Dave Shuffle Blog Party (#1)
By: Yaya | in: Dave Shuffle Blog Party | Leave a CommentThis should be a weekly project of reviewing the first nine or ten songs that the Media Player will play, while the shuffle button was pressed. I cannot guaranty anything. I’m just full of good will. That was designed for the relaxed Sunday morning feeling, therefore the Stoners or deep and heavy Krautrocks were put aside. The list turned out to be pretty folky, but, you know, so is life.
1. Rockfour - Corridors
(Memories Of The Never Happened)
One of the best psychedelic opuses of this wonderful record by Israeli veteran neo-psych-power-pop group. This album contains so many colors and flavors, exactly like its art - eclectic, exciting, collage of paper clips and stove buttons, psychedelic and yet popish. For those of you who don’t know it - it is highly recommended.
2. John Fahey - I’m Going To Do All I Can For My Lord
(The Legend Of Blind Joe Death)
A famous piece by acoustic guitar wizz and eccentric persona John Fahey. Fahey was the mentor for every acoustic guitar player from 62-3 onwards. Deeply inspired by Mississippi Delta blues, he has one of the most amazing guitar feels ever.
3. June Tabor - The Last Time I Ever Saw Your Face
(A Quiet Eye)
June Tabor is probably the most important and influential folksingers of Britain, and one of the most shimmering voices existing on the face of the earth. Almost every June Tabor record is a priceless gem, as she cleverly picks the songs for each album (She often covers Richard Thompson’s songs). Sometimes it’s performed A’Cappela, sometimes with a dramatic piano and sometimes with a full orchestra - but always with an amazing feel, charisma and character. This time she took a famous song by a veteran English Folk singer Ewan McColl. This song was performed zillion times in the past but no one did it like June Tabor did it.
Buy it : Physical, Digital
4. Michael Chapman - March Rain
(Fully Qualified Survivor)
…And from one British enigma to the other…Michael Chapman was an art teacher in a countryside college, and inspite his proven skills on the guitar (as a part of some local jazz and swing bands), it took a while until the good people of A&M records came to him with a contract for his first album Rainmaker. His second album Fully Qualified Survivor had some beautiful strings arrangements, some good old rocknroll (with a wonderful backing band, lead by Spiders’ guitar player and Bowie’s-right hand - Mick Ronson), and some solo pieces. All that made Survivor one of the best albums in the 70’s. Chapman kept releasing albums and performing, but the public somehow forgotten him and Chapman became a musician mainly for fans of the genre, instead of becoming a true legend (like Nick Drake or Gene Clark). He’s still performing and releasing records these days, for people who heard pieces like March Rain and fell totally in love. Maybe it’ll happen to you too.
Buy it : Physical
5. Fraser & Debolt - Walts Of The Tennis Player
(Fraser & Debolt, With Ian Gunther)
A country-folk rare gem from the 70’s that was longtime lost and forgotten, until someone came and did a poetic justice when he reissued the album and made it available on cd’s. I don’t know much about the two, but I do know to recognize beauty when I see it.
Buy it : Physical
6. Fred Neil - The Other Side Of This Life (Live)
(The Other Side Of This Life)
Fred Neil was an American folk legend. He was the superstar and the sheriff of the evolving folk scene of Greenwich Village, when he ran a line of performances in the famous Cafe Wha? When he played, he has his followers sitting close : Gene Clark, Neil Young, Tim Buckley, David Crosby, Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan. If you’re familiar with Fred’s name, that’s probably because you’ve read Dylan’s Chronicles.
Buy it : Physical, Digital
7. Shalom Gad - A Strange Kid
(Ahava - Love)
Shalom Gad is an alternative rock hero in Israel. A True Poet and storyteller. This album reflected Gad’s rocknroll side when it presented 19 short songs about love, hate, and unfulfilled dreams
8. Neil Young (and Crazy Horse) - Roll Another Number For The Road
(Weld)
The best live album by Neil with his Crazy Horse freak show. The ultimate school of ‘how-to-play-electric-guitar-and-make-it-sound-authentic’. Rocknroll is a way of life, really.
