Most aQ customers will merely need to see the two bands sharing this split to know they need this. Then consider the fact that it's already out of print and we got the last 25 copies. We won't go into too much detail as these will most likely be gone in a heartbeat.
One side is Jack Rose, the modern master of neo-Appalachia, a demon with a slide guitar, which he demonstrates on the first track, and awesome Fahey cover. Elegant and effortless, the slide slippery and swooping, so smooth it almost makes it sound like the speed of the record is being altered. The second track is another cover, just as striking, this one a wicked bluegrass breakdown, all rapid fire fingerpicking and melancholy twang.
The flipside is one long track from Belgian funeral folk avant ambient doom collective Silvester Anfang, and it's a beauty, sounding like it could have come right off their recent Kosmies Slachtafval full length. Creepy and abstract, scattered percussion, haunting vocals, buzzing steel strings, little flurries of drumming, ominous chordal swells, building and building to a fever pitch. Some pagan musical ritual performed in a black forest in the middle of nowhere.
Cool creepy woodcut style cover, thick vinyl, and again, SUPER LIMITED, ONLY 250 COPIES and ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!
Massive collection of four epic live performances from the ever shifting Jackie O Motherfucker collective. Recorded in various venues and conditions, live on stage, live in the studio, live on the radio, with various guests and collaborators present. All four tracks are epic in length, the shortest nearly 20 minutes, each one a long and winding road that meanders through pretty much ever sonic nook and cranny the band have ever explored. And all four tracks some of the prettiest and creepiest stuff we've heard from these guys.
Raw stripped down blues guitar, abstract free folk flutter, drones everywhere, buzzing strings, and simple scattered percussion, mysterious vocals, strange samples and lots and lots of turntable. In fact, more than any JOMF recording we can remember, the turntable is one of the main elements, mostly maintaining a rich textural backdrop, but just as easily spitting out some Paul Hardcastle style stuttered loops, or offering up all manner of slippery scratchy rhythms. All very subtle and smoothly integrated into the ever shifting whole. Epic and cinematic, dark and dramatic, it sounds a bit like a dream jam between the No Neck Blues Band and Godspeed You Black Emperor mixed by DJ Shadow. When the guitar enters the fray on the second track is sounds like some slowcore post rock band suddenly decided to sit in. But it fits perfectly. The third track recorded live in Minneapolis, is the heaviest and most 'rocking', a cacophonous blast that ends up sounding like some long lost Krautrock jam, revived and brought back to life right there on stage, while the final twenty minute piece, recorded in the UK, unfurls lazily, bringing the nearly two hours of America Mystica to a close, with an epic spaciousness, underpinned by murky synths, fuzzy psych guitar buzz, splattery disembodied drumming, and a strangely funky fade out.
Limited lp only collection of live performances and radio broadcasts, all woven together into one lengthy buzzy free psych jam. A sitar sounding guitar (or is that a sitar?) unwinds lazily into a lengthy sun baked raga, all buzzing and slowly shifting, lazy, washed out guitars, a meditative soundscape, slow and sleepy and syrupy. This bliss eventually drifts directly into a West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band cover, with sweet hushed female vocals over barely-there instrumentation, a gentle reverbed hush, while beneath a soft pulse and distant lilting whirs. The second side is a single sidelong track, a mumbled murky psych jam, starting off like a way more shambolic Can before quickly dissipating into long stretches of guitar shimmer, far away percussion, manipulated turntables, a mesmerizing druggy and dreamlike drift, all whisper and warble. So nice.
Packaged in a brown chipboard sleeve with a metallic silver sticker affixed to the front.
This album came out a couple of months ago, but some problems in distribution from France (where the Textile lable is located) kept us from getting this until now. Nevertheless, "Change" is the much anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed pair of Jackie-O Motherfucker albums "Liberation" and "Magick Fire Music." This fluctuating ensemble of musicians have made a few minor alterations to their psychedelic improvisations channelled through the mythologies of Appalachian folk music; but for the most part, "Change" isn't that much of a prophetic title for this work. Jackie-O Motherfucker lets loose a vast array of instrumentation (guitars, violins, cellos, sax, reeds, vibes, and percussion) to explore any number of divergent paths of improvisation, while attempting to hold generalized themes which at times reference an Easter snake-charming vibe and at others a Huck Finn laziness. The latter is exemplified by Tom Greenwood's nasally vocals which wistfully meander through a couple of tracks like Gibby Haynes on even heavier sedation than usual. Jackie-O is at their best when structuring this sprawling aesthetic in a post-rock expansiveness (i.e. Tarentel, Pajo, Sonna, etc.) in which repeated guitar riffs reign in all of the other instruments as ornamentation. Yet, more frequently on "Change" than previous outings, Jackie-O allows for a Knitting Factory-style noodle jazz to be invoked through a plethora of solos.
The CD has three tracks not featured on the LP.
Another long out of print JOMF gem gets the deluxe reissue treatment. Here's our review from the first time around:
Jackie-O Motherfucker's sound is not the aggro fury the name might imply. Rather this Portland/New York/Baltimore ensemble prefers freeminded improvisational stylings that delve into the meandering Americana of Souled American, but with the psychedelic pastoral jazz freakouts of the No Neck Blues Band or the Sun City Girls. Through delicate plucks of banjo, melancholic slide guitars, and creaking violin, Jackie-O Motherfucker wanders through avant garde deconstructions of what could be folk standards -- "Amazing Grace" makes an appearance with only a single sax riff betraying its presence. So nice.
