Heavy progressive electric raga psychedelia here folks!! And it's soooooo good. All the songs here are long (there's five of 'em, between 7:16 and 13:09 in length) and you'll only wish they were longer. Described as "a two-man, all-British electric symphony orchestra", this album was originally released in 1969 on Decca and is utter nirvana for those into psych headswirlers. The lead electric guitar on here is incredible (and the bongo playing isn't bad, either!). While this duo came out of the '60s British blues rock scene, Mick Hutchinson's guitar playing displays tripped-out, classically trained chops and certainly also a strong sitar influence... percussionist Andy Clark plays guitar at times too, and between them they switch back and forth on a number of instruments.
The first track, "Improvisation On A Modal Scale" has got a heavy-riffing acid folk sound, sounding like early Wishbone Ash, sitting crosslegged off on an Indian ashram, or Comus if they ever plugged in and cranked it up. "Acapulco Gold" (hmm, the only song here not given a technical musical title is named after marijuana!) follows in a more acoustic, Spanish-guitar flavored mode. Lovely. Then "Impromptu in 'E' Minor" is another mellow number, yet darker, incorporating tribal percussive throb and jazz-inflected piano improvisation. "Textures In 3/4" also has a moody, jazzy vibe, with some saxophone coloration, and of course extended electric guitar improv, gorgeous and glorious. Very krautrocky, stuff that fans of Amon Duul II and Agitation Free would certainly love. And then Hutchinson's playing gets even more sitar-y on the epic "Improvisation On An Indian Scale", the track that wraps up this amazing album of Eastern-tinged, psychedelic instrumental interplay. He's endlessly spinning out slippery, sinuous melodies over a quietly galloping beat that brings to mind Spaghetti Western soundtracks. Wow. We'd been wanting to list this for a long time, but the previous cd edition on Repertoire has been out of print for years and years. Stoked are we that Sunbeam has reissued it again, on compact disc and vinyl, both versions coming with an entire bonus disc to boot!
That second disc, however, is full-on 12-bar blues rock, total chooglin' boogie stuff, with song titles like "Bad Loser" and "Someone's Been At My Woman". So... maybe for blues lovers only, that one. If you're really into Clapton/Cream and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. But it's just a bonus disc, the A=MH2 album on disc one is worth the price of the package alone. And the guitar playing on the blues disc is of course ace.
It always kinda seems like the British blues rock bands, the ones we really like anyway, we like 'em especially for the one album they did where they got away from the basic blues template (stuff they might have done really well) and weirded out, got all beardistic and beyond-blues improvisational and Eastern and freaky and proggy. Say, Steamhammer's Speech. Or the Groundhogs' Split. There's always one. In this case, it was Clark-Hutchinson's debut, A=MH2. But, beforehand they'd been way more bluesy, as that bonus disc here proves (it's material from their unreleased -first- first recording sessions in March of '69, laid down just a couple months prior to the two days in the studio they spent recording their actual debut).
EVERYONE we play A=MH2 for, or who hears it in the store, has been blown away. You know how the "ragadelic" acoustic folk guitar playing of folks today like Jack Rose and James Blackshaw is something we love? If you like that sort of thing too but want it a bit more druggily psych-rock, Clark-Hutchinson doing it electric way back when should satisfy! So very recommended (along with another obscure classic of the era, by T2, also reviewed this list).
Nope, never heard of 'em before either. Glad we have now though! The oddly-named Classical M were a psych-pop trio (consisting of brothers Guy and Andre Maruani, and Henri Bratter) who flourished in France circa 1966-1970. Well, maybe flourished isn't quite the word. They did play on TV, and opened for Steppenwolf once, but only sold a meager number of the handful of singles they released, before heading off in separate musical or non-musical directions and disbanding. A crime really, since they were so good!! I mean, the singles tracks they left behind, as documented on this collection, are awesome. Songs like "Love, Love Is There", "Music Of The Rain", "Gog Magog" (with lyrics originally written with hopes of King Crimson using 'em!), "Such A Lovely Voice", and others are a '60s psych pop fan's dream. "Such A Lovely Voice" could be a lost Colin Blunstone/Zombies classic, and there's also a definite, well-put-to-use Beatles influence at play here. These tracks are intimate and adventurous, with Guy's strong voice and superb psychedelic instrumentation including flute, 12-string guitar, oud, violin, congas, a variety of exotic instruments.
It's interesting to note in Guy Maruani's confessional liner notes that they didn't do drugs, or even smoke or drink. "Music being for us perfectly psychedelic in and of itself". Hear hear. This disc convinces.
