Bones from the Garden - July 2006

After some delay we’re back in full force here at the compound: watering the greens, raking the dirt and finding fresh digs, including a few goodies nabbed on our recent Terrastock voyage. First off, let me just say we love vinyl. We love the warm clicks and pops that come with giving an old (or new) 33 (or 45 or 78) LP a spin. We even love that there are entire musical genres devoted simply to playing records, but mostly we just love the feel of vinyl’s smooth surface, the overt bulkiness of its package and the eye-popping dimensions of its artwork. We also love that records take up too much space and have to be flipped over halfway through playing. It’s the ritual.

In the annals of recording, an interesting development is the lathe-cut record, a thin polycarbonate disc that looks and sounds (almost) like a real record and plays on normal turntables. The rationale behind the lathe-cut apparently has something to do with cost effectiveness. Homemade in New Zealand by Peter King, it might seem unlikely that shipping to and from NZ for anything could ever be considered cost effective, but that doesn’t stop artists of every stripe from giving it a whirl. A quick glance at Dan Vallor’s Lathe Cut Universe reveals hundreds of folks from all over the globe that have gotten in on the action, and if you own a lathe-cut, then you have too. Lathes are much thinner and their aural capacity is diminished compared to normal records, so a piece of music coming from a lathe has a ghostly, tinny quality. This quality is perfect for Steven R. Smith’s recordings under the name Hala Strana. His compositions—combining 4/8-track recordings of live instruments with minidisk and boombox overdubs—conjure a dream symphony that defies easy categorization on the 7” lathe, White Sleep (Soft Abuse). Beset with wheezing ambient tones and degraded tape noise, these pieces (including a Dog Faced Hermans cover!) sound positively ancient and fall somewhere between Eastern European traditional folk, the homemade primitive works of Harry Partch and the early noise drone of Velvet Underground. Limited to 60.

Tennessee’s Valley of Ashes offers something a little more rock and outer at the same time with the massive 3LP Cavehill Hunter’s Attrition, a split release from the Black Velvet Fuckere and Consanguineous labels. Valley of Ashes may or may not still be a running concern with an extended lineup that includes members of Sapat (forthcoming LP on Siltbreeze), Virgin Eye Blood Brothers, Raw Thug, Kark and the Magik Markers. I haven’t heard half those ensembles, but this is very good in terms of stumbling ramshackle blues, folk, noise, heavy acid rock and Tennessee hoedown. It’s all here, and it’s burnt to a crisp, or steeped in a dense mountain fog depending on your preference. Think of the squawking blues jazz of No-Neck Blues Band and throw in a more chemically induced lo-fi fuzz stupor a la Amon Düül I, and you’re close. In fact, this behemoth reminds of the mega-recording session that yielded all those classic early Düül albums, only it’s packaged all together as one mammoth vinyl box and sprinkled with Smoky Mountain pixy dust.

More glowing limited vinyl, this time in the glorious picture disk format from Matt Valentine ‘M.V.’, Alex Neilson, Erika Elder ‘E.E.’ and Moses Jiggs on the Qbico label. Something of a companion to the recently issued and highly recommended “Mother of Thousands” 2LP/2CD on Time-Lag, this sees our beloved M.V. and E.E. performing as a quartet with the aid of Masters Jiggs and Neilson in extra-mind-melting instrumental capacity, and it’s about as gloriously dissonant as anything I’ve heard from all of the above, and oh so beautiful to look at.

The Cowboy’s Road (Children of Microtones), credited simply to The Bummer Road and featuring most of the same participants as above, is a recently issued CD-R that features two extended live recordings from the MV/EE big band experience and offers a more restrained trek through ethnic ghost blues and industrial raga drone. The build ups and catharses are compounded by an incomparable production value that sounds piped in from below the ocean’s surface and benefits tremendously from a kind of restraint and lidded ecstasy that’s practically unparalleled in modern music. Isolation never sounded so perfectly imperfect.