We never would have expected this sort of record from the always difficult Jackie-O-Motherfucker. A downright pretty folk record. And no, not psych folk, or new weird America folk, just gorgeous and dreamy, lilting and delicately lovely folk. A bit of droney strum, a little shimmery atmosphere, male and female harmony vocals, a lush instrumental backdrop of double bass, cello, pedal steel, reeds, occasional slow burning post rock rhythms, rich and lush and really quite lovely. Some of the old JOMF surfaces toward the end of a few of the tracks, and on some of the longer tracks, where the floating folk implodes and becomes a sort of abstract free rock meander, with hiccuping turntables, snippets of spoken word, warbly melodies, all drifting in a woozy soundscape of drone and shimmer. But for the most part this is definitely the most song-oriented, and loveliest JOMF record to date. Probably has a bit to do with the fact that four of the seven tracks are traditionals. But even when the songs are being stretched and twisted and pulled apart, it's never harsh, instead it's all warm and muted, lush and dense, lilting and hypnotic, a deep, rich gorgeous sound world of dark and dreamy folk, washing over you and filling your ears with sweet soft sounds.
Cool bandana cover art too!
In spite of their punk-as-fuck name, Jackie-O Motherfucker is a Portland avant-rock ensemble that draws much more from the inner-connectivist logic of Harry Smith (the curator of Smithsonian's Anthology of American Folk Music, amongst other things),
"Liberation" is Jackie-O's seventh album and continues their explorations into the psychedelic recombinations of traditional American folk and the non-linear agendas of free-jazz. Rather than utilizing the approach of the like minded No Neck Blues Band's squalid lack of structure, Jackie-O smartly plays patterned composition and free improvisation off of each other. "Ray-O-Graph" is a solid example of such a strategy, with its cheap but unwavering beatbox and a twangy guitar that repeats its bent notes at an unhurried pace, while the rest of the massive ensemble makes itself known with a quiet racket. Yet, just when the erosion and upheaval of form starts to make sense, Jackie-O issues forth an honest-to-God song in "Something on Your Mind," a backwoodsy ballad complete with Southern drawl and front porch stomp. For all of its sonic complexities, "Liberation" lives up to its name as an album content in the disorienting freedom to allow oneself to wander.
Finally available again!
Northwestern psychedelic space/free/avant rockers Jackie O Motherfucker return from a massive European tour and all we got was this lousy live double cd. Just kidding. It's hardly lousy. In fact, this may be one of our favorite JOMF recordings to date. Which makes sense, since live is where a large improvisatory ensemble can let loose and do what they do best. Improvise. Wander. Meander. Get lost. And explore. Mantra like, barely-there-vocals, guitars buzzing like sitars, subtle shuffling percussion, warm drones, occasional sputters and half melodies from the turntables, guitars and basses melt into the background, blending into the sonic foliage, while everything rustles and shimmers, breathes and stretches. Like free jazz filtered through a thick haze of painkillers and potsmoke. Lethargic, lugubrious, cinematic and at times almost nightmarish. Really nice! Includes a West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band cover, of all things...
- MPEG stream: 2
- MPEG stream: 3
Another super limited release from Portland (formerly SF) based artist Chris Johansen's Awesome Vistas label. We flew through the last two, the Oh Sees' Peanut Butter Oven EP and Linda Hagood's Pink Love Red Love (the Oh Sees is WAY gone, but we might have a few of the Hagood left), so we expect the new ones to fly out of here just as fast.
The Cryin' Sea is the latest from folk drone free noise collective Jackie-O Motherfucker, whose last disc Freedom Land was a bit of a flop around these parts. But thankfully The Cryin' Sea has not only righted that wrong, it also finds the band returning to more of a folk sound, at least on the opener. A loping meandering shuffle, with mumbled vocals, simple propulsive drumming, and spidery reverby guitar lines. A bit like a super stripped down No Neck, Jackie-O let the song unfurl lazily, allowing the track to morph into some super blissed out krautrock, which could easily have filled out the whole side but ends up ending way too soon. That's followed up by something a bit more abstract, an angular assemblage of buzzing metallic melodic fragments, bits of guitar twang spread out over sizzling tinkling percussion, muted voices, and distant shimmering drones, before the vocals return and the song gets a bit folky again. The side closer is a caustic slab of bedroom buzz, the guitars crunchy and buzzing, the vocals distorted and garbled, the drums a buried plod, a lilting, darkly pretty dirge.
As if that weren't enough, the B-side is a single side long song, the title track captured live in Finland, and sounding much more like 'classic' JoM: sputtery percussion, moaned abstract vocals, bits of turntable whir and mutated samples, eventually giving way to strummed guitar, simple motorik drum beat, and some gorgeous super stripped down krautrockiness, that over the course of the rest of the disc becomes looser and looser, more and more free, finishing off with a burst of soft cacophony. Really nice. And JoM now counts among its membership Nick Bindeman, the man behind bigtime aQ drone faves Tunnels (he may have been in JoM for a while, but we only just noticed).
As with all Awesome Vistas, cool cover art too. Hand screened black green and purple images on SUPER thick old style lp sleeves, with a photocopied insert.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!
