Coming up with a new album on the heels of a hit like Los Angeles is definitely difficult, but Flying Lotus have created a pretty perfect follow up with another amazing disc of esoteric electronica, rife with everything we loved about LA, as well as some serious sonic twists and turns.
While their past releases always found Flying Lotus with a foot firmly planted in the world of hip-hop production, Cosmogramma finds Flying Lotus branching out much more with an energy that is both frantic and majestic, a combination that is pretty damn hard to pull off, but they do manage it here with flying colors!
What makes Flying Lotus so unique and sound so ahead of their peers is that you can't sum up their music with one word, genre or catch all phrase. Yes there are moments of dubstep, and hints of their more hip-hop minded past but there is also a nice use of instrumentation including harps, strings, horns, and keys that help give the record a rounded and celestial feel. But along with those majestic and pretty moments there is a whole lot of frantic and urgent energy that runs throughout the record. Like the last outing, there are a few tracks with guest vocals (including Thom Yorke!), and with all these varying ingredients, what makes Cosmogramma such a success is that they all meld together so seamlessly and create a true album listening experience. This is a start to finish listen, in that you get to really feel the music, and get swept away by the range of sounds and the feelings that weave all these songs together into a single organic and expansive whole. So great!
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There is no doubt that this record is going to find itself near the top of many of our year end favorite lists. This is one of those rare records that on first listen you are grabbed by its immediacy & intensity and with each repeated listen you melt deeper into its richness. While just in his early 20's Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus) has crafted a record wise beyond his years. There is a fluidity and transcendence on Los Angeles that defies categorization. Call it instrumental hip-hop if you want, but these are songs that would sound right at home next to spiritual Afro-jazz, psychedelic soul and even dubstep. Taking inspiration from the late great J Dilla, Flying Lotus understands how to extract such punch and soul from all the sounds he takes and creates. Flying Lotus has a wide world vision that's as informed by Eastern grooves and psychedelia as it is hip-hop, electronica, video games and cartoon culture (he used to make music for Adult Swim). This is stirring many of the same emotions and excitement as when Four Tet released the Rounds record and in many ways it brings to the next level what so much of Prefuse 73 tries to do.
It actually didn't surprise us that much to find out that Ellison is the great nephew of Alice Coltrane as you can hear the amazing legacy of her spiritual and universal consciousness in the sounds that Flying Lotus create. In fact there are a few upfront Coltrane moments on the record including "Aunti's Harp" which is an all too short but beautiful majestic minute of Alice on the harp. Flying Lotus has found a spot next to Madlib as a much needed ambassador of someone taking hip-hop as a launching pad orbiting to such pleasing outer dimensions. In fact , some of us couldn't help but daydream about a Flying Lotus/Erykah Badu collaboration as they both are so tapped into a magical and exciting landscape of hip-hop & soul that soars in spiritual and psychedelic horizons. Filled with undeniable passion and of course highly recommended!
A frenetic 7 song ep that finds Flying Lotus building more nervous kinetic rhythms and lurching arcade game textures than on past releases (though we got some hint of it on the first half of his last full length Cosmogramma) This reminds us a bit of a Zomby's One Foot Ahead of the Other, but on a more wonky tip than Zomby's 8-bit rave-ups. We're not sure if this is just a moment to release some pent-up anxious energy or a sneak peek into a possible full blown assault on their next outing. Got to give them credit for their exploration and experimentation, but we find ourselves missing the majestic downtempo moments from past releases.
Flying Lotus is back and with every new release seems to bring something new to the table. This time around he doesn't spread himself as far out sonically as he did on Cosmogramma but instead reigns himself in to refine the details of his complex musical palette. This is definitely a late night record, full of lucid dreamy qualities, referencing obscure quiet storm RnB, celestial jazz, and narcoleptic funk, but with a soaring jewel-like exactitude. Cinematic in scope, we don't just listen, but become engrossed in his floating oceanic soundworld. Guest stints by Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Thundercat and others add to the ponderous gauzy midnight feel. Recommended! Vinyl comes with download.
