From hereon in the big list I think, everything is a potential number 1. All of these are truly excellent. Each time I listen to one of ‘em, I want to move it straight up to the top, until I play the next one in line again. And, the records in parts #1 and #2 weren’t bad either. Such a fine year for ears, if not for most other organs and appendages.

 

 

Mixing near-eastern processional/celebratory music with the scuzz-drenched tape cut-up methodology of the western noise underground, N.R. Safi aka Naujawanan Baidar makes a racket as original, incendiary and authentically psychedelic as anything the brutalised culture of the 21st century has to offer. Wherever music finds itself heading in future years, MORE OF THIS SORT OF THING would seem like a good start.

From June 2020:  

“..combining traditional Afghan instrumentation with a bewildering array of loops, radio textures, distortion, digital effects, drums, Western/South Asian instruments and more besides, [this] dense and beguiling set of heavy psyche-blasted quasi-enthno semi-forgeries basically sounds 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.”

Side D of the album, comprising ‘Shakl-e-Barqi’, ‘Nagin Saaz’ and ‘Panj Ruz Pesh’, strikes me as particularly choice. 

 

 

I wouldn’t be a Stereo Sanctity best-of-year list without Mike Vest sticking his oar in at some point, and the most noteworthy project undertaken by the UK’s leading maximalist guitar savant during 2020 was undoubtedly Ozo, a studio-bound trio in which Vest’s distinctively uncompromising bass and guitar work goes head-to-head with the Equally forthright sounds of Karl D’Silva (sax) and Graham Thompson (drums).

Of ‘Pluto’, my favourite of the two LPs, I said in July 2020:  

“Moving at least slightly closer to realising the elusive space-rock / free jazz ideal Ozo are allegedly aiming for, this one is a heavy, heavy trip – a hulking motherlode of King Crimson-accented sonic gloop which feels more ‘high gravity planetary surface trek’ than ‘interstellar joyride’, stumbling over boulders on the way back to the landing module as the low-hanging sky overhead behind to look like this album’s cover.”

‘Saturn’ is well worth a listen too however, particularly for fans of Thompson’s powerhouse drumming, which effectively assumes lead instrument status through much of the LP, his meteor shower beat-downs often pummelling both Vest’s galaxy-questing, ‘Space Ritual’ bass lines and D’Silva’s squalling, disembodied ‘Funhouse’-in-a-hall-of-mirrors sax echoes into submission. A uniquely wild and disorientating new sound in the space-rock firmament, whichever way you look at it. 

 

 

The interplay between bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger was a big part of what made the New York side of Makaya McCraven’s ‘Universal Beings’ double LP so sublime, and here the duo return with one of the world’s first real lessons in how to make the concept of a “lockdown album” really work.

Culled from a series of lunchtime live-streams the couple undertook from their NYC apartment through the peak of the city’s first wave in March-June 2020, Douglas & Younger’s instinctive / off-the-cuff playing here succeeds in providing a veritable beacon of good ol’ peace, love and understanding in a cold and threatening world, proving (lest the thousands of such recordings made during the 20th century left us in any doubt) that with the right players, and the right feel, one half-decent microphone is all that’s needed to make an album for the ages.

Concentrating largely on melodically potent material which will likely be at least distantly familiar to most of their listeners, ‘Force Majeure’ is probably at its best when the duo explore the jazz repertoire, working over such touchstones as John Coltrane’s ‘Equinox’ and ‘Wise One’, Alice Coltrane’s ‘Gospel Trane’ and Pharaoh Sanders & Leon Thomas’s ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’ with a sense of warmth and constant harmonic discovery that it’s near impossible not to be moved by. Their (instrumental) interpretations of pop songs are good too, particularly when Younger takes the lead on comparatively simple, heart-rending reimaginings of Clifton Davis’s ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ (you know, the Jackson 5 one) and Kate Bush’s ‘A Woman’s Work’.

