Stuck on a Frownapilago
 

In this journal, I'm going to review some albums that I enjoy. For those of you who know my taste you're aware of the interesting ride that you're about to take. I may go beyond albums and throw a couple movie reviews or get drunk and rant about something, so as to keep it in one thread. For now, I'll be sticking to music.

Given my egotism, you're likely to hear about my music, and it'll probably be pretty detailed, so expect that at one point. Free jazz, modern classical, noise music, avant-garde music, hip-hop, psychedelic, prog, and anything other artists in a given genre that really strikes my fancy will likely be covered in this journal as well.

My first entry will be coming soon. So to set off this journal, I'll leave you with a painting by the infamous Pollock called White Noise. It was originally on the cover of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation and I must say that its very fitting for both the album and the incoherent rambling sure to come in this thread. "Out of chaos, intuition and freedom, beauty will emerge."

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZFeQWDDNaD...hite+light.jpg

Yay.

I am going to review, you guessed it, a bunch of Peter Brötzmann live videos that I watched courtesy of Youtube. Brötzmann is a German saxophonist became a core member of the first wave of European free improvisation and he is active to this day. His style is heavily influenced by Albert Ayler, which is mainly shrieky tenor sax. However, Brötzmann employs a lot more cacophony and sheer insanity from all the other instruments. On to the first reviews, which I will do in three parts.

Peter Brötzmann Quartet - Improvisation 10/17/1974 (Part 1/3)



This quartet has Brötzmann on reeds, Paul Lovens on drums, Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, and Peter Kovald on the contrabass. This performance starts with a jolt as the bass, piano, and drums crash into each other as Brötzmann ferociously shrieks into his sax. He really knows how to make that thing wail. Peter Kovald bows his bass to make some screechy noises as well by grabbing his strings and bowing intensely. Alexander von Schlippenbach is on a grand piano and his playing is all over the place in a good way. He makes sure to blend low and high notes as sporadically as possible. Lastly, we have Lovens on a very interesting drum kit. I see the usual snare, kick, and toms, but he also has a bongo, cymbals that have been beat to hell, as well as a bunch of toys that Kovald uses to expand his kit.

After about a minute of improvisation, Brötzmann breaks into a solo that showcases his standard style. Too many notes to follow, squeaks and squeals ringing all over the place, and bam! the rest of the band joins in. Lovens is now placing pie tins on his snare and tom, which makes his drumset more clattery. Oh look at that, I see why his cymbals are all beat up now.

Another minute or so of improvisation goes by in this manner and Schlippenbach breaks into a great piano solo, similar to the style that he plays in thoughout the video. Then Kovald joins in on the fun and plays some screeches to to Schlippenbach's fluttery piano with the drums following. Loven's drumming is awesome, he's using a cymbal on top of his drum, as well as a woodblock, that's creative.

Things start to slow down, and Brötzmann joins in on the clarinet. At first Petey needs to step closer to the mic when he plays a long line of low notes, but then the squeaks come and he plays that thing like he's going to make it pay for what it did. There's some great Brötzmann/Kovald trade off on here.

The video ends kind of abruptly in this scene. These guys are mad musicians and this video has me itching to watch the next. I'll be covering it in my next journal entry. For now, here's another painting that I like. It's a Man Ray painting called Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz.

http://uploads2.wikipaintings.org/im...glitz-1913.jpg

:tramp: Frownland, your mortage from the Bank of Journaltown has been passed and approved. Welcome to your new home. Great to have you here. When's the housewarming, and should I bring a bottle? I'll bring a bottle.
:beer:

Now we move on to the second part of the 1974 improvised performance, which picks up where the last one left off.



Old Brötzy has his clarinet a-wailing while Kovald responds with some of his stylistically abrasive bassities. As Kovald cleans plucks away the broken and shredded strings from his bow, Brötzmann begins to deconstruct his clarinet and using his hands as a wah to get some more interesting clarinet noises. First he takes off the bottom part, then he goes on to remove the top part as well while still playing the mouthpiece. He plays some really sick stuff during the deconstruction while the band carries on the song in its usual state of ear shattering cacophony but this time, Schlippenbach's piano increases its dramatic flair.

Brötzmann hops back onto the sax after his interlude with the clarinet, and he starts to do some fantastic call and response improvisations (while it's kind of a basic idea for improvisation, many artists use it to great advantage) with Schlippenbach. All of these men are fantastic musicians, but it's clear that Brötzmann and Schlippenbach are in it to steal the show. More jimp-jumpy free jazz goes along and Schlippenbach starts to play his piano with a drumstick. There's nothing really noticably different when he does this, it just sounds like he's pounding down on a section of keys. There is one part where he does some very fast drumming and there's this clattering noise that coincides with his drumming, but then the camera switches over to Lovens playing a cymbal on his snare in a similar pattern. So I'm at a loss on who's making that noise, but that's free jazz for you.

Brötzmann takes a breather from the sax while the rest of the band does some more of the dramatic trade-off playing. I have no idea what Lovens is playing on his drums, but it looks like some kind of building material. Whatever it is, it's the best nontraditional addition to the kit in this performance. Schlippenbach kicks some ass on the piano for a few until Kovald takes the stage with a solo. It's more of the all-over-the-place grinding screechy bass that we hear throughout the rest of the show, but this does seem a little more focused. Maybe I'm just saying that because it's him solo and no on else is there to steal the spotlight. Lovens joins in on the drums by scraping his sticks together with one on the drum, making some pretty interesting noises that I think I might put in my pocketbook for personal use (any MB drummers know if there's a term for this technique?).

The video ends on the bass solo segment while Brötzmann starts to join in, but before he can get more than a few notes out, the show was cut for the third part, which I will be covering in my next post. I prefer this one to the first part, if only because it's more diverse.

Oh yeah, and here's another fucking painting. This one's by Giorgio de Chirico called The Archaologists:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lG7NebnnIs...ico%20(19).jpg

And on to the third part of the video we've been following, and the last segment of the Brötzmann saga for now.



This one starts off somewhat slow, with more vague trade offs between the players, but then it starts building up. Brötzmann really wants to make his sax pay for whatever it did with some of his more trademark altissimo. So far, this one is easier to follow than the other two.

Lovens playing is the quickest, most sporadic, and interesting of the three videos. The band goes on in the typical Euro free jazz fashion until Brötzmann takes the lead again. However, this is less of a solo and more of a continuation of what he was doing before. Things slow down and Lovens throws down a recognizable beat (as opposed to a constant clattering/crashing) while Brötzmann plays along to it with squeaks. I think this is a sign that there is some semblance of structure because of the syncopation being pretty impeccable on this part.

Thins speed up again and I can barely tell what's going on. Now that's your typical Brötzmann track but this avoids melody and harmony even moreso than before. Back down to a slower rhythm and Schlippenbach wows us with what starts off as a classical(ish) solo. He has some incredible talent and shows his chops for semi-tonal music here. Damn is he fast. The rest of the group joins in again and it's great. Lovens making love to his cymbals without forgetting to pay attention to the other drums. Kovald's bow hangs on by a few horse hairs as his bass plays more of the high squeaky notes. Lastly, we have Brötzmann's blistery sax playing to tie it all together. We reach a very dramatic climax and the show ends.

This is a great quartet. They definitely have a lot of good chemistry when it comes to playing all the wrong notes the right way. I've always found free jazz to be a bit more enjoyable when I'm witnessing the music coming together spontaneously than listening to the recording. While this can be said with any genre, I think free jazz is the culmination of this mentality. As a musician myself, it's easier to identify with this music as it is difficult to make (don't let the "my five year old could play this crap" comments below the videos fool you, their child must be a genius or something).

My next entry will be an album review on a different genre, unless I decide on something because fuck structure. For this closer, I'm not going to post an art piece, but an intriguing image from the Hubble telescope.

https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/...77141288_n.jpg

Well fuck me, I went to the greatest concert I've ever attended on Sunday the 6th. But I think I'll start from the beginning, in more of the standard journal format.

I found out about the concert in late March. I bought the tickets (25 dollars) almost immediately and simmered in anticipation for a couple of weeks waiting to see The Magic Band. The guy who told me about it was my friend Stryder, who is my best friend and also the other member of my group Wolves In Sheepskin. So we were going to the show together and also planned a little jam sesh beforehand.

