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The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio Recap: Episode 12

Posted in Radio on March 18th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

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A few episodes ago, I played Graven and floated the idea of doing a whole episode that was super-aggressive. At the same time, I thought a show that went totally the other way would be cool too; all acoustic or near-acoustic stuff and nothing really aggro about it. Well, then my silly brain got started wondering why not do both? So here we are. The first hour? Oh that’s mad. Lots of sludge, lots of screaming. When you start off with YOB’s “Nothing to Win,” you know you’re throwing down some anger. I probably won’t play Primitive Man that often. This time, it felt important to make the point. So it’s there next to Coltsblood. Point made.

Second hour? Well, it starts with Lamp of the Universe, so things get pretty trippy and pretty mellow and they basically stay that way with T.G. Olson, Conny Ochs, No Man’s Valley, The Book of Knots — because god damn, I love that song — and Scott Kelly and the Road Home — ditto — getting progressively moodier as they go. From there, it’s time to jam to the end of the episode with WEEED and Träden, who I recently saw have a show coming up at Rough Trade in New York. No way I’ll be cool enough to be there, but it’s an awesome idea anyhow.

All told, I’m happy with how this one came out, and for being kind of a hodgepodge conceptually, I think it’s worth exploring different kinds of heaviness and what makes a particular song or moment feel that way. If you listened last night or hear the replay, thanks.

Here’s the full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 03.17.19

YOB Nothing to Win Clearing the Path to Ascend
Mastiff Vermin Plague*
Swarm of the Lotus From Embers When White Becomes Black
Sadhus, The Smoking Community Sobbing Children Big Fish*
BREAK
Horsehunter Bring out Yer Dead Horsehunter*
Primitive Man Sterility Caustic
Coltsblood Snows of the Winter Realm Split with Un*
Lamp of the Universe The Leaving Align in the Fourth Dimension*
T.G. Olson Backslider Riding Roughshod*
Conny Ochs Hammer to Fit Doom Folk*
No Man’s Valley Murder Ballad Outside the Dream*
The Book of Knots Traineater Traineater
Scott Kelly & the Road Home The Field that Surrounds Me The Forgiven Ghost in Me
BREAK
WEEED Carmelized You are the Sky*
Träden När lingonen mognar (Lingonberries Forever) Träden

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every other Sunday night at 7PM Eastern, with replays the following Tuesday at 9AM. Next show is March 31. Thanks for listening if you do.

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Friday Full-Length: The Book of Knots, Traineater

Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 16th, 2018 by JJ Koczan

The Book of Knots, Traineater (2007)

Traineater is something of the lost The Book of Knots record, which is counterintuitive because I’m pretty sure it was the one with widest initial distribution. But their 2004 debut, Book of Knots, is still available to stream via Arclight Records, and their 2011 third LP, Garden of Fainting Stars (review here), is diligently hosted for digital listening via Ipecac Recordings‘ Bandcamp page. Traineater, the middle outing from the kinda-New-York-based troupe, is only listenable as a YouTube playlist, and while physical copies are still available in some places, it never had nearly the profile it deserved. Though to be fair, I’m not sure it possibly could.

I’ll be blunt and say flat out I love this record. I’ve lived with it for 11 years and it still manages to both deliver something new each time and to make an impact in the listening experience. The Book of Knots was comprised of the four-piece of vocalist/violinist Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), guitarist Joel Hamilton (Battle of Mice, noted producer at Studio G in Brooklyn), bassist Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu) and the book of knots traineaterdrummer/vocalist Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), and each of their three albums carried a loose concept behind it. Sea, land and air. The self-titled told stories of the ocean, Traineater was in homage to post-industrial Rust Belt decline, and Garden of Fainting Stars explored Cold War-era piloting and the space race. Particularly on the latter two outings, the core four-piece was joined by a slew of guests, and as Traineater opens with “View from the Watertower,” also its longest track at 5:51 (immediate points), their impact can be felt immediately as Carla Bozulich (Evangelista) takes the lead vocal to top the album’s explosive launch.

The track devolves into eerie noise and manic poetry as Bozulich builds a maddening tension that, at 3:50, bursts out again on a slow instrumental march that’s every bit what post-metal could’ve become at its best. The album that follows is wildly experimental — each of its 14 tracks offers something different, as well as mostly different personnel; if there’s any crime to it, it’s that Kihlstedt doesn’t get more lead vocal opportunities, as she’s a fucking genius — and after Bossi takes on ol’-time radio compression to narrate the quick bounce of “Hands of Production,” Traineater gives its first demonstration of her utter brilliance with its title-track. Broken down mills, factory decline, worn down people, and a kind of wounded heart populate Traineater, and though there’s some element of condescension as Tom Waits gives a gravelly voice to the nonetheless catchy-as-hell “Pray,” which follows in succession, the raw soul on display in “Traineater” itself might only be matched by Kihlstedt‘s vocal/violin — yes, she does both at the same time; I’ve seen it live — on the later “Salina,” which is the first of a two-stage apex of the album in its second half.

Spoken word is introduced as an element in “View from the Watertower” to some degree, but as The Book of Knots welcome more and more guests — Jon Langford of The Mekons, Waits, Aaron Lazar of The Giraffes, Trey Spruance of Secret Chiefs 3 and Mr. Bungle (etc.), Norman Westberg (who’d go on to play in Swans), Mike Watt and a slew of others credited on the back cover: Alice Lee, Rick Moody, Wu Fei, Zeena Parkins, Brian Wolf, Allen Willner, Matt Welsh, Kathleen Brennan, John Davis, Doug Henderson, and Megan Reilly — on vocals and various instruments, some homemade, human speaking voice becomes an all the more essential element in the album’s varied personality on cuts like “Pedro to Cleveland,” the seething and malevolent “Red Apple Boy,” parts of “Midnight,” “Boomtown” and “Hewitt-Smithson,” which appears just ahead of the two minutes of noise in “Walker Percy Evans High School” that close out.

