Posted in Whathaveyou on August 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Well, now I know that Bydgoszcz is the eighth largest city in Poland. Never stop learning, kids.
Gdańsk-based jammy psych mischief makers The Howling Eye are going on tour in their native Poland and making stops as well in Germany and the Czech Republic. The band offered their third album earlier this year in the loose-grooving List Do Borykan (review here), and I’d have to imagine their live show doesn’t go too far from the album at least in terms of general approach. That is, I don’t think The Howling Eye are releasing a record of exploratory psych and then getting on stage and reciting the material note for note. Too adventurous a band, and for a bonus, they don’t take themselves too seriously. Warning: Actual fun may occur.
I didn’t need the excuse to post the dates, but you’ll note The Howling Eye sharing the stage with the likes of Tet, Mythic Sunship, Abanamat, The Device, Taxi Caveman, Mares of Thrace and TarLung, among others. I don’t see anything listed outright as a festival — and most of the Fall tours in Europe I’ve posted about have been fest runs — but I’m not 100 percent on that since, as noted, I’m still just learning about different cities in The Howling Eye‘s home country, which I know for sure I wouldn’t mind visiting one of these years.
From social media:
THE HOWLING EYE – TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT
We’re going on tour! Space Dwellers Tour will bring our riff-transmitted mystic visions to 15 cities in 3 countries. Many thanks to Interstellar Smoke Records and Galactic SmokeHouse for helping us pull this off, and to Maciek Szukała for the artwork. Facebook events coming soon…
Meanwhile: 6.10 – Toruń – KoŃcÓwa + Tet, Lovecraft 7.10 – Bydgoszcz – Estrada stagebar + Lovecraft, The Device 8.10 – Gdańsk – Wydział Remontowy + Mythic Sunship, Tet 10.10 – Hamburg – Bar 227 + Verstärker 12.10 – Kiel – Siebeneck & Triangel + TBA 13.10 – Szczecin – Krzywy Gryf + aleph א, Power Plant 14.10 – Elbląg – Mjazzga + ELBONG 15.10 – Warszawa – Hydrozagadka + Atom Juice 19.10 – Berlin – RESET + Abanamat 20.10 – Poznań – PAN GAR + Abanamat, Szacunek 22.10 – Wrocław – Liverpool + Abanamat, Noise River 26.10 – Kraków – Warsztat + Taxi Caveman, Niewyspani 27.10 – Tarnowskie Góry – Beczka + Taxi Caveman, Astral Nomad 28.10 – Ostrava – Rock Hill + TBA 29.10 – Praha – Modrá Vopice + MARES OF THRACE, TarLung
Been a trip so far, has this Quarterly Review. It’s been fun to bounce from one thing to the next, drawing imaginary lines between releases that have nothing more to do with each other than being written up on the same day, and seeing the way the mind reels in adjusting from talking about one thing to the next. It’s a different kind of challenge to write 150-200 words (and often more than that; these reviews are getting too long) about a record than 1,000 words.
Less room to make your argument means you need to say what you want to say how you want to say it and punch out. If you’ve read this site with any regularity over the last however many years, or perhaps if you’re reading this very sentence right now, right here, you might guess that such efficiency isn’t a strong suit. This assessment would be correct. Fact is I suck at any number of things. A growing list.
But we’ve made it to Thursday anyhow and today this 70-record Quarterly Review passes its halfway point, and that’s always a fun thing to mark. If you’ve been digging it, I hope you continue to do so. If nothing’s hit, maybe today. If this is the first you’re seeing of any of it, well, that’s fine too. We’re all friends here. You can go back and dig in or not, as you prefer. I’ll keep going either way. Speaking of…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
The Howling Eye, List Do Borykan
I don’t often say things like this, but List Do Borykan is worth it for the opening jam of “Space Dwellers, Episode 1.” That does not mean that song’s languid flow, silly stoned space-adventure spoken word narrative, and flashes of dub and psych and so on, are all that Poland’s The Howling Eye have to offer on their third full-length. It’s not. The prior single “Medival” (sic) has a thoughtful arrangement led by post-Claypool funky bass and surf-style guitar, which are swapped out for hard-riff cacophony metal in the second half of the song’s 3:35 run. That pairing sets up a back and forth between longer jams and more structured material, but it’s all pretty out there when you hear the seven song/44 minutes of the entire record, as the 10-minute “Brothers” builds from silence to organ-laced classic rock testimony and then draws itself down to let the funkier/rolling (depending on which part you’re talking about) “Space Dwellers, Episode 2” provide a swaying melodic highlight, and “Caverns” drones into jazz minimalism for nine minutes before “Space Dwellers, Episode 3” goes full-on over-the-top 92-second dance party. Finally. That leaves the closer, “Johnny,” as the landing spot where the back and forth jams/songs trades end, and they’re due a jam and provide one, but “Johnny” also follows on theme from “Space Dwellers, Episode 3” and the start of “Medival” and other funk-psych stretches, so summarizes List Do Borykan well. Again, worth it for the first song, but is much more than just that as a listening experience.
