Sounding like a band crossing the energy of American garage surf gods The Lords Of Altamont, French punks Les Thugs with the legendary Motörhead, Frau Blücher combine a poppy, but aggressive garage-punk with hints of metal. The band name comes from a running gag from the movie Young Frankenstein, and you can read about the history of the name here. Gags and comedy aside, Frau Blucher make great power pop.
We have quite a treat tonight. The Lamplight Club was a six-piece band out of Essex, England who produce a sound that fits comfortably between 60’s garage-psych, gothic folk and touched with a noir country tinge to it. You can stream their songs via Spotify here. If there are more honorable streaming services to recommend, please do so.
For those of you, my friends, who were avid readers of my previous blog, A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music, among the musicians I was proud to champion was Destruktionsanstalt, whose works were featured at this link. I’m pleased to say that Per Najbjerg Odderskov has a fresh release under that monicker, splitting it with a project which is new to me in Cyanosis. The first two tracks from from Destruktionsanstalt, and unlike many noise bands, there is a nearly surgical focus on both tracks. The pummeling noise fest has a vibe utterly indebted to the masters, especially early period-Throbbing Gristle…
Though there are heavy tensions at the moment between the governments of Japan and the People’s Republic of China (sic), this compilation proves that there is peace through psych. Psychedelic music is the medium both the legendary guitarist of Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata Makoto and Chinese acid-folk musician Baisong Wu, and their collaboration bore the fruit of dulcet, meandering, gentle washes of lightly LSD-soaked bliss. This is music for the cloudy day we’re currently enduring in the Greater Los Angeles area, and it fits perfectly with the clouds. A stellar piece of work.
This has to be one of the more elegant releases I’ve had the pleasure of spending my evenings with in a few weeks. Ombra are a quintent, as I understand it, based in Barcelona, Spain. This sumptuous release blends everything from jazz, a touch of waltz, Arabic and Balkan music with vocals sung in a myriad of languages including Ladino, spoken today in Israel and parts of the Balkans. This is true ethno-jazz, fusing together music, scales and traditions together seamlessly. For further information, consider visiting their promotional page at Tejo Milenario. Personnel: Andranik Muradyan — Klarinet Albert Pintor —…
Dead Can Dance singer and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Perry is absolutely enamored with Greek culture, and it’s obvious because a lot of DCD’s work has an affinity towards it. Perry is especially appreciative of rebetiko, the local variant of the blues in Greek culture. This album is his paean to his adoration of rebetiko, and is perhaps the first time some of these ballads have been recorded in English. This disc is a labor of love.
Today seems to be an important day, at least as far as I can read. It’s apparently a pot holiday, and as such, though I can’t stand the smell of the stuff, I figure posting a sludgy piece of metal would be appropriate. The Swedish band Domkraft roar with one of the louder pieces of music I’ve heard in some time. This is heavy on the level of early Black Sabbath with a fuller guitar sound (reminding me of a very much slowed down Metallica or St. Vitus), more distant vocals, and pretty good guitar work. I’m not much into…
Tommy Guerrero’s music came to me via a recommendation of a friend online. I had heard his name bandied about years ago because of friends of mine who were into skateboarding, but I had no idea he was making music. And such good music, I must say. The album is full of instrumental psychedelic tracks. According to Tommy, influences such as Ethio-Jazz, Afrobeat and spiritual jazz inflect the album, and you can hear this from the first few notes. This is one I’ll be coming back to frequently.
Schloss Tegal have a storied history in post-Industrial, ritualistic and experimental music. The duo of Richard Schneider (based in Prague) and MWBurch (based in New York) developed a body of work on their own, drawing from some extremely dark places, as well as collaborating with musicians like Aube from Japan and the American experimental music composer John Duncan. Our friend and colleague Raffaele Pezzella is releasing and has remastered these cassette recordings and unreleased tracks into a very coherent album. To learn more about the history of the band, and how this collaboration came to be, consider going to the…
Considering how bad Top 40 music is, I never listen to the radio unless I’m subjected to such torture when I visit a mall or other public place of business. Because I was doing some late night work related to China, I figured I would take a look at a link which popped up for the BBC radio program hosted by a lady whose name doesn’t come to mind right now, but who is on my Twitter feed, and it led me to hearing this track. JIM is the monicker of James Baron who was a member of an indie…