As you might well be aware, Bandcamp are doing another revenue-free Friday this week, so that seems as good a reason as any to round up another pile of great new(ish) sounds which have helped see me through the past month or so of brow-mopping, early summer heatwave home-working.

(Or alternatively, if you don’t mind waiting a bit and fancy helping out some of our fellow terrorist sympathisers, the site are donating their revenue from all sales on 19th June to the NAACP Legal Defence Fund.)

(And no, Bandcamp aren’t paying me (unfortunately), and I have no agenda to promote their site in-and-of-itself, but…. it’s currently the best place to listen to and obtain contemporary music in this cold, sad world, so makes sense to maximise the percentage of our pennies that go in good directions, no?)

Anyway, let’s get on with it.

Naujawanan Baidar.



Recorded via four track to “assorted dead stock cassette tapes” between 2016 and 2018, the material recently compiled on this double LP finds Tucson-based musician N.R. Safi combining traditional Afghan instrumentation with a bewildering array of loops, radio textures, distortion, digital effects, drums, Western/South Asian instruments and more besides, creating a dense and beguiling set of heavy psyche-blasted quasi-enthno semi-forgeries which basically sound like the wildest dream of some Sublime Frequencies junkie, obsessively scanning the scanning the short wave dials in search of mind-blowing pan-global audio to rip and reconstitute for hungry ears.

Beautiful collage artwork, vintage field recordings and track titles like ‘Blood Can’t Clean Blood’ speak of a legit and powerful engagement with the issues of cultural displacement and transformation which inevitably surround this music, which pulses and shrieks across imagined and real airwaves, like an affirmative signal of resistance for Middle Eastern and North American deserts alike. Righteous stuff indeed.


Emma-Jean Thackray.
Angel Bat Dawid.




In what now sounds like an evening of nigh-on unimaginable utopian bliss, one Thursday night late last year found my wife and I heading to Peckham, following up a cracking Italian meal by heading round the corner to drop in on what turned out to be the final hour of an evening of improvised music organised by the International Anthem label.

At the time, I was unable to establish the identity of the musicians we saw performing (no names were listed on the event’s advertising), but the group on stage as we entered was led by a woman conjuring careful, atmospheric textures from trumpet, keyboard, electronics and vocals, whilst another woman, initially seated, laid down wildly ecstatic, free-wheeling exclamations on clarinet, before rising to traverse the room in a state of reverie, powering the music forward in breathlessly thrilling fashion.

Backed up by an obligatory super-tight, laidback rhythm section (still unidentified at the time of writing), this performance was little short of mind-blowing - the kind of casually perfect summation of a particular strain of exultantly positive, welcoming culture which makes you feel humbled to have stumbled into its presence. Having spent almost every subsequent evening stuck in the goddamn flat at this point, I think back upon it often.

And now, many months of bandcamp-surfing later, I’m pretty sure I’ve established that we were listening that night to the sounds of Emma-Jean Thackray, whose new EP ‘Rain Dance’ came out in March, and to Angel Bat Dawid, who has an absolutely beautiful 7” out on the aforementioned International Anthem (see embedded links above).

Both of these short releases stand out as essential listening for anyone who’s been digging into this new stream of open-ended, jazz-affiliated greatness half as heavily as I have been in recent months, and, though the concept of Socially Distanced live music – or indeed any group playing whatsoever – still doggedly fails of compute in any way that makes sense to me, I continue to hope that somehow, someday I’ll be able to reconnect with these musicians and/or their contemporaries in a context that in some way rekindles the spirit of that glorious, random hour in Peckham, at some point before all is changed and gone.


Grey Hairs.



And speaking of memories of wild nights out meanwhile…. whilst I like Grey Hairs studio output just a little bit, the truth is that they’ve always really excelled as a live band. It therefore pretty much stands to reason that their new live LP – recorded last Halloween at exemplary Notts DIY venue J.T. Soar, and mixed and engineered brilliantly by in-house recording guy Phil Booth - is by default their best release to date.

If you like your rock served up with some crisp, hard-hitting Albini-isms, the quality of the sound here will likely floor you, it’s just a superb recording, and the band are on top form, the energy and good vibes palpable. I realise I’ve held forth repeatedly here in the past about the virtues of Grey Hairs’ approach to their craft, so what more is there to say? This is an excellent live album by an excellent live rock band, and how many more of those do you anticipate we’ll see coming down the pike over the next year or so?

Stand in the middle of your living room with a can of cheaper lager than you’d usually tolerate, turn off the lights, hang all your coats and stuff on a bunch of mannequins and chairs blocking your view of the hi-fi, and drink it all in.


Munehiro Narita.



Well, here’s at least one more skull-fuckingly magnificent live rock album to keep us going, anyway. Recorded by the god-like Ethan Miller (I mean, OF COURSE IT WAS) when former High Rise guitarist Munehiro Narita played a few dates in California in 2017, backed up by the rhythm section with whom he would subsequently form Psychedelic Speed Freaks, recording one of my favourite debut albums of recent years, this is as much of a roughshod, extremist rock apocalypse as fans of this incredible musician might rightfully expect.

Grinding through raw facsimiles of some old High Rise hits (‘Sadame’, ‘Outside Gentiles’, ‘Pop Sicle’) alongside a few marginally more restrained numbers from his subsequent band Green Flames [with whose work I confess I’m unfamiliar – need to get on that], this recording squashes most of the bassist and drummer’s spirited contributions into a blaring tar-pit thud, whilst Munehiro’s reedy vocals are pretty much an after-thought, just marking out time and space, against which the elastic lightning whip monolith of his infernally inspired guitar playing rages and howls centre stage, with the energy of a live audience and appropriately ripped amplification powering him forward toward some of the most jaw-droppingly exciting six string pyrotechnics I have ever heard - not just from him, but from anyone, ever.

I could, of course, continue spewing out this guff indefinitely, but instead let’s put it simply. If you are a fan of loud rock guitar playing who values actual music over posing and gimmickry, you need Munehiro Narita’s recent and reissued recordings in your life. Failure to heed this advice will be liable to label you as kin to the kind of idiots who sold their copies of the Stooges records in 1971 because they were ‘a bit much’.


Sarah Davachi / Ariel Kalma.



As much as I’ve been enjoying Sarah Davachi’s work recently, her pursuit of monotonal melancholia can sometimes tend to get a bit, well, monotonous after a while – which makes this collaboration from French ambient artist Ariel Kalma feel like just the ticket. Herein, Kalma adds some welcome bursts of melodic and textural colour to Davachi’s pure-tone excursions, complimenting her quietly monolithic, largely synth-based work with the sound of tanpura, harmonium, slightly different synths and Vangelis-esque echo sax.

The simple fact that there are two people working together here helps cut against the barren loneliness that has sometimes made Davachi’s solo releases feel slightly unapproachable, making ‘Intemporel’ stand out as one of her sunnier, more optimistic recordings, with the sublime ‘Adieu de Vie’ in particular sinking into a warm steam bath of exactly the kind of ingratiating, escapist psychedelia I’m hard-wired to enjoy, electronics and delays burbling away like a morning chorus of robot birdies above a lightly LSD-brushed alien onsen resort.


Asher Gamedze.



Intense, heavily Coltrane-influenced spiritual jazz from this South African quintet, led by drummer Asher Gamedze. Only the opening 18 minute suite from a forthcoming double LP on the UK-based On The Corner label is currently available for listening, but that alone covers a lot of parched ground, mixing abrasive, ecstatic-yet-controlled blowouts from tenor player Buddy Wells (whose name sounds so much like he should be a famous 20th century jazz luminary, I had to invoke google to confirm that he isn’t) with finger-scrabbling group improv passages and deep, sinuous low end melodies, seemingly drawn from the same well of tribal/traditional influence that Louis Moholo-Moholo and his colleagues have been working with across the decades.

This is heady, no nonsense stuff, foregrounding PLAYIN’ over tonal/textural concerns or sonic surprises, and speaking wordlessly of connection to people and to landscape, and to political/metaphysical engagement and such. It should certainly appeal to listeners whose interest in the J word ceased abruptly on 17th July 1967, although some affecting, poetical contemplation from spoken wordist Nono Nkoane suggests other directions in which the full four sides of this as-yet-unheard set might be apt to travel.


Curanderos.



Seemingly demonstrating that you can take the boys out of the Pond, but can’t dry ‘em off no matter how hard you try, this collaboration between Bardo Pond guitarists the Gibbons Bros and a drummer named Scott Verrastro finds the trio initially tip-toeing around each other with a few minutes of uncertain, questioning abstraction, before they apparently make eye contact, exchange shrugs and lock into exactly the kind of stoned, heavy-weight-on-butterfly-wings grandeur which has helped cement the brothers’ main band’s ‘90s output as such an indelible and insurmountable cornerstone of modern heavy psyche.

Although the sound is necessary somewhat stripped back here, I’ve not heard these guys tap into this particular sweetest of sweet spots for some years now, making their decision to break out the big spoons and just dig in across the majority of this three track release feel like a slo-mo, fungoid sugar rush of purest satisfation. Taped in Bardo HQ in Philadelphia in 2018, this was released as a tape and name-yr-price download by the Athens, GA based Null Zone label a few months back, and I’m sure that all concerned would appreciate it if you were to name said price at something higher than zero (see intro above).


Eric Arn & Jasmine Pender.



Heavy duty, oxygen-sucking, cosmic / cloud level Popal Vuh-esque drone-work here from Austria-based American guitarist Eric Arn (Primordial Undermind) and British cellist Jasmine Pender (Rotten Bliss). First cut is perfect for witnessing a pale sun rise across a planetery curve as one falls into the orbit of a frozen, featureless gas giant, or so I should imagine, whilst the second explores more tense, noisy and recognisably instrument-y angles on the same kind of weightless inertia. It’s good, in other words.


Kamaal Williams.



And last but not least…. South London keyboard luminary Kamaal Williams aka Henry Wu has his follow up to 2018’s ‘The Return’ up for pre-order, the curiously named ‘Wu Hen’, with a few sample tracks suggesting a more expansive palette than the previous record’s straight trio line up (strings, sax, street chat), alongside some more abrasive, Gameboy-ish tones on ‘One More Time’, but still heavily swathed in darkly sinuous, disarmingly blissful yet inexplicably menacing nocturnal pavement atmos, straight from the heart of some mid-gentrification, pre-pandemic cultural sandpaper zone. Being cautious, I’ll wait until I can catch a stream of the whole thing in July (hopefully), but hey – keep a close eye on this cat, if you’re not already.

(About that title by the way – just like a lot of faux-mysterious hardcore bands, Williams’ Black Focus label seems to have a bit of a fetish for Japanese words and characters, so I’m guessing he’s going for ‘hen’ as in ‘strange/perverse’ here, rather than hen as in cluck-cluck.)

Labels: Angel Bat Dawid, Ariel Kalma, Asher Gamedze, Curanderos, Emma-Jean Thackray, Erc Arn, Grey Hairs, Jasmine Pender, Kamaal Williams, Munehiro Narita, Naujawanan Baidar, Sarah Davachi

Before we get going here, I should take some time to address the fact that a number of records on this list actually came out in 2018. I know - ancient, right? A couple of them I even picked up when they were repressed by the label after a period of unavailability, which I suppose technically makes them reissues, even. At the end of the day though, WHO F-ING CARES? When the gap between recording and release dates can stretch into years, does it really matter? This is a list of reasonably contemporary music that I discovered and played a lot in 2019, the existence of which made me happy and in some sense… reassured?

Reassured about what, I’m not really sure, but I’ll leave the the-end-is-nigh drum beating for another day (it’s getting pretty mainstream now anyway, so perhaps my work on that score is done). Suffice to say, if you and yours are lucky enough to inhabit lands not currently on fire, under water or under heavy bombardment – happy new year! In previous years, I’d have added something about not being under the yoke of some pea-brained tyrant, but we can’t expect miracles, I suppose.

And, finally, I’d like to close things off with a reminder that last year saw the death of a number a people whose work meant a great deal to me, both in the realm of music and beyond. Roky Erickson, David Berman, Dick Dale, Larry Cohen – gone but not forgotten. Please take a few minutes to click on those links and remember them at their best.

Now let’s get on with it.

1. Grey Hairs – Health & Social Care LP
(Gringo)





Essential rock music for dark times. Back in October, I said:

“At the risk of repeating myself from past reviews, Grey Hairs make proper modern rock music, reclaiming that horribly loaded phrase from a place of the map which finds it bracketed between moustache-twiddling sub-genre re-enactment societies and shit that sounds like The Foo Fighters. In doing so, they stare down cold the expected bandwagon of influences, they address the world in which we live with honesty and insight, they conduct their band business with integrity, and, they rock, in a manner both profound and disconcertingly literal.

If you find yourself sick of a life full of dodgy cabling and dented speaker cabs, crowded dark rooms full of pints and germs, please listen to ‘Health & Social Care’, and remind yourself what the point is.”


2. Psychedelic Speed Freaks – s/t LP
(Black Editions)




Whisper it please, but you know what - on reflection, I think I might actually enjoy this even more than the old High Rise records, if you can believe that. Back in June, I ventured to characterise it as;

“..one of the most exhilaratingly extreme rock albums of the modern era, sitting comfortably next to the MC5-meets-AMT carnage of Feral Ohms debut from a couple of years back, even as tracks like ‘Night Seer’ – my personal favourite here - dial things back to a sleek, pulsing urban beauty that nigh on defies description, recalling the exquisitely nuanced blare of Martin Weaver’s work in Wicked Lady, whilst closing track ‘Immaterialized’ finds Narita grinding the gears of a shining, ectoplasmic hog for an eternal run down the post-earth highway, ol’ Jasso’s voice breaking into a Lemmy-like croak as space-rock oblivion beckons. It’s a monster.

Fuzz guitar fanatics who value raw sound, inventive playing and sonic extremity over expensive, brightly coloured boxes and multi-tracked compression - or indeed, unrehabilitated rock fans who just want an excuse to grind their drunken heads into the ground like some kind of human corkscrew - both need to get on this immediately.”


3. Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society – Mandatory Reality 2xLP 
(Eremite)




The very nicest sounds that the nicer half of our world has to offer. From November:

“Central to this music’s appeal is the fact that, rather than drifting off into abstraction, the tracks remain anchored around simple, almost child-like melodies – endlessly appealing harmonic phrases picked out on some string bass and glockenspiel-type things (practically none of the instruments my ears tell me are present on this record are actually listed on the credits), lending the music a feeling of warmth and accessibility that any open-eared, human listener should be able to appreciate.

If this can indeed be deemed a ‘drone’ record (and the proposition is questionable, though ‘In Memory’s Prism’ has tended to get played in the time and place I normally reserve for drone records), then it’s certainly not a “cold depths of interstellar space” type proposition – more of a “come on in, make yourself at home, would you like a cup of tea?” kind of deal, like walking into a stranger’s living room for the first time and immediately feeling so much at home that you feel you could spend your entire life there.”


4. Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings 2xLP
(International Anthem)




A good few dozen varieties of raw musical talent, thrown together by Mr McCraven like some mad cake mix, taking that ‘boom-bap’ nouveau-jazz sound to stereotype-defying heights of senseless beauty.

From July:

“Like many musicians within this milieu, McCraven plays as if he is as much influenced by hip-hop and electronica as ‘classic’ jazz, but his smoked-out, head-nodding 4/4 style, occasionally diverging into patterns of skittering, Ninja Tune-y rim-shots and weird double-time experiments, remains well-judged, never degenerating into cheese, and always serving to enhance, rather than detract from, the fine work of his collaborators. And make no mistake, accessibility should not be confused with any lack of depth or legitimacy in the performances showcased herein, which, I would contend, often hit a level that even the most hardline free improv/extended technique partisans would find difficult to dismiss. […] a compelling and – dare I say – inspiring listen; an album I can easily imagine be fetishised in years to come as the sound of a very particular, and I’d venture, very positive, set of cultural time & place circumstances crystalising – temporarily, at least - into something really special.”


5. The Bevis Frond – We’re Your Friends, Man 2xLP
(Fire)




You’ve gotta love someone who sticks to their story, and god knows, The Bevis Frond’s Nick Saloman has certainly done that – ‘We’re Your Friends Man’ could have come out immediately after fan favourites like 1990’s ‘Any Gas Faster’ or 1991’s ‘New River Head’ and no one would have batted an eyelid. The same mixture of elements that has sent me on a heavy duty trawl through the Frond back catalogue in recent years – disarmingly direct, pretention-free song-writing, sturdy DIY rock arrangements spiked with trace elements of folk and psychedelia and gargantuan quantities of unashamed, Hendrix-via-Mascis lead guitar heroism – can be found here in spades, the formula unchanged and undimmed by the passage of time.

Like most Frond releases, this is a pretty mammoth venture – twenty full length songs stretching over eighty plus minutes – and whilst there are, as always, some iffy moments here and there, it’s a tribute to the strength of Saloman’s writing that at least two thirds of these numbers demand repeat listens, his capacity for twisting his own experiences and insecurities into compelling new shapes lending the material a great deal more mileage than this kind of relentless introspection would normally achieve.