Stryder came an hour earlier than expected on the 6th, which isn't a complaint on my part because I missed the fucker (he's still living in San Diego while I'm attending school upstate). Oh look at this, Stryder didn't just bring instruments, he brought party supplies! He had a fourth of some bomb ganja, a fifth of Maker's Mark, and a large pack of M&Ms. I only include this detail because that day, I went to the grocery store on a whim and bought some coke and a few Trader Joes chocolate bars. Well this was obviously meant to be, coke and whiskey, choc and choc? Plus some good ole THC to make this realization all the more mindblowing.

So we pull a little smokage and then go and eat some lunch at the caf. Damn, this is probably the most bomb reefer I'd ever had, but that could be because I hadn't smoked in a couple of weeks. However, at one point Stryder asked me "really dank right? Some of the best ganja I've ever had right here." For those interested, this was some outdoor grown Trainwreck Kush from Northern California. For those who don't know much about the pot culture, Northern Califronia is the fucking place to be (barring Hawaii) for bud. Also, Trainwreck and anything including the old "Kush" moniker (Master Kush, Orange Kush, etc.). Let me tell you, as an avid THC fan, this really put me in my place.

After some awful food that was damn delicious at the hands of my new idol Trainwreck Kush, me and Stryder head back to my dorm and do a little jamming. We threw down some seriously great recordings where I was on guitar, then drums and Stryder was on guitar, acoustic then electric. WISK fans can expect these recordings to show up on an album in the future (we've got a few other tracks on the album called "How Your Mother Cried Last Night" or "When Cold Stuff Feels Wet". Those are the albums we already have some primer tracks for, but we'ven't really discussed which we'll put it on, but expect it in the next couple of months. One track sounds like a lost track from a Han Bennink and Derek Bailey recording session.

So after the jam session and recording we head down to LA. Once we get to the line we have to wait for a half hour for the venue to open up, during which we met some pretty cool people. These guys came up to us saying "you look like you're having too much fun", which we were because we were quite blitzed at that point. Some people told me I have a familiar face also, but I didn't recognize them. Is WISK more famous than I thought? Do they recognize me from MB or something like that? I'm not sure. My social skills were kind of impaired by the party favours.

Finally we went into the venue after standing in line until 15 minutes after the opening time. We experience a short wait until the opening band Jeffertiti's Nile came on. They were decent; did mostly original tracks aside from a cover of Zig Zag Wanderer in favour of The Magic Band. I've listened to a few of their tracks and they did a spot on job, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, their music has to much of a pseudo-punk edge for me. There were some rather psychedelic interludes where the guitarist made use of his damn sexy pedalboard and there was a multi-instrumentalist who joined in with some really good flute playing for those parts. It would have been more fitting for the show if they went on to the psychedelic direction more. But I wasn't here to see Jeffertiti's Nile, I came to see The Magic Band; so I breathed a sigh of excited relief when the opening act fled the stage.

Here they come. Rockette Morton picks up his five string bass, Feelers Rebo paces across the stage, Andrew Niven takes his place at the kit, Eric Klerks grabs his guitar nearby Rockette Morton, and last but most definitely not least (if anything the opposite!), John "Drumbo" French grabs the mic. The only people who haven't performed in the Magic Band with the big Beef are Andrew Niven and Erik Klerks. Rockette Morton played on TMR and several other albums, Feelers Rebo playe on Bat Chain Puller (also on the original release which is preceded by Shiny Beast, parenthetically. The original recordings were released by the Zappa Family Trust in 2012). The standard "how're you doing LA!?" is proffered before the band breaks into "My Human Gets Me Blues".

Good god, they're nailing it. I almost want to cry tears of joy as they nail bit after bit of one of my favourite Beefheart (and overall, those of you who know me know how special this music is to me) tracks. After the deliver the cacophony with astounding precision, John French asks the crowd if anybody had never heard the music of Captain Beefheart before, because it's rather an acquired taste (ahem, Trollheart). Nobody fessed up, so I assume that I was among a crowd of other die hard Beefheart fans, which my conversations with fellow attendees also suggested. The group starts playing "Lo Yo Stuff" off of Clear Spot. After all of this Rockette Morton breaks into a fantastic bass solo, and he really gets the crowd going there.

From there on, it gets a little bit fuzzy the exact order because you know, drugs, but after some deliberation after the show, me and my gig mate wrote up the songs that they did. From here on it'll be a track by track review.

Hair Pie: Bake One
Holy shit! They're really doing this one! French takes up the soprano sax and plays some rather precise noodliness while the group nails the original plan. Damn I still can't believe they did this one of all tracks. I figured they would have done the easier tracks off of Safe As Milk but hell no! These men are here to entertain, and they know anyone who'd pay to get into a show of theirs wants to hear some TMR material or else!

Golden Birdies
French joins in the group on the sax for a visitation to the theme from Golden Birdies as well as The Clouds Are Full of Wine (Not Whiskey Or Rye) theme. For those who don't know, The Clouds are Full of Wine starts off with a xylophone and guitar doing the theme. Man they did so well with it I can't even put it into words. After a couple minutes of playing on that theme they break into Golden Birdies, which (you can guess what I'm going to say now) they entirely nailed. At the end, French chanted "and the pantaloon duck, white goose neck, quacked" at which point he pointed the mic to the crowd. The ENTIRE crowd shouted back "webcore, webcore". I knew I was among friends at this point.

Hot Head
Really glad they did a track from Doc at the Radar Station. They threw this one on perfectly. I'm going to stop saying that because they did justice to every track that they played. At one point French joined in on the toms while Niven was playing.

Doctor Dark
And they even did a track from Lick My Decals, my favourite nonetheless. Frenchie was on vocals and did it quite well.

Circumstances
This performance made me revisit Clear Spot because it was quite a rocking track. Clear Spot is my favourite of Beefheart's "conventional" era, but since it's from that time period, I don't listen to it that much. Duly fixed.

Diddy Wah Diddy
A throw back to way back when to Beefheart's first EP. Did a fantastic job with it as usual. The crowd was not as enthusiastic about this one, but it was still a good one.

Click Clack
Now on this one, the group really brought the energy because they were clearly feeling it off of the audience. Fantastic rendition.

Floppy Boot Stomp
Probably my favourite song about a fight between a bum, a farmer, and his fiddle. The ****ing best right here. The group threw in some extra interludes not in the original track.

Moonlight On Vermont
Ah yes, good old Moonlight. How could they go wrong with this classic? An impossible task that they proved to be even more impractical. These are the original members and hardcore devotees, could you imagine them doing disgrace to this track?

Big Eyed Beans From Venus
A great track that the group did fantastically. French threw in some saxonizations on this one and it worked so well.

French Plays a Dank Solo
John French tells the crowd "well my original name in The Magic Band was 'Drumbo', and I'm going back to my roots." After which he hops on the drums and plays a mindblowing drum solo. Neil Peart, you can take a seat and learn from the master.

When It Blows It Stacks
A good track off of The Spotlight Kid that the band did well with. They brought the energy with this one. Since it had such good bass on it, someone in the crowd shouted out "What do you run on, Rockette Morton?". It was great.

On Tomorrow
John French went onto the intro to this after his great solo, and the band nailed it. This was something of an extended version of this track as the band went into more of a jammy mode. I came into this expecting some Safe As Milk tracks and though I was surprised by the ones I was given, I was not disappointed in the slightest by the performances.

Big Black Baby Shoes
You can probably guess what I'm going to say now. What a great performance, it was quite stunning.

Suction Prints
French ran off backstage while the rest of the band went on to play this track sans the reeds. These people clearly live and breathe this music like I do, as they did an incredible job with it (fuck, okay I'll stop saying that now.

She's Too Much for My Mirror
This one was the last track that they did, and damn it was great. Got the crowd pumped on this one, and they got the unsynchronized synchronizations down pat. Fucking impeccable.

B-Side Track? Medley?
They didn't end on this track, but I don't know which one it was! I didn't recognize it, even though traces of Beefheart can be found in my blood, hair, and urine. It was pretty good, I'm pretty sure it was a medley of sorts because there were parts where I felt like I knew what they were playing but then they'd jump onto the next part and I'd be lost again. It was a good track, but Erik Klerks played a long solo towards the end of the track that started off really good and beefy but sort of fell of into bland-land. Whatever, enough redeeming tracks to make up for that moment.