When this showed up at Aquarius, I made a stupid comment to a customer who was curious about this record. I said that Jackie-O Motherfucker were somewhat of a Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn communal project featuring a bunch of random No Neck Blues Band style "pipe
Now that I've actually cracked the duct-tape seal which encases the two records and immersed myself in the wonders of "The Magick Fire Music," I must gladly admit that I was very very wrong. There certainly is a rustic Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn aspect to the Portland ensemble's sound, but there is much less of the expected jazz element. Instead, Jackie-O Motherfucker has carved out a sound that is emotively quite similar to the post-rock melancholia of Godspeed / Sigur Ros but with none of their overly dramatic orchestrations.
The album opens with a buried collage of shortwave radio heterodyning and disconnected voices, but emphatically steps forward with a guitar duet between a saddened David Pajo-esque riff and an intertwining effects-laden chimed tone. After the clunky twang of Jew's harps on "Bone Saw," Jackie-O returns to the evocative, spacious, and cinematically Western riffs (especially on the breathtakingly melancholy "The Cage"), as an effective means of transcribing sound into a psychic landscape that is strangely similar to the aforementioned Godspeed. While Godspeed brackets their tight orchestrations around a social pessimism that eventually leads to cathartic enlightenment about how shitty the world is around us, Jackie-O Motherfucker settles back into a drugged stupor of oddly psychedelic grooves, something I prefer. A very, very good record!
Run by Tom Greenwood and Josh Stevenson, both from Jackie-O Motherfucker, the U Sound series documents lost, hidden and forgotten musical history. Volume 2 features excerpts from two live Jackie-O Motherfucker shows in Portland and Vancouver back in 2000,
More live recordings from the Portland improv collective Jackie-O Motherfucker from 2001 from shows in Portland and Vancouver. This document opens with their often squiggly saxophone mellowing out into sultry almost snake charmers' slinkiness, fronting lots
Again, ESP-style revisionist jazz kicks off these two sets from Jackie-O Motherfucker from live shows in their native Portland and Seattle. Of all of the U Sound archives of Jackie-O live shows Volume 4 is the most free-jazz oriented, even their amazingly
Finally available on cd, the one-two punch that proves Jackie O Motherfucker just may well edge out their more hyped contemporaries, the No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, in the bid to rule the world of US-underground-free-psych-folk-weirdness.
There certainly is a rustic Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn aspect to this Portland ensemble's sound, but there is much less of the expected jazz element. Instead, Jackie-O Motherfucker have carved out a sound that is emotively quite similar to the post-rock melancholia of Godspeed / Sigur Ros but with none of their overly dramatic orchestrations.
The album opens with a buried collage of heterodyning shortwave radio and disconnected voices, but emphatically steps forward with a guitar duet between a sad David Pajo-esque riff and an intertwining effects-laden chimed tone. After the clunky twang of Jew's harps on "Bone Saw," Jackie-O returns to the evocative, spacious, and cinematically Western riffs (especially on the breathtakingly melancholy "The Cage"), as an effective means of transcribing sound into a psychic landscape that is strangely similar to the aforementioned Godspeed. While Godspeed bracket their tight orchestrations around a social pessimism that eventually leads to cathartic enlightenment about how shitty the world is around us, Jackie-O Motherfucker shrug their shoulders and settle back into a drugged out, dreamy drawly musical stupor of oddly psychedelic grooves which somehow seems way more appealing.
This is volume three in My Cat Is An Alien's series of split lp's/cd's. The lps are limited to 100 copies and contain original MCIAA artwork, but sell out immediately and more importantly cost over $100 so we wisely passed on those since the cds are way more nicely priced. And sound exactly the same! For volume three, MCIAA is joined by Jackie-O Motherfucker, who offer up a twenty minute musical joyride, equal parts tribal clatter, vocal experimentation, music concrete, skittery free jazz, ambient drone, studio fuckery / tape splicing / turntable weirdness and found sound collage. Sounds like it could be a mess, but it somehow works. A chaotic convoluted sonic freakout that's more mesmerizing than maddening. Quite cool actually. For their half of the split, MCIAA deliver a keening wash of glistening ambience, with lots of space-y swoosh and futuristic bleeps and bloops, that slowly morphs into an almost nursery rhyme like ditty with affected vocal melodies, simple chimes, and reverberating steel string shimmer.
It's been awhile since we've heard from these two camps of free rock improvisers, but this split is a welcome return for both old faves, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Tom Carter.
The Jackie-O side is a side-long track called "House of Rain" which begins plaintively with funereal horns, bass, synth, and clattering percussion airing out in a slow build. Mournful mumbling vocals intone through a collage of interweaving sounds, broken guitar strums, hallucinogenic claptrap, and propulsive dirgery that coalesce into a momentous free-jazz memorial send-off for some seemingly heroic figure's burial at sea. Flutes, drums and horns buzzingly flock together into an epic whirring cloud of noise that battles it out among the stratosphere before slowly dying out.
The Tom Carter side is a collaboration with cellist Helena Espvall (formerly of Espers) called "Electrogesis" which begins more abstractly with what sounds like sped-up piano tones joined by cello and guitar in tandem, the cello more abrasive and droney while the guitar is more searching and exploratory, riding the line between melodic psych excursion and free improvisation. Soon the two lock horns around an intense raga-like center and as the sound grows more intense, the music fragments and destabilizes into a burning murky ember of glorious beautiful noise. So great! Limited to 200 copies.