On a slightly snarkier note, I would also like to state that this is the one and only occasion upon which this blog will provide positive commentary on a release which includes a track composed by Sting (that being Douglas’s solo bass take on a something named ‘Inshallah’ on side # 2). You may have won me over this time with your good-natured banter about coffee and human togetherness and your vast musical talent guys, but c’mon - don’t push it. 

 

 

As I mused way back in July, the extended vocal cuts led here by Chicagoan percussionist/singer Kahil El’Zabar often veer more toward a kind of spaced out, discombobulated soul than to anything in the jazz canon, with the simple hypnotic rhythms of El’Zabor and bassist Emma Dayhuff backing up the band leader’s resonant, mantra-like, sometimes entirely non-verbal, incantations, resulting in a sound which perhaps recalls the methodology of Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ taken to it’s furthest extreme, or perhaps Gil Scott Heron getting waa-aay out there on a jazz tip, if he’d stuck to pot rather than hitting the hard stuff.

At the same time though, as I’ve lived with this record over the past six months or so, it’s the instrumental cuts I come back to the most. Side # 3’s ‘Katon’ in particular spends quite a while digging into territory not too distant from the slow burn, ambient minimalism of Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, until saxophonist David Murray eventually weighs in with some stark, unmistakably Trane-like tenor ruminations, paying heed to the feather-soft groove even as he briefly tilts in a considerably more fearsome direction - a trend which is furthered, naturally enough, on side # 4’s more conventionally lyrical ‘Trane in Mind’ - as knock-out a tribute to the big man as you’re likely to hear anywhere in the current musical firmament. 

 

 

Why, after all these years, does ‘The Devil Rides Out’, an insufferably boring novel written by arch-conservative imperialist blowhard Dennis Wheatley in 19…, retain such an irresistible aesthetic appeal, living on in the minds of horror/weird fiction aficionados like a rich bouquet of combined old book smell, empty church dust and ceremonial sulphur..?

Damned if I know, but Hammer’s ever-wonderful 1968 movie adaptation no doubt helps, as does this more recent ‘soundtrack’ to the novel offered up by Tom Mcdowell, aka Dream Division.

Of all the quote-unquote “dungeon synth” releases I sampled last year in fact, this one strikes me as by far the strongest. Not only does Mcdowell succeed in wringing exactly the right tones of comforting, TV/VHS-fogged dread and fascination from his wheezing, hissing analogue equipment, but he also brings a strong melodic sensibility to the material, filling the album with memorable, earworm-heavy numbers which would certainly not have disgraced the professional-yet-impoverished band of film composers who first minted this particular sound back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Combine this with a keen appreciation of the intangible / irresistible ‘feel’ of the material he is plundering for inspiration, and Mcdowell has really created an all-time, party rockin’ classic for the world’s second-hand bookshop haunting creeps.

 

 

Single-handedly making the concept of “stoner rock” suddenly seem like a good idea again, this Vienna-based group’s shamelessly indulgent assemblage of gargantuan / Sleep-worthy riffs and foot-on-monitor solos, served up with just a touch of bonged out weirdness, has rarely travelled far from my turntable in 2020. Seriously - super-massive rock fun with real longevity right here. Do yourself a favour today and check it out.

Here is some further blather from way back in the carefree days of Feb 2020: 

 “‘Raging Mammoth’! ‘Shaking Pyramid’! Yes, these are the kind of things pieces of music like this should be called, and I commend artist Sandra Havik for her valiant attempts to literally illustrate these concepts on the album’s front cover. Side 2’s ‘Monolith’ is dutifully depicted on the back cover meanwhile, whilst the accompanying track mixes things up somewhat, heading in a more trad metal direction, bringing in NWBHM-ish harmonic leads and moving from curious, almost jazzy/modal passages early on toward some positively Maiden-esque adventures in mid-tempo, dragon-slaying guitar heroism. Probably the all-round best cut here, it’s pretty damn immense.” 