Vincent Tornatore of Lion Productions is especially thrilled about this release (saying Classical M are "perhaps the best, and certainly the most intriguing French band of all time"). Not sure if we can go that far (ahem...Magma) but we can see why he got so excited n' enthused when these tracks showed up out of the blue, the former band members soliciting a label for a reissue. Blown away is probably the size of it. What loveliness! What atmosphere! Press play and immediately be enthralled by the melody, the melancholy, the creativity this band displays.
Lion did an nice job packaging this, with a thick booklet of lyrics, notes on each song, photos, and reminiscences. There's 24 tracks total -- singles, demos, rehearsal recordings, live stuff. And the first ten or so with the English lyrics are the truly crucial cuts, almost all of 'em amazing... but nothing on here isn't at least enjoyable, the rest of the disc ranging from groovy, orchestrated French-language "chanson-pop" to ethnic improv stuff. Too bad they never got to do a real, entire album, but we're still lucky to have these tracks. Highly recommended.
The Classical's Diptych is the first release on Time Sensitive Materials, an imprint/offshoot of beloved local experimental electronic label Time Released Sound, and it's easy to see why this didn't come out on TRS, cuz unlike the drifty ambience and hushed pastoral dronescapes that define most of the label's releases, this chunk of abstract, experimental, jazzy noise rock / psych jazz / post punk / swamp pop weirdness would have stuck out like a sore thumb. But it's easy to see that a sonic sore thumb is precisely what vocalist / songwriter Juliet Gordon and avant jazz drummer Britt Ciampa were going for, whipping up a din unlike anything you've heard from Time Released Sound, and very likely anywhere else.
The label makes comparisons to Nico, The Birthday Party, Scott Walker, John Barry, all of which definitely seem to be present, but there's a distinctly indie rock vibe too, with much of the record sounding to us like a way more avant grade PJ Harvey, with a drummer, who occasionally drives the proceedings, but just as often veers off wildly into tripped out rhythmic tangents. The sound is gloriously fractured, and flits from moody brood, to lush, lustrous poppiness, to almost classic sounding torch songsmithery, and that's just the first track. Track two, "Shovel & Bevel" is the 'single' (there's even a video), and emblematic of the duo's willful difficult sonic disposition, it might be the weirdest of the bunch, the drums in constant chaos, the vocals haunting and weird, the song pocked with dense swirls of strings, soaring symphonic blurts, there's some processed slowed down vocals, the vibe is bombastic, like a damaged theme to some James Bond movie that was never released one second, and then some pissed off jazz diva dueling with a wildly drumming dervish the next, with a finale that almost sounds like Bernard Hermann.
It's tough to pin down the Classical, but that's probably the point, and precisely what makes this record, and the group's sound so compelling. The rest of the record never really resting in one place, stretches of lazy, languid, jazzy crooning, bleeds into weird blown out noise jazz, if you can imagine Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt or Zach Hill from Hella teaming up with PJ Harvey, you might be getting close, but the closer you get, the more the Classical seem hell bent on tripping you up. The sound is definitely reminiscent of some of our favorite musical eras past, but instead of sounding retro, they sound like a band out of time, one whose sound and very sonic make up, was somehow damaged during its transit to the present, and that delightful damage is as mesmerizing as every perfect little melody, sweetly crooned couplet and gorgeous baroque pop-ism, and while that twisted mix might make the Classical a difficult musical pill to swallow for some, it just makes us dig it all the more.
Once again, you can nab one of two versions, the over the top, somewhat pricey (but well worth it) deluxe version, limited to just 65 copies, is housed in a hardcover book, adorned with clock parts on the outside, while the inside is decorated with a collage of images featuring antique engravings of Greek and Roman statuary, modified with gears and springs and other horological workings, the result very steampunk-ish. There's also a standard version, limited to 150 copies and housed in a full color digipak.
The Classical's Diptych is the first release on Time Sensitive Materials, an imprint/offshoot of beloved local experimental electronic label Time Released Sound, and it's easy to see why this didn't come out on TRS, cuz unlike the drifty ambience and hushed pastoral dronescapes that define most of the label's releases, this chunk of abstract, experimental, jazzy noise rock / psych jazz / post punk / swamp pop weirdness would have stuck out like a sore thumb. But it's easy to see that a sonic sore thumb is precisely what vocalist / songwriter Juliet Gordon and avant jazz drummer Britt Ciampa were going for, whipping up a din unlike anything you've heard from Time Released Sound, and very likely anywhere else.