We managed to get a super limited number of these, a killer live album, vinyl only, from Northwestern psych / drone / improv / whatever collective Jackie-O-Motherfucker. Three tracks, recorded in Italy, San Francisco and Buffalo over the last few years, housed in a super striking hand made sleeve. Full color, psychedelic gatefold, hand screened, the inside is cut out so you can see the vinyl inside, the lp is housed in a trippy printed plastic sleeve, also included is a strange mini insert, each one is hand numbered, limited to 1000 copies.
The whole of side one is the NY show, and is an extended shimmery cinematic soundscape, distant swells, abstract percussion, and haunting female vocals that go from crooning to wordless mumbling to wildly speaking in tongues. Guitars warble and waver, everything is drifty and woozy and gorgeously dreamlike.
The SF show is all creaking moans and deconstructed blues, detuned guitars and bleating horns, muted and rumbling with lots and lots of low end. It sort of sounds like some busted old jazz record being spun manually with your finger on the turntable as slow as you can.
And finally, the Italian show is more of a sort of hypnotic ur-drone, like Sunroof! crossed with No Neck Blues Band, with a bit of that Finnish Forest Folk thrown in. A dronelike hum, a muted buzzing skree, horns moaning in the distance, cymbals sizzling and drums an abstract clatter.
All three sets are on the soft and tranquil side. Even at their most animated, they still seem dark and dreamy and subtly tripped out. Quite lovely and haunting.
Again, AMAZING packaging, and crazy limited. We got maybe 15 copies left, and once they're gone, we most likely will not be able to get more.
The arrival of anything that Andrew Chalk touches is a cause for celebration here at aQuarius, and here we have this new lp entitled A Paper Doll's Whisper Of Spring. A tiny edition of these recordings appeared and disappeared on cd-r about a year or so ago, with the occasional duo of Vikki Jackman and Andrew Chalk working here with the hitherto unknown to us Jean-Noel Rebilly. The Jackman and Chalk aesthetic of wintry pastoral piano clusters swelling with beautifully rendered gossamer clouds of impressionism, haze, fog, smoke, and whatnot remain intact, so what Rebilly is contributing is not all that clear. But given how good Jackman and Chalk work together, why mess things up? At times, it appears that the three are in fact working as a trio, with Jackman sitting behind the keys and with Chalk and Rebilly taking up possibly guitar and bass. There sounds are so ephemeral and so seamlessly integrated into the languid tones and suspended drones out of Jackman's piano that it's hard to really tell. Synths, koto, and possibly flutes also get wrapped up in the mirage-like sonic miasma that Chalk weaves from his source materials. That of course is the magic of Andrew Chalk, his ability to render the drone musical, and blur all sounds into time-lapsed experiences of forgotten memories, haunted films, and half-remembered dreams. Beautiful stuff as always and again, as with all Chalk releases, immaculately packaged. The vinyl is limited to 400 copies, and it's unlikely that a cd version of this will show up anytime in the near future...
David Jackman originally released Edge Of Nothing on an untitled cassette back in 1983 through his own Aeroplane imprint. This cassette was a tiny edition of 5 copies and recycled the archaic C7 tapes used in some computing systems as a means of storage. All of those copies were sold through the Rough Trade Shop in London; and supposedly, one customer actually used the cassette for computer storage and destroyed the music. Later that year, Edge Of Nothing re-appeared on the Elephant Table Album compilation alongside Chris & Cosey, Nurse With Wound, SPK, Legendary Pink Dots, Coil, etc. Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound remarked that Jackman's enigmatic work was "a cherry on a pile of vomit." While that compilation is actually quite good, Jackman's dissonant composition is an eerie anomaly amidst the rest of the albums disjointed electronics and semantic inversions of power. All of the sounds from Edge Of Nothing came from a 14" splash cymbal that Jackman bowed, scraped, looped, and played back in reverse. Jackman admits that he found this cymbal in the street, and it had previously been used for BB-gun practice. Regardless, the slightly overblown multi-tracked sounds from that cymbal have been the basis for the best Jackman recordings, both solo and with his 'group' Organum.
Jump two decades, and find Jackman returning to that same material to sculpt two tracks of the exact same length (6'29"). Edge Of Nothing is so dense and so lacking in any recognizable signposts within the mass of buzzings and raspings that it's hard to say if in fact Jackman has simply put the same track on both side. If one is to believe Die Stadt, then the pieces are indeed different.
"Eisen" is another installment in a series from Organum ringleader David Jackman, who consistently offers a disturbing body of work with undeniable references to the atrocities of World War II. This piece is an extended collage built from an eerie repetition of a Wagnerian theme as played by a German marching band circa 1940. Jackman handles this piece with such masterful
This is the first of four 10"s to be released through Die Stadt within the next year. The A-side will certainly appeal to Organum fans, an impressive collage of acoustic drones from scraped metals. This is as good as any of the best Organum recordings, although only a mere 6 minutes long. The B-side is a straight field recording of birds and airplanes, also with a very brief program of 6 minutes or so. Limited to 500 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
David Jackman is the enigmatic mastermind behind the drone ensemble Organum, who are known for their textural explorations into the acoustic properities of bowed metals. Jackman, under his own name, has released several amazing records completely unlike Organum. "Machine Gun Fighting" is a reworking of archival sound recordings from the Imperial War Museum in London, and continues in a series of war related collages that Jackman has made from those recordings. Using the rapid hammer fire of machine guns as the sole sound source, Jackman builds a surprisingly droned-out but nerve-wracking collage. While certain circles of right-wing post-industrialists still conjure the images of World War II to invoke the power of horror, Jackman's intentions appear less than clear and may simply be based on the sonic quality of these machines rather than their significance as implements of destructions.