Buy it : Physical
9. John Martyn - Small Hours
(One World)
The closing opus of one of Martyn’s best albums ever. Martyn was in the height of his creative and expermintation process, which exploded in his album Inside Out. Then he packed everything, left to Jamaica, met Lee Perry and god exposed to Reggae and Dub. He comes back, full of passion to continue the experiments he began, but this time he also has Perry’s influence on him. In 1977 he releases One World, his last masterpiece. The deluxe edition, btw, worth every cent you’ll pay for it.
Buy it : Physical
Posted on April 26, 2008
Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash (2007)
By: Yaya | in: Albums review, Artists review | Leave a Comment
Prolog, to clean up the mess before we start
Couple of days ago, I’ve mentioned Comets on Fire as one of my fav bands operating day. They were a great band from day one, their debut was a stunning psych album and they kept getting better and better from one album to the other. But the smartest career move Ethan Miller (guitar, vocals, songwriter) did, was having Ben Chasny joining the group as a guitarist. This move led to two results:
1. They became outrageously good.
2. They were signed by Sub-Pop.
Not only they signed with SP, they kept their own spirit and didn’t become ‘a Sub Pop band’ (not that there’s anything wrong with it, some of my best friends etc. etc. etc.).
Then, they released their 2006 neo-psych masterpiece Avatar. And that was the point where Chasny crawled back to my cd-player, after a one year absence.
Ben who?
In 2005 I first paid notice to him when he released his first masterpiece (though he had several of terrific albums before) – “School Of Flower”, under his stage name “Six Organs of Admittance”. Like Comets, he released a masterpiece with a new label – Drag City - THE Holy Grail for people like Chasny.
The year after that, saw the release of the dark and mysterious “Sun Awakens” which made me understand that Chasny is not only a guitar player whom I share the same music heroes with (Jansch, Fahey, Basho, twisted krautrock), but he’s also very eclectic composer and arranger and he keeps evolvng from one album to the other – which makes me automatically poorer as I understand I’ll have no choice but to buy all his albums (aka “complete the cataloge”).
So, two amazing albums in one year – Avatar and Sun Awakens. And he just was getting started.
Ben Hur!
He almost missed 2007, but he knew there’s someone who may pick his album to be the first choice in a “best albums of the year” list (that person is me), so Drag City quickly released Shelter From The Ash, before the midnight kissing took place. Yes. Another masterpiece.
Shelter is the only thing that this album doesn’t have. The squeaking, fuzzy roars that’s being produced from Chasny’s guitar, does not provide a shelter for anyone and you gotta be a real masochist to lay in Chasny’s bed of stingy roses and find your compfort in it, but, you know, like Jim said - people ARE strange.
Ben went through a journey in his last three albums, and became a real songwriter. While his first LP’s where mostly noisy-drone-folk (brings to mind Steven R. Smith for example), School Of Flower was the album where you could feel Chasny tried to change the style a bit. Tracks became actual songs, rather than the beautiful abstract pieces he used to produce. Not the type of songs you’d put in the Deli’s jukebox, but songs that keeps a clear structure, so you know exactly where the guitar comes in and tries to kill your mama.
Shelter is an album that mixes zillion types of influences. It gives Chasny the relief he needed after no new Comets album was released, and it allows him to express his wild, psychedelic guitar. But on the other hand, it does also express his acoustic guitar skills (“Goddess Atonement”). In pieces like Final Wing, he even sounds like a proper singer/songwriter (with the eccentric and frequently bizarre style of Espers or Nick Castro). Eight repetitive minutes that circles around one guitar line, backed up with strange noises that gives the impression that the skies are closing on us. But in a piece like Shelter From The Ash itself, he skewering us all, puts us on his grill and burning the flesh – WHAT THE FUCK? I’ll have what he’s having for breakfast.
Loneliness
Without knowing him personally, I’m guessing that Chasny was a shoegazer when he was a kid. Probably listened to Bloodless endlessly. The loneliness feeling is out there in every single note. His compositions are venerable and introverted like a child that comes to school everyday with his sandwich, and the bullies abuse him, take the sandwich and beat him up.
