Posted in Questionnaire on December 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Paul Chavez of Stockhausen & The Amplified Riot
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
It’s entertainment, really. For me and for you. Whether it’s in private or I’m performing on stage – my goal is to entertain and provide for the soundtrack to a moment in your life.
Describe your first musical memory.
My most significant memory was seeing KISS in concert in 1979. After that experience, I knew I wanted to be an entertainer and a musician.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I have a lot of fond music-related memories so it would be tough to pick one as the best. Touring and performing in Mexico was quite an experience, performing in a meth house (not on purpose!) was also a bizarre and interesting experience… but also, seeing the Grateful Dead in 1989 was like nothing else I had experienced before in terms of the audience and the band’s culture. Outside of contemporary music – I stumbled upon a Holi ceremony at a Hindu temple when I first moved to Houston and that first-hand experience opened by eyes to an amazing world of music, film, culture, and incredible food!
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
When I was in 9th grade, we moved to a small town in the rural southern United States and I was regularly bullied for being a Jew. It didn’t take long until I seriously doubted everything about my culture, religion, as well as whether there were any good people in the world. Thankfully, we moved away to Washington, D.C. right after the school year ended… but it would be years before I got back in touch with my culture.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Hopefully to something positive for the artist and for people who enjoy the art.
How do you define success?
With my band – I define success as: when a publication completely outside of my circle writes about me. For example: Vogue has nothing to do with music, but if they write about what I’m doing, then I know I’ve reached an entirely different level of success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Can’t really think of anything. All experiences (good and bad) help shape who you are and your outlook.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Book publishing. My next endeavor will involve publishing books – chapbook style initially. I’ve been an avid book reader / collector for decades. I dipped my toe in the self-publishing world about 15 years ago with my book on spam poetry and I’ve produced zines on and off for years, but I want to move back in the direction of publishing books.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To evoke an emotion. If it doesn’t make you feel anything, then the art has failed you.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I love riding my bike and (lately) I have been plotting tours with extra time padded around gigs so I can get out and ride on the trails and paths wherever I am.
Posted in Reviews on September 30th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Guess this is it, huh? Always bittersweet, the end of a Quarterly Review. Bitter, because there’s still a ton of albums waiting on my desktop to be reviewed, and certainly more that have come along over the course of the last two weeks looking for coverage. Sweet because when I finish here I’ll have written about 100 albums, added a bunch of stuff to my year-end lists, and managed to keep the remaining vestiges of my sanity. If you’ve kept up, I hope you’ve enjoyed doing so. And if you haven’t, all 10 of the posts are here.
Thanks for reading.
Quarterly Review #91-100:
Hazemaze, Blinded by the Wicked
This is one of 2022’s best records cast in dark-riffed, heavy garage-style doom rock. I admit I’m late to the party for Hazemaze‘s third album and Heavy Psych Sounds label debut, Blinded by the Wicked, but what a party it is. The Swedish three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Ludvig Andersson, bassist Estefan Carrillo and drummer Nils Eineus position themselves as a lumbering forerunner of modern cultist heavy, presenting the post-“In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” lumber of “In the Night of the Light, for the Dark” and “Ethereal Disillusion” (bassline in the latter) with a clarity of purpose and sureness that builds even on what the trio accomplished with 2019’s Hymns for the Damned (review here), opening with the longest track (immediate points) “Malevolent Inveigler” and setting up a devil-as-metaphor-for-now lyrical bent alongside the roll of “In the Night of the Light, for the Dark” and the chugging-through-mud “Devil’s Spawn.” Separated by the “Planet Caravan”-y instrumental “Sectatores et Principes,” the final three tracks are relatively shorter than the first four, but there’s still space for a bass-backed organ solo in “Ceremonial Aspersion,” and the particularly Electric Wizardian “Divine Harlotry” leads effectively into the closer “Lucifierian Rite,” which caps with surprising bounce in its apex and underscores the level of songwriting throughout. Just a band nailing their sound, that’s all. Seems like maybe the kind of party you’d want to be on time for.