Encore:
Electricity
After the group exited the stage, the audience applauded with great enthusiasm for about five minutes until the band returned to their instruments. French told the crowd that they didn't usually do encores, but how could they say no to that? Whether he was full of shit I don't know, but it made this track all the better. Elec-fucking-tricity. They really nailed...I said I wasn't going to say that anymore, sorry, but it's so true. They went into a little improvisation in the middle that was really sick (plus their eyes were a little bit redder than before they left the stage, nomsayin). Fantastic track and performance.

Encore Two:
Orange Claw Fucking Hammer
Another couple of minutes of applause and shouts for more go by before John French comes back out alone. What's he going to do? Apes-Ma? Well? The Dust Blows Forward 'N' The Dust Blows Back? Oh shit, is he going to do Orange Claw Fucking Hammer!? Goddamn, he's doing Orange Claw Hammer. This is one of my favourite Beefheart tracks, and by now I hope you've picked up how big of a fan of his I am. I really didn't think they were going to do any of the a capella pieces, but damn, French really delivered on this one. No flubs here (not even a "lic-lic-licorice twisted around" like the Captain did) and it was a very emotionally powerful performance. This was the most perfect and poignant way they could have ended the show.

Whenever French brandished the sax, I was dying in anticipation that they would break into "When Big Joan Sets Up". I was also hoping for some Ice Cream For Crow Material, as well as the irreplaceable "Frownland". But it's no problem that they didn't do these tracks. This was hands down the best concert that I'd ever been to. After the show, me and my gig-mate just sort of looked at each other in understanding. Even though I just tried to do so, words cannot tell how incredible this show was.

Another art piece for you guys, this time by the Big Beef himself. It's called Making Love to a Vampire With a Monkey On My Knee, after (possibly) the track off of Doc at the Radar Station.

http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/disco/14docdraw.jpg

Musicbanter regulars, you surely know all about my group Wolves In Sheepskin because I never shut up about us. Today I'll be reviewing our most well received (and best selling) album, Indecent Vibrations. This album is my second favourite of our output, with A Van Per Oven being my favourite. This music speaks to me because the group does what we love as opposed to what would sell or sound appealing, and I'm glad to say that I'm a member of one of my favourite bands.

Indecent Vibrations consists of four tracks ranging from 6 to 17 minutes in length. It is entirely improvised apart from basic song structures that I came up with ("when I start to do this, change to that"). Stryder Rymer plays guitar for tracks 1, 2, and 4 and mandolin on the 3rd, Christophe Bassett (myself) plays guitar on the first track, electronics on the second, and drums on the last two, and Zach plays drums on the first two tracks and guitar on the final two.

The opener, Robot Intestines has Zach on drums and Stryder and I on guitar. It starts off with a kickdrum assaulted with reverb before the guitars enter. The sound is noisy and industrial, which is why we named the track Robot Intestines. The first minute or so is slower and more droney until it breaks into a faster part where indigestion occurs in the robot's intestines.

The song carries on like this with the crazy and noisy soundscape offering a variety of electric guitar noises from myself and rumbling rif***e from Stryder. There are points where we slow back into the opening part before breaking into another chaotic passage. The track ends on a drone and closing drums. This one is my favourite track on the album, and one of my favourite WISK tracks overall. Everybody did a great job on this song, and I don't have a favourite player on it because the sounds meld together so well. We recorded this track in my garage and after we were done with this tune, my dad came out and said "why don't you play a SONG?" so we knew this was a really good track if he felt the need to say something about it.

The second track is Flashback, where Stryder is on prepared guitar, Zach plays a reverb box and drums, and I play effects-heavy theremin. This track clocks in at 17 minutes long and is the longest on the album. It starts off very ambient with the players trading echoey and strange sounds. Throughout the track the theremin abandons the ambient atmosphere that the other two instruments are creating and overlays them with other-wordly sounds. About 9 minutes into a theremin solo comes in that makes you regret taking the brown acid. The other instruments grow in intensity until the quasi-sudden end of the track.

Out of the four tracks on this album, this one is my least favourite, but it's still a great track nonetheless. We thought that Flashback would be an appropriate track name for obvious reasons.

Then we have the last two tracks which are rather similar but still very different animals. Anyeurysm, which is intentionally misspelled as a reference to our album Any of Many, is a noisy track where Stryder jumps on the mandolin, Zach plays the guitar, and I sit at the drums. It starts off with a tremolo guitar and mandolin trade-off combined with drums. There's one tom that really complements the track as it's very prominent and gives the track some semblance of order to the track. There are points where you can't even differentiate what's each instrument is doing as it's a great wall of noise. I'm rather proud of my drum work on this track, especially the from the point where I rapidly play the snare up until the end of the song. It carries on in the noise ridden industrial sounds until it ends abruptly (the reason for this being that my recorder ran out of battery, the actual performance ran at about 12 minutes).

The closing track, Echoes of a Distant Memory has the same line up as Anyeurysm but this time with Stryder on guitar. A strum of the electric guitar and the clunkety drums enter. This one has more standard drumming in the beginning that breaks into a fast paced, almost Han Bennink-esque style. The guitars on this track are anything but standard. They're very angry and inseparable, and that thing called melody that Trollheart is always going on about is gone from this track. Everything is lost in the wall of noise. The track continues on in the metal-influenced aggression that we hear in the beginning of the song until we get another abrupt end. Again, this is because of the recorder running out of battery.

This album was incredibly fun to make and I find it a lot of fun to listen to. The sound of this album is somewhat unparalleled in our other six albums, save for a vague similarity on some tracks from A Van Per Oven and the title track from Lizard of Ox, which sounds like Indecent Vibrations on heroin and bath salts. We found a unique kind of sound that's specific to us with this album, and that's something I'm glad that we've done.



For the art piece on this entry, I'm going to give you guys the album artwork to Indecent Vibrations. It's a photograph of the reflection of the inside of a drainage pipe. We got the lines to be really messed up by throwing rocks in the water and taking the photo right after.

http://f0.bcbits.com/img/a1123048212_2.jpg

I’m just gonna shoot this list all over you guys, it’s not in any particular order except for the first one (gee I wonder what it’ll be) but they’re just a shitload of fantastic albums you might want to listen to. It’s not going to have every quintessential album but this list is a good starting place. I’ll likely be reviewing some of these at one point so I’ll update this list with links to those reviews. You ready? I am.

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
John Zorn - Madness, Love and Mysticism
Zu - Carboniferous
The Thing - Bag It!
Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, and Han Bennink - The Topography of the Lungs
Billy Woods - History Will Absolve Me
John Coltrane - Ascension
Armand Hammer - Race Music
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Jim Black - Endangered Blood
Silver Apples - Contact
Fifty Foot Hose - Cauldron
United States of America - United States of America
This Heat - This Heat
Tom Waits - Real Gone
Taku Sugimoto - Opposite
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music (fuck the haters)
Wolves in Sheepskin - Indecent Vibrations
Pink Floyd - Meddle
Anthony Braxton - For Alto
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation
Jandek - Threw You Away
Colin Stetson - Those Who Didn’t Run
Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love - The Fat Is Gone
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love
Derek Bailey - Ballads
Boom Bip & Doseone - Circle
miRthkon - Vehicle
Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante
Fantômas - Fantômas
Primus - Pork Soda
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch!
Gorguts - Obscura
Naked City - Torture Garden
DNA - DNA on DNA
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Kreng - Grimoire
John Coltrane - Meditations
Can - Tago Mago
Faust - Rien
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
Huun-Huur-Tu - Fly, Fly My Sadness
John Fahey - Womblife
The Red Krayola - Parable of Arable Land
The Pop Group - Y
This Heat - Deceit
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Ice Cream for Crow
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Doc at the Radar Station
Swans - To Be Kind
Sunn O))) - Black One
Marc Ribot - Asmodeus: Book of Angels, Vol. 7
Sun Ra - Space is the Place
Throbbing Gristle - The Second Annual Report
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
John Cale - Stainless Steel Gamelan
Ween - GodWeenSatan: The Oneness
Zs - Arms
Fushitsusha - Withdraw, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot’d
El-P - Cancer 4 Cure
Keiji Haino - Koko
Keiji Haino - I Said, This Is the Son of Nihilism
Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come
Praxis - Sacrifist
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de colour libres
Thrangh - Erzefilisch
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Les Stances a Sophie
Charles Mingus - The Clown
Dälek - Absence
The Residents - Meet the Residents
Aesop Rock - Float
Pere Ubu - Dub Housing
Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages
Masada - Alef
The Residents - Eskimo
Charles Gayle - Repent
Albert Ayler - Love Cry
Wild Man Fischer - An Evening With Wild Man Fischer
Brian Eno - Ambient One: Music for Airports
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam
Gil Scott-Heron - Small Talk at 125th and Lenox
Masayuki Takayanaki & Kaoru Abe - Gradually Projection
Wolves In Sheepskin - Lizard of Ox (ja it’s self promotion but I really do love this album)
Ken Vandermark - Mark in the Water
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
John Cage - Imaginary Landscapes
Ornette Coleman - This Is Our Music
Moondog - Moondog
Arnold Schoenberg - any album with a performance of Verklarte Nacht Op. 4. I like Schoenberg: Orchestral Works
Cromagnon - Orgasm (aka by the reissue name, Cave Rock)
Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Morton Feldman - Three Voices for Joan La Barbara
Mr. Bungle - Mr. Bungle
Oidupaa Vladimir Ouin - Divine Music from a Jail