When I first heard Shelter, I immediately thought about Richard Thompson’s soundtrack of Werner Hertzog film – Grizzly Man. The same wilderness is there. The same mountains that closing in with the same raven circling above. But Thompson kept it mostly cool throughout the soundtrack, while Chasny is boiling underneath the surface. He’s hurt.
Sometimes, this kids who were neglected by their classmates or got beaten up by bullies, ends up in the cafeteria, shooting other kids. The tense is then relieved. So in order not to shoot anyone, Chasny took Tim Green (of the Fucking Champs) to hold him back before he shoots someone. Shelter looks like an album that was about to become similar to his Dust&Chimes album, but wanted to cut down the killing, so he brought a friend to hold him.
But Still
This is the kind of records where they use the old cliché of “it grows on you”. Shelter sounds impressive on first listen, but is it really that good? Take my advice – yes, it’s THAT good.
So Shelter is ambivalent, so what? A singer/songwriter on one hand and a Faust-ish follower on the other, the two works together perfectly and I have to say that if Tim Green wasn’t there, I have a feeling that it would have been a perfect, straight A’s record. Not that Green did a bad job, but sometimes when you got a hyperactive child, don’t feed him with Ritalin, let him break all the radios and food-processors in the house and then give him the Ritalin.
You know what? Fuck it. What am I burbling about. It’s a new Six Organs record and even if it was produced by George Bush (the father), it could only be amazing or extremely good. This guy will always win. He beats the statics. He’s coming to get you.
Listen : Shelter From The Ash
Jade Like Wine
Buy - phisycal : Amazon
Buy - digital : Amazon
Watch : Youtube
Posted on April 22, 2008
(Jewlled) Crystal Antlers (Collective)
By: Yaya | in: Artists review, Indie, Music | Leave a Comment
In one year time, I promise you, you won’t be able to avoid the name of Crystal Antlers, whom you’re gonna decalre as the world’s coolest band. Don’t forget where you first heared about them. I found their myspace page yesterday and got totally blown away by them. The Antlers are a 5 piece band from the west coast and that’s about all I know regarding their bio.
And since my The Plugg page is not yet popular enough - I wasn’t conacted by them directly so no bio sheet available to quote from. So I all know is that they have two 7″ and one EP which I’m about to buy.
But all that is totally irrelevant.
For those who talked to me lately, probably heard the name Comets On Fire couple of times. That’s mainly because I recently bought their 2006 masterpiece Avatar and my life hasn’t been the same since. It was then that I discovered that one of the people I adore in the music world today is Ben Chasney, a.k.a Six Organs Of Admittance, is actully playing guitar in Avatar and does an amazing job (as usual, what’s new). The other reason I like Comets On Fire that much is Ethan Miller, the band’s lead vocalist and one of the best throats in the world today (next to, of course, Jim James). Speaking of Miller - a new album for Howlin’ Rain is out and it sounds fantastic!
And what does all that has to do with the Crystal Antlers? thanks for reading my blurbs so far. Johnny Bell (bass/lead vocals) is sort of a new Ethan Miller/Jim James, yes, the world is enhancing with good throats. The Crystals combine bad-ass energies with a great joy soaked in fuzz, they keep their songs tight but still maintain a great freedom feeling. There’s always the psych-rock oriented keyboard (played by Victor Rodriguez) sound in the back, while drummer Kevin Stuart and Bell on bass, are providing the space for Andrew King on guitars to breath threw this guitar sounds and parts.
What I heard in their myspace page, the amazing combination of psychedelic rock in the Comets style with the freedom vibe of early Mercury Rev records, completley blew me away. They’re gonna make it, big time. I just hope they’ll remember what I wrote about them and will give a free pass backstage to mingle with them.
Until The Sun Dies
Vexation
Posted on April 17, 2008
Es - Sateenkaarisuudelma (Fonal, 2005)
By: Yaya | in: Albums review, Music | Leave a Comment
Sami Sanpakkila is the brain behind “Es“, A Finnish band released several of masterpieces so far.
