Posted in Whathaveyou on May 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
While by no means the longest stretch of touring London’s Elephant Tree have ever done, it is noteworthy in the context of the “return to the stage” mentioned below. That return, which took place at Masters of the Riff III in London in early March, follows a mostly quiet stretch as guitarist/vocalist Jack Townley has been embroiled in an ongoing, months-if-not-years-long recovery from a cycling accident that nearly ended his life. Seriously. I’ve heard the list of bones broken and innards damaged. It is extensive.
So while you’d look at a weekender in September, a stop at Riffolution Festival in Manchester and two nights at London’s famed The Black Heart from a lot of acts and think it’s not the hugest amount of activity ever, that Elephant Tree are “getting back” at all is a reason to rejoice.
They have releases upcoming as well, which I know because I have two ongoing liner-notes projects for the band. One is the split LP with Lowrider that will be out as part of Blues Funeral Recordings‘ PostWax series. The other one I haven’t seen announced as yet — if you’re thinking it might be album-three, it’s not — so I will hold off talking about to be on the safe side, but suffice it to say I’ve been digging back into their catalog of late and as they’re on my mind anyhow, I’m happy to see something like this take shape and the fact that they’ve got a booking agency again speaks of more to come, if not this Fall, then after. I hope that’s how it pans out.
From socials:
Following on from our surprisingly smooth return to the stage earlier this year, we thought we’d team up with Atonal once again to go on a little jolly this September and December. It gets awful stuffy in them recording rooms and we need a rest from reviewing artwork…
Catch us live at: 13.09.2024 – The Corporation, Sheffield 14.09.2024 – Abyssal Festival, Southampton 15.09.2024 – The Exchange, Bristol 29.09.2024 – Riffolution Festival, Manchester 19.12.2024 – The Black Heart, London 20.12.2024 – The Black Heart, London
Posted in Questionnaire on May 7th, 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: inserirefloppino and m tabe of San Leo
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
We play intense, immersive music. Sometimes it’s minimal, a lot of the times it’s pretty dense and packed with sounds. It’s been this way since our first attempts in 2013. Starting with a simple guitar-drums setup, in the last few years we’ve added a few more sound sources (sampler, keyboard/synth, vocals). We try to keep it exciting and share our vision.
Describe your first musical memory.
inserirefloppino (drums): Sneaking into my parents’ car to listen to ‘Yellow Submarine’ on cassette.
m tabe (guitar): A brass/drums marching band somewhere, it was loud and chaotic.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
inserirefloppino: The first time I sat on a drum kit.
m tabe: Can’t think of THE best, but Phil Elverum’s first distorted bass attack during The Microphones’s live performance at LeGuessWho in 2021 was pretty cool.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Every time we walk on stage we test our principles and convictions. Sometimes it all works out fine and we feel like we’re in the right direction, other times we need to take a step back, get our shit together and try again.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Hopefully a deeper understanding of oneself, and in general a perpetual search for clearer, sharper expression. It probably never ends.
How do you define success?
On one side, managing to communicate what you are in a way that’s relevant to other people. On a more intimate, inner level, success would be staying curious, always finding new ideas to be passionate about and/or obsessed with.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Television (the thing, not the band) and social networks.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
If we could define this idea in our head clearly enough to describe it in a few words we might as well start working on it right now! But just for fun, it would be cool someday to collaborate with other media artists, film/video makers, performers, lighting technicians, set designers… Who knows.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To let us peek into a different interpretation of reality, a vision stripped of conventions and re-shaped into some new kind of Truth.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
We might want to check the new Anish Kapoor exhibition in Florence – the last one in Venice was pretty good, his work is always inspiring.
[Click play above to stream Maragda’s second album, Tyrants in full. It’s out tomorrow through Spinda Records. Preorders available here.]