 

 

Making her second collaborative appearance on this year’s list, Kryssi Battalene (Head Room/Mountain Movers) here lends her guitar and vocals talents to former Mininokoto / LSD March frontman Kawaguchi Masami’s New Rock Syndicate, and, if the shorter, more garage-inclined numbers which begin the resulting LP perhaps don’t come off quite as well as they could, tracks like sitar-enhanced slow-burn epic ‘Sunday Afternoon’, the shimmering, scorched earth drama of ‘Shadow of the Earth’ and the churning, bad vibes jamming of ‘The Beginning’ and ‘Pieces of You’ all remain absolutely sublime.

Even more-so than with his previous bands, Kawaguchi seems intent here on digging deep into the legacy of late ‘80s legends White Heaven, tacking close to that band’s gospel of lysergic songcraft and elegiac guitar heroics, seasoned with a touch of AMT’s show-boating exotica, whilst Battalene for her part brings a more Bardo/MBV-like sense of blissed out pedalboard oblivion to proceedings, birthing beautific, timeless, trans-pacific psychedelic rock of the very highest calibre; just a sky-scraping, spirit-nourishing triumph of beautific noise, miraculously still available on wax to U.S.-based readers for the price of a six pack plus postage. 

 

  

From July 2020:

“As ever, it’s difficult to really put into words the unique amalgam that comprises Obnox’s sound, but nonetheless, let’s take a deep breath and try again. Mixing up lo-fi cut-up noise, rust-belt garage-punk, mutant p-funk derivations, ghostly regional/outsider soul and aggro-laden, street level hip-hop, ‘Savage Raygun’ makes for an exhilarating tour through the treacherous back alleys of American music, all mixed down with a chopped n’ screwed, basement tape-splicin’ aesthetic that makes the album’s presence on shiny, newly pressed vinyl feel kind of incongruous.

That said though, this is still perhaps a slightly more – cough –‘accessible’ take on the Obnox ideal than we’ve been presented with before, dialling back on the hyper-aggressive saturation of earlier releases, even as Thomas remains an elusive presence within his own music, his vocals often remaining distant and translucent as he slyly works earworms and familiar phrases from semi-well known songs in his material, leaving us trying to source them in the fog of our own memories like some form of archaic, pre-industrial sampling. The exception of course is on the full-on hip-hop cuts, where he’s upfront and in our grill, spitting as angry and unhinged as our stupid white asses could wish for, milling down decades of uncouth working class discontent for some implacably affirmative, ugly shit flow goodness.

All of the deep, strange threads Lamont Thomas is exploring and tearing through here seem to come together, just before the end of the record, on the supremely titled ‘Young Neezy’, looping an ancient tape of Neil’s ‘Southern Man’ riff and firing it straight off into the resentful depths of twisted r’n’b oblivion. It’s pretty inspired. A few years on from Obnox coining the phrase ‘America in a Blender’ on his mutant, malfunctioning non-“free jazz” LP [‘Templo dol Solido’, 2018], he’s still busy making supremely bitter-sweet lemonade from that terrifying concept.”

 

Makaya McCraven’s ‘Universal Beings’ double LP from 2018 is one of the records I’ve played most over the past few years, and undoubtedly the one which has had the biggest impact on my listening… so of course it's a no brainer that a further disc culled from the same trans-coastal / transatlantic sessions was going to find itself sitting pretty high up on this 2020 list.

Unlike the earlier LPs, tracks recorded in different cities with different line-ups are mixed up willy-nilly here, arguably resulting in a somewhat more bracing and unpredictable listen, but McCraven’s intense, skittering electronica-influenced drum style remains consistent throughout, lending the music a unified pulse even as the textures and atmospheres change on a dime.

Most of the pieces here are quite brief, with some sounding like repetitive / water-treading segments excised from longer jams, which perhaps explains why they didn’t quite make the cut on the first two LPs, but even in its more quotidian moments, this music retains a floating, blissful sense of infectious positivity, and highlights, of course, remain plentiful.