It is an album as dense as its list of personnel, but not inaccessible, and the showcase of voice is a big part of that. Kihlstedt‘s presence in “Traineater,” “Where’d Mom Go?” and “Salina” isn’t to be understated as a factor tying the material together, but whether it’s the selection of obscure verses to the traditional “The Ballad of John Henry” that start Traineater‘s second half, ending poignantly with the title character telling his son he must be a steel-driving man, which in the context of the record is only thereby perpetuating the decline of human-labor industrialization, or the somewhat departures from the concept in “Red Apple Boy” — more a treatise on the underlying threat of suburbia — and “Boomtown,” which carries through the theme, but from a British Isles perspective, each cut brings characters and stories to life such that it’s not artists sitting back in a New York studio talking about the Midwest, but more of an effort to engage a collective spirit. Issues of social class remain, but that too is a crucial part of the American story.

As noted, “Salina” is the first of a two-part apex to the work as a whole. The second piece of that is the chugging “Third Generation Pink Slip.” Fronted — and very much fronted — by Lazar, it begins with the lines, “This town’s so done/The writing’s on the wall/The more the union makes demands/The more the union falls,” and continues through with a scathing, gnashing performance that’s bitter enough to earn its concluding image: “Three generations on a Friday night spend their last paychecks, alright,” which arrives around a reprise of dutiful workaday whistling brought in during an earlier break. In combination with the violin-laced, hair-stand-on-end surge in the second half of “Salina,” it’s The Book of Knots at both their most outwardly heavy and arguably the book of knots traineater back covertheir most visionary, answering back the intensity of “View from the Watertower” with a righteous summation of Traineater‘s style and message alike, and it every bit earns the subsequent epitaph of “Hewitt-Smithson” and “Walker Percy Evans High School” that follows. At that point there’s not much left to say.

They played one show for Traineater, in New York at some theater downtown — was it Gramercy? It was one of them — and I was there. It was their first show, and BozulichLazar, and a ton of others showed up for the occasion. Incredible. There was one gig at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn for Garden of Fainting Stars the review of which is linked above, and there may have been one more in the years since, but I’m not sure on that. I may have blocked it out of my memory because I was so upset I couldn’t be there, if it did happen. Either way, the quartet of KihlstedtBossiMaimone and Hamilton have moved onto different projects. Last I heard Kihlstedt and Bossi were on Cape Cod, being brilliant under sundry guises. Hamilton was nominated for a Grammy for production work a few years back, and in addition to owning Studio GMaimone plays in the instrumental post-rock outfit No Grave Like the Sea and others. He recorded and mixed their debut album, Estelle, in 2016.

I won’t, but I could go on about Traineater, and frankly, I don’t care if you’ve never heard The Book of Knots or what. Sometimes I close out a week with a record just for myself, and this is one of those occasions. I won’t take away from either of their other releases, but this is an album so underrated that it feels like a crime against humanity. Approach with an open mind.

As always, I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading.

I stood outside for a minute last night in the parking lot of the stretch of townhouses where we live in Massachusetts last night in my shorts and my sandals and let the lazy snowflakes fall on my head. I don’t know what this winter’s going to be like up here — one feels permanently traumatized by capital-‘w’ Winter 2014 — but I enjoyed that moment and as it’s quarter to five in the morning now, I’m looking forward to when The Pecan wakes up and sees the two inches or so of snow that fell after he went to bed last night. I expect he’ll squeak in response. He’s been doing that a lot this week. He’s amazing.

We came back north from Jersey on Tuesday, I think. Yeah, Tuesday. Stole an extra 24 hours in the Mid-Atlantic owing to the end of World War I. I’ll take it however it comes. Spent most of the week beat to hell, as expected, and down, down, down in that narcissistic mire of fucking depressive horror. Awful. You feel like shit about everything and it just bleeds off you. I’m 37 years old and I fucking hate myself like I did when I was 12. Do you have any idea how sad that shit is a quarter-century later? A big part of me is like, “dude get over it” and then I just sit there and fucking chastise myself for existing and draining the life out of everyone around me — which up here is really only The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan. You think a one-year-old doesn’t deserve better than to hang around with my sad ass? Pathetic.

There’s a lot of shit that’s happened to me in the last two-plus years that I’m just not over. At all. At all. It’s personal, but it’s always there. You go through some things that change who you are on a fundamental level. You get scars, and they look different over time, but they don’t leave you.

Speaking of permanence — and yet radically shifting the subject — I’m thinking of getting a tattoo. Not going to say of what yet, and no, it has nothing to do with the baby, but yeah, I’ve got a design from Sean “Skillit” McEleny that’s headed toward finalization that I’m looking to get on the inside of my forearm. Haven’t quite decided right or left, but either way, it’s something I want visible.

