Ultra limited, LP only, space-psych match up between Philadelphia's masters of druggy space rock and Detroit's psych sludge outfit Buck Paco. Bardo Pond are on fire here, heavy and huge and super intense, a blurry, dense, buzzy, drugged out, psych-space freakout. Super distorted and dizzyingly shambolic and so utterly divine. Spiky tendrils of squirming feedback, droning buzz guitar, simple motorik drumming, all slithering and convulsing, before about halfway through everything slows down to lurching acid drenched krautrockiness, pounding and pulsing, beneath tangled squalls of freak-psych guitars. Definitely one of the 'Pond's wildest and heaviest recordings.
We had never heard of Buck Paco before, but they manage to kick up quite a shitstorm. A murky and drone-y and relentless dirge, with an ultra distorted, repetitive rhythm beaneath churning rumbles and a creepy minor key guitar figure looped and repeated endlessly. The second half of Buck Paco's side (just noticed both bands start with BP, and they sound a bit similar, could Buck Paco actually BE Bardo Pond? Hmmm....) does away with the drums completely, or at the very least buries them way way back in the mix, adds a bit of sitar, and turns their drone-y sludge into some sort of free-guitar-psych / Appalachian folk hybrid, with strange distorted melodies over simple strums and mournful riffing, all smothered in layers of amp buzz, tape hiss and instrument hum. Pressed on 140 gram virgin vinyl, packaged in beautiful hand screened covers and limited to 600 copies!
One of two splits on this week's list from local psychedelic space rockers and aQ faves Carlton Melton, both amazingly appropriate team-ups. The other one is a super limited 7" with UK space rockers Mugstar, and then there's this, a vinyl-only split with legendary Phillie psych rockers Bardo Pond, who prove to be the perfect match for Carlton Melton slow burning laid back psychedelic drift.
CM's side-long "Slow Growth" (a title by way of an early AQ Carlton Melton review by our very own Scott) definitely describes CM's sidelong jam here, easily one of their best, and most musically cohesive, finding sharp sonic focus even amidst the seemingly freeform drift, the track beginning as a soft hazy swirl, softly churning guitars over what sounds like whipping wind, the vibe tense and ominous and darkly dreamy, it takes a few minutes for the song proper to kick in, but when it does, the guitars immediately swoop in and distort, blossoming into massive crumbling swells, heaving and howling over delicate crystalline strum and simple propulsive motorik drumming. The drums eventually drop out, leaving the sound to slowly implode, growing muddier and murkier, stretched way out into muted drones, laced with shards of feedback and little fragmented melodies, all before another slow build, back into a seriously dense sonic squall, still muted and murky, but seriously black hole dense, a roiling cloud of blackened psych, which billows wildly until the drums gradually return, offering a rhythmic anchor and guiding the track to its final resting place.
Bardo Pond counter with one of the best tracks we've heard from them, the sound fierce and epic and lush and SO heavy, launching immediately into a gorgeous sprawl of free form psychedelia, clouds of swirling guitars, tangled melodies, the drums loose and free and awesomely wild, but still managing to somehow hold everything together, but just barely. The vibe is blissed out and druggy, it's the sort of jam, that could go on forever, and sort of does, and is somehow simultaneously static and hypnotic, but also impossibly active and constantly shifting, a swirl of melodies and textures, the guitars unleashing some seriously kick ass leads, filling the sky with sonic contrails and swirling chordal clouds, the flute shows up late, and flutters subtly beneath the ever intensifying guitar freakouts, the vocals come in even later, and then only briefly, but add the perfect sort of gauzy / ethereal vibe to the proceedings, the song seeming to just organically wind down, leaving us to imagine that somewhere else there's a version, that does in fact go on forever.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
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Not actually a Brigitte Bardot record...it's just music from films she was in...kind of so-so.
Some of you young'uns might not be familiar with this mighty blonde sexpot, but she sure set her fair share of hearts and loins aflame back in the sixties. Va va voom! She was perhaps less known for her singing than for her voluptuous physique, but she did indeed coo a few tunes back then, and did quite a fine job at it too. We just got this reissued Show album, and it showcases Bardot in all of her sweet and sexy glory. Kicky rocked up tunes, lusty slow orchestral ballads and saucy funky numbers, she did it all. This reissue includes the original fifteen album tracks plus four bonus cuts. Fab!
Whoa! From the get-go, Bobby Bare Jr. is revvin' up his country rock motor full throttle. Is he drivin' a tractor? Heck no! It's more of a bulldozer or steamroller! The Longest Meow just might be his most spirited full length to date (yes, studio albums included)! A somewhat unconventional live album, apparently it was recorded over a marathon eleven hour session back in March. His backing band on it is nothing short of star-studded. The Young Criminals Starvation League includes folks from My Morning Jacket, And You Will Know Us From The Trail Of Dead, and Lambchop. Yee haw! As an added treat, amid his rowdy Americana original numbers you'll find an odd barebones cover of The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind". Always endearingly loose and irreverent.
First long player from Bare Wires, a band best known around these parts for being the OTHER band of the guy from Snake Flower 2, whose recent full length knocked us on our asses with it's wild hybrid of distorted garage rock and drone-y druggy FX drenched space rock. Bare Wires are a whole different beast, less heavy, less spacey, but way more poppy, and garage-y, and thankfully equally as catchy. Where SF2 reminded us of a garage rock Hawkwind or Monster Magnet, Bare Wires are all classic garage and power pop, but with just enough of that modern warp-age to keep it interesting.
