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

New/Old LP reviews:
Neil Young – Homegrown
(Reprise/Warners, 2020)

Normally when legendary artists (and/or their record companies) decide to unveil long-lost, never-before-released albums from decades past, caution is strongly advised, but, there are of course exceptions. Hearing John Coltrane or Jimi Hendrix pootling about for instance will pretty much never cease to be rewarding, however much the attempts to scrape more monetary value from their legacies may grate, and, though many (most) may disagree, I’d personally extend the same indulgence to Neil Young’s work up to the end of the 1970s.

Or, such was my justification earlier this year for blind pre-ordering this forty-five year old major label LP with a singularly unappealing illustration of a hippie eating a corncob on the cover, at any rate. In contextualising that decision however, we should make clear from the outset that, for Young’s fans, ‘Homegrown’ is far from just another iffy rehash of some nixed studio sessions or somesuch.

In fact, the legend goes that this completed LP was all ready to go back in 1975 – sequenced, mastered, cover art signed off etc – and was indeed being prepped for great things by Reprise, touted around the industry as Young’s ‘return from the wilderness’ after a lengthy spell of what then seemed like self-sabotaging, contrarian craziness - the natural successor to his multi-million selling, star-making ‘Harvest’ a few years earlier.

In typically perverse Youngian fashion however, Neil took the decision to withdraw ‘Homegrown’ from release just before it hit the pressing plants, not because the material was in any way sub-par, the story goes, but because it was in fact too commercial for his liking, instead instructing the suits to put out ‘Tonight’s The Night’, a set of recordings which had been kicking around for a few years at this point, considered too ragged, edgy and inebriated for a general release.

Actually, the truth is a bit more complicated than that… which is where things start to get interesting. In his definitive Young biog ‘Shakey’, Jimmy McDonough frames the story as follows (p.469):

“After some mixing was completed, [producer] Elliot Mazer headed off for England, where he played a tape of the album for the head of Chrysalis Records, who then told Mo Ostin he was sure they had another five-million seller. But then a funny thing happened. Young changed his mind.

Blame it on that blurry evening at the Chateau Marmont, where Young had played ‘Homegrown’ back to back with ‘Tonight’s the Night’ for a bunch of stoned musicians including Rick Danko. “At which point Rick the Prick said, ‘Go with the raw one,’” said Mazer, who was devastated when Young decided to jettison ‘Homegrown’ in favour of ‘Tonight’s the Night’.

There was another factor involved in the decision. Young had pulled back from the emotional nakedness of ‘Homegrown’. “It was a little too personal… it scared me,” Young told Cameron Crowe a short time later. “I’ve never released any of those. And I probably never will. I think I’d be too embarrassed to put them out. They’re a little too real.”

(I’m unsure whether or not I’ve mentioned it previously on this blog incidentally, but I recommend McDonough’s Neil Young book so highly that I’d advise you to read it even if you have zero interest in the life and work of Neil Young. Quite possibly the best book on music I’ve ever read, it’s such a fucking masterpiece of the biographical form that the incidental picture of the entertainment industry and the lifestyles of musicians in America during the 60s, 70s and 80s it paints along the way is worth the entry price alone.)

Anyway - the rest is history. ‘Tonight’s The Night’ was initially met with consternation and disappointment, but has since been widely hailed as a staggering work of genius. ‘Harvest’, with it’s easy-going country-rock sound and flat, rather muted production, meanwhile continues to divide hardcore fans, but I still think it’s an equally fine piece of work. And now, nearly half a century down the track, you’d better believe I was happy to sign up blind to grab myself a piece of the alleged ‘successor’ LP which skirts both of these great works, as well as sitting in close temporal/emotional proximity to two more of Young’s flat-out masterpieces (‘On The Beach’ and ‘Zuma’).

Indeed, on its first few dozen spins, ‘Homegrown’ seems to hold more value as a priceless historical artefact for Young-o-philes than it does for its surface level musical merit, making the Chrysalis guy’s talk of a “five million seller” seem pretty mystifying. (Possibly he was high? Just a thought.)

Anyway, it’s certainly no instant mindblower, that’s for sure, lacking as it does either the raw force of an ‘Everybody Knows..’ or ‘On The Beach’, or the indelible melodic grace of ‘Harvest’ or ‘After The Goldrush’, but… there’s a lot going on beneath the surface here.

Many of the recordings included on the album feel fragile, disjointed, or out-of-place, which lends a transient, inscrutable quality to the record as a whole. Something about it gets under your skin.

It’s a haunter, in other words - or at least, that’s my first impression. And, like any haunting, only by digging deeper, getting further stuck into the context surrounding it, can we really start to get to the bottom of things. So let’s do that. Strap yourselves in safely readers - I’m afraid this might go on a while.

Though ‘Homegrown’ ultimately has little in common with ‘Harvest’, there is nonetheless some kind of conscious connection between the two records.

Beyond just the homey, rustic artwork from Tom Wilkes (who also did the earlier album) and the single-agriculture-related-word-beginning-with-‘H’ title, ‘Homegrown’s opening cut ‘Separate Ways’ begins – in what surely must be a deliberate gesture – with an almost exact recreation of Harvest opener ‘Out on the Weekend’s forlorn, hang-dog shuffle.

This time however, the vibe is dark and foreboding, rather than merelt disconsolate and bored, as the rhythm section of Tim Mulligan and Levon Helm (no less) beat out a leaden, muddy trudge. Instead of Neil’s brash harmonica, the cripplingly beautiful melody on the intro is picked out on Ben Keith’s inimitable pedal steel, sounding, in McDonough’s words, like “..one of the loneliest sounds ever recorded”.

Despite this sonic nod to our hero’s albatross of a big-hit-album three years earlier, the feel this record is actually communicating couldn’t be more different. As ‘Homegrown’s hypothetical 1975 listeners would quote possibly have realised before even dropping the needle, had they taken the time to grok the song titles and noted album’s on-the-nose back cover dedication (“For Carrie”), we know we’re going to be hitting some choppy waters here.

The true connection between ‘Harvest’ and ‘Homegrown’ in fact is not one of continuation, but of opposition. Between them, they mark out the beginning and end of the relationship which bookended the most creatively vital period of Young’s life, essentially representing a kind of yin and yang of their creator’s treacherous emotional demonology.

Taken as a whole, I tend to think that Neil Young’s ‘70s output can be best understood as a kind of ‘innocence to experience’ tale, framed not only around the darkening, increasingly chemical hue of America’s ‘me decade’, wherein the ideals of the hippie era died a lingering, drawn-out death, but also deeply intertwined with the turbulence in Young’s own life, and in particular the changes wrought upon his personality by his tempestuous relationship with the actress Carrie Snodgrass, the bitter fallout from which eventually allowed his song-writing to attain the wider, more nuanced vision evident in his best work during the second half of the decade.

Written around the time that the two first met, the songs on ‘Harvest’ – bright and disarmingly melodic yet crippled by self-doubt, naïvely searching for love and acceptance – defines the ‘innocence’ part of our story almost too well. Therein, Neil “fell in love with the actress”; she was “playing a part that [he] could understand”. A few years of more-or-less hell later, ‘Homegrown’ hits the same relationship on the exit ramp, pieced together when things were at their very rawest, following the couple’s mutually devastating separation.

Shortly after completing these recordings, Young would hook up with the rejuvenated Crazy Horse in Malibu, and, in between getting blasted to their heart’s content on all the indulgences mid-70s Malibu had to offer, they recorded what came to be seen as the ‘official’ break-up album, the all-time catharsis-through-rock classic that is ‘Zuma’. Time time after that, he’d rake the ghost of his failed relationship over the coals yet again, finally regaining the steely-eyed, nihilistic persona (last glimpsed on ‘On The Beach’ in ‘73) which characterises the ‘experience’ part of our story, as he laid down the exceptional set of the acoustic demos belatedly released under the name Hitchhiker (those ‘H’s again) in 2017; an album which finds him sounding decades older, and centuries wiser, than the kid who recorded ‘Harvest’ just a few short years earlier.