The Pecan is waking up. I can hear him thumping around upstairs even with the new Spidergawd record playing — which rules, by the way — and maybe he’ll go back out and maybe not. Either way, time’s a crunch. Here’s what’s up for next week, subject to change:

Mon.:  New Light Choir full stream/review; Samavayo video premiere-ish; Bell Witch video.
Tue.: Pale Divine full stream/review; Fauna Timbre video premiere.
Wed.: Foghound full stream/review.
Thu.: Huata full stream/review.
Fri.: Maybe an Orango full stream/review? Otherwise Rotor review.

Packed. Next week is Thanksgiving in the US, and if you’re celebrating, all my best. We’ll be back down in New Jersey for it to see and host family. Very much looking forward to that, and you’ll note that the end of next week is pretty Euro-centric as a result. You know I overthink this stuff.

Alright, I should get going. Two quick plugs:

1. Hoodies and longsleeve shirts are up now at Dropout Merch: https://dropoutmerch.com/the-obelisk.

2. This Sunday at 7PM Eastern is a new episode of ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Radio: https://gimmeradio.com/

If you didn’t see over on Instagram, I bought a new microphone to use for the latter. Sounds pretty good but for the doofus talking into it. Ha.

Please have a great and safe weekend, and if I don’t say so again between now and then, an excellent Thanksgiving, and a productive start to the brutality that is the holiday season. Have fun. Back Monday.

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Live Review: The Book of Knots in Brooklyn, 05.15.13

Posted in Reviews on May 16th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

To my knowledge, The Book of Knots hadn’t done a live show since July 2007, when they took the stage at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre with a slew of guests to support their then-new second album, Traineater. I was there and it was grand. From Jon Langford (The Mekons) to Carla Bozulich (Evangelista) to Aaron Lazar (The Giraffes), the stage was in constant flux around Book of Knots steady members Carla Kihlstedt (vocals, violin), Joel Hamilton (guitar), Tony Maimone (bass) and Matthias Bossi (drums), grounded only by the consistent brilliance of the woefully underdiscovered material, songs like “Midnight,” “Hands of Production” and “The Captain’s Cup” ringing out through the not-packed but thoroughly-appreciative room in what I to this day consider one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, hands down. And I’ve seen a few.

Joined by Faun Fables and Skeleton Key, what may indeed have been The Book of Knots‘ second gig in six years was a different kind of family affair. I walked into Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory — my first time there since it moved from its old location on Leonard St. in Manhattan — to find Faun Fables already on stage and a goodly portion through their set, the duo of Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl seamlessly blending mountain folk spirit with art rock theatricality — both wore gowns and McCarthy brought one of her young daughters on stage while the other slept in the audience — and a fittingly earthy vibe. I recognized Frykdahl‘s voice immediately from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, of which Book of KnotsKihlstedt and Bossi were also members, though other than his vocals, Faun Fables shares almost nothing in common with the sadly defunct, ultra-dark avant metal outfit.

Still, they were more than enjoyable in that look-at-those-very-talented-weirdos kind of way, McCarthy echoing her own yodels in the closer with striking believability, if not much setup for Skeleton Key, a long-running NY-native post-noise rock four-piece (with whom Bossi once played) with jagged riffs and a double-dose of percussion in a standard kit and secondary cymbals, canisters and other found items that were thoroughly banged on. Most of what they played came from their first LP in a decade, last year’s Gravity is the Enemy — the material striking a blend between New York City’s ’90s noise-punk lineage and the heavier end of indie, without fear of the occasional rockabilly twang or slide guitar interjection — but between percussionist Benjamin Clapp recruiting Kihlstedt and others to run through the crowd with big paper mache marshmallow heads on and returning later to take a French horn solo in a similar fashion — they were hardly short on the avant elements either. Actually, knowing almost nothing about the band going into their set, they were exciting to watch.

Bassist/vocalist/founder Erik Sanko announced toward the end of their time that his mother has passed away on Sunday, and that added further emotionality to the already-striking “Roses,” the closer from Gravity is the Enemy and penultimate inclusion before “Wide Open” from 1997’s Fantastic Spikes through Balloon. When they were finished and Sanko came back out to retrieve his bass, the crowd goaded them into one more song, so they did “Roost in Peace” from 2002’s Obtanium, clicking sticks to keep the rhythm under the folksy melody line and memorable chorus. They seemed glad for the chance to do the encore, even if somewhat surprised to have been asked.

In 2011, The Book of Knots made their debut on Ipecac with Garden of Fainting Stars (review here), their third album behind the aforementioned Traineater on Anti- and their 2004 self-titled debut, released by Texas imprint Arclight. It was the final installment in a vague thematic trilogy, the first record centering around the nautical, the second the rust belt, the third aerospace — sea, land and air, roughly — and whether or not they’ll follow it with further tales of industrial decay and cruelties both personal and at-large remains to be seen,  but they hardly sounded finished at Knitting Factory. With guitarist/backing vocalist Jon Evans and keyboardist/backing vocalist Michael Jinno, Kihlstedt, Bossi, Maimone and Hamilton took the stage and bled before the audience even realized they were starting into the dreary moodiness of “All this Nothing” from Garden of Fainting Stars.

“We are purveyors of that type of music,” Bossi announced on mic from behind his kit, and sure enough, the remainder of the night proved him right, through from their very beginnings, The Book of Knots have been a richly dynamic band, moving from these ambient, still-melodic droning sections of sparse atmospherics to intense, crushing distortion and correspondingly weighted rhythmic thud. Rules are minimal and followed as whims dictate, but the songs are cohesive, and in the case of this set, flowed well together. It was late when they got going, and some of the setlist was cut out to make room, but “Tugboat” from the first album and the Traineater title-track showcased excellently the sonic variety in The Book of Knots‘ approach, Maimone‘s steady low end, Evans and Hamilton‘s guitars, Jinno‘s keys and even Bossi‘s drums and vocals all coming into and out of focus along the way.

