Posted in Whathaveyou on February 2nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
This is a good way to spend a couple of nights in Denmark. Hot damn. I missed I think, wait, let me check, yes, all of the batch announcements for Esbjerg Fuzztival 2023 due, I assume, to the whims of the algorithm, but when it finally occurred to me to check in on the fest precisely because I hadn’t seen anything about it, well, there was the full damn lineup waiting for me.
And it’s looking sharp, as well. There isn’t one band on this bill I wouldn’t want to see, from Nebula and Greenleaf to Slowjoint and Vestjysk Ørken. Not a clunker in the bunch. And hell, I’ve never seen Clouds Taste Satanic and they’re from New York, so catching them in Denmark would be a hell of a way to see them for a first time. And Ecstatic Vision, High Desert Queen, Edena Gardens, Kryptograf, getting to check Causa Sui off my all-time must-see list? Yeah. Sounds fucking amazing, actually. Throw in Kanaan, Valley of the Sun and oh, say, Deathchant, and you’ve got yourself a deal. I’m not trying to be glib when I say this, but it looks like a lovely time.
I pieced the below together out of the aforementioned posts I missed, so if it reads clunky or they come off as excessively proud, perhaps, that’s why. Here you go:
Complete lineup for Fuzztival ’23!
Who are you most excited to see this year!?
Get your tickets in now!
Fuzztival are PROUD to announce our Friday night headliner NEBULA, bringing the desert to Denmark! ECSTATIC VISION, VALLEY of THE SUN and KRYPTOGRAF will be joining! And as always the Fuzztival house band VESTJYSK ØRKEN will be opening the festival for the 6th consecutive time!
We are PROUD to present another round of bands! Adding KANAAN as well as EDENA GARDENS (feat. members of Causa Sui & Papir) and CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC to Fuzztival 23!
We are proud to be adding the OG desert Rockers FATSO JETSON alongside DEATHCHANT and HIGH DESERT QUEEN! The riffs will be plenty and scorching hot! SLOWJOINT will be returning to Fuzztival with a special surprise set!
The almighty riff machine GREENLEAF will be headlining Saturday at Fuzztival ’23! Closing the fest with a shake and a bang so bring your dancing shoes!
Last but not least we are PROUD to welcome back the KINGS of Heavy Psych CAUSA SUI to Fuzztival ’23!
This wraps up the bands announced for this year! Final call to save some dough for more Fuzz Ales!
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Staring at the poster of the finished lineup, there’s nothing more to do than congratulate the Desertscene crew on Desertfest London 2023. You could spend an entire day at any single stage in any single venue and call it front-to-back a good time. I’ve been posting festival lineups for Desertfest since it started in 2012 and this is the biggest and best it’s ever been. If you’re going, I’ll tell you flat out I’m jealous. It looks like it will be an amazing experience, and right up to the last lineup announcement, it’s quality as much as quantity when it comes to who is playing, on what stage, and when. It is the heavy festival ideal; a lineup that crosses generations and geographies to give those fortunate enough to be there something they’ll never forget.
So that’s it. Go if you can. Here’s the reportedly final update:
Desertfest London announces final bands and day splits for 2023, including Nebula, Dozer, Fatso Jetson + more
Desertfest London have announced the final bands and day-splits for 2023’s line-up, which will be taking place across Camden from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th May and promises to be heavier than the King’s coronation crown.
The final few bands to join the already stellar line-up includes the heavy groove rocking trio Nebula, Sweden’s stalwarts of stoner Dozer and the godfathers of the Desert Fatso Jetson. French post-metallers Year Of No Light will also be playing their first London show since 2013.
Also joining the line-up is Antwerp’s Gnome who will bring their dirty riffs, anarcho-punks Bad Breeding to get everyone fired up and acclaimed virtuoso Cellist Jo Quail to bring another dynamic to proceedings.
