Our Solar System – Origins

You’re only dead once

The only way forward is backwards

Can you call someone blind if they don’t see what they’re not looking for?

All that I do know is all that you know
As I was saying to myself the other night

Waiting for the punchline so that we can die laughing

She walked through the hall like an earthquake
I could tell things were about to get real

This time I decided to err on the side of gluttony

If you want to win the war on drugs, destroy all humans
oh, that’s what you’re trying to do

Seeing as it’s my blood, I suppose I should clear it up

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.

 

The Myrrors – Entranced Earth

New album from The Myrrors, is this, and it carries right on from where they left off. Whilst that may sound like a back handed compliment, it most certainly isn’t. I’d say this is my favourite of their releases to date. It’s also the one where they channel Parson Sound more explicitly than before, at least on Liberty is in the Streets and the title track. Invitation Mantra raises a hypnotic pulse that I imagine would be a great soundtrack to astral projection, so it’s about time I learnt that skill so as to test that hypothesis.

Elsewhere, they do the rustic desert jams, reminding me at times of where Evening Fires are at. In fact, the layout of the album is kind of acoustic/electric/acoustic/electric and so on – the sense is of contrasts rather than opposites, different ways of presenting a worldview. I think it is put together very well.

Their continued evolution is a joy to behold, and I’m sure the journey will continue to places unimaginable. For now, though, this is a lovely place to stop and take in the sounds.

 

Our Solar System – In Time

I meant to post about this when it came out since I eagerly anticipated its release after they did the pre-announcement thing and I listened to the first track, a marketing ploy I otherwise despise as being irrelevant to the digital age. But Other Things were Very Very Good and caught hold of my easily distracted attention span, so there you go, Beyond Beyond is Beyond records – you’d have had a proper on the moment big-up if you’d have just stuck it out when it was ready. Let that be a lesson to you.

Our Solar System are a collective from Sweden. This release contains two tracks, and so is definitely Music My Brother Would Not Like (I will explain that epithet in an upcoming post). Opener ‘In the beginning of time’ comes on like Pharoah Sanders chilling with a quite propulsive Parson Sound. ‘At the edge of time’ dispenses with the sax and brings the vox, largely wordless and ecstatic to start with but introducing actual words later on.

My own personal nearest reference point to this is actually Sungod – I could quite easily imagine these jams turning up on one of their albums. Both tunes exceed twenty minutes, and both tunes could keep going as far as I’m concerned. There’s a lot of repetition but also gradual evolution of the music too – not in a linear way, however. The music demonstrates an impressive understanding of the cyclical nature of the macrocosm. There, I said it (well, typed).

Like my most recent post, I’m going to put the many other projects so far associated with this amongst the tags to save me typing it all twice!

Flowers Must Die

It’s about time I wrote of something relatively contemporary this year, although the argument can be made that if something is turning you on now, then it is contemporary, regardless of when it was made. Fashion – there’s the door. Don’t slam it. I’m listening to Flowers Must Die.

Hat tip goes to the Psych Insight column over at Backseat Mafia.

They’re a Swedish band, and the Parson Sound influence is obvious, particularly on the ‘Greatest Hits (live)’ album (I love that they called it that) which most definitely qualifies as music my brother wouldn’t like as the shortest song is 8 minutes, and the longest is 54. This is music to properly get lost in. As the title suggests, these are live recordings. I think music of this nature really benefits from being captured live.

The tunes on Psykjunta/Parsonligt Sound are much shorter, and also more uptempo. The other release I can tell you about is Hoga Nord which is back in the realm of the longer, more meditative tunage that I personally find so appealing, with Eastern influences more prevalent. There are other releases too. I love when bands do that. I shall check them out whenever I check them out, and tell you about the good ones in one of my updates.

Inutili

Something approaching sonic heaven for you, assuming that an admixture of Parson Sound and Les Rallizes Denudes would be your thang…

I’m here to tell you that this is most definitely my thang.

It’s actually quite blissed out, something I need to mention given that you would not always – or maybe ever – categorise Les Rallizes Denudes as blissed out.

‘Music to Watch the Clouds on a Sunny Day’ is in fact the best title they could give it, although I am yet to test the suggestion, what with it being winter, this being the UK, and the few days since I discovered it having very little in the way of sunny. I firmly intend to test it out in the summer, though, if we have one. However, I can say that as I listened to it for the first time on a Thursday morning in the basement office in which I work, the sun did indeed shine through the small horizontal cracks at the top of the wall that we call windows, and the moment was perfect. Hence why I think of this as blissed out.

There’s a bluesy feel to it, too. I’d love to say it’s a bit like Junior Kimbrough in that respect, but it probably isn’t that much, I just wanted an excuse to reference my all time favourite bluesman. Any firmer reference points, answers on a comment please…

I can’t find out much about them beyond they are/were a three piece from Italy.

There’s also a couple of free downloads available, very nearly as good. Their artwork is NSFW in the same way that Acid Mothers Temple artwork is NSFW, although it depends very much on where you work, I suppose.

 

The Myrrors

So I went to see The Myrrors last night at Duffy’s Bar, a very enjoyable night which reminded me I hadn’t flagged to the world that I love Arena Negra, their album from earlier this year. So this post is really to rectify that. But anywho, whilst there I was talking to my long time friend in musical explorations about how I rarely dive into a bands back catalogue now, unlike when I was younger and tended to go full completist on everything (there are a couple of current exceptions – guess who? and well, obviously).

So when starting this post I decided to see what else they had.

On the strength of last nights wonderful music, I am therefore going to give all of these things a listen. Those of you unfamiliar with The Myrrors would do well to check out the embedded album below, for I love it very much. These are one of a few bands who are noticeably beginning to channel the wonderful Parson Sound (another being the awesome Les Sorciers du Theil), a band who history will soon regard as the true godfathers of psychedelic rock. I’m going to dedicate a post to Parson Sound soon, actually.

But they do very much their own thing. You can hear the desert in their music, so much space is there (I find the same thing with many of the desert blues acts of North Africa, particularly Tinariwen). There is also a hint of tribal rhythms, and I could easily imagine listening / jamming to this round an actual campfire, probably in the desert (the only desert I’ve seen or been to is the one in Australia; admittedly it’s not a small one, although technically it might actually be an ‘outback’). Don’t know what we’d use for electricity, though. Maybe we could plug into a salamander? I’ve heard those things have juice.

Les Sorciers du Theil

I can’t remember where I heard or read about these. Apparently they convene annually and improvise some music. Maybe they should convene more frequently.

They put me in mind of: Parson Sound, Master Musicians of Bukkake, a little bit Electric Moon, a twist of Selim Lemouchi, and the whispered vocals on the final track of Polyte Deshaies make me think of Current 93.

I really haven’t got anything to write! Marvellous music, though. I am listening to it often.