Kihlstedt, who also has an album forthcoming with Bossi under the duo guise of Rabbit Rabbit, did most of the singing, her voice smooth and bluesy over “Traineater” and no less suited to the more active Garden opener “Microgravity,” which followed the spoken idiosyncrasies of “Hands of Production” and foreshadowed some of the heft to come in the latter half of the set. Frykdahl returned for a vocal/guitar spot on “Moondust Must” — he was the night’s only guest — which even the band acknowledged would be the most upbeat sounding thing they’d play. It was, and though I never got to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum during their day, I was thankful to get a glimpse at some of their expanded roots in Frykdahl and Kihlstedt‘s combined singing.

The high points were still to come, however. I had been glad to see “Pearl Harbor” on the setlist. I’ll confess it had been a while since I broke out the self-titled for a listen, so I didn’t remember precisely why I was glad to see it, but I knew that it being there was something to be happy about, and once they kicked into the slow, full-weight drudgery of the track’s second half, I immediately remembered the reason. Bossi pounded out a stomping but complex rhythm, Hamilton kept his I’m-a-producer’s cool while Evans punished his guitar with each strum on the other side of the stage, but it was Maimone‘s bass that left the greatest impression, each swell of the riff cycle resulting in a “voom” you could feel in your chest standing in front of the stage. It was even more satisfying for not having it so fresh in my memory, and a reminder of how much I lived with that self-titled when I first heard it, now nine years ago.

They followed and closed out with really the only song that possibly could have followed “Pearl Harbor,” “Salina” from Traineater, which never fails to send a shiver up my spine. It was a highlight in 2007 and remained one last night, and though it was late, I couldn’t help but hope for an encore of pretty much whatever they wanted to do — loud, quiet, whatever. No such luck on that, but “Salina” was more than one could ask for without being greedy, all six players locking into its build and noisy, deconstructed ending, Kihlstedt delivering one last highlight performance.

I already had a copy of Garden of Fainting Stars, and though I wanted to hit the merch table and see if there was anything to be had from the members of Book of Knots‘ other projects — be it Rabbit Rabbit, Two Foot Yard, Pere Ubu, etc. — it wasn’t to be, and I shuffled out of the Knitting Factory and back down the block to where I’d parked. It may not have been the same scale as six years ago, but for the chance to see this band as a band, almost entirely on their own, the show only confirmed for me how massively underappreciated The Book of Knots have been over the course of their time together. Not that I didn’t feel that way anyhow, but it’s nice to be proven right every now and again.

More pics after the jump. Thanks for reading.

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The Obelisk Presents: The Top 20 of 2011

Posted in Features on December 9th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Please note: This list is made up of my personal picks, not the results of the Readers Poll, which is ongoing — if you haven’t added your top 11 to that yet, please do.

It was an impossible task to keep up with everything that came out this year. I’ll say flat out that I didn’t. There are records that I just didn’t get to hear, and I should note at the outset that this list is mine. It’s based on my personal opinions, what I listened to the most this year and what I think 2011’s most crucial releases have been.

I’ve spent the better part of this week (and last, if brain-time counts) constructing this list, and I finally got it to a point where I feel comfortable sharing. Since last December, I’ve kept a Post-It of names, and all year, I’ve logged bands I’d want to consider for the final top 20. In the end, there were 78 bands and more that I didn’t get to write down for whatever reason. 2011 was nothing if it wasn’t overwhelming.

But here we are, anyway, and it’s done. Let’s get to it:

20. Suplecs, Mad Oak Redux

Released by Small Stone. Reviewed Nov. 5, 2010.

This is nothing if not a sentimental pick. Last year, I put Electric Wizard in the #20 spot because the record wasn’t out yet, and this year, I’m putting Suplecs (interview with bassist Danny Nick here) in just because I couldn’t imagine this list without them. Until literally a few minutes before I clicked “Publish” on this post, there was someone else in this spot, but ultimately, it had to be them. The New Orleans trio’s first record in half a decade wasn’t what I listened to most in 2011, it wasn’t the best album, or the most important, or career-defining, but when it came right down to it, god damn, I was just happy to have Suplecs back. It had been too long.

19. Elvis Deluxe, Favourite State of Mind

Released by Harmony Records. Reviewed June 14.

After a while, I was kind of shocked to find myself continuing to listen to Favourite State of Mind, the second album by Polish rockers Elvis Deluxe. The record’s dynamics didn’t immediately open up to me, but once I dug into the songs, I was wowed by their balance of catchy hooks and substantial-sounding riffs. The album was genre-relevant without being genre-minded, with vocal changes, organ, atmospheric shifts and a whole host of moods and turns. After hearing their 2007 debut, Lazy, I wasn’t expecting much out of the norm from Favourite State of Mind, and I’m still thrilled by just how wrong I was, and “Take it Slow” is among my favorite single songs of the year.

18. 40 Watt Sun, The Inside Room

Released by Metal Blade. Reviewed Aug. 11.

The gloomy opening statement from former Warning guitarist/vocalist Patrick Walker turned heads around the world with its unabashed emotional conviction, which was so much the central focus of the record as to be made a novelty by those who don’t usually consider doom an emotionally relevant genre (the widespread arguments against that notion I’ll leave for another time). What most stood out to me about The Inside Room was how the sentimentality translated into a gorgeous melodic sensibility and resulted in a lonely mood that was engrossing. On that level, it was easily among 2011’s most effective releases. It made you feel what it seemed to be feeling.