Back to ‘Homegrown’ though, what we essentially have here is the previously invisible hinge upon which Thee Story of Neil Young in The 1970s pivots; the exact centre-point of the drama, left on the cutting room floor until now, cos it was just too much, man.

That’s not to say however that ‘Homegrown’ really plays as a ragin’, hang-wringing break-up album. Though some of the lyrics may be rife with uncomfortably personal detail, at the same time it often feels as if these songs were laid down before their writer’s feelings have really been allowed to sink in and coalesce.

As with such deconstructed masterpieces as Big Star’s ‘Third / Sister Lovers’ and Skip Spence’s ‘Oar’, heartbreak stalks around the edges of these songs, pain warping them from within. It’s as if the poor guy hadn’t even realised the extent to which he’d been fucked up by it all yet, but as always, the music knows.

III.

Straight out of the gate on Side # 1, ‘Separate Ways’ and ‘Try’ both at least attempt to give us the straight dope, sounding slurred and emotionally drained, even as their lyrics chase some white horse of reconciliation over the hazy horizon.

The inspired instrumental interplay between Young, Keith, Helm and Mulligan on the former song lends it a touch of that ineffable sublimity that defines the best of Young’s singer/songwriter-orientated output, whilst the latter - framed as a soggy, exhausted country waltz – pushes coherence way out on a limb, but just about keeps it together thanks to some interesting lyrical digressions, and crisp backing vocals from Emmylou Harris.

According to McDonough, some of ‘Try’s lyrics, including its stand-out “..shit Mary, I can’t dance” bit, incorporate phrases coined by Snodgrass’s mother, who passed away at almost the exact same moment her daughter’s relationship with Young imploded. Assuming there’s any truth in that, it’s certainly easy to see why Neil thought it better to keep this stuff out of the public eye for a while.

Equally personal, albeit in a slightly more obtuse fashion is ‘Mexico’, a brief (one minute forty) fragment of piano balladry, full of eerie, unresolved phrases left hanging in the air, recalling ‘Harvest’-era songs like ‘There’s a World’ or ‘Love in Mind’. Part of a seemingly endless series of numbers which find Young attempting to escape his troubles by taking imaginary trips to remote locales or other historical periods, this not-quite-song feels like musical thinking-out-loud, but it’s a testament to the strength of Young’s creativity during this era that even his half-finished ruminations remain eerily spell-binding.

In more concrete terms, ‘Mexico’ is also one of a number of songs on ‘Homegrown’ which touch uneasily on their writer’s recent experience of fatherhood, the spectre of his perceived failure to keep his new family together hanging heavy, as domestic responsibilities impinge upon the freedom he might otherwise have enjoyed as a newly single, itinerant rock star. (“Daddy is a travellin’ man..”, the song concludes uncertainly, as the final, ominous notes drift off into the ether.)

Skipping over ‘Love is a Rose’, a robust ol’ coffee-shop folk belter which can’t help but sound a bit out of place here (SO 1962, man), we arrive at ‘Homegrown’s title track, an incongruously light-hearted freak-rock shuffle which, though it ain’t exactly gonna blow anyone mind, is still far more palatable than the version which appeared on the ‘American Stars N’ Bars’ album a few years later.

On that album, it sounded like a smug hippie campfire sing-along that got way out of hand, but here, shorn of the more familiar version’s obnoxious backing vocals, it scrubs up pretty well, strummed/picked in a kinda interesting manner by Neil on a fuzzed out electric and Ben Keith on lap steel, backed up by a supremely groovy, light touch beat from drummer Karl T. Himmel. Suggesting a slightly more nuanced sentiment than the “heh heh, he’s singing about weed” vibe encouraged by the ‘..Stars and Bars’ recording, the song provides some welcome respite from the heavier themes explored elsewhere on this record… which is much needed, given that things get pretty far-out as we head toward the end of side # 1, to say the least.

Oddly reminiscent of some stoned out ‘skit’ track from a ‘90s hip-hop album, ‘Florida’ finds Young and Keith (who seems to have been acting as the star’s primary right-hand-man / emotional crutch at this point) conjuring eerie droning sounds from what the album credits tell us are “wine glasses and piano strings”, whilst muttering distractedly about a potential visit to the sunshine state (“palm trees n’ shit, y’know..”). Things take a darker turn however when Neil begins recounting what is evidently the memory of a dream, which concludes with his retrieving a baby whose parents have been killed in a freak hang-gliding accident. (Those following the underlying psychodrama may wish to note that the audio cuts out just as he begins describing a woman approaching him, claiming the child as her own.)

All of which effectively serves as an intro to what is possibly ‘Homegrown’s most remarkable moment, the inexplicably named ‘Kansas’, another fragmentary, close-miced solo vignette, accompanied this time by soft-strummed, tentative acoustic.

Distantly echoing the privileged masculine self-loathing of the oft-misunderstood ‘A Man Needs a Maid’, but recasting it in more oneiric, transitory territory, this one finds Neil waking up from a bad dream, next to a girl (but not THE girl?), whose name he is unable to recollect; “guess you’re the one I’m talking to this morning / with your mind so kind and your friendly body lying / in my bungalow of stucco / that the glory and success bought..”.

The cynicism of the lyric here is belied by the almost surreal, beach-at-dawn airiness conjured by Young’s minimal musical setting. It’s as if he’s settled into this identity as a self-pitying, profligate rock star only momentarily before he drifts off again into the breeze over the ocean, ready to take shape again in some other place and time.

The preceding skit, with its talk of lethal hang-gliding accidents, adds a sinister undertow to the song’s insistence (during the closest thing it manages to a chorus) that “we can go gliding, through the air, far from the tears you’ve cried..” – a strange sentiment indeed for the pot-smoking, alpha male millionaire to express toward a sleeping beach-house groupie, and far from a reassuring one, with the sickly-sweet pull of New Age guru-dom (and ‘Revolution Blues’) still lurking just a few miles back on the cultural highway. (I’m also reminded that Dennis Hopper’s character in ‘The Last Movie’ was named Kansas, but am probably just thinking about all this a bit too hard.) 

Dialling back the intensity somewhat, Side # 2 opens with ‘We Don’t Smoke It No More’, five minutes of heavy-lidded, last-gasp-before-unconscious 12 bar jamming which could have been pulled straight from the infamously debauched ‘Tonight’s The Night’ sessions. Sounding largely improvised, the lyrics could potentially be poking barbed fun at ‘70s rock stars’ favourite game of publically declaring themselves free of all those BAD drugs, whilst quietly sneaking to the bathroom to hoover up this week’s designated GOOD drugs, which prevent them from crumpling to the floor like weeping, incontinent man-children (a frequent pass-time of Young’s erstwhile cohorts in CS&N, incidentally).

There’s ragged magic here for the faithful, but more casual listeners might feel more inclined to prescribe a mug of cocoa and good night’s sleep to the players before they deign to hit ‘record’ again… a sentiment which could apply to this album as a whole in fact, excepting perhaps the following ‘White Line’, which sounds positively sprightly in comparison.

Augmented by some tasteful acoustic lead licks from Levon’s arch-nemesis Robbie Robertson, this recording – taped in London of all places, on one of the days surrounding CSN&Y’s disastrous 1974 Wembley Stadium concert – hits a real sweet spot that all Neil freaks should be able to appreciate, drawing a shaky (natch) throughline between the disarming melodicism of his early ‘70s work and the more weathered, emotionally nuanced balladry of the ‘Hitchhiker’/‘Rust Never Sleeps’ era.