One of the great pleasures of my recent Terrastock trek was finally getting to see PG Six live. The Tower Recordings contributor is one of today’s finest practitioners of psychedelic trad folk from both sides of the Atlantic, and given the relatively stripped down nature of his albums, seeing him with full electric backing was a welcome thrill. At the same time, PG has an amazing gift for playing in a more direct, unplugged mode, as found on Live Gladtree Festival 4-10-04. This CD-R, courtesy of Perhaps Transparent Records, is a raggedly gorgeous live document of the this more minimal approach that features many of the best songs from his two albums, plus two exquisite covers in Townes Van Zandt’s “High Low and In Between” and Robin Williamson’s “My Name is Death,” and a whole lot of creaking chairs and ambient noise and sounds that makes the whole thing even better as far as I’m concerned. A lovely little monument to what was surely a special night.

Also nabbed from the Perhaps Transparent table: the astounding duo recordings of Mark Dagley & Stephen Connolly. Benedictions From the Eternal sounds like acoustic guitar and violin (but don’t quote me on that) weaving a fluid spell of raga bliss and drone that should appeal to anyone who digs on the more stripped down aspects of MV & EE among many other ethnic mind-trippers. One studio track, one live in NYC—all amazing.

The New American Folk Hero label is back in action with a slew of new releases, some of which will get covered in the next Bones column, but we have a little room here to mention Robert Horton’s Winter Suite, a 3” CD-R recorded a couple years ago that’s currently still in print and definitely worth a listen given it contains some of Horton’s most memorable wobbly folk-blues-drone constructions across five tracks and twenty minutes that are genuinely free and deeply revenant of the old blues at the same time. This is easily one of my favorite Horton spins to date.

Horton also contributes a 3” CD-R to Students of Decay’s Creeping Dawn Vol. 2, a four disc boxset of EP length submissions that also features Mike Shiflet, David Kirby and Alligator Crystal Moth. We get Horton’s whirring gamelan spells and layered string drones; Kirby’s foundation rattling drone collage of primitive electronics and field recordings. Mike Shiflet unleashes 18 minutes of snowballing radioactive white noise that growls like the harshest arctic winds. And the mighty Alligator Crystal Moth tickles the synapses with four slices of tumbling spirit music, proving that the long distance collaboration between Terracid and The North Sea continues to thrive when it comes to melding ramshackle ethnic sounds, moody experimentation and industrial pulse. All 4 CD-R’s come with their own cases and artwork in a tastefully designed white box. Definitely a keeper and limited to 50.

Also from Students of Decay comes a co-release with our good friends at Digitalis, the first official CD by With Throats as Fine as Needles, another veritable underground all-star super-groupings that finds masters of the new New Zealand drone—Antony Milton of the PseudoArcana empire, Richard Francis, Campbell Kneale of the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon / Birchville Cat Motel drone axis and James Kirk of Sandoz Lab Technicians—joining forces for all encompassing buzz / clank / noise fests. It’s all recorded in an old abandoned bunker on New Zealand’s north island with entirely battery operated instruments and recording devices, and the (un)natural reverb makes for one of the more strikingly panoramic widescreen audio presentations I’ve ever wrapped my ears around. Nice background stuff at low volumes; godhead feedback bliss at high volumes.

Two other cherry Digitalis CDs of note: the reissue of Hush Arbors self-titled debut, which shows that Keith Wood was weaving pastoral drone folk magic from the start with a rich tapestry of fuzzy lo-fi noise ecstasy made up of acoustic / electric guitars, ethnic drones and Wood’s own high pitched ghost vocal at the center of it all. Fans of Fursaxa, Flying Saucer Attack, Popol Vuh and the like, really need to hear this one.

Also of note from Digitalis is the first real CD, following countless CD-Rs, by Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood. Goodbye features three extended tracks of shimmering live electronics and prog rock manifestations that maintain a constant flow made up of morphing electric guitars, electronics, tapes and minimal percussion. The beauty of BOTOS comes in that their songs rarely seem to have any real beginning or end and sound as if each performer were simply tapping into an endless river of cosmic energy and carefully tracing its every crook and bend with aural markers along the way.

