First off, I’ve got to offer entirely predictable, prosaic apologies for the delay in getting these ‘end of year’ posts together this year. Basically, the first half of December just proved far busier than planned, which left me behind on things. That’s about it.

With no further ado then, let’s go on with it. The list below has eight items on it simply because that turns out to be the number of reissues and compilations I bought during 2020 which were, a) actually released in 2020, and b) pleased me sufficiently to obtain a place on the list. (For the record, I did buy an absolute ton of new/old jazz, soul and soundtrack discs this year… but they all bear earlier copyrights for the reissue, so hey-ho.)

A marathon run-down of 2020’s new/new music will follow…. let’s be optimistic and say, SOON. 

 

The pricing of 7”s these days makes my toenails curl and my chest hair fall out, but nonetheless, I couldn’t stop myself paying the equivalent of about £4 per minute of music for this sliver of absurdly esoteric library-sleaze, its lineage guaranteed to impress at least four highly reclusive people in any first-world nation you happen to visit.

As the title and beautifully crude cover artwork will no doubt signal to these especially cultured individuals, the two lean slices of raging, big beat strip club dementia herein were offered up by the splendidly named Senor Reverberi for use in his regular patron Renato Polselli’s legendarily distasteful, mondo-ish whitecoater sex film ‘Revelations of a Psychiatrist on The World of Sexual Perversion’ (1978), a work whose lurid rep is surpassed only by its comprehensive obscurity. If Reverberi & Forlai’s thoroughly blazin’, psyched out, prog-carnival stylings are in any way representative of the on-screen action however, well… I think the world may have done ol’ Renato’s perverso rivelazioni a disservice, let’s put it that way. 

 

As any fool know, listenable live recording of the definitive ’69-’70 incarnation of The Stooges have proved an extremely elusive commodity up to this point. Suffice to say then, this basic sound desk mixdown of the ill-starred quartet’s final public performance, ploughing through their ‘Funhouse’ material in more-or-less the same order it’s presented on the album, is probably about as good as it’s ever gonna get, more than likely.

In the cold light of day, the drawbacks of both source tape and performance will become clear as soon as you get this one back from the shop and drop the needle. In no particular order, we’re looking here at the frequent absence of Dave Alexander’s bass [he was famously fired the same night for on-stage inebriation], way too much vocal and sax in the mix, aimless moments of slurred, between-song inertia, occasional cut-outs and variations in volume, a rather murky guitar sound, and, perhaps worst of all, a dry, headache-y, no-room-sound feel characteristic of soundboard tapes throughout the ages.

None of this though distracts too much from the things which continue to make it worth scouring the earth for every piece of Stooge detritus on the market. As fans will be aware, there are two of those things, Mrs Asheton named them Ron and Scott, and happily, they can both be heard large and in charge here beneath Iggy’s yammering. The set might be slow to get going, but by the time Ron drops a hair-raising wah solo on ‘Down on the Street’, sounding like he’s juggling live electric cables, you know it’s gonna be worth sticking around for the duration. ‘Dirt’ in particular benefits from a slinky, heavy-ass groove which I believe is unique to this recording (Alexander is very much in evidence here, for the record), and when they kick into ‘1970’ in double-time, sounding almost like some acid-damaged ‘80s hardcore band, well… holy hell. That’s really something. 

 

A some-time employee of the late Hideo Ikeezumi’s ‘Modern Music’ shop in Tokyo, Go Hirano (that’s a person, not a band, ‘Go’ being a common Japanese family name) was apparently quite a a fixture of the scene from which grew up around the storied PSF label. Though Go was an enthusiastic witness to the extremist outpourings of the label’s roster of envelope-pushing rock bands however, he seemingly found his own musical muse somewhere else entirely, quietly developing a propensity for creating minimal-yet-melodic, home-recorded musical miniatures, picked out primarily on piano, with occasional interventions from melodica, wind chimes, ocarina, and whatever strange, slightly reverb-distorted room sounds happened to be crashing around at the time the recordings took place.

A hermetic, rather intimate, practice, this style came to full fruition on Go’s third LP, ‘Corridor of Daylights’, originally issued on CD by PSF in 2004 and pressed to vinyl for the first time at the dawn of 2020 by Black Editions. Warm, gentle and curiously compelling, the album’s collage of numerous short tracks will tend to evoke all manner of potential comparisons from seasoned listeners - from the murky four track conjurations of New Zealand’s Alastair Galbraith to Erik Satie’s zen-like piano compositions, via Epic Soundtracks’ delightfully cozy home tapes or the tendencies of innumerable ambient artists to incorporate both chance and atmospheric sound into their recordings - but in truth, none of these quite hit the mark.