The label makes comparisons to Nico, The Birthday Party, Scott Walker, John Barry, all of which definitely seem to be present, but there's a distinctly indie rock vibe too, with much of the record sounding to us like a way more avant grade PJ Harvey, with a drummer, who occasionally drives the proceedings, but just as often veers off wildly into tripped out rhythmic tangents. The sound is gloriously fractured, and flits from moody brood, to lush, lustrous poppiness, to almost classic sounding torch songsmithery, and that's just the first track. Track two, "Shovel & Bevel" is the 'single' (there's even a video), and emblematic of the duo's willful difficult sonic disposition, it might be the weirdest of the bunch, the drums in constant chaos, the vocals haunting and weird, the song pocked with dense swirls of strings, soaring symphonic blurts, there's some processed slowed down vocals, the vibe is bombastic, like a damaged theme to some James Bond movie that was never released one second, and then some pissed off jazz diva dueling with a wildly drumming dervish the next, with a finale that almost sounds like Bernard Hermann.
It's tough to pin down the Classical, but that's probably the point, and precisely what makes this record, and the group's sound so compelling. The rest of the record never really resting in one place, stretches of lazy, languid, jazzy crooning, bleeds into weird blown out noise jazz, if you can imagine Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt or Zach Hill from Hella teaming up with PJ Harvey, you might be getting close, but the closer you get, the more the Classical seem hell bent on tripping you up. The sound is definitely reminiscent of some of our favorite musical eras past, but instead of sounding retro, they sound like a band out of time, one whose sound and very sonic make up, was somehow damaged during its transit to the present, and that delightful damage is as mesmerizing as every perfect little melody, sweetly crooned couplet and gorgeous baroque pop-ism, and while that twisted mix might make the Classical a difficult musical pill to swallow for some, it just makes us dig it all the more.
Once again, you can nab one of two versions, the over the top, somewhat pricey (but well worth it) deluxe version, limited to just 65 copies, is housed in a hardcover book, adorned with clock parts on the outside, while the inside is decorated with a collage of images featuring antique engravings of Greek and Roman statuary, modified with gears and springs and other horological workings, the result very steampunk-ish. There's also a standard version, limited to 150 copies and housed in a full color digipak.
Just when you were thinking that the next installment in the Jewelled Antler Library was, um, overdue, comes this new 3" cd-r in the series. Volume 8 hails from New Zealand -- it seems Jewelled Antler have found some kindred souls Down Under, no not Gandalf and Frodo but in this case Antony Milton (who runs a cd-r label himself, Pseudoarcana) and Clayton Noone (C.J.A., Armpit) who together are known as Claypipe. Repetition and drone and field recording grit coexist with lovely acoustic guitar -- it's real nice. With wistful, earnest vocals, some distorted and layered, this is neither indie-pop nor environmental ambient, but a hybrid that totally fits with Jewelled Antler 'groups' like the Blithe Sons and Child Readers, while possessing that special New Zealand magic we all adore. Seven tracks, 20 minutes, and you're left wishing it were longer.
Here's the long-awaited follow up to Windswept Trees And Houses and Heat & Birds, those being the two previous, and now long out of print, "friends and family" compilations of music and field recordings (two things not mutually exclusive in the methodology of these artists for sure!) from the Jewelled Antler camp. Now that Jewelled Antler isn't the prolific cd-r label it once was (though the various members of the so-called Jewelled Antler Collective are still quite active) the Music Fellowship label has stepped in to release this new disc, as a proper cd by the way, and it's a terrific third in the "series", bringing together the fantastical sounds of three far-flung artists: Claypipe (New Zealand), Pekko Kappi (Finland), and The Blithe Sons (California). It's an "amazed map" indeed that links those people and places, all so magical from the musical standpoint as we're sure most Aquarius customers will concur. NZ/Finland/California, the current psych-folk-drone axis of awesomeness! Several tracks of nature sounds field-recorded by Tony Endless and (former AQ'er) Byram Abbot also appear here, adding some extra ecological, dronological mystery to a disc hardly lacking in such, acting as purely environmental interludes between the rather diverse yet linked-in-spirit works of the three main musical artists. First up are New Zealanders Claypipe, a duo of consisting of Antony Milton (overlord of the PseudoArcana cd-r label) and Clayton Noone (CJA, Armpit, Futurians), whose tracks here range from lo-fi almost indie-pop to droned-out experimentation. Then Pekko Kappi (Lau Nau, Paivansade) invites listeners to a campfire concert wherein he and his trusty horsehair lyre perform a wonderful set of traditional Finnish folk music, for us perhaps the highlight of this disc, itself a highlight on our list. Finally this disc's unofficial hosts, Jewelled Antler's Blithe Sons (Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson) wrap things up with their murky yet microscopically detailed, indoor-outdoor mix of lovely song-like drones, drone-like songs. It's the first we've heard from this collaboration since their Arm Of The Starfish cd on Family Vineyard a few years ago and we hope it's not the last.