Sami is also behind the fantastic Finnish label “Fonal’, the home for his previous releases. This time, Sateenkaarisuudelma is released in Kraak3 as well. It’s a great label. This album was released on an LP only, so far, and it’s a fascinating journey, full of passion, rage, competition, serenity and desolateness in an urban style.
It has pagan vocals and dark freaky keyboard work, saxophones, almost out of tune Honky Tonk pianos, trickling waterfalls and other words used to describe the indescribable.
That was a very smart decision, to release it on a double LP. Each of the four sides really has its own personality and attitude, from strange Cluster and Eno-style minimalism to a dense half-chaos.
If you’re familiar with the music of the German Popol Vuh, you may find the chapter B of their music in all the past albums of Es but especially in this one.
Both of the bands had the true essence of authentic world music, without having to deal with the trouble of this definition with its piles of cliches. Hosianna Mantra by Popol Vuh is a sort of a prototype for this album and fans of this album and Popol Vuh, will find Es’ album fascinating and intriguing.
Listen (Excerpts, taken from Boomkat’s page of the album)
01
02 - Pianokaari
Buy : Physical (hey, you know what, it was also released on a cd couple of months ago!) - Boomkat
Digitial - Boomkat (I just adore these guys)
Your comments are always welcome
Posted on April 10, 2008
The sounds of apocalypse #1 - (Issues with Hala Strana’s These Villages)
By: Yaya | in: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Hala Strana is the brainchild of the multi-instrumentalist Steven R. Smith, known for his membership in the fabulous band Mirza (The great, late 90’s neo-psych band).
In this project, Smith brings to life his passion for eastern Europe traditional folk music (Czech, Romanian, Hungarian), and using endless layers of bizarre instruments - the music is created.
In his previous album (actually, a double album contains two early releases), Smith played rather traditional folk music, while covering true trad. alongside to the new original (yet sounds like authentic). It’s a bit like A Hawk and A Hacksaw, but far more dark and disturbed.
These Villages is a whole different story. Smith extends the boundaries of his own creation and gives a new definition to that style, when he reaches to the more abstract and hallucinatory edges of the music. The album is minimalistic and amorphic then his previous work.
His influences are blurred by a tapestry of drone irritating sounds of bowed guitars (sometimes sounds like a Sarod). He also plays Harmonium, cello, bouzouki, harpsichord, accordion, violin, waves, sea shells, and many other conventional and unconventional instruments.
Through the whole album, there’s a great sense of raga music, but less spiritual then usual. Raga isn’t a simple music, it requires time and concentration from the listener while digging deep into the listener’s soul, but it reaches to the the most sincere places and causes a meditative state of mind. Smith’s raga is a whole different story. It bugs you, it’s unpleasant, sometimes almost annoying, doesn’t keep an eastern authenticity throughout the whole album, and brings Smith’s experience as a member of the Jeweled Antler Collective into his attempt of creating musical escapism that draws the landscapes of different eras, of small villages and peasants and wells, loads of wells.
Seven tracks after the album began and caused you this unpleasant feeling, comes a short rest to the average ear when a sort of a half-sax/half-trumpet instrument plays a relaxing melody with gentle bells and a piano high noted key that runs through a delay (Nepdal Tarogaton).
In Smith’s world, even the pause in the madness has to be poetic and bizarre.
In Peal, along with the tribal percussion, there’s a dense distortion layer that brings back to mind another past project by smith - Thuja.
The last couple of years brought a great interest in the non-western culture. Even within Europe, the east got famous. We had a Balkan wave, a Klezmer wave, the Polka wave (all of them, of course are alternative. alt-klez, alt-balk, alt-polk). Endless bands suddenly digged in their parents’ old wooden boxes and discovered scratched 78” of local minstrels of a small village in Uzbekistan and decided to pay their respect to the music. We had enough of that. What we really needed was a guy like Smith to bring his own interpretation and skip the “alt-” definition while moving in giant steps to the “experimental-” titles. This is what makes this album so unique. You can see that he’s coming from somewhere, you’re just not positively sure where he’s coming from.
