One Dog Clapping – Fragments of the Night

Happy birthday to me…. I thought I’d celebrate by releasing an album. As you do.

I’ve faffed loads with this and ended up having to give myself a deadline and this seemed as good as any. However, I’m going to do the same for the next some too, and it is my current intention to have a busy year. It may even compete with 2018. Universe permitting, obviously.

Although the album has my usual vague, non-linear thread, there is no real over-arching narrative to this, though whether it ends up fitting into a larger scheme like the aforementioned series, well, things have an odd way of working out.

Sex Swing – Type II

Now, this one is probably old news to most of you.

I actually ignored these for quite a while for reasons that all say more about me than the band. 1) Don’t like the band name. 2) I see the word ‘supergroup’ and I just think swearwords about people phoning it in. 3) What is that cover? Fucking disgusting.

So God Unknown records put it out recently after I’d ignored it’s initial issue on Rocket, and for reasons I don’t know why I decided to listen to it. Actually, I do know why. It was a Monday and I was in a Monday mood so wanted to listen to gnarliness and I thought these might tick that box. And they did tick that box. They ticked it righteously. But they did more than tick that box, they turned that box into a well of unfathomable depth with their riffing, repetitious, droning, hypnotic gnarliness.

And it turns out that one of them has visited these parts before, and that also had a ghastly cover.

October and the Eyes – Dogs and Gods

I actually discovered this album because Aldous RH on NTS played a song by her called ‘Tit Pic’ which is just fantastic and so I went looking for it. I can only find it on Spotify. Boo. I want to buy the thing. Someone tell me where I can buy the thing.

This is a very good second prize, though. It sounds to me like it’s a one-woman band, and also like she gives as much of a fuck about conventional production wisdom as I do. Example – dogmatic in ‘proper’ production land is the notion that you foreground the vocals and the drums, and if you can fit the rest of the music in, well, so much the better. After all, that’s how The Beatles did it and apparently all originality in rock music became impossible from that moment forth because they had Done It All. Ms October, on the other hand, wants you to hear her fucking guitars and basslines and stuff, and guess what? You can actually hear her singing as well, so it is possible to foreground everything. There’s a lesson there.

Obviously I know nothing else about her because I am lazy and don’t research, but I do like the music she makes. And I do hope Tit Pic is on an album/E.P. that is available to buy, I really do.

Sebastian Melmoth – The Dynamics of Vanity

For about the last week I’ve been obsessed with listening to NTS Radio and not just whatever is live but going back through archives of particular hosts, so much so I even put the app on my phone (which close friends will probably retort with ‘where is Jay and what have you done with him?’). I have mentioned them before but I originally only went there for that one host. I just had this desire one day to listen to dubstep for a while and I only have early Burial stuff so that made me wonder what would happen if I looked around here.

So the final track on this album – all 14 minutes of it – was featured on a show which made me go to this album and check it out. It is far from the only thing that’s happened with, and more posts may follow once I’ve checked out the relevant bandcamps, etc. But the reason I mention that is because – what is not to absolutely love about radio that plays 14 minute experimental tracks? This was far from an outlier, too.

I’m the last person in the world to go around dispensing descriptions. Sebastian Melmoth do experimental post-punk, according to the description on this page though it is a vague pointer at best. Art rock? maybe, whatever that is. That last track I mentioned is a classic but I would have no idea how to describe it. Ambient post-punk maybe. But the E.P. / album is all over the place stylistically. Not sure I can think of a meaningful reference point – at an absolute stretch, maybe one of the tunes reminds me of Faust.

One Unique Signal – Aether

So a while ago I bought ‘The Drift‘ by these (did I post about it? I don’t remember doing so) which is wonderfully hypnotic and is kind of my go-to album for when my playlist only takes until about 20 minutes before I hit the hay; it’s a perfect EP for that sort of gap, especially the closing track.

But this is an entirely different beast. I suspect the line-up was different. Maybe they were jamming with peak-Oneida, as that’s who I kept thinking of when I was listening to it. And because of that, I love it. I think it might be one for more in the midst of a hectic playlist, though, rather than the wind-down before bedtime.

And I love the cover.

Death and the Maiden – Wisteria

I’ve been listening to this for aaages, every now and again. It’s at the top of the shortlist for this weeks Bandcamp Friday. Can’t believe I haven’t posted this one before.

It’s quite tail-end 80s-ish, and for once that isn’t a bad thing. The songwriting and the arrangements are just superb. I wish I’d written several of these songs.

One Dog Clapping – Twilight Communion

Thought I’d get my contender for album of the year in early!

This is a distinctly non-linear story that doesn’t start at the beginning, because it has no beginning, and doesn’t stop at the end because it never ends. Whether it’s true is just a detail.

This has been far from the only thing I’ve done in the lockdowns since Influx Arena. I’ve been updating some old stuff (a continuing project) and I have a shit-ton of new ideas in the works which might lead to a couple of new 2021 albums, although I’m not inclined to go an a mad spree like I did in 2018.

I’m rubbish at genres for other people’s stuff; I’m even worse for my own. I only choose post-punk as the main label because one or two others have thrown that in my direction and it seems as good a tag as any. If any budding labellers out there want to suggest something else (polite), I’ll be all ears. Or eyes, since I’m likely to read it.

Edit in June 21: I since came to the conclusion that my ‘genre’, since I probably have to have one, is Urban Blues. How can it be otherwise?

Cowboy Flying Saucer – Travel Lodge

So as I work form home with now occasional trips into the main campus to get us ready for a bit of return, I’ve been going through my inbox’s many, many emails from Bandcamp telling me what people have bought who I follow. I click on those that catch my eye. And the hit rate has been surprisingly low, so much so that I’ve unfollowed a couple, and more may follow.

But then the last couple of days has suddenly given me some interesting stuff. This one is a bit like The Fall, with hints of Campag Velocet.

Тихие улицы Греты Гарбо – Это был понедельник​.​Я превратился в собаку

Me neither.

So, Russians have a way of doing buses in a different way. The Тихие улицы Греты Гарбо bus has just one stop on the journey, although it’s a big stop and really contains two stops when you ride the journey it offers. The first five minutes of the journey are an actual song and the second 11 minutes of the ride are a different thing altogether, really, but by God! Most effective.

They only seem to do one stop rides. It would be good to take a journey on one of their buses with a larger number of stops.

 

Vago Sagrado – Vol. III

The theme for this week is buses, as I have a week off work just because. This means I get to ride many more buses than usual.

The first of this weeks buses comes from Santiago, Chile, a country rightly famous for Follakzoid and also for sounding like a cold place whilst simultaneously  sounding like one of my very favourite hot foods of all time. Almost all of my stir fries have chopped chillies in them. I particlarly like the ones called Birds Eye Chillis though they do not look like birds eyes, or even mass produced frozen food. Maybe a native of Santiago would find my attempted humour even less funny than my usual peer group do.

This is what comes of looking at many buses.

So this bus has a picture of some old ruins on the front. I don’t know what to make of them. Nothing, I suppose. They’re ruins. Let them be. Let them fade with all those other failed constructs from past times and spaces, a reminder of something you never knew in the first place.

This bus sounds like it’s motoring along smoothly, and the journey it takes you on is a pleasant one. It doesn’t get in your face with how much of a good bus it is, it just drives along at an appropriate speed for the environment in which it travels through.

I heartily recommend this bus to all who would take a bus journey.