Perhaps I should make it my goal to listen to all of these albums.. still quite a few there I haven't heard. I will definitely be coming back here for recs at least

Well they all come with my stamp of approval :). Don't be afraid to shoot me a PM if you need help finding any of the albums.

This update has been a long time coming. So far I've reviewed mostly jazz and the noise rock stuff that I do, so I'm going to change it up and review one of my favourite drone albums.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ness_Music.jpg
John Cale - Sun Blindness Music

Before John Cale joined The Velvet Underground, he was working with the Theater of Eternal Music. Founded by composer La Monte Young, the group was a collaboration of some of the greatest avant-garde minds of the time such as Tony Conrad, Angus Maclise, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell and many others. Heavily influenced by John Cage, the group gravitated towards drone music and they did a damn good job of it. Unfortunately, there were a series of tapes allegedly destroyed by La Monte Young with some of the group's work on it, potentially erasing several great drone albums from history. This album was recorded from 1964 to 1966, and it's worlds apart from anything you would hear from The Velvet Underground (except for maybe the violin drone on "Heroin" or the bass on "European Sun"). I'm of the opinion that Sun Blindness Music, Stainless Steel Gamelan, and Dream Interpretation are the best things that John Cale has ever done; it's definitely leaps and bounds greater than VU's discography. It's a shame that he went on to do all that poppy crap because he's probably my favourite drone artist (Keiji Haino and Sunn O))) come pretty close though).

The album consists of three tracks. The title track opener runs 43 minutes long and the following pieces, "Summer Heat" and "The Second Fortress" are 11 and 10 minutes long, respectively. "Sun Blindness Music" is Cale on a synthesizer playing a chord and changing the settings on the synth. Given the time it was recorded, Cale was working on an analogue synth that looks something like this:

http://de-bug.de/musiktechnik/files/...ch-500x231.jpg

Or maybe this:

http://www.ultraimg.com/images/sinte...ar41aee.md.jpg
That makes me hard.

It really doesn't sound like much based on that premise, but Cale manages to keep it exciting while showing us the way through the sounds his toy can make. What we get is an extremely textural piece that goes through several different moods. Some of these moments are serene, beautiful, and blissful, some are harsh and somewhat abrasive, other moments make me regret taking the brown acid. At the end of the song, we're left with a lingering note followed by a deep rumble. It's almost as if we stared at the sun and after being overwhelmed with it all we're rewarded with blindness. Overall it's a magical piece that showcase the genius of Cale and the wonders of patch cables and filters. The length is a bit daunting, but I think it's very appropriate for the song because Cale guides you through a strange and wonderful journey. It's most definitely the best track on the album. Take a listen to it, you won't regret (or maybe you will, I don't really care).



The second track, "Summer Heat" has Cale on the bass and is a huge 180 from the opener. This is more rock based than most of Cale's early work and it reminds me of what a jangly post punk bassist's attempt at minimalism. Cale's just jamming out on his bass, playing that chord for eleven minutes and it works great. It's repetitive and I find it pretty hypnotic when I'm listening to it on headphones.

The final track, "The Second Fortress", puts Cale back on the synth. This time, Cale's not so nice to us. The drone here is high pitched and has more melodic variation than "Sun Blindness Music". The more abrasive moments are many with this one. I'd say this is probably my least favourite track on the album because it's not as exciting as the other two, but it's a fantastic track nonetheless.

Taste some art, an untitled piece by Francisco Bores:
http://www.aschersquares.com/cms_img...esuntitled.jpg

Lies. That is a picture of a Korg MS-20 mini, it is a recent reproduction of the original MS-20. The MS-20 mini was release ~35 years after the original was created and is 86% the size. The Korg MS 20 which was released in 1978. John Cale recorded that album from 1964 to '66 and there is no way possible he could had been able to use an instrument circa 1978 in 1964. And the second picture is one of a Modular synth, those things were mightily expensive, and I doubt he owned one or had access to one. I never heard him or anyone else mention he played a modular synth in 1964 especially since they were still in the developmental stage. In my non-expertise opinion the instrument that Cale used sounds simply like an air-organ.

What I think John Cale did was use Vox that was available during the 60s organ and tape loops. And what made me come to that conclusion? I actually looked things up on Wikipedia :rollseyes:. There is a bit a audio-distortion. Which could come from various sources like using cheap equipment such as microphones or having the recording level too high, or the inevitable wear of magnetic tape.

Are there moments where it sounds like a analog synth, yes, but only the notes on the lower register. You can heard chords and runs that have a organ-like sound. That's another thing that bothers me is that I don't see how you confused the two, a monophonic Synthesizer with a polyphonic organ? :confused:

Anyway besides all the mis-information it was an interesting pick.

Eh I just searched analog synth in google images and picked one with a bunch of patch cables. You got me on not doing my research. Thanks for the info though.

John Cale played a viola not a violin. He modified it by filing bridge down, & could sustain a three note drone. Usually string instruments in the violin family have a curved nut & bridge and the best you can do is only play double stops. Moe said that when they played at small venues Cale's viola sounded the jet engines on a Boeing 747.

edit: I had to fact check myself.
John Cale said it sounded like a B-52

Goddamnit quit fact checking me! Nah it's all good. I knew he played viola but I thought it was a violin on Heroin since it's a little more high pitched. I can definitely see where that quote comes from, this track sounds like Metal Machine Music's pissed off granddaddy.

This is a good one. I'll be subbing.

So as a follow up to the John Cale album I reviewed, I decided to do some more reviews of albums done by members of The Velvet Underground. I may decide to review a certain controversial Lou Reed album I'm fond of, but first:


Singer Nico gives us an album worlds apart from her work on the infamous The Velvet Underground and Nico. Dark and often beautiful works described as avant-folk (though I really can't hear the folk, I'll give the people who say this the benefit of the doubt) with a neoclassical bent make up Desertshore. The album opens up with "Janitor of Lunacy," fueled by a harmonium droning a few chords and proffering up a melody that Nico begins to sing along to, opening with the haunting verse "Janitor of lunacy/Paralyze my infancy/Petrify the empty cradle/Bring hope to them and me." The second track "The Falconer" carries on the dark tone of the record with some high pitched percussion that sounds similar to John Cale's work with the Dream Syndicate. I'm guessing that the similarity is there because Cale on percussion and piano for the track (he also plays all other instruments apart from harmonium and trumpet on this record). Moving away from the heavy-handed approach, the track gives way to an uplifting piano line that carries forward until it's shattered by a crash of a piano chord and warbling harmonium to bring the track back to the desolute theme that the track opens with.

The third track "My Only Child" starts off with a trumpet note that fades away as Nico takes the floor with an a capella verse. As the track progresses we begin to hear some beautiful vocal harmonies and a reintroduction of the trumpet. The thing that makes this track so powerful is the way in which it was recorded, either the track was recorded in a large, open space that let Nico's voice ring out or heavy reverb was added in post. Either way, it makes the track infinitely more meditative and potent. Next we have "Le Petit Chavalier," which has a child singing in French (I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong) accompanied by a harpsichord courtesy of Cale. This is the low point of the album but on an album of such highs that is in no way a knock on the track. What follows this track is the high point of the album, "Abschied", which translates roughly to "farewell" or "parting" in German. Starting off with a viola flemish that grows increasingly dramatic, Nico joins in with harmonium to create a wonderful interplay within the instruments that invokes feelings of loss and sorrow. Some wonderful vocals on this one, with Nico singing in (surprise!) German. This track has the heaviest neoclassical tinge to it out of all the tracks on the album, but even with this influence present, it is very much Nico's own.

