Narcosatanicos – Body Cults

I’ve been looking forward to this, having been properly into their debut, so much so that they’ve been one of the few acts I check in on every now and again to see when something might be coming. This does not disappoint me, being more of the same but more so, and also a bit different. It is continuing proof of my conviction that the merger of brass and heavy guitar freakouts is a thing of great beauty.

I referenced Monoshock and Puffy Areolas first time up, and they still hold true. But I would also add a strong Stooges groove, occasional Hey Colossus sludge, an occasional veer into Bad Seeds-esque territory and they sound familiar with Swans recent work.

In other words, it is loud and it is aggressive, it is not for the faint hearted, and, oh yeah, I really, really like it. Also, it was available to buy a week before the date on the page, because that’s when I bought it.

 

 

Karina Vismara – Casa del Viento

I’ve been reading Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits during my lunch breaks at work (a very good book, by the way, easy to get back into when I haven’t picked it up for a fortnight or more, but still with a phenomenal amount of depth to the narrative).Coincidentally, I’ve also discovered another South American person, this time a woman who plays guitar and sings excellent songs.

This is one of those really lazy ways of saying that I discovered a whole two artists based in South America and I think it’s a Thing. After all, it’s hardly the first time I’ve found artists from the continent that do good things to my soul (Jodorowsky, Borges, Os Mutantes, Coelho, Rakta… and they’re just the ones off the top of my head as I sit at the usual enquiry desk at work…) But actually, there is a similarity of atmosphere, in a way I cannot possibly put into words. (sidebar: does something exist if there isn’t a word for it?)

Karina Vismara is a singer-songwriter from Argentina who seems unreasonably young for one with such music, though I say that with admiration rather than envy. Her voice is strong and expressive, and her guitar playing is seriously good with some gorgeous passages of droney finger picking finding their way into the songs.

The opener, Tied up Tight actually puts me in mind somewhat of Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore. Also you might want to consider Joni Mitchell. Most of the references I could think of (they always leave my head when I sit in front of a blank blog post) also date from the late 60s/ early 70s folk revival. And of course, she’s from the same country as the wonderful Juana Molina, who you know all about, obviously.

 

Black Bombain and Peter Brötzmann

Black Bombain seem to me to be born collaborators. Their live jam from late last year was a seriously good piece of music, and if you haven’t heard their collaboration with Gnod, then you should know that Black Gnod’s Innerspace recording comes with the highest possible recommendation from Soundbergs Towers.

This time they’ve teamed up with free jazz maestro Peter Brötzmann, himself no stranger to the collaborative arts, resulting in a superlative work of one of my favourite sub-mashup-genres, saxophone psych. There should be more horns and brass atop these swirling guitar maelstroms generally, and I speak as a guitarist who never used to like brass at all. Brass is the one class of instrument I absolutely cannot play at all, which may be related; however, it adds a tonal element to the ‘psych-rock’ mix which complements it superbly. A whole field with relatively few visitors.

It fascinates me how music that quite obviously came together on the spot can nevertheless sound so coherent and, you know, purposive. Having done some improv over the years (all the best Itto tunes came into being that way) I have an idea; it’s like tuning into some music and being the vehicle of its expression rather than ‘separate’ beings somehow all being creative in the same way at the same time. Maybe we receive before we can transmit? On a very basic level, that is exactly true – you have to listen to your collaborators (receive) if you want to complement the overall sound (transmit). However, there were times when all of us suddenly changed direction at the same time without prompt – you can’t put those experiences into words, and neither can you take the idea of a flat universe seriously anymore.

The music comes with the guarantee that it is good, not that it will make you think mystical things, although that may happen if you are so inclined. You can score it from shhpuma or Lovers and Lollipops

Fantasy collaboration time: imagine Valerio Cosi collaborating with Oneida? (drools like Homer Simpson…)

Mixpost 3

Seeing as the last mixpost was an exclusively dub one, let’s start with more of the same. I discovered this whilst sitting in Mad Arawak’s lounge as he DJ’d it last Wednesday evening. I don’t know if he has a regular schedule, but when he dj’s, he dj’s here.

Cyrenius Black – No Bad Intention:

I’m about to go to some session where people talk about the library of the future. The cynical part of me was immediately cynical, which is good because that’s why I give it ego room, but also proved impeccable taste in music by reminding me of this tune from the equally good album, Welcome to the Afterfuture.