A few Foxglove CD-Rs that have been out a while and still might be findable: Stephen Clover, AKA Seht, is easily one of my favorite current NZ sound makers. Christian Jesus. I Will Determine a Suicide illustrates his drone prowess with two longer pieces of ambient haze that combine mechanized pulse and organic breath into deep minimal workouts. Seht brings to mind any number of masters in the genre while largely sidestepping the expected NZ “free noise” vernacular.

Brooklyn noise jammers Heavy Winged (who sadly just called it a day) have an album coming out soon on Deep Water, but the A Serpent’s Lust CD-R is my first exposure to the trio. Four instrumentals of fuzz-skronk / heavy psych comprised of messy screeching guitar bursts and plodding rhythms that make me think early Skullflower, Comets on Fire and all manner of aural extremism. Altogether, this makes for a worthy slab of elevated caveman stomp that’s as aggressive as it is engaging, and I’ve got to think they were the most insane live show in NYC for a brief period of time. Sorry to see you go, boys.

Sindre Bjerga is a name I’ve been reading in various places for a while but only recently actually heard. Sinking Slowly, Dissolving Quietly is comprised of dense pieces of guitar drone and lower register electronics across six tracks of static ebbing and flowing tone fluctuations. It all sounds sort of like a home-recorded answer to the early 70s work of German electronic noise pioneers Cluster, and that is intended as high praise. Bjerga obviously has a gift for combining electronics and feedback into something unnerving and hypnotic at the same time. All three of these CD-Rs are limited to 100.

Another mighty fine label is Archive Recordings out of New York, which first released hand-made live CD-Rs by some heavy hitters in the avant-noise scene (including Keiji Haino, Khanate and Earth) and has recently graduated to CDs with these two fine platters. James Plotkin & Tim Wyskida usually mangle bottom end sludge rock as the rhythm section of Khanate, the most hellish heavy band on earth. On 8 Improvisations they explore the other parts of the sonic spectrum, i.e. the deepest regions of guitar/drums space with instrumentals that range from grinding free jazz eruptions to bottomless oceanic ambient depths; it’s all recorded live with no overdubs, so the energy is palpable. Bits of Fripptronics, NYC no wave and Krautrock can be glimpsed in these fascinating workouts. Needless to say, there’s a lot more variation here than found on the typical Khanate release.

Also on Archive, LSD-March’s Empty Rubious Red is a stoned beast of enlightenment. Reissued on CD from an absurdly limited microcassette edition, this benefits significantly from James Plotkin’s mastering and touchup and stands as some sort of pinnacle from these New Lords of the Dark Chaos. Most of these seven tracks have more of a lazy campfire vibe much of the way than their earlier albums; only this camp was erected inside a musty smoke-laden club and all the heat comes from burning cigarettes. There’s at least one deep space blast-off to sate the noise freaks, but mostly these songs are soft and glowing like the embers in Lou Reed’s ashtray.20 Buck Spin is another relatively new label out of California that’s devoted to the heavier end of the noise spectrum. Campbell Kneale’s Battlecruiser sub-label explores similar dank crypts where ensembles like Cicadashrine, Wardagger and Black Boned Angel offer their own howls from the crumbling abyss. If into the new sludge doom, pay the site a visit soon. Black Boned Angel’s Bliss and Void Inseparable wins the award for most philosophically profound title of the year, but more importantly this single-tack hour-long journey through cold winds and bottom end minimal desolation offers a kind of aural summation of all that is wrong with this world today and how the conscientious observer might possibly overcome all that agony. Combining the bleak doom-scapes of Corrupted, Kneale’s own ecstatic works as Birchville Cat Motel and even his trance-scapes as Ming, Bliss and Void Inseparable provides devastating power drones across a wide and varied sonic landscape.