Record opener "Artificial Clouds" pretty much sets the tone, and in the process, sets itself up as another contender for jam of the year, total tripped out effects wrapped around some seriously rocking lo-fi twisted garage noise pop, with some incredible guitar parts and a main hook to die for. A record full of tracks like this should have Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh & Onlys and the rest of that crowd sweating it big time. And that's exactly what this is, hooky, jangly, melodic, frenetic, catchy as fuck, a little spacey and druggy for sure, but way more heavy on the classic power pop and sixties garage jangle, which is just fine by us!
NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE! With TWO bonus tracks, not on the lp...
First long player from Bare Wires, a band best known around these parts for being the OTHER band of the guy from Snake Flower 2, whose recent full length knocked us on our asses with its wild hybrid of distorted garage rock and drone-y druggy FX drenched space rock. Bare Wires are a whole different beast, less heavy, less spacey, but way more poppy, and garage-y, and thankfully equally as catchy. Where SF2 reminded us of a garage rock Hawkwind or Monster Magnet, Bare Wires are all classic garage and power pop, but with just enough of that modern warp-age to keep it interesting.
Record opener "Artificial Clouds" pretty much sets the tone, and in the process, sets itself up as another contender for jam of the year, total tripped out effects wrapped around some seriously rocking lo-fi twisted garage noise pop, with some incredible guitar parts and a main hook to die for. A record full of tracks like this should have Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh & Onlys and the rest of that crowd sweating it big time. And that's exactly what this is, hooky, jangly, melodic, frenetic, catchy as fuck, a little spacey and druggy for sure, but way more heavy on the classic power pop and sixties garage jangle, which is just fine by us!
Latest blast of kick ass hook heavy garage pop from Mr. Matthew Melton and company, and it's another doozy, ditching the reverb and low fidelity that so many of their sonic brethren rely on, in favor of some KILLER songs, as well as a sound and production that sounds like it was transported here direct from the sixties. Opener "Don't Ever Change" was the A side of a single we were never able to get, and it's an impossible (and impossibly kick ass!) blend of glammy T.Rex stomp, fuzzy sixties pop and Beach Boys surf rock, all crunchy jangly guitars, lots of oooh's and aaah's, a hook to die for, and some super strange production with the second guitar swooping in from one channel, way louder than the rest of the mix, adding a strange bit of psychedelia to the proceedings. Once we got past that first track (after listening to it about a million times), the rest of the record unfolded similarly, Melton's knack for conjuring up classic pop unmatched these days, and the sound, we can't help but think we're listening to some lost collection of sixties Nuggets or something. As always, regardless of the sound, or the production, it's all about the songs, and BW are tough to beat when it comes to classic hooks, just check out the title track, fuzzy, jangly, a little bit surfy, a little bit rockabilly, bur pure pop at its core, and that coupled with the weird mix, the vocals panned hard right, the drums panned hard left, only makes it that much cooler and weirder. As the record progresses the sound gets a bit heavier, and the Who vibe that was all over past records resurfaces here big time (check out "Sweet Little Stranger), as does some Stoogesy swagger.
As always, killer stuff, and like with past records, we find ourselves not really wanting to listen to anything else!
We all went so totally crazy for Snake Flower 2, so we were psyched to discover that the dude from SF2 had another band, a more old school garage rock combo called Bare Wires, which as we might have expected, is just as kick ass. Imagine SF2 with less of a Hawkwind / Monster Magnet vibe, and more of a Lyres / Gories sort of sixties garage vibe. Jangly, lo-fi garage punk with lots of jangle guitars, reverbed snotty vox, simple stripped down rhythms, and best of all some super blown out, in-the-red psychedelic leads, so loud they nearly blot out the rest of the song.
The flipside is way more poppy, a sweet slice of classic AM radio power pop jangle, lo-fi, and sing songy, catchy as hell, still stripped down, but less distorted and more melodic. Folks into current garage rock revival weirdos like Thee Oh Sees and the Fresh & Onlys will definitely dig this, same overall sonic vibe, just way more fuzzed out and retro and genuinely garage-y.
We love Matthew Melton, we love his Band Snake Flower 2, and we love these guys, Bare Wires. Melton is a master of pop songs, no matter how they're presented, whether as the druggy heavy Hawkwind / Monster Magnet space rock of Snake Flower 2, or the classic sixties garage jangle of Bare Wires, every song is perfectly crafted, melodic, catchy as fuck, super rocking. Even totally stripped down the songs get lodged in your head like crazy.
So here's the latest from Bare Wires, and Melton and Co.'s influences are even more obviously on display this time around, the Kinks, the Who, the Flamin' Groovies, classic seventies power pop, the Shoes, the Nerves, the Diodes, all bands we've referenced before with Melton, but considering how many modern retro garage rock outfits there are, it's a little fascinating that so many rely more on sound and production and attitude and vibe, than on songcraft, so when someone is approaching garage rock with impeccable songcraft, well, it doesn't take much to leave the rest of those bands in the dust, which these guys most certainly do.
On Seeking love, not only are the songs great, but the sound and the production seem totally vintage, if you played this for some garage rock collector and told them this was some lost 7" from some unknown group in the seventies, they would absolutely buy it. And the thing is, the sound suits the song. Sure, someone could have recorded these songs on a boombox, and run the whole thing through a million distortion boxes, and buried the vocals in reverb, and mastered it so all the levels were WAY in the red, and the legions of modern warped garage pop obsessive would be flipping their lids, but at the risk of sounding like your mother, why go to such lengths to disguise a fantastic song, and fuck all that noise, any on can spit out some generic by the numbers rock and roll, and fuck it up enough that it sounds twisted and far out and innovative, and probably people won't notice the lack of songs, but with a batch of songs this catchy, and groovy and jangly and goddamn great, well nothing to do but strap on the headphones and rock the fuck out!
