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Video Premiere: Carcaño, ‘Live at Ecolandia Park 2021’ Full Set

Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

carcano

Italian heavy psychedelic fuzzbringers Carcaño released their second album, By Order of the Green Goddess (review here), through respected purveyors Clostridium Records in early 2021. It looks like it was a warm, sunny day that the Reggio Calabria four-piece took to Parco Ecolandia — Ecolandia Park — in order to record a live set in an amphitheater carved into a hill. Sunny enough that the sound recording gear of Ottavio Leo is tucked away back under an umbrella for shade, in any case. As it’s currently well below freezing where I am and the boiler clicked off for some reason last night, I’ll note that the apparent warmth is perhaps a bit more of an escape from winter as I wait for the heat to come back on.

The group — guitarists Elmore Penoise (also vocals and synth) and El Pez, bassist/synthesist Ugo “The Doc” and drummer Max “The Mind” — are spread out across a kind of makeshift stage, playing tracks from the record like the languid, exploratory feeling “I Don’t Belong Here” or the more raucous opener “Riding Space Elephants,” which kind of is what it sounds like. They had previously posted “Riding Space Elephants” from the set, which is reasonable considering the quality they were able to capture in sound and video, but the full 28-minute stretch hasn’t been unveiled until now. Fancy.

Grooves abound, heavy abounds, space abounds. Abound abounds. In a manner wholly unpretentious, the band put their listener in a nodding mindset while a multi-camera, drone-inclusive shoot cycles through one shot to the next, edited in rhythm but not necessarily locked to the changes of each song; more concert film than music video. In the age of livestreams, etc., Carcaño represent themselves and the album well, and if you ever wanted an advertisement for the kind of fun you might have been a heavy rock or heavy psych drummer, look no further than Max “The Mind”. He’s putting in work, no doubt about it, but golly he looks like he’s having a good time doing it. And bonus points for the Neurosis shirt, dude. Do it in style.

If you haven’t heard By Order of the Green Goddess, it’s streaming below in full. Tracks there are organized by “Day” — “Day 1…” “Day 2…” and so on — whereas the live set seems to dispense with that, but everything the band plays comes from the latest album, so the clip is a cool way to get introduced in any case. Certainly beats working on a lazy Friday.

Enjoy:

Carcaño, ‘Live at Ecolandia Park 2021’ full set premiere

Video by Saverio Autelitano
photography Fabio Itri
Sound Recording by Ottavio Leo (RecOnBlack)
Clostridiumrecords

Recorded Live at Ecolandia Park

From https://turismo.reggiocal.it/: “Air, fire, water, and earth. These four elements identify the technological environmental amusement park called Ecolandia. It is a place where the beauty of the landscape blends with important activities that promote culture, social interaction, and the environment. Hence, therefore, the reference to the four thematic areas as ideal links to Greek mythology on the one hand, and, on the other, to a model of sustainable and participatory development.”

Setlist:
Riding Space Elephants
Green Grace
I Don’t Belong Here
Wasted Land

Carcaño are:
Elmore Penoise – Voice & Guitar/Synth
El Pez – Guitar
Ugo “The Doc” – Bass/Synth
Max “the Mind” – Drums

Carcaño, By Order of the Green Goddess (2021)

Carcaño on Facebook

Carcaño on Instagram

Carcaño on Bandcamp

Clostridium Records on Facebook

Clostridium Records website

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The Obelisk Questionnaire: El Pez of Carcaño

Posted in Questionnaire on November 9th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

El pez carcano

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: El Pez of Carcaño

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Just music and I got there because I developed a passion for sounds. What I do must always have fun.

Describe your first musical memory.

I was six or seven years old and I was in the car with my father, we were returning from the house we used for the holidays and on the highway he put on a stereo cassette and that moment I was struck by that voice, that guitar sound. He later discovered that it was “Across the Universe” by the Beatles. I remember it as if it were today and every time I take that stretch of road it comes back to me.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Concert of the Cure 1996 or 1997 and I was totally drunk, to enter two friends had to support me. I remember that for about an hour before the concert began, a music box sound was heard in the background which increased until the concert began. And I threw up. It was wonderful!

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Every day!!! I have few certainties.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

In this moment nowhere, art as it is understood today has stopped pursuing what was its primary goal, that of creating a universal language. A single work of art stimulated both the proletarian and the wealthy and promoted it at best. Now it’s just an elitist issue.