In the parlance of our times, Tyrants might be Maragda entering the chat. And in this case, the “chat” in question is the broader European heavy psychedelic underground with which the eight tracks and 43 minutes so vividly engage, from the bass-underscored shuffle and chorus burst of the opening title-track (premiered here) through the expansive spacier jamming of “Godspeed,” and well beyond. For the Barcelona-based three-piece of bassist/vocalist/synthesist Marçal Itarte, guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Guillem Tora and drummer/vocalist Xavi Pasqual (who would probably play synth too if his hands weren’t already busy), Tyrants is the follow-up to 2021’s impressive full-length debut (review here), and it takes on modern cosmic prog, psych and space rocks from a variety of angles in the songwriting, with varied arrangements, howling solos, and memorable hooks in cuts like “Tyrants,” “Endless,” and “The Singing Mountain,” among others spread throughout that aren’t necessarily just catchy choruses. A keyboard line, a standout lyric (as with the debut, the lyrics are in English), the freneticism in the build of “Sunset Room,” on and on. It’s all fair game in imprinting itself on the mind of the listener, and moreover, it feels intentional in that.
A roiling dynamic is able to account for the wah-drenched rush in the second half of “Skirmish,” the righteous fuzz of “My Only Link,” the mellotron that sneaks into “Endless,” all the ensuing melodic and rhythmic turns and an overarching progression which, for the many pivots between and sometimes within the songs themselves, flows with a sense of purpose. Stylistically, Tyrants touches on classics from The Beatles to Hawkwind (thinking the jangly strums and vocal pattern of “My Only Link” for the latter, the later guitar solo in the same song for the former) while remaining aware of modern forerunners like Elder, King Gizzard or Slift, and has enough range so that when the twisting leads of closer “Loose” bring a particularly flamenco-rooted feel, rather than come across as out of place, it enriches the fleetfooted rhythm of “The Singing Mountain” and “Godspeed” just prior, adding to the context of the front-to-back listening experience. Especially when one factors in the production helmed by the much-respected Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio (Elder, front-of-house for Kadavar, much etc.) in Berlin, Germany, to which the band traveled from Spain to record, and the subsequent master by Peter Deimel at Black Box Studios — who also finalized the self-titled — Maragda seem to be upfront in their outreach to the Eurozone underground scene. They sound like they want to play all the festivals, in all the countries. Yes, that includes yours.
Yet, they’re not cloying in that. The howling scorch that begins “Skirmish” and the vocal layering of the verse that follow are an earnest clarion. Following the digging-in as represented by the verses and the way the chorus takes flight from there, those early moments of “Skirmish” make a bold callout to the converted — perhaps most of all to the heads who think they’ve heard it all before — but Tyrants goes deeper than superficially highlighting aspects of current-day psych-prog in this material, and it does not sacrifice the folkier aspects that have long typified Spanish psychedelia in order to fit with some idea of whatever a phrase like “current-day psych-prog” might evoke for a different listener.
They are themselves in it, however far outside Iberia their influences might reach stylistically or geographically, and even as Tyrants sends out dogwhistles in working with Behrens, putting the words in English, the lush vocal melodicism before “The Sleeping Mountain” gives over to its no-less-lush instrumental ending, and so on, the needs of the song are never measured as less than the message being sent by the album as a whole. As a collection, Tyrants ends up nowhere that Maragda don’t want it to go, and whether you have a background in Spain’s history in folk, psych or rock more generally — to be clear, I don’t — the songs are likewise accessible and encompassing.