Several cuts from the hallowed (by me at least) New York session appear to be pieces of the same tight, rhythmic workout, foregrounding Joel Ross’s vibraphone alongside backing from the aforementioned Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger, whilst ‘Half Steppin’, recorded in London with Soweto Kinch (sax) and Kamaal Williams (keys) is an altogether more hair-raising piece of work, with what sounds like a heavily processed and/or electronically-generated beat bringing a frantic, almost jungle-like feel emphasised by distant, juddering bass frequencies and strange, droning chords picked out by Williams.

Two further London cuts featuring a more trad sax/keys/bass line up (courtesy of Nubya Garcia, Ashley Henry and Daniel Casimir respectively) find McCraven's polyphonous beatdowns sometimes threatening to drown out his collaborators, but a louche slide toward the ol ‘smoky groove’ pocket eventually wins the day, with some lovely work in particular from Henry on Fender Rhodes.

Meanwhile, the Chicago material here is excellent too, with Tomeka Reid’s cello adding a baleful quality to proceedings, as Shabaka Hutchings’ rich, Trane-esque tone alternately locks into and drowsily pulls away from McCraven's meticulously detailed, double-time beat - but my pick for the absolute best stuff this time around comes from Los Angeles.

As the distinctive creepy-crawl of Jeff Parker’s guitar signals a shift to the West Coast, the combo of ‘Universal Being pt2’ and ‘Butterss Fly’ (named for bassist Anna Butterss) proves absolutely stunning, perhaps a peak moment of this entire project in fact, with Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s violin cooing some some bird of paradise as Josh Johnson's alto rides the tightly-wound rhythm set by McCraven and Parker, eventually folding out into a beautiful cat’s cradle of interlocking, ‘Bitches Brew’-esque textures… oh man, it’s a shame they couldn’t have kept this one going for hours.

But, we’re reaching the end of the final side by this point, so needs must, and, back to London, Soweto Kinch shows us ‘The Way Home’ - a big, bold South African style melodic theme, played in a duo with McCraven, cheerfully waving us off into the sunrise of the perilously uncertain future we all now find ourselves stuck in. 

 

 

Year on year, I find myself feeling ever more distraught when the moment comes for me to vainly try, yet again, to find a way to convey the kind of magic routinely bottled by Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck whenever and wherever they convene to take care of Necks business.

These days at least, I can merely point to the bandcamp embed above and let more patient readers discover a way in for themselves, but, for those unwilling or unable to do so, I can at least suggest that, exhibiting a characteristically zen-like sense of internal symmetry (three tracks of equal length, three musicians), CD-only album ‘Three’ represents some of the band’s strongest work in years (which is going some).

Mixing restrained, ruminative piano and bass excursions with a chaotic, rotor-blade like clamour of disembodied percussion, ‘Bloom’ and ‘Further’ are both - and it makes my soul wither just to say this, but no alternatives immediately present themselves - classic Necks. The former leaves strange, distorted, guitar-like overdubs churning deep in the background, cymbal hits ringing through infinite space and fizzing, climactic organ chords occasionally rising up like fragments of Chicago house overheard from the wrong side of thick concrete wall. The latter meanwhile is a particularly special aural tranquilizer dart, tidal organ and string textures drifting against the frantic rattle of Buck’s bells and chimes as Swanson locks into an exquisite example of the kind of slow, cyclical groove which defined the band’s early work back in the ‘90s/‘00s.

By contrast, middle track ‘Lovelock’, named in tribute to recently deceased Celibate Rifles frontman Damien Lovelock, proves harrowing stuff - a dry gulch twenty minutes of exhausted, nocturnal dream-atmos which I’d characterise as ‘bereft’, but for the fact that that would imply a level of emotional manipulation mercifully alien to The Necks pointedly abstract/subjective methodology. 

---

To be concluded…

Labels: best of 2020, Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger, Dream Division, Kahil El’Zabar’s Spirit Groove, Kawaguchi Masami, Kryssi Battalene, Makaya McCraven, Naujawanan Baidar, Obnox, Ozo, Ryte, The Necks

Further deep dips into Bandcamp which have been keeping my ears vibrating nicely (and my bank balance reassuringly low) as I sweat over me work PC in these times of home-based toil… a few longer/proper reviews of other things to hopefully to follow soon, as and when I get a minute.

Gerycz / Powers / Rolin.



Pure, third-eye blasting maximalist fields of bliss straight out of the American south, conjured forth via a 12 string acoustic, hammered dulcimer and some (fairly minimal) percussion, with nary an amp nor pedal in sight. Swings open those bead curtains into blinding sunlight just like I like this stuff to. Pretty magnificent. Sitting comfortably alongside such aforementioned-in-the-pages acts as Woven Skull, Sarah Louise, Sally Anne Morgan & Kryssi B., Elkhorn etc, there seems to be a fresh strain of rustic-minded, pure psyche brilliance starting to bubble up from the Trump-bedevilled underground which needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. Children of Pelt rejoice!

Chicago Underground Quartet.



Although I can’t think of anything terribly pertinent to say about it, I’ve been hitting Jeff Parker’s recent album on International Anthem pretty hard recently, and this first-album-in-donkeys-years from the intermittently convened quartet (previously trio) of which he is a member carries the same spirit of warm, non-denominational good times musicking, casually swinging between trad jazz lyricism, questing chaos and… other realms entirely… in a way that just feels right n’ good. The sultry desert dreamscape of ‘Strange Wing’ is hitting the spot particularly nicely today, for the record. (I’d dearly love to pick this one up on vinyl, but the Astral Spirits label don’t seem to have much in the way of European distribution, and I’d prefer not to risk the extravagant vagaries of overseas postage at present, so… mp3s it is.)

Acid Mothers Temple.



So, did you know that, prior to putting out their excellent ‘comeback’ album Reverse of Rebirth in Universe album a couple of years back, AMT’s revised new generation line-up stopped over in Brazil, where they quietly released this absolute peach of an LP, presumably recorded at around the same time? As previously stated, I realise that getting excited about an AMT record when we’ve all already been suckered into buying a thousand of the things over the years is a tough call, but they’re really firing on all cylinders here, hitting all of their strongest suits at one point or another with a minimum of silliness and faff, and the results are pretty jaw-dropping. If, like me, you find yourself ruing the unlikelihood of AMT’s proposed June tour dates going ahead, this should help tide you over until they’re back on the virus-free road once more.

Some anonymous sleazy ‘70s session blokes.



So, this is just a quick Public Service announcement to let you know that Trunk Records have finally gotten around to setting up a Bandcamp page, and that it’s full of all the weird and wonderful bit n’ pieces you’d rightfully expect. Their new Basil Kirchin archival release is alternately sublime and deeply uncomfortable (as you’d likewise rightly expect), but my # 1 pick is DEFINITELY this anonymous, car boot sale-sourced reel of totally monstrous ‘70s porno jamming. I mean, of course it is. Seriously though folks, forget the novelty / cheese factor here, this music is legitimately fucking amazing, and if some kids dropped it today I’d probably hail them as heroes. As it is, they likely made do with a few packs of B&H and enough dosh for a few brandies in the pub round the corner before they shuffled off forever into the beige, tea-stained night. What a time in which to have been alive.


Sarah Davachi.



And, at completely the other end of the spectrum – a new EP of sombre, spiritually bereft meditative drone pieces from Sarah Davachi. Need I say more?

Lewsberg.



To be honest, I only rarely dip my toes in the lukewarm waters of new indie-rock these days, but if you’re still jonesin’ for something in that general vein that can make an impression, I’d highly recommend these oddballs from Rotterdam. Embracing a laissez faire approach to guitar tuning that the early Fall might have appreciated, the best tracks on their new album ‘In This House’ find them pretty much sanding down the Velvets-via-Feelies-via-Breeders lineage of affectless, cooler-than-thou guitar pop to a kind of shiny, casual perfection (never stretching to two notes when one played twice will suffice), over which one of most distinctive, weird-yet-charming vocalists I’ve heard since Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins holds forth in a clipped, naïve, mid-European sort of fashion that remains entirely his own.

Individual taste may vary of course, and the slower cuts test my patience a bit, but generally I’m inclined to believe that this strange bunch are really on to something. Specifically, their songs exhibit a kind of dead-pan musical humour which charms the pants off me, as exemplified by the triumphant guitar non-solo (refusal to solo?) which forms the LOL-worthy highlight of stand-out track From Never To Once.

Chris Forsyth / Peoples Motel Band.




Back to the hairy handed jamming meanwhile, and… do you know this Chris Forsyth guy? His voluminous catalogue seems to have passed me by up to now, and in truth I’ve yet to really reach a decision on the extent to which I’d wish to recommend it, but if you find yourself with a hankering for some unashamedly manly, free form classic rock guitar noodling in a ‘Dead-on-steroids kind of vein (and who doesn’t every now and then?), there is lots, and I mean lots, of it to dig into here, and this recent live album recorded with the band Garcia Peoples feels like a good place to start. In stark contrast to Lewsberg, when this dude says, “I play the guitar”, he ain’t foolin’.

The Necks.



And last but not least – this new album from The Necks is an absolute banger! I know, hold the front page, right? How such a long-standing group can remain so immaculately consistent whilst simultaneously managing to break new ground within the carefully-monitored constraints of their “always different, always the same” methodology frankly defies all reason, and has done for many years. Given that I’ve long since given up on trying to find new ways to put the unique alchemy of what they do into words, let’s simply say that, for my money, ‘Three’ is their best, most instantly striking and thoroughly engrossing recording since the ‘Unfold’ double LP set in 2017, distinguished by a zen-like internal symmetry (three tracks, three musicians) whose refusal to countenance the horrendous prospect of a blank fourth side presumably explains why they’ve opted to skip a vinyl edition this time around.

Labels: Acid Mothers Temple, Chicago Underground Quartet, Chris Forsyth, Gerycz / Powers / Rolin, Lewsberg, Sarah Davachi, The Necks

So I like The Necks very much. That much we know.

Very much an ‘always the same / always different’ sort of proposition, this is a group who seem so consistently able to find new ways to wring extraordinary sounds from the guts of their basic piano / bass / drums set up, it’s almost frightening - but for ‘Vertigo’ at least, the novelty arises initially from something more palpable. Namely, the fact that, after several decades of functioning as a natural ‘CD band’, it feels strangely perfect to actually have a Necks album whose two twenty minute-ish ‘sides’ are designed to fit so nicely on a vinyl LP. They’re moving (backward) with the times I guess. Kinda weird when you think about it, but hey – as long as rubes like me keep happily dropping twice as much for forty minutes of big plastic disc as we would for eighty minutes of little shiny one, you can’t fault ‘em on the economics.

Anyway, side # 1 kicks off in notably sinister fashion, with droning bowed bass rumble, cascading dissonant piano chords and short outbursts of falling-down-the-stairs drums gradually coalescing into a kind of fugue that puts me in mind of dark, nocturnal alleyways - towering tenement shadows, a distant moon stuck between vertical lines, enlivened by the occasional shock of crooks knocking over trash cans [uh, that’ll be the drums then – down-to-earth ed.].

Only after a good ten minute or so do some beautifully complete, melodic phrases begin to creep into Chris Abrahams’ trademark ‘falling raindrops’ piano runs, suggestive of peace and normalcy, reminding us that, onerous and threatening though it may be, this state of mild anxiety is a constant - as natural as any rainforest idyll.

Gradually – always gradually of course with these guys – knob-twisting, siren-like electronics start to slide in from god knows where and the piece develops into some kind of long-form crescendo, an extended string ‘suspense chord’ ringing out as if The Terminator just materialised in that same alleyway, before things fall away again to leave what sounds like a frantic, rotorblade tremoloed tape loop, over which the musicians continue to circle each other as if waiting to be the first to jump out and shout ‘boo!’