17. Sigiriya, Return to Earth

Released by The Church Within. Reviewed May 27.

It was an album that lived up to its name. Return to Earth marked the remaking of one of heavy rocks most stoned outfits: Acrimony. But, as Sigiriya (interview with drummer Darren Ivey here), the four-piece (down from five) would show that the years since the demise of their former band had found them progressing as musicians, resulting in a sound less directly stoner, more modern, more earthy. The songs, however, were what made it. It’s still a rare day that goes by that I don’t hum at least part of the chorus of “Mountain Goat” to myself, and if Return to Earth was a new beginning for these players, I can’t wait to see where they go next.

16. Totimoshi, Avenger

Released by At a Loss. Reviewed Aug. 16.

In addition to being Totimoshi‘s first album for At a Loss following the end of their deal with Volcom, Avenger was the first Totimoshi record since 2003’s ¿Mysterioso? not to be produced by Page Hamilton, and where 2006’s Ladrón and 2008’s Milagrosa moved away from some of the noisy crunch in the guitar of Tony Aguilar (interview here), Avenger managed to be both a return to form and a progression of the band’s melodicism. It seems, as ever, to have flown under most radars, but Totimoshi continue to refine their songwriting and have become one of the heavy underground’s most formidable and least classifiable bands.

15. Grifter, Grifter

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed Aug. 30.

With their 2010 EP release, upstart British trio Grifter informed us that The Simplicity of the Riff is Key, and on their self-titled Ripple Music debut, they put that ethic to excellent use, resulting in straightforward, catchy songs that were as high-octane as they were low-bullshit. The ultra-catchy “Good Day for Bad News” showed Grifter at the top of their form, and with a dose of humor thrown in, Grifter was the drunken stoner rock party you always wanted to be invited to and, of course, finally were. Now if only I could get Skype to work and get that interview with Ollie Stygall moving, I’d be happy to tell him personally he put out one of 2011’s most kickass rock records.

14. The Book of Knots, Garden of Fainting Stars

Released by Ipecac. Reviewed June 16.

I don’t know what’s most impressive about The Book of KnotsGarden of Fainting Stars — the songs themselves or that they were able to make any songs at all. With upwards of 20 guest spots around the core four-piece, the third in a purported trilogy of records from the avant rock originalists was an epic in every listen. Songs like “Microgravity” and the Mike Watt spoken word “Yeager’s Approach” pushed the limits of both genre and expectation, and miraculously, Garden of Fainting Stars was cohesive and enthralling in its narrative aspect. If it really was their last album, it was triumphant in a manner befitting its expanding-universe thematics.

13. Ancestors, Invisible White

Released by Tee Pee. Reviewed July 5.

Had it been a full-length, Invisible White would be higher on this list. Many out there who were enamored of Ancestors‘ 2008 Neptune with Fire debut have gone on to bemoan the Californian collective’s shift away from extended sections of heavy riffing and tales of sea monsters and other things that go “doom” in the night. I’m not one of them. The Invisible White EP was a brave step along a fascinating progression, and as Crippled Black Phoenix didn’t release a new album in 2011, I was glad to have Ancestors there to fill that morose, contemplative void, and I look forward to seeing how they expand on the ideas presented on Invisible White (if they decide to stick to this direction) for their next full-length.

12. Elder, Dead Roots Stirring

Released by MeteorCity. Reviewed Oct. 5.

Speaking of shifting approaches, still-young Massachusetts trio Elder also moved away from the Sleep-centric methods of their 2008 self-titled debut on the follow-up, Dead Roots Stirring. Still based very much around the guitar work of Nick DiSalvo (interview here), Elder songs like “Gemini” and the über-soloed “The End” pushed an influence of European heavy psych into the band’s aesthetic, and the result was both grippingly heavy and blown of mind. As an album long delayed by mixing and business concerns, when Dead Roots Stirring finally arrived, it was a relief to hear that Elder, though they’d varied the path, were still headed in the right direction.

11. The Gates of Slumber, The Wretch

Released by Rise Above. Reviewed May 5.

Hands down the year’s best traditional doom release. The Wretch so gleefully and so earnestly employed the conventions of ’80s-style doom — most especially those of Saint Vitus and Trouble — that even though the lyrical and musical content was miserable, I couldn’t help but smile as I listened. Songs like “Bastards Born” and “The Scovrge ov Drvnkenness” pushed The Gates of Slumber away from the barbarism the Indianapolis outfit had been touting on their last couple albums, including 2008’s Conqueror breakthrough, in favor of a more purely Chandlerian plod. “To the Rack with Them” remains a standout favorite and a line often referenced in my workplace dealings.

10. Weedeater, Jason… the Dragon

Released by Southern Lord. Reviewed Jan. 6.

I don’t know what you say to someone at this point who doesn’t like Weedeater. It just seems like a terrible way to go through life, without the madman ranting of “Dixie” Dave Collins (interview here) echoing perpetually in your ears, or never having witnessed their ultra-viscous fuzz in person. Jason… the Dragon was one of the earliest landmark releases of 2011, and practically the whole year later, it retains its hold, whether it’s the stomping fury of “Mancoon,” the lumbering groove of “Long Gone” or the surprisingly melodic “Homecoming.” The hard-touring, hard-hitting band did right in recording with Steve Albini to capture their live sound, and Jason… the Dragon was their strongest outing yet in terms of both songwriting and that unmistakable quality that makes Weedeater records Weedeater records.