Electric Funeral will also be keeping the party going with a Sabbath covers set at Friday night’s after party and the festival is completed with Elder Druid, Kurokuma, Firebreather, Earth Moves, Untitled With Drums, Graywave, Mountains, Rosy Finch, Lowen, Homecoming, Wall and Death Wvrm.
The final additions join festival headliners and cult heroes Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats who will be playing the Roundhouse for the very first time. As one of the most widely-requested bands in the Desertfest-sphere, Uncle Acid’s trippy and melodic riff-driven hard-rock is uniquely original, yet an utterly timeless beast and will close Desertfest 2023 in a mystical cloud of doom and awe.
Friday’s headliners are none other than Swedish heavy-blues maestros Graveyard who will draw out raw emotion with their lyrical prowess & introspective compositions whilst Saturday welcomes back Corrosion of Conformity who have not been on UK soil since 2018 so expect big, loud and memorable things from their appearance at the festival!
Full Line-Up for Desertfest London 2023:
FRIDAY 5TH MAY ELECTRIC BALLROOM GRAVEYARD KADAVAR CHURCH OF MISERY VALLEY OF THE SUN SPACESLUG ELECTRIC FUNERAL (AFTER PARTY)
UNDERWORLD DISCHARGE BAD BREEDING DAWN RAY’D KUROKUMA TERROR COSMICO
POWERHAUS YEAR OF NO LIGHT SUM OF R EARTH MOVES WYATT E IRON JINN
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Solid bill. More than solid, actually. I don’t think I need to argue in favor of Ruination Festival 2023’s headliners in Slomatics and Fatso Jetson, but check out the US/UK blend at the pre-show as well with Thunder Horse and Great Electric Quest with Old Horn Tooth and Oakenthrone and Gandalf the Green. That’s a good time even before you get to Sergeant Thunderhoof and Mastiff and Trevor’s Head and Ritual King and Goblinsmoker et al welcoming High Desert Queen and the aforementioned Fatso Jetson to England’s green and pleasant land.
Of course, the elephant in the room here, fest-wise, is Desertfest London, but there are arguments to be made here for the concise all-dayer/pre-show format, and if you want a curated sample of some of the best up and coming UK acts with some more established names on top, it’s a good way to go and a situation without the rampant timing conflicts that inherently happen at larger festivals. Even with two stages going, this seems doable to me and like a good way to pack in seeing a bunch of bands and not having to miss out on something you want to see.
The fest is a collaboration between Iron Boar Bookings and Riffolution Promotions, and you can see the full lineup and
RUINATION FESTIVAL
Ruination Festival is a joint event from Iron Boar Bookings and Riffolution Promotions. Taking place on the 13th of May across 2 stages, The Underground and Als Juke Bar!
Tickets are £15.
Make sure to RVSP to stay up to date with announcements. With some of the best stoner, doom & psych on the scene, from both UK and US.
(#127482#)(#127480#) Fatso Jetson Great Electric Quest High Desert Queen Thunder Horse
(#127468#)(#127463#) Slomatics, Sergeant Thunderhoof, Mastiff, Grave Lines, Trevors Head, Ritual King, Son of Boar, Everest Queen, Goblinsmoker, Boach, Swamp Coffin, Ironrat, Old Horn Tooth, Gandalf the Green, Oakenthrone
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 23rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Park myself in Joshua Tree for a weekend just as the winter is turning to spring, catch a ton of awesome bands from and beyond the desert? Yeah, that sounds pretty magical, to be honest. Nothing against San Francisco. I’ve seen videos from outside at Thee Parkside and it looks like an incredible place to see a gig, but if I’m making the trip from the other side of the country — and unless there’s a sudden fiscal windfall in my favor, I’m not, sadly — it’s the desert calling, all the more with All Souls and BigPig and Third Ear Experience on that bill. That’s a memorable weekend in the making.