Toronto-based folk experimentalist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Avi C. Engel starts off the 10-song Sanguinaria with the first of its headphone-ready arrangements “Sing in Our Chains” assessing modernity and realizing, “We were better off in the trees.” In addition to Engel‘s actual voice, which is well capable of carrying records on its own, with a distinctive character, part soft and breathy in delivery but resilient with a kind of bruised grace and, as time goes on, grown more adventurous. In “Poisonous Fruit” and “The Snake in the Mirror,” folk, soul and organically-cast sprawl unfold, and where “A Silver Thread” brings in electric guitar and lap steel, “Deathless” — the longest cut at 6:33, arriving paired with the subsequent, textural “I Died Again” — is sparse at first but builds around whatever stringed instrument Engel (slow talharpa?) is playing and Paul Kolinski‘s banjo, standout vocal harmonies and a subdued keeping of rhythm. Along with Kolinski, Brad Deschamps adds lap steel to the opener and the more-forward-in-percussion “Extasis Boogie,” which is listed as an interlude but nearly five minutes long, and Lys Guillorn contributes lap steel to “A Silver Thread,” with all due landscape manifestation. Sad, complex, and beautiful, the 52-minute long-player isn’t a minor undertaking on any level, and “Personne” and the penultimate “Bridge Behind the Sun” emphasize the point of intricacy before the looping “Larvae” masterfully crafts its resonance across the last six minutes of the album.
Begun in 1993 as Peach, London heavy prog rockers Suns of the Tundra celebrate 30 years with the encompassing hour-long The Only Equation, their fifth album, which brings back past members of the band, has a few songs with two drummers, and is wildly sprawling across 10 still-accessible tracks that shimmer with purpose and melody. The title-track seems to harken to a ’90s push, but the twisting and volume-surging back half stave redundancy ahead of the patient drama in the 10-minute “The Rot,” which follows. On the other side of the metal-leaning “Run Boy Run,” with its big, open, floating, thudding finish representing something Suns of the Tundra do very well throughout, the three-part cycle of “Reach for the Inbetween” could probably just as easily have been one 15-minute cut, but is more palatable as three, and loses nothing of its fluidity for it, the build in the third piece giving due payoff before “The Window is Wide” caps in deceptively hooky style. Whether one approaches it with the context of their decades or not, The Only Equation is deeply welcoming. And no, its proggy prog progness won’t resonate universally, but nothing does, and that doesn’t matter anyhow. Without giving up who they are creatively, Suns of the Tundra have made it as easy as they can for one to get on board. The rest is on the listener.
Natskygge sneak a little “Paranoid” into “Delir,” the instrumental opener/longest track (immediate points) of their second album, Eskapisme, and that’s just fine as dogwhistles go. The Danish classic psych rockers made a well-received self-titled debut in 2020 and look to expand on that outing’s classic vibe with this 34-minute eight-tracker, which is rife with creative ambition in the slower “Lys på vej” and the piano-laced “Fjern planet,” which follows, as well as in a mover/shaker like “Titusind år,” the compact three-minute strutter “Frit fald” or what might be the side B leadoff “Feberdrøm” with its circa-1999 Brant Bjork casual groove and warm fuzz, purposefully veering into psychedelia in a way that feels like a preface for the closing duo “Livet brænder,” an organ/keyboard flourish, grounded verse and airy swirls over top leading smoothly into the likewise-peppered but acoustically-based “Den der sidst gik ud,” which conveys patience without giving up the momentum the band has amassed up to that point. I’ll note that my ignorance of the Danish language doesn’t feel like it’s holding me back as “Fjern planet” holds forth its lush melancholy or “Titusind år” signals the band’s affinity for krautrock. Not quite vintage in production, but not too far off, Eskapisme feels like it was made to be lived with, the songs engaged over a period of years, and I look forward to revisiting accordingly.
Portland’s Last Giant reportedly had a bit of a time recording their fourth long-player, Monuments, in a months-long process involving multiple studios and a handful of producers, among them Adam Pike (Holy Grove, Young Hunter, Red Fang, Mammoth Salmon, etc.) recording basic tracks, Paul Malinowski (Shiner, Open Hand) mixing and three different rounds of mastering. Complicated. Working as the three-piece of founder, principal songwriter, guitarist and vocalist RFK Heise (ex-System and Station), bassist Palmer Cloud and drummer Matt Wiles — it was just Heise and Wiles on 2020’s Let the End Begin (review here) — the band effectively fill in whatever cracks may have been apparent to them in the finished product, and the 10-track/39-minute offering is pop-informed as all their output to-date has been and loaded with heart. Also a bit of trumpet on “Saviors.” There’s swagger in “Blue” and “Hell on Burnside,” and “Feels Like Water” is about as weighted and brash as I’ve heard Last Giant get — a fun contrast to the acoustic “Lost and Losing,” which closes — but wherever a given track ends up, it is deftly guided there by Heise‘s sure hand. Sounds like it was much easier to make than apparently it was.
Growth is either the second or third full-length from Polish heavy psych doomers Moonstone depending on what you count, but by the time you’re about three minutes into the 7:47 of second cut “Bloom” after the gets-loud-at-the-end-anyway atmospheric intro “Harvest” — which establishes an undercurrent of metal that the rest of the six-song/36-minute LP holds even in its quietest parts — ordinal numbering won’t matter anyway. “Bloom” and “Sun” (8:02), which follows, are the longest pieces on Growth, and that in itself speaks to the band stripping back some of their jammier impulses as compared to, say, late 2021’s two-song 12″ 1904 (discussed here), but while the individual tracks may be shorter, they give up nothing as regards largesse of tone or the spaces the band inhabit in the material. Flowing and doomed, “Sun” ends side A and gives over to the extra-bass-punch meditativeness of “Night,” the guitar building in the second half to solo for the payoff, while the six-minutes-each “Lust” and “Emerald” filter Electric Wizard haze and the proggy volume trades of countrymen like Spaceslug, respectively, close with due affirmation of purpose in big tone, big groove, and a noteworthy dark streak that may yet come to the fore of their approach.