Another unique quality of the album, is that it has not pauses between tracks, which gives the musical creation a complete story (or “opera”) concept.
The beautiful drawing on the cover is from 1493 and the music has its influence in that era, but the funny thing about it, is that Smith owes a great deal to modern technology for allowing him to record layers of music thanks to the multi tracking system available everywhere.
I bought this album in second hand, and it’s easy to understand why someone had given up on it. It’s a very challenging album and unmercifully. But, once it grows on you, it becomes one of these albums you won’t listen to on a daily basis, and keep it for special occasions. Just like you do with White Noise’s Electric Storm or Fursaxia’s albums.
In the end of the day, this is the true acid/free/alt-folk. All the rest are mainly anties with a harp.
Listen : Nepdal Tarogaton
Peal
Buy, directly from the artist : Official website
Buy, digital : Emusic
Your comments are always welcome.
Posted on April 8, 2008
The sounds of apocalypse #2 (but most of the time it’s beautiful)
By: Yaya | in: Indie | Leave a Comment
James Blackshaw - The Cloud Of Unknowing (Tompkins Square, 2007)
Every now and then, there comes an album that makes you drop everything and find a different career as a shoemaker or whatever. That feeling of “at least when it comes down to shoelaces, I’m not compared to my colleagues” gets a reasonable and offending sense when you understands the music.
The understanding I’m talking about is not listening to Miles “Sketches Of Spain” and understand its roots.
I’m talking about the music that functions as a wire around a cork of a well shaken Champagne bottle, and it’s the only thing the keeps the volcanoes of creativity inside the bottle and prevents them from bursting out.
This creativity was well hidden all these years under the cover of the old “my art is not legit”, and the release of that cork makes the time of hesitation transform into the time of your creation. The one things that interferes with the true liberation, is the fact that it’s so good, that it castrates you, and you drop your guitar, puts John Fahey’s “Of Rivers And Religion” back on the shelve, and dive into the world of women’s shoes.
That was the feeling I got when I first heard James Blackshaw, 24 years old, when he released his first proper release (after a series of wonderful cd-r’s) O True Believers.
One year later, he released “The Cloud Of Unknowing” (In the wonderful Tompkins Square Records, a small but very quality label). He didn’t grow up in one year and became 25. He grew up in a light year (9,460,730,472,580.8 Km, to be precised) and became a classic.
Blackshaw took his own place in the modern folk impressive guitar player, joining the tea party of Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Richard Bishop, Harris Newman and others, all of them forming a modern replica of the circle of giants assembling the cult Tacoma label in the 60’s and 70’s (Members of the circle were people like John Fahey, Max Ochs, Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho).
In the last couple of years the numbers of guitar players who just found out who Fahey was, increased to the point where it becomes dangerous. To the authenticity, that is. Everyone tuned their guitars to DADGAD, bought a thumb pick and start practicing on their Mississippi John Hurt grooves. I am that sort of person.
But Blackshaw is different from all of them, and with his new album, he’s different from himself. He brings something new to the music, and it’s a masterpiece.
Blackshaw enters the Robbie Basho niche in the circle, as a 12 strings guitar player, tuned with open tunings, while playing eastern,Celtic, and Arabic scales and modes.
In his previous albums, you can identify Blackshaw’s influences, both as a guitar player and a composer. But in Cloud, as someone who made the great leap (a light year ahead), we got a new, improved, mature and fascinating James. A James that pressed the paused button in the cd player, removed the needle from the vinyl, did put Basho’s Zarthus on the shelve (where did you get a copy, btw? I’ve been looking for one), and brought him. Only him. The great individual. And this individual, as I said, makes me wanna be a shoemaker or a fireman.
So much originality, beauty and vision in one record, that it merges into a fantasy story without its cliches. His guitar, dipped in a pleasant and accurate reverb (sounds a bit like it was taken from Windham Hill records) bangs on the Geneva office doors of the ECM A&R’s. It could have been one of their classics, if it wasn’t so psychedelically dark and mysterious.