The 2023 lineups for Heavy Psych Sounds Fest in California are finished, and with the two posters next to each other you can see some of the differences from one to the other, but they’re mostly the same as artists will play in one city one night, the other the other, and as someone who remembers seeing Yawning Man and Fatso Jetson together a decade ago at Desertfest London 2013 (review here), I’d offer up a kidney to do so again if I thought I could be healed in time to actually enjoy the show in March.
Anybody want to buy some… shit I have nothing of value. Alright then.
Here’s the bill:
Heavy Psych Sounds Records & Booking is proud to announce *** HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST CALIFORNIA 2023 JOSHUA TREE & SAN FRANCISCO ***
full lineup announcement
Heavy Psych Sounds together with Plastic Cactus Productions and Subliminal SF presents the full lineup of the Heavy Psych Sounds Fest California 2023 !!!
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST ***CALIFORNIA 2023*** MARCH 25 & 26
SAN FRANCISCO @ OPEN AIR AT THEE PARKSIDE
JOSHUA TREE @ HI DESERT CULTURAL CENTER
JOSHUA TREE HI DESERT CULTURAL CENTER MARCH 25th and 26th
WINDHAND WEEDEATER BRANT BJORK NEBULA THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX YAWNING MAN FATSO JETSON DUEL HIPPIE DEATH CULT GEEZER KADABRA WARLUNG LOVE GANG WITCHPIT COSMIC REAPER ALL SOULS BIG PIG THIRD EAR EXPERIENCE DEATHCHANT WHISKEY AND KNIVES HIGH TONE SON OF A BITCH
SAN FRANCISCO OPEN AIR AT THEE PARKSIDE MARCH 25th and 26th
WINDHAND WEEDEATER MONDO GENERATOR NEBULA THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX DUEL HIPPIE DEATH CULT GEEZER KADABRA WARLUNG LOVE GANG COSMIC REAPER WITCHPIT DEATHCHANT HIGH TONE SON OF A BITCH DISASTROID
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Desert Records‘ split series Legends of the Desert has never seemed more aptly named with Fatso Jetson and Dali’s Llama on this third volume. I’ve heard none of it, but the former outfit are progenitors of the Californian desert rock style and an influence to more bands than you or I can count, and the latter are longtime practitioners of the sand-hued arts, persistently underrated in their expansion around the core desert sound and tonality to vibes bluesy, goth rocking and beyond. Both proven entities in my mind.
The label has launched a Kickstarter as of today that’s serving as preorders for the various editions to come, and below they present the respective backgrounds of the bands as probably the best case for supporting the project. Legit. There’s a video below that features new music snippets, but honestly, if you’re not already on board based on the personnel alone — both acts who’ve long since established trust and a series that’s proven its mettle across two to-date volumes — I’m not sure what to tell you. The argument makes itself.
I’ll hope to have more to come as we get closer to the release. For now, this comes from the PR wire:
Legends of the Desert: Vol. 3
The third volume features two old school veterans of desert rock, Fatso Jetson & Dali’s Llama. After kicking off the first two volumes with new bands, it was due time to work with veterans of the Palm Desert scene.
The artwork is done by artist Joshua Mathus of Phoenix, AZ. He is commissioned to do all the album artwork (front and back covers) for the entire series.
Fatso Jetson is an American desert rock band from Palm Desert, California, formed in 1994 by Yawning Man and The Sort of Quartet members Mario Lalli and Larry Lalli, along with Tony Tornay, and Dino Von Lalli (son of Mario). Fatso Jetson have remained an active force in underground rock for almost 25 years. They are often credited as originators of the desert strain of stoner rock made most famous by their younger neighbors Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. While musically similar to some of their stoner brethren, Fatso Jetson incorporates a variety of musical influences that includes punk, art rock, blues and psychedelic hard rock.
Dali’s Llama is a desert rock band from the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area of Southern California. Dali’s Llama was formed in 1993 and released their first album that same year. The band, started by the husband and wife team of Zach and Erica Huskey, have remained the only two original members from the beginning. Zach is the guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, and Erica is the bass player. Dali’s Llama has released 15 albums so far. Their music is in five films, including being featured in the desert rock documentary “Lo Sound Desert”. They have performed and/or toured throughout the southwestern United States, including the ‘Stoner Hands of Doom’ and ‘Doom In June’ fests.