It’s not quite the centerpiece, but in terms of the general perspective on the world of the record from which it comes, there’s little arguing with Sonic Demon‘s “F.O.A.D.” as the declarative statement on Veterans of the Psychic War. As with Norway’s Darkthrone, who released an LP titled F.O.A.D. in 2007, Sonic Demon‘s “F.O.A.D.” stands for ‘fuck off and die,’ and that seems to be the central ethic they’re working from. Like most of what surrounds on the Italian duo’s follow-up to 2021’s Vendetta (review here), “F.O.A.D.” is coated in tonal dirt, a nastiness of buzz in line with the stated mentality making songs like swinging opener “Electric Demon” and “Lucifer’s the Light,” which follows, raw even by post-Uncle Acid garage doom standards. There are moments of letup, as in the wah-swirling second half of “The Black Pill,” a bit of psych bookending in “Wolfblood,” or the penultimate (probably thankfully) instrumental “Sexmagick Nights,” but the forward drive in “The Gates” highlights the point of Sonic Demon hand-drilling their riffs into the listener’s skull, and the actually-stoned-sounding groove of closer “To Hell and Back” seems pleased to bask in the filth the album has wrought.
If you’re taking on From the Ages‘ deceptively-titled first full-length, II — the trio of guitarist Paul Dudziak, bassist Sean Fredrich and drummer David Tucker issued their I EP in 2021, so this is their second release overall — it is perhaps useful to know that the only inclusion with vocals is opener/longest track (immediate points) “Harbinger.” An automatic focal point for that, for its transposed Sleep influence, and for being about four minutes longer than anything else on the album, it draws well together with the five sans-vox cuts that follow, with an exploratory sensibility in its jam that feels like it may be from whence a clearly-plotted song like “Maelstrom” or the lumbering volume trades of “Tenebrous” originate. Full in tone and present in the noisy slog and pre-midpoint drift of “Epoch” as well as Dudziak‘s verses in “Harbinger,” From the Ages seem willful in their intention to try out different ideas, whether that’s the winding woe of “Obsolescence” or the acoustilectric standalone guitar of closer “Providence,” and while that can make the listener less sure of where their development might take them in stylistic terms, that only results in their being more exciting to hear in the now.
Not only is Astral Magic‘s Cosmic Energy Flow — released in May of this year — not the first outing from the Finnish space rock outfit led by project founder and spearhead Santtu Laakso in 2023, it’s the eighth. And that doesn’t include the demo short release with a live band. It’s also not the latest Astral Magic about two months after the fact, as Laakso and company have put out two full-lengths since. Unrealistic as this level of productivity is — surely the work of dimensional timeporting — and already-out-of-date as the eight-song/42-minute LP might be, it also brings Laakso into collaboration with the late Nik Turner of Hawkwind, who plays sax on the opening title-track, as well as guitarists Ilya Lipkin of Russia’s The Re-Stoned and Stefan Olesinski (Nuns on Napalm), and vocalists Christina Poupoutsi (The Higher Craft, The Meads of Asphodel, etc.) and Kev Ellis (Dubbal, Heliotrope, etc.), and where one might think so many personnel shifts around Laakso‘s synth-forward basic tracks would result in a disjointed offering, well, anything can happen in space and when you throw open doors in such a way, expectations broaden accordingly. Maybe it’s just one thing on the way to the next, maybe it’s the record with Nik Turner. Either way, Astral Magic move inextricably deeper into the known and unknown cosmos.
Until the solo hits in the second half of “The Barrens,” you almost don’t realize how much space there is in the mix on Green Inferno‘s Trace the Veins. The New Jersey trio like it dank and deathly as they answer the rawness of their 2019 demo with the six Esben Willems-mastered tracks of their first album, porting over “Spellcaster” and “Unearth the Tombs” to rest in the same mud as malevolent plodders like “Carried to the Pit” and the penultimate “Vultures,” which adds higher-register screaming to the already-established low growls — I doubt it’s actually an influence, but I’m reminded of Amorphis circa Elegy — that give the whole outing such an extreme persona if the guitar and bass tones weren’t already taking care of it. The tortured feel there carries into closer “Crown the Virgin” as the three-piece attempt to stomp their own riffs into oblivion along with everything else, and one can only hope they get there. New songs or the two older tracks, doesn’t matter. At any angle you might choose, Green Inferno are slow-churned extreme sludge, death-sludge if you want, fully stoned, drenched in murk, disillusioned, misanthropic. It’s the sound of looking at the world around you and deciding it’s not worth saving. Did I mention stoned? Good.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 31st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
As to why only 42 tapes? Well aside from the fact that it’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything, I don’t really know. But at least it’s that.
Today, Ukrainian sludgethrowers The Device release their new three-songer, titled EAST in all-caps as though to emphasize the other-ness of Eastern Europe from the perspective of the western portion of the continent, on limited cassette through Galactic SmokeHouse, which honors the outing’s live recorded, harsh, dense-toned chaos with handmade art, poems, and exclusive tracks on the B-side that aren’t available in the DL version.
Proceedings from the release — also streaming in full as of today — go to benefit the war effort in Ukraine, which now has the rest of Europe and beyond fortifying itself for who the hell knows what will happen in the next couple years as it drags on, the Ukrainian people running point in a proxy war between my home country of the US and Russia which reaffirms that America learned nothing from wasting 20 years and I don’t even know how many lives in Afghanistan and Iraq — that’s before you get to the money — and reminds once again that humans, primarily, don’t deserve a planet this beautiful. Nonetheless, we’re here and we’re wrecking up the place.
