Posted in Whathaveyou on September 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Hey, I get it. I understand not everybody catches everything that gets posted around here, and apart from bands or labels sharing across thee socials, sometimes this get posted on this site and that’s the end of it. A Quebecois psych band’s debut — even one with the endorsement of Castle Face Records behind it — isn’t going to catch eyes like something people already know. But there are going to be a few people who see this post, maybe check out the track at the bottom of it, and be really, really glad they did.
Whether or not you catch the Randy Holden reference in the band’s moniker, Population II‘s first record, À La Ô Terre, is coming out Nov. 13 and its trad-psych fuzz meanderings have a soul behind them that comes through in each brimming noodle and volume burst. Would watch on stage. Gladly.
So take it as you will. Maybe the name snags your eye as it did mine, and maybe you figure that anyone who knows that LP might be on their game, as indeed these cats are. If you hear “Introspection” below and want more (legit), their Bandcamp has some name-your-priceness up for your perusal.
Art and info came down the PR wire:
Announcing Debut POPULATION II Album on Castle Face Records
Quebec-based raw rock band Population II share single “Introspection” and announce their album À La Ô Terre out October 30th via Castle Face Records. Opener “Introspection” is a sustainted, ferocious pummeling rock track that showcases Population II’s solid rock-n-roll, psych, and prog infused sound.
The band puts it best, saying: “With heaviness through experimentation, Introspection is an immersion in the mind of one who feels the energy of raw Rock n ‘Roll running through its veins for the first time. Instantly, comes the need to transmit and amplify it.”
POPULATION II À La Ô Terre Castle Face Records Released 13th November 2020
Tracklist 01. Introspection 02. Ce n’est Réve 03. Les Vents 04. L’Offrande 05. La Nuit 06. Il eut une Silence dans le Ciel 07. Attraction 08. La Danse 09. À la Porte de Demain 10. Je Laisse le Soleil Briller
Population II are: Pierre-Luc Gratton – Drums, Vocal Tristan Lacombe – Guitare, Orgue Sébastien Provençal – Bass
[Click play above to stream ‘Waterbirth’ from Tony Reed’s Funeral Suit. Album is out Nov. 6 on Ripple Music. Says Reed, ‘Musically the genesis of “Waterbirth” came to me by accident. I was visiting a friend who had an old National M4 resonator that he was playing in a tuning I wasn’t familiar with (DGDGBD). He was playing it with a slide in a blues style. I asked him if I could borrow it for the night to write something in my style with that tuning. This is what I recorded that night. The song is about being hopelessly lost and turning to the one you love to help guide you home.’]
The acoustic solo debut from Tony Reed arrives as part of a creative explosion that has been going on for years at this point. Recording at his own HeavyHead Studio in Port Orchard, Washington, Reed issues Funeral Suit through Ripple‘s ‘Blood and Strings’ series — which began with Wino‘s Forever Gone this summer –and it joins at least two splits, a dug-up-and-deconstructed single and another EP from his main outfit, Mos Generator, an archival release from the earlier goth-tinged project Constance Tomb (with a promise of a new album to follow, already in the works), and a debut full-length and second EP from the supergroup Big Scenic Nowhere, in which Reed works alongside members of Fu Manchu and Yawning Man, among a rotating cast of guests. Plus a swath of mixing and mastering projects for other artists and bands, as always. And there’s a good chance that I’ve left one or two things out.
In the context of this frenetic productivity, it’s somewhat astonishing that Reed found the time to add nuances like the self-harmonies and the Mellotron early in and the dual-layers of strum in the final fadeout of the title-track of Funeral Suit, or to tap into Cat–Stevens-meets-Alain–Johannes vibes on the progressive, finger-plugged and richly melodic opener “Waterbirth.” There are a couple reworked Mos Generator songs in “Lonely One” — originally “Lonely One Kenobi” from 2012’s Nomads(review here), which began the band’s association with Ripple Music — and “Wicked Willow” from 2016’s Abyssinia (review here), as well as closer “Who Goes There,” which appeared as a two-parter on late-2019’s Spontaneous Combustions EP (review here), but even these are given due treatment rather than simply played in “unplugged” fashion. To wit, the impassioned vocal of “Lonely One” and layers of guitar that accompany, or the slow piano balladry that suddenly feels like such a natural context for “Wicked Willow” and the choral effect that acts as a culmination for the entirety of Funeral Suit at the end of “Who Goes There.” These moments balance intimacy and melodic grandeur, emotional expression and stylistic experimentation.