After that though, it’s back to the gnarled, bonged out grunge with ‘Vacancy’, a sinister nightmare of frazzled, end-of-relationship paranoia (“I look in your eyes, and I don’t know who’s there”) which sounds like CCR suddenly losing the will to live mid-recording session, the double meaning if its title summoning visions of anonymous motel break-downs, even as it prefigures the harder, riff-based rock sound of ‘Zuma’.

Clearly giving voice to the side of Young’s personality which saw fit to knock it on the head with Carrie in no uncertain terms, ‘Vacancy’ is a murky, dispiriting rock song in spite of some great lead guitar work in the second half, revealing a disturbing edge when viewed through the prism of this album’s ongoing emotional narrative – all the more-so once it segues into the beguiling, gossamer psychedelia of ‘Little Wing’. 

This is another strange, fragmentary song which, echoing the ghosts of ‘After The Goldrush’s ‘Birds’, invites us to envision some kind of spectral, hippie goddess, who “comes to town when the children sing / leaves them feathers when they fall”.

A thing of extraordinary beauty, it’s an example of the way Young’s compositions, at their best, can completely disarm the listener’s critical faculties, allowing words which we might write off as cliché in the hands of other writers to fall like pollen over the shell of his hesitant chording, creating a song which sounds as if it could have existed for a thousand years, lost in the aether, until this sleepy, Kermit-voiced stoner tuned into just the right frequency and dragged it back down to terra firma.

Much the same can be said for ‘Star of Bethlehem’, an unsettlingly ambiguous ol’ time country tune which was subsequently revisited on ‘American Stars N’ Bars’. Lent greater significance here as it closes out one of its writer’s most personal LPs, the song’s declaration that, “your friends and your lovers won’t protect you / they’re all just passing through you in the end” chills the blood, whilst its gnomic conclusion forces us to consider the possibility that some coded message is being conveyed solely to the ears of particular listener here, as the casually irreligious Young brings matters to a close by musing that, “maybe the Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all?”

So thin, troubled and wracked by unprocessed emotion are the recordings on ‘Homegrown’ that to try to conclude by placing it somewhere within the context of Young’s more familiar ‘70s catalogue, let alone offering an opinion as to whether you should or should not buy it, seems almost brutishly insensitive.

Cobbled together from what feels like a state of mind at the very edge of continued functionality, lost somewhere in the slipstream between waking and dream, many of these tracks feel more like automatic writing than conscious attempts at commercial songwriting, marking out a space in which stanzas fade away unresolved and voices sink into whispers, even as each scrape of finger against string or shuffle on the studio chair is painstakingly reproduced in cutting edge stereo.

For Young’s fans, this is a vital, fascinating and - yes - haunting glimpse into the mind of one of the 20th century’s greatest musical talents, captured at the exact moment his life hit a cataclysmic crossroads. For anyone else though, caution is advised – it’s all too easy to see why he thought better of putting this stuff in the public domain for over four decades. God knows, it might take us four more to really get the drop on it.

Labels: album reviews, comps & reissues, Neil Young, old LPs

And, on the reissues front meanwhile…

South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo (he added an extra ‘Moholo’ at some point subsequent to this recording, in deference to family/cultural traditions) first came to the UK as a member of pioneering Cape Town jazz group The Blue Notes, who collectively relocated to London in 1964. As recounted in a chapter of Joe Boyd’s memoir ‘White Bicycles’ covering the author’s work with the band, The Blue Notes trod a hard road to put it mildly as they tried to establish a place for themselves within the era’s marginal and diffuse British jazz scene, with hard drugs, bad living and, eventually, premature death putting a significant dent in their stride as the members gradually drifted apart and went their separate ways.

Pianist Chris McGregor of course went on to great things with his Brotherhood of Breath, but Moholo-Moholo has likewise kept the fire burning right up to the present day, first hitting back against adversity with his 1978 debut LP as band leader, ‘Spirits Rejoice!’. Reissued late last year on Café Oto’s Otoroku label, the album showcases the impressively massive-sounding eight-piece ensemble the drummer assembled to play the heavily African-influenced compositions he and his fellow countrymen (including bassist Johnny Dyani, featured here) had collectively knocked up, and the sheer, overwhelming greatness of the results is difficult to overstate.

In addition to the aforementioned players, the octet comprises Keith Tippett on piano, Harry Miller doubling up the bass, and a full quartet of brass players including two trombonists (Radu Malfatti & Nick Evans) alongside free improv luminary Evan Parker on sax and gifted stylistic all-rounder Kenny Wheeler on trumpet -- and right from the outset, this thing is just as much of a joyous riot of incendiary sound as you might have hoped.

Opener ‘Khanya Apho’ finds Parker and Wheeler dropping sloshing puddles of searing post-Ayler skronk across a tempestuous rhythmic work-out, as the declamatory, melodic trombone riffs which open the piece are soon submerged in a writhing sea of happy chaos. Probably the album’s highlight, the following ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me’ (composed by Blue Notes alumnus Mongezi Feza) is considerably mellower, but even more revelatory in its own way, mustering a swaggering, Elephantine swing from the brass players, whose gentle, insistent melodicism and massed, sinuous groove could part the clouds amid a Pacific tsunami and raise a smile from a death row inmate, I daresay. Play it at some more celebratory occasion, such as a street party or carnival, meanwhile and bliss would swiftly be achieved, guaranteed. It’s just such an unrelentingly generous, happy piece of music, its hard-won, monolithic positivity is difficult to put into words.

Subsequent to that, the similarly blue-skied cosmic/modal workout ‘Ithi-gqi’ proves equally sublime, with dizzying depths of interlocking, twinkle-fingered majesty that could have fitted right in on a late ‘60s Pharaoh or Alice joint – just absolutely stunning. Those declamatory brass riffs ring out again meanwhile on side 2’s ‘Amaxesha Osizi’, sounding like the ceremonial entrance music of some long forgotten, jewel-bedecked Nubian monarch, before the composition slides headfirst across eras and continents to become a slinky, hard-bop workout with Parker very much out in front, his playing as lyrical, compassionate and otherly inspired as ever, holding court until Tippett’s piano spins things off in a different direction entirely with some brain-breaking double-speed repetition, before things slow down again for a euphoric burst of collective ecstasy in the piece’s closing minutes. Whoa! - is about the only verdict I can muster.

And finally, accompanied by live (?!) bird song, the closing ‘Wedding Hymn’ reprises the indelible central riff from ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me..’ in appropriately solemn, matrimonial fashion, seguing into a beautiful, melancholic solo from Wheeler, gradually expanding into a lengthy, blissed out honeymoon night reverie from the entire ensemble.

There’s so much going on across the course of ‘Spirits Rejoice!’, so many musical, geographic and historical currents overlapping and intersecting, that picking it all apart would prove a formidable task – and a potentially headache-inducing and unnecessary one, I would suggest. For all the big names and notions involved here, this album is absolutely not the kind of disc you need to be some kind of jazz buff to appreciate.

On the contrary, the music herein is just so massively, overwhelmingly enjoyable, so welcoming and universal in its appeal, that it seems like a better idea to quit analysing it altogether, to quit yakking and instead just to drink it all in, exalting in the fact that it exists and is here with us on whatever’s left of planet earth. It’s a language-killing, thought-stopping, gate-opening, soul-fortifyingly amazing record, in the best possible way. It is aptly named, in short.

(Vinyl copies are still available direct from Café Oto at the time of writing.)

Labels: album reviews, comps & reissues, Louis Moholo Octet

1. Gene Clark – No Other LP (4AD)




So I know it feels all kinds of wrong to accord the 1 spot on this list to a hoary old canonical classic which by my reckoning has been widely and affordably available for years, but – this is Gene Clark’s ‘No Other’, fergodsake. They could re-issue the damned thing every other week so far as I’m concerned, and if a few more sorry souls tune in each time around, none of the plastic n’ cardboard will have gone to waste.

