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Friday Full-Length: My Brother the Wind, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet

Posted in Bootleg Theater on July 16th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

Like a lot of two-guitar records, My Brother the Wind‘s debut, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, is all about the bass. Released in 2010 through Transubstans Records, the debut outing from the Swedish outfit formed in Västra Götaland on the Swedish west coast is pretty unassuming on the face of it. The cover art doesn’t tell you much, and though colorful with red and blue making purple in the middle in a way that also kind of symbolizes the musical coming together happening in the songs, the spindly nerve-looking design and black background give a darker, less shimmering impression than the material itself. Nothing against the artist, mind you, but what you see isn’t necessarily what you get when it comes to the entire spectrum of the at least partially improvisational psychedelic craft on display.

And for a debut album, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet has a somewhat complex history in the coming together. Its 2010 arrival situates it in a break for guitarist Nicklas Barker‘s other band, the Borlänge progressive rockers Anekdoten, whose stretch between 2007 and 2015 without putting out a full-length accounts for the entirety of My Brother the Wind‘s three studio/one live LP discography. Taking their name from the 1970 offering from Sun Ra and His Astro Infinity Arkestra, as well as that record’s opening track, My Brother the Wind aligned Barker with fellow guitarist Mathias Danielsson, perhaps best known for his work in Gösta Berlings Saga, but also of Makajodama and Øresund Space Collective, as well as the rhythm section of bassist Ronny Eriksson and drummer Tomas Eriksson, both also of Magnolia at least at one point or another.

The coming together of the dramatis personnae really only matters because of what they did during their time — to wit, science reminds us that dudes in bands often form bands with dudes from other bands — and on the six tracks, 59 minutes of Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, that’s to create a swath of spacey, pastoral and engaging instrumentalist heavy psychedelia. You can hear from the outset in opening track “Karmagrinder” how much of the impetus of the band is the interplay between Barker and Danielsson, and fair enough. Both guitarists seem keen to explore, and their tones complement each other in headphone-ready fashion, while underneath, Ronny Eriksson‘s bass provides highlightMy brother the wind twilight in the crystal cabinet runs of its own for those who’d seek glories in the lower frequencies.

Count me in. In the subsequent “Electric Universe,” they’ll dig into some more classic space rock — blah blah motorik, blah blah obligatory Hawkwind namedrop, etc. — but the dynamic is not unlike the solo section of a classic power trio: the drums hold everything together, the bass fleshes out the groove and does some showy runs of its own, and the guitars go where they want to go. I don’t know what the balance is in the songs between what was improvised off the top of their heads, but Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet reminds that the most important element in that equation — the trio made four in this case, obviously — is instrumental chemistry, and improv or not, My Brother the Wind‘s material is rife with it. You can hear it in the later reaches of “Karmagrinder” and the intertwining cosmic shred of “Electric Universe,” but also in the quieter stretch of the title-track, shorter than either of the two preceding cuts at just under four minutes long, and followed by the free(k)-jazz 1:47 outlet “Precious Sanity,” the latter an obvious splurge in the studio — a thing that happened while recording — and fun for the sense of the experience it gives.

I generally think the idea of the “format wars” are garbage. A thing to argue about on the internet. But with Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, in the 2LP version, the side split between C and D is between the last two inclusions — “The Mournful Howl of Dawn” and “Death and Beyond” — and that makes sense to me somehow. Mind you, earlier in the outing, I’d be grumbling at having to get up to flip the platter over after the 13 minutes of “Karmagrinder” — how’s anybody supposed to get dishes done listening to vinyl? — but given the meandering hypnosis wrought by “The Mournful Howl of Dawn” (13:08) and the consuming freakout that is “Death and Beyond” (16:47), it’s worth having an extra breath between the two that doesn’t happen when hearing the album in a digital or linear format. There’s nuance in the noodling of both that’s worth specific attention, and even unto the way “Death and Beyond” takes off in its 11th minute, building to a head and giving way soon enough to the drift that, presumably, serves as the titular ‘beyond,’ the lesson being given is one of dynamic and organic methodology. Nothing My Brother the Wind are doing is magic, but they kind of make it sound that way, in stretches vital and serene.

As noted, My Brother the Wind produced three studio albums between 2010 and 2014: Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, 2011’s follow-up, I Wash My Soul in the Stream of Infinity and 2014’s Once There Was a Time When Time and Space Were One (review here). The first two were issued on Transubstans, while the third came out on Free Electric Sounds — you’ll note full-lengths two and three had brighter, more lush cover art — and their live album, Live at Roadburn 2013, was on Burning World Records and also came out in 2014. It was their last work to-date. I have to think that if they were going to do another record now, it would come out through El Paraiso Records. One would hope, anyway.