As those who follow Reed‘s work to some degree or other would have to expect, he delivers this material with a steady, masterful hand. His approach to melody is clean and clear, his playing is precise but organic, and across the ultra-manageable eight-song/34-minute span of Funeral Suit, he demonstrates an awareness of his audience not only through a customary lack of pretense or in the lyrics to “Lonely One” (“I can tell you right now, people…”) and “Funeral Suit” (“…Can I find worth in you and you and you?”), but also in the breadth of arrangements throughout. A crucial first clue of the diversity to come arrives with “Waterbirth,” which is played in a style unlike anything else on the album. It’s the shortest track at 3:07, and along with the charm of a subtle Voivod reference in the first verse, it brings a melodic wash worthy of its title, Reed joining himself in the chorus for an effect conveying depth and melancholy.
There’s a turn just before the last minute that brings handclaps and a feel like languid gospel, but of course a return to the chorus finishes, the structure duly reinforced. Even so, the message to the listener that Funeral Suit is more than guy-and-a-guitar folk emulation is immediate, and by putting “Waterbirth” first and then following it with the more straight-ahead strum of “Moonlighting,” the aforementioned Mellotron on “Funeral Suit,” and the relatively serene amble of “Along the Way” on the record’s first side, Reed likewise frames the progressive reach of the album as a priority. Thus the mind of the audience is more open to whatever the subsequent tracks might bring, and because the material that follows asks relatively few indulgences, it’s that much easier to follow along where each piece leads. This is a skill born of experience, and it makes an essential contribution to the spirit of the album as a whole.
“Lonely One Kenobi” was a standout hook on Nomads, and there may be a bit of reorienting the listener happening as “Lonely One” — the title dropping the Star Wars reference that seemed to distract from the emotionally-fueled, frankly lonely lyrics — but whether or not one assumes a given listener taking on Funeral Suit is already familiar, its harder-edged strum and its soulful vocals find it serving as a memorable inclusion here as well. It is followed and complemented by “Wicked Willow,” which departs from guitar in classic side B fashion, taking its own familiar basis and from it bringing a new texture to Funeral Suit only previously hinted toward. Slow, mellow and wistful as only a slow piano can be, it’s about as stripped-down as Reed gets here, and as it inevitably would, it highlights the songcraft that underscores all of these pieces, new or old. The same applies to the subsequent and penultimate “Might Just…” which feels stylistically like a reset back to where the album was on side A circa “Moonlighting” or “Along the Way,” with doubled-vocals in the repeated-line chorus of “Rolling along…,” melodic and straightforward, short at 3:30 but enough to satisfy and do its job between “Wicked Willow” and “Who Goes There,” which is the longest inclusion at 5:37 as well as the already-noted finale of the record, encompassing and ready for judgment-free sing-alongs as it is.
A linear build, it holds a tension in the guitar of its first half, the title lyric delivered with due paranoia. A break after two verse/chorus cycles comes at 3:25 in, and from there, the song launches into its righteous capstone movement, not a departure from what’s come before throughout Funeral Suit, but an extension thereof that speaks to one more prevailing factor of Reed‘s work across the LP, which is the forward potential. Not that he doesn’t have plenty going on besides, but having so risen to the challenge of this first offering, as a fan (I also wrote the bio for the album, which I’ll note was uncompensated only because I knew I’d want to review it as well), one only hopes he’ll continue to explore outward from the already-broad reach he establishes here. If Funeral Suit is a one-off, fair enough, but what it conveys to the listener feels far more substantial.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
As they mark the 10-year anniversary of their debut in 2021, Washington D.C. heavy rolling trio Borracho will also release their covid-delayed fourth full-length, Pound of Flesh. Also their second for Kozmik Artifactz, the new Borracho follows some four-plus years on from 2016’s Atacama (review here) and is prefaced by the new video for “It Came From the Sky.” And if the premise of an upcoming Borracho record isn’t immediately enticing, plug your brain into the clip for just long enough to hear guitarist Steve Fisher‘s fuzz riff and that should be more than enough to prick up your ears.
