Ignatz & De Stervende Honden – Saturday’s Den

It’s been a day today, as the invoices have landed. Many has been the time when I thought I was merely blinking only to be met with eyelid rebellion when attempting to re-open my eyes. My mind was choosing a cataleptic coma over work. What can I say? My job is thrill-a-minute.

Imagine Les Rallizes Denudes but chilled waaay down, and with a dose of Inutili playing chess with Neil Young, and you might get somewhere close to what this trio do when they’re not trying to make us think they’re a duo with that name of theirs. Albeit Belgian, so for all I know that name is not at all an intended deception, I’m just being a quintessential Little Englander. Again.

I had thought this might be the first time I was using the tag ‘blues’ in all my years of Soundberging, but then I remembered Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Dub thing or whatever he called it, and so I played that again.

It might be the musical accompaniment to my catatonia should perhaps be kicked up to some bangin’ disco? But I don’t like bangin’ disco.

Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Dubs

Gambling for life, then.
Sounds dramatic, does it not?
but if we broaden our definition out to a bigger one
than a mere chemical reaction with added respiration and awareness
then maybe it has more utility as a concept
Is not life a pathway?
What if that pathway should seem blocked?
Then the traveller must decide on a course of action:
remain at the blockage
choose a different pathway
remove/overcome the blockage
The latter is a direct combat, which is a gamble
The first is yielding, or biding time, but always a gamble
But the second is the biggest gamble although it requires travelling in order to know
and the blockage may follow, if it be perceptual

In many ways, words are judgements. The label is a judgement. Yet judgement is an incomplete process; the true goal is understanding. Understanding is much harder, as it may mean the assimilation of uncomfortable perceptions that would prefer to be ignored, hence why it is so easy to stop at judgement.
The attempt to understand is a gamble, as you may end the world as you know it when you understand it.
The good news is that it will be replaced by a more coherent one.

 

Emma Ruth Rundle & Jaye Jayle – The Time Between Us

Collaboration / split releases can be a hit and miss affair, but when they work well, they are a joy to behold. They’re even better when they introduce someone to you who you wasn’t familiar with and now glad you are.

For me, that is Jay Jayle, which is not the name of the person but the entire outfit. Research tells me that this is the project of one Evan Patterson of the Young Widows.

This collaboration came about because both artists had songs leftover from their most recent releases, and decided to combine them onto a split release. Although they have different styles, said styles complement each other well. Emma Ruth Rundle’s songs are highly personal and emotionally charged, with a very late night feel to them. She’s really hard to put a label on and doesn’t really sound like anyone else that I’m aware of, and that’s a good thing. Jay Jayle is a more rootsy, alt-country-blues affair that likes to repeat the groove throughout the tune, reminding most of all of Little Axe, albeit without the samples, and that also is a good thing.

I had intended to do a post on Emma Ruth Rundle’s Some Heavy Ocean last year, but didn’t because it was such an interesting year (which I realise doesn’t tell you anything, but hey ho). Let it be known, however, that the album comes with a hearty recommendation. It contains some great tunes; the lady clearly knows her way around a song.

 

Charlie Parr – Hollandale

It never occurred to me to look for Charlie Parr on Bandcamp. It was after I did the recent post on Daniel Higgs that I had a look at the supporters collections – something I sometimes do – and found a follower called Charlie Parr. Could it be the same one, I thought?

See, I have in my digital archives an album called Roustabout by said artist released some years ago now, and I think it’s wonderful. Kind of a shit-kickin’ bluegrass thing going on, modern country blues, I suppose. Don’t ask me about genres and all that. So I did the search in the artist box and whaddya know… I don’t know if the supporter of ‘viv’ is the same one, I’m too stupid to figure it out (can you get to One Dog Clapping from my profile? I’m not sure you can), but nevertheless, there’s lots of Charlie Parr on Bandcamp.

This here Hollandale is actually somewhat unlike most of the recorded stuff I’d previously heard him do, in that it is largely improvised and somewhat more in the ‘American primitive’ tradition (another crap genre name – why is it that an American person sitting down with a guitar and jamming stuff out is labelled primitive?), I’ve heard similar stuff from John Fahey. But it is very hypnotic, not wholly unlike the way Crow Tongue hypnotise me.

And whilst you’re there, go over and listen to God Moves on the Water from Roustabout. I fackin love that one.

Mixpost 4

Because 2016 was so very, very interesting in so many ways, I am now in the position where I am unlikely to be buying much in the way of new music for a while. I mean, my finger and the pulse are better described as acquaintances rather than friends under the best of normal circumstances anyway, but it’s going to be straying far and wide as I do the next best thing to finding new music by rediscovering stuff I’d forgotten about.

Equally as much fun is music that other people recommend because they get a platform on which to do so; Dusted’s Listed feature is such an example and I recommend it to those who don’t reckon their music taste in terms of genre.

And, completely without planning, I’ve somehow made the following flow quite well…

I’m going to start with something poppy and popular because I love it. We did a kind of stoner version of it in my old One Dog Clapping band back in 2005 which was riotous fun to play (I ‘sang’ it an octave lower), but I make no secret of my love for the mighty Goldfrapp:

It is disappointingly hard to find any music by Appliance over the web – Mute Records, aren’t you supposed to playas? What are you playing at? So you’ll just have to take my word for it that if you spot one of their albums somewhere, snap it up. Amongst the very best artists from the turn of millennium.

I first discovered Kaophonic Tribu on MySpazz back in the Noughties (do peope call it that?), and I downloaded a song from their page which I played many, many times. Sods law, I can’t find it now, but I have found the album éliso déli, a delicious mix of electronics and ‘ethnic’ (i.e. not your standard dadrock bands instruments) sound sources. There’s a few of their tunes on the Googletube, this is one and rather good:

Because of this Listed, I found this, which I subsequently found is also on Bandcamp, and has been added to my hopelessly long wishlist:

It seems a bit lazy to then put the next song from the same feature, but damn this is good:

Henry Flynt is my kind of outsider, having rejected places in some ‘cool’ crowds over the years. I could wax on about why I personally think that’s a good thing, but I don’t think he did it to impress anyone, least of all me. Listen to this, though, all 15 minutes of it:

Words cannot describe Catherine Ribeiro’s wonderfully true singing, and since I’ve brought you into the realm of the epically hypnotic, then let’s finish with this:

 

 

 

Creech Holler – The Shovel and the Gun

 

   This was probably my favourite album of 2008. Probably. I don’t honestly have an exhaustive list of albums released in 2008, and I’m not sure I’ve got round to listening to all of them yet anyway.

This is lo-fi shit-kickin back porch electrified alt-country gospel blues at its rawest and finest. They do versions of standards like John the Revelator and The Cuckoo, but they also write some cracking tunes of their own too, such as Devil’s Eyes and The Color of Bone.

Because there doesn’t seem to be a page where you can listen to the whole album, I’m going to find you some YouTubes. Unlike the other day, I doubt I can find the whole album…

Raymond Lee:

Devil’s Eyes:

Jeff Zentner did an acoustic version of this on this album

John the Revelator:

Live version of The Cuckoo:

Live version of When the Temptor Calls:

 

I think you can listen to all the album at Last FM, but I think you may also need a spotify account which is a new restriction and yet another reason to pay it less attention, as I no have that account and nor am I likely to get one. Also, I’m on an enquiry desk again so I can’t actually test it.

Creech Holler don’t seem to have released anything further since this album, their preceding work With Signs Following, was very nearly as good. Jeff Zentner’s solo stuff is much more mellow, being predominantly acoustic.