Another blast of killer garage-y power pop from Oakland's Bare Wires, whose lp Artificial Clouds we raved about a while back (which was reissued on TAPE, and is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and which just so happens to be the work of the same guy behind Snake Flower 2, who were responsible for one of our favorite records of the last few years...
Anyway, these two short sharp bursts of jangle and twang are total sunshine-y old school power pop, sounding like they were transported straight from the early eighties, heck the late seventies, these two jams could just as easily have come off one of those Yellow Pills comps, Dwight Twilley Band, The Only Ones, the Nerves, The Flamin' Groovies, the Diodes, gone is much of the garagey grit and grime, although the sound is still rough around the edges, but both tracks here sound totally classic and vintage. Bouncy and hooky, jangly and catchy, killer guitar melodies, dreamy vocals, the B side is even poppier, with a distinctly sixties pop vibe, super stripped down, still jangly, revved up a bit it could be a lost Ramones Bside, but strip it even further down and it's some classic jukebox jam. So awesome. Surprised Bare Wires (and Snake Flower 2 for that matter), haven't yet been pegged as the next big thing. We can't imagine that time is very far off though...
Another fantastic release from Aussie reissue label Omni, this one from country legend Bobby Bare. It's a compilation of two seventies records, the first, Hard Time Hungrys, a record released in 1975, in the midst of the oil crisis, finds Bare teamed up with Shel Silverstein (who of course wrote the childhood classic, The Giving Tree), who wrote the lyrics for this darkly political record detailing the economic and social decline of the time, the sound classic country, Bare's vocals deep and soulful, the arrangements spare, but a bit lush, the standard instrumentation augmented by some keyboards and other studio polish, with the record balanced between old school classic country, and a more lush pop sound, that classic seventies country pop that was all over the radio at the time, the record rife with some really great songs (and a few hits), the lyrics cutting and incisive, but molded into some surprisingly melodies and some serious hooks.
This reissue tacks on another record, the following year's The Winner And Other Losers, which ended up being a much more popular record, due in no small part to the inclusion of Bare's version of "Dropkick Me, Jesus" which was a HUGE hit, and still ranks up there as one of THEE best (and funniest) spirituals ever. But the whole record is overflowing with great songs, a few co-written by Silverstein again, including "The Winner" which comes accompanied by a laugh track(!). There's lots of could/should/would have been classics, and definitely finds Bare at his best. And like all Omni reissues, meticulously researched, and fantastically remastered, with a huge booklet full of liner notes and rare photos!
Like father like son! We've heard quite a bit from Mr. Bobby Bare Jr. over the last few years, but we haven't heard from his papa, Mr. Bobby Bare Sr., himself quite a venerable veteran country artist, in over two decades! He's resurfaced from his lengthy musical absence with this album which was co-produced by his son and fellow country artist Bobby Bare Jr. along with Lambchop's Mark Nevers. It's clear that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Moon Was Blue features a batch of old country classics such as "Everybody's Talkin'" (previously recorded by Harry Nilsson and included on the Midnight Cowboy movie soundtrack), "Love Letters In The Sand" and "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan". Not at all surprisingly they definitely retain the old country heart 'n' soul of the originals. Although these are current recordings, they almost seems like long-lost treasures from a bygone era.
Since Jeff Tweedy and his Wilco comrades have moved further into the more esoteric territory and Paul Westerberg has gotten his boot stuck in his cranky, slipshod bluesy Grandpaboy hole, it's nice to find that Bobby Bare Jr. has ably stepped up to fill their catchy country rock vacancy. On From The End Of Your Leash, he's offered up a nicely varied selection of tunes -- some are warm and golden with piano, some swagger, some have slink'n'pluck surf-inflections. Much better than his somewhat disappointing "OK - I'm Sorry..." ep and his "Young Criminals' Starvation League" debut which we liked quite a bit. Bare's voice has that endearingly withery, slightly inebbriated hoarseness (much like that of Drivin' N' Cryin's Kevn Kinney, Tweedy and Westerberg). To boot, his often twistedly funny without being juvenile lyrics will keep ya entertained. His Young Criminals' Starvation League backing band this time includes such luminaries as Will Oldham, Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard), Paul Niehaus (Calexico, Lambchop), and the excellent vocal accompaniment of Ms Deanna Varagona (Lambchop).
Alternative country / Indie rock. Mr. Bobby Bare Jr. is the son of country musician Bobby Bare (singer of such classics as "Detroit City, "Miller's Cave," and "500 Miles Away From Home" and 56 other Top 40 country hits), Lil' Bobby was nominated for a Grammy for a duet with his father at the age of 5. He even sang on the Ryman stage on its closing night.. Bare Jr.'s sound has been described as Nirvana meets Lynyrd Skynyrd and well, he does certainly possess a very Cobain-esque, hoarsely pleading, on the verge of cracking yelp of a voice. Combine it with the deeper, more low-key backing vocals and this is much more reminiscent of the beloved Uncle Tupelo. He does a cover of "What Difference Does it Make" by the Smiths, and his version brings all new meaning to the words.
A bunch of us here loved Bobby Bare Junior's last full-length on Bloodshot, Young Criminals' Starvation League (which now seems to be the name of his band). The son of a country veteran, Junior and his pals play jangly, morose yet sometimes humorous alt-country/indie rock that mixes Nashville with post-Nirvana angst, and could have an Uncle named Tupelo. We're not quite as taken with this new mini-lp -- maybe 'cause the first song is a twee, twangy version of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" -- but you might be, so check it out, especially if you're already a fan. Indeed, this seems to be a fan-oriented release, with some new stuff, two covers, live versions of songs from his last album, and a demo of one of our faves off that record, "I'll Be Around". There's eight audio tracks here and two live video clips you can watch on your computer. A nice half-hour visit into Bobby Bare Jr. country as we await his next full-length.