I’m not sure who recorded the thing, and I’m not sure how representative “It Came From the Sky” might be of what surrounds it across the whole of the LP, because I haven’t heard it yet, but Fisher and bassist/backing vocalist Tim Martin conjure up some enviable tonality, and set to Mario Trubiano‘s steady-as-she-goes-and-she-goes-pretty-damn-steady drums, you’re basically getting a lesson in how to do heavy fuzz correctly in 2020.
For Borracho, “It Came From the Sky” also represents something of a turn toward the socially conscious. Can’t argue. Lines like the song’s hook, “What do you want?/What do you want from me?/Whatever happened to the land of the free?/Fear. Control. Fear.,” put emphasis on the paranoia of our age, and the song digs into conspiracy theories and the abiding sense of something having shifted in the reality in which we live. The last runthrough of the chorus, in fact, switches out “the land of the free” for “reality,” in a clever twist that works well rhythmically. You’ll also note that, in the video, all three members of the band are shown speaking various lines throughout, underscoring the notion of their speaking as a group.
And if you missed it above, Borracho hail from the epicenter of alternate-universe-ism that is the American capitol city, Washington “Taxation Without Representation” D.C. I cannot for the life of me imagine what the air in that town might smell like at this point, but as the US moves inexorably toward a presidential election that has the potential to either reinforce or undermine our shown-to-be-oh-so-fragile system of government, it’s only fair that politics, social issues, and so forth should be on Borracho‘s mind. For those of you who might live elsewhere in the world, you’d have to work really, really hard to ignore it otherwise.
With the promise of more to come, enjoy the premiere of “It Came From the Sky” — filmed in isolation I would guess by the band themselves and skillfully edited together by Larry Jackson, Jr. (also of Wasted Theory) — below, followed by some quick confirmation from the band about the record coming out, double-vinyl style.
Dig:
Borracho, “It Came From the Sky” official video premiere
From the forthcoming album Pound of Flesh, coming in early 2021 on Kozmik Artifactz heavyweight 2LP, CD and digital.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
By way of a bit of a mishap, the original promo version of My Dying Bride‘s 2020 album, The Ghost of Orion (review here), that went out not-cool-enough-to-get-it-when-the-print-mags-do press such as myself contained three extra tracks, and those three, “Macabre Cabaret,” “A Secret Kiss” and “A Purse of Gold and Stars,” happen to be the three songs now listed on the forthcoming Macabre Cabaret EP. As someone who’s heard them, I’ll say there’s no real dip in quality from the album. The songs shift arrangements, but the record was just too long with everything on there and they (whether it was band or label) were right to hold some of it back for a release such as this.
And not that My Dying Bride were about to hit the road for an 18-month touring cycle anyway, but in a year with virtually no touring — also the advent of “virtual touring,” just ask Nuclear Blast labelmates Enslaved — a roughly concurrent outing makes sense to keep momentum from the full-length going as year-end whatnot begins to be considered.
The cover below is for the single “A Secret Kiss,” which you can hear in the lyric video below. For what it’s worth, I have no idea what the “hidden gem” might be on the physical editions that the PR wire discusses. Live track, maybe? Another holdover? Acoustic version? The possibilities are as limitless as My Dying Bride‘s own melancholy.
Info follows:
MY DYING BRIDE ANNOUNCE NEW EP “MACABRE CABARET,” OUT ON NOVEMBER 20TH
WATCH LYRIC VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE “A SECRET KISS”
No rest for one of Britain’s most melancholic exports: Just half a year after MY DYING BRIDE returned from their break with their haunting and successful (German Album Charts #12) masterpiece “The Ghost Of Orion”, the kindred of Yorkshire raise the curtains to the “Macabre Cabaret” – their new MLP that will be released on November 20th via Nuclear Blast.
The new EP of the band offers three new songs (plus a hidden gem on the physical editions) – dark luscious Death Doom ear candies that will dive their victim into a sensual world of darkness and temptation and conceal the borders between sweet pain and destructive illusion.
Singer Aaron Stainthorpe states: “’Macabre Cabaret’ delves into the shadow empire of dark love and the consequences of unchecked sexuality. The deep passion of physical desire and its all-conquering rage over pure love is written bleakly here. A destructive essence within the soul can’t help but rear its ugly head.
‘A Secret Kiss’ is the final and lasting mark on the soul any human will feel when the lights have dulled and nothing meaningful remains for them. All religion features a shadow creature who arrives at the point of extinction and the release of the human soul, to either guide them to majesty or allow them do fall eternally into the ether.