How does this war end? And when? I don’t know. Think Russia won’t just throw hundreds of thousands of its ‘soldiers’ under the treads of US and European tanks? Think America is going to bankrupt itself again without sending ground troops in? And when NATO goes to war with Russia, and that’s basically WWIII, what does China have to say about it? I think about these things, and then my head starts to hurt when I think it could be my kid’s generation fighting this war in another 10-plus years, and having seen my own generation pulled apart by needless conflict in a war of aggression — that the US started, I’ll note — to watch the cycle start up all over, with nuclear threat looming, is all the more disheartening. So yeah.
I’m not saying it’s not worth supporting Ukraine. I’m saying it’s not worth betting on humanity.
And on that happy note, I’ll turn you over to the PR wire info for The Device‘s EAST — which was recorded in 2021 when all Eastern Europe had to worry about was a fucking plague like everyone else at the time — and the war-themed video that accompanies the 13-minute “Front” from it. Alongside “Work” (10:24) and the interlude “Crawl” (2:44), “Front” is duly raw and biting, and if you actually make it through watching the clip and feel nothing, just a heads up, you might be a sociopath.
The Device rises again. From the ashes of the ruined buildings. From the tears of the forsaken ones. From the blood of the dead.
‘Front’ is a single promoting the new album of the ancient brotherhood. ‘EAST’ is to be released on a DIY TAPE the 31st of March, 2023. By buying this album, you are helping in the fight for freedom of Ukraine and its people. Money from this tape is being sent to those who need it in the UA. Right now we are raising money for a thermal viewfinder for our friend Ivan, fighting in Donbas.
This album is dedicated to all Easterners in Europe.
Stay strong, brothers and sister. We will see better times. The power of change is within us.
Eastern Europe. War. Regime. Propaganda. Gov-Party police. Inhumane working conditions in modern day slavery – minimum wage jobs. This is an album touching on all of those topics so vivid in everyday life of the Easterners today. With this music, we are fighting against all of those as much as we can. To help our Ukrainian brothers and sisters win the most important of all fights, the fight for freedom of the whole East against the muscovite invasion, we are sending all the profits from this record to the Ukrainian army.
East is an album that is a pure expression of anger, anguish and grief of living in Eastern Europe. Raw, disgusting sounds full of saturation and distortion. Sludge in the most real form. DIY live recorded on one day in a basement in Poland during summer 2021.
Side A recorded live in one day, in a basement somewhere in the heart of Poland, in much calmer and safer times, during the summer 2021.
Recording Side A – Cebula Mix – Cebula (except B1,3) Cover art and B1 mix – Wiktor Kozak Video: Maciej Niemczyk
Contains TAPE ONLY B SIDES:
1. Unsleeping – Unsleeping 2. Aргос – BCD 3. RAQAL – the beauty of the bad trip
Tape mastered, hand numbered, hand copied and crafted by Cebula. MC tape in a handmade cardboard box. Hand numbered, limited to 42 copies. Made from 100% recycled materials. Additionally, there is an insert with tracklist and two poems. One in Ukrainian, one in Polish. Both full of darkness and sorrow. Just like the music.
Though admittedly the paradigm has shifted somewhat in the era of social media word-of-mouth, manipulable algorithms and so on, Polish heavy, like that of Greece, Ukraine and to a lesser extent Italy, has never seemed to carry the same respect in the greater continental sphere as bands from, say, Germany, Sweden, or the UK. I won’t claim to understand centuries of European tribal politics — and oh the war drums beat again — but such outright discrimination is only to the detriment of all. And again, that’s lessened over recent years, but in some cases there is still a sense of isolation, parallel perhaps to American views of bands from Mexico or Canada, both nations with vital undergrounds.
One could go on at length about the rigors of geopolitical relations as regards fuzzed out rock and roll, doom, and other sundry weighted sounds, but the thing is, with a mind toward Polish heavy, I put on Krapkowice-based four-piece Andromeda Space Ritual‘s All Shades of Perception when I started writing this, and I’m afraid my brain has melted. I can feel it quietly leaking out of my left ear as I slightly tilt my head in that direction to account for how I’m sitting on the couch with my legs folded under me and in the quiet of the early morning, I can’t say I regret either the inevitable cleanup — that extra roll of paper towels is gonna get put to work, I guess — or the liquefication of my train of thought.
Indeed, I’d much rather take out the ol’ stationary and send Andromeda Space Ritual‘s Kamil Lasonczyk a personal thank you note for ‘dat bass’ throughout the album. The crowded Euro underground — Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western — is not at all short on heavy psychedelic rock, but All Shades of Perception stands out in no small part because of the prominence of low end and the creativity of the play there in kind with the keyboards and synth of Dominik Spasówka, the guitar of Marcin Bis — which isn’t necessarily de-emphasized, but able to lead or recede in the well-balanced mix — and Mariusz Łyżwa‘s drums. Indeed, where more jam-minded fare is often held together by the drums, sometimes in what feels like endlessly looping progressions, in 15-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Signs of the Unseen” and along with the early, vaguely Eastern-tinged echoing howls of centerpiece “Relay,” Lasonczyk is doing the word of uniting the melody and rhythm, bringing the songs coherence they’d otherwise be very much lacking.
