Vampire Slayer - Psychic Hex

Shimmering, metallic drones from the Vampire Slayer, also known under his birth name Valentin Torres. Eight spells (or maybe rather: hexes) on the album shift the mood between dark and dangerous to trippy and futuristic. Mysterious, heavy echoes roll like thick clouds in the back while the leading synthesizers try to find their way through the electronic maze. The high point here is the closing “Window Peeping”, a hazy, sample-ladden deconstruction of techno that occupies the space somewhere between Actress and The Field.

Review: Caligine - Anomia Mediterranea

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(CD-R, A Beard of Snails, 2012)

Freak folk was never dead for the Italian freak folkers Caligine. Or maybe rather good ol’ psychedelic folk, before it became the domain of music journalists and critics trying to push it as just another another bandwagon-jumpin’, hype-creatin’ music trend squeezed between one genre and another somewhere toward the end of the previous decade. The psychedelic folk is alive and kicking, even if it exists way below the radar of the tastemaking moguls, now replaced by some other style of aesthetic, only to be exploited, milked out and left to rot. Caligine just don’t give a flying fuck about trends and keep on doing their thing, and to a great effect.

A Beard of Snails, the label that releases “Anomia Mediterranea”, describes the album as an “absolute tour de force”. And of course, a record label desciribing the album they’re releasing with anything else than a glaring praise would be nothing short a suicidal, they’re pretty damn right with this one. Caligine are known to fuse the new with the old, and the catchy with the more experimental. And so, the opening “Καλύπτειν” starts with what appears to be a traditional folk song in Greek that fades away, to be replaced with healthily feedbacked electric guitar drones and a mysterious tapestry of overlapping, whispering voices. This is just the intro, though. The next songs show that Caligine are took much inspiration from the American Primitivists, both old and new - there are echoes of Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho and Ben Chasny almost everywhere on the album, from the beautiful musical poem “La Grande Ferita del Cuore č Questa Esistenza”   or the fingerpicking raga “Cani di Paglia Divorano Tigri di Cartapesta” complete with deep Eastern drones rolling gently in the background. The album tends to descend into some weirder areas, occasionally bordering on noise music, with overblown, harsh drones and noise rock guitar explorations, like the closing “丹田”, which starts with echoing classsical music samples only to be replaced by a menacing black cloud of guitar feedback and reverb, which kinda sounds like a Fushitsusha jam without bass or drums, only the screeching strings remaining.

But apart from the occasional harshness or sound experiments, the new Caligine offering is a thoroughly beautiful and beatific affirmation of folk music ideals, a series of musical paintings with great semi-whispered, semi-spoken narrations in Italian and a stellar acoustic guitar technique, heartfelt and sensible. So if you’re into psychedelic folk and you believe that psych folk/freak folk is NOT dead, get it immediately. You won’t be disappointed.

Review: Wes Imel - Stereophonic Mountain Man

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(Cassette, Plus Tapes, 2012)

When my girlfriend was once sifting through my cassette collection, she was getting gradually angrier and angrier at the lack of proper labeling (i.e. artist and album name) on the covers. She’s an accountant by trade, and if you’ve ever had any contact with an accountant you know they’re not the most mystic kind of people. You see, accountants LOVE to have everything neatly labelled and catalogued - alphabetically. Binders, files, organizers, archives. So browsing through a bunch of cassettes with abstract, psychedelic artworks and little (if any) information given right there in the artwork was starting to grind her gears. But suddenly she shouted: “Finally, a good, well labeled cassette!”. She showed me the copy of Wes Imel’s “Stereophonic Mountain Man” with the all the names right there on the cover. “Why can’t all those cassettes look like this?”, she added.

