Stuff we didn't pay for . . . - November 06

Y'know, it's kinda surprising that a publication located as far off the main highways as Deep Water Acres still receives a significant amount of music sent our way for possible review. We're mighty grateful for it though, yes we are. There's just such an explosion in creative independent music-making nowadays, and thanks to technological advances so much more of it is available/findable than ever before, that it can be a real bear to keep up with it all. We do try to stay on top of things, but making time even for the music we've spent our hard-earned money on (or traded a chicken for, or whatever) can be a big enough challenge, let alone sorting through all the surprises that arrive in the mail. Now, it's only fair to note that some of those items don't necessarily fit within our particular purview, though we're still thankful for the chance to hear ‘em. But at least a few do hit us right where we live (here, that would be), and so we'd like to take this opportunity to spill a few words in their honor.

Those with really long memories (and too much time on their hands back in the mid-90s) might remember a conversation with guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors published in the old hard-copy print version of Deep Water; that was always one of my favorite interviews from the mag at the time. During our chat, Loren turned me on to some incredibly obscure records he made back in the early 80s with a unique singer named Kath Bloom; and those remain real standouts in Loren's large oeuvre, a fairly stunning meeting of "new folk" songcraft and skeletal avant-garde blues (a CD collection of some of that music appeared a couple of years later, now nearly as lost as the original LPs). After those albums, Kath apparently spent some time living for a while and didn't record again until the mid-1990s; the new CD Finally (on Chapter Music) collects material from that period previously only available on homemade discs (though one song was used by Richard Linklater in his film Before Sunrise). Kath's solo music is a bit different from the spectral sound of the Loren collaborations, much more fluent in conventional roots music dialects (country/folk division - the quaver in her voice is more Hazel Dickens than Billie Holiday) in a way that initially brings to mind reference points such as Lucinda Williams or Gillian Welch, though also w/a homemade air and a tug of depth that would appeal to fans of more non-mainstream types like Sharron Kraus and Larkin Grimm. The overall tone is spare and proportional throughout - this is determinedly, gloriously plain music, avoiding all flash and artifice and unnecessary decoration, stripping perception and expression to their fundamental elements, like a zen photograph of an everyday item that bridges the quotidian and the universal, or maybe more accurately erases the concept of such a difference. There are at least a few "perfect songs" here (you can decide which ones fit your particular temperament), and they're unafraid to touch directly a whole range of human emotion that would mark them as transcending any genre you'd want to place ‘em near.

Also exploring the depths of human emotion, and also based in a personalized approach to folk music and songwriting, but located far toward the other end of the accessibility scale, is Hoofbeat, Caw and Thunder by our old friend Tim Renner (released on his own Hand/Eye label). Under the aegis of his Timothy, Revelator solo persona (with help from Sarada and Shane Speal), Hoofbeat does indeed showcase some of Tim's most radically personalized writing to date, delving bravely into apocalypse and death and the return to earth, but also the possibility of rebirth as seen in the lives of his young children. While deeply individual topically, musically this disc comes closer than any of Tim's releases in quite some time to referencing his old gothic-experimental influences (Current 93 and the like), though Hoofbeat also incorporates his other musical developments since then, from psychedelic folk to traditional string band music. In fact, whereas these varied strains have mostly been segregated in Tim's music (between Stone Breath, Breathe Stone, the Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree, and so on), this project seems to indicate a new convergence, going back to the roots as a way forward, re-weaving the strands, thus leading the brave listener through thickets of dark incantations, scraping drones, fingerpicked guitar and banjo, droning harmonium, and verite samples, lightened only occasionally by Sarada's hovering voice. This is far from Tim's most accessible disc (which is saying something), but that's part of its strength really, and his work always deserves attention for its persistence of vision - Tim has been working his unique vein of experimental and folk sounds for a decade and a half now, and will likely continue to do so long after the current vogue for such things is as far gone as the spirits that haunt his music. (Fans should also look out for Black Happy Day, Tim's new disc in collaboration with Tara VanFlower; there's an interview too at Terrascope Online.)