9. Rwake, Rest

Released by Relapse. Reviewed Sept. 6.

I was surprised to see Rwake crack the top 10. Not because their first album in four years, the Sanford Parker-produced Rest, wasn’t superb, but because of how much the songs on the album stayed with me after listening. The Arkansas band’s last outing, Voices of Omens, was heavy and dark and had a lot going for it, but Rest upped the songwriting on every level and together with frontman CT (interview here) adopting a more decipherable shout over most of the record’s four main extended tracks, Rwake felt like a band reborn, and theirs was a highlight among several 2011 albums that showed there’s still room for individual growth and stylistic nuance within the sphere of post-metal.

8. Hull, Beyond the Lightless Sky

Released by The End. Reviewed Oct. 14.

It was back and forth, nine and eight, between Rwake and Hull for a while, but when all was said and done, the fantastic scope of Beyond the Lightless Sky gave the Brooklyn triple-guitar masters the edge. With a narrative structure behind it and a breadth of ambience and crushing, post-doomly riffing, Beyond the Lightless Sky was the defining moment that those who’ve followed Hull since their Viking Funeral demo have been waiting for. In concept, in performance, in sound and structure and heft, it absolutely floored me, and of all the heavy records I’ve heard with the tag applied to them in 2011, Hull‘s second full-length seems most to earn the tag “progressive.” A stunning and groundbreaking achievement.

7. Mars Red Sky, Mars Red Sky

Released by Emergence. Reviewed Aug. 29.

One of 2011’s most fascinating developments has been the boom in European heavy psychedelia, and the self-titled debut from French band Mars Red Sky was among the best releases to blend a jam-based sensibility with thick, warm fuzz and memorable riffs. Together with the sweet-hued vocals of Julien Pras (interview here), those riffs made for some of the most infectious hooks I heard all year on songs like “Strong Reflection” and “Way to Rome,” and where other bands jammed their way into psychedelic oblivion, Mars Red Sky were able to balance their focus on crafting quality songs, so that although they sounded spontaneous, the material was never self-indulgent or lacking accessibility. One just hopes they don’t lose sight of that musical humility their next time out.

6. Grayceon, All We Destroy

Released by Profound Lore. Reviewed on March 8.

There was a point earlier this year at which I had forgotten about All We Destroy. After reviewing it in March, I simply moved on to the next thing on my list, and the thing after, and the thing after. But before I knew it, in my head was the voice of Jackie Perez Gratz, singing the line “As I live and breathe” over her own cello, the guitar of Max Doyle and Max Doyle‘s drums. It got so persistent that, eventually, I went out and bought the record, because the mp3s I’d been given to review simply weren’t enough. That was probably July, and I don’t think I’ve gone a week since without listening to Grayceon. So although I classify it in the same league as Rwake and Hull in terms of what it accomplishes in and for its genre, All We Destroy gets the extra nod for the fact that I simply haven’t been able to let it go. And though I’ve come to further appreciate “Shellmounds,” “Once a Shadow” and “A Road Less Traveled,” the 17-minute “We Can” — from which the above-noted lyric is taken — remains the best single song I heard in 2011.

5. Red Fang, Murder the Mountains

Released by Relapse. Reviewed Feb. 16.

On paper, this one should’ve flopped: Band with minor buzz and a cool video hooks up with indie rock dude to record an album of dopey riffs and beardo bombast. Instead, Red Fang‘s second album and Relapse debut became the 2011 vanguard release for the Portland heavy underground, which is arguably the most fertile scene in the US right now. They toured the record widely, and made another killer video for the mega-single “Wires,” but the reason Murder the Mountains is top five material is because it’s lasted. It was February that I reviewed this record, and March that I interviewed guitarist/vocalist Bryan Giles, and I still can’t get “Into the Eye” and “Hank is Dead” and “Number Thirteen” (especially the latter) out of my head. When it came down to it, the songs on Murder the Mountains lived up to any hype the album received, and I’m a sucker for quality songwriting. I mean, seriously. That key change late into “Number Thirteen?” It’s the stuff of the gods.

4. Graveyard, Hisingen Blues

Released by Nuclear Blast. Reviewed Feb. 25.

I wasn’t particularly a fan of Swedish rockers Graveyard‘s 2008 self-titled debut. Even watching them at Roadburn in 2010, I was underwhelmed. But when I heard Hisingen Blues and was able to get a feel for what the retro-minded foursome were getting at stylistically — and most of all, that they were acknowledging that they were doing it without being glib or ironic about it — I found the material irresistible. We’re getting into seriously indispensable records now; ones that I’ve been unwilling to leave home without since they came, in, and Graveyard‘s Hisingen Blues has been a constant feature in heavy rotation. Everything from the devilish testimony of the title-track to the wiry guitars of the chorus to “Ungrateful are the Dead,” to the Skynyrd-ified solo capping “Uncomfortably Numb”: It’s been a year of revelry in all of it, and since they overcame my prejudice to impress on such a level, Graveyard (interview with drummer Axel Sjöberg here) are all the more deserving of their spot on this list.

3. Sungrazer, Mirador

Released by Elektrohasch. Reviewed Sept. 9.