How do you define success?

A successful man is a fully realized man. Success is not measured on the basis of the bank account, it is taken for granted and it seems a circumstance response but I really think so. If you still enjoy what you do then you are a successful man.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Salvini in the government.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

It takes at least a month to answer this question, but I can tell you that I would like to be able to compose a riff like “The Wizard” (lol). No seriously I can’t answer.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Making you see things as you never imagined, must make you open your eyes and project your mind beyond any imposed limit and draw your own conclusions.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

My daughter! She will be born in January.

https://www.facebook.com/Carcaforte/
https://www.instagram.com/carcanostoner
https://carca.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/clostridiumrecords/
http://www.clostridiumrecords.com/

Carcaño, By Order of the Green Goddess (2021)

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Quarterly Review: Delco Detention, Fuzzy Lights, Blackwolfgoat, Carcano, Planet of the 8s, High Desert Queen, Megalith Levitation, Forebode, Codex Serafini, Stone Deaf

Posted in Reviews on September 27th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

Not really much to say about it, is there? You know the deal. I know the deal. This time we go to 70. 10 records every day between today and next Tuesday. It seems insurmountable as usual right now, but as history has shown throughout the last seven or however many years I’ve been doing this kind of thing, it’ll work out. Time is utterly irrelevant when there’s distortion to be had. Wavelengths intersecting, dissolution of hours. You make an extra cup of coffee, I’ll burn from the inside out.

The Fall 2021 Quarterly Review begins today. Let’s boogie.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Delco Detention, From the Basement

Delco Detention From the Basement

The essential bit of narrative here is that Tyler Pomerantz, founding guitarist of Delco Detention, is about 10 years old. Kid can fuzz. With his father, Adam, on drums, the ambitious young man has put together a wholly professional heavy rock record with a who’s who of collaborators, including Clutch‘s Neil Fallon on “The Joy of Home Schooling” (a video for which went viral last year), Jared Collins of Mississippi Bones, EarthlessIsaiah Mitchell, Bob Balch of Fu Manchu on the instrumental “The Action is Delco,” Erik Caplan of Thunderbird Divine on the highlight “Gods Surround,” as well as members of Hippie Death Cult, Kingsnake, The Age of Truth and others across the 15 tracks. The result is inherently diverse given the swath of personnel, tones, etc., but From the Basement plays thematically at points around the experience of being a young rocker — “All Ages Show,” “Digital Animal,” the title-track and “The Joy of Home Schooling” — but isn’t limited to that, and though there are some moodier stretches as there inevitably would be, Tyler holds his own among this esteemed company and the record’s an unabashed good time.

Delco Detention on YouTube

Delco Detention on Bandcamp

 

Fuzzy Lights, Burials

Fuzzy Lights Burials

A fourth album arriving some eight years after the third, Fuzzy LightsBurials doesn’t necessarily surprise with its patience, but its sense of world-building is immaculate and immersive. The Cambridge, UK, five-piece of violinist/vocalist Rachel Watkins, guitarist/electronicist Xavier Watkins, guitarist Chris Rogers, bassist Daniel Carney and drummer Mark Blay offer classic Britfolk melody tinged with heavy post-rock atmospherics and foreboding rhythmic push on the 10-minute “Songbird,” with the snare drum building tension for the payoff to come. Elsewhere, opener “Maiden’s Call” and “Haraldskær Woman” drift into darker vibes, while “Under the Waves” dares more uptempo psychedelic rock ahead of the highlight “Sirens” and closer “The Gathering Storm,” which offers bombast so smoothly executed one is surrounded by it almost before noticing. “Songbird,” “Maiden’s Call” and “The Graveyard Song” have their roots in a 2019 solo outing from Rachel Watkins called Collectanea, but however long this material may or may not have been around, it sounds refreshingly individual, natural, full, warm and still boldly forward thinking.