At points, ‘Corridor of Daylights’ may veer toward the twee, particularly when the melodica or Go’s ‘ba-ba’ing wordless vocals come into play (perhaps recalling label mates Maher Shalal Hash Baz?), but the further you allow yourself to sink into Go’s headspace as the album progresses, the more immersive, calming and innately beautiful his ready-made compositions become, to the extent that you will occasionally feel yourself stunned by the depth of otherworldly ambience casually captured on tape by one guy with a cheap condenser microphone, sitting in a one room apartment somewhere in suburban Japan in the early years of the 21st century. (Of the tracks streaming on Bandcamp, I’d particularly draw your attention to the unusually lengthy ‘Coral’ in this regard.)

Just as the disorientating roar conjured up by bands of scowling, black-clad outsiders in underground rocks club could be seen as a synapse-jolting flipside to the stultifying sound of major label MOR rock which dominated much of Japan’s musical landscape through the 70s, 80s and 90s, so perhaps we could see Go Hirano’s simple, instinctive approach to creating ambient/meditative music as a refreshing, nay necessary, DIY counterweight to the more technologically sophisticated, eminently tasteful and frequently industry-sponsored sounds catalogued on Light in the Attic’s Kankyō Ongaku compilation..?

 

Ken Hughes’ ‘The Internecine Project’ from 1974 is one of those ‘70s thrillers which puts so much emphasis on being dour, taciturn and efficient that it forgets to really be very entertaining, and as such it is infrequently remembered these days. Along with the amble opportunity to watch the great James Coburn drinking scotch and glowering however, Roy Budd’s score is definitely the highlight of the whole affair, and Trunk Records’ decision to dig up the master tapes and throw them on vinyl this year is one I wholeheartedly commend.

Essentially comprising a more brash and outgoing take on the kind of themes and atmospheres Budd employed for his exquisitely low-key work on Mike Hodges’ ‘Get Carter’ a few year earlier, ‘Internecine..’ provides the listener with a one-size-fits-all accompaniment to being tense, duplicitous and/or frightened during the 1970s, incorporating a lavishly orchestrated, harpsichord-led main theme, masses of chime/tabla/woodblock-enhanced clock-watching unease, menacing cello stings, moments of bass-bin juddering synth terror and, best of all, some indelible examples of what synthesizer player Paul Fishman refers to in his liner notes as “hypnotic Budd grooves” (devotees of the ‘..Carter’ score will know exactly what he means).

One repeated theme in particular, with a heavy-ass electric bass line, whip-smart jazz drumming and metronomic percussion, will cement itself in yr brain for all eternity. Easily a match of any of the more bad-ass/head nodding moments found on Morricone & Nicolai’s giallo scores, consider it a must for the next time you find yourself assembling a sniper rifle, hitting the button on the top of an oversized stopwatch or navigating London’s back streets in pursuit of a suspicious transit van.

Sadly this one is not available to stream or download - vinyl only folks, so you’ll just have to take to take my word for it and shell out for a copy, available direct from the source. 

 

“Recorded by Brian Eno in 1981” would seem to be the primary selling point for the sole LP produced by this hard-luck Ghanian outfit during their original run, but personally, I’d much prefer to commend it to you on the basis of it being a set of startlingly inventive and exhilarating, intermittently cinematic, afro-funk featuring musicianship so damn in-the-pocket that James Brown would probably have pointed his finger at ‘em and given them a pay rise. (If that’s not enough first draft hyperbole for you, I also wrote a bit about the record back in this post from July.) 

 

Well, I think I probably said quite enough about this legendary-no-longer platter from the dark heart of Neil’s mid-‘70s creative zenith back in September, but, just for the record, I’d also like to note that if you put all the biographical/career trajectory type bollocks I dug into there aside and just throw it on in the background, it also rather perversely makes for some pretty good porch-sittin’, beer-sittin’ relaxation time - a secondary function which Mr Young, as a devotee of J.J. Cale, must no doubt appreciate.