After a spell of expensive releases both solo and as Organum that held a paltry amount of material, David Jackman has finally provided a new album where the dollar per minute ratio is less than one! In other words, you get 35 minutes of aggregate sound collage for a mere $14.98. Though a reissue, essentially nobody has really heard these recordings before as Up From Zero was one of the very first cassettes that Jackman put out on his Aeroplane Records back in 1982 in an edition of just 30 copies. There's also an extra track dating back to 1980, a collaboration with the underappreciated Philip Sanderson. While his strongest work has clearly been his Organum project which concentrates on timbral accumulations of bowed gongs and scraped metals into epic drones and minimalist constructions, Jackman's solo work has a considerable amount to offer. Up From Zero is a particularly dynamic suite distinguished by the easily recognizable samples which riddle Jackman's compositions. A screeching loop of a car crash interrupts the burbling of a placid stream; deep rumbling drones situate behind the seasick motion of scraped metals and smashed glass; and bowed guitar echoes toward infinity. These sounds are much more obvious than most Organum / Jackman sounds, but never quite articulate themselves as the Surrealist epiphanies of Nurse With Wound. It may have been that these early works experimented with various sounds before he hit on the signature of Organum. Nevertheless, another very strong piece of work from one of the great minimalists of the contemporary era.
Outside of his work in Organum (which has been sadly on hold for the past few years), David Jackman has been producing a strange series of collages based upon a handful of personal yet unidentified accounts from World War II. In previous interviews, Jackman has stated an open hostility towards the ultra-conservative agendas of certain elements of Industrial culture, thus making
This album originally was released as an incredibly limited cassette in 1996 in an edition of only 61 copies. The CD release will see a bit more longevity with a pressing of a whopping 700 copies.
The journey through the back catalogue of Organum and David Jackman continues; this time with two very rare tracks from 1980 / 1981. "Terrain" was a collaboration between Jackman and Philip Sanderson, who had been active in the early '80s in the minimalist, primitive electronics ensemble the Storm Bugs. This is an alternate version of a track that had appeared on the "0 Degrees North" cassette that Jackman released through his Aeroplane Records in an edition of 25 copies. With Jackman overdubbing low guttural growls on a steel strung cello and Sanderson programming coffee-percolation on a drum machine, "Terrain" is a lo-fi production that finds its companions in the work of Throbbing Gristle, Hunting Lodge, and the Broken Flag camps of noise. "Adrift" -- a solo Jackman piece which appeared on the Sanderson's Snatch tapes in an edition again of 25 copies -- is similarly lo-fi with a hypnotic loop of a monochromatic guitar topped with clanging metals and samples from orchestral swells which have been drained of all color and replaced with a swampy din. Perhaps not one of Jackman's finest moments; but considering how all of his work fetches high prices from record collectors, this may be more of an investment.
Of Beauty Reminiscing is the debut album for Vikki Jackman who had previously contributed the evocative if very minimal clusters of piano notes on Andrew Chalk's Goldfall LP from a few months back. So taken was he by the results of that source material, Chalk offered Ms. Jackman an album of her own, which he would produce and release through his Faraway Press imprint. The piano that Jackman uses could never be confused for a concert piano as the antiquated instrument offers forth slightly askew if thoroughly elegant notes; and Jackman certainly emphasizes the idiosyncrasies of that piano through her fragile, open-ended and sparsely laid out melodies, which hold some similarities to Erik Satie's or maybe even Morton Feldman's piano compositions smeared with a decaying Victorian gracefulness. One side of this LP features Jackman by her lonesome, and the other appears to exhibit the hand of Andrew Chalk blurring the edges of many of her tones into a wistful fog of drifting dronescaping. Super limited to a tiny pressing of which we will probably get no more than the pittance that we have received. Which at this point is FIVE copies. Gone in no time of course. Prepare to be disappointed. Sorry. Highly recommended nonetheless.
Andrew Chalk began his Faraway Press imprint less than a decade ago, hand-fabricating some of the loveliest packaging we have seen, created to house some of the loveliest drones we have ever heard. Almost all of the records on Faraway Press have been Chalk's solo records, with a couple of collaborations, and a few albums from Vikki Jackman, who had previously partnered with Chalk on a handful of records, most notably providing the source material for Chalk's Goldfall album. Her first album was Of Beauty Reminiscing, and this one Whispering Pages is the second - both of which enjoy Andrew Chalk's impeccable ear and additional production. Jackman's principle instrument is an antiquated piano, which clearly wears its age in its warbled tones and wooden creaks which Jackman has no interest in disguising. Her compositions are gossamer at best, with gently plinked clusters of notes leaving little more than impressionist marks. Where her previous outing took many of its Spartan cues from Erik Satie, Whispering Pages enjoys a greater amount of additional treatments: field recordings, drone fabrication, and even some digital pixel smear. Throughout the album, Jackman's soft focus piano flickers across shadowy rumbles, which while somber and nocturnal are never oppressively blackened. The bits of digital splutter which dot the drift and drone are a bit unusual from anything that Andrew Chalk touches, but it certainly does not detract from the delicate drama of this album. Think Tim Hecker judiciously remixing Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon. Be warned however, Whispering Pages is strictly limited to 300 copies.
