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The Heads Sort of Announce Breakup; Final Shows in September

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 24th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

The Heads (Photo by JJ Koczan)

It’s fitting that even a breakup announcement from long-running Bristol psych heads The Heads — wait, what? — should be nebulous. These shows were announced some time ago, but I saw the following posted on the band’s social media, and even as they’re set Sept. 9 to release a 20th anniversary edition of 2002’s Under Sided, preceded by a limited 7″ with a May Blitz cover from Small Stone‘s well-ahead-of-its-time Sucking the ’70s compilation and an edit of “Born to Go” — both out through Rooster Rock — they’re putting out word that these will be the last shows the four-piece play.

Well you’ll have to pardon me, but that’s a pretty big fucking deal. The Heads are more than 30 years into one of heavy psych’s trailblazing tenures, and in the world of fuzz, psychedelic rock, acid jams and shoegaze, you’d have a hard time finding a band of that era whose legacy is so well earned. Everybody knows they, in fact, got somewhere.

I reached out to Hugo Owen Morgan and asked if this was really it. Honestly, I know playing with Mudhoney is cool and all, but I can’t bring myself to imagine a final The Heads show happening somewhere other than Roadburn in the Netherlands, however far that venerated festival has removed itself from its psychedelic and heavy foundations. Some bands you figure get on the bill no matter what.

Morgan was willing to say in so many words that the “final ever” might be as definitive as the “world tour” portion of the same sentence. I don’t know, but if you’d begrudge The Heads wanting to pick and choose their appearances from here on out and feel like they don’t need to be doing anything if they don’t want to, well, that’s true. This isn’t some pissant psych rock upstart with a TikTok and the same manager as insert-impressive-namedrop-here. This is The Heads. They’ve only ever done the thing for real. And if these do end up being their last shows ever, then they’re going out on the same terms under which they’ve always operated: their own and no one else’s.

But I do hope they keep going, at least to some degree. They want to take seven or 10 years, just put out limited reissues, archival live albums, various collections and the odd bit of jams, fine, but I’ll go on record saying I think The Heads have another album in them. I don’t have a god damned clue what that might sound like, but I would sure like to find out. Maybe we’ll get there maybe not. Life is long and weird.

Their announcement and links for the shows follow, as per the aforementioned social media:

The heads shows

Our final ever world tour is fast approaching.

Will be great to see some old familiar faces.

Sept 9th – Bristol Exchange
Sept 10th – London Electric Ballroom,with Mudhoney

https://exchangebristol.com/whats-on/#events/e76409

https://electricballroom.seetickets.com/event/mudhoney/electric-ballroom/1505859

The Heads are:
Simon Price: Guitar/Vocals
Hugo Owen Morgan: Bass
Paul Allen: Guitar/Vocals
Wayne Maskell: Drums

https://www.facebook.com/The-Heads-282801075465/4
https://www.instagram.com/theheadsrock/
https://theheads1.bandcamp.com/

The Heads, Undersided (2002/2022)

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Quarterly Review: My Diligence, BBF, Druids, Kandodo4, Into the Valley of Death, Stuck in Motion, Sageness, Kaleidobolt, The Tazers, Obelos

Posted in Reviews on June 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Oh we’re in the thick of it now, make no mistake. Day one? A novelty. Day two? I don’t know, slightly less of a novelty? But by the time you get to day three in a Quarterly Review, you know how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go. In this particular case, building toward 100 records total covered, today passes the line of the first quarter done, and that’s not nothing, even if there’s a hell of a lot more on the way.

That said, let’s not waste time we don’t have. I hope you find something killer in here, because I already have.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

My Diligence, The Matter, Form and Power

my diligence the matter form and power

The Matter, Form and Power is the third long-player from Brussels’ My Diligence, whose expansive take on melodic noise rock has never sounded grander. The largesse of songs like the Floor-esque “Multiversal Tree” or the choruses in “On the Wire” and the layered post-hardcore screams in “Sail to the Red Light” — to say nothing of the massive nod with which the title-track opens, or the progressively-minded lumbering with which the 10-minute “Elasmotherium” closes — brims with purpose in laying the atmospheric foundation from which the material soars outward. With “Celestial Kingdom” as its centerpiece, the heavy starting far, far away and shifting into an earliest-Mastodon chug as drift and heft collide, there are hints of Cave In in form if not all through the execution — that is, My Diligence cross similar boundaries but don’t necessarily sound the same — such that the growling that populates that song’s second half isn’t so much a surprise as it is a slamming, consuming, welcome advent. Music as a force. As much volume as you can give it, give it.

