Karamika (self titled)

There’s about 10 shows I listen to regularly that make my wishlist increase every time, and so much enjoyment am I having going through their old shows that I haven’t actually listened to the full albums in question yet…

So I did this one, and despite it being at the more expensive end of the digital albums available, I’m still seriously considering bumping this to the head of the queue. It ticks all those buttons that make music conducive to catatonia, I mean, it’s trancey as all fuck.

This is one of those albums where you actually can just refer to each track by its number. I mean, the whole thing works as a cohesive whole, but say you wanted to highlight, say, track 5, you don’t have to worry about remembering the title.

There may be a whole academic treatise available to someone in this observation – back when I bought vinyl, I used to know the name of every song on every album I bought, same with tapes. Once I moved into CDs, that became slightly less perfect. Now I’m digital only, I struggle to remember song names at all until I’ve heard them about 20 times unless the name jumps out, and that’s just the albums in English. Quantity may have something to do with it, but there’s something else at play as well. I remember reading some while back the suggestion that human memory started to atrophy with the advent of writing because before we could write things down somewhere we needed to have epic memories in order to remember things. As the amount of storage for memory has increased over the years, with books and then TV/Film, and then digital with all dem server farms, so we don’t need to remember anything any more, we can all just look it up. And then forget what we just looked up. Did someone say progress?

Anyway, ignore my ramblings and listen to the music.

Thee Telepaths – The Velvet Lounge

I have something in common with Thee Telepaths. I’ve also recorded music at Far Heath recording Studios. I did it with the old blues band I was in. We recorded a demo. It is a marvellous place to record music, surrounded by fields, devilishly difficult to find, lovely spacious vibe.

Bit like this music, really. Music that is also dense. Difficult trick to pull off, but they do it well. My only nark is that they’ve split what is essentially 3 long tunes into separate pieces which mean that when you listen digitally – as I have to – you get a gap at what seem like quite arbitrary intervals.

As someone who has no intention of ever buying a vinyl player due to not having money to waste on relics of our imperial greatness (face it, people, it’s over), I get rather annoyed by the snobbery shown towards those of us who focus on the digital music.

The entire Nest Egg discography

I’ve been meaning to post their new(ish) album Dislocation since I got the mailout from t’Cardinal, but just, y’know, not got round to it. And the tab has been sat there waiting for me to do that thing. and I didn’t do it.

So what I did instead was listen to the other albums they had on their bandcamp, and it turns out they is all good, really good. Hypnotic and trancey with a fondness for also bringing the noise.

Of course, they aren’t aiming this music at me, despite the obvious disguise in dressing it up in so many of my favourite musical traits, the bastards. But they actually say this is for nihilists, and I am not a nihilist. Nothing is impossible (there’s a double meaning there, people; a clue that has been with us all along). So we’ll have to agree to disagree, philosophically, and just dig the music.

There’s more, too. But I’ll not post them all. Go and have a listen.

 

 

 

Locean – Object/Disco

Six white pigeons lined on a roof
Re-arranged to give the order of proof
The magus waits until his hands have finished
Then asks them what they did

Six wide angles in a time of doubt
Give way to senses and what’s allowed
The disease waits until his hands are full
Then he asks them what they’re doing

Six meets seven then multiplies
It’s a universe but a smaller size
The maker waits til his hands are empty
And asks them what have they done

 

Orsak:Oslo – Tipping Point

My daughter says this album cover is gross and looks like monster blood. I don’t believe she read the description on their bandcamp page which makes comparisons to Bukowski novels, but I cannot be entirely sure.

Zement – Werk

So, my way around using that descriptor of music that I really don’t like* is to use a different one – or two, or three, or many – instead, because I just love when genres get divided and subdivided and so on. But stay with me on this.

“Krautrock” (the last time I will ever type that word) can arguably be said to comprise of (at least) two elements – motorik and kosmiche. So, without further ado, I hereby tag this particular music motorik, because it has that driving rhythmical quality to it so prevalent within the field. I would argue that it isn’t particularly kosmiche – I personally am more likely to ascribe that quality to the output of Ash Ra Tempel, Gunter Schickert, etc. But that doesn’t mean this music can’t transport you, it is heavy on repetition after all, and repetition rocks. When done well, anyway. Though I suppose an argument can be made to call it something like industrial drone. But I’m not going to do that.

Other reference points for this include but are not limited to Minami Deutsch, Follakzoid, a more up-tempo Appliance and there’s also a riff they use quite often that can be found on Hey Colossus‘ magnificent Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo (those of you familiar will know what I mean, it’s on the track English Flesh).

*just to clarify, because the sentence is not all that clear, it’s the descriptor I don’t like, not the music. If I didn’t like the music it wouldn’t be here.