Be not mistaken, there's certainly no Robert Blake here, nor any sign of his bird. What we have is the soundtrack for those nights when you just wanna kick back and chill. Got it? Slow to mid tempo grooves for when you feel like spinning something new along the lines of Thievery Corp or Kruder & Dorfmeister.
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
Ok, we aren't sure if this is the best blues album ever or the most bizarre, it just depends on who you ask. When we first played it, some of us thought it couldn't be real, it had to be a parody. Perhaps someone making fun of how anyone can play the blues, because the singing sounds like complete mushmouth gibberish! Seriously, you and your pals can have a fun drinking game trying to figure out what the hell he's saying! But it's really no joke, Cecil Barfield (aka William Robertson, more on that in a minute...), one of the last surviving Southern Georgian bluesmen (according to the liner notes) was discovered in 1976 by George Mitchell, who was touring the state for field research in hopes of finding unknown ol' traditional rural bluesmen for a planned festival. One of the scant few left was Barfield, who to Mitchell's delight was previously unrecorded, living outside a tiny farm town on a meager disability check (in fact, the original lp was released under the name William Robertson, because Barfield was scared that he would lose his disability benefits if he released the record under his own name).
Born in 1922, he first started playing when he was just five years old, making his own instruments by attaching a neck to a cooking oil can and tying a string to it. Learning music from what he could hear off records at parties, Barfield's style comes from what he calls "rag pieces", bits of popular tunes picked up from round dances and parties and often individually reworked according to the player. His moaning, wrenching vocal style lends a definite outsider quality to the performance, but supports the superstitious nature of some of the tunes, where he's singing about evil spells called "roots". He even refused to be photographed, because he feared anyone could turn the photo face down and kill him. But of course it's this oddball quality that we love in these records, and of course what makes them totally recommended in our book!
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I'd really like the press kit to say "Blixa Bargeld, the frontman and singer of Einsturzende Neubauten, is well acquainted with the music of film and theater, having seen numerous films himself." But it doesn't.
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Smooth jazzy guitar, horn and keyboard melodies float over a sexy, Italian Charlie's Angels soundtrack.
While you just blinked or checked your email or watched some clips on YouTube, Thurston Moore released another record! Just kidding, but really, Moore shows no signs of slowing down his prolific pace, but as long as he keeps coming up with records as pretty and stoned sounding as this, we're not even the slightest bit anxious for him to slow down. Teamed up with Andrew Macgregor of Gown, they use their guitars to create gorgeously languid, slow shifting sonic landscapes reminiscent of Loren Mazzacane Connors, Roy Montgomery or that great Tom Carter / Bardo Pond collaboration from a few years back. Two long tracks that slowly unfold, beautifully and delicately...
Fans of Sonic Youth's more wandering and sprawling guitar passages will find much to love here. Recommended!
This is an album that should have been huge, or at least an album that should sit next to Slint's Spiderland or My Bloody Valentine's Loveless as a seminal record from the early '90s. In fact, this was THE record that inspired music critic Simon Reynolds to first coin the term 'post-rock', when reviewing this record back in the day. But as it happened, Bark Psychosis was perhaps three or four years ahead of the curve, with Tortoise really stealing all of Bark Psychosis' thunder through the sculpted sounds melded by exquisite engineering, spacious arrangements, and careful consideration of forms past (e.g. that aforementioned Slint album, Miles Davis' more contemplative moments, and for Bark Psychosis, the latter day Talk Talk albums). Bark Psychosis also disbanded shortly after the release of Hex, which never really helped their cause in achieving greatness through this record.
That said, the band's beginnings were quite interesting, as they started out aping Napalm Death, whose short blasts of grindcore are the absolute antithesis of what Bark Psychosis would be known for - subtle, quiet, and beautiful scores of nocturnal music. Where their first handful of singles (which were later collected on the Independency compilation) pushed a post-punk intensity that was considerably effective (and still miles away from Napalm Death), they reached a whole new level on Hex with a lush atmospheric moodiness that's quite special.
A somber piano interlude starts the album off on "The Loom" which shifts into dubbed out orchestration for strings, electronics, and Graham Sutton's emphatic whisper of a voice. "A Street Scene" opens with one of those intricate bass / guitar concoctions that Pinback would lay out on Blue Screen Life, but with more of a cinematic, noirish approach to the construction of a sad pop-tune. "Fingerspit" opens with a graceful Durutti Column-esque melody settling on top of a slinky, deconstructed rhythm section skitter for piano, bass, and drums that erupts with a very Slint like jangled chord emphasizing Sutton's maudlin vocals. The bright ringing guitars cycle through a hypnotic chord on "Eyes & Smiles" as the rest of the band builds the tension upon Necks-style rhythmic crescendo. For all of the jazz conceits on the album, Bark Psychosis never faltered like so many of the British post-punks who attempted to dabble in the cool waters of jazz (e.g. Dif Juz, A.R. Kane, etc.), and it's pretty much because they realized that they needed to keep it as simple as possible in terms of the flourishes and let the complications speak through their songwriting and not a desire to jam. Yeah, it's an album that's definitely a precursor to Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die and Village Of Savoonga's Score. Brilliant.