My Diligence on Facebook

Mottow Soundz website

 

BBF, I Will Be Found

BBF I Will Be Found

Their moniker derived from the initials of the three members — bassist/vocalist/synthesist Pietro Brunetti, guitarist/vocalist Claudio Banelli and drummer Carlo Forgiarini — Italian troupe BBF aren’t through I Will Be Found‘s five minute opener “Freedom” before they’ve transposed grunge vibes onto a go-where-it-wants psychedelia from out of an acoustic, bluesy beginning. Garage rock in “Cosmic Surgery,” meditative jamming in “Rise,” and a vast expanse in “T-Rex” that delivers the album’s title line while furthering with even-the-drums-have-echo breadth the psych vibe such that the synthy take of the penultimate “Wake Up” becomes just another part of the procession, its floating guitar met with percussion real and imagined ahead of the bookending acoustic-based closer “Supernova,” which dedicates its last 90 seconds or so to a hidden track comprised entirely of sweet acoustic notes that might’ve otherwise ended up as an interlude but work just as well tucked away as they are. Here’s a band who know the rules and seem to take a special joy in bending if not outright breaking them, drawing from various styles in order to make their songs their own. To say they acquit themselves well in doing so is an understatement.

BBF on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

 

Druids, Shadow Work

Druids Shadow Work

Progressive and melodic, the fourth album from Iowan trio Druids is nonetheless at times crushingly heavy, and in a longer piece like “Ide’s Koan,” the band demonstrate how to execute a patient, dynamic build, beginning slow and spaced out and gradually growing in intensity until they reach a multi-layered shouting apex. Drew Rauch (bass), Luke Rauch (guitar) and Keith Rich (drums) all contribute vocals at one point or another, and whether it’s in the plodding rock of “Dance of Skulls” or the not-the-longest-track-but-the-farthest-reaching closer “Cloak/Nior Bloom,” their modern prog metal works off influences like Baroness, Mastodon, Gojira, etc., while retaining character of its own through both rhythmic intricacy and its abiding use of melody, both well on display in “Othenian Blood” and the subsequent, drum-intensive “Traveller” alike. “Path to R” starts Shadow Work mellow after the ceremonial build-up of “Aether,” but the tension is almost immediate and Druids‘ telegraphing that the heavy is coming makes it no less satisfying when it lands.

Druids on Facebook

Pelagic Records on Bandcamp

 

Kandodo4, Burning the (Kandl)

Kandodo4 Burning the (Kandl)

Though it’s spread across two LPs, don’t think of Kandodo4‘s Burning the (Kandl) as an album. Or even a live album, though technically it’s that. You might not know, you might not care, but it’s a historical preservation. ‘The time that thing happened,’ where the thing is Simon Price of The Heads leading a jam under the banner of his Kandodo side-project featuring Robert Hampson of Loop, and bassist Hugo Morgan and drummer Wayne Maskell — who play in both The Heads and Loop — as part of The Heads‘ residency at Roadburn Festival 2015 (review here). I tell you, I was there, and I’ve seen few psychedelic rituals that could compare in flow or letting the music find its own shape(lessness) as it will. Burning the (Kandl) not only has the live set, but the lone rehearsal that the one-off-four-piece did prior to taking stage at Het Patronaat in Tilburg, the Netherlands, that evening. Thus, history. Certainly for the fest, for the players and those who were there, but I like to think in listening to these side-long stretches of expanse upon expanse that all of our great-grandchildren will worship at the altar of this stuff in a better world. Maybe, maybe not, but better to have Burning the (Kandl) ready to go just in case.