Readers who remain unfamiliar with this one will just have to believe me when I try to reassure them that, in this instance, the Mojo writers got it right. If you’ve ever found yourself enticed by Gram Parsons’ promise of Cosmic American Music but disappointed by the fact that his stuff (good tho it is) basically sounds like straight up country… I believe this may have been the record you were actually looking for.

There has been an unedifying trend in the early 21st century for every solo artist or indie band who made a few quid to immediately hue toward The Epic, recording precious and bombastic personal song-cycles in readiness for the end-of-year lists and the invitation to recreate them at the Albert Hall with a twenty-piece band and so on. Naturally, these records have almost always been godawful, forgettable guff, but their sickly memory can be instantly eradicated by dropping the needle on ‘No Other’ and hearing Gene Clark, one day in the mid-70s, rousing himself from a sundazed stupor of substance abuse and chronic self-sabotage, making a few phonecalls, booking some studio time, and proceeding to swim fucking laps around the rim of the cloud-capped musical grail which has so consistently eluded the well-scrubbed contenders of our own era.

Naturally I didn’t shell out the £100+ required for the big, box set version of this reissue with sleeve notes and documentaries and so forth (what do you think I am, someone’s dad or something?), so I remain ignorant of ‘No Other’s exact production circumstances, but basically it sounds as if Gene and credited producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye assembled a small army of the most gifted, consummate session players the world had to offer and drilled them until they were all playing exactly what they needed to play at any given moment across these eight colossally poignant, multi-faceted compositions.

Within these songs, gravelly nuggets of mordant, hard-won wisdom casually arise, delivered to us upon tendrils of tangled and baroque poetic sprawl, fragmentary images glimmering, withering and reviving once more upon each repeat play as the guitars and harpsichords fray and yearn, the backing singers swoon and the funk-savvy rhythm section kicks in like a double-shot of espresso. Gene’s voice itself meanwhile sounds like some distraught cowboy spirit guide, intercepted through those Webb/Campbell wires as he unfurls his scrolls of revelation and gives ol’ Percy Shelley a run for his money.

To my amateur ears, the new remaster of the album sounds a bit quieter than my old CD rip, with greater dynamic range seeming to give instrumental line more space once the volume is suitably adjusted, and dropping the compression which used to render the album’s relentless cosmic bombast rather tiring when played through in its entirety. A definite improvement, if I’m any judge.

Taken individually, each song on ‘No Other’ basically sounds like the kind of staggering masterpiece most artists could spend their entire career working up to. Together, they form like Voltron to make an uber-masterpiece of fearsome majesty, solid and palpable enough to eat up all this damn hyperbole and come back for more; one of those cultural artifacts which it is pretty much impossible to rate too highly.


2. David Behrman – On The Other Ocean LP  
(Lovely Music)





From February:

“Regardless of the processes that brought these recordings about, the results are serene, oceanic and absolutely delightful, veering away from academic, pure tone minimalism toward what I suppose may have been seen as the more cerebral end of the ‘new age’ spectrum. Drawing on my own listening experience, they certainly put me in mind of Emerald Web’s Silicon Valley laser show conjurations, Arthur Russell’s neo-classical ‘First Thought, Best Thought’ recordings, and some sort of perfect, shimmering dream of driving down through the hills to San Francisco harbour in a silent, pastel-coloured Cadillac powered by sunbeams. Rare and mirage-like 20th Century American Utopian vibes can be found here in abundance – an impossibly precious dream of compassionate, technologically-mediated progress, shining forever on black wax.”

(I’ve also subsequently been very much enjoying David Behrman’s Music With Memory album, recorded in collaboration with violinist Takehisa Kosugi and saxophonist Werner Durand, and reissued on the Alga Marghen label in 2017 – highly recommended.)


3. John Coltrane – Blue World LP  
(Impulse!/UMG)





So, yeah, I know the recent trend in “new, unheard album from legendary, god-like artist” releases has the potential to become teeth-grindingly tedious pretty quickly now that the major labels seem to have cottoned on to it as a good earner, and I’d demurred on these ‘new’ Coltrane albums in particular, on the basis that there are still a fair few old Coltrane albums I need to catch up with, but…. I happened to hear the take on ‘Blue World’ that gives this collection it’s name on the radio one day, and that was that - Universal Music Group got my dough (filtered through a friendly, independant local record shop, of course).

The sole ‘new’ composition uncovered on this session of alternate takes recorded by the classic Tyner/Garrison/Jones quartet in 1964 for use on the soundtrack to an otherwise obscure French-Canadian film (Gilles Groulx’s ‘Le Chat dans le Sac’), ‘Blue World’ itself is, indisputably, a keeper – a proto-cosmic nugget of blissed out grace, with Garrison’s lolloping, head-noddin’ bass line – initially doubled by Tyner on piano, before he begins twisting the groove in some characteristically interesting directions - pre-empting not only the rhythmic backbone of ‘A Love Supreme’ (recorded a few months later), but even Cecil McBee’s work on Alice’s psychedelic masterpiece ‘Journey in Satchidinanda’.

Elsewhere, quartet remain in a mellow, reflective kinda mood (presumably in keeping with the feel requested by director Groulx). The exquisitely tender ‘Naima’ has always been one of my favourite Coltrane numbers, so it’s great to be able to take in two alternate versions of it here (the second one particularly superb, with Trane throwing a few scale-shifting question marks into the central melody), and three takes of ‘Village Blues’ – originally from the 1961 ‘Coltrane Jazz’ album – are not to be sniffed at either, with the final one briefly evolving into a slightly more aggressive, though still light touch, modal work-out, Jones’ strident crash cymbal leading the way. Beginning with lengthy solos spots from both Garrison and Tyner before the boss eventually steps in to breath fire, the take on ‘Traneing In’ on side two stays pretty trad, dad, but is still totally sweet too.

As you’ll no doubt be aware, hearing these four guys playing together is basically the musical equivalent of watching the sun and moon rise simultaneously, so getting a bit more of it in ANY context is to be welcomed, irrespective of major label vinyl revival machinations, and these recordings do have a unique vibe to them that makes this album an invaluable addition to the Trane catalogue – a kind of low key, beautific kick-about, setting the scene and sing-posting new directions, before the boys began striding forward in earnest, cracking the next few big eggs of their leader’s hallowed discography.


4. Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit – April is the Cruellest Month LP (Blank Forms)





I’d long been aware of this one’s status as a storied landmark of Japanese guitar extremity, but Blank Forms’ 2019 reissue has definitely helped me achieve a new appreciation for the album, having previously only experienced it through some extremely low-res mp3s downloaded from god-knows-where.

The two cuts on side A keep it low key, axe-wise, with Takayanagi’s growly wah-wah scrapes looming in the background like some nocturnal hunting beast as the rest of the group (flautist/woodwind guy Kengi Mori, bassist/cellist Nobuyoshi Ino and percussionist Hiroshi Yamazaki) instead come to the fore, building a mordant, rain-soaked sprawl of kaidan-ish avant gloom and “bad night in the saw mill” free improv. But, it’s for the side long ‘My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart’ on the flip that this disc will really be remembered.

Therein, we hear one of the world’s most uncompromising guitarists going absolutely fucking postal across twenty plus minutes of howling, unrelenting chaos, pushing the physical limitations of flesh on strings on wood about as far as they’ll go before reaching a state of complete collapse.

It’s breath-taking, overwhelming stuff – Too Much on every level, as Takayanagi’s frothing, unhinged attack often makes it sound as he’s consumed the then non-existent rulebook for grind/death metal soloing and vomited that weak-ass shit back into the black heart of his own personal fury, whilst his equally hyped up collaborators follow suit, with Mori in particular going absolutely bat-shit on alto sax. (Even sounds as if someone’s twisting knobs on a analogue synth across the last five minutes or so – what gives?)