Instrumentalist heavy psych, or jazz-influenced psych, or wherever you want to situate it, can easily be fodder for a mental checkout, and that’s valid. There’s nothing wrong with escapism (to a point). But whether Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet serves that purpose or the more academic, sit-and-pick-it-apart-style experience, or even just active enjoyment of what these players accomplished together in a room over a decade ago, the life in this music is worth companionship. That’s all.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Thank you if you’ve been reading the Quarterly Review at all. We hit 100 reviews today and I’ve got the last batch of 10 already in progress to go up on Monday, so that’ll be it. I’ve added a few of those releases to my best of lists, which, out of 110 records, frankly, I should damn well hope so.

I got my laptop back yesterday afternoon. Drive crashed. Boom. The guy who repaired it managed to recover all the data. He remarked on how much shit I had on the drive; it was 1TB, about two-thirds full, didn’t seem unreasonable to me but apparently it took him two days to sort it all out. When he did, he installed a new drive on the computer, but it’s 500 gigs instead of 1TB. In trade, he also gave me a 500 gig external that had all the non-system stuff — albums, docs, etc. — that was on the machine before on it.

Thus I am denied the satisfaction of removing 110 albums from my desktop into the “Albums” archival folder after this Quarterly Review wraps up on Monday, which I will tell you outright is some no-justice-in-the-universe level bullshit.

I’m looking at 2TB drives now to replace the 500 gig, because really, what am I, a child? 500 gigs is nothing. There’s cloud storage, but you know what? I’ve had a record leak with my watermark on it before (when, no, I didn’t leak it), and that’s a hassle I never need again in my life. I’m not saying I’m important enough that someone’s gonna hack into my Dropbox and spread that shit around — I’m not — but the interwebs is full of people doing stuff for lulz and I’m a no-fun kind of guy. I’d much rather keep it to myself and run the (evident) risk of crashing a drive, which seems less likely with more space rather than less, which I have now.

Or the same amount of space, differently organized. An external HD. Wonderful. One more thing for The Pecan to grab and be like “this is?” while dropping it or throwing it or just ripping it out from the machine or stepping on it or spilling something on it or whatever the fuck. Something. Always something. I can’t really have my computer open while he’s around.

Which, if you’re wondering (you’re not, I know) is one of the reasons I got up at 1:30 this morning to start writing this post. The other was it was too warm in the bedroom.

We’re in CT for the next couple days. It is stressful here. A small space. An active kid. No real buffer between my man the invincible and the Long Island Sound. Lovely view if you like fighting with a toddler trying to escape so he can jump in the ocean without being able to swim.

Fighting with a toddler about everything. Ugh.

I had oral surgery on Monday. They put a rod in that seems to be healing okay — antibiotics, all that — and then I’ll get a crown put on and apparently that’s it. The Pecan had a cold. We kept him home from camp Monday and Tuesday. Watched a lot of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which is about all he really wants to see at this point. Fine. Let the worst thing that happens be he’s the first human being ever to walk the earth with a shred of emotional literacy. Seems like a high aim, frankly. He certainly won’t have gotten it from my ass.

But so we did that Monday, less Tuesday — more reading, which is good — and after going to the doctor on Tuesday and checking in there for the looming specter of plague and all that, he went back to camp Wednesday and scratched a kid and was pushing and to hear them tell it kind of continued to be a jerk Thursday morning. He’s still congested, getting over the cold, so I blame that. He fell asleep in the car yesterday on the way up here from NJ — a normally two-hour trip took four, so there was plenty of time to nap — so I chalk it up to tired, still under the weather, etc. Knowing that doesn’t make living with him any easier.

Which I assume is the case because I didn’t watch enough Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when I was his age.

He resents the shit out of me. He’s not yet four years old. I fail him every day, and myself. At what would be an impressive rate were it not so sad.

But at least I got my computer back.

No Gimme show this week. Next week. Turned in the playlist Wednesday, all Quarterly Review stuff. It’ll be good.

Great and safe weekend. I hear we’re going to a sculpture park. Will bring water. Have fun whatever you’re doing. Be safe. Watch your head. Hydrate. It’s 4AM. I’m gonna go take a cold shower.