Most of the album is a lone 12 strings guitar composition, but a sudden Glockenspiel arrives (played by Blackshaw on Running To The Ghosts, along with a guest violin). The guitar is put asides in Clouds Collapse which is a 4 minutes sounds structure produced by a high pitched string instrument, based on a far and dense distortion layer.
The album ends with a waltz tempo pastoral piece (Stained Glass Window), where Blackshaw gives his 10 minutes of breathtaking landscapes of Bolivian mountains, and completely turns the phase to the 5 minutes endings of the violinist Fran Bury that enters with a squeaking violin playing, addicted to an endless tape loop and brings the apocalypse.
The Cloud Of Unknowing, as it turns out to be, is a symbol of humanity that began with a pastoral Eden, got a tremendous shock in the middle, got back on tracks afterwards, and ended when a violinist decided to ruin everything.
The apocalypse, is a fine fine moment.
Btw - a new album by James is now out. And soon - A review !
your comments are always welcome. Feel free to register to the blog. it’s free and fun.
Posted on April 8, 2008
Efterklang: Parades - This May be the Album of the Year
By: Yaya | in: Indie, Music | Leave a Comment(well, at least next to Sky Blue Sky, the upcoming Robert Wyatt, and the Collective’s Strawberry Jam. And - I still need to listen to Moor’s new album anyway, so…)
But - Let’s dive into the album we gathered here today for.
Efterklang - Parades
There’s no doubt that Ladies and Gentleman by Spiritualized is an amazing album, right?
(A small reminder–>)
There’s Also no doubt that Loveless by Bloody Valentine is an amazing album, right?
(Another small reminder—>)
Now, the common thing about them (besides being the masterpieces of their genre) is that Mr. Darren Allison was doing the mixing for both of them (along with the valentines, and Mr. Pierce)
And why, out of the blue, I pulled that name?
Well, it’s because these magic hands touched the new masterpiece that will be released by The Album Leaf label in two weeks. The Danish group Efterklang is releasing another beautiful Nordic result of icebergs in the streets (at least that’s how I picture the streets of Denmark. When I think about this music, that is.)
I believe it’s their fourth album, Parades is an album that your kids will learn in The School For Music Production. If there is such. This one hit me in the face. Just when I have all my radars working, I came across a track from the album in the wonderful WFMU radio.
I was sure the album was released already, but I saw it in the net, and downloaded it. coz yes, I’m a pig who can’t wait. But I do promise I’ll buy it. Seriously.
So Efterklang finished 18 months of recording and arranging for this album. We have three choirs, one strings quartet, one brass section, tapestries of sound and emotions, and everything’s about to explode in a second.
Your favourite French singer that you don’t know yet is called Dominique A (A new live album was released couple of days ago). Before his latest Masterpiece “L’Horizon”, he recorded an album with the Bulgarian symphony orchestra called “Tout Sera Comment Avant”. If you know this album, you’re about to fall in love with Parades.
(This, is one of the best teasers ever)
They both share great strings arrangement, captivating explosion of emotions and beauty, and the grandiose feeling belongs to the likes of Emerson, Lake and Palmer - just, good.
Efterklang has been working on the album since 2005, whilst during that time they did release a mini-album recorded out of stuff they wrote on the road and recorded in live shows (never heard it - am I right?) after the mini-album was released they returned to climb the big mountain with a huge stone on the shoulder. but they won the race to the top, no doubt.
This is going to be one of the best albums of the year, I guarantee. And though you don’t know me at all - trust me. I’m sorry I can’t really say much in terms of music definitions, as it’s not post something or pre whatever. It’s not a “The” band, and it’s not a Rough Trade release - so, no categorizing for you here.
But I can say that this album is just perfect, intellectual, interesting, captivating, astonishing, Thrilling, has an amazing big sound, well produced and played. Just stir and serve.
Parades will be released in two weeks. DO NOT miss it.
Posted on February 5, 2008