Bark! is an electoacoustic improv trio from the UK featuring guitar, percussion and electronics. The players are really good at generating cool noises (not just plain old noise) with their instruments, and create an enjoyable interplay of these sounds, sometimes resembling a rhythmic, wild, alien conversation. This stuff reminds us a bit of Supersilent, or the Shaking Ray Levis,
Former Currituck Co. frontman Kevin Barker's debut release under his own name marks a slightly different direction for the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter. For the last few years, he's been a phenomenal touring musician for Joanna Newsom (who lends a hand on piano and organ here), Vashti Bunyan and Vetiver. His past releases had more of a raw back porch quality, his vocals more urgent and less refined, but here he takes on a more laidback and expansive approach. The production is more lush and warm and his vocals have more of a soft and sweet quality similar in vibe to Vetiver, MV & EE or Cass McCombs, channeling that seventies West Coast sound. While it's a nice little record, the price of admission comes form the three included bonus tracks, which have more of a deeper epic folk quality than the breeziness of the songs on the album proper.
A massive dose of drug drenched weirdness from Lightning Bolt / Load Records. This installment of Barkley's Barnyard Critters, a tale of an animal rock band, alchemy gone wrong, grave digging, and other bizarre mind bending ridiculousness, is the third, you may have glimpsed volume two on the Load Pick A Winner DVD from a few years back (the first was a super limited VHS tape, included here as a bonus feature!) and holy crap is this some gloriously demented stuff. AMAZING animation by Lightning Bolt's Brian Gibson, an incredible mix of computer animation, stop motion, and live action, totally amazing to look at, although the story is probably better understood high, but boy is it fun, crazy voices from a who's who or Rhode Island underground rockers, killer design, and again the animation! Wow. It goes from primitve and handmade, to totally high tech, often in the same scene. Gonna take a few viewings to totally understand what the heck is going on, but what a trip!
Bonus features include Wizardzz live (we made their most recent record a highlight a few weeks back), totally costumed up (how the hell do they play in those costumes?) the filmstock treated and colored to make it even more psychedelic, something called "Totem Tour", a four minute blast of brightly colored, spastic, psychedelic costume rock freakout, and the much more primitve first volume of Barkley's Barnyard Critters.
Highly recommended!
Aaaaah Mr. Barlow, few songwriters (indie rock or otherwise) can tug a heartstring quite like you! Nobody does the romantic mope with such slouchy bespectacled ease. After years of profuse recording under a mountain of different monikers (heck, we always knew it was dear Lou behind the veils of Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion, etc!), he's finally released an album under just his name. Aptly titled Emoh, it's graced with some of his most achingly pretty songs since the "Brand New Love" and "Soul And Fire" good ol' days -- songs to which you just wanna bundle up in a wooly cardigan and get all cozy. Oh and we can't forget to mention that he's included a sweet rendition of Ratt's hit "Round-n-Round" that made Andee and Allan immediately think of Tenacious D.
On a sticker affixed to the cd's shrinkwrap, Lou B. proclaims this to be "A cross between Folk Implosion and Sebadoh. To my ears, anyway."
And yeah, we guess that is pretty much what this is... although we sorta though it sounded like a someone *trying* to sound like a cross between Folk Implosion and Sebadoh. Not the man himself. A bit strange, yes? And it gets stranger, the third song "Too Much Freedom" sounds like it's constantly on the verge of becoming REM's "Man On The Moon". WTF? We've always had a special place in our hearts for the slouchy heartstring pluckin' goodness of Mr. Barlow, but this album sadly left us cold and wondering if he's been hanging around with fellow indie rock vet, the hot/cold Mr. Pollard. Y'know, when he's 'on', he's in a league all his own, but when he's not, you've just gotta steer clear! For diehards only!
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Unfair to dis him as the Ivy League Eminem? Maybe. Funny/annoying whiteboy rapping never goes out of style, does it? But it must be said that Barman's definitely got some hilarious lines in his rhymes.
(But then again, so does my friend Steven Schultz, and he probably wouldn't put PM Dawn on his record like MC P.B.). Anyhow, if you liked his Prince Paul-produced WordSound debut from last year, then you'll enjoy this (and the cute/gross cover visuals). If you haven't heard that, well, thirty seconds at www.paulbarman.com ought to make up your mind.
MC Paul Barman is the hip-hop 'protege' discovered by Prince Paul. In what looks like an ironic take on the discovery of Emimen by Dr. Dre, Paul Barman is a particularly annoying rapper somewhere between the aforementioned Eminem (though not as good) and Atom & his Package.
More Ivy League joke hip hop pining for grade-school. I guess you gotta spend that trust fund money on something.
Now sure how we missed out on these guys, they're called Barn Burner, their first record as called Bangers, and had an amazingly goofy cover, and song titles like "Holy Smokes", "Beer Today Bong Tomorrow" and "Wizard Island", maybe we figured it would just be some stupid joke metal thing, but then for whatever reason we threw it on and were BLOWN AWAY. Heavy, riffy, hooky as fuck, with REAL singing, killer guitar harmonies, classic rock, meets classic metal, meets Southern rock meets stoner metal, with amazing songs, with crazy catchy choruses, bad ass riffs and shredding leads. As much as we love us some black buzz or dirgey sludge, it's easy to forget how much we love metal that ROCKS. And these guys rock. HARD.
So here we have record number two from Barn Burner (and we can definitely get the first one for you, just ask), appropriately titled Bangers II: Scum Of The Earth, with yet another even more ridiculous cover, more killer song titles, like "Dark Side Of The Barn", "Keg Stand And Deliver", "Quest For The Cube", and "Skid Marks The Spot", and yeah, a whole 'nother batch of shredding, rocking heaviness, killer riffs and wild solos, the sort of shit they just don't make anymore, and yeah, sure it may ultimately be beer drinking party metal, but sonically this stuff KILLS, easily one of our new favorite metal bands, we've been listening to both records nonstop, but this new one, is rapidly becoming a contender for metal record of the year. Hell yeah.
