Category Archives: Record Review

The Vocokesh, Through the Smoke (Strange Attractors Audio House, SAAH034) CD

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Everybody knows that old adage about not judging a book by its cover. Well it’s nonsense. You can judge a book, a record, a dude, even a cover by its cover. It’s easy to do. Hell, most records have terrible covers, and well, most records are terrible. However, if you took a gander at the Vocokesh’s Through the Smoke with its goofy-ass “retro-lounge” cover (nicked from some probably-bad 1959 Warner Bros. release) and thought “gee this must suck, lookit those douchebags,” you’d be 100-percent wrong, my friend. Then again, if you had to go by its cover because you didn’t have any clue who the Vocokesh are, you’d be the bigger douchebag anyway. The Vocokesh are and remain one of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s finest musical exports (and hey the Oil Tasters, Couch Flambeau and the Frogs were from there – to name just a few great bands from Laverne and Shirley’s hometown). So if ya don’t know, the Vocokesh is made up of longtime scene stalwarts John Helwig and Richard Franecki (whom you may know from f/i) with various pals helping out here and there. If ya don’t know their previous stuff on Drag City and Strange Attractors (among other places), well what you should expect is some heavy instrumental vibing akin to but different from, say, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Popul Vuh, other big fucking names. Is it silly for me to put them alongside such obvious greats? Hell no. This is some great, ominous, filthy stuff. And unlike most of the European psych stuff I just cited, the Vocokesh also rock pretty fucking hard while evoking transcendental moon mountain mists and other nonsense. For as far-out as these guys go (and that’s pretty far, you’ll need more than a canoe my friend), Through the Smoke is still pretty heavily grounded.

Buy Through the Smoke direct from Strange Attractors Audio House.

In other, completely unrelated news, it appears all friends and family living on the Gulf Coast are safe, though most everyone’s houses were destroyed. At least they’re alive, which is what matters most. From just a music fan-standpoint (ugh), given its history, the devastation that New Orleans is struggling to endure is pretty fucking depressing. But obviously more importantly, my condolences go to the living and the dead victims of Katrina and its aftermath. If you can, please donate to the American Red Cross. Thanks.

Thuja, Pine Cone Temples (Strange Attractors Audio House, SAAH3223) 2CD

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The squeaks and plinkity-plonks of post-Bailey not-really-jazz improvisation have seemingly been replaced in the international noise “underground” by a new lexicon of metallic scrapes, low rumbles resembling steady bong hits, and various other underwater soundz. I’m not one for codifying movements – and “noise” or “new beard america” or whatever cockamamie catchphrase The Wire comes up with next week sure are silly vis-à-vis ALL MUSIC IS NOISE, duh (don’t get me wrong though ‘cuz I like The Wire alright) – but there’s a lot more emphasis on DENSITY and VOLUME as parameters in “deep listening” these days, and I ain’t talking about Pauline Oliveros’s moustache (and don’t get me wrong ‘cuz both Pauline and her moustache totally kick ass!). Thuja was, perhaps, ahead of the curve, as I sure wasn’t paying attention. Pine Cone Temples consists of recordings made by the quartet of Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Rob Reger and Steven R. Smith between 1999 and 2004, and I can’t help but think that most of the stuff is pretty forward-thinking, anticipating today’s crop of I-got-some-pedals drone goons. But it ain’t just a couple of notes spread over a couple hours (again, don’t get me wrong ‘cuz Conrad, Palestine and a few others show how two notes can destroy worlds). But there’s a lot of variety here: organ vamps interrupted by chainsaw-attacked guitar, delicate sustained piano figures reinforced with amplifier static and no-so-random random percussive accidents, and even more stuff – all of it very pretty – than I have the time or space or attention span to go into. Beats hearing some twenty-something chump noodle on an expensive guitar because he – always he – read Thurston namedrop Derek Bailey in an interview (don’t get me wrong, I like Thurston) (and I’m talking about myself there, always).

