Los Natas – El Hombre Monta​ñ​a

I don’t even know what stoner rock is these days. I mean, it’s a long time since I was a stoner now, so I’m not the right person to ask anyway, but when I was it tended to be more brooding stuff like Electric Moon. Or maybe that was just my own preference. The only thing that opinions prove is the limitations of the beholder.

For what it’s worth, and in my opinion, this isn’t really stoner rock, it’s just really good rock music from Argentina. It’s quite frenetic most of the way through, a bit like, say, Nudity, but in Spanish, and then for the final track they start it off all bang-bang like, like they’re going to go out in a blaze of sonic ferocity and then about two thirds of the way through, it mellows and finishes acoustically. Works really well. I think they had a bit of an angle, these boys.

I think I rarely post frenetic rock music these days. I think it’s quite fitting that I start 2023 off this way, especially after the shit-show that was 2022. Here’s to a much better year for us all.

Fuzzthrone (self titled)

I wasn’t expecting to like this because, generally, I rarely do stoner-rock stuff these days. So I don’t know why I played it. But I played it.

Which led me to wondering what it was about it, but then I remembered something I said to my mate the other day, a thought that I’ve held for a long while now – if music resonates with you then you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to justify it to anyone. If you like it, you like it.

I like this.

 

 

The Myrrors – Borderlands

The more artists you like, the harder it is to keep up with when they come up with new stuff, particularly when your head, like mine, is full enough trying to keep up with your own creative output, let alone anyone else’s (note to self: put some of your own stuff out again.There’s facking loads). Also known as having your head up your arse.

All I know is that this is 2018, so it is either nearly a year old by the time I first play it, or potentially nearly 2 years old. Whatevs, man, I’m really enjoying listening to it this morning. It is them at their tranciest.

I recently came to the conclusion that what I like isn’t psychedelic, it’s trance, although the two terms are not mutually exclusive. A lot of music that gets labelled as psychedelic is more like a pastiche of other artists labelled as psychedelic, or the new version of stoner rock, which was the new label for grunge, which was the new label for whatever they called Black Sabbath in the 80s (I didn’t read the music press back then). To my mind, that’s the opposite of head-expanding. But what do I know? I’ve got my head up my arse, me.

Even with ears surrounded by arse, though, this music sounds fantastic.

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.

Bardo Pond – Volume 8

Initially, we built a wall. It started off as a small wall, then it became a big wall and a thick wall and a wide wall and then people wondered whether or not we could build a wall that we couldn‟t climb or scale in any way, but we left that worry to the worriers.

One thing we did concern ourselves with, though, was just how boring the wall looked, so we started to decorate it (in practice, little people had been putting their little illustrations on already, many of them denigrative of the wall). So we split the wall up and sold off squares of it, and those squares were duly decorated with whatever the owners of those squares wished, plus that which appeared spontaneously, often in reaction.

But it was becoming apparent that the wall was costing a lot to maintain, so we started importing the bricks from south east Asia, as we had people over there, and they were able to manipulate things so that it actually became cheaper for us in purely monetary cost considerations (are there any other cons iderations to consider?) to import the bricks from Chinesia. This held for a while, and the wall grew ever higher, and its decorations became so elaborate that many observers didn‟t even realise there was a wall behind the pictures.

Soon, the pictures were all that remained in the popular memory, so we saw that as an opportunity to sell some of the more expensive bricks, as the projectors maintaining the illusions were of such high quality that they could project their nothing onto nothing itself. So we con tinued selling our bricks, slowly at first, and then more rapidly as they became more sought after, and the by now moving pictures reassured everybody that everything was fine and normal and the wall is as indomitable as ever.

But, in practice, the wall had completely gone, and the profits from the sale were draining away on keeping the projectors fed for the image parade, because, without those images, the people would realise what we had been up to, and we couldn’t let that happen, oh no, not at all.

So we made the images brighter and louder, repeating only the most successful images, and in the meantime, cast about for some new bricks

Band in the Pit – self titled

Infinity has had to make efficiency savings, in common with almost everyone else. There is now a waiting list for membership.

Is Sir ready to order?
Yes, thank you. I’d like to order some chaos.

I burnt from my mistakes

No charm, just offensive

The Spacelords – Water Planet

At this point in the timeline, it seems that all is collapsing hopelessly. Yet I invite you to picture it another way – once a flower has completed its own beautiful cycle, it then produces the seed. This doesn’t look as beautiful, I grant you, but it is just as necessary if we want more flowers.

People, the time for flowers as you knew them is passing. Fortunately, we live in a time of seeds. Many, many, many, countless, not quite infinite yet neverending.

Let us nurture these seeds and see what flowers may subsequently grow from them, even as we accept those flowers may be appreciated more fully elsewhen.

True Widow – Avvolgere

The academy shut its doors. It was planning an expansion, a growth. It invited in a designer – the designer was a God. He rejected the blueprints – it was the wrong colour, he wanted a whitewash. Seems there were hankerings for a public enquiry, reckoned he’d been less than transparent with His creation. Well, said the academy, You’ve got an obvious chip on Your shoulder and thus decided on a different designer – one with a decent pen.

Were you there when Zeus started getting fresh with Aphrodite? God on God action! You’ve never seen anything like it! She wouldn’t go near him!

Let’s go to that fucking place.

Celebrity shock: Page 1 pinup admits to having ‘camera sex’ with cardigan expert. Welcome to life in the Empire of Temptation – the only way to expand! And while we’re on the subject – it’s not very comfortable.

I’m anti-modern – I’m shocked by everything and nothing. At the same time.

 

Earthling Society – Ascent to Godhead

3rd post in a year. Well, it turns it they ARE that good.

Pontiak – Dialectic of Ignorance

I’m a bit late to the party on this one if you want finger-on-the-pulse stuff, but then you don’t come here for that anyway. It’s not why I’m here.

This is my favourite ever Pontiak album, and is currently my favourite release this year. I never thought they’d top Sun on Sun from back whenever it was, but they have done in some style.

What I really like about it is how there’s nothing particularly ‘look-at-me’ about it. The music simply does what it does, which is exactly what music should be allowed to do. The brothers have allowed this music to express itself, the very wisest thing they could have done.

My favourite track is all of them. The grooves are fantastic, the atmosphere incredible, the sogwriting impeccable, and the harmonies reminiscent of Neil Young & Crazy Horse at their most ecstatic.

I don’t think I shall be tiring of this album any time soon.