Jacob isn't a person, but a duo, consisting of David Cordero, who belongs to a Spanish experimental post-rock ensemble called Ursula whom we haven't heard before, and Marco Serrato, who's the bassist/vocalist in Spanish avant-doooOOOoomsters Orthodox, whom we HAVE heard (and love). This disc on Utech finds the two working together on a new project in the spirit of what's described as "Xenakis-worship", making a dark and droney soundscape that lives up to its title, and then some! Full of spooky seismic rumblings, fluttering static, scary grinding distortion, speaker-rattling drone, avant-chamber string skree, it's only loud if you turn it up (we dare you), but even at a fairly low volume it's still sinister and eerie stuff. Inspired, perhaps, yes, by the electronic compositions of Xenakis, but also definitely by the duo's mutual love of sci-fi and horror film soundtracks. It doesn't say anywhere what the instrumentation is, but we think we're hearing cello or double bass, and electronics, and bowed cymbals maybe? All played by skeletons, or wraiths, in a dead void of inky blackness. Some haunting buried/effected wordless vokills enter into the listener's (sub)consciousness during the final track, too, we think, and hint at somethings we've heard from Orthodox. But if it turned out that this really was the work of an obscure 20th century composer we'd belive it - and be putting in a call to Creel Pone just to say, why have you been holding out on us?
The six tracks of nightmare atmospherics on this disc aren't just ominous, but THE ominous. Seriously. Open-minded Orthodox fans (what other kind are there?) should investigate, as should anyone else into claustrophobic isolationist soundscapery!!
Comes in typically nice, slim Utech packaging, with translucent printed sleeve and three cards bearing b&w photographs, morbid and beautiful.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Well, it would be nice to see as well as hear what's documented here, but it's still pretty interesting... this Harry Partch-ish music was part of a audio-visual Planetarium show, and was originally released on LP by Folkways in 1959.
The first in a new series from Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin, in which visual artists, most of which are not actually musicians, are asked to create a tape, both the music and packaging, with the only caveat being that they do whatever they want. The first installment comes from aQ pal Rich Jacobs, who most art nerds are no doubt familiar with, who has conjured up a cool, dark, brooding collection of guitar instrumentals, the label describes the sound as improv surf and Western cinematic, and there's definitely some of that going on, but we're hearing lots of Sun City Girls too, a sort of Eastern vibe, droned out, buzzy, exotic and mysterious, spidery melodies wrapped around reverby riffs, a sort of slow motion surf twang brood that is haunting and hypnotic, tranced out and woozily mesmerizing, hazy and washed out and dreamily psychedelic, it's a gorgeous dusty dreamlike sound that we find ourselves getting utterly lost in.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES! Super deluxe packaging by Jacobs himself, printed tape labels on blue tapes, a mini screen printed zine, a mini Gocco print, a Japanese style obi, stamped and hand numbered.
Another winner from the seemingly infallible Students Of Decay cd-r label. Who hereby join the ranks of AQ faves like Pseudo Arcana and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Maybe not in terms of sheer output, but certainly in terms of quality! This one features a familiar name and some strange underground cross pollination. You may not recognize the name Jade Emperor, but by now, you probably know the name Brad Rose, as the man who runs another killer label, Digitalis, and who also performs as The North Sea. For Jade Emperor, Rose teams up with Wilson Lee and the two explore a haunting world of abstract Appalachia and buzzing ragas and murky drones. The first track is the perfect demonstration. Over the course of 13 minutes, steel string guitars buzz and shimmer, Eastern sounding melodies drift delicately. chords ring out and fade away, this ambient folk gradually overtaken by a subtle murmuring rumble, that builds to a dark and slithery smear of sound, over which, haunting super affected psych guitar figures twist and turn. Slightly sinister but totally captivating. For the second track, the guitars retreat and allow slow waves of buzzing drone to build into a slow pulsing current.
Then the final track is like an unhinged version of the first. As if the band performing the opening track, were suddenly transported to another place. Free of gravity, of the laws of nature and physics. So the music just sort of drifts and dissipates, riffs splinter into fragments, strummed chords become sing spinning notes, the track breaks apart into its constituent parts, and the result is a dense cloud of sounds and notes and whirs and buzzes and melodic fragments and instrumental snippets, a sort of organic raga, decay becoming the music of nature. Gorgeous!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! So you can bet these won't last long...
Glass Canyons marks the first time, Bay area-based experimental musician Marielle V. Jakobsons (Date Palms, Myrmyr, darwinsbitch) has recorded under her own name, and it's a delicate balance between her more classical and experimental tendencies. Overriding melodies take a back seat to texture, rhythm and spatialization, the feeling of hiking through a varied terrain of wild topographies: glacial drift, windy deserts and oceanic turbulence. Bowed vibrational strings sometime sway in lyrical folk filigrees, but only make apparitional appearances throughout before disintegrating in a sea of modulating tones and an undercurrent of bell-tone piano figures. Darker uncertain moods sometimes cloud over before blissful lighter notes burst forth like dappled sunlight. It's an album that has the uncanny ability of feeling free-form and carefully constructed at the same time, and so in tune with a sensitive nature that makes it seem like we're roaming through a strange new world. Lovely!