This record is so wackadoo, and we mean that in the best possible way! Flying Lotus records have always been more about the whole than their individual parts, often built around a large abstract metaphysical concept, where multiple ideas and spaces can congeal and separate. This time around, that concept is revealed in the title, and this album is a journey of short vignettes where like the process of death, there is a hectic loss of control, regrets and fears bubble to the surface, and then there is the quieting and majestic expanse, and sometimes this happens all in one track. When we first put this on, some of us were like, 'What in Jaco Pastorius hell is this?' The sound of prog jazz fusion may not be everyone's cup of tea - regular Flying Lotus collaborator, Thundercat, who makes his own George Duke inspired soul jams, provides the fret-hopping bass and Herbie Hancock (!!) is on the Fender Rhodes! But, those fusion sounds are tempered by some of the most sublimely beautiful ambient passages. What keeps this from being overtly indulgent are the short track times (mostly every track is under 3 minutes) and the genre-jumps from instrumental hip-hop to jazz prog, from cosmic ambiance to mind-rattling raps provided by Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dog, and Flying Lotus alter-ego, Captain Murphy - who has a vocal affectation of stuffed-up worry that could easily be a voice from one of the Fat Albert kids. You're Dead may be the aural equivalent of the film Enter The Void, but with a sharper focus and an incredible all-encompassing flow that really feels like we have been through a life-altering event. Nothing else out there sounds like this, a black prog beauty!
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Reissued Weasel Walter classic.
Trauma finds long time no wave free jazz attackers the Flying Luttenbachers doing their usual brutal best to channel the spirits of Brotzmann and Ayler and Takayanagi and the like. It's primal stuff originally recorded in 2001, newly reissued on cd for those that missed it the first time, and want a taste of that intensely improv Luttenbachers phase (before their more recent forays into tech guitar mutant metal prog scifi spasms). On this disc, squealing saxophone and rumbling bass vie with the frenzied percussive pummel of bandleader Weasel Walter, the whole screaming machinegunning shebang never really letting up (the eleven tracks on this nearly 70 minute disc are aptly titled "Trauma 1" through "Trauma 11").
Go to YouTube to watch this (http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU4pVVM5wb4) brilliant video for a track from Trauma, depicting panic in the streets and the nightmarish effects of multiple nuclear blasts, for which the Luttenbacher's freeform blasting is the perfect soundtrack. The images, so scary in the '80s (they're all edited together from the TV movie The Day After, remember that?) hilariously, horrifically fit the music and vice versa. No more need be said by us, that should do the trick.
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The notorious Weasel Walter and co. return with their seventh album of Chicago death-jazz spazz. This album features two almost diameterically opposed covers: "De Futura" by French prog giants Magma and "Black Perversion" by sub-cult black metal band Havohej, both fitting in nicely along with the Flying Luttenbachers' usual skree. Instrumentation on this disc includes mellotron, cello (played by Fred Lonberg-Holm) and 'abyssic guitar', in addition to the more ordindary drums, bass, saxophone, etc.
Holy crap. This is the Luttenbachers' fourteenth (we think) album release, the follow-up to 2004's The Void. Their instrumental insanity features as always drummer extraordinare Weasel Walter (Lake Of Dracula/Hatewave), this time assisted by these three equally high-level technicians: on guitars Ed Rodriguez (Gorge Trio/Colossamite/Iceburn) and Mick Barr (Ocrilim/Octis/Orthrelm/Crom Tech), and on bass Mike Green (Burmese). Together they're an unstoppable frenzied skronk attack, pulling stop-start ADD fretboard and percussive maneuvers off in their own blackened jazz sci-fi galaxy... It's like (heck, it is) metallic mathrockers practicing their scales, ensemble style, amidst a barrage of ominous dirge. The appropriate response at the end of each piece can only be "Whew!". If you haven't heard the Luttenbachers before (or only their earlier material with jazz horns and not so much electric guitar), but do like Mick Barr's various bands, you will like this -- Barr fans needn't hesitate!!