Released in June 2020 through Galactic SmokeHouse, the five-song/44-minute instrumentalist offering is cosmic in its sense of reach and ability to cast an atmosphere. The band bills it as their first full-length following 2017’s four-tracker Satellite, and if one considers All Shades of Perception as a debut release, its patience is all the more impressive. Toward the end of “Relay,” even as the guitar reaches outward toward My Sleeping Karma-style contemplation, bolstered in doing so by the weaving lines of keys, the vibe is particularly resonant in a way that, while shorter, feels like it’s building on the slower and languid soloing in the second half of “Signs of the Unseen,” the two tracks separated by the sub-four-minute “Lazarus,” a piece that would seem to be entirely synth-based (there may be some guitar effects in there, etc.) and intended as a bridge between the longer songs that’s more substantial than an interlude or at very least more hypnotic. That, too, could be the idea.
The structure of All Shades of Perception works along those lines, longer song, shorter, longer, shorter, longer, with the digipak edition of the album available from the label its only physical release to date, allowing for an entirely linear experience to which the flow is excellently suited. That is to say, while one could split sides A and B between “Lazarus” and “Relay” and I’m sure give vinyl psych heads a platter worthy of their various social-sharable photoshoots (nothing against them), the direct-from-one-end-to-the-other approach has its own rewards when it comes to listening. “Bullet Cluster” (6:41) follows “Relay” and holds a tense undercurrent in its first couple minutes, subtly telegraphing the surge to come at the 2:30 mark introduced by — naturally — the bassline as the full meditative lumber takes hold, shades of a fleshed-out Om taking the foreground backed by the steady tap of snare and the crashing cymbals. Guitar and bass are both exploring, and the vibe is almost improvised feeling, but there’s too much of an awareness of where they’re headed for it not to be plotted, the comedown before the five-minute mark leading to a second crescendo before the last keyboard drama — Wendy Carlos walks by and waves, carrying a beat up LP of the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack — before the near silence at the outset of 10-minute closer “Telepath” sets the foundation for its own movement.
For being five minutes shorter, “Telepath” is no less immersive than was “Signs of the Unseen” — or “Lazarus,” or “Relay” or “Bullet Cluster,” for that matter — as it works on a singular, patiently executed linear pattern, marked out by some more angular turns than have come before and a right-out-the-airlock spacey midsection of punchy noodling, but the end result is righteously fluid and settles itself in its final minutes on a throne of tonal substance, the guitar, bass and keys meeting in a way worthy of the far-off thudding drums backing them. It comes apart with a last crash and residual noise in a way that feels purposefully unplanned, but however much off-the-cuff it may or may not be, it hints at a spontaneity under the surface in what Andromeda Space Ritual do and is a welcome last-minute manifestation of the ‘ritual’ in their name.
To answer the question you didn’t ask, no, I don’t think I’ll miss my brain. Looking down at the puddle of goo that once held the noncorporeal essence of myself — the ‘me’ I think of as me — I’ll probably just scoop it up and shove it back in my ear, hope for the best. Fingers crossed, and such. And much respect for Polish heavy.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
By the early afternoon yesterday I was so tired I wanted to cry. The entire week was exhausting, and I slept late yesterday — until about 6:30AM, though doing so involved shutting off my alarm twice — but I’d gotten up before 4AM on Wednesday and a better night’s sleep obviously had not been enough. It’s 6:30 now too. My alarm went off at 5 o’clock so I could get up and write this before The Pecan was really kicking. I see him on the monitor, he’s awake. He hides in his blanket when he gets up now, as a game. When you go upstairs you say, “What is this lump? I remember putting a sweet kid to bed,” and then he uncovers himself and it’s a big reveal. Dude is big on repetitive play. We do this daily.
He was back to school this week, which was fine. We had a good week last week with him home but I think by the end he was ready for something else, so school is that. This week was kind of bumpier. I’ll ask him a question and he just ignores me, and last night at bedtime I don’t even remember why — I think I was putting away a toy — he started in both punching and biting me and I just took him upstairs and instead of closing out the usual bedtime routine just shut the door and left him there. He cried for a couple minutes and I came back downstairs and as usual The Patient Mrs. was like ‘you’re a terrible person’ without saying it out loud in her “I have WASP roots in Connecticut kind of way — which is lovely — and I went back upstairs and talked to him for a while. He asked why he didn’t have grandpas, so I sang him “Dear Prudence” and then talked about The Patient Mrs.’ dead father and my dead father for a while. Covid and a fall, respectively, if you’re curious.
The latter was interesting because The Pecan made the connection entirely on his own between his fall down stairs and cracked skull and my father’s — a connection I hadn’t previously made. He said “he got a big bonk” and I said “yes, much bigger than yours and he didn’t recover.” The kid is too smart for his own good. ALSO too smart for my good. I will cry when he moves across the country and abandons us here in this house.
Errands today. Shopping. Maybe Costco? I don’t know. I’m so out of it I might just be inclined to take him to a park and let him run it out, despite the fact that it’s been obnoxiously cold here all week. Just cold enough to make me want to hunker down. Cold enough that waiting for his bus in the morning has been an extra pain in the ass. We’ll see I guess. I tried to get him to watch A Hard Day’s Night yesterday but he wasn’t feeling it because it’s something different, plus he knows there’s a bus in Magical Mystery Tour — which is otherwise horrifying to a small child, mind you — and even the train in black and white doesn’t seem to be enough to persuade him away from that. Maybe I’ll put on the Yellow Submarine cartoon and just scar him for life. He can write an Obelisk Questionnaire someday about how his first musical memory was seeing Yellow Submarine at four years old and having nightmares forever about it.
There’s a Gimme show today. 5PM. All requests again. The playlist should be up by now, so thanks if you tune in. It’s a good show, as much as I can take responsibility for it.
Thanks for reading. Have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, drink a gallon of water. I’m back on Monday and will be around in the interim working on whatnot.