Somehow though, spread out across the track’s extended duration, this full bore, constantly climaxing sonic violence actually becomes a strangely meditative, cleansing experience – like sitting impassively at the calm centre of a city-totalling hurricane. It also, you’ll note, sounds almost exactly like Guttersnipe – no small boast for what is ostensibly a straight-to-tape 1975 jazz session, given the extended chains of magic, flashing LED covered boxes that band use to realise their sound.

5. Berto Pisano - Death Smiles on a Murderer OST 2xLP 
(Arrow)





‘Death Smiles on a Murderer’ is a quintessentially narcotic and incoherent Italian horror film from 1973 (I reviewed it here at my Other Place if anyone’s interested), but composer Berto Pisano arguably went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to composing the movie’s main theme – an epic, baroque fantasia which and which sounds like the accompaniment to a ballerina suffering from tuberculosis expiring during her final dance and witnessing the dust of her bones reforming itself into the shape of a gliding, celestial swan.

This remarkable melody – channelled in some instances through the inimitable vocal cords of Edda Dell’Orso - tunnels its way into the viewer’s brain across the course of the film like a flower-bearing, funereally-garbed earworm, and indeed, Arrow’s double LP soundtrack release features what feels like about a thousand variations on it, all equally wonderful.

Pisano continues to deliver elsewhere across these four sides of morbid delirium however, providing sinister stabs of exquisite fuzz guitar, abstract, percussion-led creep-outs, limpid orchestral atmospherics and even some ‘On The Corner’-style FX-filtered trumpet jams. Just about everything you could wish for in one of these things in other words – highly recommend for those who are in the mood (or wish to be).

Of course, there are inevitably also several clod-hopping, buzz-killing jaunty harpsichord waltz numbers provided to accompany the film’s ballroom scenes – very much the gothic horror equivalent of those god-awful ‘saloon piano’ tracks that tend to stink up Spaghetti Western soundtracks, guaranteed to send me leaping toward the turntable as if intercepting a thrown hand grenade… but that’s all part of the fun really, isn’t it?

Labels: Berto Pisano, best of 2019, comps & reissues, David Behrman, Gene Clark, John Coltrane, Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit

1. High Rise - II LP
(Black Editions)

Well, here we are folks – having once held an original pressing of this 1986 LP in my hands in an Osaka record shop before realising that the price tag was roughly equivalent to a salaryman’s monthly pay cheque, I now sit back and laugh in the face of collector elitism, as Black Editions once again do the lord’s work, their marginally cheaper 2018 reissue bringing this eternal, irreducible MONSTER OF ROCK back into circulation, to the sweaty, speechless delight of… well, me, for starters.

The year is important to note here I think. 1986. I mean, it’s a bit before my time, but I nonetheless feel confident in asserting that NOTHING sounded like this in 1986. For aficionados of the Japanese heavy psyche sound pioneered by the PSF label through the ‘90s and ‘00s, High Rise II can be considered Ground Zero, with all the weight of expectation that implies, but I’d also contest that the appeal of this disc extends way wider than that. To put it plainly: if you’ve ever banged your head or shaken your fists to the sound of loud, unapologetic rock music and retain a desire to do so, this’ll floor you.

Bassist/vocalist Nanjo Asahito may have taken his Rallizes-derived, static-gargling / feedback-bleeding recording aesthetic to more challenging extremes in his subsequent Mainliner project with Makoto Kawabata, but here the energy level of the rock n’ roll buzz remains high enough to actually spark flash-forwards to the similarly blown out ‘90s garage-punk excelsis of Teengenerate in places, if you can imagine that.

What I’m trying to say is: High Rise weren’t just pushing a load of formless, bonged out noise blather. High Rise ROCKED. Clearly drawing as much from Motorhead and ‘Raw Power’ as from the weird, intangible engine fumes left behind by Blue Cheer and The Velvets (the stated inspiration for many of their peers in the Tokyo psyche sweepstakes), High Rise did songs, and largely kept ‘em under six minutes too. If you claim to know what Nanjo-san is actually going on about in any of them, you are lying, quite frankly, but, even when they don’t have riffs to die for (ala the inadvertently Mudhoney-birthing epic ‘Pop Sicle’), they still kick out the kind of smoke-belching, punkoid churn that would have seen Lemmy & co happily through to the end of another lager-blackened night.

Few of High Rise’s precursors though dared storm the gates of godly feedback with quite the howling gusto displayed here, and crucially – oh, so crucially – none of them had a guy like Munehiro Narita flipping out over those pulverising blocks of chord either.

Carve that name in stone, brothers and sisters! Munehiro Narita. WHAT a guitarist! I remember reading somewhere that, after High Rise’s glory days, he gave up on music for family reasons, but the Narita family’s gain is music’s considerable loss, and I weep at least weekly for my inability to listen to another couple of decades-worth of his evidently amazing talent. I realise that I will inevitably sound a bit dad-rockish, sitting here praising some lead guitarist’s technical wizardry, but seriously folks, this guy’s particular shred is just exhilarating, shrieking out across these tracks like a mass of sentient, crackling loose wires – he is a precise, jelly-fingered madman, conjuring thrilling, unpredictable shapes from the fuzz-wah trash can fire.

As you will have gathered, I quite like this record. It fairly rules. Certainly, if you’ve spent the early years of the 21st century taking tea with, say, Comets On Fire and their successor bands, Boris or The Heads, there is much to be gained from rolling the clock back to ‘86, courtesy of Black Editions. Sometimes the collector-scum get it right, I suppose.

Visit Black Editions here, listen and buy in U.S. dollars here, or check local dealers for vinyl if other currencies and non-eye-watering postage are preferred.


2. Causa Sui – Free Ride 2xLP
(El Paraiso)

More humungous, capital letters ROCK business here I’m afraid, but you should probably have expected that, in view of my recent tastes.

I am a total newcomer to Denmark’s El Paraiso label and to the members of the band Causa Sui who seem to be chiefly responsible for recording, designing and co-ordinating its prolific output, but I bought this double disc re-do of the band’s 2007 album ‘Free Ride’ largely on a whim, because I thought it looked cool.

I’m very glad I did.. Back at the ranch, first spin of the first side just flattened me with joy.

Though chiefly the vision of guitarist/producer Jonas Munk, at this point at least, Causa Sui seem to have comprised a trad four rock band piece line-up of monstrous potency, and as such they seem to have set out to record something akin to the Ultimate Heavy Rock Album – a task which they proceeded to bring off successfully, with an admirable mixture of stereotypical Scandinavian professionalism and raw, Anglo-Saxon gusto.

Seriously folks – if ever a group of long haired, muscular men are standing on an outdoor festival stage prior to sun-down with a wall of amplifiers behind them, THIS is the sound I want them to make.

The opening title cut throws us a feint, fading up bongos and acoustic strumming for an indelible bit of sun-dazed, Cali desert-psych (“..last night we crossed the border line..”) – it’s lovely, actually, but we know it’s just a tease. As soon as the second number (‘Lotus’) kicks in with a fearsome wash of low-end feedback, a preliminary drum roll and a spirited “yeee-eaaahhh…. ahwohall-ri-i-ight” from vocalist Kasper Markus, we know it’s ON. Even the sound of these guys strolling on for a contrived studio line-check is awesome.

Cue THE RIFF, rolling across the horizon like an MDMA-blasted 21st century ‘Immigrant Song’, crushing all in its path. At which point, I think I quite possibly went “yeee-eaaahhh…. ahwohall-ri-i-ight” myself.

As things progress, Causa Sui spread out, with tracks blithely skipping over the ten minute mark and Munk’s extended wah-wah excursions becoming so remarkable that I think he deserves some kind of award for the most sensitive feet in Northern Europe, yet they remain prostrate before the holy ideal of ‘70s stadium grandeur throughout. Even when echo-laden flute and burbling synths hove into view for the much-needed cool-down mid-way through side # 2, drummer Jakob Skøtt’s extraordinary, Bonham-worthy pummel doesn’t let up for long.