The song titles are ever so appropriate: "Demonic Velocities", "Insektoid Horror", "The Elimination Of Incompetence"... They are masters of their realm, that's for sure. And their special brand of heaviness is one that can go from a punishing rocker like "Interstellar War" into the relative calm and beauty of "Movement Four Of L'Ascension" (yes, an Olivier Messiaen cover).
By the way, despite the lack of lyrics, this is a concept album, just like their last few releases. Have you been following along, and learning the future fate of the Earth? No? Well don't say they didn't warn you...
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Now-on-cd reissue of vinyl from a few years back, this Chicago no-wave jazz improv combo makes an unholy racket worthy of their death/black metal heroes, but different. Featuring drummer Weasel Walter and reedsman Ken Vandermark (who replaced original Luttenbacher Hal Russell).
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New one from the Chicago jazz-grind band that used to boast reedsmen Hal Russell and Ken Vandermark in their ranks, slimmed down to a trio led by drummer Weasel Walter (also of Lake of Dracula and Hatewave). They kind of go for a no-wave meets black metal image, and are probably equally influenced by the music of Albert Ayler and Norway's Immortal...
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The umpteenth (tenth, actually) long player from Weasel Walter's constantly mutating free jazz / black metal / no wave / prog monster. "Infection And Decline" is the first recording to document the latest incarnation of the now-stripped down trio featuring
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More instro-avant-jazz-metal mayhem from recent Chicago-to-San Francisco transplant Weasel Walter & Co. Except, there's no Co. on this album, it's just the Wease. The concept here (we're told) is that the record is about "a horrible planetoid being [who] configures itself from atomic chaos". Cool. It's noisy, fusiony, and no-wavey. 45 minutes of this is either gonna be sheer punishment or pleasure, you probably already know where you stand on that. We're impressed, regardless. Especially by the 20 minute finale "Rise Of The Iridescent Behemoth"! Weasel works hard at this stuff and succeeds. Nerdy noisy prog rock for punks.
As the Luttenbachers fly on and on into the void, they just get more and more metal, don't they? Now a Bay Area based trio (including one of the Mikes from Burmese on bass), they offer up their thirteenth album! This latest episode of Flying Luttenbacher insanity features nine tracks of feedback-filled, drum-blasting, chaotically complexified, metallic skree that can't be topped by almost anyone in the known universe -- heck parts of this even remind us a bit of Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, which is a comparison we don't make too often. The Void is an all-instrumental tour-de-force that believe it or not could be the missing link between black metal and no-wave, surely band leader Weasel Walter's life's work. Track after track, each cut here builds and builds without much in the way of release, racheting tension to head-bursting levels. Judging from comments in the liner notes, perhaps this is Weasel's howling response to the Republican take-over of the United States. In any event, it's a serious dose of heavy, frenzied, jazz-damaged, post-rock, post-metal, mathy mayhem!
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From the liner notes: "This album brings together some tracks originally used for our John Peel session, the Planet Records single and for our contribution to the Speed Kills compilation EP... These tracks make up an ongoing album idea begun before Further and finished some time after that LP. We hope they now make sense as a whole. This album marks the end of FSA phase one... When we return with phase two -- who knows where the wind blows..."
We had almost given up on ever hearing from Flying Saucer attack ever again. After all, it's been 15 years since the last record (2000's Mirror), and now nearly twenty since Rachel Brook left the band to focus on Movietone. They (or now he really, as it's essentially been a David Pearce solo project for a while now) still rank amongst our all time favorite psychedelic shoegaze outfits EVER. And even on this new one it's easy to see why.
While not a proper new -album- per se, Instrumentals plays out more like a collection of sonic sketches, impressionistic textures and guitarscapes, still covering much of the same found that FSA did back in the day, be it chiming, pastoral psych-folk, or shimmering ambient drift, or distorted, washed out soft-noise. The songs are mostly short here, none breaking the 10 minute mark, and many hovering around 90 seconds or less, and yet somehow, it manages to sound cohesive, these ideas, sonic suggestions, these hazy movements, all flow and ooze and bleed into one another, the whole thing gorgeously amorphous and mesmeric.