Buy Pine Cone Temples from Forced Exposure

Andrew Paine and Richard Youngs, Mauve Dawn (Fusetron, FUSE037) LP

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For nearly twenty years, Richard Youngs has confounded collectors of obscure musics with his incredibly singular vision – so singular that it’s difficult for even a seasoned fan to describe – yet all the while sounding completely different with every release. From the early solo classic Advent and the duo masterpiece Lake (with Simon Wickham-Smith) to his more recent, more “accessible” guitar-and-voice work on Sapphie, Youngs has continued to astound listeners with what he’s capable of: beauty, terror, whimsy; sometimes all on the same album. Mauve Dawn, his new duo with Andrew Paine on Chris Freeman’s excellent Fusetron label, is no different. Starting with a heavy drone reminiscent of Ligeti’s pieces on the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack, the title track “Mauve Dawn” announces itself as a primordial blast, an ur-music suitable for either the beginning or the end of the world. Amazingly enough, Paine and Youngs achieve this fantastic heavyosity not with primitive instrumentation, but with electronics, perhaps even, dare I say it, digital signal processing. As the record unfolds into the subsequent songs, the electronics make room for other instruments: bells, voice (clipped phrases here and there), and indecipherable noises. By the second side, the drones have given way to more open spaces, and as a result this side is perhaps the more “modern” of the two. Indeed, some aspects of the second side touch on more resolutely timely laptop-isms, while eschewing the glaringly obvious “hey-lookit-me-I’m-makin’-music-on-a-computer” moves ground into cliché by 10,000 bald geeks-in-tiny-glasses over the past decade or so. This music exists not to demonstrate somebody’s disposable-income purchasing power or even worse some company’s lame software, but because it has to. Knowing Youngs’ and his various collaborators’ music over the years, at this point, I expect nothing less.

Keith Fullerton Whitman, Multiples (Kranky) CD

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Keith Fullerton Whitman aka Hrvatski is mostly known for his older drill n’ bass originals and remixes of fellow travelers such as Matmos, Cex and Kid606. His first solo album under his actual given name, Playthroughs, was more in an experimental-drone mode, and though I like a lotta stuff like that, for some reason it bored me. HOWEVER, Multiples is quite the burner. The premise behind this one is that Mr. Whitman limited himself to building the pieces on the album from toying with vintage synthesizers he had access to during a stint lecturing at Harvard, and while that probably reads as eye-glazing-over, not to mention ear-bores-galore, the end result is anything but. Multiples is, I’m happy to say, a thoroughly engaging and engrossing electronic album, every bit as accessible and intriguing as your standard rock band bullshit, yet made with entirely different components (and no vocals neither). Though the song titles only detail what instruments were used, they have clear schematic and thematic sounds, almost mini-dramas for the ear. Good stuff.

Crime, San Francisco’s Still Doomed (Swami) CD

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OH HOLY FUCK THIS IS AWESOME. Basically, Crime was “San Francisco’s First and Only Rock and Roll Band.” Now, sure, that’s a bit of hyperbole, and even I like Quicksilver, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Avengers, etc. so it ain’t even accurate. But Crime were the true real deal, one of the first punk bands to release singles in America outside of New York, and of a much higher quality than what would pass for “punk” in the UK. Most of their recordings have been sadly only available as bootlegs, and even the most discerning music fans probably only know Sonic Youth’s cover of “Hot Wire My Heart.” So now here’s your chance to get hip.

Sightings, Arrived in Gold (Load) CD

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Simply put, there isn’t a single band that’s making music with the ferocity and intent as Sightings right now and definitely not in the same manner. This Brooklyn trio’s third album, Arrived In Gold, is a huge step forward in terms of innovation and technique. What’s amazing is that this record was (as far as I can tell) recorded live, with minimal overdubs, and most interestingly, non-synthetic instruments! That is, Sightings is a guitar/bass/drums trio, but very few of the sounds on Arrived In Gold sound like those instruments at least not any that weren’t chopped up in a blender and spat back out. Fucking awesome.