We've been experiencing something of a Jandek craze here at aQuarius as of late. Not that Houston's legendary loner went away or anything - it's just when you have 60+ albums to your name it can be possible to overwhelm anyone trying to write a review. Well, the last few Jandek releases have overwhelmed us in the best way imaginable, signifying another unexpected turn, this one towards more melodic group improvisations showing a heavy free/spiritual jazz influence with wandering piano melodies, sustained strings, clarinette, dramatic cymbal washes, and an overall sense of restraint that hasn't been really heard on Jandek records before. You get the impression that Jandek, handling the piano on this one, acts more as a conductor outlining the general direction for the songs and trusting his cast of supporting players to simply be themselves within the ensemble. The results are strikingly beautiful while somehow managing to remain classically Jandek-ian in their freewheeling execution.
Atlanta Saturday follows a similar path as the last two releases, Where Do You Go From Here and Maze Of The Phantom, though it predates them, having been recorded in 2007 at the Academy Of Medicine. The album is another beautifully subdued affair with plenty of breathing room and drawn out instrumentation. Who would have ever thought that the man responsible for unleashing one of the strangest careers (if you want to call it that) in modern music back in 1978 would have landed in such a peaceful sounding place three decades later? Of course, once the occasional vocals come in there will be no mistaking who this is, and the recent material appears to be the latest phase in the continuing saga. Again, the emphasis here seems to be on the group dynamic and the songs gel together into one gigantic harmonious whole. If you dug the previous few albums, or possibly even the recent slew of Anton Batagov releases we have been going crazy for, then you will definitely want this one.
There's two things that even people who haven't heard Jandek's music, but have heard of him, know: the mysterious Texas-based "singer/songwriter" is (or, was) even more reclusive than J.D. Salinger, and is VERY prolific, issuing recordings every few months on this own Corwood Industries label, going way back to the late '70s! But now that he's come out of his shell just a bit and taken to actually playing live shows, the former quality of reclusiveness has been shaken (just a little bit), yet on the other hand he's easily able to add even MORE to his already vast discography, by issuing live albums of course. This is his fourth live album, and 48th release overall! Austin Sunday is a double disc documenting his performance at the Scottish Rite Theater in Austin, TX on August 28th, 2005. "The representative from Corwood" (as Jandek likes to be billed) played electric guitar and sang, in his usual unique style, and was accompanied by a pick-up band of local musicians from the indie/improv scene: Juan Garcia on bass and two drummers -- Nick Hennies (of Weird Weeds) and Chris Cogburn. Jandek brought new lyrics along, and then (we assume) he and the band improvised. It gets into some fairly "rockin'" territory, by Jandek standards, if we can even say that about something this haunting and abstract sounding... creepy and weird. "Run away, run away, and don't like me."
The Jandek onslaught continues unabated. So much so that we have been forced to actually go back in time and review albums released within the last few years that somehow flew under the radar when they first came out. Jandek's recent direction with melodically rich collaborative albums like Where Do You Go From Here? and Maze Of The Phantom has been enthusiastically received by aQ customers and staff alike, we just can't get enough.
Canticle Of Castaway dates from 2010, and unlike those previously mentioned albums, this is the kind of material that probably separates the casual Jandek listener (if there is such a thing) from the true acolytes. Featuring the most enduring of Jandek recording approaches - the man and his sourly tuned guitar - Canticle is almost jarringly "out there". So if you dig that stuff from the mid-2000s, like the Ruins Of Adventure and When I Took That Train you should find plenty to love; if you found yourself pleasantly surprised by how much you actually liked the past few releases after never really being a fan, you may find yourself cowering in terror. We think it's great that Jandek's still got the old fire within to create such awesome and bizarre tunes that are completely unique to him. Starting with the 29 minute "Don't Go Out", the feel is similar to what you get on the earliest records, but more upfront and less distant sounding, the voice older and more secure sounding in its delivery, but perhaps even weirder in the lyric department (a good thing for sure). Occasional slashes of conventional chords show up, but it's mostly free form strumming and wandering single note melodies. Things follow a similar path with "You Weren't", a brief 6 minute piece before closing with another monster, the 17 minute "Boys Like Blue", which has slightly sparser instrumentation, perhaps hinting at the restraint we've heard on some the recent live stuff. Or perhaps not. It's Jandek, so you'll probably never know. So yeah, we're definitely giving this our highest recommendation, and we know there are plenty of you who will agree with us. Of course, it wouldn't be a Jandek record without confusing the living fuck out the majority of the human population, so approach at your own risk!