If that makes Tyrants sound like it’s somehow educational, that’s part of it, at least on the hearing end. Even in the reverbed boogie of “Tyrants,” Maragda‘s efforts could be read as having an ambassadorial side, and I don’t think that’s a detriment. But, say you’re the type of listener who might just want to put a record on and enjoy it without delving into the social and aesthetic backdrop against which it arrives (madness, I say, but not unheard of), the energetic spirit captured in the recording, the chemistry shared between Pasqual, Tora and Itarte on the live-feeling performances branched in three dimensions to make the final versions of the songs, and the varying shapes that vitality takes are an accomplishment of craft ready to stand on their own. In the physical motion of the leadoff, the heft unveiled in “Skirmish” and the intricacies of tone and groove beneath the chorus in “Endless,” Maragda launch side A with an enticing salvo that holds the momentum amassed through shifts between longer and shorter runtimes and trades in volume, pace and tone, and a resounding sense of joy in both the build of tension and the freedom inherent in its release. And as much as Tyrants can be defined by its ambitious scope, that applies as much to the interplay of drift and push in “Sunset Room” as it does to the bridges it constructs between often-disparate interpretations of style, and the heart put into its execution cannot and should not be ignored.
Rather, the passion that comes through is pivotal to every level on which Tyrants meets what feel like its goals — and to that, it’s not as though Maragda have said they’re trying to give the countries east of their home peninsula a piece of what they’ve been missing; that’s what I hear happening in the songs separate from the lyrical storyline and at an ocean’s distance and I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth — and while not without its indulgent side as “Loose” reaches toward seven minutes in capping with revitalized mellow-heavy fluidity, Tyrants is nonetheless clearheaded and lets its movement or procession handle its own declarations.
In this, it remains about presence over pretense. Adding to rather than taking from. It is optimistic and forward-looking. What Maragda do on Tyrants expands the palette for themselves first and genre second, and whatever the future will bring for them, whatever they might do next, wherever they might tour, whatever whatever whatever comes of the potential this sophomore LP carries, it is a significant achievement by itself that distinguishes the band from the pigeonholes in which they might otherwise be placed. If they’re entering the chat, they’ve brought plenty to say.
Maragda, “Tyrants” Live at Siete Barbas Studios video
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I know we’re on the internet, so I’m supposed to be pissed off that this tour and all other tours don’t stop at my house like they were Amazon deliveries for volume, but really, I’m just glad I took a couple minutes out of the day to refresh my acquaintance with Space Queen‘s 2023 nine-track sophomore EP, Nebula (review here), on which the harmony-prone Vancouver trio at first veer between heavy crunch (seriously, “Battle Cry” feels like Facelift-era Alice in Chains in tone, never mind the corresponding vocal pattern) and soothing come-by-honestly folk melodies in shorter complementary tracks like “Deluge” and “Veil” before the pairing of “Darkest Part” and “When it Gets Light” bring the different sides together and “Transmission/Lost Cosmonaut” pushes deeper into fuzzy dream-nod and “End Transmission” cuts out on a sample from Ground Control. It’s rad, and of all the hype that went out last year about whoever, whatever, whenever, here’s one I didn’t hear close to enough rampant hyperbole about.
And I guess that’s why I’m posting about the tour even though I don’t exist in any of these towns. The songs. Go figure.
If you also want to revisit, Nebula is at the bottom of this post. Info/dates from the PR wire:
Space Queen announce West Coast tour dates supporting new album Nebula
Vancouver, BC trio Space Queen announce May 2024 tour dates supporting their new album Nebula today. Please see all tour dates below.
Space Queen is the stoner rock evolution of power trio Jenna Earle (guitar/vocals), Seah Maister (bass/keys/vocals) and Karli MacIntosh (drums/vocals).
Space Queen takes the signature haunting vocal harmonies of the trio’s former folk project (Sound of the Sun) and sends them soaring over a cosmic canvas of neo-psychedelic rock. Driving beats from MacIntosh provide an anchor for Earle’s heavy distortion and fuzzy 70s-style riffs, while Maister keeps everything grounded on bass, or shoots beyond the stratosphere with spacey synths and intergalactic organ.