FRM.

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Quarterly Review: Carlton Melton, Crown, Noêta, Polymerase, Lucid Sins, Hekate, Abel Blood, Suffer Yourself, Green Dragon, Age Total

Posted in Reviews on July 5th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

This will be a two-week Quarterly Review. That means this Monday to Friday and next Monday to Friday, 10 releases per day, totaling 100 by the time it’s done.

Me? I’m taking it one week, one day, one album at a time. It’s the only way to go and not have it seem completely insurmountable. But we’ll get through it all. I started out with the usual five days, and then I went to seven, then eight, and at that point I felt like I had a pretty good idea where things were headed. The last two days I filled up just at the end of last week. Some of it is I think a result of quarantine productivity, but there’s a glut of relevant stuff out now and some of it I’m catching up on, true, but some of it isn’t out yet either, so it’s a balance as ever. I keep telling myself I’m done with 2020 releases, but there’s one in here today. You know how it goes.

And since you do, I won’t delay further. Thanks in advance for reading if you do.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Carlton Melton, Night Pillers

carlton melton night pillers

Rangey mellow psych collected together with the natural shimmer of a Phil Manley (Trans Am) recording and a John McBain master, the new mini-LP from Mendocino medicine makers Carlton Melton is a 31-minute, five-song meditative joy. To wit, “Safe Place?” Is. “Morning Warmth?” Is, even with the foreboding march of drums behind it. And “Striatum,” which closes with interplay of keys and fuzzy leads and effects, giving a culminating seven-minute wash that doesn’t feel like it’s pushing far out so much as already gone upon arrival, indeed seems like a reward for any head or brain that’s managed to make it so far. Opener “Resemblance” brings four minutes of gentle drone to set the mood ahead of “Morning Warmth” — it might be sunrise, if we’re thinking of it that way — and centerpiece “High Noon Thirty” bridges krauty electronic beats and organic ceremony that feels both familiar and like the band’s own. They may pill at night, but Carlton Melton have a hell of a day here.

Carlton Melton on Facebook

Agitated Records website

 

Crown, The End of All Things

Crown The End of All Things

Weaving in and around genres with fluidity that’s tied together through dark industrial foundations, Crown are as much black metal as they are post-heavy, cinematic or danceable. “Gallow” or the earlier “Neverland” call to mind mid-period, electronica-fascinated Katatonia, but “Extinction” pairs this with a more experimental feel, opening in its midsection to more unsettling spaces ahead of the dance-ready finish. There’s nothing cartoonish or vamp about The End of All Things, which is the French outfit’s fourth album in 10 years, and it’s as likely to embrace pop (closer “Utopia”) as extremity (“Firebearer” just before), grim atmospherics (“Nails”) or textured acoustics (“Fleuve”), feeling remarkably unconcerned with genre across its 45 entrancing minutes, and remarkably even in its approach for a sound that’s still so varied. It’s not an easy listen front to back, but the challenge feels intentional and is emotional as much as cerebral in the craft and performance.

Crown on Facebook

Pelagic Records on Bandcamp

 

Noêta, Elm

Noêta elm

Swedish duo Noêta offer their second record for Prophecy Productions in Elm, comprising a deceptively efficient eight songs and 38 minutes that work in atmospheres of darker but not grim or cultish folk. Vocalist Êlea is very much a focal point in terms of performance, with Andris‘ instrumentals forming a backdrop that’s mournful on “Above and Below” while shimmering enough to bring affirmation to “As We Are Gone” a short while later ahead of the electrified layering in “Elm” and the particularly haunted-feeling closer “Elm II.” “As I Fall Silent” is a singularly spacious moment, but not the only one, as “Fade” complements with strings and outward-sounding guitar, and some of Elm‘s most affecting moments are its quietest stretches, as “Dawn Falls” proves at the outset and the whispers of “Elm” reaffirm on side B. Subdued but not lacking complexity, Noêta‘s songs make an instrument of mood itself and are pointedly graceful in doing so.

