Lee Jackson

Round 2, Lee Jackson takes the lead

2008? Still haven't caught up; in fact I probably fell even further behind. 2007 was definitely a good year, with vets like San Francisco's Holy Mountain and North Carolinas's Three Lobed Recordings unleashing some of their most varied and unique slabs to date. And there were dozens of fine records on Not Not Fun, Important, Kranky, Digitalis, Soft Abuse, Locust, Drag City, Sublime Frequencies and on down the line that helped make '07 a little brighter. Speaking of Sublime Frequencies, must acknowledge the untimely passing of Charles Gocher due to complications from cancer in late February. Gocher played drums and sung some pretty messed up lounge songs for Sun City Girls, whose bassist Al Bishop co-owns and operates Sublime Frequencies. Needless to say, Sun City

Michio Kurihara is one of the most revered electric guitarists in the world today, though outside of his native Japan only the closest followers of psychedelic rock might even know his name. For over 20 years Kurihara has honed an approach that's equal parts scorched earth and cool breeze. His tone exists with and apart from nature, its effects felt clearly whether serving as a melodic compliment or a central focal point. The dense fuzz-tone blasts he's known for have rightfully earned comparisons to Cream era Clapton, Jimmy Page, and perhaps most of all the late great John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Virtually every one of Kurihara's performances over the years has reflected an innate understanding of the nature and energy of the chosen material. His abilities have graced classic albums by White Heaven, Marble Sheep, Ghost, The Stars (not to be confused with the Canadian band of the same name), Damon and Naomi, Yura

Back for more, with Tony Dale (Lee follows below)

This is the time of year I like to call "nailing smoke to a wall time". With the proliferation of releases on CD and LP on major and minor labels, and the explosion of artifacts issued by the handmade CD-R underground, chances of actually hearing more than an infinitesimal sample of what's going on are slim, and add to that the increasing impact of download only releases and you've got an exercise on par with sorting out the shenanigans of quantum particles. Nonetheless, here is a selection of ten releases that stayed with me more than briefly - works that in effect became invisible co-travelers in the hurtling rail cart that was my passage through 2006.

As you may have noticed, we've been away from the Garden on an extended sabbatical over the last few months, and we emerge from our voyage fully charged and ready to shine more light on the precious substrate of the weird music underground. All in all 2006 has simply provided the mother load in terms of far-reaching, strange, unique, mind-bending, soul-cleansing sound. It's a great time to be alive if you have the ears for this stuff and the time to sift through it all. Enter your ever diligent gardener.

First off: a few words about the highly influential VHF Records. For over 10 years now owner Bill Kellum (who also played with Kranky prog-droners Doldrums) has served as a dependable bridge between the psychedelic underground and the avid sound art consumer. Certainly one of the most influential and dependable bands on the roster - it gave us Jack Rose for Chrisssakes! - is Pelt, the improvised brainchild of Patrick Best, Rose, Mike Gangloff and Mikel Dimmick. The story of how Pelt went from a primitive anti rock unit to one of the most fluid cosmic noise raga bands on the planet probably deserves a book, but in the meantime Skullfuck / Bestio Tergum Degero, a recording of a recent live set captured in NYC at the Knitting Factory, not only shows how far these lads have come compositionally, but also just how much their musicianship has improved, from Rose's fluid open-tuned fingerpicking to the other players' command of the deep drone (comprised of harmonium, srutis, fiddle, singing bowls, gongs, portacello and flute). It can all be glimpsed magnificently on their epic, mind-blowing rendition of Rose's "Calais to Dover." Perhaps even more fascinating are the brooding gongs and percussive drones of the three part title track, which grows from a cold whisper to a cloud-breaking sunburst before it's through.

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.

This past April (21-23, to be precise), the fine city of Providence, RI, USA played host to the sixth Terrastock music festival (cleverly titled Terrastock 6), which gathered some 35 of the finest artists in the contemporary psychedelic rock / folk / avant / whatever scene for what surely rates as the underground musical event of the year. Luckily, several members of our Deep Water team were able to attend the festival, and with a little bit of editorial arm-twisting we managed to convince them to reflect on their T-stock experiences in a round-robin conversational fashion via the magic of email. So, without any further ado, your editor will get out of the way and turn the floor over to: Mats Gustafsson (MG), Lee Jackson (LJ), Nathaniel Rasmussen (NR), and Heraclitus Franklin (HF). Take it away lads!

HF: I think we definitely need to start by giving major kudos to the folks behind the festival, especially Phil McMullen (longtime visionary behind the Ptolemaic Terrascope publication and the Terrastock festivals) and Jeffrey Alexander (of the excellent group Black Forest/Black Sea, the Secret Eye label, and the AS220 club). It’s probably totally oversimplifying things to see it as Phil providing the inspiration and Jeffrey providing the organization, especially since they both chose the roster of artists that appeared over the weekend. In fact, I know that some folks wondered in advance if that might not lead to a somewhat schizoid fest—Phil and his mates over here, Jeffrey and his gang over there... But I think the scheduling of the groups helped mitigate against that, and one thing that really worked for me was the diversity of sounds on hand, as you could walk from a set of solo acoustic guitar instrumentals to a noise-rock maelstrom to catchy pop to avant experimentation without ever losing a sense of flow.