Bobby Beausoleil, Lucifer Rising Original Soundtrack (Arcanum) 2CD

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It’s incredibly difficult, nay perhaps impossible, to discuss Lucifer Rising without mentioning its “controversial” (to put it mildly) creator and his story. Bobby Beausoleil is currently incarcerated in California, serving time for his part in the murders committed by the infamous Manson Family. But his bizarre and horrific criminal record is not what’s interesting about Beausoleil, or Lucifer Rising. Before his involvement with Manson, Beausoleil was active on the San Francisco hippy music scene, and was engaged to score Lucifer Rising, an intense occult meditation on film by Kenneth Anger (also known as the genius behind the films Scorpio Rising, Fireworks and the book Hollywood Babylon). Beausoleil and Anger had a falling out at Lucifer Rising‘s first screening, and did not speak to each other for many years. After Beausoleil’s incarceration, Anger engaged him again to complete the score, after Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page failed to finish. Finally released in 2004, Beausoleil’s score recorded entirely in prison is a classic of instrumental psychedelia, akin to some of the better early Pink Floyd tracks. Imagine the sun rising over the pyramids, because that’s what you’re gonna see in your mind when you play this. Heavy.

Ones/Hands, 1997-2005 (White Tapes) CD

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So my friend Russ Waterhouse has been running the high-quality, low-quantity White Tapes label off and on for years through various mysterious Brooklyn-located apartments, and 2005 has seen a re-birth of this ongoing concern. One of this year’s new ones is the collaboration CD by Ones and Hands, two American noisy units obscure by even most obscurists’ standards. Having only seen Ones in action, I feel confident in describing their modus operandi as officially awesomely weird: two dudes, crouching low over tables full of tiny objects, make atonal rattly creaky drony soft and oddly compelling noises. I’m assuming they’re responsible for most of those-type sounds on the disc, whereas I assume Hands provides the sweetly melodic guitar and drones that drift in and out, like the sounds of the street outside an open window. The combination of disparate elements makes this CD a fun time for fans of inscrutability, audio-style. Highly recommended.

More entries on White Tapes stuff forthcoming.

CORRECTION MAY 12: Ok, thanks to the benevolent stranger in the comments box, I learned that Hands is actually Hands To, aka Jeph Jerman. I think maybe Russ told me this but I forgot it. Whoops. And Nick from Ones plays the sweet guitar, so that’s good to know.

Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, Supplication Jam (Chrondritic Sound) 3″CD

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WWVV as they are known for brevity’s sake are a part-Brooklyn, part-Knoxville jam unit who bring the psychedelic cosmic debris for ya dome in a heavy way here. Supplication Jam (For Greh) is made up of some serious noises, starting with some straight-outta-Tangiers flute action and going all the way to liquid guitar bonk and bullhorn vocal scrape-age. Don’t look for longevity, though Chrondritic Sound‘s 3″CD is made with shorty playing times in mind. But that’s fine; the petite length in time is perfect for a taste of WWVV’s head medicine.

FULL DISCLOSURE: James and Jessica from WWVV are real nice folx, and I booked a Hive Mind (Greh) show once.

FROG EYES, THE FOLDED PALM (ABSOLUTELY KOSHER) CD

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The Victoria, B.C. band Frog Eyes presents listeners with a pretty heavy proposition: can you deal with lead singer Carey Mercer’s absolutely histrionic vocal style long enough to hear the music as a whole, and to grasp what he’s singing? It’s probably a tough job for the average joe, which is not to say it’s not somewhat rewarding. I’m not a huge fan of the narrative, or the meta, or even that much elliptical stuff in rock lyrics anymore. These days I think I just want simplicity. But there’s something about this record by Frog Eyes that makes me re-think my position, even though I’m not poring over the lyric sheet. Carey Mercer’s vocals make this stuff seem pretty damn urgent so maybe he’s not Iggy, but that’s all right. But like any band with their own distinct sense of style, it’s not going to be for everybody.