Noêta on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

 

Polymerase, Unostentatious

Polymerase Unostentatious

Unostentatious, which is presumably not to say “humble,” may or may not be Polymerase‘s debut release, but it follows on from several years of inactivity on the part of the Philippines-based mostly-instrumentalist heavy psych trio. The band present four duly engaging and somewhat raw feeling jams, with a jump in volume as “Lightbringer//Lightgiver” picks up from “A Night with a Succubus” and opener “The Traveler” and a final touch of thickened, fuzzy sludge in the rolling “Green is the Color of Evil,” which closes at a lurch that comes across at significant remove from the title-hinted brightness of the song just before it. Uneven? Maybe, but not egregiously so, and if Polymerase are looking to give listeners an impression of their having a multifaceted sound, they most assuredly do. My question is over what span of time these tracks were recorded and what the group will do in moving forward from them, but I take the fact that I’m curious to find out at all as a positive sign of having interest piqued. Will hope for more.

Polymerase on Facebook

Polymerase on Bandcamp

 

Lucid Sins, Cursed!

lucid sins cursed

Lucid indeed. The band’s self-applied genre tag of “adult AOR” is more efficient a descriptor of their sound than anything I might come up with. Glasgow’s Lucid Sins released their acclaimed debut, Occultation, in 2014, and Cursed! is the exclamatory seven-years-later follow-up, bringing together classic progressive rock and modern cult heavy sensibilities with a focus on songwriting that’s the undercurrent from “Joker’s Dance” onward and which, as deep as “The Serpentine Path” or the title-track or “The Forest” might go, is never forgotten. To wit, the penultimate “By Your Hand” is a proto-everything highlight, stomping compared to the organ-prog “Sun and the Moon” earlier, but ultimately just as melodic and of enviable tonal warmth. Seven years is a long time between records, and maybe this material just took that long to put together, I don’t know, but I had no idea “cult xylophone” was a possibility until “The Devil’s Sign” came along, and now I’m not sure how I ever lived without it.

Lucid Sins on Facebook

Totem Cat Records store

 

Hekate, Sermons to the Black Owl

Hekate Sermons to the Black Owl

Australia’s history in heavy rock and roll is as long as that of heavy rock and roll itself and need not be recounted here, except to say that Hekate, from Canberra and Sydney, draw from multiple eras of it with their debut long-player, Sermons to the Black Owl, pushing ’70s boogie over the top with solos on “Carpathian Eagle” only after “Winter Void” and “Child of Black Magick” have seen the double-guitar-and-let’s-use-both four-piece update nascent doom vibes and “Burning Mask” has brought a more severe chug to the increasingly intense procession. A full production sound refuses to let the quick eight-tracker be anything other than modern, and though it’s only 28 minutes long, the aptly-titled “Acoustic Outro” feels earned atmospherically, even down to the early-feeling cold finish of “Cassowary Dreaming.” The balance may be then, then, then, and now, but the sense of shove that Hekate foster in their songs gives fresh urgency to the tenets of genre they seem to have adopted at will.

Hekate on Facebook

Black Farm Records store

 

Abel Blood, Keeping Pace with the Elephants

Abel Blood Keeping Pace with the Elephants

One does not evoke elephantine images on a heavy record, even on a debut release, if aural largesse isn’t a factor. New Hampshire trio Abel Blood — guitarist/vocalist Adam Joslyn, bassist Ben Cook, drummer Jim DeLuca — are raw in sound on their first EP, Keeping Pace with the Elephants, but the impact with which they land “The Day that Moby Died” at the outset is only encouraging, and to be sure, it’s not the thickest of their wares either. “Enemies” already pushes further, and as centerpiece “UnKnown Variant” would seem to date the effort in advance, it also serves the vital function of moving the EP in a different, more jangly, grungier direction, which is a valuable move with the title cut following behind, its massive cymbals and distorted wash building to a head in time for the nine-minute finale “Fire on the Hillside” to draw together both sides of the approach shown throughout into a parabolically structured jam the middle-placed surge of which passes quickly enough to leave the listener unsure whether it ever happened. They’re messing with you. Dig that.

Abel Blood on Facebook

Abel Blood on Bandcamp

 

Suffer Yourself, Rip Tide

Suffer Yourself Rip Tide

Begun in 2011 by guitarist/vocalist Stanislav Govorukha and based in Sweden by way of Poland and the Ukraine, death-doom lurchbringers Suffer Yourself are not strangers to longer-form material, but to my knowledge, “Spit in the Chasm” — the opening and longest track (immediate points) on their third record, Rip Tide — is the first time they’ve crossed the 20-minute mark. Time well spent, and by that I mean “brutally spent,” whether its the speedier chug that emerges from the willful slog of the extended piece’s first half or the viciously progressive lead work that tops the precise, cold end of the song that brings final ambience. Side B offers two shorter pieces in “Désir de Trépas Maritime (Au Bord de la Mer Je Veux Mourir),” laced with suitably mournful strings and a fair enough maritime sense of gothic drama emphasized by later spoken word and piano, and the brief, mostly-drone “Submerging,” which one assumes is the end of that plotline playing out. The main consumption though is in “Spit in the Chasm,” and the dimensions of that fissure are significant, figuratively and literally.