What I hear in the second album from Dutch trio Sungrazer is the heralding of a new generation of fuzz rock. Taking influence from their forebears in Colour Haze and Kyuss, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Rutger Smeets (interview here), bassist/vocalist Sander Haagmans and drummer Hans Mulders followed and surpassed their stellar 2010 debut on every level, playing heavy riffs on expansive psychedelic jams and still finding room for some of 2011’s most memorable choruses in songs like “Sea” and “Goldstrike.” In so doing, Sungrazer affirmed the character of next-gen European fuzz and placed themselves at the fore of their scene, with touring and festival  appearances to support. For their warmth of tone and for the fact that I spent the better part of the summer streaming the record through the Dutch website 3voor12, there was no way they were going to be left out of the top 20. It wasn’t until I sat down and actually put the numbers together, though, that I realized how vital Mirador actually was.

2. Lo-Pan, Salvador

Released by Small Stone. Reviewed Feb. 16.

I was lucky enough to be sent some rough listening mixes of Ohio outfit Lo-Pan‘s Small Stone Records debut (following a reworked reissue of their Sasquanaut sophomore full-length), and in my email back to label head Scott Hamilton, I told him I thought he had a genuine classic on his hands. A year, I don’t even know how many Lo-Pan gigs and listens through Salvador later, I still feel that way 100 percent. If you were from another planet, and we got to talking at a bar, and you asked me what rock and roll should sound like in the place where I’m from, I’d hand you Salvador. I still think they should’ve started the album with “Generations,” but if that’s my biggest gripe, they’re clearly doing alright. “Bird of Prey” was the best live song I saw all year, and I saw it plenty, and cuts like “Bleeding Out” and “Struck Match” set the standard by which I’ll judge American heavy rock for a long time to come. Like the best of any class, Salvador is bigger than just the year in which it was released, and at this point, I don’t know what else to say about it.

1. YOB, Atma

Released by Profound Lore. Reviewed July 6.

This is as good as it gets, and by “it,” I mean life. YOB‘s last album, 2009’s The Great Cessation, was my album of the year that year as well, and I knew from the second I heard the self-produced Atma that nothing to come this year would top it. Like Ufomammut‘s Eve in 2010, Atma brings the entire genre of doom along with it on the new ground it breaks, refining what’s fast becoming YOB‘s signature approach even as it pushes ever forward. I still have to stop whatever I’m doing (not exactly good for productivity) whenever “Prepare the Ground” comes on, and songs like “Adrift in the Ocean” and “Before We Dreamed of Two” were humbling. Seriously. Humbling. Listening to them was like looking at those photographs from the Hubble that cover trillions of miles that we’ll never know and reveal gorgeous colors where our naked eyes only see black. If that sounds hyperbolic, thanks for getting it. YOB guitarist/vocalist Mike Scheidt (interview here) is, almost in spite of himself, one of American doom’s most crucial contributors, and with Atma, he and the rhythm section of bassist Aaron Reiseberg and drummer Travis Foster released what is without a doubt the best album of 2011.

A few quick housekeeping items and we’ll call it quits. First, honorable mentions. If this list went to 25, also included would be The Wounded Kings, Earth, Larman Clamor, Olde Growth and The Atlas Moth. Roadsaw were also in heavy consideration, so they’re worth noting, as are many others.

Obviously, I couldn’t include them, but two of my favorite releases in 2011 also came from Blackwolfgoat and HeavyPink, and I’m thrilled and honored to have helped put them out in the small way I did.

And as I said above, there are records I didn’t hear. I haven’t heard the new Black Pyramid yet. Or Orchid. Or a bunch more that I could go on listing. I’m only one man and this is only my list, for better or worse. Again, I really do hope you’ll contribute yours to the group poll, the results of which will be out Jan. 1.

I’ll probably have some more to wrap up 2011 as the month winds down, but until then, thank you so much for reading this and the rest of the wordy nonsense I’ve put up the whole year long. Your support and encouragement means more than I’m able to tell. Here’s to 2012 to come.

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The Book of Knots, Garden of Fainting Stars: The Alchemy that Turns Moondust into Gunpowder

Posted in Reviews on June 16th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

The third installment in New York experimental rockers The Book of Knots’ alleged trilogy of concept albums, Garden of Fainting Stars, released by Ipecac Recordings, follows 2007’s Traineater and 2004’s Book of Knots (issued via Anti- and Arclight, respectively) and concludes the thematic string of “sea, land, air” the band undertook as its initial project. Like its predecessors, Garden of Fainting Stars is rife with an extremely particular atmosphere and artistry, and probably has more in common sonically with the second album than the first, on which the core four-piece of Carla Kihlstedt (vocals and violin mostly; also of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Two-Foot Yard), Joel Hamilton (guitar and engineer), Tony Maimone (bass; also of Pere Ubu) and Matthias Bossi (drums, synth and occasional vocals; also of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) was still feeling its way into what has become over the subsequent (now) two albums The Book of Knots’ sound. That sound, typified by invented instrumentation – Kihlstedt plays a “marxophone” on the track “Yeager’s Approach” – and the integration of an array of guest performers, makes Garden of Fainting Stars a subtle but complex listen, and in just 40 minutes, The Book of Knots draws upon a Cold War sense of fear, American arrogance and wonder at modernity to cover a wide berth of moods and feelings, all the while remaining consistent in terms of songwriting and overall flow. As did Traineater from Book of Knots, Garden of Fainting Stars justifies every minute of the time it took to put it out.