Maybe she wouldn’t be so entusiastic if she actually listened to “Stereophonic Mountain Man” (she didn’t). Which is not to say it’s not living to the expectations; it’s just the fact Wes Imel provides a pretty huge slab of ambient-infused psychedelia here, and psychedelic stuff isn’t exactly the most accountant-friendly music (she loves gothic rock though, so I might be a bit wrong). Wes Imel is a prime example of a totally amateurish bedroom musician (“bedroom” might be an understatement, as the liner notes state that the material was recorded in “various places” in Chicago), who doesn’t take himself all that seriously while still having a ball with making his music.  He’s not trying to break any new ground (one of the tracks is called “Copy of a Copy”), while at the same time cracking jokes at music journalism and its need to create a new name for a genre every few months - another composition is called “Postmodern Ambience” and he refers to the music he’s making as “blisswave”.

“Wes Imel has taken the laid back chillwave aesthetic, infused it with blunt smoke and transformed it into blisswave”, the blurb at Plus Tapes label’s website states. Which is rather appropriate, considering how most of the stuff on SMM sounds like washed-up chillwave devoid of poppiness and instead looped, psychedelicized and stretched out to near infinity with gentle guitar plucks or analog synthesizer patchworks. It’s blissful most of the time, yet it’s rid of “endless summer” polaroid/technicolor/instagram bullshit, instead going for a colder, more lo-fi feel. The “serious” ambient suites are sometimes lightened up by strange humor, like the speech synthesizer intro of “House Hunting With Osama Bin Laden”. 

“Stereophonic Mountain Man” is a step up from the guitar-driven ambience on “Rickshaw Driver” EP. I’m still not sure if “Stereophonic Mountain Man” can be treated as a “grown” album or rather just a compilation documenting the creative process. I’m going for the latter, but for what it is, it’s a damn good compilation. Keep makin’ music, dude.

house hunting with osama bin laden from hang on Vimeo.

Sungod - Crash Galactic

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Back when I posted Sungod’s “First Matter” on the Blogger based Weed Temple, it was an album filled to the brim with white hot, mind-melting stoner/space rock jams very much in the Hawkwind school of thought. “Crash Galactic”, the 2012 release by the same band, doesn’t rock as much, this time going for a more mind-expanding approach, doing less freakout jams and more droning nirvana sessions. It’s partially psych folk, partially New Age, partially kosmische musik and partially psychedelic rock free jam, but all in all it’s a 70+ minute long spectacle of cosmic powers and great, great music for trips of all kind (including the sober inner-self meditational trips). Recommended!

Review: Homogenized Terrestrials - The Contaminist

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(CD, Intangible Cat, 2012)

Don’t be mistaken by the word “Terrestrials” in this artist’s name, because little is terrestrial here, unless we add the prefix “extra” to the name, then we’re getting closer (well, further, actually) home. “The Contaminist” is both long and well-executed - Phil Klampe has spent a lot of time on creation of the album, and it can be heard from the start. It’s an exhausting compilation of tracks composed over the course of a few years with a plethora of means, both instrumental and electronic, extending out of the 3” CD-R format the label Intangible Cat got many used to, toward a full CD.

Like the super-zoomed photo on the album’s cover, “The Contaiminist” plays like an alien’s chronicle toward documenting Earth’s nature and living creation. While we, as Earthlings, know perfectly well what animal and plant is safe or dangerous (as in: which ones we can touch and which ones we should avoid like fire), it’s all completely new to a visitor from another planet. Klampe translates the human sounds and music to a hearing process of an alien, often weaving samples or found sounds in the mix. Most of the time the music sounds utterly alien and otherworldly - it’s based on ethereal, spacey ambience. Sometimes, however, some of the more “normal” music seeps into the psychedelic experience - which doesn’t make the alien ambience any less alien - in fact, it just enhances the sense of wonder and isolation from all that is known and named. Sounds of bells are reversed and glitchy. Church choirs are devoid of any religious associations, instead appearing to be chants in unknown language from an unknown, astral culture. Which is not to say that “The Contaminist” is a purposely diffucult and unlistenable. Quite the opposite - everything is new and unexplored, but friendly and welcomes further exploration.