Suffer Yourself on Facebook

Aesthetic Death website

 

Green Dragon, Dead of the Night

Green Dragon Dead of the Night

High order Sabbathian doom rock from my own beloved Garden State, there’s very little chance I’m not going to dig Green Dragon‘s Dead of the Night, and true to type, I do. Presented by the band on limited vinyl after digital release late in 2020, the four-song, 24-minute outing brings guitarist/vocalists Zach Kurland and Ryan Lipynsky (the latter also adding keys and known for his work in Unearthly Trance, etc.), bassist Jennifer Klein and drummer Herbert Wiley to a place so dug into its groove it almost feels inappropriate to think of it as a peak in terms of their work to-date. They go high by going low, then. Fair enough. “Altered States” opens with a rollout of fuzz that miraculously avoids the trap sounding like Electric Wizard, while “Burning Bridges” murks out, “The Sad King” pushes speed a bit will still holding firm to nod and echo alike, and “Book of Shadows” plunges into effects-drenched noise like it was one of the two waterslides at the Maplewood community pool in summertime.

Green Dragon on Facebook

Green Dragon on Bandcamp

 

ÂGE TOTAL, ÂGE TOTAL

ÂGE ? TOTAL

The kind of record that probably won’t be heard by enough people but will inspire visceral loyalty in many of those who encounter it, the self-titled debut from French collaborative outfit Age Total — bringing together members from Endless Floods out of Bordeaux and Rouen’s Greyfell — is a grand and engrossing work that pushes the outer limits of doom and post-metal. Bookending opener “Amure” (14:28) and closer “The Songbird” (16:45) around the experimentalist “Carré” (4:06) and rumbling melodic death-doom of “Metal,” the album harnesses grandiosity and nuance to spare, with each piece feeling independently conceived and enlightening to musician and audience alike. It sounds like the kind of material they didn’t know they were going to come up with until they actually got together — whatever the circumstances of “together” might’ve looked like at the time — and the bridges they build between progressive metal and sheer weight of intention are staggering. However much hype it does or doesn’t have behind it, Age Total‘s Age Total is one of 2021’s best debut albums.

Endless Floods on Facebook

Greyfell on Facebook

Soza Label on Bandcamp

 

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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Êlea of NOÊTA

Posted in Questionnaire on April 12th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

Êlea of NOÊTA

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: Êlea of NOÊTA

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

I’m a singer, musician and a visual artist. Musically, I define NOÊTA as a dynamic mixture between folk, black metal, and dark ambient, with my singing as a contrasting element. I never really chose to do music, but it’s been something I’ve needed to do to feel complete.

Describe your first musical memory.

Probably singing in the Church choir as a three-year old.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Very tough question, I’ve had so many great musical memories. I think it would be either times of writing my own music, in especially creative times, or one of the many great live concerts I’ve been to.

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

Constantly, I feel. I live a life of constant exploration and I think we should never stop challenging our beliefs.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

The obvious answer is to new creative expressions. But I think the neat thing about being an artist is that, at least for me, so much of the value of life is interconnected with music and creativity. So exploring and progressing in your artistic expression is in a way what gives some bigger purpose to life.

How do you define success?

Success is dangerous to define by any external values or opinions, or by things like financial gain or popularity. I believe that in the end, success is the constant work towards your goals. It’s not a place that you reach, and then you’re finished. Success to me is more a “state” and a mindset.

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

The slow destruction of our natural surroundings at the hands of humanity.

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

Music in so many shapes and forms. I like and appreciate a lot of different expressions of music, and I hope to create something of another genre than that of my current project, NOÊTA. I’d like to sing a lot more during my everyday life. So, more so than what I want to create, my goals are about focusing more time and energy towards singing and music.

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

There is no one answer to that question, as art affects people in very different ways, and in a multitude of ways at that. For me art is about experiencing, expressing or exploring different emotions, feelings, concepts or settings. Art that doesn’t prompt any emotional response whatsoever is quite useless, or serves the same purpose as a wall paper or a nice pair of pants.

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

Seeing how life unfolds.

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NOÊTA, Elm (2021)

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