If only Music Fellowship could also arrange to reissue on cd this disc's two cd-r prequels, which featured the likes of Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, Markus, Golden Hotel, Franciscan Hobbies, The Floating Birthday Children, Hala Strana, Thuja, Of, The Blithe Sons & Daughters, Child Readers, Entlang, Silt, and The Billy Crosby's amongst others! And by the way, that also reminds us -- when are all the out-of-print Jewelled Antler "Library" series of 3" cd-rs going to be compiled into a cd box set or something? We're pretty sure lots of folks are dying to get their ears on those...
This record is Radiohead. I mean I think it's Radiohead. I mean, it must be. I wonder what Radiohead would think if they knew that some guy was single handedly making Radiohead records on the sly. That being said, this record is pretty fucking cool, all majesty and breathy falsettos. Along with the Muse record (see elsewhere in the list, this is the perfect hold-you-over until the next Radiohead. If the Muse record is all Paranoid Android, Justin Clayton is all Karma Police. Nice.
The history of the legendary New Zealand indie label Flying Run quite literally begins with The Clean. Impressed by a slew of The Clean's live performances in their home town of Dunedin, New Zealand back in 1980, Roger Shephard began Flying Nun, simply in order to release the band's first single "Tally Ho." That song, an upbeat but simple post-punk number that crashed together jangling guitars and persistant organ melodies, surprised everybody with a considerable amount of commercial success in New Zealand, and became one of many songs by The Clean that found enthusiastic audiences in the US during the college rock days of the '80s, offering a quirky, exotic alternative to staples like REM, the Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, and Elvis Costello.
Formed in 1978 by the Kilgour brothers David and Hamish, The Clean never stooped to the depths of the Gallagher brother's public fisticuffs; but the band -- which flushed out its membership with Robert Scott and (in the early days) Peter Gutteridge -- spent more time broken up than together. Yet, their eternally catchy pop songs became the blueprint for almost all of the other Flying Nun bands (in part due to the numerous Clean related projects on Flying Nun, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, Snapper, Stephen, and others). The Clean's self-explanatory "Anthology" runs through their numerous albums, offering a good chunk of their fantastic early work (the aforementioned "Tally Ho," the "Boodle Boodle Boodle" ep, the "Great Sounds..." ep, and a couple of oddities) on one disc. Edgy yet unswervingly optimistic, these songs were sloppy four-track recordings of monomaniacally simple rhythms, cacophonously jangly guitar melodies, and happy-go-lucky vocals. Disc two contains excerpts from the '90s albums "Vehicle," "Modern Rock," and "Unknown Country," which marked a considerable polishing of The Clean's sound, in part because they recorded that material in well established studios like Blackwing studios in London, but also as the songs, while still simple in their own right, were slightly more restrained.
Highly recommended!
Another cool release from one of our new favorite labels, Mississippi, or VIA Mississippi records, as it's technically on a label called Change, the same label that released that Irma Thomas lp a while back. But whatever, as far as we're concerned it is Mississippi Records, which means it's a cool record, available on vinyl for the first time, or the first time in ages, pressed on nice vinyl and in thick sleeves, for a nice price.
This time around it's New Zealand's legendary pop combo The Clean. Their Compilation album originally released on Homestead way back when, which collects all of the band's early essential recordings. Who the heck are The Clean you ask? Well, here's the lowdown from another of our reviews: The history of the legendary New Zealand indie label Flying Run quite literally begins with The Clean. Impressed by a slew of The Clean's live performances in their home town of Dunedin, New Zealand back in 1980, Roger Shephard began Flying Nun, simply in order to release the band's first single "Tally Ho." That song, an upbeat but simple post-punk number that crashed together jangling guitars and persistent organ melodies, surprised everybody with a considerable amount of commercial success in New Zealand, and became one of many songs by The Clean that found enthusiastic audiences in the US during the college rock days of the '80s, offering a quirky, exotic alternative to staples like REM, the Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, and Elvis Costello.