And why stop there? If Kneale can get on the apocalyptic fun, so can his pal, Antony Milton. Mrtyu is truly a welcome addition to the mongrel industrial black noise genre. And Milton gives Kneale a run for his money across the 2 CD Blood Tantra (also on 20 Buck Spin) with guttural feedback and radioactive wind storms howling in every direction. It’s sort of hard to get too specific as many of these tracks sound quite similar, but Milton maintains the trademark sonic intensity he brings to all his projects and keeps it interesting across both discs of necrotic bliss.

Milton has a more subdued project called The Nether Dawn, whose first album Whisky Mute-Down (Last Visible Dog) won its share of accolades in underground circles a couple years ago. Outer Dark (on Kneale’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) is a follow-up of six more tracks of ghost blues, drones and effects that attain some truly exalted meditative heights. Here Milton mostly explores minimal guitar based sound sculpture, though on some tracks you’d be hard-pressed to place a guitar anywhere in sight. Bowed tones, minimal organs, brilliantly distorted accents—all given a spacious minimal air—take this well beyond just another guitar based drone record. The works of countrymen Seht and Peter Wright come to mind, but Milton’s restraint and occasional vocal whispers lend things a uniquely desolate quality.

Pefkin’s Pingle Pangle sounds almost like a distant cousin to Outer Dark, which might make sense given it comes courtesy of Milton’s PseudoArcana label. Gayle Brogan runs a wonderfully tuned in mail-order called Boa Melody Bar and made a vivid impression in the late ‘90s as one half the underrated shoegaze / minimal pop duo, Electroscope. I’m always excited when I get a chance to mention Electroscope anywhere because at a time when everybody seemed to sound like everybody else, Electroscope had no real equal. On this, Pefkin’s second album, Brogan proves that she’s lost none of her knack for melding fantastic dream voyages from primitive electronics, guitar, bowed strings, organ, effects and voice. Pefkin is actually something of a stripped down, modern day counterpart to some of Electroscope’s ideas, but everything is lent a slightly more isolationist slant that makes me think of Alastair Galbraith and even Nico. For all its experimentation and oblique structures, Pingle Pangle is an incredibly warm and engaging listening experience.

And now a re-visitation of sorts to our recent United Bible Studies / Deserted Village feature. Agitated Radio Pilot is the solo guise of one Dave Colohan, a long time member of United Bible Studies and prime mover in the Deserted Village collective. His works as ARP are timeless psychedelic folk evocations that could just as easily be compared to Townes Van Zandt as Current 93, and on the double 3” CD-R Your Turn To Go It Alone (released on the new Rusted Rail label), he doesn’t make a false move across eight shorter song based tracks and two extended chamber drone pieces. We’re talking deeply moving stuff here that comes from a place where ego and pretension are mostly left behind. Many, many artists come to mind, yet Colohan has such a striking and personal vision that there’s really no point in naming names. Hopefully these tracks will be rescued from limited release oblivion somewhere on down the line.

And last but not least, a tape from Wisconsin’s Wormsblood, courtesy of the 23 Productions sublabel, Skull Fucking Tapes. Yes sir! SKULLFUCKED! Good way to describe what’s going on here. In recent months I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the genre of basement black metal scunge. When you strip away all the studio gloss, corpse paint and satanic posturing, you can be left with something truly harrowing. Wormsblood is about as fucked and compelling as rock music can be across the 20 minutes of The Grave Hill. Blood soaked guitars, abysmal electronics, wolf-howl field recordings and, of course, screeching hag vocals are all employed; and thanks to the gift of horror-ble fidelity and Worm’s own compositional skills, warped greatness ensues. None of your friends will like The Grave Hill, but grim sorts enamored of the likes of Furze and Emit should definitely hear this in a pitch black room after midnight.

That’s all from the garden for now but expect another dispatch soon. And keep on digging, folks. We need the aural medication now more than over. Peace and love to all during these difficult times.

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