Let's try a little extended Goldilocks conceit here (bear with me): If a fan of typical current wyrd-folk fare were to find Kath Bloom's music too coolly straight for their tastes, and Tim Renner's music too mercurial and individualistically fiery, I'd be willing to wager that the new CD by Fern Knight, Music for Witches and Alchemists, would hit them as "just right". Now, a few less charitable musical observers out there have been anxiously waiting for the ongoing avant-folk scene to "jump the shark" (as the kids say) and become its own cliché (which from my pov happened some time back & so is no longer a real relevant concern), and the arrival of a disc with this particular artist name and title might initially threaten to play into their hands. But it turns out that Fern Knight is actually one Margie Wienck, who will be familiar to turned-on listeners for her membership in the excellent Providence band the Eyesores, as well as her guest playing (often on cello) with the Espers, Nick Castro and others, and thus such a knee-jerk evaluation would end up missing out on one of the more enchanting recent recordings in the style. Esper Greg Weeks oversaw the recording, and other similarly-minded friends help out instrumentally, so it's absolutely no surprise that the results sit quite comfortably alongside albums such Espers II, The Ghost, the Elf, the Cat and the Angel by the Iditarod, and Sharron Kraus's Songs of Love and Loss - all classicist explorations and updates of early-70s English folk-rock via the methods of the current psychedelic underground. Margie's lovely unadorned alto spins earthy songs of delicate mood and suspended feeling, accompanied by her own guitar and cello, with additional instrumentation from harp to synth to bowed saw, all periodically split open by Weeks's blistering "acid leads" (it says here). Music for Witches and Alchemists (released by our old friends at VHF Records) hovers over the candle in the middle of the room like an enchanting, autumnal chamber-music echo of the undeniably classic sounds associated with the likes of Mellow Candle, Spriguns, and Pentangle, and if any of that sounds even vaguely interesting then this is certainly a disc you'll need to hear.

The above-mentioned Sharron Kraus played a lovely show here in State College this past summer with the above-mentioned Tim Renner - the first time they had ever shared a stage, surprisingly. Also scheduled to be on the bill that night was Christian Kiefer, playing with Sharron in support of their excellent CD The Black Dove; however, Christian was unable to make it due to a pressing personal situation, and we're sad to have missed him. If that duo CD embodies the more folkish and songwriterly side of Christian's approach to music as a mode for the exploration of narrative and culture, the recent and also excellent Czar Nicholas Is Dead (Camera Obscura Records) may be the best example yet of his experimental and abstract investigations of the same. Ostensibly about the downfall and execution of Nicholas II, the final Czar of Russia, at the hands of the popular Bolshevist uprising, the music on hand works not so much as a linear narrative as an invocation/evocation of a time and a place and the mood that surrounded it - the aftermath of a bloody war, frigid snow-covered steppes, and a society at the end of one empire and on the brink of another. Across a deeply spacious sonic landscape, Kiefer deploys sawing strings, hovering electronics, ponderous percussion, pensive guitar, and various audio verite samples, setting melancholic human touches against atmospheres of chill winter air, wide open spaces and an indefinite horizon, the interplay of nearby and far away itself suggesting a myriad of narrative possibilities without a word of exposition required. If that all sounds somewhat soundtrackian, that's probably fair; while there's obviously no film involved here, the most interesting recent comparisons for this might be Neil Young's score for Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and Richard Thompson's music for Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man; and Czar Nicholas is strong and resonant enough to make good company for both of those.

Also sonically spacious, but redolent more of abandoned cityscapes than wintry steppes, is Ink by the fine Chicago experimenters Zelienople. Indeed, the disc sounds like it was recorded in a decaying factory late at night - sparse and slowly-evolving drones on acoustic and electric instruments are enveloped by shadowy and claustrophobic tunnel-like reverb, dissonant metallic and machinic sounds echoing in the distance as some other part of the factory briefly whirrs and clanks to life before subsiding back into a lurking silence. This version of the disc is a re-release on Loose Thread Recordings, having originally existed in very limited form via the excellent Finnish CDR label 267 Lattajjaa, who have released music by some of the best avant-weird-drone operators from Finland and elsewhere, including Avarus, Uton, Keijo, and Davenport. While the general sonic territory might be shared, Zelienople's music mostly lacks the freakier aspects of those artists, instead calling to mind an art-improv/post-rock base expanding into a more purely avant-garde drone that could appeal to fans of AMM and Pelt equally. A good example of how we sometimes take a while to get to things, this disc has been hanging around DWA HQ since last March; a more up-to-date and non-thematic review would also urge interested listeners to check out Ghost Ship (on Antony Milton's great PseudoArcana label) and Stone Academy (released on CD by Digitalis and on LP by Root Strata), both of which carry the band's development even further and promise more fine things to come.