The playing from the currently full band line-up meanwhile is, needless to say, exceptional, keeping energy levels high throughout, and the fact that a group who’ve been doggedly plugging away across the decades can still hide Greatest Hits-worthy nuggets like Theft, And Relax… or the title track deep within the double digits of their umpteenth album’s track-list is nothing short of remarkable.


6. Aggressive Perfector – Havoc at the Midnight Hour LP
(Dying Victims)




I’m not sure I if I can put this much more clearly than I did in my brief write-up at the start of December, but – HEAVY FUCKING METAL. If you like it, you’ll like this.


7. Kamaal Williams – The Return LP
(Black Focus)




From that same December post:

“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’.”


8. Sarah Davachi - Let Night Come On Bells End The Day LP
(Recital)




And yet again, from December:

“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, 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.”


9. Comet Gain - Fireraisers Forever! LP
(Tapete)





This wouldn’t be a 2010s Stereo Sanctity best-of list without the great Mike Vest getting his oar in, and, following the less than amicable demise of Blown Out (about which we remain VERY SAD), Mike’s best shot at deep space nirvana in 2019 came via this postal collaboration with Australia-based drummer Andrew Panagopoulos.

Expanding on the template laid down by earlier releases under the Dodge Meteor name, this must stand as Vest’s most unashamedly Rockist project to date, as he brings chunky, full-on stoner-rock tone to the party, leaning heavily into the riffs as if waiting for some Dave Wyndorf type dude to step up to the mic – but, thankfully, that never happens, allowing Vest & Panagopoulos to instead stretch out and get gnarly.

The eight minute ‘Alien Shit’ in particular is a magnificent cut, a synapse-melting showcase of ultra-fried soloing that finds Vest embodying the album’s title about as completely as is humanly possible, revealing the influence of both Hendrix and Munehiro Narita upon his playing, in yet another absolutely flattening display of unashamed rock n’ roll extremity. In a happier world, they’d hand out sporting-style statuettes for this kind of achievement, and poor old Mike would need to invest in a sturdier set of shelves to keep them all on, in rare moments when he kills the volume and glides back to terra firma.


11. Venom Prison – Samsara LP
(Prosthetic)




From July:

“Hold the presses folks! Here’s our new lead: Welsh metal band fronted by Russo-German antifa / feminist activist play unbelievably intense tech-grind / battle-ready death metal addressing frightening, taboo-skirting subjects of real life concern. As you might imagine, the results are impossible to fuck with, but more surprisingly, they are also super fun to listen to and don’t give me a headache! Whole world rejoices! Story at eleven.”


12. Taras Bulba – One LP
(Riot Season)




Though I was initially sad to hear that Fred Laird had disbanded his long-running outfit Earthling Society earlier this year, after sampling this initial collection of recordings from Laird’s new project with Earthling Society drummer Jon Blacow, the decision begins to make a lot of sense. To some extent I think, Taras Bulba follows on directly from the foundations laid by last year’s fairly astounding MO: The Demon album, vis-à-vis Laird’s apparent desire to move away from the more traditionally rooted British heavy psych/space rock of Earthling Soc’s prior releases, and to instead throw his stylistic net wide, embracing weird and exotic new sonic climes in a predominantly instrumental context.

And, sure enough, this ‘One’ goes all over the place, with otherly tuned and/or otherly constructed string tones predominating on the early tracks, alongside chimes, tabla-like percussion, eerie, looped samples and tape fragments whose mantra-like Middle Eastern atmos recalls Sun City Girls’ “ethno-forgery” approach, before paranoid, sawing strings, sinister/whimsical Czech movie soundtrack chimes and florid late night sax guide us through the spy-haunted neon midnight of, uh, ‘Neon Midnight’, ‘The YO-YO Man’ inaugurates a gleaming, chrome-bumpered ‘Ege Bamyasi’-ish nightmare funk jam, and ‘Rising Lazarus Blues’, the record’s sole vocal cut, returns us briefly to the more (relatively) familiar terrain of a particularly discombobulated under-the-apple-tree psych-folk phantasia, hitting a very particular sweet spot that I think was last tickled way back when by Dead Meadow’s ‘Feathers’ album, or the work of nutty Italian Barrett-devotees Jennifer Gentle.

For a fairly modest and low key initial release under a new band name, this LP covers one hell of a lot of ground, displaying a vivid and powerful sonic imagination and no small amount of skill and ingenuity, suggesting that the sky’s the limit for Laird and Blacow now that they’ve (for the most part) put aside the fuzzboxes and left the trad rock band format far behind.


13. Lower Slaughter – Some Things Take Work LP 
(Box)




I’ll confess, when I first picked up Lower Slaughter’s second LP upon its release early in 2019, it struck me as a pretty grizzly exemplar of Difficult Second Album Syndrome… not that there’s anything ‘wrong’ with it as such, you understand, but by nixing the easy Rock Pleasure Principle wins of their earlier work in order to undertake some brittle and punishing explorations of break-ups, bad relationships and self-esteem struggles, the band delivered a record which initially felt forbidding and unrewarding – the opening dirge of ‘Gas’ in particular is, appropriately enough, hard work - particularly for those of us who are (happily) unable to relate directly to its lyrical themes at this point in our lives.

Returning to it for a few weeks prolonged exposure later in the year however, expectations duly adjusted, it’s really grown on me. Aside from anything else, the band’s unique, rhythmically engaged riffage still whips, snaps and churns the way it should (the title track is very much what we in the biz are obliged to call a ‘total banger’), the recording/mixing (courtesy of Wayne Adams of Big Lad/Pet Brick/Melting Hand etc) is top notch, and Sinead Young’s voice remains an absolute force of nature.

During the album’s closing stretch on side # 2 meanwhile, the band hit a real purple patch, pushing their sound in some pretty powerful new directions. First, the agreeably energised ‘The Measure of a Man’ wrong-foots us with its startling talk of attacking airships and wolves in the forest (dunno what all that’s about, but it’s, uh, kind of awesome?), before ‘A Portrait of the Father’ hits hard – a pitch black outpouring a familial angst whose brooding, down tempo musical backing cuts straight to the bone, abetted by judicious use of some dubbed out vocal effects - and closer ‘The Body’ delivers a KO with one of the most stunning tracks the band have recorded to date, it’s colossal, neck-sliding riff and doom-heavy rhythmic heft combining with Young’s fearsome delivery for some real force-the-air-from-yr-lungs catharsis; exhilarating stuff.

Still not sure this one will ever get as much play from me as ‘What Big Eyes’ a few years back, but it’s a brave and strong step forward for the band – a convincing dead-eyed stare at an uncertain future, and those last few songs; man, that’s some good shit.


14. Headroom – New Heaven 12” 
(EverNever)



Wherein the rarefied spirit of 90s/’00s Proper Psyche settles over the town of New Haven, CT like a lime green cloud, and sleepy, patchouli-scented ectoplasm pulses through the myriad cables of Kryssi Battalene’s guitar set-up.

From February:

“For all the excess inherent in this kind of guitar-playing, there’s an admirable avoidance of bombast here, a sort of laidback, accidental feel, and a warm, analogue distance to the recordings, which feels very appealing to me, coming as it does at a point in time when all forms of heavy music seem to be constantly upping the ante in terms of volume, compression and general mind-buggering immensitude. As with the Mountain Movers albums, it feels a bit old fashioned in that regard. In a good way, I mean. It’s just a nice record to hang with, if you like psychedelic guitar music. No expectation, no pretence. Just enjoy the sounds, cos they’re pretty sweet.” 


15. Pye Corner Audio – Hollow Earth LP 
(Ghost Box)




Also from February:

“In a sense, Pye Corner Audio strikes me as the hauntological electronica equivalent of, say, a mid-table thrash metal band, or a jazz group who play at local pubs on a Sunday afternoon, or something like that. By which I mean, this music doesn’t send me off on ecstatic reveries or leave me slack-jawed with instant revelation or anything, but it’s solid. It’s there when you need it, it ticks the boxes and does what it does. It’s reliable, like that super-strong wood glue from B&Q.

Listening to the woozy, out-of-sync synth line that opens this LP, you might be inclined to think, well, we already have one Boards of Canada, how badly do we need another? But, as things crack on and Jenkins gets stuck into his trademark MO – essentially stripping the BoC idiom back to its strongest core elements, replacing their somewhat dated breaks-based drum programming with some throbbing 4/4 mutant techno and adding a heavy dose of John Carpenter style dystopian sci-fi dread – I think you’ll be hard-pressed not to give him the nod.”

Labels: Aggressive Perfector, best of 2019, Grey Hairs, Headroom, Joshua Abrams, Kamaal Williams, Lower Slaughter, Makaya McCraven, Oblivion Reptilian, PSF, Sarah Davachi, Taras Bulba, The Bevis Frond, Venom Prison

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