Fans of the group probably didn't have to even read this far, news of a new FSA record is likely all it took, and those folks will not be disappointed. But somehow, Instrumentals serves as a perfect introduction to the group, an easy entree into a catalog of subtly difficult music. And there are difficult moments here too, guitars detune, explode into squalls, settle into hushed whispery thrum, but even at its most caustic or bombastic, there's a tranquility, a depth and weight to these sounds, that unfurl like pieces not songs, fragmented for sure, but the fragments are allowed to billow and expand, the layers piling up, and often peeling away, as much about texture, timbre and tone as mood and melody, if not more so. The songs are even named generically, as if to not color the listener's impression, allowing the sound to reveal what lies beneath, and within. And like all the FSA records, this is far from a high fidelity affair, the sound gritty, and grimy, amp buzz, and tape warble, hiss and hum, all subtle shadings in the sound, and in many cases, perfectly blended with the music itself, to add heft, or gravitas, or hell, just some extra noise.
Throughout, it's hard not to be swept away. Pearce conjures up a musical world that's at once magical and mysterious, the sound transcendent and transformative, minimal on the surface, but hiding a maximal energy within. And yeah, we're far from objective. We've loved this band forEVER, and were dying for this record when we first heard about it, and were definitely inclined to love it no matter what. But after repeated listens, what at first seemed like a sonic sketchbook (albeit good one at that), has blossomed into something more purposeful. There's a melancholic, meandering, musical path that runs through these 15 tracks, a path that leads simultaneously inward and outward, and coheres into a darkly delicate songsuite of somnambulant lullabies and softly psychedelic threnodies.
When Third Eye Foundation first experimented with fusing drum & bass beats with guitar dissonance, it stood as the awkward realization of what one might imagine My Bloody Valentine's (as yet undocumented) drum & bass sound to be...
While Third Eye Foundation's sound has since developed into gritty drum & bass dirges, fellow Bristol space rockers Flying Saucer Attack have also taken up the drum & bass / bliss rock challenge, with a rather groovy yet wholly blissed-out result. While half the tracks from "Mirror" are injected with the hyperactive speed of jungle breaks, their breathy Nick Drake style pastoral folk songs are remain, and of course "Mirror" is still laden with sleepy guitar fuzz. Complete with colorful, psychedelic cover and gatefold art by Savage Pencil.
While many of rock's deconstructionists have found themselves at the dead end of ambient, Flying Saucer Attack have veered from such a trajectory by reclaiming the "rural psychedelia" that made their first album so stunning. Big Phil Spector reverb drums demarcate the feedback that at times sound like the new Dead C album Tusk though from a less abject & more isolationist sensibility... Their best record in god knows how long.
P.A. Blues is a super limited cd-r that's been out for a while, but we haven't been able to get enough to list until now. A selection of unreleased live material hand picked and edited by FSA's Dave Pearce. Blissed out and dense, thick washes of guitar ambience and slowly shifting, dark and droning swoosh and shimmer. The focus of this disc is the lengthy title track, a massive collage of live recordings chopped and edited into a single huge swelling throbbing movement. As with most things Flying Saucer attack, this is epic and gorgeous spaced out, dreamy and mesmerizing drone rock of the highest order!
One of the most limited and sought after documents in the FSA catalog has finally got a cassette reissue from local tape archival label Sanity Muffin. Here is what we said about the original cd-r release back in 2004:
P.A. Blues is a selection of unreleased live material from 1994-1997 hand picked and edited by FSA's Dave Pearce and featuring Rachel Brook from Movietone and Matt Elliott from Third Eye Foundation. Blissed out and dense, thick washes of guitar ambience and slowly shifting, dark and droning swoosh and shimmer. The focus of this disc is the lengthy side-long title track, a massive collage of live recordings chopped and edited into a single huge swelling throbbing movement. The B-side features other live recordings including a sprawling mumbling lo-fi cover of Fairport Convention's "She Moves Through The Fair". As with most things Flying Saucer attack, this is epic and gorgeous spaced out, dreamy and mesmerizing drone rock of the highest order!