Now back in print on vinyl, Chair Beside A Window was album number four in the massive Jandek discography, recorded and originally released back in 1982. Jandek's recordings are always self-contained, self-referential, and willfully difficult excursions into anti-folk aesthetic that deconstructs every blues-based archetype through freely tuned 'songs.' It was never clear at all if Jandek was the work of one mystery man who lived in Texas, or if he employed help from anonymous musicians. The early records allude to a nearly hermetic form of creativity, but given the model for Jandek's live performances in the 21st Century (with only a couple of a notes handed to the backing musicians and no introductions whatsoever), it's entirely possible that Jandek brought in a couple of musicians under similar instructions back in the day. That said, Chair Beside A Window is an exceptional record for Jandek, not just because of its cracked genius, but also because of the appearance of two outside vocalists, a woman presumably named Nancy and another woman who might be Nancy's sister named Pat. There had been speculation that Nancy was Jandek's girlfriend, although there's nothing to prove (or disprove) that notion. In any case, Jandek's "Nancy Sings" is something of a freak-folk classic with Nancy adopting more of a classic Patsy Cline delivery of fragile beauty, as a counter to the lithium warble and growl from the man himself. Jandek also reprises his track "European Jewel" which is as close to a Jandek standard as you can get, given the recurrence of this song on a handful of albums. This song appeared on Ready For The House but here gets an electric guitar arrangement instead of the treble happy acoustic found on the debut. There's still no end to the mystery of Jandek, even after he's been touring the globe as a very unlikely troubadour. Pretty much all of Jandek's records from the '80s are awe-inspiring / confounding documents, Chair Beside A Window included!
Just when you think you have Jandek figured out. Nearly fifty releases, several this year, you sort of figure he has his 'thing' and does it when the inspiration strikes him. But then along comes Glasgow Monday and we are totally thrown for a loop. Where to begin. First off it's a single track, spread out over TWO discs, a track called "The Cell" nine parts, near ninety minutes. Recorded live in Scotland, May 23, 2005, this is the 47th Jandek release, and FOURTH of 2006. BUT, gone is the strangled blues guitar that pretty much defined Jandek's sound, and its place, piano. Just piano. And vocals. Some strange scraping buzz and subtle percussion, some rumbling cello way in the background, but this is almost entirely piano and vocals, and you know what? It's absolutely gorgeous. This just might be the disc to win over all you Jandek haters out there. The piano is lilting and lovely, strange melodies hover and dissipate, notes and chords trail and drift, hands wandering along the keyboard, slightly melancholy, the sound just glistens and shimmers, while Jandek sings over the top, a sort of spoken croon, tentative, hushed, almost whispered, very dreamy and delicate. This is really nothing like any of the other Jandek records you have ever heard. A dark and mysterious, lovely and dreamlike record. Intimate and inspired, gentle and delicate, without a doubt the loveliest Jandek yet...
After 26 years of cultivating an identity of secrecy, Jandek emerged on October 17, 2004 to perform live for the first time at a festival held at The Arches in Glasgow, Scotland. Many have expressed disappointment at the fact that the famously reclusive Jandek has "thrown away" his cultural cache by making a public appearance; but if you consider that Jandek declined to speak to anyone before or after the show and only spoke in undisclosed communications with the promoter and his collaborators, Jandek continues to take considerable efforts to maintain his distance from the public. So don't fret. Even though he has made this public appearance, do we really know more about Jandek than we did prior to this event? No, not really. The only thing that we can know for sure is that he's more clued into the avant-garde that had been previously thought since his collaborators were Richard Youngs and Alex Neilsen, though that could have been the doing of the festival's promoter. Plus Jandek's whole career makes it clear that he should, can and does do what he wants.
Glasgow Sunday is the recording of that historic Jandek performance; and no matter what your opinion is of Jandek's decision to make a public appearance, this recording is fantastic. Youngs and Neilsen keep their input strictly as a rhythm section never to upstage Jandek himself. Throughout the entire set, Richard Youngs keeps his bass within a controlled variation of an elliptical throb and Neilsen does the quiet tumble down the stairs thing on the drum kit. But it's Jandek who really shines. His strangulated blues chords have the same jangling atonality of his earliest records (i.e. Ready For The House), and his deepened baritone voice snakes through his signature revelatory darkness: "I'm floating in a sea of red / Drowning down, can't get no air / And you done told me / I've got no life / I'm rolling my eyes / The last gasp is coming on." If Jandek's going to come out of his shell to make records this good, who are we to complain!?
The drums stagger forward in a drunken lurch and a pseudo-bluesy rocktastic bass line oozes forth occasionally reaching towards brassy moans in jazz-not-jazz pools of structural devolution. Here is the anonymous rhythm section for Jandek's Saturday performance back in June of 2013 in his hometown of Houston, Texas. Anchoring all of this activity is Jandek himself, firing off taut, sharp, yet meandering phrases and notes from his guitar with the stream-of-consciousness poetics that wax and wane unintelligibly as he warbles through the notes. His freeform live shows are always without practice and with his backing band given only the instructions for 'blues', 'ballads', or 'brutal.' The Houston gig seemed to fall into none of those categories, although it seems to slant closest to the blues in a super abstract, Jandekian way. The overall feel is closer to the completely wasted sessions that The Stooges belligerently recorded while completely fucked up as they struggled to work through Funhouse between bottles of alcohol and heroin fixes. The crack from reality that Jandek describes is not through the delirium of bacchanalian excess but rather through an exasperation with existence itself. Jandek huffs and heaves his lyrics about his excitement and physical obsession with an unnamed dreamtime figure, betrayed by a throaty voice and old age. It's long been a compelling journey of non-representational songwriting, and here's to many more years to come!