‘A Purse of Gold and Stars’ is where we keep our hopes and desires and affection, perhaps in a dreamlike state, unattainable yet we still reach out for them. The trinkets and shiny baubles we call happiness and love are what we try so hard to keep close and protect. But it is never quite like that in real life and is often a struggle tainted with sadness but still, we hold the purse close and in tight cold hands.”
The EP was produced mixed and mastered by maestro Mark Mynett and crowned with a beautiful and sinister artwork from Bunker Artworks.
It comes as: – Jewelcase CD, digital version – Black Gatefold LP, Black And Blue Splatter LP [US exclusive – limited to 300 p.] – Blue Sparkle LP [Mailorder Exclusive – limited to 300 p.] – White and Grey Splatter [Mailorder and Wholesale Exclusive – limited to 300 p.] – Marigold LP [EMP Exclusive – limited to 300 p] – White LP [US – Revolver Magazine Exclusive – limited to 300 p].
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Some bands you listen to and then whole bunches of other bands make sense. Like The Heads. See also, Mugstar. The Liverpudlian troupe have been in the spacefaring business for nigh on 17 years, which if you’re keeping track, puts them well ahead of the current wave of what’s being kinda-laughably called neo-psych. Their new album, GRAFT, will see issue through Centripetal Force and Cardinal Fuzz Records on Oct. 30, and to go with preorders, they’re currently streaming the track “Zeta Potential,” which you can hear below.
To go with that, you’ll also find the collaborative outing the four-piece put out earlier this year with Damo Suzuki of progressive rock legends Can through Weird Beard Records. Different vibe, obviously, but it’s another chance to bliss out for 40 minutes and I don’t really see where you’d lose.
Okeydokey:
MUGSTAR – GRAFT LP
Presale Date: September 25, 2020 Release Date: October 30, 2020
Centripetal Force (North America) and Cardinal Fuzz (UK/Europe) are excited to announce the upcoming release of Mugstar’s GRAFT, the follow up album to their much-lauded live collaboration with Can’s Damo Suzuki released earlier this year. The album is being presented in a 600 copy vinyl pressing, 250 of which will be on deep red vinyl and made available for preorder on September 25th. GRAFT’s release date is October 30th.
UK space rockers Mugstar have been hurtling through the sonic multiverse since 2003 and have left an extensive discography in their wake. Early on, the band caught the attention of the late John Peel, taking part in one of the last editions of his famed Peel Sessions. From there, the band has compiled an impressive run of releases and solidified their reputation for powerfully hypnotic live performances.
After experimenting with longer form compositions on 2016’s Magnetic Seasons (Rock Action Records), GRAFT’s six song journey sees Mugstar return to a more focused work ethic, a move resulting in a sound that is fraught with tension and caters to one of their biggest strengths, the ability to consistently create, sustain, and, ultimately, diffuse drama. This is an effect well-executed on tracks like “Zeta Potential” and “Star Cage.” And even on an album where a tighter approach was a priority, Mugstar still finds plenty of room to improvise and allow for creative exploration, as illustrated on “Ghost of a Ghost” and “Low, Slow Horizon.” Looking back at Mugstar’s catalog, it is remarkable to see the path they have travelled and how GRAFT continues their bold advance into the future. We think you’ll agree.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 25th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Seeing the appeal of Monolord‘s Empress Rising doesn’t require an especially deep dive. Issued in April 2014 through what was then EasyRider Records — and it was bullshit they had to change the name, but RidingEasy has certainly been no worse for the wear since — the Gothenburg, Sweden, trio’s debut full-length is comprised of five tracks running 46 minutes given to massive, tectonic tonality, far off, watery vocals, and a consuming, nigh-on-irresistible nodding groove that runs across the entirety of the thing regardless of the tempo or volume of what’s actually being played.
Guitarist/vocalist Thomas Jäger, bassist Mika Häkki and drummer/coffee-enthusiast Esben Willems hit into a time-tested/time-approved formula of tonal largesse and hard-hitting landing that, by the time they were halfway through the 12-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Empress Rising,” seemed to denote them with the sense of royalty they were conveying in the lyrical repetitions of the song’s/album’s title. Listening back to it with six subsequent years of hindsight, it feels like a clarion — a call to worship for the converted that caps with a swirling solo and moves smoothly into the next round of pummeling with the emergence of the instrumental “Audhumbla.”