Next we move on to "Afraid," which opens up with somber piano and viola. While it does have a somber mood to it, this is one of the lighter tracks on the album. Though it is quite pleasant, it somewhat forgettable. As with "Le Petit Chavalier," it is followed by an infinitely more interesting track, "Mutterlein." There is no English equivalent that I can find to the word, but I believe the word is involved with "mother." Some help from MB members with German tongues would be appreciated. Kicking off with the march of (what sounds like) a prepared piano and bells, Nico joins in with a brooding harmonium line that introduces the vocal melody. A trumpet fanfare rises and falls throughout the track, and as Nico begins to sing, once again in German, the piano crashes down heavy and melancholic chords. The track progresses with more trumpet fanfare, choral harmonies, and Nico's reflective vocals. A second piano is introduced to the picture once the first piano begins to grow increasingly disconcerted and cacophonous, which the second piano reflects with a tradeoff of pounded piano chords. Following "Abschied," this is one of the better tracks on the album, along with "Janitor of Lunacy." The closer begins off with the most experimental flair of any track on the album, with percussion we'ven't heard before, a little more trumpet fanfare, and of course, Nico's harmonium. A harpsichord line pushes forward the track as the verse begins. Cale's sliding viola is also present, and it sounds similar what he plays on the VU's "Venus In Furs." Nico's vocals are interspersed with spoken word passages, introducing the album title into the music with lines such as "meet me on the Desertshore."

A few years back, when I first heard this record, I wasn't too impressed. While I found it musically to be fascinating, Nico's vocals didn't mesh well with me. After subsequent listens however, I saw it as the masterpiece that it truly is. Each track on the album gives us a new angle of Nico's unique vision, and it's one that I wish more artists would embrace. Here's a rating because I don't know what else to say about the record. 10/10

And for your art, here's a sculpture I thought went well with the record. It's "Everything Flows" by Lynda Benglis.

http://imgick.nola.com/home/nola-med...14664bdbe4.jpg

Being a pretty big Pink Floyd fan, I felt obligated to check out their newest release from this year. Ki and Trollheart have been singing this album's praises, but they're prog fans and not to be trusted, so I thought I'd toss my opinion into Journaltown. Now, I think that Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell are shitstains on an otherwise great catalogue and this is made up of a series of unreleased tracks from The Division Bell, so my hopes weren't too high. Man was I surprised.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._(Artwork).jpg
Pink Floyd - The Endless River

It's even fucking worse than I expected. Do you have insomnia? Forgo the melatonin or going to this doctor for a prescription, just throw this album on and you'll sleep like a drunk baby. I could give a fuck about this endless river of shit being a cash grab from Pink Floyd, if it was musically interesting I would listen to it regardless. Much like Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music being a middle finger to the music industry and I still enjoy it, the intentions of the artist mean nothing to me. There are points on the album where I thought to myself "holy shit! They're actually doing something interesting!" But I guess Pink Floyd decided that having a song or album be interesting all the way through wouldn't be what Richard Wright wanted. I've even listened to this album stoned, and it still did nothing for me. It is a sad world we live in when a Pink Floyd album doesn't impress someone who's high as a kite. Unless you like wanky new age bullshit, avoid, avoid, avoid. I wasted my time with this record so you don't have to. You're welcome.

I'm not going to put an art piece with this one. Doesn't seem fitting.

****, I bought this album as a christmas gift for someone...

Someone you hate? :rofl:

Hopefully nobody ever filled them in on what good music is.

Ouch. That Pink Floyd review was brutal...

I guess I should have really given it a listen before getting it....

Good review of Desert Shore. I also suggest listening to Marble Index it is almost just as good or just as good. I sometimes see people pay more attention to Chelsea Girl rather than those two albums; it is something that I find laughable.

Marble Index is pretty good too, Desertshore's my favourite though. It's much more brooding. I've actually never listened to Chelsea Girl all the way through. I started a couple of times, but never could pull myself up to the task.

So I'm taking suggestions. Throw some crazy shit my way and I'll review the first three (just one per person). Make sure it's something that I haven't heard by checking my last.fm, or just post it and I'll tell you (you'll keep your spot in the lineup so long as you can come up with something).

idk if ive already talked a bunch about this album around here (I cant praise it about it tbh) or if you've already heard it but if not you should:

http://shop.aurora-infernalis.com/54...n-fort-2cd.jpg

Hin-Fort by Trist

one of my all time fav albums and one that ill likely add to that 1001 albums thingy if I ever get not lazy (or maybe I already have.. cant recall that either haha).

Solanaceae Tau - A Chemical in Debris

Non Credo - Happy Wretched Family

Was just listening to it and haven't found it in your last.fm
Not particularly crazy, but something worth checking out.

Perfect! I haven't heard any of those. Expect reviews in the coming weeks.

Mondo, send me a link to yours, I can't find it anywhere. Nine and grind are all set though.

I'll get to those reviews soon, gentlemen. I'm going to do another in the meantime.


Gunther's Grass is a San Diego based drone duo. Marcelo Radulovich plays hurdy gurdy and the other member, Christopher Adler, plays the khaen. There are some other musicians who join the bill as well. Scott Walton joins in on bass on the tracks "Earlier in the Future That Dawned Earlier On," "Boat People," and "Hull." Charles Curtis plays cello on the tracks "Automatic Writing" and is also on "Hull" with Walton and the others. Lastly, we have Marcos Fernandes playing tamboura box on "Boat People." Given that not everyone knows what these instruments are, I'll post some photos of them.


The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that is bowed using a rosined wheel, which is controlled by a handcrank. There are also keys that can change the pitch of the strings and it sounds pretty sweet. Hurdy-gurdies date back to Eleventh Century B.C. where they are depicted by Ibn Khurradadhbih (like a badass version of Marco Polo). However, the instrument was not in its modern form by that time. Due to the original size of the liras or organastrums used in the Byzantine Empire that Khurradadbih, it was played by two people at once: one person for the hand crank and one for the keys. There are other early reports that the organastrums were also used in Spain and some Middle Eastern countries, likely because of merchants spreading the various elements of the cultures that they visited. After its time in the Middle East, the solo organstrum appeared. Early versions of the solo organastrum— which is similar to the hurdy-gurdies that we see today—first appeared in Spain and France. In 1968, Donovan released the song "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and sparked interest in the instrument, although the instrument wasn't present on the track. It's since been revived after a long break and used in several genres, but I think that it's an instrument best suited for drone.


The khaen is a mouth organ instrument made up of hollowed out bamboo shoots. It uses a free reed similar to a harmonica or harmonium and when combined with circular breathing it can be pretty interesting. Khaens date back to the Bronze Age (1000-700ish BC) Laos, where it was allegedly created by a woman who just felt like making some instruments that day. She recreated her bamboo contraption until she was ready to reveal it to the king or whateverthefuck ruler they had there. After she played it for Sir Whoeverthefuck, the gentleman said he enjoyed it and then he named it "khaen" because some kings are dicks who want to take credit for everything.


You guys know about this probably.


You probably know about the cello, too. If you don't, think of the stand-up bass's younger cousin.


A cigar box sitar. Well how about that. Sitars are badass and cigar box guitars are badass, I can't believe I never heard of or thought of this creation before Gunther's Grass.

Never in the Future That Dawned Earlier On is a beautiful album full of sustained drones that touches on some magical moments, really. All of the music is improvised, but whether or not there is some structure, I'm not sure. There are six tracks on the album and none of them are below six minutes long, in fact most of these are in the 12-16 minute mark. This is a lot more pleasant than a lot of the other drone groups that I've heard, but I do hear overtones of Keiji Haino's hurdy-gurdy playing (I highly recommend listening to any of the versions of Haino's 21st Century Hardy-Guide-Y-Man).

Even though this is a drone record full of long and blaring chords, it still moves around quite a bit. To be honest I think that it makes it a little more accessible than the more difficult drone music that they're emulating, such as La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music which included John Cale, Angus MacLise, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, John Hassell, and Terry Jennings, among others. NITFTDEO hits all the right points of drone music, in my opinion, and I think that it would be a great starter for anyone who's really interested in getting to know the genre.