Limited to 100 copies, this one will go fast!
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Classic first full length recording.
Another batch of super limited and beautifully packaged cd-r's from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. The finest in underground free noise / drone, culled mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound. And when we say limited we mean LIMITED. Thes babies come in pressings of 30-80, out of which we get a whopping 10 copies!!
Flying Sweety Dog is a London based noise duo, of Danish / Japanese origin, and are a bit of a tough proposition to figure out. Twenty seven tracks, titled either "Cinema", "Inside" or "Outside". On a couple tracks they mix things up with tracks titled "Anders Outside, Take Inside" and "Take Outside, Anders Inside". Not that the song titles tell you anything about the sounds contained within. They do at least give you an idea that you're dealing with something well outside the realm of the ordinary. All the tracks are relatively short, super spare and minimal with ambient clatter, occasional sort-of rhythms, far away whistles, squeaks of ear piercing feedback, and what sounds like the duo hard at work assembling or dismantling various broken musical instruments. Weird.
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitve, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
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Finally available on vinyl, both volumes of Flynt's Back Porch Hillbilly Blues, on a deluxe double lp. And very limited!
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
And the tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitive, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.
Another gorgeous document of keening high end drone exploration from this central figure in the sixties Fluxus scene. The focus (as always) is on Flynt's electric fiddle, that squeals and scrapes and glides effortlessly between notes and deep into
Originally released as a cd on the Ampersand label way back in 2001, now available on vinyl via local reissue label Superior Viaduct. Here's our (brief) review of Graduation from when we listed the Ampersand version...
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to discover this additional archival release (of material unreleased these past 20-odd years) see the light of day. But, our enthusiasm was a little dampened somewhat by the preponderance of vocals (!) found here. There's some prime drones to be found here for sure, and some truly sublime moments, but you'll have to also deal with some not-so-prime folksy singing. Which, for us, makes this unfortunately a somewhat disappointing listen in the Flynt oeuvre - but obviously not all Flynt fans (like the folks at Superior Viaduct, obviously) would agree with us about that.
Includes download code.
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release "You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power" by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to see this additional archival release (of
Aquarius' favorite fluxus hillbilly intellectual returns with yet another collection avant-folk. We say 'returns' and yet, with the exception of one from 1976/2001, these tracks come from 1971 and 1978. Much of the goods here are similar to his last two releases on Locust ("Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Vols. 1 & 2"). For instance track one, "Violin Strobe", begins with slowly pulsing notes scratched out on violin which, through some tape device, begin to accumulate a hypnotizing tapestry under Flynt's playing. Hillbilly tape music indeed! Track two, "Guitar Rebop", is a duet for demented tremolo laden swamp guitar and sitar-like drone. Not all Flynt's tracks here are of the hillbilly variety though. For instance, two "Leather High" compositions in A and E (recorded in 1978 appropriately enough) sound like an erstwhile disco guitarist recovering from trauma. In both, a boogying disco rhythm guitar rapidly decays into a series of reverberant swells of guitar through a volume pedal. It's these two tracks, along with the 15 minute ending track "S&M Delerium" -- a continuation of "Leather High in E" -- which make up the bulk of the play time on this disc. It's too bad as, while they're fine tracks in moderation, it would be nicer if the earlier tracks like "Violin Strobe" (which lasts a mere 5 minutes) could be left to degenerate for another 10. Or 20!
MPEG Download: "Violin Strobe" [/audio/hflyntviolinstrobe.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Violin Strobe" [/audio/hflyntviolinstrobe.m3u]
You know it's a good day when a new Henry Flynt release comes out, especially one as good as this.