Formed in 1978 by the Kilgour brothers David and Hamish, The Clean never stooped to the depths of the Gallagher brother's public fisticuffs; but the band - which flushed out its membership with Robert Scott and (in the early days) Peter Gutteridge - spent more time broken up than together. Yet, their eternally catchy pop songs became the blueprint for almost all of the other Flying Nun bands (in part due to the numerous Clean related projects on Flying Nun, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, Snapper, Stephen, and others).
The Clean's Compilation runs through their early releases, including "Tally Ho," the "Boodle Boodle Boodle" ep, the "Great Sounds..." ep, and a few more. Edgy yet unswervingly optimistic, these songs were sloppy four-track recordings of monomaniacally simple rhythms, cacophonously jangly guitar melodies, and happy-go-lucky vocals.
For folks who already have the recently released Anthology two disc set on Merge, there is a lot of overlap, in fact most of this stuff is on that comp, but obviously this has been out of print for years on vinyl, and while Compilation is just that, a collection of eps and singles, it somehow manages to function as a proper album, tight, short, sharp and nearly perfect!
The Clean, who have been around for more than 20 years, are credited with helping to develop the New Zealand sound and are an influence on many of the great pop bands around today. This is their first release in 5 years, and while it's slower and less manicly delightful than their earlier material, it still pleases at times. Ira and Georgia from Yo La Tengo each play on two
It would take way more space than we have for this review to list off all the great bands who have been influenced by The Clean over the years. For the sake of brevity we'll just mention off a handful: Yo La Tengo, The Chills, Jay Reatard, R.E.M, Eat Skull, Times New Viking, Woods, Pavement, Sebadoh, the list goes on and on! Since the early '80s this New Zealand band has been crafting totally infectious left of center pop that really helped usher in the sound of "college radio" as we know it.
It's been quite a long while since we last heard from The Clean, yet with Mister Pop there is something so natural and free flowing that it feels like they were never gone. Focusing more on their hazy psychedelic dream pop side, the songs on Mister Pop unfold so easily, yet with a sonic depth that makes you keep going back to them over and over. While it would be so easy for The Clean to just rest on their laurels and dial in a standard reunion album, they instead remind us of why they are the legends they are, and what great songsmiths they were and still are, with an unparalleled ability to not only create hooks and melody but mood and feeling.
The Flying Nun reissue onslaught continues, this time a vinyl reissue of this collection of odds and sods from legendary NZ pop combo The Clean, who are one of THEE original Flying Nun bands, and whose iconic single "Tally Ho" was even borrowed as the title for a recent double cd collection of Flying Nun's greatest hits. As good as pretty much everything The Clean released, if you haven't already bought their Anthology collection on Merge, that might be the place to start, but if you like your pop a bit more raw and rough around the edges, then this might actually be more up your alley, the same pop smarts, hooks galore, jangle everywhere, vocal harmonies, catchy melodies, killer songs, off kilter and slightly warped, some songs super rocking, others stripped down and acoustic, some cool experimental jams too (just check out the tripped out "Point That Thing Dub"), all recorded in varying levels of fidelity, the performances sometimes more energetic and heartfelt than tight or in key, but this is the sort of pop, that as far as we're concerned, often sounds better warts and all, and the funny thing is, this collection of oddities, B sides, demos, unreleased track and random screwing around studio weirdness, somehow seems WAY better than most of the proper pop records out there. All hail The Clean, whose nearly thirty year old records sound better than ever!
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.
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.
Originally released as a deluxe 5lp boxset for this year's Record Store Day, this amazing collection, gathering up the first three albums from this seminal eighties indie pop outfit, is now also available as a triple cd set (and as individual lps, which we'll list/review soon), and reveals once again, to a whole new audience hopefully, what an amazing and influential band Cleaners From Venus really were.
