Edward Ka-Spel – The Moon Cracked Over Albion

I knew of the Legendary Pink Dots. Who doesn’t? But only a bit of their work, and that from the 70s.

Nonetheless, this came right as a surprise. I’d recently had recommended an album made by someone who was knocking around in the 60s doing a new thing with some ‘cool’ luminaries helping him, and it did nothing for me at all. Felt like it was living in the past. So I initially was a bit worried that this might be similar.

Didn’t take long at all to kick that notion into touch. This is something that encapsulates probably every style the guy has done over the years and then some, gloriously wrapped up in a whole dose of now. Impossible to describe, even more so than the usual things that are impossible to describe. Which isn’t a description.

I think I need to investigate more of his work.

 

M. Takara – “música resiliente para pessoas e lugares”

Definitely a dice needed now, and there’s still a week to go.

How do you even describe music like this? Best just to listen to it.

 

 

 

Big Blood – Operate Spaceship Earth Properly

So, this time that Bandcamp are doing their thing where they waive their fee, I’ve decided to buy this Big Blood album, and one of their others.

You all know how I feel about Big Blood. It’s helped by the fact that I discovered them at the time they were on a real roll creatively, the time of Unlikely Mothers, which contains one of the greatest pieces of recorded music, ever.

Operate Spaceship Earth Properly has them doing that sound again, which they hadn’t done since then. It is therefore my favourite thing I’ve heard this year, because them doing this sound is them pushing all of my buttons simultaneously. This music is orgasmically good.

When Bandcamp do this thing again next month, I think I’m a-gonna get the recent Follakzoid album, which I had wanted today but… Big Blood, though!

Julius Gabriel -ÆTHERHALLEN

So take the scars from your eyes and remove the bars
there is no cage except in your imagination

The objective truth can only be perceived subjectively

Thinking is subversive

Rumours of my exaggeration have now died

The best way to learn boundaries is to cross them
It’ll teach you how valuable they are

So God plugged the universe in. “Let there,” he began, “be sound.”
And he turned us on.

Rusty Souls – Tripnotic

Clarkson sold his soul
and was rewarded with a fast car
gave him such a thrill
that he thought that’s all there was
part of the deal he made
was in treating men with wither
if they happened to point out
that he’d been taken for a ride
but eventually he arrived at the end
of his sordid little pleasuredome
he had to put in concepts
all the scorn he’d sold in words
and he found that they were empty
he found that they were empty
albeit with invective
but it isn’t quite the same
where has your reward gone?
it’s stuck behind in this realm
and you could have taken riches
if you knew just what they were
life is not a lesson
it’s a song
and if you get the meaning wrong
you cannot hear the music
its underneath the engines
but above the darker ground
it could be in the air
try listening to the air
ears are more than just the holes in the side of your head
you need to know your song
its your passport to moving on

 

Tengger – Segye

It was in the middle of nowhere I found you strapped to the last fence, tied to the past as the desert (inevitable) encroached (incorrigible). I bribed my way past the fates, whose eyes were everywhere, and I tried to attend to the knot, not demanding the impossible.

The way forward was blocked, an impediment that blind progress nonetheless sought to conquer. It sought allies, conscript; it entreated us all to visions to prosper. ‘I will never stoop to conquer,’ I yelled and returned to my task, only to find it gone. Gone! As far as the eye can see, and I can see, let me tell you. Call this a ramble? No, I never did. This is now a rescue mission, which I think I always knew it was. If only it wasn’t so dense, maybe the target would be clearer, but theway, like the sinus of the perciever, remained blocked.

Perhaps – V

The soup thickened, as soup will. In amongst its mass, nematoads appeared, well, evolved, well, agglomerated, well… language really is fucking limited. Anywho, there they were and they had this idea, well actually, this idea had them, and thats why seemed to have such purpose about them. Generations and generations of them, they conceived of things and they participated in the events and they renumerated their memories and still the idea stayed constant, and eventually the idea got what it wanted and wondered what to do next? It was at a loss. And the nematoads grew fewer and fewer, sparser and sparser, though the soup looked a little thinner, it was still recognisably soup. So maybe the idea came before the means to achieve it? What am I, some kind of answer peddler? I just say it as I haphazardly think it up on the spot.

 

Big Blood

Now, you may have to stay with me on this one.

When I die, as I realise I must, and go to heaven, as I know I will,* I will be hearing ‘A Watery Down Part II‘ on the escalators upwards, and probably constantly afterwards.

‘Unlikely Mothers‘ is flat out the best (as in, my favourite) album of 2014. I love it so much that I even bought the double vinyl LP despite having no means to play such an item (I’m giving it to my friend who does – his initial reaction to it was, shall we say, less enthusiastic, but he’s beginning to enjoy them now. Hence my opening caveat).

Big Blood create an eerie, unique sound, which perfectly matches the vocal styles created within. They find a groove, and they stick with it, except for the occasional instance when the song demands it. In some ways the music is quite ethereal, but it is more often ecstatic.  There’s an angels-getting-their-hands-dirty feel about this album. They are also quite clearly having a ball.

It is not just ‘Unlikely Mothers’ which so unrelentingly floats my boat. Check out their page on the Free Music Archive – I particularly draw your attention to the album ‘Dark Country Music.’

http://freemusicarchive.org/swf/playlistplayer.swf

On this 11-track album, there are 5 utter classics. Let me tell you, I’m very fussy about naming a song an utter classic. For an album to have 2 is rare enough, 3 is proper unusual – but 5?!?!

I’ll also point you to ‘Old Time Primitives‘ too, as there are some stunning songs on there too.

The two albums mentioned above are much more country, more ‘New Weird America’ (remember that?). The songs are generally shorter, but still with the same ecstatic vocals, although I have to single out ‘Coming Home Pt III‘ off Dark Country Magic as possibly the most heartbreaking vocal performance I’ve ever heard. Utterly transcendent.

Colleen Kinsella sings like an angel, pure and simple – not one of those sanitised, Aled Jones singing the snowman type (that’s not the work of angels – maybe cherubim. I don’t know, my theological taxonomy is non-existent) but an angel that has lived. Raw, passionate, at times absolutely deranged, at others transcendentally beautiful. In possession of the full realisation of the fact that in order to understand what you’re singing about, you have to live it first, and live it truly. If you want a reference point, Joanna Newsom and Kate Bush trying to outcompete each other, but effortlessly. Caleb Mulkerin has a decent style too, although equally far from the conventional.  It is fair to say, though, that to some ears, the vocals will be a dealbreaker.

In fact, as has been demonstrated above, this band is so good they make me write like a fool.

They have an etsy page where they sell some stuff, and also stuff by other people in their scene.

*I inserted that phrase specifically for the benefit of my friend for whom I’m buying the album, because I know he will appreciate it :0