Many months late and countless dollars short (trying to meet crazy, self-imposed horror movie reviewing deadlines will do that to you), here is a quick run-down of new-ish things (some drifting back a year or five, but as I say, my ears, like my posts here, are OFTEN LATE) which have won my attention and to some extent admiration during the latter half of 2019.


Shooting Guns.


A discovery via the ever-reliable Terminal Escape blog, this Saskatoon-based instrumental heavy psych combo seem to have been toiling away in relative obscurity for quite a while now. I’m not entirely sure how best to frame the smeary, slo-mo space-rock grooves found on their ‘Street Rock’ tape (2014), but despite the apparent simplicity of the band’s approach (guitar, bass n’ drums banging it out, with occasional dubbed out echo noise and samples thrown in for the pure heck of it), their sound feels thoroughly hypnotic and entirely unique within its field – enveloping, like flying slowly into a big, dark cloud.

I’ve not yet had a chance to wade into the group’s wider oeuvre, but this murky ol’ tape rip alone seems liable to find me head-nodding my way toward a blissful coma for many months to come; the opening ‘Feelings (Dub)’ in particular is an absolute monster, blown-out bass gradually becoming pure mist as the sky caves in and vision narrows… keep it coming.


 


Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember.



And if all that seems a bit too weird for you meanwhile, say hello to this cumbersomely named Cardiff six-piece, whose recent double LP on the Cardinal Fuzz label delivers eighty minutes or so of comfortably ungrounded space-rock, doled out the way the blind idiot god at the centre of the cosmos intended, helmets respectfully doffed to Hawkwind and The Heads; which is not to say that they fail to to establish their own niche within this closely-guarded sub-genre, but I suspect they’re well aware that their chosen idiom comes with a certain set of expectations, and basically they aim to please.

To be honest, the reedy, reverbed vocals and hippy-drippy, ‘random gnarly phrase generator’ type lyrics here do sometimes get a bit too close to the Primal Scream Zone for my taste (it’s sort of the psyche-rock equivalent of the “dog piss zone” when you’re out picking blackberries), but such suspicions are quickly annulled by a sturdy, ‘Space Ritual’-worthy rhythm section and some superb, noise-spiralin’ grue from the guitarist, who’s got a wah-wah pedal and is heroically unafraid to use it (seriously, this guy must have the most muscular left ankle in South Wales on the basis of his foot work here).

As the album ploughs on and the track times get ever longer, Infinity Forms.. settle comfortably into their predominantly long-form business, with the full-on rock band sections buffered by long stretches of analogue electronic bliss-out, which are very enjoyable if yr in the mood. Closer ‘Sun God Grave Goods’ (cor blimey) is the best of the bunch I think, opening with a can’t fail combo of electric tamboura and harmonica, before momentarily recalling one of Bong’s more recent, distortion-free jams, as a massive, gong-like crash cymbal heralds the entrance of the rhythm section for a further expanse of delightful ‘Star Gate’ type ceremonial, head-nodding ambience. (Not sure that the extended acoustic outro and field recordings of soggy footsteps add a great deal, but hey, they’ve got four sides to fill and they’re stretching out – I can dig it.)

As mentioned, these guys aren’t exactly re-invented the afterburner here, but if you’re planning on firing up the ol’ interstellar freighter to an excursion to some distant moon-pyramids any time in the near future, you could do worse than jam this one in the eight-track, especially now that Blown Out are permanently on ice.


Sarah Davachi.



I tried listening to some stuff from young U.S.-based composer and PhD student Sarah Davachi a while back and couldn’t really get into it, but her recently repressed 2018 disc Let Night Come On Bells End The Day really hit the spot (and as a result, hit my wallet).

Regular readers will recall that I’m always in the market for a good drone or two, and this humble LP boasts five of the buggers – three reasonably lengthy, two short – which represents admirable value, I’m sure you’d agree.

The sounds herein seem to have been sourced entirely from keys of all varieties (organ, synths and piano), although the woozy, uncertainly pitched tones conjured during the opening minutes of the first side’s exuberantly blissful ‘Mordents’ sound uncannily like strings in places (that’ll be the Mellotron, I’m assuming).

Natural instrument tones seem to dominate here, insofar as they can with synths involved, and there are no obvious treatments or effects in evidence, yet the resonance and range Davachi wrings from her gear, aided by a few consummate overdubs adding over/undertones, is profoundly effective.