The CD is very varied and full of different “sound quotes” manipulated to the point of becoming a guessing game - “what was that sound originally coming from?”. Klampe had a lot of fun with composing the pieces, smuggling little pieces of melody under the droning exterior. There are also moments of pure bliss, like the 7-minute “Plastic Resonance Key”, which floats on a single droning note like a liquid nirvana pointing straight at heavens. English track titles are interspersed with strange, randomly titled tracks, like “Sroa”, “Spurk” or “Forn Poclipse”. Maybe the title of the release refers to the gradual contamination of the Earth’s atmosphere with the alien matter? This album surely is contaminated with some alien matter. Recommended for all ambient fans.

Adderall Canyonly - Btonal

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This album is an approximation of what would happen if the guys from Autechre in their “Untilted”/”Quaristice” era were devoid of state-of-the-art Max/MSP software and instead left with some shitty synthesizers and/or some ancient computer software. Strangely cut-up, often abstract, yet always beat-driven pieces call to mind the “mutant techno” aesthetic - it’s rugged, noisy, but strangely danceable (even if it would require a mixture of strange drugs in order to become danceable). Scummy, acid-soaked mutations of IDM and techno music reign here, leaving the kosmische version of Adderall Canyonly far, far behind. If you enjoyed Moon Pool & Dead Band, there’s quite a chance you’ll love this one. Highly recommended!

QUICK EDIT! Turns out that it’s from a split tape between Aderall Canyonly and a Texan brain-melter Kösmonaut  (real name: Patrick R. Pärk), who delivers side B in a similarly dancefloor-friendly fashion, except with less inclinations toward noisy bleeps and bloops and more towards endlessly unfolding classic prog-electronic epic suite much in the vein of Klaus Schulze or Harald Grosskopf. Check that one out, too! Top notch!

Better Psychics - Better Psychics

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Don’t be scared away by the excess of weirdness in the songs that begin “Better Psychics”. The self-titled cassette by Brattleboro, VT freak folkers Better Psychics (which consists of Zach Phillips and Chris Weisman) is really a nice collection of heartfelt folk/pop songs, it’s just served in a somewhat dadaistically fucked up way sometimes, throwing angular synth noises or ambient snippets out of the blue or just drowning the pieces in tape hiss or “studio” talk (hard to talk about any studio here, considering the very lo-fi and DIY nature of the tape). Challenging, but rewarding. See through the mess to see the beauty. The cassette can be bought from OSR Records, but you can also download it for free to get a taste.

Better Psychics - “Better Psychics”

Review: 3 Leafs - Live at Cafe du Nord

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(Cassette, Triangle Tapes, 2012)

I used to dislike live albums for some reason. Maybe it was the worse sound quality than recordings made in the studio or a completely different approach to production - instead of pristine studio environment, where everything could be adjusted, live recordings documented a certain time and place. Or maybe it was the deviations from the studio versions of the songs. But it’s impossible not to deviate with psychedelic rock, where hypnotic grooves and stoned guitar solos reign. Thankfully now, I’ve grown to appreciate the grit and documentary quality of live recordings.

With this cassette we fall into the middle of the psychedelic capital of the world. 3 Leafs recorded this set at the legendary venue Cafe du Nord in December 2011, but we had to wait until 2013 when the fresh London cassette label released it on cassette - two sides of unedited, unpaused and untreated psych rock goodness with a bass line that makes one’s brain melt with its sheer depth and power. Bass here is on the forefront, leaving the electric guitar behind a bit - not sure if this was the musician’s intention or it’s just how the mixing turned out. But thanks to this one can only appreciate more the importance of the good bassline in psychedelic rock. It’s really snakelike and hypnotic, meaty and heavy - just as it should be. Electric guitars can get really attention-craving and show-offy in psych rock, with Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. being the best, most jarring example. On “Live at Cafe du Nord”, 3 Leafs invert the situation, putting the bass in the spotlight. The drummer shifts between a propelling, somewhat tribal style full of cymbal crashes and breaks and minimalistic, fast-paced motorik. The guitar serves more like a tool for providing intriguing textures and lengthy drones, making the term “drone rock” quite appropriate for 3 Leafs, or at least this specific recording. Occasional synth warbles also enhance the psychedelic atmosphere, rising and disappearing in the bassed-out fog and intense drumming in the vein of Jaki Liebezeit circa “Delay 1968” sessions.