 

So I’ll freely admit, I’ve wandered into the midst of the world’s trendy new jazz scene over the past eighteen months with all the grace and finesse of an overweight stockbroker donning sandals and a headband and turning up in Haight Ashbury circa 1972 loudly enquiring about where Owsley’s at. So, praise be to Soul Jazz for providing this mammoth compendium of jazz-affiliated U.K. sounds, tailor-made to usher me in, slap me on the back and prevent me from feeling like such a rube as I overcome my inherent fear of anything involving positive broadsheet reviews, arts council funding or Giles Peterson and seek out a quite spot in the corner from which to observe what I hope will continue to prove one of the more positive, open-minded and straightforwardly enjoyable currents to have flowed across the musical landscape in recent years.

There is, as you would hope, quite a range of stuff to enjoy here, and the comp makes a perfect jumping off point for further exploration. From the modal mediations of Matthew Halsall to muscular, live-in-situ chop workouts from groups like Ill Considered and Collocuter, to more electronica/hip-hop inclined rhythmic experiments from Joe Armon-Jones & Maxwell Owin, Pokus and Hector Plimmer, sly jazz-funk burners from The Expansions and Cromagnon Band, flute-driven exotica from Tenderlonious, straight up Coltrane/Sanders worship from Nat Birchall and Chip Wickham, together with the squelching, tuba-driven weirdness of Emma-Jean Thackray’s ‘Walrus’ and extraordinary cosmic/psychedelic excursions from SEED Ensemble and the aptly-named Levitation Orchestra…. all-in-all, this red-eyed homeworker salutes Soul Jazz for assembling a comprehensively enthralling and brain-kneading mountain of music which has at no point caused him to spill coffee on his keyboard or lose track of his morning emails as these discs were spun again, and yet again, through the course of many a 2020 working week.

Once again, this release has not been bandcamp-ed or soundcloud-ed, but you can preview to yr heart’s content via Soul Jazz’s website here.  

 

Very much a shining light of what we might roughly call the ‘second wave’ of Tokyo-based psychedelic rock bands associated with the aforementioned PSF label, White Heaven released this, their first LP, in 1991, and it immediately establishes them as a very different prospect from the black-clad noise extremity of first-wavers like High Rise and Fushitsusha, instead perusing a more intuitive, fragile and essentially song-based approach to funnelling the spirit of ‘60s psychedelia into a contemporary rock context.

To some extent betraying the fearful hesitancy of a young band with a stand-in bass player entering a professional studio for the first time, ‘Out’ sometimes even finds itself echoing the hermetic, too-cool-for-school sound of late ‘80s British psyche revivalists like Spacemen 3 or Thee Hypnotics, with opening cut ‘Blind Promise’ suggesting a distortion-blitzed take on the reverberating chaos of The 13th Floor Elevators (no mean feat in itself), whilst the shadows of both the Velvets and The Doors hang over the band’s tendency to launch into loosely-structured, expressionistic epics at the drop of a hat.

All of which is very nice, but there are two factors in play here which help ‘Out’ to transcend its status as a mere interesting, out-of-time psych-rock record and become something truly special. The first of these is the extraordinary contribution of vocalist/rhythm guitarist/primary songwriter You Ishihara, whose bombastic, tormented crooning may initially be apt to inspire a certain amount of hilarity for first-time listeners, particularly given that his lyrics are conveyed as a kind of absurdist Japan-glish mish-mash which sometimes recalls a less artful version of Damo Suzuki’s work with Can (is he really singing “..your face just like a closet..” on ‘Fallin’ Stars End’?). Once you get used to it though, it’s difficult not to love the sheer courage with which Ishihara attacks these compositions, imbuing them with a kind of crazed, dramatic gravitas which, if nothing else, is certainly entirely psychedelic.

Whilst the presence of such an out-there vocalist could tend to overpower many bands though, Ishihara more than meets his match here in the figure of White Heaven’s most renowned member, lead guitarist Michio Kurihara (whom you may recall from his subsequent work with Ghost, Cosmic Invention, Boris and Damon & Noami). A key figure in the shadowy pantheon of 80s/90s Japanese guitar gods, Kurihara was already in jaw-dropping form even at this early stage in his career, stretching Ishihara’s mangled hymnals out into shrieking abysses of string-bending oblivion, drawing somewhat from the ol’ SF ballroom sound embodied by Quicksilver Messenger Service’s John Cippolina, but expanding that overdriven, vibrato-heavy style to fit the higher velocity and higher volume of early ‘90s underground rock, strafing and dive-bombing as much as PSF fanboys (hi there) may have demanded on rockers like ‘My Cold Dimension’ whilst also retaining the lyrical, questing quality which we all hoped to find (but so rarely did) on all those San Fran jam band-type records.