The feel here is nuanced, timeless, eternally resonant – like mainlining the form and contents of a small yet beautiful Alpine chapel through your ears. Emotionally speaking, we run the gamut here from ‘Buhrstone’, which flirts with indulgent, melodic melancholia, not a million miles away perhaps from one of The Dirty Three’s piano-led tracks, to the twelve austere minutes of ‘Hours in the Evening’, as cold and affectless as the ancient, clammy stone wall of that aforementioned chapel.

At this point in my life, music like this performs an important function, keeping me calm and grounded, and creating an appropriate atmosphere in my quarters during that all-important lead up to bed time. It’s therapeutic in a sense, I suppose. As such, I’m always thrilled to discover a great new practitioner whose work I can keep close to the turntable, so thanks for this one Sarah – it’s out here in the world, doing great work.


Kamaal Williams.



Once again, I’m severely late to the party when it comes to digging into London / the globe’s rewarding new funk/electronica-informed jazz scene, and in this case in particular I have NO excuse, given that a friend dropped me a link to Kamaal Williams’ 2018 LP The Return in an email over a year ago - but hey, at least I picked up on the repress, so hopefully I’m getting at least a little bit closer to getting a handle on all this exciting shit which appears to have been going on literally just down the road from my f-ing house for a number of years now.

Formerly one half of duo Yussef Kamaal (with drummer Yussef Dayes), Williams fills all available space here on keys, and also produces under the auspices of his sharply-monikered alter-ego Henry Wu. Spare some applause too though for Pete Martin and Joshua McKenzie, who do flat out fantastic work on bass and drums, pulling back from the downtempo/hip-hop inspired grooves often favoured by this scene and instead laying down some sinuous, quick-silver playing which delivers all the muscle of yr ‘70s fusion favourites with none of the off-putting show-boating (well, ok, maybe just a little bit, here and there).

Williams likewise seems to be daring us to start pulling comparisons to Herbie and Stevie out of the hat at some points here, but unlike the old masters, he seems deeply concerned with texture more-so than technique, seemingly ripping his organ and synth through a chain of effects that would make a guitar shop employee blush, building up deep, tidal washes of wah, tremolo and delay which keep the music sensuous, multi-layered and engrossing, bringing a disorientating psychedelic swirl to proceedings, whilst his tightly wound, hand-brake-turn interplay with Brown and McKenzie adds a sense of swaggering danger, undercutting any accusations of mere dinner-jazz noodling; you can almost feel the cold eyes of Miles overseeing this shit when things get way out there on the second half of stunning opening cut ‘Salaam’.

This is, I’ll freely admit, probably the most totally-fucking-Gilles-Peterson thing currently lurking in my record collection, but the older I get and the wider I listen, the more I’d inclined to suspect that the old boy has actually been holding the keys to the castle all along, and to start regretting the rube-ish years I’ve spent projecting sneers and roll-eyes in his general direction.


Aggressive Perfector.



And on completely the other end of the spectrum meanwhile… FUCK YEAH! Infernal Hails! It’s been a long wait since Manchester’s Aggressive Perfector unleashed (because music in this vein can never simply be ‘released’) their accurately named ‘Satan’s Heavy Metal’ EP in 2016, but they’re finally back this month with their debut LP, ‘Havoc at the Midnight Hour’, and the consciously grotesque, Lucio Fulci-inspired cover painting certainly bodes well.

Well, I mean, I say that, but in fact I’ve started to suspect that contemporary metal bands’ devotion to awesome, eye-catching album covers and OTT retro aesthetics can often be inversely proportional to the actual quality of their music. Aggressive Perfector however provide a glorious exception to this embryonic rule, continuing to attack their admirably non-denominational Awesome Old School Metal (does that merit an acronym..?) with punkoid energy and an infectious love of and dedication to their chosen craft which should get them over the spiked railings erected by even the most discerning of self-appointed NWOBHM gatekeepers.

Higher recording fidelity and more ambitious song structures have for-better-or-for-worse diluted the Venom/Motorhead booze n’ fags vibe which defined Perfector’s first EP, but guess what – the tighter studio playing and clearer, more compressed production showcased here actually suits them pretty well, with the band’s core essence retaining enough piss n’ vinegar to immediately give ‘em a sharp, serrated edge over the legions of festival-clogging, mid-table outfits whose broadly unexceptional work fills out the reviews pages of Metal Hammer each month.