I realise there is no way for me to get through this without sounding like some deathless Classic Rock Magazine bore, so let’s just take a deep breath and get it over with: the production on this album is excellent (the drum sound alone is enough to send most home studio bods off into a fit of silent weeping), and the playing by all members of the band is excellent. The breadth of the compositions is excellent, and the energy of the core performances are excellently captured, even as the mix groans beneath the weight of overdubs.

I realise of course that the world is full to bursting with bands playing workable pastiches of this kind of music, particularly in Scandinavia, but few if any of them can capture the sheer, lightning-in-a-bottle, nostalgia-resistant exhilaration that Causa Sui uncorked for us here.

‘Free Ride’ is not some smug exercise in vintage store aesthetic box-ticking – it’s a record with the power to make grown (wo)men scream and cry and stagger backwards making weird, uncoordinated gestures of excitement, like surly teenagers who just heard ‘Led Zeppelin II’ or ‘Volume 4’ for the first time. Fuck me, is it ever good.

What was I doing back in 2007, anyway? Trying me force myself to like Animal Collective or something probably. God, what a pillock. Growing up is great.

Listen and buy direct from El Paraiso, or check yr usual vendors to avoid international postage (the label has both UK and US distribution).


3. Joe Henderson feat. Alice Coltrane – The Elements LP 
(Fantasy / Jazz Dispensary)

In spite of its misleadingly dull cover design, this unfairly-overlooked-until-recently 1973 LP is some heavy cosmic business, in some ways feeling very much like an unlikely follow-up to Alice C’s all-time classic ‘Journey in Satchidinanda’, even as the very different personnel and varied instrumentation spin it off in some rather more curious directions from that album’s beatific, all-consuming drone.

As the title suggests, the record is framed as a suite around the four elements (hey, why not), and, as the cover’s nomenclature also implies, West Coast tenor sax player and band leader Joe Henderson remains front and centre in the mix, and his strident, rhythmic playing – sometimes bordering on post-Ayler “discombobulated marching band” kind of territory – certainly provides a striking contrast to the lyrical flights of fancy that Pharaoh Sanders made de rigour for cosmic jazz horn-work. Meanwhile, the great Charlie Haden works his usual poised, cerebral magic on bass, pursuing a considerably more exploratory direction than Cecil McBee took with his hypnotic, rock-inspired electric bass lines on ‘..Satchidinanda’, even as he drops just as much of an eternal ear-worm on the opening ‘Fire’.

It is Alice herself however who plays the biggest role in defining this music’s feel and texture, variously playing piano, harp, harmonium and tamboura (often within the same track), and doing so with instinctive brilliance, as was her want. Drummers Kenneth Nash and Baba Duru Oshun further drive home the mystic feel, hitting up a tidal, open-ended storm of tablas, skittering rim shots, bells, shakers, woodblocks and cymbals, lounging behind their expanded kit like a pair of lazy, eight armed vishnus, doing anything in their power to avoid the indignities of a straight snare/kick drum hit. Taken to its furtherest extreme on ‘Air’ and ‘Water’, this lackadaisical approach to time-keeping leaves the music feeling entirely unmoored, lost in space.. which is all to the good, needless to say. (Nash also contributes a memorable spoken word incantation to the closing ‘Earth’, sounding baked out of his brain, if I may be so bold.)

Michael White’s violin remains a silent partner through much of this, but it’s nonetheless great to hear him crashing in for an extended solo on ‘Fire’, and undertaking a soaring duel with Henderson towards the end of ‘Air’, throwing a further spanner into the works of modern jazz’s expected sound palette.

Though ‘The Elements’ is basically an acoustic set, extensive use of overdubs and effects clearly sends us into post-‘Bitch’s Brew’ terrain – indeed, the hard echo applied to Henderson’s screeching, staccato blasts on ‘Fire’ seems to be directly riffing on Miles - whilst the general avoidance of extended solo spots in favour of a democratic, ego-free ocean of rhythmic, pulsing sound puts us firmly within the psychedelic continuum, with the record’s densest moments liable to put modern listeners into an almost Necks/Vibracathedral-esque headspace, even as Joe (like Miles before him) seems to be struggling to overcome his reliance upon boss man / band leader bombast.

Like most of Coltrane’s post-‘..Satchidinanda’ work, ‘The Elements’ pointedly sidesteps the clichés of “spiritual jazz” which she and her collaborators helped to create, instead opening up an endlessly rewarding sonic wormhole into the murky depths of collective mind-meld that the-thing-that-used-to-be-called-jazz was capable of morphing into through the early ‘70s. Doing their damnedest to bypass genre altogether, sessions like this always feel as if they could best be classified as pure psychedelic music, and needless to say, I can’t get enough of it.

The label page for this reissue is here, but check local dealers for copies and Youtube for the sounds and yada yada yada. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you this, do you?


4. Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Claude Vannier - 
Les Chemins De Katmandou LP 
(Finders Keepers)

I’ll confess, I get totally mixed up about all these iffy-sounding hippie/drug movies that Serge Gainsbourg seemed to spend much of his time participating in through the late ‘60s / early ‘70s – I mean, there are just so many of them. All persistently muttered about and mythologised by Francophile collectors, and all pointedly lacking in any kind of legitimate, English friendly exposure, they represent a cultural honey-trap that I have thus far resisted falling into. But, Finders Keepers assure us that the music for this particular one is THE HOLY GRAIL, so who am I to argue?

Never previously pressed to disc and allegedly sought out, Indiana Jones-style, for decades before the master tapes were finally discovered in a shoebox (or something), the painstakingly remastered results are indeed an extraordinary find, sounding for the most part like an illicit, sun-and-drug blasted celebration of everything that was brilliant about the decadent movie n’ music culture of Europe in the days when everything was pink and orange and fuzzy and scented with exotic spices, just before the cold, hard dawn of the 1970s began to harsh the buzz.

In slightly more practical terms, this means that the best tracks here (‘Pleasure Pit’, ‘Colin-Maillard’) sound as if some members of the same secret order of razor sharp session men who went on to define the sound of Gainsbourg & Vannier’s storied collaborations over the next few years gate-crashed the sessions for a Bruno Nicolai Jess Franco soundtrack.

Which is to say: deeply inappropriate sitars and sundry other ‘ethnic’ droney things roar and jangle in a demented ring-o-roses as flick-knife lead guitar broods and pounces, Vannier’s Clavinet dredges up the faux-archaic riffs from the title city’s crumbling, sandstone finery and the tightest rhythm section in existence cook up a muscle-twitching lysergic groove. Heaven - just pure heaven.

What a time to have been alive, when you could lay back in whatever hip pad you happened to be in at the time and just dig this shit, without having to worry about environmental devastation, cultural misappropriation, global inequality, sexually transmitted diseases and basic human rights.

I mean, so long as we all keep rutting like dogs, there’ll be another generation along in a minute to sort all that out, won’t there? So let’s smoke smack whilst the sun is shining and keep on rocking those sitars….

(…those BASTARDS.)

Anyway. Elsewhere, things go a bit haywire in the way that reconstituted movie soundtrack LPs often tend to, with a brief collection of slightly more traditional Vannier string pieces (not bad actually), a field-recorded acoustic guitar and jew’s harp jam entitled ‘Opium Den’ (nice atmos), and even a brief outburst of some murky Jujouka style flute n’ drum type business (hmm..). Must have been quite a movie.

Oh, and as for Serge meanwhile? Well, his name’s on the front of the record, as you will have noted, but if he’s hiding in here somewhere, I can’t find him. So if the absence of the dirty old bugger muttering anyway in his usual charming fashion constitutes a deal-breaker for you, please bear that in mind before rushing to place an order.