Bandleader Martin Newell, who was bitter after some bad record label experiences with his previous band, became obsessed with doing everything himself (a real DIY band for sure), which meant recording records on a 4 track in his bedroom, dubbing the tapes himself, and releasing those tapes in super limited editions, of course distributed by Newell himself, which probably has a lot do with why these guys didn't get more attention than they did. But masterful pop music like this with such incredible songwriting was bound to work its way to the surface, and this stuff did manage to make its way into the ears of obsessive pop nerds, and quickly attained a cultlike status, and for good reason. Listening to this stuff now, it's easy to hear what a huge influence these guys had, and that their lo-fi pop was years ahead of groups like Ariel Pink, who would trawl the same sonic territory, albeit a bit more ironically. Jangly outsider pop, with strange homebrewed production weirdness, bizarre edits, twisted little intros and outros, brief snippets of conversations, sudden fade outs, that inexplicably fade right back in, the programmed drums, gorgeous vocal harmonies, hooks galore, definitely a product of the early '80s, with a different production and a less skewed take on pop, it's not hard to imagine this stuff on the radio or on MTV alongside groups like the Style Council or Human League or any of the other bands popular at the time, but Newell's Cleaners had it's own twisted take on the sound of the time, channeling Elvis Costello, XTC and the rest, but transforming that commercial pop sound into something much more personal and urgent, and without any restrictions, or any hopes of mainstream popularity, Newell never shied away from trying anything, no matter how weird it may have seemed, and the results definitely speak for themselves.
The first record, 1981's Blow Away Your Troubles, is the rawest of the bunch, and might still be our favorite, it's definitely the weirdest, with even this meticulously assembled reissue replete with those weird edits and damaged tape dropouts, all of which merely adds to the mood and mystery of the music. The second record, 1982's On Any Normal Monday, might be objectively the best record though, for a home recorded album, it sound incredible, still rife with all sorts of weirdness, whether that meant dubbed out snares, or strange spoken word segments, thick sinewy basslines or xylophone melodies, the sound is lush, and so fully realized, and the songs, catchy and meticulously crafted, in different circumstances, another instance where some of these songs definitely could have been hits.
The final record in the set, Midnight Cleaners, also from 1982, found the band's sound shifting once again, the vibe a bit more new wavey, the recording still polished, but but a bit more raw than On Any Normal Monday, still warped and weird, and reminding us a LOT of Guided By Voices, who seemed to fancy themselves a sort of imaginary Cleaners From Venus, a lost unsung genius pop band, GBV would after all manufacture a sort of faux Britishness that definitely approaches the Cleaners dreamy eighties pop sound, especially on Midnight Cleaners. Some of the songs here had us seriously thinking GBV might owe these guys some heartfelt thanks, if not actual royalties.
We had been subsisting for years on a worn out mix tape of Cleaners tracks, so it's thrilling to have all these songs in one place, many of which we're only hearing now for the first time, and we have been gleefully immersing ourselves in The Cleaners From Venus' twisted pop world, and we're hoping that the designation that this is in fact volume one, means that volume two is on the way...
The first volume, collecting the early, long out of print works of this seminal eighties indie pop combo, was originally released in the beginning of 2012, as a five lp box set for Record Store Day. The box quickly went out of print, but the triple cd version surfaced soon after and immediately, and ever since, became what might be the most regularly listened to record in the shop. Those three Cleaners From Venus albums, 1981's Blow Away Your Troubles, 1982's On Any Normal Monday and Midnight Cleaners, also from 1982, are in heavy rotation, pretty much everyone at aQ, customers too we're guessing, know those albums by heart, backwards and forwards, and the crazy thing is, somehow, we're still not sick of them. And we can tell you right now, when we first heard about this Cleaners From Venus reissue campaign, the only thing more exciting than the impending release of those first three albums, was that it was just volume one, which meant to us, even way back then, that there was a second volume coming. And finally, here it is!
And it's not surprisingly, just as good as the first set, sonically, songwriting, everything, perfectly taking up right where the first volume left off, a sprawling collections of homebrewed outsider indie pop, fuzzy, jangly, catchy, quirky, lo-fi, this collection spanning the years 1983-1985 for the three proper albums included, but this time around there's a bonus disc of early Cleaners jams, and some Pre-Cleaners tracks as well, going all the way back to 1967!! Wow.
Before we get to the records themselves, we figured we oughta give everyone a refresher on the band itself, its history and influence, and we probably can't say it any better than we already did in our review of Volume 1:
Bandleader Martin Newell, who was bitter after some bad record label experiences with his previous band, became obsessed with doing everything himself (a real DIY band for sure), which meant recording records on a 4 track in his bedroom, dubbing the tapes himself, and releasing those tapes in super limited editions, of course distributed by Newell himself, which probably has a lot do with why these guys didn't get more attention than they did. But masterful pop music like this with such incredible songwriting was bound to work its way to the surface, and this stuff did manage to make its way into the ears of obsessive pop nerds, and quickly attained a cultlike status, and for good reason. Listening to this stuff now, it's easy to hear what a huge influence these guys had, and that their lo-fi pop was years ahead of groups like Ariel Pink, who would trawl the same sonic territory, albeit a bit more ironically. Jangly outsider pop, with strange homebrewed production weirdness, bizarre edits, twisted little intros and outros, brief snippets of conversations, sudden fade outs, that inexplicably fade right back in, the programmed drums, gorgeous vocal harmonies, hooks galore, definitely a product of the early '80s, with a different production and a less skewed take on pop, it's not hard to imagine this stuff on the radio or on MTV alongside groups like the Style Council or Human League or any of the other bands popular at the time, but Newell's Cleaners had it's own twisted take on the sound of the time, channeling Elvis Costello, XTC and the rest, but transforming that commercial pop sound into something much more personal and urgent, and without any restrictions, or any hopes of mainstream popularity, Newell never shied away from trying anything, no matter how weird it may have seemed, and the results definitely speak for themselves.
