Posted in Whathaveyou on February 26th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
It’s an enticing idea, Al Cisneros and David Eugene Edwards working together, but if you’re thinking it’s gonna sound like Sleep with the dude from 16 Horsepower playing banjo and “Strawfoot”-crooning over it, that’s probably not what their collaborative EP is going to be. Mind you I wouldn’t actually know that, as I haven’t heard it, but Cisneros has been sporadically working on solo dub tracks under his own name — his latest two-songer, Suicide of Judas / Akeldama, was pressed as a 7″ in 2023 — for over a decade now, and Edwards‘ 2023 solo album, Hyacinth (review here), brought moody modernism to his roots-based songwriting.
As to what combining those two might sound like, it could be Edwards on a Cisneros track, Cisneros on an Edwards track, both, neither, or some combination of the two. In other words I’ve got no idea. But whatever it is, I’m sure some people will moan about it and some people will say it’s the best thing ever, because both parties involved are known enough to have fans and such is the nature of fandom as we’ve all learned from the internet. For realsies, you wouldn’t say either of these parties was lacking for creativity, so the thought of having them collaborate, however it actually turns out, is exciting. And by the way, I’m slagging neither Edwards‘ solo record nor Cisneros‘ dub excursions. Both are rad as well and artistic exploration is a good thing and the world could use more of it.
There’s no audio yet — and that’s not actually unreasonable; with just two songs there isn’t a ton to go around — but preorders are up for the 10″ from Drag City and fortunately neither Cisneros nor Edwards are lacking for a back catalog for you to dive into in the meanwhile. April 25 is the release date, like the headline says.
From social media:
Announcing Pillar of Fire / Capernaum, the first collaboration between Al Cisneros (OM, Sleep) and David Eugene Edwards (Wovenhand, 16 Horsepower), out on April 25th.
Posted in Reviews on December 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Well, this is it. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do Monday and Tuesday, or just Monday, or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or the whole week next week or what. I don’t know. But while I figure it out — and not having this planned is kind of a novelty for me; something against my nature that I’m kind of forcing I think just to make myself uncomfortable — there are 10 more records to dig through today and it’s been a killer week. Yeah, that’s the other thing. Maybe it’s better to quit while I’m ahead.
I’ll kick it back and forth while writing today and getting the last of what I’d originally slated covered, then see how much I still have waiting to be covered. You can’t ever get everything. I keep learning that every year. But if I don’t do it Monday and Tuesday, it’ll either be last week of December or maybe second week of January, so it’s not long until the next one. Never is, I guess.
If this is it for now or not, thanks for reading. I hope you found music that has touched your life and/or made your day better.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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David Eugene Edwards, Hyacinth
There are not a ton of surprises to behold in what’s positioned as a first solo studio offering from David Eugene Edwards, whose pedigree would be impressive enough if it only included either 16 Horsepower or Wovenhand but of course is singular in including both. But you don’t need surprises. Titled Hyacinth and issued through Sargent House, the voice, the presence, the sense of intimacy and grandiosity both accounted for as Edwards taps acoustic simplicity in “Bright Boy,” though even that is accompanied by the programmed electronics that provides backing through much of the included 11 tracks. Atop and within these expanses, Edwards broods poetic and explores atmospheres that are heavy in a different way from what Wovenhand has become, chasing tone or intensity. On Hyacinth, it’s more about the impact of the slow-rolling beat in “Celeste” and the blend of organic/inorganic than just how loud a part is or isn’t. Whether a solo career under his name will take the place of Wovenhand or coincide, I don’t know.
Whatever led Beastwars to decide it was time to do a covers EP, fine. No, really, it’s fine. It’s fine that it’s 32 minutes long. It’s fine that I’ve never heard The Gordons, or Julia Deans, or Superette, or The 3Ds or any of the other New Zealand-based artists the Wellington bashers are covering. It’s fine. It’s fine that it sounds different than 2019’s IV (review here). It should. It’s been nearly five years and Beastwars didn’t write these eight songs, though it seems safe to assume they did a fair bit of rearranging since it all sounds so much like Beastwars. But the reason it’s all fine is that when it’s over, whether I know the original version of “Waves” or the blues-turns-crushing “High and Lonely” originally by Nadia Reid, or not, when it’s all over, I’ve got over half an hour more recorded Beastwars music than I had before Tyranny of Distance showed up, and if you don’t consider that a win, you probably already stopped reading. That’s fine too. A sidestep for them in not being an epic landmark LP, and a chance for new ideas to flourish.
Because Messages From the Mothership stacks its longer songs (six-seven minutes) in the back half of its tracklisting, one might be tempted to say Sun Dial push further out as they go, but the truth is that ’60s pop-inflected three-minute opener “Echoes All Around” is pretty out there, and the penultimate “Saucer Noise” — the longest inclusion at 7:47 — is no less melodically present than the more structure-forward leadoff. The difference, principally, is a long stretch of keyboard, but that’s well within the UK outfit’s vintage-synth wheelhouse, and anyway, “Demagnitized” is essentially seven minutes of wobbly drone at the end of the record, so they get weirder, as prefaced in the early going by, well, the early going itself, but also “New Day,” which is more exploratory than the radio-friendly-but-won’t-be-on-the-radio harmonies of “Living for Today” and the duly shimmering strum of “Burning Bright.” This is familiar terrain for Sun Dial, but they approach it with a perspective that’s fresh and, in the title-track, a little bit funky to boot.
With rampant heavy blues and a Mk II Deep Purple boogie bent, Toulouse, France’s Fuzzy Grass present The Revenge of the Blue Nut, and there’s a story there but to be honest I’m not sure I want to know. The heavy ’70s persist as an influence — no surprise for a group who named their 2018 debut 1971 — and pieces like “I’m Alright” and “The Dreamer” feel at least in part informed by Graveyard‘s slow-soul-to-boogie-blowout methodology. Raw fuzz rolls out in 11-minute capper “Moonlight Shades” with a swinging nod that’s a highlight even after “Why You Stop Me” just before, and grows noisy, expansive, eventually furious as it approaches the end, coherent in the verse and cacophonous in just about everything else. But the rawness bolsters the character of the album in ways beyond enhancing the vintage-ist impression, and Fuzzy Grass unite decades of influences with vibrant shred and groove that’s welcoming even at its bluest.
If you go by the current of sizzling electronic pops deeper in the mix, even the outwardly quiet intro to Morne‘s Engraved with Pain is intense. The Boston-based crush-metallers have examined the world around them thoroughly ahead of this fifth full-length, and their disappointment is brutally brought to realization across four songs — “Engraved with Pain” (10:42), “Memories Like Stone” (10:48), “Wretched Empire” (7:45) and “Fire and Dust” (11:40) — written and executed with a dark mastery that goes beyond the weight of the guitar and bass and drums and gutturally shouted vocals to the aura around the music itself. Engraved with Pain makes the air around it feel heavier, basking in an individualized vision of metal that’s part Ministry, part Gojira, lots of Celtic Frost, progressive and bleak in kind — the kind of superlative and consuming listening experience that makes you wonder why you ever listen to anything else except that you’re also exhausted from it because Morne just gave you an existential flaying the likes of which you’ve not had in some time. Artistry. Don’t be shocked when it’s on my ‘best of the year’ list in a couple weeks. I might just go to a store and buy the CD.
Don’t tell the swingin’-dick Western swag of “Wounded,” but Appalooza are a metal band. To wit, The Shining Son, their very-dudely follow-up to 2021’s The Holy of Holies (review here) and second outing for Ripple Music. Opener “Pelican” has more in common with Sepultura than Kyuss, or Pelican for that matter. “Unbreakable” and “Wasted Land” both boast screams worthy of Devin Townsend, while the acoustic/electric urgency in “Wasted Land” and the tumultuous scope of the seven-plus-minute track recall some of Primordial‘s battle-aftermath mourning. “Groundhog Days” has an airy melody and is more decisively heavy rock, and the hypnotic post-doom apparent-murder-balladry of “Killing Maria” answers that at the album’s close, and “Framed” hits heavy blues à la a missed outfit like Dwellers, but even in “Sunburn” there’s an immediacy to the rhythm between the guitar and percussion, and though they’re not necessarily always aggressive in their delivery, nor do they want to be. Metal they are, if only under the surface, and that, coupled with the care they put into their songwriting, makes The Shining Son stand out all the more in an ever-crowded Euro underground.
An invitation to chill the beans delivered to your ears courtesy of Irish cosmic jammers Space Shepherds as two longform jams. “Wading Through the Infinite Sea” nestles into a funky groove and spends who-even-cares-how-much-time of its total 27 minutes vibing out with noodling guitar and a steady, languid, periodically funk-leaning flow. I don’t know if it was made up on the spot, but it sure sounds like it was, and though the drums get a little restless as keys and guitar keep dreaming, the elements gradually align and push toward and through denser clouds of dust and gas on their way to being suns, a returning lick at the end looking slightly in the direction of Elder but after nearly half an hour it belongs to no one so much as Space Shepherds themselves. ‘Side B,’ as it were, is “Void Hurler” (18:41), which is more active early around circles being drawn on the snare, and it has a crescendo and a synthy finish, but is ultimately more about the exploration and little moments along the way like the drums decided to add a bit of push to what might’ve otherwise been the comedown, or the fuzz buzzing amid the drone circa 10 minutes in. You can sit and listen and follow each waveform on its journey or you can relax and let the whole thing carry you. No wrong answer for jams this engaging.
Young Chilean four-piece Rey Mosca — the lineup of Josué Campos, Valentín Pérez, Damián Arros and Rafael Álvarez — hold a spaciousness in reserve for the midsection of teh seven-minute “Sol del Tiempo,” which is the third of the three songs included in their live-recorded Volumen! Sesion AMB EP. A ready hint is dropped of a switch in methodology since both “Psychodoom” and ” Perdiendo el Control” are under two minutes long. Crust around the edge of the riff greets the listener with “Psychodoom,” which spends about a third of its 90 seconds on its intro and so is barely started by the time it’s over. Awesome. “Perdiendo el Control” is quicker into its verse and quicker generally and gets brasher in its second half with some hardcore shout-alongs, but it too is there and gone, where “Sol del Tiempo” is more patient from the outset, flirting with ’90s noise crunch in its finish but finding a path through a developing interpretation of psychedelic doom en route. I don’t know if “Sol del Tiempo” would fit on a 7″, but it might be worth a shot as Rey Mosca serve notice of their potential hopefully to flourish.
Principally engaged in the consumption and expulsion of expectations, Fawn Limbs and Nadja — experimentalists from Finland and Germany-via-Canada, respectively — drone as one might think in opener “Isomerich,” and in the subsequent “Black Body Radiation” and “Cascading Entropy,” they give Primitive Man, The Body or any other extremely violent, doom-derived bludgeoners you want to name a run for their money in terms of sheer noisy assault. Somebody’s been reading about exoplanets, as the drone/harsh noise pairing “Redshifted” and “Blueshifted” (look it up, it’s super cool) reset the aural trebuchet for its next launch, the latter growing caustic on the way, ahead of “Distilled in Observance” renewing the punishment in earnest. And it is earnest. They mean every second of it as Fawn Limbs and Nadja grind souls to powder with all-or-nothing fury, dropping overwhelming drive to round out “Distilled in Observance” before the 11-minute “Metastable Ion Decay” bursts out from the chest of its intro drone to devour everybody on the ship except Sigourney Weaver. I’m not lying to you — this is ferocious. You might think you’re up for it. One sure way to find out, but you should know you’re being tested.
Do they pilot, a-pilot, do they the dune? Probably. Regardless, German heavy rockers Dune Pilot offer their third full-length and first for Argonauta Records in the 11-song Magnetic, taking cues from modern fuzz in the vein of Truckfighters for “Visions” after the opening title-track sets the mood and establishes the mostly-dry sound of the vocals as they cut through the guitar and bass tones. A push of voice becomes a defining feature of Magnetic, which isn’t such a departure from 2018’s Lucy, though the rush of “Next to the Liquor Store” and the breadth in the fuzz of “Highest Bid” and the largesse of the nod in “Let You Down” assure that Dune Pilot don’t come close to wearing down their welcome in the 46 minutes, cuts like the bluesy “So Mad” and the big-chorus ideology of “Heap of Shards” coexisting drawn together by the vitality of the performances behind them as well as the surety of their craft. It is heavy rock that feels specifically geared toward the lovers thereof.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 7th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
You can hear in the first single from David Eugene Edwards‘ debut studio solo full-length, Hyacinth, where the comparisons to the self-titled debut from Wovenhand (discussed here) and 16 Horsepower‘s Secret South are coming from. “Lionisis” (audio/video streaming below) has a brooding and organic groove not undercut by the various electronic whip cracks and speedy tick-ticks that accompany and mark out the rhythm, and of course it’s Edwards‘ voice and singular delivery tying those two sides together.
I’ll make no predictions about Hyacinth‘s sonic persona, though some clues might be found in the late-2022 live outing, A Riverwood Arts Session (also streaming below), on which the Colorado-based neofolk pioneer digs into songs from across his many-storied discography. Wherever it may go in arrangement or melody, it will mark the beginning of a new trajectory for Edwards, who’s explored various interpretations of aural heaviness in Wovenhand across the last 15 years or so, building on the more folkish beginnings of the band’s earlier work, as well as what Edwards conjured in songwriting and aesthetic with 16 Horsepower.
I’ve got high hopes that I’m actively working to temper. Really, I’d just like a chance to hear it. The PR wire has info, the preorder link, European tour dates, and so on:
David Eugene Edwards announces solo debut, shares video for lead single “Lionisis”
Wovenhand & 16 Horsepower cult icon’s first solo album, produced by Ben Chisholm
David Eugene Edwards announces his first ever solo album under his own name today, sharing the lead single and video from Hyacinth. Watch/share “Lionisis” video (directed by Loic Zimmerman).
David Eugene Edwards has always been larger than life. His atemporal style and powerfully iconoclast presence make him seem a man somehow beyond us.
His music with innovative heavy droning folk band Wovenhand, and before that the haunting revivification of high lonesome sound antique Americana of 16 Horsepower breathed a near apocalyptic sense of urgency and poignance into musical archetypes long abandoned in the latter-20th Century. Anyone who has seen him perform live will attest to his captivating intensity as he sings and coaxes sweeping, dark fury and beauty from his instrument.
Now, on his first-ever solo album under his own name, Edwards delivers a sound uniquely his own, with a vulnerability and introspection unheard from him before. Stripping back the heavy rock of his recent work with Wovenhand, Hyacinth puts the man’s voice, and sparing instrumentation into the main focus. There’s a somber beauty and world-weary tone throughout these songs. The album could been considered a slight return to the more melodic sounds of 16 Horsepower’s Secret South (2000) and the first, self-titled Wovenhand album (2002). But there’s more going on here: a rhythmic, pulsating undercurrent reminiscent of the tape loops and rudimentary rhythms of 80s Industrial post-punk as well as 808 Drill Style beats. The overall effect is often as if we’re hearing the clock ticking away our own mortality.
“Hyacinth was a sort of vision,“ Edwards says. “A dream. I sought out of my old wooden banjo and nylon string guitar a hidden path. Secrets they had kept from me within themselves all these years, and created a new Mythos to myself of philosophical and spiritual ideas or concepts.” From the outset of the pandemic, Edwards spent considerable time in solitary isolation, sick and impacted very hard in every way. Once he’d harnessed the music within, he enlisted multi-instrumentalist and producer Ben Chisholm (The Armed, Chelsea Wolfe, Converge, Genghis Tron) to help him realize the album’s recording and mix.
“Overall, I guess the album is a weaving of narratives ancient and modern, of humankind’s search for understanding of this world we find ourselves in and of each other. In all its simplicity and complexity,” Edwards says. “Hyacinth is a reference to the Greek myth of Apollo. And, the word meaning a precious stone and blue larkspur flower of purple and pall.”
In addition to his work with Wovenhand from 2001 to present, and Sixteen Horsepower between 1992 to 2005, Edwards has collaborated with such artists as Crime & the City Solution, Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten), and Carpenter Brut. He has also contributed to the soundtracks of films such as Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, The Brass Teapot, and Titane.
Hyacinth will be available worldwide on LP, CD and download via Sargent House on September 29th, 2023. Pre-orders / pre-saves are available HERE: https://found.ee/DEE-Hyacinth
Album: Hyacinth Label: Sargent House Release Date: September 29th, 2023
Tracklisting: 01. Seraph 02. Howling Flower 03. Celeste 04. Through The Lattice 05. Apparition 06. Bright Boy 07. Hyacinth 08. Lionisis 09. Weavers Beam 10. Hall of Mirrors 11. The Cuckoo
DAVID EUGENE EDWARDS EUROPEAN TOUR 2023 Sept 24 Amplifest – Porto PT Sept 28 Le 106 Club – Rouen FR Sept 29 Auditorium du Conservatoire de Lille – Lille FR Sept 30 De Roma – Antwerp BE Oct 01 Place La Laiterie – Strasbourg FR Oct 02 L’Usine – Geneva CH Oct 04 BIKO – Milano IT Oct 05 Casa del Popolo Il Progresso – Florence IT Oct 06 Locomotiv – Bologna IT Oct 09 De Spot – Middelburg NL Oct 10 Tolhuistuin – Amsterdam NL Oct 12 Train – Århus DK Oct 13 Amager Bio – Copenhagen DK Oct 14 Mejeriet – Lund SE Oct 15 Nefertiti – Gothenburg SE Oct 17 Kulturkirken Jakob – Oslo NO Oct 18 Kulturhuset – Bergen NO Oct 19 Folken – Stavanger NO Oct 20 Kick Scene – Kristiansand NO Oct 23 OSLO – London UK
Before I turn you over to the playlist — and I’m gonna try to keep this short either way — I want to single out and say thank you to Dean Rispler. He’s the engineer for this show, and with my dumbass voice tracks, it ran long. Instead of cutting out a song or whatever, Dean went ahead and trimmed intros and outros, making it a tighter ‘broadcast,’ such as it is, and enhancing the thing rather than detracting from it. Thank you, Dean. I know the effort that takes, the time that can take, and it is very much appreciated, by me if by no one else.