Ancestral Star is the latest batch of brooding, epic, twang flecked darkness from this local duo (now trio with the seemingly permanent addition of a drummer), their first for Thrill Jockey, and easily their most fully realized record yet, and while we were expecting it to maybe be their heaviest, based on the last few releases and the duo's individual solo recordings, it seems the band have dialed back the crunch, opting more for moodiness and atmosphere. The group's development from hushed psychedelic droners to brooding epic soundscapers has been a gradual and natural one, which is most likely what accounts for the seamless melding of whispery psychedelic ambience and lumbering doom-ed country drift.
The record opens up with a wild squall of superdistorted guitar buzz and howling feedback, a slowly unfurling melody, the notes crumbling and blown out, it had us expecting some serious crush right off the bat, but instead, the thick peals of smoldering psychdrone give way to some smokey Morricone-ish drift, haunting and abstract, the drums giving the sound a definite slowcore vibe, vocals hovering way off in the distance, more about adding texture than delivering lyrics.
After a brief twangscape, another spare skeletal bit of haunting countrydoomdrift, the band launch into the 10+ minute title track, a gauzy bit of slow building dronemusic, lushly layered, gradually expanding like a timelapse film of a supernova, a slowly blossoming burst of white hot buzz, expanding in every direction, a massive cloud of roiling distorted sound, that begins to fade almost immediately eventually becoming another stretch of hushed haunting ambience.
The rest of the record is rich with short sonic vignettes, a brief bit of echo drenched Appalachia, a heavily reverbed stretch of lush droney piano, a gorgeous bit of desert-y drift, all brooding twang and sitar like buzz, even some wheezing harmonium and choral like chants, these short form soundscapes separating the record's other two lengthy soundscapes, the first "Flatlands" begins all singing strings, and droned out vocals, lots of layers, and incredible overtones, the sounds constantly shifting, so dark and dramatic rife with some sort of melodic inner glow that infuses the rest of the sounds, the drone eventually fading out, leaving a bit of distorted twang, to gradually unravel to song's end. and then there's the closer, the nearly 7 minute "Light From The Mesa" another sprawling bit of dark dronemusic, washed out and whirring, the band's murky twang buried beneath the muted drift, everything wreathed in an ethereal haze, the drone finally dissipating leaving more spidery western twang, this time with percussion that sound like the clink of spurs on the wooden floor of the saloon, until those spidery guitars blossom into thick warm waves of chordal hum, backed up by soaring falsetto vocals, a gorgeous dirge to lead Barn Owl out of the valley, the record winding down as they disappear into the distance.
Yet another gorgeous collection of darkly epic doomfolk dronedrift dreaminess.
The cd version comes in a 4 panel mini lp style gatefold sleeve, the lp comes in a full color gatefold jacket and includes a download coupon as well.
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by atrists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released, it's all relative, meaning these LP's are not going to be around too long, in fact we weren't even able to get as many as we ordered. Highly recommended, but act fast!
Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squall of jagged psychedelic feedback. And that jagged psychedelia definitely seeps into the rest of the record, with the duo seeming to crank up their guitars for the first time in a while.
Past records have been all about the dusty deserty twang, the slow burn, the smoldering ambience, and while all of that is still present, the band seem supercharged. "Turiya" finds the duo stomping on the fuzz box and unfurling peals of thick distorted guitar that almost sounds like Neil Young at times, gorgeous streaks of melody suspended over an Earth like dirge, it's a potent combo and definitely has the band sounding aggressive and HEAVY. "Devotion 1" brings it all back down, letting slow smokey melodies drift over vast expanses of space, eventually joined by a thick insectoid buzz, the sound transformed into a blissed out celestial raga. The longest track here, is also the heaviest, "The Darkest Night Since 1683" opens with a crackly haze of amp buzz and slow build chordal thrum, before erupting into some seriously blown out, downtuned blackened doomdronedirge guitar, a slow motion riff, all tarpit ooze as it buzzes and crumbles, eventually leaving a stretch of hazy twangy, psychedelic shimmer.
The rest of the record takes Barn Owl's ever shifting sound and runs with it, exploring Appalachian raga folk, all steel string buzz and lush soaring psychedelic swirl, murky moody late night crawl, rife with streaks of whirling melodies driven by a muted pulse and some washed out twang, gauzy Sunroof!-like ur-drone, all upper register skree wreathed in lush swells of bassy hum, and finally a closer that finds the band revisiting their dusty twang, but again, giving it some extra crunch, the guitars super distorted, the drums a blown out pound, all woven into a swoonsome mournful desert doom creep.
Hot on the heels of their recent From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light lp, comes this super limited (only 120 copies) repress of a tour only cd-r, available again briefly on Jef from Tarentel's Root Strata label.
This SF duo (featuring new aQ employee Jon!) brew up dark swirling druggy drifts, the guitars languid, hovering and buzzing in wide open expanses of slow slithery ambience. Bands like this usually revel in loooooooong songs, but here, 5 of the 6 tracks are just over two minutes, the longest, the 6 minute opener is the most fully realized and song-like, guitars shimmering and wet with effects, the result is like some incorporeal 16rpm Spacemen 3, drumless, and with the propulsion-level set to near zero, leaving just weightless clouds of haunting metallic reverberation, steel stings vibrating in a gorgeously washed out blur. A track like this should take up all four sides of a double lp, druggy and deliriously dreamy, a soft fuzzy musical opium den.