Here's a live video of the group:


And here's an art piece that's cool:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...asturbator.jpg
Salvador Dali - The Great Batlord

One of the pioneers and extremely left-field bands of the already off-the-wall post punk genre, The Pop Group has rebanded 35 years after releasing their second album, For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? There are always worries that bands have “lost it” over the years, but post-punk seems to be immune to this affliction with artists like Public Image Ltd., The Fall and Gang of Four still trudging along and coming out with solid albums.

The Pop Group’s reintroduction to the music world, Citizen Zombie, could definitely be seen this way. The new album has little of what their first two albums offered: chaos, cathartic shrieks and disconcertingly layered instruments that still managed to be catchy and groovy despite the avant-garde overtones. However, I would move that Citizen Zombie—while a move away from a sound of theirs that I prefer—is not so much The Pop Group losing their musical element, but rather changing it.

Citizen Zombie, although it can be a disappointment to fans of their earlier work who expect a revival of their old sound, is still a great album when taken into its own right. The album follows more traditional post-punk song structures of bands like Public Image Ltd. and Pere Ubu, while falling into experimental interludes that hint back to their earlier sound.

Singer Mark Stewart falls back onto a lighter vocal style than what we heard on earlier albums like Y and How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? wherein he assaults his voice with effects while his voice reciprocates against the delay and reverb pedals with harsh shrieks and vocalizations. Unfortunately, Stewart is no longer in his twenties so I imagine that this is a lot more difficult for him to do these days.

This by no means suggests that he cannot sing anymore. In fact, the vocals are fantastic and Stewart still goes all out on tracks like “St. Outrageous”. There is a quality of Stewart’s singing on this that sounds very similar to Pere Ubu’s vocalist, David Thomas. While this certainly is not a bad thing in terms of the musical outcome, I feel like The Pop Group loses a bit of their identity due to the similarity. If someone showed me this album and told me it was the new Pere Ubu album, I would believe them; I’ve even accidentally referred to the album as “the new Pere Ubu album” when discussing it with fellow post-punk enthusiasts.

With that being said, this album is still very much The Pop Group, even if it doesn't quite live up to the far superior Y. They have incorporated more modern technology into their music and it works better than when most older musicians tinker around with these new-fangled devices. The first half of the album is almost something that you can dance to even if you’re not invested in the genre. The second half moves on to a darker vibe, with tracks like “Nations” flowing through with a fast paced beat and keys while Stewart joins in, chanting a chilling and intimidating message.

We still have the layered sound that The Pop Group is known for, but instead of pulling it out and waving it in your face on the first listen, Citizen Zombie waits until the third or so listen like a respectable album to reveal the intricacies and complexities within the music. On first listen, I was disillusioned by how the group had changed their earlier insane sound, but I moved on from that disappointment quickly by taking this record for what it is: a brilliant post-punk record.

Frownrant: Overanalyzing Pornography Is a Detriment to Society

The outcries of well-meaning observers attempting to censor media that they don’t understand or agree with is nothing new; another trend that one can easily see throughout history and into the modern day is the media’s reaction. Presumably foaming at the mouth, upon seeing these outcries and one-sided criticisms, the media deems these situations newsworthy. Chanting “for the children” as they process through the hallways of the Rupert Murdoch Pantheon or proceed to kneel at the Anderson Cooper shrine, the first amendment becomes the punchline of a joke as a moral panic is streamlined into the public’s vein (presumably).

One thing that has changed in the world of elitist moral preaching is the source. In the 80s we were met with the Washington Wives pushing the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) on Congress to prevent children from hearing music that is profane, violent, sexual, or related to the occult. There was a massive outcry in the music world, with guitarist and composer Frank Zappa making a statement to Congress likening the PMRC’s goals to the construction of a fascist theocracy.

For the children, they chant.

A clear issue with the PMRC is that the people who truly believed that they were doing well were religious conservatives and made it unclear how to (or who will) categorize what is frowned upon by proper society to prevent the corruption of our simple and close-minded youth. A war was declared on the content itself as the Washington Wives patted themselves on the back for making sure that your nine year old did not listen to Madonna.

Today we do not see so much spittle flying from the lips of the morally supercilious towards the content of what hurts their sensibilities, though this is certainly an element of what is decried. These days the inciters of the moral outcry has shifted from the religious right to the radical progressives.

It’s what is implied that’s become the new enemy for people to shout and wave their finger at. The recent offenders in the eyes of the people new to art—good or bad—is “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

I understand that, because I understand how fun it can be to hate something. I seriously look down on some music that I really dislike. Manowar, Limp Bizkit and most of Kanye West’s music make me laugh they’re so bad, but I look down on them because they don’t serve the function of good artists for me.

What a majority of the moral police complaining about the trendiest topic to be mad about do is forgetting to contextualize the very thing they’re whining about. “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a money grab of a novel, a shoddily written piece of garbage that a lot of people liked to masturbate to. That’s sexuality for you, I guess.

That’s all that I need to not like the film. I feel no urge to make things up about Slipknot or Van Halen’s art for promoting violence and public intoxication (respectively), because their music is bad enough for me to know that it’s not for me. I don’t need to put them down because anyone with similar taste to mine will see them in a poor light, and others may not. With that being said, art inherently breeds discussion, so this often comes with strong opinions one way or another.

However, in the heat of the sexual tension between the public and their cheap thrills, another attempt to cash in on people’s orgasms has been made; some radical progressives see a new beast rising from the shore, but time the horns adorn the film industry. The demonic corruption that has infiltrated society flicking its red tail as wonton stares seduce passersby—yes, we are referring to the Antichrist himself—is “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

I heard that it's a pretty awful film, I'll take their word for it. I implore you to write a negative review of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” but belittle it for being a poorly made film attempting to capitalize on bored housewives. There’s no need to justify hating someone’s poorly written sexual fantasy by making things up by misreading what could be intentionally implied to make a message or just as easily something unintentionally conveyed.

Or you could let the film slide into obscurity by not giving it its credit through intense analysis and discussion. Much like Kim Kardashian, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” thrives on discussion/debate, both positive and negative. Sans the hype, the film would likely do poorly in its opening weekend.

There are brilliant films that go to dark places in terms of the violent sexual content in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” such as Pasolini’s “Salo: Or 120 Days of Sodom,” Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” or von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” (Part II, especially with regards to abuse, nymphomania and sexuality). It’s possible for a film to rely on hard and dark themes and still be a great viewing experience.

Apparently the film promotes rape culture, among other things, which makes it problematic for men to see because we are all simple minded and withhold zero ability to ignore our lizard-brain instincts. However, according to Adweek, men only make up 20 to 30% of the audience for “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Women are the ones flocking to the film that is apparently degrading women and promoting violence against them.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is apparently a sloppy depiction of the BDSM community, which is interesting because Hollywood has always been so well known for its realistic depictions of the world. I have never seen a film where I had to suspend my disbelief. Never have I seen a film where I thought to myself “well that was awful.”

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is a sad case where zealots on both sides—sides that usually oppose one another—are battling the existence of art they do not enjoy, understand or just pay far too much attention to. These groups still find ways to be different from one another and they have debates on why “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a detriment to society.

We have these arguments for the children.

For the children, they chant.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is simply just pulp, a new way for housewives and little girls to get their jollies that will fade like the next fad (see: Magic Mike). I wouldn’t recommend watching the film from a cinematic perspective; dicks or dildos out would be the best way to watch it, really. Or avoid watching it period and enjoy the rich history that film has to offer—whatever genre of film there is, I'm sure you can find a more redeemable film that is far better than "Fifty Shades of Grey." Unfortunately, I am obliged to say that I would not get any sex tips from this film nor give it the time of day.

So I'm going to talk about myself again because my new album is one of the best of 2015 so far. I'll also be providing a little insight on how the tracks were made, what influenced them, and other trivia.


The title for Obtuse Psychotria came from a random word generator. I just generated different pairs of words until I found one that I like, and since psychotria is the genus that are used to produce DMT, I decided to go with that one since it fit pretty well. I took the photo for the album cover in San Marcos, CA. I got dropped off at the train station and the train was coming in around twenty minutes so I had time to dick around and smoke a cigarette whatehaveyou. I noticed the creek after a little bit and was struck by how similar it is to some of the imagery in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. I played with the grain/contrast/etc. a little bit until I found a combination that I liked.

"But Frownland," you ask. "Why are you releasing a new album so soon after Thunder Music?"