Coloured by an ethereal sheen of maxed out reverb, and more tentative use of chorus and tape echo, Kurihara provides the perfect ‘church key’ for the bizarre, lysergic visions suggested by Ishihara’s surprisingly dry and up-front vocals, as they together transform cuts like the brooding, multi-part ‘Mandrax Town’ and the album’s definitive title track into immaculate evocations of precisely the kind of electrified, blinding light beauty which keeps me returning to the unkempt fields of psychedelic rock year after year after year.

Labels: best of 2020, comps & reissues, Edikanfo, Gianfranco Reverberi, Go Hirano, Neil Young, Roy Budd, The Stooges, White Heaven

This compilation is the result of a long and rather convoluted gestation process. I initially began throwing it together after visiting Japan last year, as a gift for some friends over there who had expressed an interest in hearing some contemporary British bands.

I chose 2015 as a cut off point for ‘new-ness’ pretty arbitrarily, and, as noted on the back cover scan above, decided to concentrate on shorter, more song-based stuff rather than the gargantuan psyche/doom stuff I often favour, primarily for space reasons (although I’ve done my best to throw in a few stylistic curveballs along the way too, particularly in the second half).

As I began gradually knocking the tracklist into shape however, it occurred to me that the period covered by the music herein actually marked out a very specific period in the cultural history of the British Isles. From the Cameron government’s dispiriting election victory in 2015 and the ridiculous/fateful referendum which followed, to the ensuing wave of hate-filled, populist xenophobia, through the ultimately doomed attempts at a fight-back, to the surreal political chaos which consumed so much of last year, and the crushing, no-hope full stop of last December’s general election result.

Could some of this spiralling ugliness, uncertainty and frustration be heard reflected in the output of the UK and Ireland’s underground rock scenes during this period? I don’t know. But suffice to say, my selections herein couldn’t help but take on a certain political bent as I remained glued to the hell-ish, hour-by-hour parliamentary ruckus which characterised the latter half of 2019.

Little did I know at that point of course, that the music herein was about to acquire a whole new level of historical potency, as the fragile cultural ecosystem which allowed it to exist in the first place found itself obliterated more-or-less overnight in March 2020.

Eight months on, it’s still fairly mind-boggling to consider that, for the first time in history, the collective creation and performance of popular music has effectively been shut down, by virtue of both governmental decree and accepted common sense, with the kind of non-profit-making / DIY musical cultures represented on this comp potentially suffering most severe and sustained damage, as a result of being both deprived of industry/government hand-outs and existing almost by definition within the confines of small, unventilated rooms.

Of course, things will come back in 2021, in some as-yet-unguessed-at form. With a bit of luck, the vast majority of the bands and musicians featured on this comp will still be active in some form. But whatever happens, all will be changed.

The faces and the places we’ve all got to know over the past few years, the forms and norms we’d all grown to expect as we’ve trudged out on cold dark evening on our way to venues or practice rooms or other weird autonomous spaces of one kind of another -- all of that is now gone. When the time to rebuild comes, new faces will be gluing foam to walls and carrying boxes of Red Stripe into new places, and new things will be happening within when OGs like you(?) and I emerge from hiding to knock upon their doors.

To a certain extent then, the music featured herein can be seen to represent the last gasp of a certain strand of DIY culture, caught in amber and filtered through my own individual tastes, before things screeched to a halt. A final burst of amplified discontent before the universe hit the ‘pause’, and then ‘restart’, buttons.

I realise that’s a pretty heavy burden of significance for a humble mix CD to carry, but what can you do? Ladies and gents, a tiny slice of the sound of the UK and Ireland, 2015-2019. Enjoy.

(NB - As the keen-eyed/eared amongst you will note, this online version of the comp contains a very important bonus track not included on the initial CD version run off for friends in Dec 2019, from which the cover scans above are taken. Apols for confusion.)

(As is now traditional, I’ve linked to relevant bandcamp pages in the tracklist below. Whether these bands are still active or otherwise, your financial contributions will almost certainly reach someone who deserves a few quid.)

Labels: mixcloud, mixtapes, recent social history, UK Freak Rock