Kandodo on Facebook

Kandodo on Bandcamp

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

 

Into the Valley of Death, Ruthless

Into the Valley of Death Ruthless

The second EP in about nine months from Los Angeles’ Spencer Robinson — operating under the moniker of Into the Valley of Death — the seven-song Ruthless feels very much like a debut album despite a runtime circa 25 minutes. The songs are cohesive in bringing together doom and grunge as they do, and as with the prior Space Age, the lo-fi aspects of the recording become part of the overarching character of the material. Guitars are up, bass is up, drums are likely programmed, vocals are throaty and obscure at least until they declare you dead on “Ghost,” and the pieces running in the three-to-four-minute range have a kind of languid drawl about them that sound purely stoned even as they seem to reach out into the desert after which the project is seemingly named. Robinson, who also played bass in The Lords of Altamont and has another outfit wherein he fronts a full backing band, is up to some curious shit here, and whether or not it was, it definitely sounds like it was recorded at night. I’m not sure where it’s going, and I’m not sure where it’s been, but I know I’ll look forward to finding out.

Into the Valley of Death on Bandcamp

Doomsayer Records on Facebook

 

Stuck in Motion, Still Stuck

Stuck in Motion Ut pa Tur

Enköping, Sweden’s Stuck in Motion issued their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) to due fanfare, and Still Stuck (changed from the working title ‘Ut på Tur,’ which translates, “on tour”) arrives with a brisk reminder why. Jammy in spirit, early singles “Höjdpunkternas Land,” “Lucy” and “På Väg” brim with vitality and a refreshing take on classic heavy rock, not strictly retro, not strictly not, and all the more able to jam and offer breadth around traditional structures as in “I de Blå” for that, weaving their way into and out of instrumental sections with a jazzy conversation between guitars and keys, bass and drums, percussion, and so on. Combined with the melodies of “Tupida,” the heavier tone underlying “Fisken” and the organ-and-synth-laced shuffle of the penultimate “Tung Sol,” there’s a balance between psych and prog — and, on the closing title-track, horns — which are emblematic of an organic style that couldn’t be faked even if the band wanted to try. I don’t know the exact release date for Still Stuck — I thought it was already out when I slated this review — but its eight songs and 40 minutes are like the kind of afternoon you don’t want to end. Sunshine and impossible blue sky.

Stuck in Motion on Facebook

Stuck in Motion on Bandcamp

 

Sageness, Tr3s

SageNESS Tr3s

A blurb posted by Spanish instrumentalists Sageness — also written SageNESS — with the release of Tr3s reads as follows: “The future seen from the past, where another current reality is possible, follow us and we will transfer to a new dimension. (Tr3s),” and fair enough. One could hardly begrudge the trio a bit of escapism in their work, and listening to the 36 minutes across four songs that comprises Tr3s, they do seem to be finding their way into the ‘way out.’ Though if where they’re ending up is 12-minute finale “Event Horizon,” in which the very jam itself seems to be taffy-pulled on a molecular level until the solid bassline and drums dissipate and what takes hold is a freakout of propulsive, drift-toned guitar, I’m not sure if they do or don’t ultimately make it to another dimension. Maybe that’s on the other side? Either way, after the scope of “Greenhouse” and the more plotted-seeming stops of “Spirit Machine,” that end is somewhat inevitable, and we may be stuck in reality for real life, but Sageness‘ fuzzy and warm-toned heavy psychedelic rock makes a reasoned argument for daydreaming the opposite.

Sageness on Facebook

Interstellar Smoke Records store

 

Kaleidobolt, This One Simple Trick

kaleidobolt this one simple trick

You think you’re up for Kaleidobolt, and that’s adorable, but let’s be honest. The Finnish trio — whose head-spinning, too-odd-not-to-be-prog heavy rock makes This One Simple Trick laughable as a title — are on another level. You and me? They’re running circles around us in “Fantastic Corps” and letting the truth about humans be known amid the fuzz of “Ultraviolent Chimpanzee” after the alternately frenetic and spaced “Borded Control,” momentarily stopping their helicopter twirl to “Walk on Grapes” at the album’s finish, but even then they’re walking on grapes on another planet yet to be catalogued by known science. 2019’s Bitter (review here) boasted likewise self-awareness, but This One Simple Trick is a bolder step into their individuality of purpose, and rest assured, they found it. I don’t know if they’re a “best kept secret” or just underrated. However you say it, more people should be aware. Onto the list of 2022’s best albums it goes, and if there are any simple tricks involved here, I’d love to know what they are.