And of course, by then, Empress Rising is well under way, and nearly a third of its runtime is dedicated to that leadoff track. Reasonably so. On paper, what makes Monolord‘s first outing so effective could hardly be simpler: it’s very, very heavy. But what that doesn’t tell you is how it’s heavy. I’m a fan generally of burying vocals in the mix to play up a notion of big-sounding guitar and bass, and certainly that’s going on here with Jäger‘s effects-laden voice cutting through as though up from a watery grave, but it’s also a question of impact with Monolord. Plenty of bands play loud, play thick, but Empress Rising brought a sense of hitting hard to that as well in Häkki‘s way, way underrated bass work and in Willems‘ drumming.
I remember hearing it at the time and placing the three-piece mentally in the kind of post-Electric Wizard sphere of riff-worship that had been taking shape since the Dorset doom legends put out Witchcult Today, but that’s not ultimately what Monolord were after in terms of style. Their approach to heavy throughout — and this was their first offering, the band having formed in 2013 with Jäger and Willems coming out of Marulk and Häkki, originally from Finland, a former member of Rotten Sound — was raw not in presentation, but in its core. It was a barebones, primitive take that nonetheless was able to harness memorable progressions through hammering riffs and repeated lines into the heads of their listeners. See “Empress Rising” itself, as well as “Harbinger of Death.” And if you weren’t a convert by then on your way to place a backpatch order, “Icon” and “Watchers of the Waste” stood like sentry reinforcements waiting to unleash further crush, each progression seeming to manifest the sound of a boulder rolling downhill, demolishing whatever might have the misfortune to be in its path.
They were well-hyped in 2014, and fair enough. What struck me the first time I saw them play live (review here) wasn’t just the size of the crowd they brought in, but indeed, the way they seemed to slam home each part of their songs, geared for maximum crater-making. However, what I didn’t take into account was how much their approach would resonate especially with a next-generation fanbase. Not the stonerrock.com crowd, but those finding bands through the YouTube algorithm, through social media word of mouth and other such Millennial/post-Millennial means. And how new to that crowd what Monolord were doing would be as “Watchers of the Waste” stomped to its swinging, would-be-languid-if-it-weren’t-so-bludgeoning, about-to-fall-apart-the-whole-time finish.
Not that those people hadn’t heard Sleep, Electric Wizard, etc., or couldn’t at that point have seen them play live, but the difference really is one of generation. Already so well established as leaders of genre and influential, those bands inherently couldn’t be fresh-sounding in the way a new group putting out their first record could. The energy behind Empress Rising was different, and it put a charge into those who heard it that quickly thrust Monolord into the upper echelon of heavy acts in the middle and later heavy ’10s, the arguments in the band’s favor much bolstered through the hard work they put in touring and the fact that they seemed to realize and take hold of the momentum as they were building it, returning to the studio on the quick to work on their next record.
When you think about bands who emerged over the last decade, the advent of Monolord and the brash way they elbowed into underground consciousness have to be considered. In a busy European sphere that a few years earlier saw the rise of Kadavar in similar generational circumstances — though of course a different aesthetic — Monolord flourished, and by meeting the demands of festivals from Roadburn to Freak Valley to Psycho Las Vegas, the band’s reputation only seemed to grow.
In 2015, they offered up the second LP, Vænir (review here), and that together with 2017’s Rust(review here) found them pushing forward in terms of sound, adding a feeling of space to the proceedings and beginning to take psychedelic cues building on elements like Jäger‘s vocals throughout Empress Rising or even the wah-coated lead that caps the title-track, by now a recognizable landmark for the band even as they’ve progressed beyond it in terms of their craft. In late 2018, they signed to Relapse Records and went on to offer my pick for 2019’s album of the year in No Comfort (review here), their fourth album a triumph that underscored the notion of their being a way forward for them creatively, so that they weren’t trapped or typecast by what they did on Empress Rising, but able to continue to grow as they will.