The band released their debut EP in 2020 which garnered a ton of favorable press and college radio play, including landing on the Earshot charts. Space Queen was featured on Nardwuar The Human Serviette’s radio show for a month leading up to their EP release. The band has thrived in 2021-2022, opening for bands such as King Buffalo, Blackwater Holylight, The Well, RIP, Spirit Mother, Black Mastiff and The Pack A.D. The band also hit multiple festival stages including Massif Music fest, a headlining slot at Tune it down, Turn it up Festival, Electric Highway, as well as playing virtual editions of Massif (and a compilation vinyl release featuring Space Queen’s single “Battle Cry” in lieu of 2021’s Massif Festival) and Rock ‘n’ Roll Pride, and Fallen Fest.
Space Queen’s sophomore EP was released in the Spring of 2023, followed by a cross Canada tour with festival stops at NXNE and Vantopia. Coming in 2024 is a single mixed by Desert Rock legend, Dave Catching. Plenty of additional plans are in the works to be announced for 2024. These next few years are shaping up to be busy ones for the rising band.
SPACE QUEEN LIVE 2024: 05/11 Olympia, WA – The Crypt 05/12 Seattle, WA – Substation 05/15 Portland, OR – High Water Mark 05/17 Oakland, CA – Eli’s Milie High Club 05/18 Goleta, CA – Old Town Coffee 05/22 Ventura, CA – The Sewer 05/24 Santa Barbara, CA – Whisky Richard’s (QOTSA afterparty) 05/25 Los Angeles, CA – The Redwood
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
You can’t look at the extensive list of dates below and not accuse Heavy Temple of slacking, to say the least of it. The Philadelphia trio will be out for six-plus weeks on this coast-to-coast US headlining tour, which I think is the longest single stretch they’ve yet undertaken, though I wouldn’t swear to it. In any case, it is a striking amount of shows, and in a time where a lot of bands break up the States into East or West Coast runs and cover the spaces between, Heavy Temple signal a righteous diving-in here.
They go in support of one of 2024’s best LPs, Garden of Heathens (review here), their second record through Magnetic Eye and built on a similarly all-in ethic as regards both craft and bombast. Note as well that support will come from also-no-strangers-to-the-road Valley of the Sun from Ohio, who are currently streaming the first half of and taking preorders for their forthcoming Quintessence LP (info here) ahead of releasing the second part and physical versions in the coming months. I hope they have ’em to bring on the tour.
And by “the tour” I mean this one. Behold:
The Nation of Heathens tour kicks off July 18th! We’re super stoked to have @valleyofthesunband with us on all these dates, and we’ll be joined by some other friends along the way. See dates below! 👇👇👇
7/17 – Boston, MA @ Mideast Upstairs 7/18 – New York, NY @ Kingsland 7/19 – Clifton, NJ @ Dingbats 7/20 – Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery 7/21 – Youngstown, OH @ Westside Bowl 7/24 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups 7/25 – Detroit, MI @ Sanctuary 7/26 – Indianapolis, IN @ Black Circle 7/27 – Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s Music Joint 7/28 – Milwaukee, WI @ Club Garibaldi 7/30 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club 7/31 – Iowa City, IA @ Wildwood 8/1 – Lincoln, NE @ 1867 Bar 8/2 – Denver, CO @ HQ Denver 8/3 – Salt Lake, UT @ Ace High Saloon 8/4 – Boise, ID @ Shredder 8/7 – Seattle, WA @ Sub Station 8/8 – Portland, OR @ Dantes 8/9 – San Fran, CA @ DNA Lounge 8/10 – Anaheim, CA @ The Parish (HOB) 8/11 – San Diego, CA @ Brick by Brick 8/13 – Las Vegas, NV @ Usual Place 8/14 – Phoenix, AZ @ Underground 8/15 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar 8/16 – El Paso, TX @ Rock House 8/17 – Dallas, TX @ Three Links 8/18 – Austin, TX @ The Lost Well 8/21 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger 8/22 – Houston, TX @ Secret Group 8/23 – Lafayette, LA @ Freetown Boom Boom 8/24 – New Orleans, LA @ Santos Bar 8/25 – Pensacola, FL @ The Handlebar 8/27 – Jacksonville, FL @ Underbelly 8/28 – Orlando, Fl @ Wills Pub 8/29 – Tampa, FL @ Orpheum 8/30 – Atlanta, GA @ Boggs Social & Supply 8/31 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel 🐍🍎
Voidkind is the third full-length from Edinburgh-based five-piece DVNE and their second to be issued with the historically-significant endorsement of Metal Blade Records behind 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here) and sees the heavy, progressive metallers reaching for and attaining new levels of refinement in terms of craft. In intensity, melody, ambience and impact, Voidkind (cover art by Felix Abel Klae) weaves its 10 tracks together across nearly an hour’s runtime that is so clearly meant to be taken in its entirety and only benefits from having enough arrogance to demand the listener’s attention for its span despite earning it with the songs themselves.
