Posted in Whathaveyou on September 9th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
While the song is catchy in a classic way that goes beyond language, I’ll admit to a bourgeois shame not knowing even how to start counting in Danish, and so Lydsyn‘s new single, “Musik Er Nummer 1,” taught me that “en” is “one.” Never too old to learn. Hopefully at some point they put out a song about the number two.
The Copenhagen heavy rock and rollers will release their second album, Højspændt (“high tension,” according to a major internet company’s translation matrix), on Oct. 25 through Bad Afro Records. A promo clip — maybe a snippet of a larger video for the song yet to be unveiled? — has been posted, along with the song itself, which one can easily imagine frontman Uffe Lorenzen, who’s still perhaps better known as Lorenzo Woodrose of Baby Woodrose, though he has solo material under his own name, has been part of other bands/projects, and so on, delivering the title line at a gig like that depicted. Regardless of my linguistic ignorance, the band’s 2022 self-titled debut (review here) was a jewel of garage and proto-heavy stylization from a master of the form prone to psychedelic leans. Where the next one might go, I haven’t heard it and won’t speculate, but songwriting is songwriting, and “Music Er Nummer En” reaffirms that’s exactly what’s at play here.
No real PR wire announce for this one, but Bad Afro and the band both posted the song/video with some info and confirmed the release on social media, and the below is cobbled together from that and Bandcamp:
Online NOW: “Musik Er Nummer 1” is the first digital single taken from the upcoming Lydsyn album “Højspændt” due out October 25th.
Here is the first single from our upcoming album Højspændt. The pictures come from the two sold out concerts at the Flea in April, where we played all the songs live for the first time. If you were present, there’s a good chance that you can spot yourself in the video. album will be released on the 25th. october.
Camera: Jens Raadal and Claus Michaelsen Klip og grade: Fuzz Cake Film
Slomosa Interview with Benjamin Berdous, Sept. 5. 2024
[Click play above to stream an interview with Slomosa guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Berdous. The band’s first US tour starts this week with European touring thereafter. Dates are here.]
Bergen, Norway’s Slomosa were a lockdown-era salve when they released their self-titled debut (review here) in Aug. 2020, assembling together early singles “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” and “In My Mind’s Desert” as part of a barrage of catchy, memorable, mostly uptempo heavy rock tunes in a style that harkened back to not the beginnings of desert rock necessarily, but to a point at which is was codified and took on a life of its own as a genre. Tundra Rock, their nine-song/38-minute second album, arrives under different circumstances, though it too has shown inklings of its personality in advance singles “Rice,” “Cabin Fever” and “Battling Guns.”
But especially with the work the four-piece have put in touring over the last two-plus years, shifting quickly from upstarts to next-gen headliners in relatively short order thanks largely to the quality of their work and their onstage chemistry delivering it, Tundra Rock is inherently going to be less of a blindside for listeners. Slomosa, who have moved from Apollon Records to Stickman (Elder, King Buffalo, Iron Jinn) for Europe and signed to MNRK Heavy (High on Fire, Somnuri, Crowbar, etc.) for the US, are a big deal, and a band on whom numerous hopes have been pinned, fairly or not, for carrying a heavy rock torch in the years to come. Tundra Rock is anticipated. A moment to be answered.
There is very little one might ask a desert-style heavy rock record to do in 2024 that Tundra Rock doesn’t deliver with aplomb, character and purpose. The band’s lineup would seem to have solidified, with guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Berdous emerging as a frontman presence alongside bassist Marie Moe — who backs Berdous to make the chorus of “Cabin Fever” a highlight before taking the lead spot for the start of “Red Thundra” at the end of side A — lead guitarist Tor Erik Bye and drummer Jard Hole. The latter makes his first studio appearance here and proves malleable to the driving finish of “Cabin Fever” no less than the weighted crashes of album-intro “Afghansk Rev,” bringing a makes-its-own-groove ideology so that even the taps of the snare drum early in “Battling Guns” become a hook, reminiscent of gunfire as they may or may not intentionally be.
As with the self-titled, Tundra Rock is very much about its individual songs. “Rice” and “Cabin Fever” roll out after “Afghansk Rev” with vitality and tonal depth, and “Battling Guns” picks up from side B’s short piano intro “Good Mourning” to move fluidly into the album’s second half. The singles are well composed and all the more a welcome to the album for the contingent of Slomosa‘s fanbase — because, yes, there is one — who’ve heard them before, but whether one arrives to the record with prior familiarity with (some of) the material or not, part of the point is in engaging the audience. Slomosa are not fostering happenstance hooks, and neither is it coincidental how “Battling Guns” moves into “Monomann,” “MJ” and “Dune”; the band pushing deeper until the mellow-heavy, vocals-follow-the-riff conclusion of “Dune,” which feels monolithic in its fuzz but actually never stops moving, dancing throughout its deceptively tight five-minute course.
As a follow-up to a successful debut, Tundra Rock shows growth in craft and the band’s approach generally, whether it’s the smooth groove-riding of “Rice” or the dug-in riff-twists of “Monomann,” which is organic to the point of sounding like it came together in about 10 minutes at a rehearsal one night, adding to the personality and charm of the record in intangible ways. Moe‘s delivery of the initial verse in “Red Thundra” happens during a quiet intro that reminds vividly of the jammier side of the still-missed Sungrazer, and even though Berdous comes back as the song sweeps into its full volume, it’s a standout moment that one hopes will be a point of development in the future as the interplay of voices makes Slomosa‘s overarching dynamic that much richer. The second half of the album, which has less advantage as regards featuring singles — one out of four songs (plus an intro), as opposed to side A, for which two of the three non-intro tracks were streamed ahead of the release — offers subtle diversity without veering from what works.
“Monomann” is the shortest song at 3:50 and is a swinging riff to follow as it linear-builds across its succession of verses, and “MJ” rolls out with kick-drum emphasis behind its chug and a vocal from Berdous that reminds just how keyed in on the 1998 self-titled Queens of the Stone Age the band are in terms of influence, but is modern and full in its sound, memorable for its repetitions around the lyric “I know how it goes,” delivered with some measure of resignation for the story being told. The room-mic outset of “Dune” feels very QOTSA-era as well, but here too Slomosa find ways to make it their own, moving with the guitar through shifts in volume and strum as the riff-chant takes on more fervency. At 5:27, the closer is the longest cut on Tundra Rock, but by two seconds over “Rice” back at (or at least near) the outset. Even in those final moments, Slomosa are more about setting up crowd participation at shows than indulging some grandiose spaceout. They are focused, sharp and professional, as they have been all along.
Tundra Rock is quick in affirming the songwriting and appeal of Slomosa‘s debut, and they come across like there’s yet potential to be realized in their sound. Between the interplay of Berdous and Moe on vocals and the self-awareness that underscores their material, a nascent sense of poppish quirk and a generally organic progression in the two-thus-far LPS, there still seems to be room to grow. But they know where they’re coming from, are clearly writing songs to be played live, whether that’s “Rice,” “Cabin Fever” and “Battling Guns” or “Red Thundra,” “MJ” and “Dune,” and are distinguished by the level at which they do so. I don’t know whether ‘tundra rock’ will take on a life of its own in the spirit of desert rock before it, but if this album is to be the shape of such a thing and a point of influence for other acts to follow in turn, one could very easily do a hell of a lot worse. Either way, it is one of 2024’s strongest declarations in heavy rock, and whatever hype it has, it earns.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Oh, the party boat is here. Released in 1995 through Eastwest Records, which at the time was under Atlantic, the self-titled sophomore full-length from Maryland groove rockers Clutch is a founding document of stoner-heavy in the 1990s. Distinguished by its funk-informed bounce, hardcore undertones carried over from the four-piece band’s earlier days — their debut, Transnational Speedway League: Anthems, Anecdotes And Undeniable Truths (discussed here), came out in ’93 — and its depth of quirk in the lyrical storytelling of Neil Fallon, it not only defined the path Clutch would take over the nearly three decades since, but has been a point of inspiration for two generations of bands since. In the riffs of Tim Sult, Dan Maines‘ smooth low end groove that, for this record alone, hell, for “Droid” alone, deserves a statue carved somewhere in its honor but nobody makes statues for bassists, and Jean-Paul Gaster‘s purposefully tinny-sounding snare popping through no with no less personality than Fallon‘s vocal on “Animal Farm” while highlighting and complementing the intricacy of Sult‘s start-stop patterns or the release of tension as “Big News I” turns over to “Big News II” at the outset, the band itself was very much the biggest news of all.
It is a genre landmark, pairing restless energy and languid flow. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw” and “Big News II” border on rap-rock — there, I said it; feels good after all this time — and but that was fair game in 1995, and the recording by Larry “Uncle Punchy” Packer is so raw and so distinctly not nü-metal in the style it’s playing toward that they were never really seen as such. Fair enough. “Escape From the Prison Planet” and “I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth” have a hip-hop element too, but again, context applies when you’re setting that next to the ultimate chill of “Spacegrass” or the wah and swing and gruff vocals of “The House that Peterbilt,” the organ-laced jamming that closes out in “Tim Sult vs. the Greys” answering back to the riffing on “Big News I,” but fast enough to not necessarily be a full reprise for a song that’s already broken into two parts.
The left-unmatched vocal layering of “7 Jam,” the rush of “Animal Farm” and immediate turnover to “Tight Like That,” which seems to sneer in its later hook but remains one of the most infectious songs Clutch has ever done — and this record is full of them — Clutch bends tempo and expectation to suit the band’s purposes, and constructs a band persona on the strength of its songwriting. As much as Clutch have come to be embodied by their touring ethic and how they present themselves onstage, whether that’s Fallon as the sometimes-mad frontman, Gaster bouncing out of his seat in back, or the calm presences of Sult and Maines on either side, the part this material has played in solidifying their character as a group can’t and shouldn’t be denied. A lot of records go where they want to. Clutch‘s self-titled does that and makes every step the band takes feel like an audience invitation to the party. Also it’s on a boat!
At 13 songs and 55 minutes, it’s very much a CD-era release, but if it feels long by modern get-to-it-and-get-out vinyl standards of 40-45 minutes at the most, that time differential is invariably well spent. “7 Jam” brings a looseness and swagger between “I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth” and “Tight Like That,” while “Animal Farm” takes off on a sprint that gives everything around it an underpinning of immediacy. “Droid” rolls through its mellower flow in a way that makes a nod of its repeating measures, but is a blueprint for mid-’90s stoner rock groove that’s still being followed nearly 30 years later, and even “Tim Sult vs. the Greys” adds something to the procession, and no, I’m not just talking about the organ that shows up there (not for the first time on the record) in bookending with “Big News I” and letting the band ride out easy and hypnotic.
Is it the bestClutch record? It’s definitely in the running, and I have no doubt there’s an entire contingent who got on board when it came out — I remember hearing “Spacegrass” on WSOU and KROQ around then and being curious, but my teenaged self sought angstier and, frankly, dumber fare and it wasn’t until a few years later, between 2001’s Pure Rock Fury and 2004’s Blast Tyrant (discussed here), when I was at WSOU, that I actually became a fan. If you look at the span of the band’s catalog over the last 30-plus years, laden as it is with collections, special editions, live records and such, it’s arguably the first of several landmarks they’ve offered.
It’s not the fairest of questions in the first place since the band’s records vary so much depending on what they’re going for sound-wise, their bluesier period sparked by Blast Tyrant that led into the quick turnaround of 2005’s Robot Hive/Exodus (reissue review here), or 2013’s charged realignment in Earth Rocker (review here) — it’s not a discography short on highlights, and whether or not it’s a favorite for a given listener, over the better part of the last 30 years — an anniversary that the band will likely mark in some way touring (possibly also for a new album) in 2025, even if they don’t own the rights to actually reissue it; I don’t know how much obtaining such a thing would cost, but it has to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars; Kickstarter preorders, anyone? — both the record itself and the songs featured on it have stood any test of time and trend one might want to apply. After a certain point, the “best” just becomes a thing to debate on the internet. Clutch are in a league of their own. This record helped them get there.
Clutch are on tour with Fu Manchu supporting as of last night, playing Blast Tyrant in its entirety, so of course something like that is possible for the self-titled as well. Whatever comes or doesn’t in that regard, the band will surely keep moving forward as the buzz around new material in progress has already begun and they’ll reportedly look to record sometime next year. In the interim, and as always, I hope you enjoy revisiting this one.
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That tour — Clutch and the Fu — started last night in Brooklyn. After running Clutch songs through my brain all week, I decided to see when they were coming around yesterday and I found Fu Manchu on social media being like “We go on in New York in like an hour!” Okay then. I couldn’t have gone anyway as The Patient Mrs. is at a conference last night, today/tonight and early tomorrow and I was on kid duty — don’t worry, I’ll get my time next week at Desertfest NYC — but I did have a chuckle at the timing. I’d have bought a Fu Manchu CD, and a Clutch t-shirt is always something good to have in the house, even if the band’s fanbase can be a lot to take at shows sometimes. At least in Jersey. I don’t know how it unfolds in Brooklyn. Either way, I missed the party boat.
School started this week, on Tuesday. After I got home from dropoff a bit ago — made myself a leftover-chicken-meatloaf sandwich on chaffles in the air fryer; not slumming it on breakfast — I sprayed the bees again (hang on I’ll get there) and settled in thinking how well the first two weeks of school have gone for The Pecan, only to remember that it actually hasn’t even been one full week yet. I’m just relieved she’s (apparently) not hitting anybody, happy to not be getting the call to come pick her up or whatever that started coming in last year. She was pretty ambivalent about starting school again, but I have yet to argue with her on actually going into the building. You take your wins where you can get them.
And on that note, I’ll mention as well that we’ve been getting along decently well. Part of that is an active rethinking on her behavior — she’s not defiant, she’s sensory-seeking, anxious and often overwhelmed and arguing allows her to feel some aspect of control in her life. I won’t say I never yell at her, but it’s been a while since I’ve actually felt like I needed to raise my voice to do anything more than get her attention while she’s hyperfocused on whatever video she’s watching in the evening. On a certain level, she’s always going to be argumentative. If this becomes self-advocacy skill, it will be a strength. If she’s just a prick, well, at least she’ll have come by it honestly from my end of things. Like the card that The Patient Mrs. gave me for Father’s Day reads from the fridge: “We did this to ourselves.”
But about the bees, because yes, there are bees. There have been since we got back from Budapest, now almost a month ago. They were living in the casing of a 50-year-old air conditioner embedded into the wall of our dining room/back bar — we call it the Big Room because, well, it’s biggest room in the house — that, until it was turned on to cool off, still worked. The motor on the fan blew I guess after bumping into the hive of yellowjackets, and that was that. The Patient Mrs. and I both sprayed vigorously, but ultimately couldn’t kill the hive. I know bees are pollinators and there’s an environmental crisis, but I’m sorry, I just can’t live with either the busted A/C or bees coming out of it into my house — if that makes me a bad person, and it might, so be it — so the large, bulky and heavy unit had to come out of the wall. The Patient Mrs. and I did that earlier this week — first day of school, Tuesday, I think it was — and sprayed again.
And again, and again. Raid hasn’t done much to acquit itself, but I keep buying more so I guess they’re doing something right. I sprayed a whole can yesterday and picked up four more this morning. Two are gone already and the bees continue to look for a new nesting spot in front of the house. When we took the A/C out of the wall, we put it on the patio, so I guess they’re like “WTF happened to our house bro?” and trying to set up somewhere else. But the town came this morning and picked up the thing itself with its big grabbing-arm-truck and so they’re just basically poking around in the loose stones of our front steps and the cracks in the foundation from the last however many decades. I’ll spray again in the afternoon/evening and see where we’re at. It might require professional intervention, which of course is money I’d rather not spend. Not the least with the Zelda Lego Deku Tree set coming out.
Will be interesting to see which way it goes. I didn’t get to write as much this week as I’d hoped — I wanted to slip an Elephant Tree review in there too, since their anniversary collection is out today — but I’m happy with what I wrote, so fair enough. It’d never be enough anyway. Reviewing Thunderbird Divine, Curse the Son, Psychedelic Source, Delving and Howling Giant (coffee) is actually pretty solid for a week, and it’s nice to do things separate from the ‘event’ of a premiere. Feels oldschool as regards my Obelisk processes. Next week I’ve got Slomosa, Elephant Tree, and Tranquonauts slated, plus a Spirit Mother premiere for Thursday and then Friday begins coverage of the aforementioned Desertfest New York. We’ll see if I can get through it all. Would be nice.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head, all that stuff. I’ve been wondering if I should try to get a Fall/Winter merch drop going, so if you have any opinion on that, be it “nah I’m good” or “yeah I could use a hoodie,” please let me know in the comments. Otherwise, back Monday, and thanks again for reading.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Bringing together the tonal heft and swing of sludge with a groove metal-style aggressive underpinning, South Carolina’s Witchpit aren’t as outwardly Southern metal as one might expect, but neither are they leaving much to question about where they’re coming from as they move forward from 2022’s The Weight of Death (review here) and toward the Nov. 8 release of their new album, Forever Spoken. Their second long-player through Heavy Psych Sounds, the record is led off by its title-track, which is also the first single (it’s at the bottom of the post, as usual) to make its way to public ears. Crunch, impact, nod and push accounted for, thank you very much.
Witchpit took part in Heavy Psych Sounds Fests on both sides of the US supporting their last album. I have no idea what the plans are for Forever Spoken, but that title-track sure sounds like a gauntlet to be thrown down from the stage, so I’m sure they’ll be out somewhere along the line. With High Reeper leaning more metallic and Conan signed to the label, Heavy Psych Sounds is growing the darker, meaner-sounding contingent of its roster, and Witchpit‘s timely Phillip Cope-produced return fits right in there as well.
From the PR wire:
Heavy Psych Sounds to announce WITCHPIT new album FOREVER SPOKEN – presale starts TODAY !!!
RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 8th
Today we are stoked to start the presale of the WITCHPIT upcoming brand new album FOREVER SPOKEN !!!
“Forever Spoken is a reflection on legacy and the enduring impact one leaves behind. It poses a question about whether one’s achievements and memory will persist through time.”
RELEASED IN 10 ULTRA LTD TEST PRESS VINYL 100 ULTRA LTD COLOUR IN COLOUR YELLOW TRANSP. BACK GREEN/BLACK SPLATTER VINYL 400 LTD YELLOW VINYL BLACK VINYL DIGIPAK DIGITAL
TRACKLIST Forever Spoken Through Eyes Of Apathy Mouth Piece Of Hate Panacea New Age Fallacy Becoming I Silver Turns To Rust
ALBUM DESCRIPTION “Forever Spoken” is a powerful exploration of humanity’s quest to leave a lasting legacy. This album delves into the trials, adversities, and struggles that shape our journey and challenge our ability to fulfill our destiny. Musically, it ventures into the realms of southern metal and sludge, featuring intricate riffs and heavy metal double bass rhythms that elevate its intensity and complexity.
The album was recorded with the esteemed Phillip Cope (Kylesa, Baroness, Black Tusk), who returns to mix the record after his successful previous collaboration with us. To complement the depth of the music and lyrics, we enlisted the legendary Dan Seagrave (Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Suffocation) for the cover art. His iconic style perfectly captures the complexity and essence of “Forever Spoken,” making this collaboration a significant milestone for us.
CREDITS Preproduction by: Mike Jones Recorded and Mixed by: Phillip Cope Mastered by: Audiosiege Cover Art by: Dan Seagrave
WITCHPIT is: Denny Stone – Vocals Thomas White – Guitar Jesse Lane – Bass Jeremy Grobsmith – Drums
Posted in Reviews on September 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Four years ago, long-running Connecticut fuzz lurchers Curse the Son offered Excruciation (review here) as their fourth full-length, and pushed depressive and stylistic boundaries in expansive and melodic ways. It was the darkest Curse the Son had ever been. The band as they were at the time doesn’t exist anymore, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that Delirium, their fifth album, follows a different course. They remain led, as always, by guitarist/vocalist Ron Vanacore, but Curse the Son aren’t strangers to trading out players or a rhythm section, which is what’s happened here.
With bassist Dan Weeden and drummer Brian Harris — who since recording has already been replaced by the teenaged Logan Vanacore, son to Ron — the band’s personality as channeled through the material comes off as more doom than stoner, with opener “The Suffering is Ours,” “Deliberate Cruelty” and “In Dismal Space” answering for the atmosphere of the prior release while locking into more straight-ahead grooves that feel stripped down in terms of arrangement. There isn’t a ton of layering (but some), and while “In Dismal Space” has a vocal reach, its core shuffle is well within Vanacore‘s purview.
The instrumental portion of the album, whether that’s the sans-vocals “Riff Forest” picking up directly from the back end of the Witchfinder General cover “R.I.P.” (premiered here) in a way that feels like it was born out of an organic jam inspired by the song prior, or the druggy effects interlude “Brain Paint” ahead of the title-track, or “May Cause Drowsiness” directly after and penultimate to the finale “Liste of the Dead,” helps assure there’s enough variety of intention represented, but this too comes in a context that speaks to the core idea of what Curse the Son do in terms of tonal worship Sabbathian stoner-doom and an exploration of themes around mental health. There’s been a global pandemic since the last time Curse the Son put out an LP, so yes, the mood on Delirium remains reliably downer.
The plague is accounted for in “Deliberate Cruelty” after the initial plod of “The Suffering is Ours.” A thickened chug boogie and harmonized lead-guitar flourish gives over to the chorus, “This is our/Extermination song/When breathing/Is terminal for everyone.” That’s a story that’s been told many times at this point, but in phrasing and sound alike, Curse the Son make their version resonate in groove and experience. Most of all, the impression Delirium gives — somewhat contradicting the title — is one of clarity on the part of the band. Of course, the medication-induced fog that would seem to be coming through in “Brain Paint” and the more swirling, languid 52 seconds of “May Cause Drowsiness” are intended to capture a certain kind of stupor, and fair enough.
But as Curse the Son forego what felt like some of the more relatively experimental aspects of the last album and find their way into the kind of doomly traditionalism of “Liste of the Dead” — like slower The Obsessed with Vanacore‘s voice layered in ’90s-Ozzy style for the chorus — and the morose slogging in the bookending leadoff, etc., it’s easy to read purpose into the shape that Delirium takes. Could be Curse the Son willfully pushing themselves in a different direction at Vanacore‘s behest — he’s the only one to play on both records, after all — or it could simply be an extension of the shift in character resulting from the corresponding change in personnel, I honestly don’t know, but as the listener engages with the shove and crashdown of “In Dismal Space,” the dropout of guitar and bass in its verse lines, the album’s sound doesn’t seem like happenstance in the slightest.
Perhaps leaning into the doom portion of the balance of stoner-doom was inevitable for a band who’ve never been shy about wearing their discontent on their collective sleeve, and perhaps part of what makes Delirium feel so self-aware is the aforementioned Witchfinder General cover. This speaks pointedly to older influences — the song originally appeared on the NWOBHM-era doom rockers’ 1982 album, Death Penalty — and accordingly to an older audience, and the inclusion of “Riff Forest” right after not only accounts for how Curse the Son are making that obscure-classic their own, but how they’ve incorporated that influence into their own writing in this particular case. Underlying it all is Black Sabbath, of course, but Curse the Son‘s songwriting seems throughout the album to only benefit from the focused take that birthed it.
To wit, the hook of “Delirium” itself with its clever turn around the month of July being a wonderful time to start living and a terrible time to die represents a cleverness that’s been in Vanacore‘s craft since the also-medicated days of 2011’s Klonopain (review here). The difference on Delirium, then, is one of maturity in expressing and framing ideas; that is, the focus itself is the sign of growth in the band’s root approach, and as cognizant as they may or may not be of direction and how much flash they wanted to bring to the production this time out, the underlying development of what they do remains natural. There’s a drift factor as Delirium moves from its opening salvo into the interludes woven across the second half of the tracklisting — “In Dismal Space” makes for a winning centerpiece coming out of “Riff Forest,” and “Brain Paint” takes off from there — but that outward portrayal of a loss of clarity shouldn’t be taken as actual confusion about what Curse the Son are trying to accomplish. Delirium isn’t so much a step backward as it is a realignment around a different idea of what they do.
In a way, it’s a shame that the timing on Logan Vanacore‘s joining the band didn’t work to have him play on these tracks. It’s surely an exciting moment to have Curse the Son bridge a generational divide, and, well, they don’t put out a record every year. All the same, the material on Delirium feels quintessential in what it captures of Curse the Son‘s persona, and considering the manner in which these songs align with and diverge from what they’ve done before, that they are so much the band’s own highlights the solid foundation on which they’re constructed. For established fans or newcomers, they could hardly make it easier to get on board.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
It is a very Steve Von Till move to put out the remix before the root form of the song in question. Ever-experimental in just about any musical context, the former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist will complete the Triptych album series on Oct. 17, of course through Neurot Recordings. “Clouds Are Relatives” is the first track on the album, and “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)” is the first single, for which a video is streaming at the bottom of this post. Explorations around dub have been a big part of Triptych more broadly, with Kevin Martin aka The Bug (who is now signed to Relapse; expect more remixes) and Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep) collaborating with Von Till here and on past installments. I don’t know how many surprises can be in store for Triptych Part Three after the first two earlier this year, but I do know enough to trust Von Till to come up with sounds that are as personal as they are adventurous, glancing inward and at the universe more broadly at once, through music. It’s kind of just how he does.
Note also Dave French (YOB, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth), Wayne Adams (Petbrick, Cower, producer for everyone in the UK not produced by Chris Fielding), Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea, Corrections House, etc.) and a slew of others guesting. There’s even an Echoplex, which is becoming increasingly rare, mostly I think because the remaining actual-machines are broken and there aren’t enough around anymore to use as spare parts. March of time and all that. I have no doubt Triptych Part Three will put it to good use.
Info from the PR wire:
HARVESTMAN ANNOUNCES TRIPTYCH PART THREE TO BE RELEASED VIA NEUROT RECORDINGS TO COINCIDE WITH THE HUNTER MOON ON 17TH OCTOBER
SHARES “CLOUDS ARE RELATIVES (THE BUG “AMTRAK DUB MIX”)”
Throughout 2024, and marking three full moons, Harvestman (a.k.a. Steve Von Till) will be presenting his ambitious Triptych project, a three-part album cycle. This album trilogy is a distillation of a unique approach that finds a continuity amongst the fragmented, treating all its myriad musical sources and reference points not as building bricks, but as tuning forks for a collective ancestral resonance, residing in that liminal space between the fundamental and the imaginary, the intrinsic and the speculative.
Today, Harvestman announces the completion of the trilogy with the arrival of Triptych Part Three on 17th October via Neurot Recordings to coincide with the Hunter Moon. The album features very special guests, including The Bug, Wayne Adams, Sanford Parker and Al Cisneros – to name a few.
Alongside the announcement, Harvestman leads with the track, “Clouds Are Relative (The Bug – Amtrak Dub Mix)”, which sees The Bug, a master of monolithic sound, put his own deep and earth-rumbling take on the opening track. The music is brought to life with visuals and animations from Thomas Hooper.
About the lead track, “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug “Amtrak Dub Mix”) Steve Von Till says; “with the original version of this track (the third piece of the series with Al’s bass) I wanted to replace my original percussion tracks with something better, so I called upon Wayne Adams of Petbrick since I had recently contributed vocals to one of their songs. He came up with a really heady combination of live drums and glitchy electronic drums. It added an alternative unique dimension, I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. When it came time to dub this track, my first attempt didn’t feel right, so I reached out to Kevin Martin aka The Bug to see if he would be into giving it a go. What you hear is the end result: a deep, dark dub by a master.”