“Live at Cafe du Nord” perfectly channels the trippy atmosphere of the club, transporting the listener to the live concert, making them imagine the people, the visuals, the smells and the grooves coming from the amplifiers. It’s a great audio documentary of a great set played by great people. There’s a very good reason this is released on cassette - because it’s not digital, there’s no indication of length or the time that has passed since the beginning of listening, rendering the session seem almost endless at times and making the listener wish it played for a lot longer. The cassette allows to forget about the time constrains and fully focus on the sound. Highly recommended. 

Merkaba - Ancient Relics

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“And now for something completely different…”

This is one of those albums that wasn’t sent to me via e-mail or discovered by me, but it was recommended to me by my friend Ramzes (that’s his nickname, not the real name, tho it would be hella cool to be friends with an ancient pharaoh). The “completely different” factor here is that it’s psytrance - not the genre I’m most familiar with (actually, not the genre I’m familiar with at all - I’ve only listened to Shpongle a few times before). Nevertheless, “Ancient Relics” by Australia’s Merkaba (nothing in common with the polish sludge/post-rock unit Merkabah I’ve once posted) is a trippy as hell (as it should be) journey through tribal moods, strange sound effects, four-to-the-floor dance rhythms and New Agey phrases uttered by sultry female vocals. Makes you think of lost civilizations, ancient aliens and astral travels. The complete psychedelic experience, in a glossy, hi-fi & sci-fi packaging.

Thanks, Ramzes!

Review: Samantha Glass - Rising Movements

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(Cassette, Constellation Tatsu, 2012)

The cassette synth scene can be divided into three basic “schools of thought”: one school follows the jagged, raw electronics of the earliest masters, providing punctured, difficult and highly abstract compositions - either with a rhythm or rhythmless. The second school follow the star-gazing Germans and New Age post-hippies in their journey to explore the inner self, with deep, sprawling tracks that often take up entire sides or even CDs. The third school follows the sunny, carefree happy synth psychedelia of Harmonia or later Cluster, making compelling, catchy, yet hypnotic poppy structures.

Samantha Glass, the alias of a Madison, WI resident Beau Deveraux, represents the third school. Despite the grim looking cover, there’s no cold, windswept ambience to be witnessed here. While I tend to fully agree with label’s descriptions of the albums they release, often praising their spot-on sense of writing, this time I have to disagree with Constellation Tatsu. The blurb on the website says: 

The abandoned lodge emerges from the dark, wet woods. It is warm and light inside – carpeted halls and wood banisters welcome your step, draw you deeper past branching rooms. What mysteries, forgotten treasure, and danger await within these decrepit walls?

 Now put the cassette in the player or play the first track from the Bandcamp page. Where are the dark, wet woods here? Maybe if we were talking about a rainforest in the summer or palm tree woods then it would make sense. But dark? No way! Actually, “Rising Movements” is one of the warmest, most sun-lit cassettes I’ve heard in quite a while. Listening to this tape is like taking a bath in the warm, calm waters during the summer evening, the soft light washing over you. The 5 untitled “movements” (named simply “Movement”, duh) are a soundtrack to a luxury yacht marina filled with relaxing, well-to-do people sipping drinks and having a great time in the hot, hot sun. And there’s nothing sarcastic or critical about this description. This album genuinely recreates the laziest, most mellowed out moments of hot summer told in a language of electronic krautrock and analog synthesizers. Fuzzed out guitar licks hover in the background, bass guitar joins the pulsing, rhythmical electronic train, the sun shines through the leaves.

To put it bluntly: Samantha’s Glass “Rising Movements” is pure, unlimited bliss. Don’t believe what the others tell you.