend. Along with the song kicking ass, you’ll note as well that Pinhas is one of the intensest-looking dudes ever.

Happy Wino Wednesday: