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Yearly Archives: 2009
Nothing People, Late Night (S-S)
My review of Late Night, the newest album by Nothing People, appears in this week’s LEO Weekly:
As far as careerist schemes go, naming your band Nothing People and titling your first album Anonymous has to be pretty high up on the list of bad ideas. Yet California’s Nothing People’s lack of such ambitions is refreshing in an age where seemingly every band has a marketing plan. Thankfully their music is unique enough for them to be noticed. Whereas their debut mined proto-punk in the vein of Chrome or Public Image Limited, Late Night presents a bleaker, lonelier vibe (hence its title). Some of its simpler songs don’t even seem to feature the entire band but still reveal an emotional complexity lurking beneath the surface. While Nothing People are seemingly hard to know, so far it’s been worth the effort.
Ofege, Try and Love (Academy)
The following review ran in today’s LEO Weekly:
Continuing the current explosion of excellent 1970s African music being reissued in the West for the first time, Brooklyn’s Academy Records (a reissue label started by quite possibly the best vinyl store in the country) has reissued Try and Love, the 1973 debut album by Nigeria’s Ofege.
Whereas Nigeria’s most well-known superstar, Fela Kuti, might be superficially comparable to our James Brown, Ofege could also be considered the continent’s Jackson 5. Consisting of five unrelated teenagers, Ofege took their country by storm but missed greater opportunities because their parents didn’t allow them to quit school. However, unlike the J5, Try and Love’s music has a conspicuous maturity that surprises. But the album doesn’t forget to rock, complete with super-psychedelic, post-Hendrix guitar over African polyrhythms.
You can buy this excellent record from Academy here.
R. Keenan Lawler, Nick Hennies at the SWAN DIVE Saturday, August 8
(Image of R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock 2008 swiped with love from Chris Barrus’s Flickr photostream. Image of Nick Hennies and a dog swiped from whiskeyandapples.com.)
R. KEENAN LAWLER
NICK HENNIES (Austin, Texas)
Saturday, August 8
The Swan Dive
9 PM
$5, 21 and over
R. KEENAN LAWLER is a musician and sound artist based in Louisville Kentucky. For over 25 years his musical journey has taken him from early experiments with reverb tanks, noise and tape decks to all manner of avant-garde, “new” music, psychedelia, electro-acoustic, drone, ethnic and sampler-based work. LAWLER is best known for developing a highly personal and exploratory language for the metal bodied resonator guitar which Baltimore’s John Berdnt called “Cosmic, monolithic and deeply American.” Indeed his work is informed by carnatic classical, Charles Ives, Albert Ayler, blues, minimalism and non-western trance musics. Primarily a solo performer, he is also known for collaborative work. The “Keyhole II” album he recorded with Pelt and metal worker Eric Clark is one of Pelt’s most beautiful and memorable recordings, and his guitar playing is also heard on releases by Paul K., Jack Wright, My Morning Jacket and most visibily on Matmos’ “The Civil War.” He has collaborated or performed with a wide range of forward-thinking musicians and mavericks including Rhys Chatham, John Butcher, Eliott Sharp, Charalambides, Ignaz Schick/Perlonex, Kaffe Matthews, Burning Star Core, Jason Kahn, Ut Gret, Thaniel Ion Lee, Ed Wilcox, Ramesh Srinivasan, Kevin Drumm, Arco Flute Foundation, Helena Espvall, Ian Nagoski, Connor Bell, Andy Willis, Alan Licht, Taksuya Nakatani, Tom Carter, Bhob Rainey, Aaron Rosenblum, Joe Dutkiewicz, Evergreen,Eric Carbonara and Joseph Suchy.
NICK HENNIES is a percussionist and composer from Louisville, KY. He received his M.A. from UC-San Diego where he studied with world-renowned percussionist Steven Schick and performed with ‘red fish blue fish’, the SONOR Ensemble, Castanets, and in a duo with trombonist Tucker Dulin. Since relocating to Austin, TX in 2003 HENNIES has performed regularly with The Weird Weeds, the Austin New Music Co-op, Peter & the Wolf, and numerous collaborations with local and visiting musicians. He has worked with a wide array of musicians including Arnold Dreyblatt, Radu Malfatti, Eugene Chadbourne, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Jandek in his first ever U.S. performance. HENNIES’ solo work involves minimalist experiments in timbre with percussion instruments, as well as working with found sounds and electronic sources. His first official solo CD “Paths” was released on Thor’s Rubber Hammer in 2008 and also has released or forthcoming work on B-Boim, Sentient Recognition Archive, and Spectral House.
Listen to a clip from NICK HENNIES’ solo CD “Paths” here: http://nhennies.com/audio/paths-sample.mp3.
For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcomingevents for updates and/or email hstencil@gmail.com.
Hugh Hopper, R.I.P.
(Image of Hugh Hopper taken from Wikipedia.)
I’m seeing news on the internet — though not confirmed by any news organizations yet — that former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper has died. His Wikipedia entry, which mentions his year-long struggle with leukemia, gives the date as “June 2009.” No additional information is available on his official website.
Hopper’s 1973 album 1984 has long been a favorite of mine. His first solo album after leaving the Soft Machine, 1984 combines Hopper’s excellent jazz playing with some experimental processes, especially tape loops, to great effect. It’s fitting that this album, based on the futuristic novel by George Orwell, still sounds ahead of its time.
(1984 cover image from http://www.progarchives.com.)
Download 1984 here.
Tie Me to the Listenin’ Post: 5/31 – 6/5
(photo swiped from http://hadleighhighlibrary.wordpress.com/about/.)
John Fahey, The Yellow Princess CD
Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest CD (Warp)
Extra Golden, Thank You Very Quickly CD (Thrill Jockey, available here)
Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle CD (Drag City)
Big Business, Mind the Drift CD (Hydra Head)
Spacemen 3, The Perfect Prescription CD
Iggy Pop, Preliminaries CD
Savath & Savalas, La Llama CD (Stones Throw)
Etran Finatawa, Desert Crossroads CD (available here)
The Damned, Machine Gun Etiquette CD
Freddie Hubbard, Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969 CD
Sir Richard Bishop, The Freak of Araby CD (Drag City)
Swans, The Great Annhilator CD
V/A, The Roots of Nick Cave CD
Sperm, Shh! LP (Destijl)
V/A, Mexique: Fetes de San Miguel Tzinacapan mp3s
Oneohtrix Point Never — Ruined Lives, Betrayal in the Octagon, and Young Beidnahga mp3s
Gas, Konigsforst 2LP
Last updated Tuesday June 2, 2009.
Tie Me to the Listenin’ Post: 5/24 – 5/30
(image swiped from http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/wireless_gallery.html.)
Group Doueh, Guitar Music from the Western Sahara and Treeg Salaam LPs (Sublime Frequencies, available here and here)
Omar Souleyman, Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria 2LP (Sublime Frequencies)
V/A, Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits LP (L’Arome)
Noah Howard, At Judson Hall LP (ESP-Disk, available here)
V/A, “Musiques de l’Asie Traditionnelle vol. 4: Tibet LP (Playa Sound)
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Soul Finger CD
The Field, Yesterday and Today CD (Kompakt)
Vieux Farka Toure, Fondo CD
V/A, Phantom Guitars CD
Jimmy Cliff, The Harder They Come CD
Elvis Presley, Roustabout LP
Boards of Canada, Music Has the Right to Children CD
Kardinal Offishal, Not 4 Sale CD
Ennio Morricone, Film Music Vol. 1 CD
Big Business, Mind the Drift CD (Hydra Head)
Patto, s/t CD
Iggy Pop, Preliminaries CD
Fire on Fire, The Orchard CD (Young God)
The Inner Space, Agilok & Blubbo CD (Wah-Wah)
DJ Shadow, Endtroducing CD
V/A, Ghana Soundz Vol. 2 CD
Hawkwind, In Search of Space CD
The Damned, Machine Gun Etiquette CD
Saccharine Trust, Past Lives CD
Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Blank Generation CD
Extra Golden, Thank You Very Quickly CD (Thrill Jockey)
James Blackshaw, The Glass Bead Game CD (Young God)
J.G. Thirlwell, The Venture Bros.: The Music of J.G. Thirlwell CD
The Stooges, S/T CD
Iron & Wine, Around the Well CD (Sub Pop)
V/A, 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground CD (Sublime Frequencies)
Last updated on Tuesday, June 2, 2009.
Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Primary Colours (Goner)
Last but not least, from Swingset:
Despite a small population consisting mainly of descendents of England’s cast-offs, Australia has graced the rest of the English-speaking world with many excellent rock bands. AC/DC, the Saints, Coloured Balls, Radio Birdman, and the Birthday Party are just a few of the many Australian bands worthy of any rock fanatic’s collection. And now, with their second full-length album, Eddy Current Suppression Ring makes a play for inclusion in the annals of antipodean rock accomplishment. While the production value of Primary Colours is slightly more polished than their debut, the album kicks out the jams quite thoroughly, with a taut minimalist kick reminiscent of Wire or the Buzzcocks, albeit with an even goofier accent.
Buy it from Goner.
Harry Pussy, You’ll Never Play This Town Again (Load)
Review number two at Swingset (and boy does it stink!) — Harry Pussy’s You’ll Never Play This Town Again retrospective on Load:
It’s difficult to describe just how great a band Harry Pussy was, or how thoroughly the Miami-based trio demolished the line between provocation and confrontation, without noting that their least offensive aspect was their name. During their brief mid-1990s “career” they managed to utterly obliterate audience expectations, even when those expectations were at best marginal. The one time I was lucky enough to see ‘em, at a show I booked during their farewell tour, they even managed to bum out a small crowd of otherwise open-minded, drugged-out hippie college students in ways I didn’t dream possible. For posterity’s sake, a number of their long out-of-print recordings are now available on You’ll Never Play This Town Again. For those of us lucky to have been there, and for those few willing to check out a crazed piece of noise past, this release is everything you’d need to know.
Buy it here from Load.
The Shadow Ring, Life Review (1993 – 2003) (Kye)
Some new reviews of mine (of older releases) appeared today at Swingset. The first one is of the recent 2CD retrospective of the Shadow Ring, one of my favorite bands of all time:
There’s no getting around the inherent difficulty posed by the music of the Shadow Ring, one of the UK’s most obscure, yet most rewarding bands of the past decade. Ironically, what makes their music difficult is its complete simplicity. Home Counties chums Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris (with later member, Tim Goss) outlined their early musical approach most succinctly in their 1994 album Put the Music In Its Coffin, whose title spells out the distinctly amateur (yet not “amateurish”) nature of their scrapes, wheezes, and plain-spoken lyrics regarding mundane topics concerning “Wash What You Eat,” “Rats & Mice,” and “Prawnography.” Later, after Lambkin moved to the United States and the group’s activities became even more difficult to sustain, the Shadow Ring embarked on an exploration of long drones and slowed-down vocals, on such releases such as 2001’s Lindus and their final album, I’m Some Songs. Despite the change in direction, the simplicity of The Shadow Ring’s music retained its power.
Life Review (1993-2003) is a 2-cd set that documents all phases of the band, and is an excellent starting point for those unfamiliar, but willing to brave their deeply strange waters. As most of their initial releases are out-of-print (and will likely remain that way), it’s fantastic that such an unlikely collection exists, including not only classic Shadow Ring “numbers” such as “Tiny Creatures,” “Horse Meat Cakes” but also unheard charms such as “Stella Drive,” their shambolic live reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.”
Buy it at Fusetron.
The Other Side of Life 