The kickstarter campaign launches on Friday, Dec 9th…and offers 4 stunning vinyl variants. Other rewards include the “Desert Rat” guitar pedal, test pressings, custom print/poster, and vinyl bundles.
SUPPORT THIS PROJECT!!! There are many exciting rewards.
Four (4) stunning vinyl LP variants. Test pressings of the LP Desert Rat guitar pedal from Fowl Sounds Custom screen-print poster 12×12 CD’s Bundles of the rewards (save $)
SIDE A: Fatso Jetson Night of the Living Amends 4:54 Angels Flight (feat. Sean Wheeler) 4:45 Todas Petrol Blues 4:21 One of Seven 3:03
SIDE B: Dali’s Llama Coyotes in the Graveyard 4:21 Lizards 6:09 Rarified 6:19 Hypnotic Wind 5:19
The music in the video features sound clips of 3 of the 8 songs on the album. The first sound clip is “Coyotes in the Graveyard” by Dali’s Llama. The second sound clip is “Angel’s Flight” (feat. Sean Wheeler) by Fatso Jetson. The third sound clip is “Lizards” by Dali’s Llama.
This is the soundtrack to the New Wild West. The focus of the Legends of the Desert series is to provide a modern perspective to the antiquated ‘Wild West’ we have etched in our brains. These songs and tales are not told by the same ol’ perspective of the white male Cowboy. These are narratives told by those who never got their stories heard. We will hear from musicians, artists, Natives, outlaws, desert rats, desert dwellers, cactuses and mesas, ravens and roadrunners, snakes and endless skies.
The bands are curated by label owner, Brad Frye. The requirements for bands to appear on the Legends series must hit certain criteria (besides making original & amazing desert rock music. Bands must be located geographically in the American Southwest. The states within this boundary include: California (southern part), Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. The bands have to be currently active. They also are in line with the Legends series ethos of offering an updated perspecitve of Wild West. Fuck John Wayne and all the outdated Wild West bullshit that we have been fed by movies and media.
Desert Records has already released Legends of the Desert Vol: 1 & 2. Both releases were successful and were met with great excitement.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Is this just an excuse to write more about Fatso Jetson? Yeah, it is. And no, this is not the grandest tour I’ve posted about this year or probably even this week, but hell, anytime Fatso Jetson blink, I pretty much want to put fingers to keyboard about it. The long-running desert rock co-progenitors are headed out for five shows alongside All Souls — with whom they not only share drummer Tony Tornay but also the recent live split LP Live From Total Annihilation (review here) — and High Desert Queen wedged in the middle there.
It’s essentially a long-weekender, and that’s just fine. Fatso Jetson‘s Dino Von Lalli will follow suit from Tornay and pull double-duty for the final night of the tour at Transplants Brewery, playing in his other band, BigPig as well. That’s right, double-double-duty. It’s that kind of thing. Meanwhile, All Souls continue to herald their upcoming album, Ghosts Among Us, in addition to the live split, and Austin-based rockers High Desert Queen — whose Ryan Garney may or may not have booked the tour, as he will do for his own band as well as others and RippleFest Texas, which All Souls and High Desert Queen both played this year — spread the good word of their Ripple-issued 2021 debut album, Secrets of the Black Moon (review here), while making one look forward to what’s invariably next.
So there you have it. Cool bands doing stuff together. Could hardly be more straightforward than that. And if it’s not 30 shows on back to back nights and blah blah blah? Fine.
From social media:
FATSO JETSON – Oct. Cali Shows
So Cal October Rock Safari!!