Heavy moments like those bookending the album in opener “Microgravity” and closer “Obituary for the Future” offset an array of ambient tracks, and if nothing else, Garden of Fainting Stars proves The Book of Knots have amassed some good friends along the members’ varied creative travels. The likes of Mike Watt, Blixa Bargeld (of The Bad Seeds/Einstürzende Neubauten) and Ipecac owner and Faith No More frontman Mike Patton show up here, alongside others including Nils Frykdahl and Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables (the former also of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), actor/singer Aaron Lazar (whose performance on “Third Generation Pink Slip” was a highlight of Traineater), vocalist Elyas Khan (Nervous Cabaret), stage director/writer Allen Willner, guitarist Trey Spruance (Secret Chiefs 3/ex-Mr. Bungle), John Vanderslice (Mk Ultra/The Mountain Goats), John Davis (Superdrag), Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3), engineer Ian Pelicci (who’s worked with Kihlstedt and Bossi in their theatrical excursions)… and more.  It’s an overwhelming amount of people, as the personnel list and publishing credits in the liner notes show, and one doesn’t at all envy Hamilton the task he had in mixing it, but somehow, The Book of Knots come out with an album that’s as cohesive as it is challenging, and although each track by the very nature of who’s contributing offers something different, the record as a whole retains its central theme and is drawn together by it. Of the total 10 tracks, only “Microgravity,” “All This Nothing” and “Nebula Rasa” feature Kihlstedt, Hamilton, Maimone and Bossi alone, and even there the instrumentation is varied. So yeah, you could easily say there’s a lot going on with Garden of Fainting Stars. I wouldn’t argue.

Nonetheless, and perhaps either in spite of or in complement to their experimental and ambient stretches, The Book of Knots leave room for several righteous choruses, striking a balance across Garden of Fainting Stars as though to give their audience something to hook onto in the face of the material’s vast breadth. Kihlstedt recounts the tale of launching monkeys into space on “Microgravity,” centered around the melodic titular question of whether or not they’ll survive, leaving room for both Hamilton’s guitar crunch and a spoken part from Bossi that’s not dissimilar from what he did on the Traineater cut “Hands of Production.” It’s telling that, even with all the contributing personalities that begin to pile up as soon as Bargeld begins his narration of “Drosophila Melangaster,” Garden of Fainting Stars would launch with just the four players in the band proper. Not that they’re starting off simple, but a foundation is established with “Microgravity” on which the rest of the album builds, starting with the aforementioned “Drosophila Melanogaster,” which undercuts the anxiety of the opener by reveling in the banality of commercial air travel as it is today. Bargeld assumes the role of passenger waiting for a variety of flights, reading as though from a journal flight numbers and recounting tales of fruit flies in his drinks and the lack of space in economy, eventually launching into drunken singing as The Book of Knots behind him pick up from the foreboding ambience of the beginning into the swaying, otherworldly weirdness that makes up the end of the track, giving way to “Moondust Must,” on which Frykdahl and McCarthy offer lead vocals with a group backing them for probably Garden of Fainting Stars’ most infectious chorus – the lines “Moondust looks like gunpowder/Moondust smells like gunpowder/Moondust tastes like gunpowder/Moondust must be gunpowder” approaching nursery rhyme memorability even as they mock the sort of down-home ignorance of “the farther shore” and religious ideas of walking among the dead in the verse. “Moondust Must” has a bouncing rhythm to it, and is simple on its surface, but there’s an underlying absurdity at play as well, and the amount of noise thrown in the mix behind Frykdahl and McCarthy is consistent with both what backed Bargeld on “Drosophila Melanogaster” and what next comes to the fore on “Lissajous Orbit.”

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The Book of Knots: New Album Due Out June 14 on Ipecac

Posted in Whathaveyou on May 18th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

The last installment in the long-spaced trilogy from avant rockers The Book of Knots was 2007’s Traineater, released by Anti-. The third and final piece is titled Garden of Fainting Stars, and it finds the core four-piece once again taking on a host of collaborators and signing with Mike Patton‘s Ipecac Recordings for a June 14 release. I was a huge sucker for Traineater, and for the 2004 self-titled debut (released by Arclight) before that, so expect much more on this to come.

For now, though, here’s the news off the PR wire:

The Book of Knots has had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the worlds most talented musicians, including Tom Waits, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, Jon Langford, and Carla Bozulich.

Founding members Matthias Bossi (Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Joel Hamilton (producer/engineer for BlakRoc, Pretty Lights), Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) and Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Frank Black, Bob Mould) forge a sound both epic and intimate, empowering and devastating. Cinematic, symphonic landscapes give way to crumbling acoustic chamber ballads. Broken guitars and beautifully warped orchestras describe the ungraceful demise of boats, blast furnaces and bloated industries. Accounts of the failed adventures of tragic would-be heroes are given voice in the band’s two previous critically-acclaimed releases.

Their newest album serves as the final chapter in the band’s “By Sea, By Land, By Air” trilogy. Garden of Fainting Stars, slated for release by Ipecac Recordings on June 14, gives dissonant sendoffs to the doomed travelers and early astronauts that plied the skies in a quest for the final frontier: Space.

The imagined utopias that await them at the other end of their fantastical journeys inevitably give way to the grim realization which mankind has faced again and again: at every hopeful turn, commonplace realities await us. A vast and empty universe, stretching far beyond infinity, capable of containing the countless imaginary creatures, civilizations, and otherwise terrestrial impossibilities that inhabit our dreams, dies in the fluorescent lighting of the laundry soap aisle at WalMart.

The Book of Knots once again cast a wormless, rusty hook into the lifeless seas of the music industry, expecting to reap only sorrow.

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