One of my most pleasing live music experiences of late was watching Mike Tamburo work his instrumental magic at a recent Deep Water show. Armed with an acoustic guitar, a hammered dulcimer (plus bow), and more loop/delay effects than are probably healthy to have in one place, he brewed up nearly an hour of whirling sound that managed to be both spontaneous and methodical, with one foot in fingerpicking folk styles and another in heavily-effected experimentation. For his latest CD Ghosts of Marumbey (actually credited to Mike Tamburo and the Universal Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge, released by Music Fellowship), the often solitary Mike drafted a large band of fellow travelers that include such familiar names as Brad Rose, Nick Schillace, Wilson Lee, and Keenan Lawler; and it's a mighty fine thing to hear. Like the live performance mentioned above, the disc passes comfortably and almost seamlessly from fingerpicked acoustic guitar to layered/sampled electronic sound manipulation. But the array of guests and styles, plus the dizzying barrage of instrumentation from the traditional to the digital to the "turkey pot" (?), also lead to some sprawled and noisy post-krautrock extrapolations that stretch outward into a bracing kind of Faustian Americana that I really can't say I've ever heard visited before; not to mention the creatively collaged production that pulls everything sideways into a dizzyingly surreal sonic space of overlapping impossibilities and surprising juxtapositions. To my ears, this is the most expansive and fully-realized MT release yet, and I don't feel too uncomfortable thinking of it as one of the genuine high points of the current avant-whatever US scene. If that kind of thing appeals, you might want to check it out.

Another collaboration of dispersed prolific undergrounders is the new disc by Eastern Fox Squirrels (out via Last Visible Dog), which brings together Brad Rose (who records solo as the North Sea and in about a dozen collaborative projects, all the while running the Foxy Digitalis webzine and releasing dozens of CDs on the Foxglove and Digitalis labels) and Eden Hemming Rose (who also records as Wax Ghost, and in other projects with Brad) with the indefatigable Robert Horton (who has been all over the place of late under his own name, as Egghatcher, and in other permutations). If I had to guess at the method behind their madness (often a fun thing to do with this kind of stuff), it seems like the Roses might have laid down some improvisational materials with plenty of space left open, which were then built on by themselves and Horton, whose sonic fingerprints are on a lot of the final shaping. From a listening point of view it's pretty hard to tell though, as sounds move in and out with an organic "live" looseness, even if those sounds themselves extend beyond the norm - from standard guitars and violins and percussion, to conventional instruments played unconventionally (bows, etc.), to seashells and seed pods and boots and Balinese flute and Indian ankle bells, and hey, Robert even remembered to bring the "sex machine" and the can of air (without which... of course). Such a huge assortment of elements could easily degenerate into a "who let the chimps loose in the band room" chaos, but the steady hands of those involved instead make for a mostly joyous whirl of layered free-clatter drone. One track even drafts Tom Carter, Jason Bill, and Dan Plonsey for a Charalambides cover, perhaps the first of those on record? Now, for purposes of full disclosure blah blah blah: I suppose it could be seen as suspect to review discs by people whose music we've released here at DW (as we have with Brad's), but I mean, at this level who really gives a hoot? In fact, I'll even go into full advocacy mode and recommend checking out all the music these people make; even though the sheer amount of it can be daunting at times, there's a huge sight more hits than misses, and adventurous listeners owe it to themselves to at least dip their toes into the waters (and I'll sneak in a special plug for the handful of recent North Sea releases, particularly the glorious ethno-folk drones of Summer Decays Into October's Alchemy on Foxglove).

Tamburo, Wood, and Horton also all appear on the first CD by a new Finnish microlabel called Harha-askel, a compilation of acoustic guitar music titled Goin' Down Slow, each copy of which comes housed in a nice hand-painted cardboard sleeve. (It's probably worth a brief digression here to note that the theme of this column has my attention mostly focused away from the micro-label/private release underground, though that is where a lot of our favorite sounds have been coming from; just check any of Lee's Bones columns for more on that...) The unplugged 6- and 12-string has been seeing continuing revival action of late, with great players like Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Harris Newman, and Steffen Basho-Junghans making consistently fine music, and some worthwhile compilation showcases like Berkeley Guitar and the Imaginational Anthem series. As befits its provenance, Goin' Down Slow swims in more basement-experimental waters than most of the above, also bringing in figures more noted for their avant-garditude than their traditional leanings, including Sindre Bjerga (usually part of the great Bjerga/Iveson drone duo), Armpit, and Tom Carter. I don't think I'm being unreasonably churlish if I note that compilations such as this do not always feature an artist's most fully-conceived work, and a few of the tracks here are clearly closer to rough sketches than recognizable figures. On the other hand, there's plenty of invention at work too, and everyone involved deserves proper respect for not simply restating currently fashionable Takoma-isms, and at least trying to see what other possibilities remain open to this most basic yet possibility-filled of instruments.