We’ll be out playing some fun shows with our friends High Desert Queen, All Souls and the mighty BigPig… go forth and nightclub
Wed 10/19: Costa Mesa- Wayfarer Thur 10/20: Highland Park Bowl Fri 10/21: Sky Valley Eric’s Ranch Sat 10/22: Old Town Pub Pasadena Sun 10/23: Palmdale CA- Transplants
[All Souls and Fatso Jetson release Live From Total Annihilation Aug. 19 on Ripple Music. Stream it in full above, find the complete video below. Ripple has preorders here.]
In the lonely middle of the Year of Our Lungs 2021, All Souls and Fatso Jetson aired the livestream (review here) that would become their joint LP release, Live From Total Annihilation. At the time, it was called ‘Virtual Volumes’ in relation to Fatso Jetson‘s 2010 album, Archaic Volumes (discussed here; review here), and the two four-pieces played with masks on with All Souls in color and Fatso Jetson in black and white, an atmosphere tense like everything but clearly a case of two bands wanting to do what they could in the absence of live shows. Helpful in regards to minimizing personnel involved, the two bands share drummer Tony Tornay, who no doubt has pulled double-duty many times over, but did as well when these two groups toured the UK together in 2017. Eddie Rivas from Total Annihilation Studio recorded and mixed, there were projected lightshows, multiple cameras, and so on. It wasn’t a concert, but they made a quality product. And particularly given how the audio came out, it’s not a surprise they’d follow up with a live album release.
AllSouls got to play five songs, one new, Fatso Jetson did five, two new, and of the many hours I spent in front of my laptop watching bands play instead of attending concerts or festivals, it was not one I regretted in the least. Thinking of Live From Total Annihilation as a split, the 43-minute LP gets down to business almost immediately with “Who Holds the Answer,” which gave and still gives an early glimpse of what’s since been announced as All Souls‘ third studio album, Ghosts Among Us, out in October (info here). And true to form for them across 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here) and 2018’s self-titled debut (review here), “Who Holds the Answer” packs expansive and jammy vibes into a structured three-and-a-half-minute song that’s heavy rock and post-punk and also neither of them and a whole bunch else. They back it with the salvo of “You Just Can’t Win” and “Winds” from the second record, two highlight cuts together that here flow immediately one into the next, the latter providing a tonal highlight for the outing as a whole and a first unclenched minute for All Souls, who even as they unfurl the more open feeling in the second half of “You Just Can’t Win” held the tension in the rhythm from the earlier part of the song.
“Winds” is probably also the best argument for All Souls as a four-piece, though it’s by no means their only song putting two guitars to dynamic use. Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith) was new on second guitar alongside Antonio Aguilar (also vocals), the aforementioned Tornay — who, for all the melodic wash and ambience around him gives a definitive performance on drums for “Wings”; style and technique — and bassist/vocalist Meg Castellanos, but the track’s complexity and depth even in a ‘live’ setting make it clearer why even after Price left the lineup issue still isn’t really settled for the band. They punk out on “Sentimental Rehash” like it’s 2001 again — hey, wait a minute! — and use that shimmy to reground the set before “Time Bomb” from the debut caps with purpose in its vocal melody, insistence in its groove and a kick of volume at the start that lets you know you’ve arrived. It turns somewhat more severe, the air gets heavier, the guitar solos cascade into noise, but not-doing-just-one-thing and not-doing-the-same-thing-all-the-time are trademarks of All Souls‘ work to this point and one would expect no less.
As regards an act who function solely on their own terms, it’s kind of astonishing how little one can know what’s coming when Fatso Jetson take the stage. Not only have they been around for nearly 30 years — long enough that guitarist/vocalist Mario Lalli‘s son, Dino von Lalli, has been in the band now for the better part of the last decade — but their work is so varied that they could put together representative sets for four different kinds of groups and you’d still come out of it saying “hot shit, what a band.” For Live From Total Annihilation, the new song “Drifting Off to Storybook Deth” sets the tone for what follows, with a methodical six minutes of mellow, methodical groove, bassist Larry Lalli reminding where the weight in Fatso Jetson comes from as Mario and Dino space out rhythm and lead tracks and Tornay continues to hold it together with a same-day-different-band-no-problem-who-else-needs-drums fluidity.