There was no way to know six years ago the band that Monolord would become over the next half-decade (-plus), but if you look beneath the earth-flattening force of Empress Rising, there are hints to find of what Vænir, Rust and No Comfort would bring. Think of it as having fun with hindsight. To wit, the record’s been through something like nine pressings and Monolord have put out an alternate version that’s all-instrumental (as they have for the second and third LPs, I think). One way or the other, Empress Rising was a crucial moment of arrival for a band whose influence could be almost immediately felt in the wake of their debut.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
I shaved about two minutes off my run just now by making the simple decision to go faster. The mornings are darker than they were. A few weeks ago I’d watch the sun start to come up circa 5:45AM, now I’m out and back in the dark. It has been taking me, loosely, about 14 minutes to go 1.3 miles around my neighborhood, up the big hill, around through the little walking park, back down, up and around to the house. Doing that in 12 minutes isn’t breaking any land-speed records, I’m all too aware, but it was satisfying to decide to do a thing and to do it.
Among the things I most miss about having an (active) eating disorder is the sense of control. To be in charge of my body was a glorious thing. I decided what went in and when and how it came out. It was a beautiful, often disgusting, sometimes painful process. But what isn’t? I have felt myself out of control lately. I’ve also decided to grow out my beard a bit and that’s messing with my perception of how my face looks. But stress in the house, the dog, the kid, etc. It is a lot, and I have found that anytime I seem to feel anything, it manifests in food/weight-related concerns. It isn’t even conscious, but I’ve caught it happening after the fact and lately have asked myself, “Did I really have too much almond butter for dessert or am I just tired of stepping in dog piss EVERY FUCKING DAY?”
You know, the big, important questions.
“Don’t be crazy,” has ascended to the level of personal mantra.
I’m so ready to get rid of the dog. So ready. The Pecan is now pointedly scared of being near her, because she jumps on him and bites him, and even as he’s swinging his arms and legs to hit and kick her will yell “No Omi!” as loud as he can. Unfortunately — I would argue for everyone — as ready as I am, I’m equal parts not-in-charge of making that decision. Apparently.
Today is my 16th wedding anniversary. 09.25.04. Morale in the house is low. The Patient Mrs. is teaching an extra online class this semester and that, in combination with reworking her regular classes to suit pandemic-time teaching, has resulted in her spending longer days in front of her laptop doing the less-preferred parts of her job. I am a fucking wretch, as usual. Heightened only by the dog, who as I see it has made everything worse while bringing zero joy into the house. Zero. No joy. It has been well over two months at this point. Net negative.
The Pecan is getting up. He will run in the closet soon and take a dump, then need to be changed. He will delay on his way down the stairs and then kick me when I finally lay him down to change his diaper because, well, he hates getting his diaper changed and has since he was about four months old and was capable of forming an opinion about anything. One might think such a child would embrace the notion of potty-training, but then one would be showing an incomplete awareness of toddler-logic, which is to say, the logic one might encounter from the average chimpanzee or a super-smart potbelly pig. He’ll be three next month and has had a runny nose for the last three weeks.
It has been… a challenge. I took a whole xanax yesterday afternoon and fell asleep on the couch while he beat me with Matchbox cars. First thing he did when I got him yesterday afternoon from upstairs after he blew off his nap — fucking again — was smack me in the groin. Granted that’s about at his smacking level, height-wise, but I wasn’t splitting hairs so much at the time as I was seeing stars. Doesn’t even matter anymore.
He had his speech assessed this week, and we haven’t gotten the official scorecard yet — which I’m assuming is somehow sponsored by the new Dew Garita! — but the teacher was impressed with his vocabulary. They must have asked him about trucks. Kid can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the difference between a front-end loader and a backhoe, and if you don’t already know that difference, drop me a comment and I’ll be glad to fill you in.
We’re going to Connecticut today, staying over at The Patient Mrs.’ mother’s not-winterized place on the shoreline. I haven’t slept there yet this season, but I prefer it there Spring and Fall anyway, as it gets too hot for me in July/August. Anyway, We were going to go Saturday but our niece texted and asked if she could hang out with us while her mother and brother did something else and fucking a, I’ll drive north in I-95 afternoon traffic for that kid any and every day of the week. She was born the night Obama got elected. It was magic. A hope for a greater future that would seem to have evaporated in the looming, swollen face of fascism.
I don’t think I have time to get into the American political situation. I’ll say rest in peace RBG, they should’ve indicted those cops in Louisville who straight-up murdered Breonna Taylor in bed, and hooray for 200,000 COVID deaths! That’s like a fifth of the global total! Come on people, winter’s coming. I know we can hit 300k by January! USA! USA! USA!