Some new stuff, some old stuff. I had Ufomammut on the brain and then I had stuff-I-like on the brain, and, well, that’s how you end up with me playing Colour Haze. I give myself points though for managing to leave Author & Punisher out of an episode though. I think he was in the last three. And if you haven’t heard the Charley No Face record, there’s a reason it starts the show.
If you listen, or you see these words, thanks.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 03.04.22
Charley No Face
Death Mask
Eleven Thousand Volts
Wo Fat
The Witching Chamber
The Singularity
Fuzz Sagrado
Lunik IX
A New Dimension
Wovenhand
Omaha
Silver Sash
VT
Kryptograf
The Spiral
The Eldorado Spell
Uncle Woe
Nine Kinds of Time
Pennyfold Haberdashery & Abattoir Deluxe
Samavayo
Afghan Sky
Payan
JIRM
Repent in Blood
The Tunnel, the Well, Holy Bedlam
Green Hog Band
Dragon
Dragon
VT
Ufomammut
Nero
Idolum
Conan
Battle in the Swamp
Monnos
YOB
Burning the Altar
The Great Cessation
Colour Haze
Grace
She Said
VT
Acid King
Coming Down From Outer Space
Live at Roadburn 2011
Fuzz Meadows
Benji
Orange Sunshine
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is March 18 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Devout followers of David Eugene Edwards and Wovenhand will note that Silver Sash is separated from its predecessor, 2016’s Star Treatment (review here), by about five and a half years, which makes it the longest break between records in the band’s tenure of 20-plus years. Released through Glitterhouse in limited vinyl and CD pressings as well as downloads, it’s the 10th full-length from the band overall (not counting two collaborations with Ultima Vez earlier on) and, understandably, brings a shift in approach on the part of Edwards (also formerly of 16 Horsepower) in working directly on songwriting with guitarist Chuck French.
The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) has it that the nine-track, 32-minute offering was whittled out of/built upward from instrumental pieces by French over the course of four years, with Edwards recording vocals at home after the music was done at French‘s. All this is perhaps intended to account for a shift in aesthetic that, while still finds a song like “Dead Dead Beat” or the subsequent “Omaha” plenty grand and bombastic in the spirit of Star Treatment and the last few records before to an increasing degree — 2014’s Refractory Obdurate (review here), 2012’s The Laughing Stalk (review here) and 2010’s The Threshingfloor (discussed here) each growing a little bolder in engaging heavy tones as well as weighted atmospheres — there are more subdued stretches like “Duat Hawk,” “8 of 9” and the brooding title-track, which closes and sets its melancholy to a burgeoning electric freneticism.
Silver Sash does not represent Edwards‘ first forays into electronic music. Late in 2020, the collaborative single with Carpenter Brut, “Fab Tool” (posted here) was issued, and some of its grand cinematic scope can be heard in “The Lash” or even opener “Tempel Timber,” alongside the familiar shimmer of guitar and Edwards‘ trademark vocal delivery, as rife with proclamations, exaltations and a severe, almost-affronted cadence as ever. “Tempel Timber” hints toward some of Silver Sash‘s more experimental aspects in a quiet midsection, but for fans of Wovenhand‘s early work, the subtly-laced-in percussion that accompanies the subsequent swell should feel like a dogwhistle harkening back to some of the adventurous arrangements of records like 2002’s self-titled debut (discussed here), the aforementioned Ultima Vez collabs, 2006’s Mosaic or 2008’s Ten Stones; a different era of approach for Edwards and company as they evolved out of the neo-folk beginnings of the band and toward the more rock-leaning fare that eventually resulted in Star Treatment.
One way or the other, Wovenhand are individual in terms of their sound. A big part of that is Edward‘s voice, and Silver Sash makes that case efficiently throughout its tracks — of which only “The Lash” and the penultimate “8 of 9” top four minutes long — as a song like “Duat Hawk” finds him calling out Native American tribe names in the lyrics and following the insistent snare of “Acacia” with more open ground and mellower acoustic guitar layered in. There are still plenty of outwardly heavy moments. The later “Sicagnu” rumbles and explodes with volatility, and melodic as it is, and “Dead Dead Beat” hits on the kind of harder-hitting boogie Wovenhand heave leaned toward over the last 10 years, though there too the arrangement feels broader, the jam underneath the ending fluid despite its relative brevity. And with the fuzz and build up of centerpiece track “Omaha” making a constant of its rawer tonal hum, electronic blowout and underlying rhythm that borders on the confrontational, the vibe throughout Silver Sash is certainly not lacking energy.
It’s just less straightforward in how that energy is brought to light. Ultimately, what Silver Sash does is speak to the varying sides of Wovenhand, from the whatever-works-as-long-as-it-makes-the-right-sound style of some of their post-self-titled material to the manifest heavy of the later, emphasizing the dynamic between them, and still managing to accomplish something new (or at least new-ish) in sound by focusing at times on those electronic/software-based elements. It is both traditional and not, Americana and not, and realized with a sense of wholeness that undercuts its quick runtime and speaks to the ongoing creative drive of Wovenhand as a project. I don’t know whether French stepping forward on songwriting was a result of Edwards not having material or not wanting to continue on the path being walked after Star Treatment or what, but Silver Sash steps in a different direction that is encompassing and adds to the mix rather than detracts from the significant achievements of the group over the last 10 years and more.
That leaves the biggest question here as whether Silver Sash is a beginning or an end for Wovenhand, and to what if anything — because it could always be nothing — it might lead. I’m somewhat curious as well both as to the change in processes for the writing and recording, if they were born of pandemic necessity or not. I seem to recall Edwards talking about a new album on social media that was originally due to coincide with touring in 2020/2021. Has Silver Sash been waiting for release all that time? I’m not sure if that actually matters, since they’re hardly the first to have delayed plans, but it feels like it does, though I’ll add that any such delay that might’ve happened does nothing to detract from the urgency in these songs.
At this point, any new offering from Edwards or Wovenhand is going to come with fervent critical hype. Part of that is the fact that, more than 20 years on, Wovenhand are still changing and growing from album to album. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me either way if Silver Sash is the last (for now at least) offering from Wovenhand or if Edwards — the perceived auteur since the outset — loosening the reins of the project to allow for French‘s songwriting flourish will result in a shifted creative balance over more releases to come. Of course it’s impossible to know, and while it’s a quick listen, Silver Sash provides enough substance in the actual listening experience to push such concerns at least to the background if not totally eliminate them. Change may or may not be in the air. I guess we’ll see. Or not.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Something different to close the week with a new album. Maybe I’m sneaking in an extra review this time? I don’t know. It felt right so I ran with it. Kinda wish I knew the record was half an hour long when I shelled out $25 to import the CD, but whatever. It’ll go in the archive. And that matters to me. Because I’m a crazy person.
The Patient Mrs. is in New Orleans for work. A conference. I’ve never been there, but I hear mostly nice things. She’ll be back Sunday, which means it’s me and The Pecan hoofing it through Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Little dude misses his mom, which is fair. We’ve video called a couple times. He says “I love you mommy” as fluidly as he says, “I don’t love you, daddy.” Rolls right off his tongue. I’ve taken to responding “Yes you do” and mirroring his giving-you-shit tone. It’s either that or cry.
Next week I’m going to see YOB at Saint Vitus Bar. Tuesday. It’s my first New York show since the start of the pandemic. I’m nervous, but it’s time, it needs to happen, and YOB are an occasion to make it happen. I need to be around people again if I’m ever going to be. And Uncle Acid/King Buffalo is a couple weeks at Brooklyn Steel. I want to see how KB do on that bigger stage.
I think the tour I’m currently booked to go on next month is going to be delayed or canceled. I’ll keep you posted.
Hey, Boris and Bongzilla released a split this week. This week was pretty overwhelming, actually, when it came to news. Today was nine posts? Yesterday was at least six, maybe seven. I don’t even remember Wednesday, but yeah. Plenty. I guess I’m not the only one poking my head above ground.
New Gimme show today at 5PM. http://gimmeradio.com
Thanks for listening if you do, and thanks for reading either way. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head, all that stuff. Back at it on Monday.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 11th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
There’s a kind of freedom in writing when I know a given post is going to get a minimal response. A kind of safety that lets me imagine I’m speaking to myself rather than addressing an audience. Some “me” versus some “you,” both little more than vague ideas perpetuated by digital distance. Nobody cares when I write about Wovenhand. They’re one of those bands. I have a list of them. So yeah. Maybe I’ll talk to myself for a little bit to close out the week instead of doing the normal thing.
I still remember where I was when I first wrote about The Threshingfloor. Wovenhand’s sixth album, it was released in 2010 through Sounds Familyre and Glitterhouse Records — the latter covering Europe — and I was in a public library in or near Ludlow, Vermont. The Patient Mrs. and I had rented a cabin up that way on someone’s property for a month as a kind of escape-from-Jersey getaway. We had to open the glass door to let in the internet from the main house on the property. One night she made a mac and cheese that was too spicy to eat. We drank Switchback ale on tap at the bar down the road, and I wrote more in that time than I think I’d ever written anytime before or have written anytime since. We slept, we woke, we wrote. She worked on her Ph.D. dissertation, I wrote the stories that would become my Master’s thesis, and later, that book I put out a few years ago. By any measure, it was a beautiful stretch of a beautiful, unemployed summer.
The Threshingfloor was new. As it happened I traveled south a few times over the month to go to band practice — the band would break up later that year mostly because I’m an asshole; so it goes — and I bought the CD at the now-defunct Other Music in Manhattan. Did I see there’s a new documentary about the store? I think so. It was a cool spot. I don’t remember but according to that old post I’d looked in a few other stores with no success, but Other Music came through. Fair enough.
The album is brilliant. There’s little in the David Eugene Edwards-led outfit’s catalog to take the place in my heart held by their 2002 self-titled debut (discussed here), with Edwards fresh out of 16 Horsepower and bleeding that band’s traditional folk into an experimentalism that helped spread both the actual gospel and that of neo-folk in and beyond the aughts. The Threshingfloor is a landmark for how it engaged with an expanded definition of sonic and atmospheric weight, how the strings and ringing melody of “Singing Grass” became heavy despite a still-gentle impact, and how Edwards’ richly creative arrangements gave nuance to the material ahead of the mid-’90s acoustic rocker “Denver City” at the finish.
These are impulses Edwards has continued to explore. The Native American language that shows up in “The Threshingfloor” itself can also be heard in Edwards’ recent collaborative single with Carpenter Brut, “Fab Tool” (posted here), and Wovenhand’s three LPs since The Threshingfloor — 2012’s The Laughing Stalk (review here), 2014’s Refractory Obdurate (review here) and 2016’s Star Treatment (review here) — have pushed further toward aural heft. The band resides in a few places between. They’re too folk for heavy heads, too heavy for the jam circuit, too Christian for the non-Christians, too weird to be pop or Christian rock, and so on. In terms of genre, they’ve kind of made it up as they’ve gone along. Fine.
Sunshine was coming through the windows of the library that I’m sure have grown taller in my mind in the decade since, and the table and chairs I sat on were made of a dark wood. I don’t actually remember that — they could’ve been particle board for all I know — but it’s my story, so let’s go with cherry or something like that. The floor had a municipal rug that smelled of recently-vacuumed dust and, though not new, was neither completely worn, though the paths to the bookshelves could be seen like prints waiting to be chased. I had headphones on — my old Bose noise-cancelers that broke a few years after this — and the portable CD player that came with them. I carried CDs around with me in an old typewriter case garnered from the closet at The Aquarian when I worked there. I’d packed it full because there was a lot of music I couldn’t live without for that month, and I had a moral objection to the restrictive nature of iPods, iTunes, etc. There was a righteousness to consider.
On headphones, The Threshingfloor remains sweeping and extreme in its own peculiar way. To someone taking it on for the first time, its arrangements can seem obtuse, because they are, but ultimately I’m of the mindset that it matters less what’s making the sound so much as what’s the sound being made. At least some of it, as I recall from the one time I interviewed Edwards — I can’t remember if it was for this record or 2008’s Ten Stones — was found folk instruments in different countries picked up on tour. That accounts for some of the flute sounds, various guitar-ish things here and there in the material, with Edwards’ voice and unique vocal cadence serving as the unifying factor, let alone the songwriting.
I guess this record’s been on my mind, and definitely some escapism behind that. Thinking about writing about it that warm day — the nights were cool in that cabin — and all that writing, it would be hard not to be nostalgic for it. It’s been a rough few weeks. I cut off my hair and beard to see what I looked like underneath and I’ve found myself looking older, fatter and more miserable, all of which I am. My disappointment with myself seems to leak through my pores like sweat. I exude it like my dead father used to. I am tired and I see no point to anything. I lose patience. When my son whines, I whine back at him. I just try to scratch through my day minute by minute so that I can go back to bed at the end of it. I just want the day to end.
Self-loathing is a comfortable traveling companion. It’s been with me as long as I’ve had the capacity to carry it. How familiar. Always there. How reliable.
What is the point of anything anymore? It’s laughably melodramatic, but I have been struggling to answer this question. What is the point of doing this? What is it that’s keeping me going with this project? This. Right here. What am I doing this for? All the fretting, all the time, all the bullshit, all the vague transactional garbage. My position on keeping this site going is that I won’t make any decisions until after live music returns — not a minor consideration even as regards The Threshingfloor, since Wovenhand’s performance at Roadburn 2011 was one of the most incredible shows I’ve ever seen — but what if it doesn’t come back? Without that, why do I need this in my life? What if I didn’t have it? After nearly 12 years, am I really so afraid to find out what might be next? Am I really so weak and cloying a person? Does my ego, my narcissism really need to be glutted by my own delusions of relevance? What the fuck am I doing and what the fuck have I done?
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 2nd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The largesse here speaks for itself in the half-time beats behind David Eugene Edwards‘ echoing lyrics. Carpenter Brut, the synth-driven manifestation of Poitiers, France’s Franck Hueso, isn’t the first electronic artist with whom Edwards — best known as frontman/auteur of Wovenhand — has collaborated, but “Fab Tool” is particularly effective. The slow rhythm evokes a sense of heft in the proceedings, and the video matches form, bringing yellow-sky open-road Americana with vague post-apocalyptic imagery and scenes of lizards and ruin in unnamed deserts. All the while, the severity comes from both sides in cinematic bursts of bass and the chorus giving way to a midsection crescendo of Edwards spitting rhymes — which, as they almost inevitably would, include shouting out Bible passages and landmarks in Montana — a fittingly rhythmic drama unfolding in unabashedly pop darkness. It is modern in its grit.
Wovenhand‘s next full-length, to be titled Silver Sash, has been thoroughly delayed by COVID-19 — see also: everything — but will allegedly see issue in 2021. Whenever it arrives, it will be the follow-up to 2016’s Star Treatment (review here), and if it is next year, that five-year stretch will represent the longest between two of the band’s releases. Of course, there’s been plenty of touring all the while — this year aside; Wovenhand were scheduled to be out with Om this past Spring — but what that might mean in terms of sound, who knows. Edwards in the meantime was also booked to do various solo performances throughout 2020, including at Roadburn, and did a few before lockdown hit, so perhaps there’s another avenue being pursued there creatively as well. I won’t claim to know and I won’t claim any insight. I just dug this track and wanted to post it because it’s something different from the usual onslaught of riffs around here. You can dive in or not, as you will.
Enjoy if you do:
Carpenter Brut Feat. David Eugene Edwards, “Fab Tool” official video
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 25th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
So, uh, you wanna go get weird in the desert for a weekend? Sure, we all do. And if you’re up for making it the trip of a lifetime, Monolith on the Mesa has a bunch of decked-out vintage trailers available for you to hide from the New Mexico sun while you wait for the show to start. From the pre-party to The Obsessed headlining the second day, the inaugural edition of Monolith on the Mesa looks like the stuff of pilgrimage dreams. Om and Dead Meadow? Wovenhand? Tia Carrera jamming in a brewery? Duel? It’s an obviously curated lineup very purposefully put together with the setting in mind, and whether it’s the indoor or outdoor stage, it’s easy to see where it has the potential to be an incredible time. I’ve gone on at some length about the growth of US festival culture over the course of this decade. Look no further if you need an example of the fruit that would seem to be bearing.
If you make it down, congratulations on your life. You pretty much win.
Lineup and ticket links as per the social medias:
Monolith on the Mesa: A High Desert Rock & Art Experience
Join Us On May 16th, 17th, & 18th In Taos New Mexico At Taos Mesa Brewing Mothership For Monolith on the Mesa A High Desert Rock Experience Like Non Other! A Music Festival with Art Visuals & Installations from Local NM Artists. And Of Course Some Of The Worlds Finest Dark, Psych, Stoner, Doom & Heavy Rock from All Over the Globe and SW Region! Browse Our Websitemonolithonthemesa.comFor VIP And check out our Vintage Trailer Packages!!
MotherShip Outside Stage: Featuring Visuals By Mad Alchemist Liquid Light Show * Day 1: OM * Dead Meadow * Wovenhand * True Widow * EYE * Green Druid * Spirit Mother** Day 2: The Obsessed * Pinkish Black * Castle * The Well * Crypt Trip * WEEED * Cloud Catcher * The Munsens
Taos Mesa Worshipper Inside Stage: Day 1: * Tia Carrera * Wino (Acoustic) * Lord Buffalo * Pharlee * SuperGiant * YOU * Via Vengence * Deep Cross** Day 2 Duel * Stone Deaf * In The Company Of Serpents * Pale Horse\Pale Rider * Communion * Oryx * Sorex * Dysphotic * Devil’s Throne