And as to those songs. They are dynamic in tempo, volume, the arrangements of vocals from Daniel Barter (also guitar live), keyboardist Maxime Keller and guitarist/keyboardist Victor Vicart, and the hairpin rhythmic turns of bassist/guitarist Allan Paterson (Alexandros Keros also contributes bass on stage) and drummer Dudley Tait, the latter with a performance that could and probably should be a blueprint on how to accompany younger-Mastodon-style angular riffing without overplaying. Working with returning producer Graeme Young on the recording and mix (Robyn Dawson assisted engineering) and the also-returning Magnus Lindberg (Domkraft, Vokonis, Wren, countless others, plus his own band) for the master, the pieces that comprise Voidkind resonate with scope and narrative, and as deep as you want to dig into the references and vocabulary of the lyrics, DVNE will meet you there for lines like “Synesthetic submergence saturates the mind,” from “Abode of the Perfect Soul” or “The zephyrian scents of verbena” from “Eleonora” earlier as the band dig in following the more bombastic, willfully aggressive opener “Summa Blasphemia.”
Like the lyrics, the instrumental arrangements feel plotted, worked on, and thoughtful of the linear thread that brings the songs together and the intended flow across Voidkind as a whole. “Summa Blasphemia” takes about nine seconds for its surge to sweep in, but from that point on, DVNE‘s sense of control is complete in the turn that introduces the record’s first soaring, melodic, emotive vocals at about the one-minute mark so they can gradually come together in the apex with the harsher growls and screams that pervade amid all the ensuing crush, and in the way “Reliquary” moves from its solo section to the ambient break that begins its second-half build, in the subtle atmospheric flourish of interludes “Path of Dust” (led by guitar) and “Path of Ether” (more of a keyboard/synth drone) and how they surround “Sarmatæ” even on the 2LP edition of the album, giving that song’s memorable lines about casting tales and ribbons into fire space to breathe before the rush start of “Abode of the Perfect Soul” renews the onslaught en route to the closing pair of the lushly post-metallic “Plērōma” and the near-10-minute finale “Cobalt Sun Necropolis,” which feels like nothing so much as a next-generation’s nodding back as its last crescendo is blown out in a mode not dissimilar from Neurosis‘ “Stones From the Sky” at the finish.
There are arguments to be made for and against what seems from outside to be such a deeply cerebral take, but at more than 10 years’ remove from their debut EP, Progenitor (review here), DVNE know who they are in terms of sound, and Voidkind comes through as all the more sculpted and literary in its ambitions for their efforts, and as they stand in the center of the tumult in “Eleonora” or bring together the airier float of guitar on “Reaching for Telos” with layered vocal harmonies as yet another example of their growth as a unit, the complexity is a strength. They’re never lost in it. They never forget where they just came from or lose track of where they’re going, how it fits, or why. As a listener, Voidkind is exciting even on a first impression because of its charge, its aggro throb, its stops and starts and twists that toy with adrenaline and pull you deeper into the material, but the reason any of it works at all is the emergent mastery of songwriting DVNE have been chasing for the last decade-plus.