While working through the stacks of new music, it can sometimes start to feel like a whole generation of left-of-center music makers have given themselves over to the seductions of wyrd-folking or avant-droning, which makes it all the nicer to come across a bit of raw slobbering acid-fried mayhem amongst the piles now and again. I actually first encountered the distressingly-monickered Iowa City combo Racoo-oo-oon via a wild'n'wooly CD from the good people at Time-Lag titled The Cave of Spirits Forever, though here we're specifically referring to Is Night People, a re-release by Swedish label Release the Bats of an earlier cassette that finds the band in more primitivist song-busting form (though there's no real need to choose between the two; just get ‘em both). At their wildest, these guys fire up a burning cornfield of splattered freakitude that might, in the flaring light of the raging bonfire, call up resemblances to early rampaging Butthole Surfers, or sometimes to the more form-destructive blat emanating from the Sun City Girls or Caroliner back in the day. But they don't stop there, also scrabbling through messy free jamming, oddball electronics, droning psychedelics, and some kind of Midwestern punk primitivism. To be honest, at this point it's not totally clear that the band have figured out what they want to DO with the pile of scavenged parts they're perched atop howling, but there's no doubt that both the quality of the gathered detritus and the raw energy brought to the whole junkyard-sifting process make this a corner worth watching. In that sense, the working comparison here might eventually end up being the early albums of Jackie-O Motherfucker (which can once again be heard in reissued form on the Alchemy.../Cross Pollinate disc and other archival releases from that band's own U-Sound imprint), as there's at least the potential for these guys to grow into something that kind of massive. And speaking of massive...

While it's nice to hear new sounds, it's also always good to check in with old favorites. Of all the groups to come out of the worldwide psychedelic freak-rock scene back in the 90s, probably only Bardo Pond can stand next to Makoto Kawabata's Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO for sheer weight of output, cumulative quality, and perennial skull crushing. In addition to their "regular" albums, both bands also branch out into a whole extended family of splinter groups, exploratory alterations, and cosmically noisy material in various editions. After a couple of years of personnel shuffling, and a bit of sonic restructuring from tribal excessiveness to a tighter band focus (under the heading of AMT and the Cosmic Inferno), it appears that the Melting Paraiso UFO is back, bigger and better and more together than ever. On the new Have You Seen the Other Side of the Sky? (Ace Fu records) the group's intense, thundering heaviness soars alongside very zony spaced-out folk balladry, just a bit of gibbering ridiculousness, and a fair helping of overblown prog-rock jams (w/authentic synth and flute sparring), all culminating in one of their patented cosmic rock epics, the half-hour long "Tales of Solar Sail / Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky". In fact, the group's debt to early 70s fried-out psychedelic prog (think, say, Gong and Ash Ra Tempel) is more up-front than ever, and the excellent recording and production makes it crystal clear that these people can really play, focusing their trademark sprawl without lessening it one bit. In my personal pantheon of the group's music (every fan has one), I'd probably put this up there with the mystical folk-rock of La Novia and the frenzied insanity of their self-titled first album on PSF as particular pinnacles for the group, though those are really just the highest peaks (from where I stand) in a lengthy and ever-expanding range of recordings into which all fans of things psychedelic should be mounting expeditions on a regular basis.

Finally, just another word of appreciation to everyone who sends us stuff. I mentioned above that we can be kind of slow in working through things, but this one really takes the cake and eats it too (mmmm... cake...) so is worth mentioning as a perfect example of our turtle-like pace. Some 4 ½ years ago a nice guy from California named Donovan Quinn sent us a new self-released disc under the name of Verdure; it arrived just on the cusp of a house move, and after a quick listen and a mental note that it demanded closer attention, it got shuffled into a pile for packing. Well (you can see where this is headed), I was recently rooting through a box of stuff that I gradually realized hadn't been seen for years (you don't know the stacks I have), and what should I come across but that very disc, the wonderfully named Cross and Satellite Station. And it sounds every bit as good now as it did then, a 3-way collision of Skip Spence loner drawl with ragged Swell Maps attitude and lo-fi Xpressway atmosphere, combining bracing songwriting with improvisational fuckery and noisy psychedelic guitar. Cross was later reissued by the fine Australian label Lexicon Devil, while their fellow Aussie comrades at Camera Obscura put out an even better second Verdure disc in 2004; and since then Mr. Quinn has gained wider notice for his work in tandem with Jeweled Antler Glenn Donaldson as the Skygreen Leopards, who have released four wonderful CDs in a more deconstructively psychedelic folk-pop vein. So, rather than write a full review of a disc that's been out for half a decade now, we'd just like to send Donovan some very belated gratitude, point listeners to check out all his work, and thank everyone out there for making it such an exciting time to be hearing music.