Ascent To The Sun is the fourth volume of the New American Ethnic Music Series, the first one being the two disc stunner of recordings from the early eighties, You Are My Everlovin'/Celestial Power. Recorded in December 2004, Ascent To The Sun is one forty minute track of layered electric violin. Sounding at times like a steam-powered freight train bound for glory or a heavily reverbed and fuzzed out harmonica, Flynt deftly applies Applachian back-porch idioms to his longform minimalist compositions that are ecstatically hypnotic in their alchemical channelling of pre-war American musical history. A quality in which he has been known to lambast his minimalist contemporaries for ignoring. Incredible!
Purified By Fire is much like a sequel to the much loved Flynt album C-Tune. Like that album, Purified By Fire features Cathrine Christer Hennix on tamboura and Henry Flynt on amplified fiddle. Over the steady metallic drone of Hennix's tamboura Flynt weaves together Hindustani and Appalachian modes in a 40 minute improvisation. At the risk of over using a tired homily these really are two great tastes that taste great together. Bringing together the modal droniness of Appalachian folk music and classical Indian music in a completely unpretentious and, dare I say, punk rock way is totally welcome here at Aquarius.
Fluxus mainstay and relative unknown until this recent spate of reissues, Flynt has dabbled in the supreme drone. explored hillbilly country and now on this reissue explores the 'raga' and traditional Indian music, but with his own bizarre twist. The opening track is a mutated version of the traditional Marines Hymn sung in a made up 'Hindustani' style, accompanied on simple acoustic guitar strums, creating a static almost drone. Tracks 2 through 5, titled Central Park Transverse Vocal #1-#4, are short sharp bursts (between 00:15 and 1:30) of wild howling and bizarre vocalising. The title track, Raga Electric, is a faux Hindustani raga, with droning un-tuned guitars and wild howling, supposedly recorded only hours after seeing Pandit Pran Nath perform. It actually sounds pretty great until the vocals, which become grating almost immediatly. But it's still quite fascinating. The final track is Flynt playing the alto sax, an instrument he had never played, and never played again after this recording. Wild skronking and high pitched shrieks and whistles. Thirteen minutes of skreeeeeeeeeeee that definitely tests the endurance of your eardrums.
Henry Flynt's "Spindizzy" is the second volume in his series of "New American Ethnic Music," following the incredible document "You Are My Everlovin' / Celestial Power", an earlier assortment of country-fried, Fluxus inspired minimalism. Flynt had been an
First in this label's "New American Ethnic Music" series. "Avant-garde hillbilly and blues music" by violinist (and Fluxus conceptual artist) Henry Flynt.
Each disc documents a live improv session, the first from 1981 and the second from 1980, and both are quite lovely indeed. I guess it's "hillbilly" 'cause he's playing a fiddle, and there's echoes of Appalachian trad music amidst the drone.
For one concert/disc he's joined by a tambura player, and on the other by a guitarist (both strangely uncredited). Definitely in a Tony Conrad / fake Indian raga mode, and good at it. Fans of the aforementioned, as well as those into (Flynt associate) LaMonte Young, Ashtray Navigations and even the Dirty Three (it's actually VERY Dirty Three sounding at moments, with Flynt's melancholy, almost psychedelic violin being the dominant voice). More specifically, these are (we're told) "extended extemporizations on extended alpha-state ascension through excessive application of overtone-series note relationships/harmonics over a single chord/form". Check out www.henryflynt.org for more info on the man's art and writing (there's some strange essays to be found there). A very cool archival release, can't wait to hear more in the series.
The well of Henry Flynt music never seems to dry up. Here, billed as Dharma Warriors, Flynt collaborates with C.C. Hennix on drums on two long guitar pieces recorded to boombox in Woodstock in 1983. Like a stripped down minimalist boogie version of Rhys Chatham or Glenn Branca, Flynt brings a lo-fi backwoods zen vibe to his raw and earthy modal jamming of repetitive riffs and fuzzy chords, while Hennix ties it together with his clattering scattershot drumming. Celestial indeed!