There might not be too much point in going through these records one by one, or track by track, all three of the albums proper fall so close chronologically to the first set, that it's easy to imagine these having been bundled with the first volume for a massive seven disc set, and thus, sonically, many of these tracks sound like they could have been plucked from any of those records on the first set, which then got us wondering if the dates of the records might not even necessarily correlate with the songs' creations. As in perhaps Newell, like most obsessive home recorders, just amassed a huge collection of songs, recording day and night, stacks of tapes all over the house, recording more and more and more, only then later, gathering up songs and assembling them into 'albums', which really seems much more likely, especially listening to some of the tracks here on the second volume.
We'd focus on some of the gems here, but there are literally SO many. That are SO catchy. But if you doubt, check out the first sound sample below, right out of the gate, we're in lo-fi jangle pop bliss, "Renee (Who's Driving Your Car)" is so catchy, the recording so warm and fuzzy, the vocals all echoey, hooks galore, lo-fi, but still lush and psychedelic and so perfectly poppy. And that track basically sets things in motion, with song after song of crazy catchy jangle, fuzzy new wave-y poppiness, and home brewed bedroom folk. Not to mention plenty of damaged and demented mad scientist WTF fractured pop weirdness, all perfectly balanced, careening madly from one to the other, some lush bit of balladry, leading into a bizarre tape experiment leading into some super rocking classic sounding power pop leading into some woozy new wave and on and on it goes. We can't help but be reminded of Guided By Voices, besides sharing a similar aesthetic, being heavily beholden to classic British pop, having a penchant for serious WTF pop moments, but yet being capable of conjuring up impossibly catchy hooks, both groups have a huge amount of songs, and often recycle melodies, so much so that you can hear one song, and be convinced you've heard it before, but only because it shares certain elements with another song you're heard a million times. But that shared DNA does not dilute the power or originality of these songs at all, just the opposite, if anything it links them all together, into a strangely insular soundworld that is all Newells', a world in which Cleaners From Venus could do no wrong,s and could do anything they wanted. Which is exactly what they did. So goddamn great. And destined to become, like Volume 1, another of the most played records in the store! At least until volume THREE!!!
Comes packaged in a ten panel fold out digipak style sleeve, with a huge booklet, tons of liner notes, rare photos, and really great and amusing notes about the tracks on the fourth disc of early archival material!
The return of the Finland's premiere troupe of music making, crossdressers, who perform all gussied up, you know in makeup, housecoats, stockings and everything, and whose instruments of choice are modified and mic'ed up clothes racks and every day household appliances. That's right, it's the Cleaning Women, whose first record was a runaway hit here at AQ a few months back, so we're super psyched to be listing the even better follow up "Aelita - The Queen Of Mars", a record inspired, according to the liner notes, by the Russian film "Aelita" directed by Jakov Protazanov in 1924. And some of it definitely sounds like it...
Sonically similar to their debut, bit somehow more varied and fully realized, "Aelita" is a dizzying schizophrenic travelogue through a million different musical personalities. the opener is a brooding Arabesque soundscape, all soaring strings and playful percussion, Eastern guitars and strange fuzz guitars. Then all of a sudden, the second track kicks in, a dark brooding bass heavy groove, with whispered vocals, and lo and behold the Cleaning Woman sound a little like Tool, albeit with some strange homemade percussion, but just like a Tool track it builds to a super heavy chorus and then slips back into a moody groove. Hot on the heels of that track is a sort of croony Spaghetti Western style number peppered with gypsy strings and angular guitar. Later on they bust out some super heavy mathy shit that sounds like it could be NoMeansNo or Victim's Family. But for the Cleaning Women, it's all about rhythms, so every track is rife with all sort of rhythms. Some tracks are defined by the rhythm, some are nothing but the rhythms, others incorporate the rhythms subtlely into the bigger picture. But no matter how they do it, each track is a delight. Dizzying and confusional, wild and weird as fuck. The best tracks are the ones where everything drops out and the band go completely nuts on their various rhythmic devices, which must be amazing to see live, it's like the Blue Man Group crossed with Stomp, only if they were transvestites, and were meaner, and less blue, and WAY more punk, armed with fuzz guitars and a stage full of washing machines and dishwashers.