So is Voidkind an arrival moment? Sure, and you wouldn’t have been wrong to say the same of Etemen Ænka or 2017’s debut LP, Asheran, either. At the very least, it’s a landmark for them along their path of continued evolution, but I also can’t seem to get out of my head the notion of placing it in the broader sphere of metal. Part of that might just be that DVNE sound fresh in their ideas of what heavy sounds can convey, whether fast or slow, loud or quiet, dissonant, melodic, etc., but Voidkind only gets more difficult to categorize the more one hears it. With the level of consideration put in and the somewhat heady vibes throughout, it’s only fair to call it progressive despite how much it uses raw ferocity to make its case, and while it might owe a debt of influence to post-hardcore, post-metal, sludge, and doom, it’s not just any one of those things. Familiar in parts, but imaginative and distinguished in its point of view.
Metal, as a genre, has splintered since the dawn of the internet such that, if someone were describing a band as “metal,” it would tell you almost nothing about the character of what you’re hearing other than it’s probably loud and potentially unspeakably dumb. Is DVNE metal? Is Pantera? Tool? Five Finger Death Punch (who are the worst band I’ve ever seen and I will say so every time I mention them)? Korn? Black Sabbath? You can get debate for the rest of your life about what is or isn’t metal, musically or as a lifestyle, without even a coherent definition to work from, and given the emotional attachment of those in the subculture to it and a long-held mistrust when those from outside — i.e., the broader pop-cultural sphere — deign to acknowledge its existence, that’s not likely to change. So what is metal and what should it be? I promise you I have no idea and I wouldn’t be so pretentious as to make any declaration in that regard even if I did. But if DVNE were the shape of metal to come, I have a hard time seeing how metal could be anything but better for it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Desertfest Berlin 2024 has rolled out its last lineup additions — headed up by Poland’s Sunnata, who’ll support their expansive, released-this-week new LP, Chasing Shadows — and the afterparties and even a sleepover ticket option for those who want to camp out on-site.
I’ve heard of that kind of thing before, and it seems to me that if you’re making the weekend a party, that’s gonna be a way to keep it going. Looking at the day-splits and the rest of the lineup additions — Kombynat Robotron, Bottenhavet, Cava, Zukunft, Night Beats, Heckspoiler — there’s plenty of stylistic variety between them, which isn’t necessarily a surprise but should make for fun fest-days. If you’re headed out for it, stay safe and enjoy. It remains an annual daydream.
Poster and final lineup announcement follow, courtesy of the PR wire:
Desertfest Berlin has released its final band line-up for this year, and announces SUNNATA, BOTTENHAVET, CAVA, NIGHT BEATS plus bands for the outdoor stage: HECKSPOILER, KOMBYNAT ROBOTRON and ZUKUNFT!
They are joining the eclectic 2024 line-up featuring iconic PENTAGRAM at their last(!) Berlin show ever, Chris Goss’ mighty MASTERS OF REALITY, Californian krautrock frontrunners OSEES, post-metal masters AMENRA, desert rock legends BRANT BJORK TRIO, MONKEY3 with the new album “Welcome To The Machine” under their belt, and so many more. Get ready for THE riff party of the year – aside a wild and high-class blend of finest psychedelia, stoner rock, doom, desert punk blues, sludge and all that is metal, the official aftershow party will be happening on Friday Night, followed by the legendary Magic “Karaoke” on Saturday.
Furthermore, and due to incredibly expensive accommodation prizes in the German capitol, Desertfest Berlin is now offering sleep over options! For only 15€/night, guests can now book their “sleepover” ticket. Columbia Theater will be covered with pond foil for Desertfesters to stay the night with sleeping mat and sleeping bag.