Kaleidobolt on Facebook

Svart Records website

 

The Tazers, Outer Space

The Tazers Outer Space

It probably wouldn’t fit on a 7″, but The TazersOuter Space EP isn’t much over that limit at four songs and 13 minutes. The Johannesburg trio’s melodicism is striking nearly at the outset of the opening title-track, and the fuzz guitar that coincides is no less right on as they touch on psychedelia without ever ranging so much as to lose sight of the structures at work. “Glass Ceiling” boasts a garage-rocking urgency but is nonetheless not an all-out sprint in its delivery, and “Ready to Die” hits into Queens of the Stone Age-esque rush after an acoustic opening and before its fuzzy rampage of a chorus, while “Up in the Air” is a little more psych-funk until solidifying around the repeated lines, “Give me a reason/Show me a sign,” which culminate as the EP’s final plea, like Witch played at 45RPM or your favorite stoner band’s cooler cousin. Four songs, it probably took more effort to put together than they’d like you to think, but the casual cool they ooze is as infectious as the songs themselves.

The Tazers on Facebook

The Tazers on Instagram

 

Obelos, Green Giant

Obelos Green Giant

Bong-worship sludge from London. It’s hard to know the extent to which Obelos — which for some reason my fingers have trouble typing correctly — are just fucking around, but their dank, lurching riffs, throaty screams and slow-motion crashes certainly paint a picture anyhow. Paint it green, with maybe some little orange or purple flecks in there. Interludes “Paranoise” and “Holy Smokes” bring harsh noise and a kind of improvised-feeling, also-quite-noisy chicanery, but the primary impression in Green Giant‘s six tracks/27 time-bending minutes is of nodding, couchlocked stoner crush, and I wouldn’t dare ask anything more of it than that. Neither should you. I’d argue this is an album rather than the EP it’s categorized as being, since it flows and definitely gets its point across in a full-length manner, but I’m not even gonna fight the band on that because they might break out a 50-minute record or some shit and, well, I’m just not sure I’m ready to get that high this early in the morning. Might have to reserve an entire day for that. Which might be fun, too.

Obelos linktr.ee

Obelos on Instagram

 

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Review & Track Premiere: Kandodo3, K3

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on May 20th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

kandodo k3

[Click play above to stream ‘Everything – Green’s – Gone” from Kandodo3’s K3. Album is out June 21 on Rooster Rock Records.]

Headphones at the ready for the third/fourth-ish full-length from Kandodo, this time incarnated as Kandodo3 and expertly delivering a packed 79 minutes of mostly minimalist psychedelic brainmelt. It’s been dubbed K3, simple enough, and its lengthy run plays out across seven tracks whose far-out sprawl is mitigated only by the distance the imagination of the listener is willing to follow them. At the nexus of all things Kandodo is guitarist Simon Price, also of garage-psych-fuzz scorchers The Heads, but Kandodo is a different bird altogether — not a bird at all, really; a supermarket in Malawi — and even as Price brings aboard The Heads bandmates Hugh Owen Morgan on bass and Wayne Maskell on drums to manifest the ‘3’ in Kandodo3, the identity of the project remains distinctly separate. It’s just something else, even if it’s some of the same people.