Not ALL of the music rescued from oblivion on this LP is revelatory by any means – if I’m splitting hairs, perhaps FK could have cut some of the extraneous bits and bobs and cut it down to a 10”? - but the highlights are so damned high that a few successive spins will probably leave even the most steadfast of 21st century modernists blubbering away in the corner, chanting “…make it 1969, make it 1969…”. Which I THINK is a recommendation? (It certainly works for me.)

Buy the LP from Finder-Keepers here, but please note that, for some reason (licensing restrictions, perhaps?), they have not made it available to sample, stream or download online in any form. Bummer.


5. Cosmic Invention – Help Your Satori Mind 2xLP 
(Drag City)

As much as I love preposterous Japanese psyche-rock, Masaki Batoh’s band Ghost have always just been a bit *too* preposterous for my liking. This is frustrating, as there were some superb musicians in the group’s classic line-up, most notably singularly inspired guitarist Michio Kurihara (ex-White Heaven), whom you might also know from his early ‘00s collaborations with Boris and Damon & Naomi.

As such, the moments on the one or two Ghost albums I’ve sampled over the years when the band are allowed to get a groove on are pretty spectacular, but…. Batoh’s particular brand of baleful, avant-acid-folk conjuration just really tests my patience, to be honest. I “cannot hang”, I believe is the phrase.

So, when Drag City announced this expanded reissue of a set of mid-‘90s recordings that see the ghost line-up kicking back on some unapologetic classic rock jams under the name Cosmic Invention, after Batoh apparently let them off the leash as means of chilling out after a particularly trying time laying down one of his albums, I had to take a chance and pull the trigger.

Whilst the resulting album is unlikely to flip the switch for anyone not already well disposed to this-sort-of-thing, it’s certainly a sweet retreat for those listeners apt to describe themselves as “heads”, as these hirsute Tokyo retro-warriors gradually loosen up and unravel their collective chops across four lengthy sides of low-key freak-out, digging up the hoariest ol’ free festival era influences they can find.

Much time is naturally spent in pure Quicksilver/SF ballroom territory, vintage organs burbling deliciously as Kurihara’s reverb-drenched picking spins celestial webs of light, but the earlier, more song-based material sees some hulking, Band of Gypsies-style business going down too, with Batoh even deigning to temporarily descend from the astral plain for some straight up rock band front-man duty on side # 1.

Elsewhere, the ghosts of Traffic and (whisper it) Santana are invoked and dismissed, and, quite a lot of the time (this album basically feels as if it lasts forever), things get weird, with long stretches of ominous, burbling analogue electronics, tinkling echoed bells and congas contributing to a sort of sinister, lounge feel, buoyed up by what I think we’re duty-bound to call ‘kosmiche grooves’. I think there's even a saxophone at one point. If these bits had been done by some Germans in the early ‘70s, folks would be murdering each other for copies, but y’know – time and place. What comes around goes around. Or whatever.

the celestial Boz Scaggs cover on side 2 is absolutely sweet, and the final side, aptly named ‘Long Jamming’, is a real monster, with the sainted Kurihara really going to town across twenty whole synapse-sparking minutes. For a guitar-fixated fool like me, it’s pretty unbeatable.

Basically the sound of a bunch of guys just doin’ their thing with no particular goal in mind, Cosmic Invention are unlikely to change lives or minds any time soon, but if you’ve already got the sprawling, psyche-rock pneumonia or the Tokyo Flashback flu, then congratulations – your life-long background accompaniment to creative endeavour and/or filing your tax returns is right here.

Buy or download direct from Drag City here, or listen to some bits here.

Labels: Alice Coltrane, best of 2018, Causa Sui, comps & reissues, Cosmic Invention, High Rise, Jean-Claude Vannier, Joe Henderson, Serge Gainsbourg

World Spirituality Classics # 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda 2xLP 
(Luaka Bop)

You might have been forgiven for thinking that, after Alice Coltrane dropped out of the secular music world to devote the remainder of her life to leading the monastic spiritual community she helped found in Southern California, her subsequent recordings of devotional/meditational music might have taken on somewhat of an, uh, ambient, New Age-y sort of character..?

So I had always assumed at least, but, well, time to get wise folks, because there’s not even the slightest whiff of cheese about the extraordinary, unclassifiable pieces assembled here by Luaka Bop. Compromising dense, over-powering monoliths of ultra-compressed electronic textures, massed voices, bone-rattling hand percussion, occasional tambora drones and gospel/deep soul influenced reiterations of ancient Hindu mantras, this is music that determinedly refuses to ever fade into the background, informed by the same uncompromising approach to composition and arrangement that characterised such challenging discs as ‘Spiritual Unity’ in earlier years.

That each track here begins sounding entirely different from the last, yet swiftly engages us in exactly the same kind of sensuous, head-nodding fugue as its predecessor, is testament to both the power and the range of endless possibilities that Alice managed to channel from her spiritual beliefs back into her music.

Existing outside of any of the expected sonic clichés, these are evocations of a terrifying, beatific godhead that has no connection whatsoever to either the Cathedral-reverbed reverence of Western devotion or the mellow, cloud-dwelling man-god of post-hippie Californian spirituality. As with all of Alice Coltrane’s best work, this music feels like peeking through the gold-flecked bead curtain into the cyclopean throne room of a divinity who radiates such love it can crush you like an ant. An endless, throbbing kaleidoscope of sound crushed down to cassette-sized doses of pupil-dilating oblivion, it’s… quite the thing.

I dread to think what ‘World Sprituality Classics # 2’ is liable to consist of, but this is certainly one hell of a good start.


Tokyo Flashback PSF ~ Psychedelic Speed Freaks! ~ 2xCD (PSF)

The death of Hideo Ikeezumi, founder of the PSF record shop and label, at the start of 2017 came as sad news indeed for anyone familiar with the exquisite mixture of maximalist psychedelic rock and borderless free sound that his label became a by-word for through its glory-days in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Hitting shelves in seemingly record time after Ikeezumi’s passing, this double CD tribute/fundraiser compilation of unreleased material from acts associated with the label serves as a testament to the strength of the legacy PSF leaves behind, effortlessly transcending the limited expectations that such a rushed, odds-and-sods sort of effort would normally command.

Of course, hearing newly disinterred cuts from core PSF groups like High Rise, White Heaven, Fushitsusha and Overhang Party is worth the entry price alone (the latter in particular provide an awesome re-working of their classic track from the second ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comp, now pleasingly retitled for English-speakers as ‘Now Appearing! Naked Existence’), but, as was often the case with this label, it’s the more unusual, less rock-orientated stuff creeping in around the edges that often proves most beguiling; terrifying, Lynchian noir improv from .es, angst-drenched Korean psych-folk from Kim Doo Soo, minimalist industrial desolation from Reizen, beautifully gentle, heart-felt free-playing from Niseaporia, and the set even ends, poignantly I’m sure, with a Bach violin sonata rearranged for solo guitar by Hideaki Kondo.

All of these cuts are by turns furious, challenging, lyrical and enchanting, opening our eyes to rarely glimpsed corners of a relentlessly creative musical underground that continues to thrive in Japan and Far-East, much akin I’d imagine to the experience Western listeners brave enough to pick up those first imported ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comps must have enjoyed when they first appeared back in the ‘90s.

I’m not sure how widely available this new comp is outside of Japan, but it is accompanied by a lovely bilingual booklet, so distribution to English–speaking territories was presumably an intention, assuming any overseas distributors could be persuaded that anyone would still be willing to buy CDs. Anyway, should you see it on sale anywhere, please don’t hesitate to prove these hypothetical distributors wrong by snapping it up, it’s extremely worthwhile.