Desertfest Berlin will take place between May 24 – 26, 2024 at Columbiahalle and Columbia Theater. Weekend Passes, Day Tickets + Sleep Over Options, are available to book at: www.desertfest-tickets.de
On April 18, Los Angeles-based mellow-heavy/shoegaze fuzz psych rockers (and then some) Dead Meadow announced that bassist Steve Kille had died the night before. Here’s the text of that post:
It is with the absolutely heaviest of hearts that we have to announce our beloved brother, bandmate, amazing and utterly unique bass player, and gifted artist Steve Kille passed away at 12 am last night. Writing, recording, performing music with Steve felt as fresh; inspiring, and as important as it did 27 years ago when we first started playing together. We don’t know what words could express this level of loss.
That of course is guitarist/vocalist and fellow founding member Jason Simon paying tribute.His math puts the start of Dead Meadow in 1997 at which point the band was still located in Washington D.C. Their first album, 2000’s Dead Meadow (discussed here), was released through Joe Lally of Fugazi‘s label, Tolotta Records — see also: Spirit Caravan, Stinking Lizaveta, Orthrelm (w/ Mick Barr), and so on — and Howls From the Hills followed the next year, once again on Tolotta and once again with Kille‘s art and design complementing the music.
Got Live if You Want It would follow in 2002 (on Bomp! and The Committee to Keep Music Evil), and the trio were signed to Matador Records ahead of 2003’s third studio album Shivering King and Others, but there’s a resonant rawness to the first two records that can only come from a band getting their feet under them and discovering who they are sonically. In that regard, the languid unfolding, wah-drenched fuzz tones and warm groove of “Drifting Down Streams” for sure learned some lessons from the self-titled. Recorded in Indiana by Shelby Cinca at a farm owned by the family of Stephen McCarty, who’d play drums on their fourth and fifth LPs, 2005’s Feathers and 2008’s Old Growth — also the era that saw Kille‘s emergence as a producer and recording engineer for the band — Howls From the Hills was ahead of its time in both the saunter of “Dusty Nothing” and the punctuated slow swing of “Jusiamere Farm,” and while I don’t have a negative word to say about Simon‘s tone or characteristic semi-sneering vocals or the urge-toward-movement that Mark Laughlin‘s drumming brings to the later “Everything’s Goin’ On,” it has always been Kille‘s bass work underneath Simon‘s higher-end fuzz that makes Howls From the Hills such a headphone-worthy listen.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in the stoned-in-the-summer-sun hook of “The White Worm” or caught in the feedback wash ahead of the Sabbathian march of “One and Old,” which becomes a classic-style outbound-jam departure before its 9:45 runtime is halfway through, getting louder, getting quieter, ebbing but always flowing before Simon brings it down with wistful but calming lead guitar over the last minute-plus. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the ’50s shimmer of the slide-inclusive “The Breeze Always Blows” or the sitar-backed bedroom folk ramble of “The One I Don’t Know” — which may or may not even have bass — Howls From the Hills highlights the particular fluidity that set Dead Meadow apart from most if not all of the turn-of-the-century-era heavy rockers, their willingness to let go of aggression where so many others couldn’t or didn’t want to, and the chemistry that was taking shape in their sound.
The last time I saw Kille play live was at the third night of Desertfest New York in May 2022 (review here), where Dead Meadow played the main stage between Big Business and the first of the evening’s headliners, Red Fang. You didn’t need to listen hard to hear the earthiness in his bass — there was plenty of volume to go around — and as much as Dead Meadow‘s style has been hailed over their years, records and tours for its floaty, drifting psychedelic aspects, in revisiting Howls From the Hills, the flexibility of craft that has let them go so many different places is so clearly emanating from the foundation laid out in the rhythm section. Kille could lock into a roller like “Dusty Nothing” or underscore the jangle of “The Breeze Always Blows” and still go a-wanderin’ in “The White Worm,” which is able to turn its exploration back around to the verse/chorus ending in no small part because Kille‘s been holding that groove the whole time.