It’s been a load road, getting from there to here, and here isn’t even there yet if you know what I mean. Alas, Thursday. Day four — 4, IV, I can’t remember how I’ve been writing it out — of the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s a doozy. These things are always packed, in fact it’s pretty much the idea, but I still find that even this week as I’m putting out 10 reviews a day — we’ll get to 60 total next Monday — I’m playing catchup with more stuff coming down the pike. It seems more and more like each Quarterly Review I’ve done out of like the last five could’ve been extended a day beyond what it already was.
Alas, Thursday. Overwhelmed? Me too.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Messa, Close
After two LPs through Aural Music, Italy’s Messa arrive via Svart with a crucial third album in Close. The hype surrounding the record has been significant, and Close earns every bit of it across its 10-song/64-minute run, intricately arranged as the Italian four-piece continue to bridge stylistic gaps with an ease born of expansive songcraft and stunning performance, first from vocalist Sara Bianchin (also percussion) and further from guitarist Alberto Piccolo (also oud, mandolin), bassist/synthesist/vocalist Marco Zanin (also various keys and percussion), and drummer Rocco Toaldo (also harsh vocals, percussion), who together create a complete and encompassing vision of doom that borrows periodically from black metal as anything artsy invariably must, but is more notable for its command of itself. That is, Messa — through the entirety of the hour-plus — are nothing but masterful. There’s an old photo of The Beatles watching Jimi Hendrix circa 1967, seeming resigned at being utterly outclassed by the ‘next thing.’ It’s easy to imagine much of doom looking at Messa the same way.
If what goes around comes around, then don’t be surprised when “Fire & Ice” goes circle-mosh near the end and you get punched in the head. Old. School. Southern. Sludge. Metal. Dudes play it big, and mean, and grooving. Think of turn of the century acts like Alabama Thunderpussy and Beaten Back to Pure, maybe earlier Sourvein, but with a big old lumbering update in sound thanks to a Phillip Cope recording job and a ferocity of its own. They’ve got a pedigree that includes Black Skies, Manticore and Black Hand Throne, and though The Weight of Death is their first long-player, they’ve been a band for seven years and their anti-dogmatic culmination in “Mr. Miserum” feels sincere as only it can coming from the land of the Southern Baptist Church. Aggression pervades throughout, but the band aren’t necessarily monochromatic. Sometimes they’re mad, sometimes they’re pissed off. Watch out when they’re pissed off. And am I wrong for feeling nostalgic listening? Can’t be too soon for them to be retro, right? Either way, they hit it hard and that’s just fine. Everybody needs to blow off steam sometime.
Do I even need to say it, that a band called Dirty Nips offering up a demo called Can O’ Dirty Demo Nipples get up to some pretty cheeky shenanigans therein? I hope not. Still, as the Bristol-via-Poland outfit crunch out the riffs of “The Third Nipple” and harmonica-laced Hank Williams-style country blues on “As I Stumbled” and touch on psychedelic jamming in opener “The Basement” and the later experimental-feeling “Dirty Nips Pt. II,” which just drops to silence in the middle enough to make you wonder if it’s coming back (it is), there’s clearly more going on here than goofball chicanery. “Jechetki” builds on the blues and adds a grunge chug, and closer “Mountain Calling” is — dare I say it? — classy with its blend of acoustic guitar and organ, echoing spoken vocal and engagingly patient realization. They may end up wishing they called themselves something else as time goes on, but as it stands, Dirty Nips‘ demo tape heralds a sonic complexity that makes it that much harder to predict where they might end up, and is all the more satisfying a listen for that.
Though they’re by no means the only band in Sweden to dig into some form of traditionalism in heavy rock, Västerås five-piece Ocean to Burn evoke a decidedly more straight-ahead, Southern-heavy feel throughout the nine songs and 33 minutes of Vultures, their self-released full-length. The throaty grit of vocalist Adam Liifw is a big part of that impression, but in the guitars of Mathilda Haanpää and Fredrik Blomqvist, the tone is more stripped-down than huge-sounding, and the grooves from bassist Pontus Jägervall and drummer Fredrik Hiltunen follow suit. That central purpose suits songs like “Wastelands” and the more strutting “Nay Sayer,” and though they largely stick to their guns style-wise, a bluesier nod on “No Afterlife” early and a breakout in closer “Vulture Road” assure there’s some toying with the balance, even as the tracks all stick to the three- to about four-and-a-half-minute range. They’ve been at it for a while, and seem to revel in the ‘nothin-too-fancy’ attitude of the material, but honestly, they don’t need tricks or novelty to get their point across.
Following an encouraging start in 2019’s Cirrus (review here), Nijmegen instrumentalists Mt. Echo return with the conceptual-feeling Electric Empire, still holding some noise rock crunch in “Automaton” following the opener “Sound & Fury,” but saving its biggest impacts for the angular “50 Fanthoms,” the 10-minute “Flummox” and subsequent “As the Tide Serves,” and on the whole working to bring that side of their approach together with the atmospheric heavy post-rock float of “The End of All Dispute” and the early going of “These Concrete Lungs.” At 10 songs and just under an hour long, Electric Empire has room for world-building, and one of Mt. Echo‘s great strengths is being able to offset patience with urgency and vice versa. By the time they cap with “Torpid,” the trio of Gerben Elburg, Vincent Voogd and Rolf Vonk have worked to further distinguish themselves among their various sans-vocals proggy peers. One hopes they’ll continue on such a path.