The rest of the disc are brief little glimpses into some fuzzy alternate universe, where guitars glimmer like stars is a blueblack sky, long tones weep and moan like wind winding through desert canyons, melodies surface and fragment, sink into the murky abyss, rhythms coalesce out of creaks and thumps, voices materialize into ghostlike melodies, keening and mysterious, krautrock like grooves fall to pieces, bits of steel string Appalachia give way to barely there minimal guitar mumble, the shards and tendrils slowly grow into some languorous disembodied ghostly blue grass, a sea of soft slow motion twang, finishing off with a brief spate of sun dappled drone and warm melodious forestfolk drift, all smeared chimes and blurred tones.
Gorgeous stuff. But almost frustratingly brief, every one of these tracks would sound fantastic expanded to 10, 20, even 60 minutes, so for now, we'll just have to make do with these way too brief glimpses of the druggy dreamy sounds these guys are capable of...
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! Packaged in a super striking metallic gold ink on black tri-fold sleeve!
A brand new musical missive from the psychedelic drone duo Barn Owl, an ep length follow up to their recent Ancestral Star album, which finds them expanding their sound even further, taking the dusky twang into realms more cinematic, with an opening track that is both haunting and ominous, allowing synths to play as big a role as the guitars, creating a sort of kosmische devotional music, unfurling a mesmerizing melodic motif, looped and hypnotic, while all around, deep swells rumble and whir, clouds of effects swirl and shimmer, it might just be one of our favorite Barn Owl jams yet, like the soundtrack to some obscure European art film, that synth melody also has a little bit of a Tim Burton vibe, playfully sinister? Regardless, the song broods and oozes like and inky black cloud, while that melody shine through like blinking lights on a stormy night. The label references Popol Vuh and Alice Coltrane, which we definitely hear, but all the usual suspects are present as well, Earth, SUNNO))), Morricone, but on the opening track, all of the influences, new and old, are transformed into something magical and new, a sound that by the end of its nearly eight minutes, has blossomed into something simultaneously thick and corrosive, but spiritual and transcendent.
The title track finds Barn Owl returning to more sonically familiar territory, a slowly unfurling landscape of spidery twang, of softly reverbed ambience, this time laced with subtle piano, not to mention some more distorted riffage, as the song progresses, more melodies surface, and become tangled in a slow swirl of minor key mesmer, while the final track, the 10+ minute "Infinite Reach" begins as a bit of sun dappled celestial drift, all hazy tones and disembodied melodies, before clouds pass over the sun, cloaking the sounds in shadow, everything becoming much more ominous, the previously ethereal drift, now infused with blurry buzz and jagged shards of high end skree, building to a pulsing soft focus squall of bleary blackened psychedelia, before slipping back into a slow, smoldering outro, all windswept and barren, droney and twangy.
As always, fantastic stuff, and well worth it for that opening track alone, a sound we hope Barn Owl will explore a bit more on future outings!
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Includes a download coupon.
Barn Owl have become quite the talk of the psych/drone/folk scene in the last year and for very good reason. The duo have released some great limited edition cd-r's on Digitalis and on their own, and their intense and trance inducing live shows have reeled in many believers, including us! Tapping into ritual drone and spiritual psychedelia this two song cassette recorded at a festival in Echo Park a few months ago is further proof that this is one of the most promising bands roaming the underground at the moment. While there are no shortage of psych drone acts these days, there is something so concrete and real about the sounds Barn Owl conjure up. Kind of like if newer Earth was less spaghetti western and more engaged in exploring LaMonte Young's dreamhouse. There is a patience and subtlety in Barn Owl's music that is way beyond their young years. They use guitars, drums, banjo, harmonium and voice to travel upwards to some magical place filled with dust, dirt and delight. This one is super limited too, so it'll be gone in the blink of an eye.
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Barn Owl, the local duo of Jon Porras (aka Elm) and Evan Caminiti (aka Higuma), have always tread a similar path to later era Earth, a sort of blackened twang, Morricone by way of the Melvins, slow motion soundscapes as evocative and slow burning as they are epic and heavy, dark and delicate. With the addition of a drummer, Barn Owl move even closer to their sonic brethren creating a gorgeous songsuite of Western tinged, slow motion psychedelia, dark, dolorous, warm and haunting, heavily reverbed, a sort of dark skeletal doom, rife with warm chordal clusters, gauzy clouds of muted feedback, and epic expanses of effected guitars that sound almost choral.
The mood is both warm and inviting, haunting and tense, emotional and intense. The various bits of steel string guitar are draped over dense swells of roiling downtuned drone, everything wreathed in streaks of high end shimmer, all blurred into a burnished black guitar blur, washed out and hazy, yet surprisingly lush and heavy. The second half of the record gets a bit more Appalachian, with delicate finger picked guitars drifting over deep layered drones, stately melodies unfurling like the black tendrils of smoke from a recently extinguished candle, or the fuzzy fog of late afternoon, painted deep blues and reds by the fading daylight. The record builds to a soaring finale, that revisits that choral sound, and infuses it with an hypnotic ur-drone vibe, like some glorious hybrid of Sunroof! and Arvo Part. Hypnotic and transcendent.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. We got the super limited fancy maroon vinyl mailorder version too. And as you might imagine, these won't be around for long...
San Francisco's dronelords Barn Owl (featuring our very own Jon!) return with Transfiguration, an awe inspiring slab of expansive psychedelia that is both heavy and beautiful. Recorded live on tour in Vancouver in summer 2008, Transfiguration clocks in at a massive 21 minutes, giving the duo plenty of time to put together a sprawling slow burning expanse that manages to retain a high degree of focus while also flowing freely.