And, basically, I could carry on like this through ceaseless paragraphs of blather, but I don’t know exactly what that would prove. Suffice to say that, for the attentive listener, there a surprise round every corner on ‘Vertigo’, and we haven’t even got to side # 2 yet.

For what it’s worth, the second half is an inexplicably calming experience, despite the prominent presence of a continually repeated sound –courtesy of some of Tony Buck’s array of homemade percussion devices, I’d imagine – that puts me in mind of someone digging a grave in the centre of a cathedral in the dead of night, to say nothing of what I assume to be additional effects processing adding drifting clouds of distortion and artificial reverb. Oh, and there's a killer locked groove at the end as well. (I swear, the first time 'round, I listened for over five minutes before noticing anything was amiss.)

Where 2013’s ‘Open’ was a masterpiece of calm, there’s a heavy feeling of unease about this one that never really lifts, surpassing even the rattling urban chaos of 2011’s ‘Mindset’ (one of my favourite prior Necks discs) whilst still somehow remaining rooted in the organic rise and fall that they’ve made a career out of perfecting, even amid the jarring jolts, handbrake turns and abrasions.

Possibly not so suited for getting yr ambient groove on and dropping off to sleep as some older Necks outings then, but I increasingly feel like the group are at their strongest when working in this slightly more risk-taking and aggressive (relatively speaking) mood, making ‘Vertigo’ another unmitigated aural thrill ride for us of the sprawled-on-the-floor-eyes-closed-with-headphones set.

Listen & buy straight from the band via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2015, The Necks

From October:

“Though not quite a concept album (god forbid), there is definitely a strong, overarching theme connecting the songs on ‘Bubblegum Graveyard’, as the record sets out kind of a rough story arc, gleefully exploring a worst case scenario of the assorted perils that could befall unprepared youngsters immersed in the tumultuous world of mid-‘60s American pop culture (21st century retrospective fantasy edition). As the path of that mad decade lurches on blindly, our protagonists find themselves navigating dangerous and uncertain terrain, as the suburban enclave of Archie Comics, candy bars and bubblegum pop slides without warning into a Blue Cheer-soundtracked world of drug-induced revelations, vagrant living and armed robbery, leading inevitably towards the sinister orbit of “The Fried Stranger”, staying one step ahead of the law with his guitar and tape-deck.

The yin/yang of California ‘60s, and the hyper-accelerated learning curve of kids who wanted to make it through the perils of that decade in one piece, has of course been grist to the mill of imaginative songwriters ever since Arthur Lee gave us his view from the front-lines, and Apache Dropout are happy to play merry hell with the pulpier end of that aesthetic legacy, which has rarely sounded as comprehensively creepy as it does here, with “Quaaludes ‘68”s central chant of “this is my life / how do I work it?” sounding all the more plaintive amid the slurred tales of ghosts, blood and drugs that surround it.

[…]
Far more interesting than a mere retro invocation of period clichés, Apache Dropout’s central technique of crafting songs *about* their chosen era of obsession strikes me as an area of vast & vibrant possibility, allowing ‘Bubblegum Graveyard’ to emerge as a real keeper - a record that fascinates more and transports further with each repeated play. As the lyrical details and odd sonic detritus of these songs work their way into your mind, initial reservations about the quality of the recording & performances seem increasingly irrelevant, as the band’s particular headspace starts to feel like an entirely natural and rewarding place to be. Not just a fun, twisted rock record, ‘Bubblegum Graveyard’ is a whole widescreen innocence & experience tale, framed in imagery dredged from the darkest corners of 20th century American mythology… and how many 30 minute garage rock albums do you get the chance to write sentence like that about?”

Labels: Apache Dropout, best of 2012, Mount Carmel, Nu Sensae, The Liminanas, The Necks