Out of all the various iterations of Henry Flynt's huge and wildly varied recorded output, we weren't sure what to expect with this release, the previously unreleased 1975 recording of Flynt's avant-punk hillbilly boogie outfit Nova'Billy. Wildly ecstatic and rhythmic, full of left-field honky-tonk idioms but never wonky, Nova'Billy is probably one of Flynt's most joyously rocking outings that we've heard. Different than the Velvet's-by-way-of-the-Fugs recordings of his early band incarnation, The Insurrections, Nova' Billy is tighter and much better produced. Flynt's singing is minimal but well-used and less grating than we've heard on other recordings. His vocal delivery on "I Was A Creep" is more like the Rev. Fred Lane than the Jandek-style realms it can sometimes enter on releases like Raga Electric. A fine reissue and one that should live towards the top of Flynt's surprisingly massive discography!
Available on lp (but very limited!!)
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
NOTE: This is temporarily out of stock, but DEFINITELY DO GO AHEAD AND ORDER IT if you want one, as we will for sure be getting more around the third week of November, but we're only getting a limited amount!
Oooooh, we got all in a tizzy when we saw this. As it seems did every one else. We're told The Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! The first 'pressing' sold out in no time, and when we heard there was a second pressing, we got as many as we could so we could actually list it and give all of our like minded customers a chance to snatch up one of these amazing little machines before they were gone. Basically, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. The ultimate record nerd, collector geek, outsider music fetish object. SO COOL. We all bought one (except Allan, but he won't be able to resist much longer!) and it seems like these will not last long at all. FM3 is Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, and they are just the first group in what is meant to be a new series of different artists composing music specifically for these tiny handheld soundboxes. Each Buddha Machine comes with two batteries, and comes sealed in a very generic looking box that doesn't even begin to hint at the joyous drones contained inside! Each Buddha Machine comes in a different color, purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow. Since the boxes are sealed, the color you get will be completely random.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
These showed up on Friday last week and we were so excited we made a whole "in-between" list out of 'em! If you didn't happen to see that, well, we got more in this week and here's that 'first impressions' review again (yeah, we sold out so fast last weekend that none of us here have even gotten a chance to pick one up yet!):
Hey, it's like Christmas in March! The new Buddha Machines are here! We wanted to let you all know, since it's been three long years since the last one - and ten years, believe it or not, since the FM3's original Buddha Machine appeared. Hence, the release of Buddha Machine 5 marks "a decade of drone." If you're not familiar with the Buddha Machine, well... we're very surprised. We've sold SO many of Buddha Machine I, II, III and IV.
But in case you haven't seen one yet, it's basically a small, handheld device - a "battery powered sound box" or, as some would have it, "pocket sound system" - that plays a discrete set of loops of ambient music. Kind of a Zen alternative to the iPod, in a way. Ever since the FM3 created their first iteration of the Buddha Machine, they've been extremely popular, with artists remixing the loops, museum shows, copy-cat sound boxes, and whatnot. Brian Eno was a famous early adopter. You could take a look at our earlier Buddha Machine reviews if you wanna get more info on what they're all about.
So, fans have been hankering for a new Buddha Machine, we were hoping it would be here for Xmas last year (they're the best stocking stuffers for music/sound geeks), but better late than never. We'll let you know the basics about it now - but really you know you want one (or more) already, right?
Buddha Machine 5 contains nine blissful, beautiful new loops by the Beijing-based experimental duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian), featuring, among other things, "deep, orchestral drones, a Steinway grand piano, and the ambient washes of a vintage monosynth". It's got the usual volume and pitch controls, and a line out so you could plug it into a stereo or whatever, although of course it's self contained with it's own little speaker. In a departure from the many neon hues of the Buddha Machine 4, there are two colors available for the Buddha Machine 5, a Black one (this one) and a White one, each with "a special five-layer silicon coating", providing "a warm and fuzzy handfeel", which sounds kind of kinky. We'll be trying it out tonight.
And oh yeah, requires two AA batteries (not included).