Vocalist Eric Brock, guitarist/backing vocalist/principal songwriter Lewis Inglis, bassist Dean Gordon and drummer Ryan Wilson are Edinburgh’s Earl of Hell, and their debut EP, Get Smoked, builds on the brash grooves of prior singles “Arryhthmia” (sic) and “Blood Disco,” the latter of which appears as the penultimate of the six included tracks on the 23-minute outing. More stomp-and-swing than punch-you-in-the-face, “I Am the Chill” nonetheless makes its sense of threat clear — it is not about chilling out — as if opener “Hang ’em High” didn’t. Split into two three-song sides each with a shorter track between, it’s in “Parasite” and “Blood Disco” that the band are at their most punk rock, but as the slower “Bitter Fruits” mellows out in opening side B, there’s more to their approach than just full-sprint shove, though don’t tell that to closer “Kill the Witch,” which revels in its call and response with nary a hesitation as it shifts into Spanish-language lyrics. High-octane, punk-informed heavy rock and roll, no pretense of trying to push boundaries; just ripping it up and threaten to burn ladies alive, as one apparently does.
Released on New Year’s Day after being recorded in Dec. 2021 in the trio’s native Rome, “Yonder” serves as the initial public offering and first single from Slugg, and at 9:59, it is more than a vague teaser for the band they might be. The guitar of Jacopo Cautela and the bass of Stephen Drive bring a marked largesse that nonetheless is able to move when called upon to do so by Andrea Giamberardini‘s drumming, and Cautela‘s corresponding vocals are pushed deeper back in the mix to emphasize those tones. Much of the second half of “Yonder” is given to a single, rolling purpose, but the band cleverly turn that into a build as they move forward, leaving behind the gallops of the first few minutes of the song, but making the transition from one side to another smoothly via midsection crashes and ably setting up the ring-out finish that will draw the song to its close. Not without ambition, “Yonder” crushes with a sense of physical catharsis while affecting an atmosphere that is no less broad. They make it easy to hope for more to come along these lines.
Joe Freedman, also of Banshee, first saw Telepathic Radio released as the debut full-length from Mirage in 2021 through Misophonia Records on tape. There are still a few of them left. That version runs 30 songs and 90 minutes. The Cardinal Fuzz/Centripetal Force edition is 50 minutes/20 tracks, but either way you go, get your head ready for dug-in freakness. Like freakness where you open the artwork file for the digital promo and all three versions are the cover of a Rhapsody album. Ostensibly psychedelic, songs play out like snippets from a wandering attention span, trying this weird thing and seeing it through en route to the next. In this way, Telepathic Radio is both broad-ranging and somewhat contained. The recordings are raw, fade in and out and follow their own paths as though recorded over a stretch of time rather than in one studio burst, which seems indeed to be how they were made. Horns, samples, keys, even some guitar, a bit of “TV Party” and “TV Eye” on “TV Screens,” Mirage howls and wails out there on its private wavelength, resolved to be what it is regardless of what one might expect of it. By the time even the 20-track version is done, the thing you can most expect is to have no clue what just happened in your brain. Rad.
With its first, self-titled release, An Evening Redness basks in morose Americana atmospheres, slow, patient guitar drones, warm bass and steady rhythms giving way to periodically violent surges. Founded perhaps as a pandemic project for Brandon Elkins of Auditor and Iron Forest, the six-song full-length explores the underlying intensity and threat to person and personhood that a lot of American culture just takes for granted. The name and inspiration for the project are literary — ‘An Evening Redness in the West’ is the subtitle of Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel, Blood Meridian — and An Evening Redness, even in the long instrumental stretch of 12-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Alkali,” treats the subject matter with duly textured reverence. Elkins isn’t alone here, and the vocals of Bridget Bellavia on the brooding “Mesa Skyline” and the closing pair of “Pariah” and “Black Flame at the Edge of the Desert,” as well as the contributions of other guests in various locales around the world up to and including Elkins‘ native Chicago should not be downplayed in enriching these explorations of space and sound. Bands like Earth and Across Tundras warrant mention as precursors of the form, but An Evening Redness casts its own light in the droning “Winter, 1847” and the harmonica-wailing “The Judge” enough to be wholly distinct from either in portraying the sometimes horrifying bounty of the land and the cruelty of those living in it.
Brothers John and Marc Beaudette — who if they aren’t twins are close enough — comprise New Hampshire’s Cryptophaser, and XXII is their first demo, pressed in an edition of 50 purple tapes. Dudes might as well just open my wallet. Fair enough. In what’s a show of chemistry and musical conversation that’s obviously been going on longer than these songs — that is, I highly suspect the maybe-twin brothers who drum and play guitar have been playing together more than a year — they bring an adversarial bent to the conventions of heavy fuzz, and do so with the proverbial gusto, breaking away from monolithic tones in favor of sheer dynamic, and when they shift into the drone in “October 83,” they make themselves a completely different band like it isn’t even a thing. Casual kickass. At 13 minutes, it flows like a full-length and has a full-length’s breadth of ideas (some full-lengths, anyway), and the energy from one moment to the next is infectious, be that next part fast, slow, loud, quiet, or whatever else they want it to be.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Points for honesty here. In addition to featuring within their ranks Hubert ‘Cebula’ Lewandowski, who doubles as the head of Galactic SmokeHouse, also plays in The Howling Eye and apparently has a thing for taking his clothes off at gigs, Dirty Nips have titled the second side of the physical version of their first LP ‘Jams ‘n’ Shit.’ We should all strive toward such expressive straightforwardness.