Released as a name-your-price benefit EP in July to help raise funds for the Ukrainian war effort, Track by Track is two songs London’s Elephant Tree recorded at the Netherlands’ Sonic Whip Festival in May of this year, “Sails” and “The Fall Chorus” — here just “Fall Chorus” — from 2020’s Habits (review here), on which the four-piece is joined by cellist Joe Butler and violinst Charlie Davis, fleshing out especially the quieter “Fall Chorus,” but definitely making their presence felt on “Sails” as well in accompanying what was one of Habits‘ strongest hooks. And the strings are all well and good, but the live harmonies on “Sails” between guitarist Jack Townley, bassist Peter Holland and guitarist/keyboardist John Slattery — arriving atop the e’er-reliable fluidity of Sam Hart‘s drumming — are perhaps even more of a highlight. Was the whole set recorded? If so, where’s that? “Fall Chorus” is more subdued and atmospheric, but likewise gorgeous, the cello and violin lending an almost Americana feel to the now-lush second-half bridge of the acoustic track. Special band, moment worth capturing, cause worth supporting. The classic no-brainer purchase.
Between Telekinetic Yeti, Mythic Sunship and Limousine Beach (not to mention Comet Control last year), Tee Pee Records has continued to offer distinct and righteous incarnations of heavy rock, and Mirror Queen‘s classic-prog-influenced strutter riffs on Inviolate fit right in. The long-running project led by guitarist/vocalist Kenny Kreisor (also the head of Tee Pee) and drummer Jeremy O’Brien is bolstered through the lead guitar work of Morgan McDaniel (ex-The Golden Grass) and the smooth low end of bassist James Corallo, and five years after 2017’s Verdigris (review here), their flowing heavy progressive rock nudges into the occult on “The Devil Seeks Control” while maintaining its ’70s-rock-meets-’80s-metal gallop, and hard-boogies in the duly shredded “A Rider on the Rain,” where experiments both in vocal effects and Mellotron sounds work well next to proto-thrash urgency. Proggers like “Inside an Icy Light,” “Sea of Tranquility” and the penultimate “Coming Round with Second Sight” show the band in top form, comfortable in tempo but still exploring, and they finish with the title-track’s highlight chorus and a well-layered, deceptively immersive wash of melody. Can’t and wouldn’t ask for more than they give here; Inviolate is a tour de force for Mirror Queen, demonstrating plainly what NYC club shows have known since the days when Aytobach Kreisor roamed the earth two decades ago.
Los Angeles-based four-piece Faetooth — guitarist/vocalist Ashla Chavez Razzano, bassist/vocalist Jenna Garcia, guitarist/vocalist Ari May, drummer Rah Kanan — make their full-length debut through Dune Altar with the atmospheric sludge doom of Remnants of the Vessel, meeting post-apocalyptic vibes as intro “(i) Naissance” leads into initial single “Echolalia,” the more spaced-out “La Sorcie|Cre” (or something like that; I think my filename got messed up) and the yet-harsher doom of “She Cast a Shadow” before the feedback-soaked interlude “(ii) Limbo” unfurls its tortured course. Blending clean croons and more biting screams assures a lack of predictability as they roll through “Remains,” the black metal-style cave echo there adding to the extremity in a way that the subsequent “Discarnate” pushes even further ahead of the nodding, you’re-still-doomed heavy-gaze of “Strange Ways.” They save the epic for last, however, with “(iii) Moribund” a minute-long organ piece leading directly into “Saturn Devouring His Son,” a nine-and-a-half-minute willful lurch toward an apex that has the majesty of death-doom and a crux of melody that doesn’t just shout out Faetooth‘s forward potential but also points to what they’ve already accomplished on Remnants of the Vessel. If this band tours, look out.
Ferocious and weighted in kind, Behold! The Monolith‘s fourth full-length and first for Ripple Music, From the Fathomless Deep finds the Los Angeles trio taking cues from progressive death metal and riff-based sludge in with a modern severity of purpose that is unmistakably heavy. Bookended by opener “Crown/The Immeasurable Void” (9:31) and closer “Stormbreaker Suite” (11:35), the six-track/45-minute offering — the band’s first since 2015’s Architects of the Void (review here) — brims with extremity and is no less intense in the crawling “Psychlopean Dread” than on the subsequent ripper “Spirit Taker” or its deathsludge-rocking companion “This Wailing Blade,” calling to mind some of what Yatra have been pushing on the opposite coast until the solo hits. The trades between onslaughts and acoustic parts are there but neither overdone nor overly telegraphed, and “The Seams of Pangea” (8:56) pairs evocative ambience with crushing volume and comes out sounding neither hackneyed nor overly poised. Extreme times call for extreme riffs? Maybe, but the bludgeoning on offer in From the Fathomless Deep speaks to a push into darkness that’s been going on over a longer term. Consuming.