Classic power trio dynamic, maybe, but in a context that makes it as much Dead Meadow‘s own as much as anyone else’s. Howls From the Hills immerses the listener early with the ambient noise and far-off feedback of “Drifting Down Streams” and is kind of a mini-blowout at the culmination of its eight minutes, but holds the same kind of deceptive movement as cuts like “Sleepy Silver Door” from the self-titled or the slowed-down trippier take on “Everything’s Goin’ On” that showed up on Shivering King and Others. The band’s live records — the aforementioned Got Live if You Want It, most of 2010’s Three Kings (for which Kille was interviewed here), 2020’s Live at Roadburn 2011 (review here), and 2021’s Levitation Sessions: Live From the Pillars of God — tell another important side of that story, and there too one finds Kille essential to creating that current-like motion beneath the surface flow.
On behalf of myself and this site, for whatever it’s worth, I offer condolences to Kille‘s family, to his bandmates Simon and Laughlin, and to the band’s many fans and the multitudes inspired by his playing, songwriting, visual and/or production styles. As part of Dead Meadow, his contributions have been part of influencing a generation of heavy psychedelia, and part of what makes Howls From the Hills feel timeless now is that records so individual to the artists making them never quite fit with their time to begin with. I don’t know the future of the band, and frankly I think it would be too early and crass to speculate, but there can be no question that Kille brought something special to the mix that made Dead Meadow who they are, and as always, that work will continue to live on.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Gonna keep it short this time (or apparently not) to sort of let the above stand on its own, but I wanted to explain a bit. I was at Roadburn, actually standing in the skate park watching Heath when Virginia’s Stephen Smith — if ever at a show, anywhere on earth, there’s at least a 30 percent chance he’ll stop through on his way to the next one — showed me the post above on his phone. In addition to needing some time to get my head back after the fest and travel, I didn’t want to be rushing to post something like it was just part of the rest of the news catchup. A person died. You want to try to honor that loss.
Took me a week I guess to think of writing about him and Howls at the Hills at the same time. I actually closed a week with the same record about 11 years ago — shocking to me how long I’ve been doing Friday Full-Lengths, and yet they’re still all categorized as Bootleg Theater instead of their own thing; makes no sense — but I figure after a decade it’s fair game if I want it to be, and once I put it on I knew I wanted it to be. I didn’t talk much about the band’s later work above, but in fact I was back and forth with Kille as part of writing the liner notes for the PostWax edition of last year’s Force From Free, and in my experience he was only ever a laid back, easy kind of person to work with. I’d say the same of Simon. Both dudes who, if they were jerks you’d say, “Well, bigger band, indie cred, sometimes that happens,” who were very much not jerks. That kind of thing means a lot to me.
Anyhow, to that’s the way it ended up what it is. Not timely, but with something like this, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in the same way it otherwise would.
I was at an appointment (actually with the same surgeon who did my meniscus operation in late-2022) for my mother this morning as she starts the process of getting one of her two very-much-in-need-of-replacing knees replaced. Bone on bone, no cartilage. A little left in the other one. Surgery hopefully in a couple weeks. But that was a drain emotionally as well, and with a weekend ahead of going to Connecticut to help The Patient Mrs.’ mom move furniture, Elephant Tree liner notes that I think need a rewrite owing to some misunderstanding of what release they were actually for — they have a couple things in the works, including the also-PostWax split with Lowrider — the regular batch of writing and having this afternoon to engage the inevitable argument of trying to give The Pecan a bath, which just sucks lately, I’m gonna punch out and call it a week.
I hope to do that DVNE review that was slated for this week on Monday — Sunnata are next in line after, but not next week — the rest of the week has premieres lined up for Maragda, Los Tayos (a Psychedelic Source Records project that will happen if it’s done in time; I love working with that label and I’m not being sarcastic), High Noon Kahuna and We Broke the Weather, so it will not lack for awesome. Until then, have a great and safe weekend and thanks again for reading.
FRM. I don’t think there’s any merch on there right now, but I’m putting the link anyway because support MIBK.