“Drifting Off to Storybook Deth” picks up in terms of getting louder, but the mood remains broad and leads into “Monoxide Dreams” from Archaic Volumes, furthering the languid sensibility of the first track while proving deceptive in its efficiency not unlike All Souls‘ “Who Holds the Answer,” fitting a lot of reach into about the same amount of time. “Monoxide Dreams” reminds how undervalued Mario Lalli (also in the instrumental Yawning Man) is as a vocalist, and it’s fitting the band’s personality that the weirdo-jazz-bounce of the not-a-word-in-it “Dream Homes” follows, the band reaffirming their longstanding commitment to chicanery. Missing from the stream is “Living All Over You,” and the songs have been rearranged, but the fuzzy pulse and vocal harmonies of “Long Deep Breaths” round out to give Fatso Jetson‘s side B not a comedown, but a flow and progression of its own in mini-album style. At five and a half minutes, it’s shorter than “Drifting Off to Storybook Deth,” but there’s still plenty of time for it to get its point across, echoing the drifting beginning and keeping enough movement for the whole thing to be comprehensible as a single work.
This stream was a gift when it was badly needed, and though the shape of the covid-19 pandemic has changed and live music has returned albeit not without risk of exposure, Live From Total Annihilation documents the event, gives both bands a bit of momentum going into whatever’s next — new record certainly for All Souls, maybe one in the works for Fatso Jetson as well? — and serves as a reminder of how precious it is to be able to have people in a room together for the sake of live performance and art. If you didn’t miss that, what’s the point of anything?
All Souls & Fatso Jetson, ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Yo, I don’t even care about the release date. Just hook this one directly up to my veins like Barney and beer truck. So good. I watched these sets when they premiered as the ‘Virtual Volumes’ live stream (review here), and even watching Fatso Jetson and All Souls — who share drummer Tony Tornay between them, further minimizing personnel — jam out with masks on was a righteous experience. Live From Total Annihilation will be issued as a split LP in both acts’ first collaboration with Ripple Music — who should also step up and put out the next All Souls already; come on — and from where I sit huddled into the same corner of the same couch where I was when I first saw and heard the thing, it remains an utter no-brainer pickup. August release? Great, that’ll work. Can’t tell you what a precious reminder this one was to just watch bands be in a place and hit it. And the audio was ace. It’ll make a great live split.
From the PR wire:
LEGENDARY DESERT ROCK INNOVATORS FATSO JETSON JOIN RIPPLE MUSIC FOR UPCOMING NEW RELEASE
Ripple Music is psyched to announce that seminal desert rock innovators FATSO JETSON are joining the Ripple roster! Their new outing is a split release with fellow Californians All Souls, with both bands recording their contributions live in the studio during the pandemic lockdown.
Fatso Jetson is an iconic American desert rock band from Palm Desert, California, formed in 1994 by Yawning Man members Mario Lalli and Larry Lalli, along with Tony Tornay. They are often credited as the fathers of the desert strain of stoner rock later made most famous by their slightly younger neighbors Kyuss and, later, Queens of the Stone Age. While musically similar to some of their brethren, Fatso Jetson have always branched out and expanded the desert sound by incorporating a broader variety of musical influences including punk, jazz and surf.
Fatson Jetson have toured the world several times, with highly regarded appearances at festivals like SXSW, Roadburn, DesertFest Berlin, DesertFest London, and RippleFest Texas, even appearing in the Foo Fighters’ HBO miniseries Sonic Highways.
Paired with Tony Tornay’s other band All Souls, Live from Total Annihilation is the new split release from Fatso Jetson, following in a long line of highly regarded splits from the band. Live from Total Annihilation finds Lalli, Tornay and the rest of the band in fine form, tearing through four classic desert-rocking tracks.
Look for the split to be released this august on Ripple Music.