Fuzzy Lights on Facebook

Meadows Records on Bandcamp

 

Blackwolfgoat, (In) Control / Tired of Dying

Blackwolfgoat In Control Tired of Dying

One with greater knowledge of such things than I might be able to sit and analyze and tell you what loops and effects guitarist Darryl Shepard (Kind, Hackman, Milligram, etc.) is using to make these noises, but that ain’t me. I’m happy to accept the mystery of his new two-songer/23-minute EP, (In) Control / Tired of Dying, which slowly unfolds the psych-drone of its 14-minute leadoff cut over its first several minutes before evening out into a mellow, drifting one-man guitar jam, replete with a solo that subtly builds in energy before entering its minute-long fadeout, as if Shepard were to say he wouldn’t want things to get too out of hand. “Tired of Dying” follows with immediately more threatening tone, deep, distorted, lumbering, sludgy, with space for drums behind that never come. That’s not Blackwolfgoat‘s thing. As much as “(In) Control” hypnotized with its sweeter, unassuming rollout, “Tired of Dying” is consumption on a headphone-destroyer level, nine and a half minutes of low wash that’s exploratory just the same. These pieces were recorded live, and it hasn’t been that long since Shepard‘s 2020 Blackwolfgoat full-length, Giving Up Feels So Good (review here), but each cut digs in in its own way and the isolated feel is nothing if not relevant.

Blackwolfgoat on Facebook

Blackwolfgoat on Bandcamp

 

Carcaňo, By Order of the Green Goddess

carcano by order of the green goddess

From the outset with the stomps later in “Day 1 – The Beginning,” Italian fuzzers Carcaňo reveal some of the rawness in the production of their second full-length, By Order of the Green Goddess, but that doesn’t stop either their tones or the melodies floating over them from being lush across the album’s eight-song/40-minute run, whether that’s happening in the massive “Day 2 – Riding Space Elephants” (aren’t we all?) or the howling leadwork that tops the languid Sabbath/earlier-Mars Red Sky-gone-dark lumber of “Day 6 – I Don’t Belong Here.” They make it move on the cosmic chaos shuffle-and-push of “Day 4 – The Birth” and tap blatant Queens of the Stone Age up-strum riffing and wood block on “Day 5 – The Son of the Sun,” but it’s in spacious freakouts like “Day 3 – Green Grace” and the righteously drawn out “Day 7 – Wasted Land” that By Order of the Green Goddess most seems to set its course, with room for the acoustic experimentalism of “Day 8 – Running Back Home” at the end, familiar in concept but delightfully weird and ethereal in its execution.

Carcaňo on Facebook

Clostridium Records website

 

Planet of the 8s, Lagrange Point Vol. 1

Planet of the 8s Lagrange Point Vol 1

Paeans to space and the desert, riffs on riffs on riffs, grit hither and yon — Melbourne’s Planet of the 8s are preaching to the converted on Lagrange Point Vol. 1, and they go so far in the opening “Lagrange Point” to explain in a Twilight Zone-esque monologue what the phenomenon actually is before “Holy Fire” unfurls its procession with the first of four included guest vocalists. King Carrot of Death by Carrot would seem to know of which he speaks there, while Diesel Doleman (Duneater) tops “Exit Planet” for an effect wholly akin to Astrosoniq at max thrust, while Georgie Cosson of Kitchen Witch joins Planet of the 8s‘ own bassist Michael “Sullo” Sullivan on “X-Ray,” and Jimi Coelli (Sheriff) takes on the early QOTSA-style riffing of “The Unofficial History of Babe Wolf,” which would also seem to be the subject of the cover art. They wrap all these comings and going with “The Three Body Problem,” a jazzy minute-long instrumental that’s there and gone before you’ve even caught your breath from the preceding songs. 21 minutes, huh? That 21 minutes is packed.

Planet of the 8s on Facebook

Planet of the 8s on Bandcamp

 

High Desert Queen, Secrets of the Black Moon

High Desert Queen Secrets of the Black Moon

Debut albums with their stylistic ducks so much in a row are rare, but with the declaration “I am the mountain/You are the quake,” the chugging boogie in the post-Trouble “Did She?,” the opening hook of “Heads Will Roll,” the duly-open, semi-progressive tinge of “Skyscraper,” and the we-saved-extra-heavy-just-for-this finish of “Bury the Queen,” Austin’s High Desert Queen indeed show themselves as schooled with Secrets of the Black Moon. It is an encapsulation of modern stoner heavy idolatry, riff-led but not necessarily riff-dependent in its entirety, and both the good-vibes fuzz of “As We Roam” and the aptly-titled penultimate roller “The Wheel” manage to boast soaring vocal melodies that put the band in another league. They’re not necessarily starting a revolution in terms of style, but they bring together lush and crush effectively and when a band has so much of a clear idea of what they’re going for and the songwriting to back them up, first record or not, they rule the day. Don’t lose them among the swaths either of three-word-moniker heavy newcomers or the flood of Texan acts out there.