Woven together from home studio recordings that span two decades, and with some notable guest appearances including; The Bug, Douglas Leal of Deafkids, Wayne Adams of Petbrick, Dave French of Yob and Sanford Parker, this final part of the Harvestman Triptych seeks once again for a lost world, with the voice of poet Ezra Pound extolling the virtues of “gather[ing] from the air a live tradition”. Elsewhere, “Herne’s Oak” provides seismic bass waves that physically halt the track in its steps – giant footfalls as Herne’s antlers themselves are dragged along a corridor. Another curious and mysterious piece of British folklore brought to life by Harvestman.
If Triptych is a multi- and extra-sensory experience, it extends to the remarkable glyph-style artwork of Henry Hablak, a map of correspondences from a long-forgotten ancient and advanced civilization. As with Triptych itself, it’s an echo from another time, an act of binding, a guide to be endlessly reinterpreted, and a signpost to the sacred that might not indicate where to look, but how.
TRIPTYCH PART THREE TRACK LISTING: Side A Clouds Are Relatives Snow Spirits Eye The Unconquered Flame
Side B Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – “Amtrak Dub Mix”) [visualiser] The Absolute Nature of Light Herne’s Oak Cumha Uisdein (Lament for Hugh)
Triptych Part Three will be available as a standard weight vinyl, in one colour, Cloudy Clear + Black Galaxy effect vinyl, in dub style jacket (jacket sleeve with center hole cut out so label of LP shows through) a black paper inner sleeve and poly bag.
Part One was released on the Pink Moon on 23rd April and Part Two was released on 21st July’s Buck Moon.
Harvestman Triptych Part Three album credits: Steve Von Till – guitars, bass, synths, percussion, stock tank, loops, filters and mutations Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug – dub mix of Clouds Dave French – stock tank percussion on Herne’s Oak, frequency consult Al Cisneros – bass on Clouds and Bug Dub Wayne Adams – acoustic drums, electronic beats, and processing on Clouds John Goff – bagpipes on Cumha Uisdean Sanford Parker – synths, processing, mixing on Herne’s Oak Ryan Van Blokland – organ, synth, found sounds and echoplex on Eye Dovglas Leal – bouzouki on Eye and flutes on Absolute Narration on Eye the Unconquered Flame – “Canto LXXXI” by Ezra Pound
Recorded and Mixed at The Crow’s Nest, North Idaho by SVT Mastered by James Plotkin
Posted in Reviews on September 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A 42-minute masterclass in the righteousness of doing your own thing, Thunderbird Divine‘s Little Wars arrives as a five-years-later sequel to the Philly soul-sludge-rocking four-piece’s 2019 debut, Magnasonic — they’ve had singles and an EP out between — with nine tracks varied in intent and course united by the sense of scope overarching the entire affair. And like any good literature, Little Wars teaches you how to read it. The opening intro “Pony Express,” with far-off Western harmonica complemented by keys, leads into a Morricone build of snare roll and steady train-engine rhythm, and when the backing vocals start, you know they’re all-in.
The piece continues to swell, but for a record that hasn’t been on two minutes and which one might take on thinking ‘this is going to be rock and roll,’ they’ve begun decidedly outside the normal sphere of what that means, and the many subsequent divergences that take place all stem from that first one as they move toward “Times Gone Bad” and “Last Laugh,” a pairing that seems purposeful in pairing life’s ups and downs and highlighting the persistence to get through both. That “Black Rhino Mantra” follows immediately also feels like no coincidence.
But “Pony Express” tells you a lot of what you need to know about just how open the setting is, with a short burst of feedback and manipulated noise before they cut to the organ that starts out “Times Gone Bad.” Thunderbird Divine‘s Erik Caplan seems to be driving a lot of the arrangement choices — he adds not only theremin, guitar and vocals as usual throughout, but also sitar, the banjo on “Old Black Crow,” the aforementioned harmonica, various synths and drones and, I’m just copying the album credits here, “weird stuff,” which when you listen to the record, is a fair assessment of what you’re getting at times — but he’s hardly alone in his cause.
The band’s lineup has changed since 2019, with Michael Stuart returning on drums and the near-minstrel throaty vocals of “Old Black Crow” as well as new bassist Joshua Adam Solomon (also guitar, vocals, synth and percussion) and keyboardist Jack Falkenbach (also vocals, violin, melodica) making their presence felt in the material. If “Pony Express” subtly does the job of introducing some of the “weird stuff” so that listeners aren’t caught off-guard as Little Wars progresses, then “Times Gone Bad” works to establish the songwriting context that will serve as the backdrop and complementarity-object of all that revelry.