Because I'm a fucking musical genius, that's why. Musically I've been on something of a peak, similar where I was at with Wolves In Sheepskin around mid-2014. I can record essentially every day and lately my procrastination skills have allowed me to direct my focus to anything else with great results.

I'll be talking about this album track by track. Commence this talk.

1. Excessive Eating Ceremony

Excessive Eating Ceremony is quite possibly the most minimalist song that I've done, since my music tends to go through several changes in the same song. It's also one of my few composed tracks as this one uses aleotoric methods. First, I emulated Alvin Lucier by creating acoustic resonance in my room through recording silence and playing it into the room over and over again, recording it each time. I think that for this recording, I did somewhere between 10-15 re-recordings to get the resonance to take over (although I did the piece with silence and the sounds of me sitting at my computer dictate the resonance as opposed to how Alvin Lucier used speech in I Am Sitting In a Room. Following this, I made two copies and laid them over the original, making it so that three of the same track were going on at the same time. After this I started to manipulate each of the tracks, and my method for determining how to do so is where the chance methods kick in. Using a random numbers table, I went through three rounds to decide at what lengths the manipulations would go on for. Going through each row, I would read the numbers in threes and use 001-100 to determine the length of the changes in seconds until I completed the length of the whole track. Having had the times determined, I moved on to choose by what percentage I change the speed of the sounds at those times. I also decided whether or not to alter the speed in a positive or negative direction based off of coin flips. It took me around 5 hours total (not at once) to do the track and I'm very happy with the result.

2. Dazed By the Sunn

This album is a scatter across several different styles of mine, so I went into my catalogue of unreleased tracks that shouldn't stay unreleased. I came up with Dazed by the Sunn for a MusicBanter thread I was running where musicians would compete to create a track to follow a theme which we would vote on afterward. For the round that led me to make this track, the theme was "sun." Being a massive dronehead, I decided to add another n to the theme and do some heavy guitar drones. At one point, my roommate came into the room and walked in from of the mic, which is why the piece sounds a bit muffled partway through.

3. Prenatal Remnant

This track is much newer than Dazed by the Sunn, having only been recorded around 6 hours before it was released. It was played entirely on my pedals, which is two analog Behringer VD400 delay pedals and a Digitech Whammy that has pitch shifting and harmonizing effects. I was just really feeling it after getting a second pedal and this is one of the better tracks that came out of it.

4. Clerical Photographer

Another newer track, this was while I was practicing for a show that I played. I was so enthused by the sound that I had to record what I was doing. This is another guitar drone track, but it's much different from any of the drones that Sunn O))) or other drone metal artists offer. It's more akin to Keiji Haino, John Cale, or Tony Conrad in its style. Using a bow I played my guitar while it was facing up in my lap while I fed these sounds through a Crybaby wah pedal, octave harmonies, reverb, and distortion as high as allowed. The result is a very noisy and very powerful piece. As much as I like this track, the recorded version doesn't do it much justice; playing in this style with my amp turned almost all the way up at the event I was playing at was otherworldly.

5. Breakpoint Soundtrack

This is the soundtrack to a friend's film that I starred in called Breakpoint. The story follows the investigation of a college tennis player who has been suspected of throwing games, but it turns out that the coach was drugging him before the games in order to make the tennis player lose. The coach does this because he owes money to a racketeer who pressures the coach into doing this ****. It was a pretty terribly written script tbh, but the friend who asked if I'd star in it was just the director and cameraman. During one scene where the coach asked the tennis player if he was throwing games, a very freeform and contemplative guitar starts meandering over the top notch bad acting from the tennis player. The director knew that I played music and asked me to make something so I just went to my guitar and hit record. What I ended up doing was almost like jazz, almost like ambient, vaguely Japanese, and entirely different from everything else that we hear on this album.

6. Fazed Baptismal Reasoning

This track is the only one done on an acoustic guitar. I prepared it by sticking a fork in the strings along the neck; when I plucked the fork's handle, it would rattle the strings in a very pleasing way. This was another chance recording when I was experimenting with a fork and really liked the sound. It could have been longer, but this was done with a few minutes until I had to leave for class. I stuck with this version instead of recording another one because I really liked its general sound and making it shorter made it better because I bet some people listen to my music and think that it overstays its welcome.

7. Foamy Boycott Ascending

This one is from the same recording/jam session as Clerical Photographer. This one has more focus on the wah and starts off with some ambient leanings and slowly progresses into something more dramatic with me hammering strings with the end my bow, then progressing further as I begin to bow again. I think that Clerical Photographer is better because it's so in your face and intense, but this one's really good as well.

8. Missing Pretense Report

I recorded this one over Christmas break after my dog passed away. My family had gone out to take care of some of their bullshiit that didn't involve me so I took it as a chance to drown the house with the sounds of the electric guitar. Still very upset from my losing Skye, the result was a raw, rumbling, and angry piece that stands out from my other drones. That's one of the reasons why I'm so proud of this album, there are a lot of drone tracks, but a lot of them sound entirely different from one another. This is a feat in the drone world because sometimes artists can become one-dimensional in their approach to sustained tones.

Since I'm too lazy to look up an art piece, I just decided to save the album cover for the end. Click the image for a link to the bandcamp page.

http://f1.bcbits.com/img/a1257065887_2.jpg

I have listened to all of your albums that you recommended. I'm not going to do a full review yet, but I did like all of them quite a bit. Non Credo had an awesome singer, quite reminiscent of Sainkho Namtchylak with her use of extended voice technique. Trist was fantastic as well, I really like their raw and atmospheric sound. I enjoyed Solanaceae Tau, but I'm going to need to give it a few more listens. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other two albums based on the few listens that I have given it.

More detailed reviews will possible be coming soon.

I'm going to post a story I wrote from outer space. Enjoy:

Plums struck the thin veneer of the watershed roof tiles. Hissing as they splash and trickle; the man's sickly frame bowed forward, feeling the radiator as it fusses and hisses.

The rooftop erodes in the omnipresent drizzle. Under, above, and in from the sides they flew, harsh droplets that would kiss the shingling tile. Flaking away piece by piece. Hard sands struck wood panels lay inside indoors once before, but sands were unionized into puddles of mud in the late Winter storm.

Struck by the dilemma of fall's plum drizzle, rotting away and oozing down the gutter. Flooded with water, streams sputter from the deposit below. Sands before leapt from the roads. Left milky hazes as wind dashed, making housesides wind tunnels. A water floods the eye, wheeled outside for a moment's time. Usually sunlight radiates, warms his bones but the evil mistress of the clouds bore upon him. Clouds, rumbling, bear waste to shake loose.

The water runs down his cheek. Reeled back inside, trails from his chair behind him stained the floor. Clear, cold trails.

Missing the last series of mainstay artistry in the winter's reflection below the mirror glass windows.Drying streams lines his cheeks. Immobilized. Eyes distorted from the watered lens, he glimpses forward. Finds behind counters of medicine parlors, birthed in age, licking its lips, pangs of hunger throttle the hourglass figure frame. Finds behind the eyes a more acceptable brand of insanity. Finding which direction to gaze, lost again through the misty haze.

Armchair leaning across the coffee table. Tongue and lip dictate letters and shape of a sense, but senseless ramblings take the floor. Numbing prick in arm, gazing double sighted as holes spreckle the ceiling. Freckles flock around the nose, hiding reverberations of shouts, moans. Groaning once before the final bell rings. Alone in silence, radiator sings. Darkness hiding him away from the cold. Streams on cheeks, hard lines.

http://i.imgur.com/pMwJTB8.jpg

This is a metal album that I enjoy.



This has been my contribution to metal month.

Okay, so I decided that my last review was a little lazy. You guys deserve better than an eight word long review and a youtube video.


Thou - Heathen

This is a great album. I like the vocalist a lot. It has a nice and thick sound to it that really grabs me.

This concludes my second contribution to metal month.

Great journal, i can barely understand it and alot is going over my head but thankfully im getting some of it. I like how you end your reviews with art pieces too.

Here's a story I wrote. It needs a little work, so all feedback is appreciated.

Moloch

He had almost begun to enjoy mindlessly humming out the nonsensical incantation before it struck him.

“Moloch.”