The second album from Nashville’s The Swell Fellas — who I’m sure are great guys — the five-song/32-minute Novaturia encapsulates an otherworldly atmosphere laced with patient effects soundscapes, echo and moody presence, but is undeniably heavy, the opener “Something’s There…” drawing the listener deeper into “High Lightsolate,” the eight-plus minutes of which roll out with technical intricacy bent toward an outward impression of depth, a solo in the midsection carrying enough scorch for the LP as a whole but still just part of the song’s greater procession, which ends with percussive nuance and vocal melody before giving way to the acoustic interlude “Caesura,” a direct lead-in for the noisy arrival of the okay-now-we-riff “Wet Cement.” The single-ready penultimate cut is a purposeful banger, going big at its finish only after topping its immediate rhythmic momentum with ethereal vocals for a progressive effect, and as elliptically-bookending finisher “…Another Realm” nears 11 minutes, its course is its own in manifesting prior shadows of progressive and atmospheric heavy rock into concrete, crafted realizations. There’s even some more shred for good measure, brought to bear with due spaciousness through Mikey Allred‘s production. It’s a quick offering, but offers substance and reach beyond its actual runtime. They’re onto something, and I think they know it, too.
Stockhausen & the Amplified Riot, Era of the Inauthentic
For years, it has seemed Houston-based guitarist/songwriter Paul Chavez (Funeral Horse, Cactus Flowers, Baby Birds, Art Institute) has searched for a project able to contain his weirdo impulses. Stockhausen & the Amplified Riot — begun with Era of the Inauthentic as a solo-project plus — is the latest incarnation of this effort, and its krautrock-meets-hooky-proto-punk vibe indeed wants nothing for weird. “Adolescent Lightning” and “Hunky Punk” are a catchy opening salvo, and “What if it Never Ends” provokes a smile by garage-rock riffing over a ’90s dance beat to a howling finish, while the 11-minute “Tilde Mae” turns early-aughts indie jangle into a maddeningly repetitive mindfuck for its first nine minutes, mercifully shifting into a less stomach-clenching groove for the remainder before closer “Intubation Blues” melds more dance beats with harmonica and last sweep. Will the band, such as it is, at last be a home for Chavez over the longer term, or is it merely another stop on the way? I don’t know. But there’s no one else doing what he does here, and since the goal seems to be individualism and experimentalism, both those ideals are upheld to an oddly charming degree. Approach without expectations.
Nothing is Real stand ready to turn mundane miseries into darkly ethereal noise, drawing from sludge and an indefinable litany of extreme metals. The End is Near is both the Los Angeles unit’s most cohesive work to-date and its most accomplished, building on the ambient mire of earlier offerings with a down-into-the-ground churn on lead single “THE (Pt. 2).” All of the songs, incidentally, comprise the title of the album, with four of “THE” followed by two “END” pieces, two “IS”es and three “NEAR”s to close. An maybe-unhealthy dose of sample-laced interlude-type works — each section has an intro, and so on — assure that Nothing is Real‘s penchant for atmospheric crush isn’t misplaced, and the band’s uptick in production value means that the vastness and blackened psychedelia of 10-minute centerpiece “END” shows the abyssal depths being plunged in their starkest light. Capping with “NEAR (Pt. 1),” jazzy metal into freneticism, back to jazzy metal, and “NEAR (Pt. 2),” epic shred emerging from hypnotic ambience, like Jeff Hanneman ripping open YOB, The End is Near resonates with a sickened intensity that, again, it shares in common with the band’s past work, but is operating at a new level of complexity across its intentionally unmanageable 63 minutes. Nothing is Real is on their own wavelength and it is a place of horror.
Copenhagen heavy psych collective Red Lama — and I’m sorry, but if you’ve got more than five people in your band, you’re a collective — brim with pastoral escapism throughout Memory Terrain, their third album and the follow-up to 2018’s Motions (discussed here) and its companion EP, Dogma (review here). Progressive in texture but with an open sensibility at their core, pieces like the title-track unfold long-song breadth in accessible spans, the earlier “Airborne” moving from the jazzy beginning of “Gentleman” into a more tripped-out All Them Witches vein. Elsewhere, “Someone” explores krautrock intricacies before synthing toward its last lines, and “Paint a Picture” exudes pop urgency before washing it away on a repeating, sweeping tide. Range and dynamic aren’t new for Red Lama, but I’m hard-pressed to think of as dramatic a one-two turn as the psych-wash-into-electro-informed-dance-brood that takes place between “Shaking My Bones” and “Chaos is the Plan” — lest one neglect the urbane shuffle of “Justified” prior — though by that point Red Lama have made it apparent they’re ready to lead the listener wherever whims may dictate. That’s a significant amount of ground to cover, but they do it.