Above all else, Thunderbird Divine sound free. They’re plenty heavy in the tumult of “Times Gone Bad,” and I won’t take away from the ’60s-psych-informed organ and general Monster Magnetry of “Black Rhino Mantra” or the rhythmic urgency brought beneath the laid-over Hammond in “Highway Dawn,” with more backing vocals and a bluesy vocal from Caplan with a hook about driving into the sky. But more than ‘heavy’ as a central ideological goal toward its own ends, Thunderbird Divine craft their own definition of what heaviness is and does in music, and that’s as likely to be the later-Iommi riff that anchors “These Eyes” as the backing vocals and keys that build the song around it. The songs are thought through and fluidly arranged in the tracklisting — which is to say “Times Gone Bad” into “Last Laugh” makes sense musically as well as conceptually — but a strong sense of fuck-around-and-find-out in terms of studio experimentation remains.
They’re not the first in heavy rock to bring a theremin like that topping the start of “Tides” or the flutey sounds that follow, or to switch up between sundry synthesizer and keyboard sounds, but they do it especially well across the span Little Wars, and it’s a major factor in what makes the record feel like such a journey and such a victory for the band. More over, they’re not just throwing in that theremin (a longstanding feature in Caplan‘s arrangements going back to his days fronting the more outwardly-sludged Wizard Eye) for the hell of it. Whatever the “weird stuff” in question, it’s in the finished product of the recording because it serves the interest, impact and/or atmosphere of the song, and that’s true from “Pony Express” through “Old Black Crow” and into the creepy post-script vibe of the subsequent outro “Carousel,” which is less directly Morricone than the lead-in, meditating through a waltz with effects before, at about 1:47, stopping and resuming with the sounds more Tim Burton than Sergio Leone.
Because it’s been five years, this second full-length from Thunderbird Divine feels something like a culmination. “These Eyes” has a doomly majesty to its procession, and that’s probably part of it, but the band are no less at home in the funkified swing and stomp of “Last Laugh” or the psychedelic lean of “Black Rhino Mantra,” and somehow even “Times Gone Bad” feels celebratory on some level. But the freedom? That’s everywhere and in everything, and while there are structures in the songs and patterns of verses and choruses are followed where applicable, between the shifts in approach from one piece to the next and the goes-where-it-needs-to-regardless-of-genre sensibility overlaid across the tracklisting when taken front-t0-back, Thunderbird Divine have struck a rare balance between pursuing their own creative whims and creating a record that’s accessible for a genre audience.
It’s not that they’re unhinged. Hearing Little Wars, it’s just the opposite. Each cut sounds like it’s been hammered out and purposefully made into what it is. When and how that happened, whether it was through pandemic years or in the studio while they were waiting for somebody to come back from the bathroom, is secondary to the ultimate vibe the album casts, which is rich and encompassing without either getting lost in pretense or giving up a sense of ‘classic’ influence, however one might want to define that. Maybe they just have more to offer than the standard heavy band. They sure sound like it here. Little Wars is a record that justifies anticipation easily, and its meld of scope and space, grounded pieces allowed to soar — looking at you, second-half guitar solo and backing vocals in “Last Laugh” — isn’t going to speak to everyone, but will resonate that much deeper for the right kind of head for that. For whatever it’s worth, I’ll count myself in that number.
Posted in Questionnaire on September 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Christoph Henning of The Antikaroshi
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
For me, it’s basically an outlet for the things that I personally can’t deal with so easily, through an electrical device. Be it on a small or large scale. Most of the time it’s very rewarding.
How I got into it? Purely by chance. I grew up in a small village and my father was kind of worried that his only son would get lost in the local soccer team. So he allowed me to buy a drum kit when I was 15. From that point on, he couldn’t turn it back.
Describe your first musical memory.
Seeing “village people” on the television. It must have been 1979 and I liked all their costumes and that there were so many people on stage playing instruments or not.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Tough one. There were a few. Hm seeing Shellac on 9/11 in Berlin was intense. No one knew if they were going to play or not, and Steve did an improvised monologue for what felt like 20+ minutes in one song. It had all the tension and desperation of the moment and set an artistic standard for me.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
There have been a few times when you’ve put on a DIY show for one of your “heroes”, whose records you’ve listened to endlessly, and it turns out that the people involved are just “human beings” after all ;-)
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I don’t get the question but I recently read an interview by a very cool band called all structures align and they said something like “to at least avoid to make the same mistakes again” – totally agree.
How do you define success?
Taking seriously what you do. Condensing honestly into words and sounds what you feel. If in that sense the music adds something to our normal everyday experiences then we have achieved our goal and we have been “successful”. If it resonates with others, that’s cool, but it’s not part of our definition of success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Murder city devils in 2003(?) supporting At the drive-in in Dublin. I guess it was their final show of the tour and for some reason the singer decided to drink a bottle of Jack Daniels in 1 sip. You can imagine what happened next..
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I wish I could built my own instruments not necessarily a guitar. But it’s either the lack of time or laziness.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
The ability to abstract
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