Also, Biden’s gonna lose. Even if he wins, he’ll lose. Calling it now. I’ll be like doom metal’s own Nate Silver — everything predicted in the most pessimistic terms possible. “Uh, well Brian, current polls show we’re universally fucked.”
But hey, I gotta go get this kid from upstairs and then get in the shower because I stink like the fetid corpse of American democracy. Who fucking cares how Aaron Sorkin would write it? The New York Times is clueless. Post another news piece about the super-rich home-schooling their children while sailing around the world, why don’t you? Really live up to that East Coast liberal elite stereotype. Fucking hell.
Have a great and safe weekend. Wear your mask and for god’s sake put your fucking nose in it. Jesus. How hard is that?
I’m off. Gimme show and lots of good reviews next week. Don’t forget to hydrate. So important. And this went longer than I originally intended, so thanks again for reading if you made it this far.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 25th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Asheville, North Carolina, scuzzriffers Rocky Mtn Roller issued their self-titled demo/EP (review here) on March 20, which was about 10 days before the state started locking down because of the covid-19 pandemic. Like everything that happened over the course of the next two months musically, if you missed it, you automatically get a pass. Suffice it to say, the buzz-tone, raw-as-chop-meat offering earned its subsequent tape release as a split with Texas’ Temptress, and its four songs wreaked brash havoc that was as much drunk as it was fun.
The four-piece, which boasts pedigree connections to the likes of Danava and Lecherous Gaze through guitarist/vocalist Zach Blackwell, have a new video “When I’m a Pile,” which is laden with a dopey, drunk, ultra-budget horror charm that’s only accented by the fact that the werewolf wears glasses. You get to see “innards” thrown on a grill with some hot dogs. You get to see the band crushing some beers in the woods while playing the song. You get to see the transition from hesher to werewolf that — in what seems a likely inside gag — includes multiple shots of hair poking out of various parts of jean shorts. It kind of makes me wish I had friends or, you know, fun.
But anyhoozle, it’s under four minutes and whether you heard the demo/EP or not, I don’t think you’ll regret watching it, even with the little bit of strobe that pops up. The song, “When I’m a Pile,” has that kind of odd, just-off phrasing to it that recalls The Stooges‘ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” — though of course they were playing off Rolling Stones via Beatles — and I’m not sure it’s fitting with the band’s aesthetic to consider that kind of thing conscious, like it’s part of some master plan to evoke the origin points of US heavy punk, but I’ll say it fits awfully well.
One way or the other, enjoy the video:
Rocky Mtn Roller, “When I’m a Pile” official video
“We made budget slasher movie with babes and gore. Bon appetite!”
BIO: Four rock n roll outcast freaks dug deep to find some raw heavy throw back grooves. With Zach Blackwell, of Danava and Lecherous Gaze, playing one lead guitar and making guttural caterwaul from his vocal chords, Ruby Roberts ripping the other lead, Alex Cabrera in the drum pocket, and Luke Whitlatch, of Merx, holding steady on the bass.
Rocky Mtn Roller are: Zach Blackwell – Guitar/vocals Ruby Roberts – Guitar Luke Whitlatch – Bass Alex Cabrera – Drums
[Click play above to stream Across Tundras’ LOESS – LÖSS in full. Album is out Oct. 2]
For those who’ve followed the inward-bound trajectory of Across Tundras and founding frontman and songwriter T.G. Olson over the past five-plus years, the new album, LOESS – LÖSS, will seem both like a reaching out and a continuation. The expansive nine-track/51-minute release brings a return of the lineup from last year’s The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds (review here) with Olson on guitar, keys, percussion and vocals joined by bassist/vocalist Ben Schriever, vocalist Abigail Lily O’Hara, synthesist/keyboardist/noisemaker Caleb R.K. Williams and drummer Noel Dorado, and would seem to be compiled from recordings done remotely by Olson, Schriever (the pair who also mixed the album, while Mikey Allred mastered), and Williams and O’Hara (the latter two in France).