The newcomer trio hail from the wellspring of ’90s Britpsych that is Bristol — actually, it’s just where The Heads are from, but that’s enough as far as I’m concerned — as Lewandowski relocated from Poland, and he and Łukasz Domański either were or are bandmates in The Howling Eye as well. Set to release on Feb. 10, Can O’ Dirty Demo Nipples has surely already destroyed the targeted ads I’ll get because of my search history, and I feel all the more compelled to throw myself headfirst into the fuzz of its advance singles “The Third Nipple” and “Dirty Nips Pt. II.” I’m sensing a theme here.
If the cover looks like it’s a funny shape, that’s because it’s a cassette release. It’s 42.0 percent dirt concentrated.
Oh, lighten up:
Dirty Nips – Can O’ Dirty Demo Nipples – 2022 – (Fuzz / Psych) Bristol, UK
Bristol’s heavy psych-rock trio Dirty Nips debuts CAN O’ DIRTY DEMO NIPPLES, their first ever release consisting of self-produced material recorded during COVID-19 lockdown, the cassette album is set to be released 10th of February 2022 released by Galactic SmokeHouse.
Dirty Nips is a new outlet that is sure to entertain any fan of fuzz, heavy riffs and the 60s. Drawing on influences in bands like Meatbodies, Fuzz or Fu Manchu, Dirty Nips embody an original and coherent spirit of Bay Area heavy psych rock scene; fun, noise and freedom.
CAN O’DIRTY DEMO NIPPLES is an album made in a 100% DIY fashion. Released on cassette, it’s written, recorded, mixed, mastered, funded and produced entirely by the band itself – with Alicja Gołębiewska designing cover art. The album came about in spite of constant pitfalls of covid pandemic, i.e. numerous lockdowns, border shut and other such attractions. It consists of SIDE A with six songs, also available digitally, and mysterious SIDE B available only for physical album holders. Put it on, crank it up and feel the dirt!
Tracklisting: 1. The Basement 2. The Third Nipple 3. As I Stumbled 4. Jachetki 5. Dirty Nips pt II 6. Mountain’s Calling
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Even if one might accuse Belfast unit Elder Druid of jumping the gun a bit in posting the album art and tracklisting of their new album before they’re finished recording it, mixing or mastering, it’s easy enough to understand why they might be excited-about-a-thing when you look at the Serpent Tusk Studio front cover for the impending release. Factor in as well that it was nearly a year ago that the follow-up to 2020’s Golgotha (review here) was first announced along with their signing to Interstellar Smoke Records, and alright, yeah, fair enough. There’s only so much sitting on hands one can reasonably be expected to do, especially when one is passionate about the work in question, which we already know Elder Druid are. Stick that in your marketing plan.
Carcosa will be out whenever it’s out — I’m told time is a flat circle anyhow, so whatever — and in the interim, an update is welcome. Not quite done, but coming together on multiple fronts, and the cover rules. Until I can actually hear the thing, that’s good enough for me.
From social media:
ELDER DRUID -‘CARCOSA’ TRACKLIST
We thought it was time for another update on our next album, ‘Carcosa’. We’ve had a number of delays in wrapping up the recording but we’re currently nearing the end and are set for a release in 2022.
It will comprise of 6 songs and they are listed below in the order they will appear on record:
1. Armada 2. Carcosa 3. Coffin Dropper 4. Gambit Caster 5. The Ingredient 6. Pandora’s Box
‘Carcosa’ will be released on vinyl via Interstellar Smoke Records and on CD/tape via Galactic SmokeHouse. We will have more information regarding pre-orders once we have the album mixed & mastered.
PERSONNEL: Gregg McDowell: Vocals Jake Wallace: Guitar Mikey Scott: Guitar Dale Hughes: Bass Daniel Zanker Ovalle: Bass Brien Gillen: Drums Album artwork: Serpent Tusk Studio
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 2nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
You’ve been around the block. When I’m writing for this site — and I don’t do much writing otherwise these days, to my combined chagrin and elation — I do so from the general perspective that the person hopefully reading it, anyone, whoever it might be, is much, much cooler than I am and already knows what I’m about to tell them. I do this because, usually, that’s true. So when I say you’ve been around the block, please know I believe it to be true.
Thus, when I further say that you already know Polish heavy will mess you up, please know that I know that you know that. Nonetheless, enter Moonstone.
The Kraków-based four-piece release their new two-songer EP, 1904 — not sure why the year for a name; maybe something to do with Poland’s push for independence as part of the larger Russian Revolution? — tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a crowded release day, I know, but do yourself a favor and take about half an hour to dig into “Magma” and “Spores” and I wholeheartedly, sincerely doubt you’ll regret doing so. This is my first experience with the band, who also released a self-titled debut in 2020 through Galactic Smokehouse and Interstellar Smoke Records, and it’s awesome and heavy and it sounds like all it wants to do is turn your bones into powder and frankly I’m on board for that at this point.
So there. No audio yet, but just go ahead and put it on your radar, where I’m sure it already is, because you’re so much cooler than I am. See how that works?
From the PR wire:
MOONSTONE – 1904
Moonstone combines heavily distorted guitars, a gut wrenching bass, and thunderous drum beats. This mixture of atmospheric doom flavors with stoner fierceness will cause a sonic trance on an orbital scale. Hailing from Krakow, Poland, the band have already made their mark on the underground scene with their 2019 self-titled debut.
The upcoming EP, mysteriously titled “1904”, perfectly captures the Moonstone’s consistent evolution. The band expand their musical landscape, incorporating elements of metal fusion, sludge metal, progressive metal, and funk. Just under half an hour, the album is a real journey to the unknown, that will surprise even the most steadfast metal veterans.
Tracklisting: 1. Magma 2. Spores
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Misiek in May 2021, Krzęcin, Poland.