High Desert Queen on Facebook

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

 

Megalith Levitation, Void Psalms

Void Psalms by Megalith Levitation

Heavy and ritualized enough to earn its release on 50 neon green tapes — CDs too — the second full-length from Russia’s Megalith Levitation, Void Psalms tops 53 minutes of beastly lurch, with opener “Phantasmagoric Journey” (13:08) playing like half-speed Celtic Frost while the back-to-back two-parters “Datura Revelations/Lysergic Phantoms” (12:47) and “Temple of Silence/Pillars of Creation” (19:45) bridge cult-heavy worship with experimental fuckall, never quite dipping entirely into dark psychedelia, but certainly refusing lucidity outright. I don’t know what’s up with the punch of bass in the back end of “Temple of Silence/Pillars of Creation,” but that froggy sound is gloriously weirdo in its affect, and makes the whole jam for me. They cap with “Last Vision,” an admirably massive riffer that only spans seven and a half minutes but in that time still finds a way to drone the shit out of its nod. Cheers to Chelyabinsk as Megalith Levitation (who are not to be confused with Megaton Leviathan) offer intentionally putrid fruit on which to feast.

Megalith Levitation on Facebook

Pestis Insaniae Records website

Aesthetic Death website

 

Forebode, The Pit of Suffering

Forebode The Pit of Suffering

There is death, and there is sludge. Do doomers mosh in Texas? “Devil’s Due” might provide an occasion to find out, as the second EP, The Pit of Suffering, from Austin extremist slingers Forebode follows 2019’s self-titled short release (review here) with plenty of slow-motion plunder, “Metal Slug” opening in grim praise of weed before the rest of what follows moves from shortest to longest in an onslaught that grows correspondingly more vicious. Rest your head on that bit of twang at the start of “Pit of Suffering” if you want, that’s only going to make it easier for the band to crush your skull in the stretch before it returns at the end. And oh, “Bane of Hammers.” You build in speed and get so brutal, and then you do, you do, you do slam on the brakes and finish out as heavy as possible, an ultimate eat-all-in-its-path tonality that would be off-putting were it not so outright gleeful in its disgusting nature. What fun they’re having making these terrible sounds. Love it.

Forebode on Facebook

Forebode on Bandcamp

 

Codex Serafini, Invisible Landscape

codex serafini invisible landscape

Yeah, you think you can hang. You’re like, “Whatever, I like weird psych stuff.” Then Codex Serafini start in with the cave echo wails and the drones and the artsy experimentalism and you’re like, “Well, maybe I’m just gonna go back to Squaresville after all. Work in the morning, you know.” The Brighton, UK, fivesome have four tracks on Invisible Landscape, and I promise you no one of them is more real than the other. In fact, the entire thing is pretend. It doesn’t exist. Neither do you. You thought you did, then the sax started blowing and you realized you were just some kind of semi-sentient wisp swirling around in reverb and what the hell were we talking about okay yeah planets and stuff whatever it doesn’t matter just quick, put this on and be ready for the splatter when “Time, Change & Become” starts. You’re not gonna want to miss it, but there’s no way that stain is ever coming out of that shirt. Kablooie is how the cosmos dies.

Codex Serafini on Facebook

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

 

Stone Deaf, Killers

stone deaf killers

Killers is the third full-length from Colorado fuzz rockers Stone Deaf, and they continue to have a chorus for every occasion, in this case going so far as to import “Gone Daddy Gone” from your teenage remembrance of Violent Femmes and actually talk about burning witches in the “Burn the Witch”-esque “Tightrope.” Queens of the Stone Age has been and continues to be a defining influence here, but from the electronics in “Cloven Hoof” to the harder edges of closing duo “Silverking” and “San Pedro Winter,” the band refuse to be identified by anything so much as their songcraft, which is tight and sharply produced across the 44 minutes of Killers, their punk rock having grown up but not having dulled so much as found a direction in which to point its angst. A collection of individual tracks, there’s nonetheless a build of momentum that starts early and carries through the entirety of the outing. I’ll leave to you to make the clever remark about there being “no fillers.” Enjoy that.

Stone Deaf on Facebook

Golden Robot Records website

Coffin and Bolt Records website

 

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