(It’s worth giving a shout-out at this point to the U.S.-based imprint The Black Editions, who have recently embarked on a programme of reissuing the PSF label’s key releases on vinyl for the first time. I don’t actually have their re-release of the first ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comp in my hands yet, but their noble efforts certainly threaten to do a great deal of damage to both my ears and bank balance in 2018.)


Coil – Time Machines 2xLP (Dais)

Whilst I of course respect the unique aesthetic they created around themselves, and their pivotal role in the wider UK 80s/90s underground, I must confess the music of Coil has never really been my cup of psilocybin-laced tea… however, there are few things I enjoy more in life than a fucking good drone, so I can definitely make an exception for this project, which was created by the core Coil duo in collaboration with Drew McDowell, and originally issued in 1998 solely under the name ‘Time Machines’.

And, make no mistake, this is some hardcore drone going on right here. When initially dropping the needle, first time listeners may be irked by the idea that they’ve just paid top dollar for some blank oscillator tones, but their tune will soon change as things progress and the full weight of these pieces makes itself felt.

Though this is utilitarian music, created primarily to aid meditation and ritual, like the Alice Coltrane record discussed above, it is about as far away from ‘background’ music as it is possible to get, instead setting out to capture your ‘foreground’ with the relentless determination of a swarming nanobot army.

This is music designed to completely transform the atmosphere of the environment in which it is played. Each of the record’s four sides is named after a psychotropic chemical compound, and the Coil boys seem to have done their damnedest to actually try to create a corresponding physiological change in their listeners through the sound of each piece.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they succeed, but they certainly got pretty close. Play this record at appropriate volume, and work or writing becomes impossible. Your concentration will disintegrate, your attention will drift from the screen/desk to some blank area on the wall. Your mind will eventually start to empty, as if someone pulled the plug, and Coil’s stated intention of creating “tones to facilitate travel through time” will start to sound a lot less fanciful. Then, about ten or twelve minutes in, when you’re sufficiently monged, they’ll suddenly twist a knob and drop the kind of bass frequency that will make you cack yourself wondering if a passenger jet is about to fall out of the sky above your house. The bastards.

Needless to say, in contrast to the vast majority of ‘drone’ records I own, this is not something to be thrown on casually, for a bit of relaxation before bed time. If you want to get down with ‘Time Machines’, you’d better cross your legs on the floor, fire up the incense, dim the lights - go whole hog with it and let’s see if we can’t make that clock start to go backwards.


Midori Takada – Through The Looking Glass LP 
(We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want)

Taking a somewhat more personable approach to the art of the drone, this until recently highly sought after disc sees minimal/ambient composer Midori Takada doing her utmost to bypass human thought patterns and instead replicate the ebb and flow of natural sound, utilising an intriguing palette of African and Asian percussion, pump organ, coca-cola bottles, bells and a recorder, along with what appear to be some interesting and unconventional recording/over-dubbing techniques. The results are extremely compelling – so much so that it feels almost crass to waste time trying to convey an impression of them in words. Let’s just say that ‘Through The Looking Glass’ feels like one of those masterworks of quietly unassailable beauty that is likely to just get better and better the more we play it through the remainder of our lives.

Suffice to say, both ‘Mr Henri Rousseau’s Dream’ on the A-side and relatively brief ‘Trompe l’oeil’ on the B are amongst my most-played tracks of the year - absolutely delightful vistas of nocturnal faux-forest ambience, guaranteed to promote relaxed breathing and a general sense of well-being just as surely as the aforementioned Coil record is to fuck with your head. Absolutely delightful stuff, even as the somewhat more baleful ‘Catastrophe’ proceeds to drag us into unsettling realms of pulsating, rhythmic unease.

This record’s extraordinary cover art – by Yohko Ochida – is also worth a mention. Click on the picture above to enlarge and spend some time looking at it. You will be a happier person as a result.


Maki Asakawa – s/t 2xLP (Honest Jons)

One of those “if she didn’t exist, they’d have had to invent her” type figures, Maki Asakawa’s appearance in the assortment of gorgeously reproduced monochrome photographs accompanying this compilation of her early recordings speaks for itself. Swathed from head to toe in black, with neat bangs, heaviest-possible-eyelashes and an ever-present, unfiltered cigarette, she is perhaps most-easily characterised as the Japanese New Wave’s characteristically studied take on an ‘avant-chanteuse’ archetype, perhaps pitched somewhere between Juliet Greco, Anna Karina and Nico, I suppose.

Originally a native of Iskikawa prefecture in Northern Japan, Asakawa’s devotion to the sound of American jazz/blues singers (Billie Holiday in particular) led her to begin performing in Tokyo and Yokahama cabaret clubs, where she soon fell under the wing of avant-garde film and theatre director Shuji Terayama (I mean, of course she did), subsequently picking up a record contract, a formidable reputation a s a live performer and a devoted following amongst Japan’s internationally-minded, left wing student movement in short order.

Truth be told, those anticipating hair-raising avant hi-jinks from Asakwawa’s music will be initially disappointed by the fact that the majority of the recordings presented here remain fairly conventional. For the most part, these are nice songs (a mixture of Terayama compositions, American folk/blues standards reworked for the Japanese language and some Asakawa originals) with strong melodies and pleasant, minimal arrangements, anchored by Asakawa’s defiant and heart-felt delivery, which, though never as gravelly or tormented as her blues idols, nonetheless sits within an unusually low register for a Japanese female vocalist of her era.

Though it would be easy for a casual listener to mistake these tunes for prime examples of enka (the oft-wonderful genre of melancholic, folk-derived pop ballads that dominated the Japanese charts through the ‘60s and ‘70s), in fact Asakawa’s fans and musical collaborators saw her at the time as standing very much in opposition to enka orthodoxy, rejecting the overwrought arrangements, melodramatic sentiments and implicit nationalism of the genre in favour of a more stripped back, “authentic”, Western blues/folk-based approach.

Certainly, the shimmering acoustic strumming, gentle fluting, brushed drumming, smouldering cocktail jazz and tasteful rock/soul jamming showcased here make a pleasant change from the squeaky trumpets and stabbing strings of more commercial enka, even as the uniquely sinuous, serpentine melodies of the genre are still very much in evidence, resulting in a rather beguiling hybrid form that undoubtedly proved very influential on later folk-pop performers such as Carmen Maki and Morita Doji.

Whilst these songs are unlikely to blow many minds in the English-speaking world in 21st century, they are nonetheless extremely fine performances – the perfect accompaniment to a glass of single malt enjoyed on a Sunday evening, and nectar of the gods for anyone with a particular yen for the hyper-specific, monochromatic aesthetic of Japan’s late ‘60s cultural new wave – and the rare occasions on Asakawa and her collaborators throw caution to the wind and get way-out-there (such as on the George Harrison-affiliated raga-rock behemoth ‘Govinda’, or the creeped out downer lament of ‘Onna’) are worth the entry price alone.


Emma de Angelis - Forgiveness b/w Trip/Plankton 7” 
(Finders Keepers)

Hey, did you know that, before she went on to pursue a career as a graphic artist, the young sister of Italio-soundtrack legends Guido and Maurizio de Angelis briefly had a bash at following in her brothers’ footsteps? That knowledge was enough to get me to bite on this short but sweet pair of tracks unearthed by Finders Keepers, and, as it transpires, they’re both absolute bangers, show-casing a heavily rock/psychedelia-skewed sound that allowed Ms de Angelis to trespass upon the oft-male-dominated realm of Italian movie/library music with verve, confidence, and, more importantly, wailing fuzz leads and an absolutely bad-ass walking bass-line on ‘Forgiveness’, wheezing synth sirens on ‘Trip’ and a lovely, plaintive folk-ropck-ish melody on ‘Plankton’ . A very enjoyable six minute palette cleanser and no mistake.

Labels: Alice Coltrane, best of 2017, Coil, comps & reissues, Emma de Angelis, Maki Asakawa, Midori Takada, PSF