The word glibly slipped off of his tongue and pierced through the clutter as the only intelligible word amidst the gibberish, ripping him from his almost euphoric and slightly terrified state of half consciousness. Embalmed with fatigue, he forced his eyes to discern the clock on the wall opposite of his bed. Obfuscated rays of moonlight dimly lit the hands upon a blank face that melded into the wall.

3:00 AM

His fluttering muddy mind subsided and his eyelids settled shut. He could slowly begin to make out a pair of faceless figures, fragmented by his interlaced fingers that pretended to cover his eyes. Flesh coloured veils had been stretched across their faces, erasing any recognizable features, but he could still see how they writhed.

Their shadows danced across his now closed eyes as his hands muffled his ears to no good effect. The shrieks filled every pocket of sound that he was able to contemplate. Seething, guttural screams panned in and out of his scattered mind before he opened his eyes again.

"Ixtab memoria. Moloch.”

The words subconsciously fled from his chest and through his mouth, shattering the stained glass windows of silence. Moloch had pulled him from his sleep once again. He strained his eyes to make out the vague hands of the clock on the wall in his bedroom with one small window.

http://i.imgur.com/SSGtbk2.jpg?1

The words bounced around the room and established themselves in echoes that haunted his ears with the dense silence that only comes about at 3 AM. It’s a very specific type of emptiness that catches the sounds of the room from days past. Sounds that like to wander around for months, maybe years at a time, before they become audible.

Hearing these noises rattled his skull, with a scowling grin creeping across his cheeks. A unique form of beauty underlined the room’s memories of sickened self loathing and sleeplessness. He was disgusted at the thought of the echoes of days past returning to him when he least needed them. He was disgusted because he would never hear them again. He had already forgotten their final cries.

The sun hadn’t come out yet and he hadn’t had but two hours of sleep. He was so exhausted that he could barely move a muscle, but he knew that on nights like this there was no point in tossing and turning until it was an acceptable hour to wake up. There were more productive things to do.

Even if he could fall asleep, he didn’t want to risk dreaming. Not tonight.

As he sat up in his bed, the sheets falling to his waist, he noticed that the air was noticeably crisper than usual this morning. He rubbed his hand across his face to wipe the thin film that his attempt at sleep had left behind. Dried riverbeds clung to his cheeks. He had been crying in his sleep.


Before he walked out into his living room he heard a choir of faint whistling. He had only just noticed that he could see his breath when the early morning air bared its teeth and sunk into his flesh. His folded his arms to ward it off to no effect. He began shivering erratically. An observer might think that he was having a seizure.

Once he had gotten a hold of his uncontrollable shaking, he saw why it was so cold. The large window at the front of the room had shattered. As the brisk winter evening whispered sweet nothings to him, he remembered what the sound of breaking glass was like. The shards scream in terror as they are ripped apart from one another, turning a singular unit into a legion of disparate and equally useless bits.

He couldn’t tell how it had happened. What looked like equal amounts of glass on both the inside and outside of the house gave no indication as to whether it had been done by something trying to break in or escape. It was as if the window simply looked inward and destroyed itself. Panic slithered through his veins and his heart raced to purge the breathless being from his body.

His eyes began to dart around the room, trying to spot anything else out of the ordinary. His gaze rested on me for a few moments and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. I was sure he had spotted me, but he relinquished a foggy sigh before heading off to the kitchen.

By the time he had gotten to the kitchen, I had just finished pouring his drink. The first thing that caught his eye was the flicker of light that caught the rim of the glass. I could tell it made him uncomfortable. His eyes widened momentarily before he was struck by a wave of familiarity. He picked up the glass and took a massive gulp.

He sat down at the counter, directly in front of me, resting his head on his hands. He was looking at nothing while I happened to be in the way. His thoughts played out on his watery eyes. I leaned in until I was mere inches from his face to catch a better glimpse.

A single dark spot on the floor was soon joined by several before they all pooled together. Staying with his head down is only making the puddle grow, but looking up ensured a worse alternative. Black heels scattered across the floor and stopped right next to the pool. The heels toppled and now he could see a faceless figure lying beside him, motionless, soaking the cloth that covered its face with vibrant shades of red.

I poured him another drink. Hopefully he wouldn’t start seeing clearly. My face would surely terrify him, even though he was the one who brought me here. He didn’t need anything new to remember. I waited for him to finish his second drink before I leaned in and tried to look inside again, but the only thing that I could see were his hollow eyes. They were sifting sand. They flickered with pangs of guilt and sorrow. For the first time in years, I saw him blink. Perhaps it was an overexpressive wince.

I grabbed the bottle of spirits and began to pour him another glass when he took it out of my hands to do it himself. His actions were efficient and confident; it seemed as if he was no longer quivering.

There were two ice cubes in his glass that had shrunk to the size of peppermints. He flung these onto the floor before filling the glass to the rim. When the spirits were drained from the bottle they flowed thickly and heavily, a clear tar that preserves its victims after first burning their flesh.


When my last glass was filled, I brought the bottle down to my waist and let it slide from my fingers. I counted the seconds before it hit the ground. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That’s much too long. I looked down. What was left in the bottle wasn’t even sprawling itself across the floor any longer, as if it had been there for minutes.

I gazed back into Moloch’s blackened eyes as I sipped my drink. The unwavering intensity at which he returned the stare told me that he was starving. Sips turned to gulps and my glass was empty once again. I sat in silence. Dawn would be coming soon. I savoured the darkness while I could. It swallowed me whole and I slipped loose from the grip of my surroundings. Suspended in the serene blankness, a lightness that I had never felt before.

Moloch grunted and stomped his hooves.

My free flowing suspension came to an end as I crashed back down into my stool. My stomach throbbed and I doubled over, forcing my eyes closed as if it would ease my nausea. I could see the pool of blood forming from my dripping nose once again. This caused the churning in my stomach to burn with a blistering acidity that bored through my stomach lining. Averting my eyes I can see her lying before me, her face bloodied, her eyes looking right back at me without seeing.

My heart stabbed my chest as I choked out a sob. I opened my eyes again and Moloch was looming over me, awaiting his feast. I closed my eyes again to find myself clutching my stomach as a boot pulled itself back. My eyes wandered up the leg to see whose boot it was. He was glaring. A bitter snarl infected his face, which was usually endearing and kind.

I was helplessly whimpering, scattered between two equally horrific worlds. I opened my eyes again to find Moloch with his face directly in front of mine. His horns cast shadows on my face in the pale moonlight that wandered in through the open window.

I had begun to heave and convulse. Moloch rose and stood before me. I closed my eyes again and saw the vermillion stained floor below me. The floor opened up and the room fell out from under me into a valley of flames. Her unfocused eyes remained motionless and his hand reached back out toward me as they made their slow descent. Soon the flames began to dwindle, leaving me suspended in darkness once again.

Moloch grunted and stomped his hooves.

I was snapped out of the darkness and found myself back on all fours in my kitchen, still jerking, stomach writhing. One heave finally struck the right chord and the poisons frothed over my stomach and rose up and through my throat. I vomited a sickening sludge that spilled out onto the floor and all over Moloch’s hooves.

“Moloch,” I uttered as I began to fade away. Any attempt to fight the allure of unconsciousness was futile. I sunk into the floor and saw Moloch, looking down on me. His face grew blurry except for his dark and empty eyes. The eyes that had seen me longer than I was aware of. The eyes that had been to my past. The eyes that had fought to keep me safe from not only others, but myself. The eyes that had washed away my memories with their tears.


He awoke on his kitchen floor, disoriented and groggy, as the sunlight that was trickling into the house began to pour in. He sat up to discover a broken bottle of scotch to his right and vomit all over his shoes. The scent flooded his nostrils and he stood up to escape it.

The backdoor of the kitchen opened up to his patio and he wandered out and sat in his chair. It was soaking wet. He was wondering if it had rained last night when he saw a splotch appear on the ground before him. Slowly more and more rain droplets found their way to the ground before blending together, darkening the concrete. He clicked his vomit-caked boots together while he watched the rain painting the ground for a moment longer. Slowly, he raised his head to the sky. The rain flicked his face lightly and began to drip off of his cheek. Whatever had happened last night, he wanted nothing to do with it, he decided.

He got up and went back inside. Water fell from his face and onto the kitchen floor, which made him uneasy for reasons he was unsure of. He leaned against the counter and sighed deeply. It was then that he saw it.

A glass of scotch, filled to the brim. Two large ice cubes bobbed in the drink as if they had just been plopped in.

“Moloch.”