Mike Ladd: 5000 Miles West of the Future:

I’m going to wax very lyrical about this album sometime soon. In the meantime…

Karina Vismara – Sooner or Later:

I cannot get enough of Fela Kuti at the moment, pretty much anything he did. People don’t realise just how psychedelic this guy was. Maybe this will wake people up to it. Not that it matters that much to me what labels people put on others music, but, y’know. If you have a pipe, stick this in it and smoke it.

Fela Kuti – It’s no Possible:

This is my first attempt at embedding something from the Free Music Archive. Obviously it’s Big Blood. There is never a period of more than a few days when I don’t play a Big Blood album. No other artist can make this claim.

Big Blood – Out of Turn:

https://freemusicarchive.org/swf/trackplayer.swf

This song just rocks.

Zulus – Gemini:

For all that I’ve namechecked Parson Sound over the various posts I’ve done, I’ve never given you a link. Here’s a 20 minute tune, From Tunis to India in Fullmoon (on testosterone). Especially for my bro.

 

Nudity is God’s creation

Roughly some time ago, I and my friend Gareth swapped music via the then quite new method of the USB memory stick. He glanced through the list of folders on my 4 gig kingston and said, ‘blimey, I’ve only heard of about 5 of these and I thought I liked obscure music…’ Also, he could not get over the name of Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat. Also, he discovered Appliance, who were wonderful and really deserve a long devotional post from someone.

Bantering a couple of years later, he said to me ‘the thing about you is you like albums so obscure that even the band who made them forgot they did it!’

Which made me immediately show him Nudity’s Last.Fm page:

(sidebar: go on, do an internet search for ‘nudity.’ I dares ya).

Now, since the above exchange, I think munikate has actually edited the comment, because it worked even better in context originally than it does now, although it still works a bit. Can you enlighten, munikate?

Still makes a good story though. Also, when I wrote my comment, Sons of Itto were in the similar artists. That may have been because Nudity’s listener count was barely higher than ours, and I was caning both at one time.

I was caning the ‘Winter in Red’ album in particular (which munikate seems to have called the nightfeeder’s album), and this thing makes up the latter part of Nudity is God’s Creation, released lately on Cardinal Fuzz. The first part is made up of Nudity’s self titled debut, and there’s a couple of unreleased tracks separating them. The albums were initially released only on limited CD-R runs, and my exposure came via another swap with someone of various files. Remember, kids: home taping is killing music.

Both releases were and are fantastic. The first is more roughly recorded and produced but has a wonderful energy about it. The second section of This Man may have predicted the emergence of the rather good Narcosatanicos, whilst Moon Druids is just batshit crazy in the best possible sense – imagine pastoral psych done in a NWOBHM style.

The latter part of the album, which I shall insist on calling ‘Winter in Red’ until someone from the band tells me not to, has a mere three tracks but will take a lot more of your listening time than the self titled. Naturally, I love it! Most deffo is this music my brother would not like. Take a groove and/or a riff and just keep playing the fuck out of it. If finale Le Premier Voyage du Captaine has you drifting off, I can promise you that the way they end it will wake you up. Also, it’s more than a bit like Parson Sound, which I usually consider to be a good thing.

The overall mashup is probably best described as a psychedelic mashup between AC/DC and Thin Lizzy, with hints on some tunes from Julian Cope, particularly in his Jehovahkill era.

If you like this, they are still around and putting stuff out – check out Astronomicon from 2015.

Horseback – Dead Ringers

Jenks Miller brings us the first Horseback release since the really rather good ‘Piedmont Apocrypha.’ Dead Ringers sees a natural evlution in the Horseback sound, which is to say, he’s carrying on down the road that he was going down.

What this means in practical terms is that the rifftastic, droney, atmospheric, groovy, noisy mashup that is Horseback continues to be a rifftatstic, droney, atmospheric, groovy, noisy mashup. He’s kept his vocals exclusively clean this time out, which I think works for the better. There’s also quite the sonic crossover with one of his other projects, Jenks Miller & Rose Cross NC, lending proceedings an alt-country air.

Listening to it last night again I was reminded mainly of the wonderful Appliance, who probably fitted few of the descriptors I used previously – it may have been partly the crystal clean production (a feature of all Horseback recordings), partly the drum machines which feature on the early parts of the album. The night before I found myself thinking of Julian Cope, particularly on the tune most likely to have slotted onto his earliest releases, In Another Time, In and Out of Form. Before that it was the HP Lovecraft band from the late ’60s. It is entirely possible that this album will remind me of a different artist every time.

There is a minor imperfection in that the last tune is about 6 minutes too long for my money; he could have kept the post-dubstep experimentation down to a mere 10 minutes and it would have been fine! But this is an otherwise minor quibble, as this is otherwise my favourite Horseback album.