A quick warning ahead of time – do NOT put this in your hi-fi stereo system. Love 666’s latest album is about as lo-fi as it gets, and considering the audience chatter, this has to be a live recording. The music is harsh, brutally in-your-face noise-rock that bands like Les Rallizes Desnudes or some of Keiji Haino’s side project fans are going to be very much into.
After a long, rather painful, but necessary break, we are back! Thank you kindly for your patience. We start off with an album I’ve anticipated for awhile now, as I have been immersing myself in the works of Dirty Three’s leader Warren Ellis and his collaborations with Nick Cave as well as Warren’s own solo soundtrack albums. From the release’s Bandcamp site: “Dirty Three Ahoy! Appropriately disheveled, the Three emerge from the unending waves of time to pick up their guitar drum and viola/violin/piano/synthesizer/loops/percussion for their first album in a decade. Their playing encompasses ALL – from the original fury…
Bleak and morose, this is the debut recording (as far as I know) of Alexander Chapovski, related to the Čapovski clan of musicians from North Macedonia. There’s a thread of Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen and Swans in this piece, perhaps a neofolk influence as well. I look forward to hear his style develop.
I was introduced to a project new to me coming from Australia. From Karl Willebrant’s Bandcamp site: “Night Daze blends immersive textures and emotive expanses that invites the listener to conceive a visual experience through soundscapes and drones utilizing bass, trumpet, field recordings, and improvised performance. The album evokes themes of time and place moving in congruent motion. ‘Night Daze’ Full performance interpretation with special guests Peggy Lee (cello) and Dylan van der Schyff (drums) viewable here – www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQgYvLem3lY “Each track feels like a seemingly large area in which the sounds of the bass and trumpet echo around luxuriously. I…
Helen Svoboda is a Finnish-Australian composer, double bassist and singer whose work reminds me in some way of Laurie Anderson’s work, but perhaps denser and more lush. This makes for a pretty phenomenal listen.
Ramble Records out of Australia have published a unique album here – one that should be seen as a modern psychedelic rock masterpiece. From their Bandcamp site: “Shūko No Omit, the name of the band, featuring Yonju Miyaoka on guitar and Vocals, his older brother Taiju Sugimori on bass and chorus,and his cousin Yuya Yamazaki on drums and chorus, is a mix of Japanese and english. Yonju told me he came across the word omit while reading an old English dictionary. Shuko (終古) is old Japanese. A word no longer used. One lost to time. The characters 終 + 古mean…
Had I not known the previous (impressive) works of both Jeff Gburek and A.J. Kaufmann, I would have happily believed that this was a lost psychedelic music gem long forgotten about in a basement studio recorded during Soviet times. While the tones are dulcet, you never really get a chance to get into a groove. The music shapes and shifts, making you ever aware of its presence and demanding that you pay attention (particularly hard to do as I’m grading papers at the moment). The introduction to the album at Ramble Records’ Bandcamp site is one of the most elegant…
Cellist Emma Caterinicchio collaborates with Indonesia-based composer and sound designer Pete Swinton for a rather blissful and drone-laden album perfect for relaxing your mind for a spell.
One of Australia’s most important, if overlooked, musicians, Louis Tillett, passed away on August 6. He started off as a musician who experimented with Industrial music in his first band, Wet Taxis, but ended up developing a rough, bluesy style that could really only be compared, vocally, to fellow Australian Nick Cave. When I was 23, I had started working at a local record shop after traveling a bit called Aron’s Records, and this album, already 6 years old at the time, came onto my desk, as we had first dibs on used albums and CDs. It blew my mind,…
Fellow giromondo Jeff Gburek offers another incredibly profound album, balancing perfectly his own signature experimental sound touched with folk and blues, with the spirits of Robbie Basho and John Fahey once again coming along for the ride. For the influence behind this album, please consider taking the time to read his liner notes at the release page here.