Re-reading the paras above, they sound a bit dry, so I’ll give it to you straight – I *love* this shit, and it’s been on my earphones for the double-speed trudge to work every morning since the weather turned cold and the band put the record up for download (perfect timing guys). If the mid-tempo, chug-riffing churn of opener ‘Onwards to the Cemetery’ – complete with soaring, Mercyful Fate leads and flaming torch-waving chorus – doesn’t serve as an effective refresher course on the reasons why metal is awesome, you’re probably in the wrong classroom, you non-metal loser, and the full-on thrash of ‘Chains of Black Wrath’, ‘Devil’s Bastard’ and ‘Vengeful One’ repeatedly hammer home the same core message with a relentless singularity of purpose.

Beginning with one of vocalist/guitarist Dan Holocausto (I kid you not)’s several attempts to top Tom Araya’s legendary falsetto-to-growl scream from ‘Angel of Death’, the latter track in particular is an absolute banger, correcting a discrepancy which blights much 80s metal production, in that the mix allows us to hear the raw buzz of the bass strings as they’re subjected to what I take to be the thrashing of a lifetime.

To recap, then: METAL. If you like it, you’ll like this.


The Vacant Lots.



I realise I’m pretty behind the times on this one, but since when did Anton Newcombe cease to be a fucking maniac and become a reliable architect of top drawer retrogressive guitar music? He is not in this band, but he produced their ‘Exit’ EP, and, in stark contrast to much of the older material available on their bandcamp page, opening track ‘Bells’ verifiably rules.

The vocalist here is going for that Peter Perret / Nikki Sudden frail, drugged up insouciance kind of thing, but basically ends up sounding almost exactly like the bloke from The Psychedelic Furs instead, which seems in some ways like an even better result. The backing track meanwhile takes a boilerplate JAMC/Shop Assistants rhythm track, adds one of those lovely, permanently ascending chord progressions and lets it all pound along for five and a half minutes without variation, whilst the production layers guitars on top of guitars on top of guitars on top of guitars on top of guitars (and indeed, some bells, way off in the background somewhere). It’s not clever and it’s certainly not new – just more of that old ‘boys with haircuts lined up on stage like shooting gallery ducks, glumly strumming away’ type shit really – but it is BIG, and as such it does the business.

Disappointingly, the rest of the material on the EP is basically pretty unremarkable – second song is ok, but it’s really just more tenth gen Mary Chain cast-offs and, god help us all, some cod-Suicide electro poetry jamming towards the end; real try-hard, eternal support band shit. But that one song, man. I sure hope you’ve got a few more like that in you, boys. Make your mothers proud!

Astonishingly, Wikipedia informs me that this EP reached number 9 in the UK singles chart in June, and whilst I’m not sure exactly what that signifies these days (plus, do they let EPs in now - WTF?), it at least suggests I’m not alone in my strange infatuation with this number. Mainstream-a-go-go!


Soga.



Feels like we definitely need a bit of a palette-cleanser after all that, and, though I’ve been feeling pretty disconnected from contemporary punk music recently, if it sounds like anything in 2019-20, I believe it should probably sound like this. Hyper-energised, unadorned practice room blasters from this all-female Mexican trio, who, weirdly but wonderfully, sound as if they could have leaped straight through a time-warp from the late ‘70s, when this stuff was still exciting and new and not buffered by four decades-worth of back patch scenester posery and contrived micro-genre suspicion.

Bass and drums are basic but righteous, but the guitarist by contrast has some real Robert Quine / East Bay Ray type shit going on. We’re talking SHREDDING here folks, with shrieking nah-nah-na-nah-nah type anti-melodies every which way, and it’s never been so welcome. Vocals meanwhile are strained, way in the red and don't give a fuck about your spit-guard, continuing to make me ponder why Spanish (or Portuguese) language punk sounds about a thousand times more crucial than the anglophone variety these days. Ten songs in marginally more minutes and all of them fucking brilliant, in short. (Well, personally I prefer the ones in ‘punk rock’ tempo to the flat-out hardcore efforts, but that’s just me.)

Quite why the entire post-MRR community didn’t fall to their knees and hail Soga as the new queens of the waking universe when this demo first appeared on tape in 2018 I can’t possibly imagine, but…. maybe they did and I didn’t even notice? It’s so hard to keep track these days. Regardless - hitting my own knees right NOW, because to all intents and purposes, this is THE BEST.

Labels: Aggressive Perfector, I like, Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember, Kamaal Williams, Sarah Davachi, Shooting Guns, Soga, The Vacant Lots