Existing in multiple avenues of progressive heavy rock and extreme metal, Echolot‘s Curatio only has four tracks, but each of those tracks has more range than the career arcs of most bands. Beginning with two 10-minute tracks in “Burden of Sorrows” (video premiered here) and “Countess of Ice,” they set a pattern of moving between melancholic heavy prog and black metal, the latter piece clearer in telegraphing its intentions after the opener, and introducing its “heavy part” to come with clean vocals overtop in the middle of the song, dramatic and fiery as it is. “Resilience of Floating Forms” (a mere 8:55) begins quiet and works into a post-black metal wash of melody before the double-kick and screams take hold, announcing a coming attack that — wait for it — doesn’t actually come, the band instead moving into falsetto and a more weighted but still clean verse before peeling back the curtain on the death growls and throatrippers, cymbals threatening to engulf all but still letting everything else cut through. Also eight minutes, “Wildfire” closes by flipping the structure of the opening salvo, putting the nastiness at the fore while progging out later, in this case closing Curatio with a winding movement of keys and an overarching groove that is only punishing for the fact that it’s the end. If you ever read a Quarterly Review around here, you know I like to do myself favors on the last day in choosing what to cover. It is no coincidence that Curatio is included. Not every record could be #100 and still make you excited to hear it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The question here I guess is when was the era of the authentic? If the implication of Paul Chavez‘s new solo krautrock, if-‘other’-was-an-actual-genre venture, Stockhausen and the Amplified Riot‘s upcoming EP, Era of the Inauthentic, is that that’s what we’re living through now, I’d be interested to find out when authenticity — that most treacherous of god-myths — was supposed to be so prevalent. Was it a time in the past? A time yet to come? Genuinely curious. Paul, if you read this, let me know.
I am wary of nostalgia, which is the death of progress, but Chavez has never wanted for individualism and Stockhausen and the Amplified Riot continues that particular thread from his work in Funeral Horse and Cactus Flowers while offering sonic departure. It feels experimental to a degree that I’m going to guess it is, but the exploratory aspects are given shape through the songs, and toward whatever it might lead, it is an introductory statement of marked reach and varied purpose. It would seem Chavez can take it anywhere he wants it to go from here, and maybe that’s the outlet he’s been looking for all along.
No audio yet, but that’ll come. For now, this from the PR wire:
STOCKHAUSEN & THE AMPLIFIED RIOT – Era of the Inauthentic
STOCKHAUSEN & THE AMPLIFIED RIOT is preparing to release the new EP Era of the Inauthentic via Artificial Head Records. Evoking a great sense of curiosity through genre-crossing to produce something memorable, Era of the Inauthentic will release on August 19, 2022.
Initially forming in early 2020 as a three-piece garage rock blues band, the pandemic put the brakes on the project and it’s now continuing as a solo project by Paul Chavez. Drawing inspiration from styles including 70s krautrock, psych rock and post-punk, along with artists such as DAVID BOWIE, KRAFTWERK, and STEREOLAB to name a few, STOCKHAUSEN & THE AMPLIFIED RIOT thrives in the realms of experimentation. Era of the Inauthentic, the title taken from a quote by Alan Vega of SUICIDE, combines an alluring concoction of textures from clean-toned and fuzz laden guitars, to dynamic percussion and audio FX.
“Adolescent Lighting” kicks off the new EP with a dynamic sound. “Hunky Punk” brings heavier guitars for a hard rock and punk fueled track, while “What if it Never Ends?” fuses distortion with a drum machine that oozes danceability. “Tilde Mae”, the longest track on the release, delivers almost twelve minutes of Teutonic riffs, punchy beats and an injection of intriguing electronics. The minimalist effect of “Intubation Blues” vocals accompanied by drums and harmonica introduces a different mood, concluding the EP with a dramatic effect.
Era of the Inauthentic is an eclectic venture through STOCKHAUSEN & THE AMPLIFIED RIOT’s distinctive sound. Powerful guitars deliver on the rock and punk elements of the project’s music, while electronics enhance the atmosphere of each track. Full of unexpected segments, Era of the Inauthentic will keep you hooked from start to finish.
Credits: Paul Chavez – guitars, vocals, drum machines, and electronics.