Beginning with high pitched, bell like drones and a slowly creeping guitar note, it is hard to tell whether the vibes are good or evil, and before long the piece begins to move forward cinematically. It's like things are ascending way up to the heavens, and as the bells create a hypnotic flow, massive guitar drones take over everything. The sound is truly mountainous, with bits of molten feedback punctuating the atmosphere, and just when you think everything is going to be taken over by total noise, you realize that even though the music appears to be alive and of its own will, things are kept very much in control by the band. Amazingly, there seems to be a sense of implied rhythm, not in the sense of a traditional pop song, but the rhythm of the drone, taking things into a more realized form of existence. The white hot squalls of heavily distorted bliss swirl about but never decay, instead its like they are alive and breathing... and then, the piece is separated into its second half, by a lone voice. The low chant creates its own sort of spacious cavern, and the surrounding silence creates its own tension as more chants enter the atmosphere while higher voices float ethereally at the top. Giant cyclones of droned voices rise and recede, creating their own unique style of movement. The way the voices merge creates a cool disorienting effect where you lose all sense of direction in a state of suspended consciousness. Awesome.
Limited to a scant 200 copies, Transfiguration comes beautifully packaged in a thick cardstock sleeve with a professionally printed cd-r and serves as a nice teaser to the duo's upcoming full length on Root Strata!
We recently got to see Barn Owl perform at the Thrill Jockey 15th anniversary celebration, alongside Wooden Shjips, Liturgy, Eternal Tapestry, Man Forever and Trans Am, and as always, they were amazing, performing in the shadows below a constantly shifting wall of visuals, dark swirling psychedelic visions, that seemed to mirror the sounds the group were conjuring from their instruments, guitars as always, but this time the guitars seemed to play second fiddle (sorry) to their banks of synths, and tables full of gear. As we've mentioned on recent records, the duo seem to have been consciously moving away from guitars, and toward a more predominantly synth based sound, being keenly aware, that they were running the risk of making the same record over and over again. Not that we'd complain, their dusky sort of twang flecked ambient creep was and is a beautiful listen, but the expanded sonic palette, and all those synths, gave the band a much more expansive sound, and instead of just treading the same ground, only with synths instead of guitars, Barn Owl actually set out to make something new and exciting, and not just the listener, but for themselves as well.
Back to that Thrill Jockey show, Barn Owl were unfurling thick swirling washed of sound, when all of a sudden, boom, a lumbering, thunderous beat rolled in, a cool pulsing murky drum machine rhythm that changed the tenor of their sound completely, and instead of drifting, they were sort of driving, the sound moving toward something a bit krautrockier, and a whole lot doomier. Sure they's played with drummers before, but this was something all together different. And on V, we get our first record glimpse of the duo's new sound, which they introduce gently, starting with the opener "Void Redux", which fills the sky with billows of chordal synth shimmer, laced with fragmented melodies, and slow shifting textures, while within, spaced out beats pulse and percolate, no specific rhythm, more adding texture, and a little motorik heft, those rhythms and rhythmic fragments drifting on the ethereal swells and ominous cinematic shimmer. A sort of blackened psychedelic new age space drift. Which is not a bad thing at all.
But fear not, the guitars have not been jettisoned completely, far from it. "The Long Shadow" sounds like Barn Owl of old, at least at first, but synths add some Arvo Part like chorales to the background, and underpin everything with deep chordal rumbles, even transforming into full on church organ at one point, the sound building gradually to a triumphant majestic coda, before devolving into a looped swirl of crumbling distortion and keening distant melodies.
Throughout the rest of the record, the band definitely flex their musical muscles, and seem to be referencing the old Barn Owl sound, rather then still embodying it, undulating tendrils of reverbed melody drift atop, thick, churning synth wash, the tracks occasionally exploding into full on psych noise chaos, but a measure chaos, that still reveals plenty of deft melodic and textural soundscaping, and when the rhythms do surface, it can sound like some sort of super space-y kosmische Muslimgauze, or like some abstract electronic shoegaze. After a brief bit of old Barn Owl guitar tangle fused to lush, prismatic new Barn Owl synth shimmer, somehow crating the perfect twang flecked synth doom dreaminess, the record finishes off with the sprawling minimal epic "The Opulent Decline", which begins as a barren landscape of synth squelch and dubbed out barely there rhythms, lots of echo and reverb, and lots and lots of space. Over the course of the song's 17+ minutes, the sound blossoms into huge billows of soft noise swirl, still driven by that slo-mo rhythmic pulse, the tempo is set to creep, the surrounding sounds following suit, oozing and melting, but then seemingly channeled heavenward, a gorgeous bit of kosmische kraut-gaze drone-doom bliss for sure.
While they last, both the cd and the lp versions include a bonus cd, called The Factory Session / Live At Berkeley Art Museum, which is an actual cd, NOT a cd-r and features 40 minutes of exclusive unreleased music, the first three tracks, experimental, raw, swirling synthscapes recorded right here in SF at the band's rehearsal space, and a final more guitar based track, huge billows of churning distorted echo drenched sound, taking full advantage of the cavernous space in which it was recorded, which of course was at the Berkeley Art Museum, back in 2010. We're one of the few places you can get it, and once these are gone, they're gone for good, and then we'll be shipping both cds and lps SANS the bonus disc. So act fast if you're after the bonus disc.
Barn Owl are Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, a new duo following in the experimental folk tradition of Sir Richard Bishop, Tom Carter and Steffen Basho-Junghans, and more recently Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and Headdress. Their music roams freely with no concrete destination in sight. The ten loosely constructed instrumental compositions that comprise their debut album are crafted from acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, banjo, harmonica, synthesizer, organ, and drums. A few slow strums across guitar strings give way to a cycles of short picked melodic phrases. Almost imperceptibly vaporous drones and murmured vocals creep in. A perfect new addition to the Digitalis label (which has featured releases by Tom Carter, Christina Carter, Seht, James Blackshaw, and Steven R. Smith).