There is a breadth to the material that begins to show itself in the concluding, hypnotic drone and sampled reading of the Carl Sandburg poem “Hoof Dusk” in second track “Our Mother of Infinite Sorrows,” which continues throughout the subsequent nine-minute prairie sprawl of “Unsatiated” and on from there. Opener “#GDSOG” sets forth with an open atmosphere, and one would expect no less from Across Tundras in any incarnation, but is more straight-ahead structurally and clearly positioned as a lead-in for what follows. And certainly The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds — which after its release received a track-by-track series of remix EPs later bundled together as the box set Complete Altered States (discussed here) — had its sense of mood and landscape too.
The reaching-out noted above, then, comes from the overall sound of LOESS – LÖSS, which has a fuller and more immersive mix than its predecessor, as well as a generally cleaner production value despite the same personnel involved in making it, and plays out almost like what was referred to tongue-in-cheek as the “Hot Radio Mix” of the last album in that box set. Even as “Unsatiated” resolves in drum-backed mellow ambience in its comedown and gives way to the intertwining lines of guitar and slide on “Feral Blues,” and LOESS – LÖSS digs into some of its most meditative vibes, there is an overarching sense of clarity behind what the band are doing.
And part of the difference a year can make is just how much Across Tundras feel like a band on these tracks. “#GDSOG” makes that impression early, and the thread plays out in the heavy Americana ramble of “Feral Blues” and coinciding march of “In a Veil of Dark Smoke” as well, the latter telling a sort of gold-prospector’s-curse narrative that seems to play into ideas of ecological devastation as well, engaging the time in which we live and tying it to the past as Across Tundras‘ music itself does through its roots in folk, country and even post-sludge’s weighted tonality.
But where The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds seemed to come across as an extension of the arrangements and impulses of Olson‘s solo work, which had seen a boom in productivity since the prior Across Tundras LP, 2013’s Electric Relics (review here), especially with the incorporation of drones and more explicit soundscapes, LOESS – LÖSS embraces a greater range of ideas and has an all the more encompassing spirit for that. “In a Veil of Dark Smoke” leads off the second half of the tracklisting — at 51 minutes, the album would push the limits of vinyl, but if you wanted to call it the start of side B, I don’t think anyone would fight you — and dissolves into a haunted melodic wash with keys and residual distortion crafting an ambience that is striking if relatively short-lived as the guitar-led lurch of “The Boundary Waters” revives the forward momentum.
At 4:50, it’s the shortest cut since “#GDSOG” and has a prominent chug of blended acoustic and electric guitar (a regular feature ’round these parts) and deep-mixed drums behind that seem to focus the listener’s attention directly on the instrumental melody that takes hold. There is a chorus, though somewhat obscured, and “The Boundary Waters” also gives way to a drone finish before the more immediate start of “Piasa,” which runs 8:59 and, despite its made-in-isolation reality, seems to jam its way through its second half, departing its structured foundation as much of LOESS – LÖSS has done up to this point in favor of drifting exploration, inviting the listener to wander along, get lost, whatever it might be.
Sure enough, Across Tundras have always brought a feeling of space to their material. It’s part of what made early outings like 2008’s Western Sky Ride or 2006’s Dark Songs of the Prairie so groundbreaking, but LOESS – LÖSS does so in a new and progressive-feeling way, playing verses and choruses off of sonic vastness in a readjusted balance of their approach even from what they were doing a year ago. They cap with “No Secret in the Tomb,” which is marked out by string sounds alongside its layers of guitar and percussion, building in volume as it moves forward in one of the record’s most memorable hooks, and as they’ve used the drones all along to transition from one track to the next, so too do they use one to shift into the end of the record, with “No Secret in the Tomb” giving over its last 90 seconds or so to the windy sounds and intermittent chimes that set a foreboding tension before simply fading out.
A sign of things to come? I wouldn’t bet one way or the other, much as I wouldn’t have bet that, after six years between Electric Relics and The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds, Across Tundras would turn around another full-length in a year’s time. But LOESS – LÖSS feels on some levels like an answer to the questions posed by the album before it, and it finds the band, which has traveled like a ghost entity with Olson from Denver, to Nashville, to Nebraska, harnessing some of the strongest aspects of their past outings while keeping their eye unblinking on the horizon far off. At the same time, these songs stand boldly on their own and are distinct unto themselves, in and out of the context of Across Tundras‘ catalog. An end of one era? A beginning of another? Is there any difference? 16 years on from the band’s inception, that they’d inspire those questions at all is evidence of the engrossing nature of their work.
