Ruckzuck – Dynamic Equilibrium Redefined

This one is from when I was scrolling through the aforementioned wishlist and saw this, which isn’t actually that far down it. Nonetheless, I had zero memory of putting it there so I played it to try to jog said memory.

Now, memory remains un-jogged. None of the songs sounded like something I had actually heard before, so I doubt I’d heard it on the radion,and I had zero idea of this band at all, so what made me add it to the wishlist will probably remain unknown to me forever and ever amen. But I’m glad I did. This is very pleasing indeed. They sound like one of those bands who don’t take themselves uber-seriously yet want to make some bloody good music nonetheless.

It’s got more of a ‘classic’ psych rock feel, by which I mean it sounds more like the late 60s psych explosion than most of what I listen to, but they do it very well. It doesn’t sound like pastiche to me, rather that they just happen to like making this particular type of noise. And why would anyone make noise other than that which they want to make?

Las Cobras – Selva

So the other day when I went to the Cardinal Fuzz page looking for an album, I should actually have gone to Fuzz Club Records. Are they by any chance related? I think we should be told. After all, they’ve never been seen in the same photo together.

It says ‘London,’ only ‘London’ on the bandcamp page. I can be amongst the more stupid members of our race sometimes, but I strongly suspect Las Cobras don’t originate from London. I bet that’s actually Fuzz Club Records HQ. A quick and dirty net search suggests Uruguay, marking them as the first Uruguayans (to my knowledge) to land in this parish.

It sometimes puts me in mind of 80s stuff like Jesus & Mary Chain, that kind of genre, a name I do not know and do not care to. There’s been a through line of that thing all the way up to the present day so this isn’t a throwback, I’m just feeling too stupid to think of any other examples at the moment. Some of the tunes are proper good, though, and as an album it is an excellent thing to listen to.

The Janitors – Noisolation Session vol​.​1

I actually went to the Cardinal Fuzz page looking for something whose name I’ve totally forgot, and remembered that I played this last night and it rocked. Can’t find the thing I was looking for, though. Have to wait until I’m back on the work PC.

The Janitors have grown on me. I don’t think I was initially impressed, but this one hits the spot, and hits it good.

The fact that I myself have just finished some self-isolation is entirely unrelated.

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 Switching Yard – Yet Again

(the bloke behind the wheel looks like my mate Dunny)

What do you do when you ate your shoes and you need to walk to Gallards Hill? You can’t walk barefoot or they’ll lock you up, using a criteria that they purposefully fit to you, even though it’s not fit for purpose, and now no longer are you. Enjoy the pills, tell us what’s in them, and hopefully we can see you when you survive.

It’s an ice age, an intellectual and spiritual ice age, where the insecure perpetuate their demons. So it’s not about the selfish gene, the selfish gene has been outflanked by the sociopathic demon. Tell me, have I got demons? Do they too have demons? And where are their demesnes? Enough to believe that demons are forward thinking – roughly 20 minutes, after that they hit a wall which you can’t drive through but the wall is not real but then neither are you, so we still can’t drive through. I’ll real you. I ask you, if this is all some quantum dream, what has the quantum been eating?

Mr. Airplane Man – Jacaranda Blue

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. This was because the bottom had fallen out of the housing market, and the house had never got finished, leaving the wall standing there on its own. Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. This was because the wall was uneven and unfit for any kind of purpose at all, including, it must be said, dividing one area from another. The reason for this was that all house builders were profit makers and profit makers only, and were expected only to care about making profits, because all forms of coercion whereby someone had to earn their money honestly had disappeared when the supreme money earners took control of the society in which the house/wall was built. And all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men couldn’t put humpty together again. Notice how the king himself isn’t having to try and make good the damage that has been done? Leaving it to his men and his horses, who are patently unqualified for the job. And as soon as all the fuss blows over, which it will with the help of a secret PR offensive which will cost a lot more than it would have done to just build the damn house properly in the first place, the king will sell it on again, and it still won’t be built properly.

 

Ecstatic Vision – Raw Rock Fury

In a still loud but otherwise quite contrasting way, this is the just-released second LP from Ecstatic Vision. I have no idea what their first is like, also having no idea how I stumbled across this – when I did, I was only able to hear You Got It or You Don’t, but I was sold on that thing alone. But now I can listen to the whole album, well, damn Daniel, the whole thing is just mighty fine.

I would personally describe this as a kind of garagey-punky-classic rock from the 70s/80s done by psychonautic blues-heads, so maybe The Stooges mixing it up with early-ish Whitesnake after a spliff ; also Endless Boogie who were much more recent. Nudity also come to mind, and a lo-fi White Hills. They mention Hawkwind which is also a good call if you imagine them at their most Motorhead-y!

This is psych-rock for a sunny day with the windows down. If there was any justice I’d hear this coming from every third car that drives past.

Thee Oh Sees – Mutilator Defeated at Last!

It took me aaaages to get hold of this album, which I eventually did by sending off for a physical CD. After which I found I could have bought it from Midheaven… sigh.

If you like Thee Oh Sees – and why on earth would you not? – then this album will push your buttons as effectively as all their stuff from the last 4 years or so.

Some has been made of its apparent heaviness on their labels page – I don’t think its much heavier than their other stuff to be honest. I don’t know what yer actual music critics think because I make it a rule not to read anybody else’s thoughts on music that I know that I’ll listen to myself because I want my own first impressions to be as uncontaminated by expectation as it is possible to be. Also, music critics deal only in opinions, and I’ve yet to meet a single human being who doesn’t have one of those. They become tiresome.

So anyway, have a listen to the album. I rather like it.

Dahga Bloom

I know nothing about this band, and can not find a bio. I tried looking at their F******k page but it made no sense to me. So I’m simply going to say what they sound like. Although, actually, you can listen to them. Go on. Listen to them.

They sound like a band who have played a million sweat stained, beer soaked gigs at every dive that would have them and have a sound of simply getting out there and kicking out the jams. They sound like a band whose pure and sole focus is the entertainment of the audience. To use a phrase I haven’t heard a band use for a loooong time, they sound like they want to kick your arse (or ass, if you’re not from round here).

I discovered ‘No Curtains’ because it made some year end list or other, and unlike most of the stuff on said list, really did rock my world. For the last couple of weeks I’ve barely listened to music due to a sinus induced migraine; I’ve made an exception for Dahga Bloom (and Big Blood, natch, as they have two – count ’em – new albums out). I’m not actually sure I’d go with the ‘psych’ descriptor but chucked it in because maybe I’m suffering from definition fatigue and it isn’t this particular definitions fault.