But what the three-piece construct, or anti-construct, in these tracks ranges from the 83-second guitar noise experiment of “Lapwinger” through the 39-minute final track “High on Planes/Drifter” that consumes sides C and D of the double-vinyl and finds Price re-teaming on the latter “Drifter” part with John McBain, as last heard in 2016’s dual-speed Lost Chants/Last Chance (review here), a record that itself was an experiment, intended for play at 33 or 45RPM depending on the listener’s preference and also presented as a 2CD with each version on its own disc. K3 doesn’t work with the same kind of meta-conceptual foundation, but its spaciousness in cuts like “Holy Debut,” the straightforward-in-comparison-to-what-follows opener “King Vulture” and of course the its-own-album finale, the record nonetheless weaves its narrative through open creativity and exploratory sensation. Its drone is droning and its layers are layered, but even in the lysergic music-box “Lounge Core” that closes side B and is just one of the two inclusions under six minutes long at 3:39, K3 basks in the unexpected and a vibe of weirdoist bliss that goes beyond “for art’s sake” and is headfirst into passion in the making.

And maybe that’s not immediately apparent in the 13-minute soundscape of “Everything – Green’s – Gone” at the close of side A after “King Vulture” and “Lapwinger,” but there is a joy in the creative process even in that piece’s moodier early stretch, where Price‘s buzzsaw guitar lead seems to be reminding of the forests lost to building empty shopping malls. The underlying low end — presumably that’s Morgan, but one never really knows and that’s part of the fun — gives that track its extra brood, and the drone would be enough to make Earth jealous, but the quiet key-like guitar (or keys), echoes “King Vulture” while foreshadowing “Lounge Core” to come, so even there, there’s some manner of intertwining “Everything – Green’s – Gone” to K3 as a whole. Similarly, “Holy Debut” feeds into “The Gaping Maw,” which is perhaps titled in honor of its spaciousness, in a way that highlights the overarching flow of the material. Not all transitions are so direct, but that change does make the point of how easily K3 has moved from one vibe to the next all along, doing so via long fades into and out of silence and the general open spirit of the material.

kandodo

That is, it sets up the audience so that expectation mirrors breadth. That’s no small feat — putting the listener where you want them, without the aid of catchy hooks or other immediately accessible fare — but neither is this Price‘s first time at this particular dance, and though he seems in places to be willfully giving up command of the songs in the name of aural adventure, whether that’s improv or just putting consciousness to the side for a moment and feeling out where a piece like “Lapwinger” does and doesn’t want to go during its brief run. That in itself is a joyful act, embracing that task of helping a thing make itself, and Kandodo3, despite the obvious shifts in atmosphere throughout, seem to have a sense of when to let go and when to steer the direction more actively — though relativity applies in that regard as much as in everything else.

It’s hard not to think of “High on Planes/Drifter” as a highlight, focal point, whatever you want to call it, and maybe that’s fair enough. At 39 minutes, it’s about half the total runtime, and its droned-out ambience is an achievement apart even from a song like “Everything – Green’s – Gone” or “The Gaping Maw,” oozing out with a fluidity distinct enough to be placed on its own LP and making its way from minimal to minimal-est as it moves toward what one assumes is the near-midpoint transition between its two parts, drums gradually fading in after the arrival of the 23rd minute with a building tension of tom hits, eBow-sounding drone and a rhythmic line floating atop. That thud holds almost maddeningly steady over the next 10-plus minutes, with the arrival of McBain (ex-Monster Magnet, Wellwater Conspiracy, etc.) announced via a fuzzy solo that only adds to the immersion of the track as a whole and helps carry it toward its quieter finish.

With the title reference to High Plains Drifter, there is perhaps unsurprisingly some spaghetti west in the atmosphere, but however it might use a repeating figure, “High on Planes/Drifter” never really fully adopts that specific kind of presentation. Like the rest of the album before it, it almost can’t help but be its own thing. And that thing won’t be for everybody — what’s that you say? experimentalist drone isn’t universally approachable? tell me more! — but whether those who take it on do so for the almost-80-minute blissout or to sit and wade through each subtle turn of Price‘s guitar the various obscure elements as they wade in and out of the mix, K3 nonetheless makes a personal connection with the listener via the intimacy at play beneath its surface and the honest creative whim at its core. So maybe it’s not for everybody. Fine. Those willing to make the connection, however, will find it delivers on engagement to a degree worthy of its vast sonic reach.

Kandodo on Thee Facebooks

Kandodo on Bandcamp

Forte Music Distribution on Thee Facebooks

Forte Music Distribution on Bandcamp

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