Needless to say, SO recommended!
More obscure '70s stoner stuff here. Clear Blue Sky made but one LP, this 1970 Vertigo label release now reissued in one of those miniature-gatefold-LP-styled cd jackets by Akarma. It's heavy, psychedelic, blues-based rock in the classic British power trio format. Boisterous, wild, trippy jamming from three eager eighteen-year-olds, bolstered by weird prog elements (odd changes, some flute) and studio trickery, such as the glitchy bit that occurs early in part II of "Journey To The Inside Of The Sun". They do a track entitled "Sweet Leaf" but it bears no relation to Black Sabbath's song of the same name, aside from the inspiration we'd suppose -- tea, right? Fans of early Sabbath (whose record label they shared) still may well dig this, though it's rather more like the not-so-doomy, less-metallic likes of Budgie, Blue Cheer and Cream (though not quite yet in that league). And, as with so many of our favorite records, this boasts Roger Dean cover art featuring a castle and flying dragons, that looks a bit like he did it when he was 12 years old but is actually pretty great.
Simply put, Flying Saucer Attack kicked ass. This was especially true for their first couple of albums and their almost endless amount of singles. FSA's oversaturated guitars and breathy Nick Drake-ish vocals made the band sound like the unkempt little brother of far more polished shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride. Where as the distortion, delay, and reverb of the shoegazer sound was smooth and blissed-out, the FSA sound was jagged, unruly, and primitive. Yet, the line-up which paired David Pearce and Rachel Brook with a handful of Bristolian post-rockers, was eventually reduced to just Pearce, after Brook departed to found Movietone. With Pearce alone at the helm, he often threatened to terminate the project, but would still occasionally produce another record. Although it did seem that 2000's Mirror would in fact be the final FSA record, and that Pearce would never record again.
Fortunately, such speculation proved to be premature, as Pearce began a trans-Atlantic collaboration with Jessica Bailliff, resulting in the Clear Horizon project. Alternating on vocal duty, Pearce and Bailiff have crafted a sleepy set of songs, principally played on acoustic guitar, but accentuated by the smoldering layers of Pearce's hazy feedback and luminous effects. Clear Horizon is a very welcome return for Pearce, and there is already talk of the two working together again, maybe actually recording together in the same studio next time.
In our current cd age, a lot of "great lost '60s psych" records have gotten reissued, and a lot of the time, they can't live up to the hype. But this is definitely one of those long-awaited reissues that deserves the billing... Clear Light were a long-haired, hippy-fashioned LA group named after a type of LSD (and a Tibetan religious concept), playing psych-pop rock kinda in the vein of fellow LA denizens Love, The Byrds, Iron Butterfly, and The Doors (or SF's Jefferson Airplane). This cd makes available once again Clear Light's one and only album released in late 1967, complete with bonus track and liner notes by Ugly Things editor Mike Stax. Key Clear Light characteristics: awesome fuzz guitars, the presence of not one but TWO drummers, and the dramatic vocal delivery of singer (and ex-actor) Cliff DeYoung, at his best on the bands more theatrical songs, sounding like "Hamlet on acid" according to Stax. All these elements were used to great effect in Clear Light's compositions (mostly by guitarist and ex-Army parachutist Bob Seal), which can get rather dark, heavy, and disturbing while remaining within the template of California pop psych sixties rock n' roll. Groovy.
Breaking Day is record number two from Cleared, the duo of Steven Hess (Locrian, Haptic) and Michael Vallera, and much like their self titled debut (reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site), this record finds the duo weaving longform landscapes of rhythm and sound, texture and noise, drawing influence from abstract ambient electronica as much as lo-fi floor-core noise. In fact, in many ways, Breaking Day feels like a continuation of that first record, touching on many of the same elements, but here having honed those elements into something spectacular.
Born of live performances in the studio, employing both live drums and sampled percussion, as well as atmospheric guitar work and all manner of droned out soundscaping, Cleared create gorgeous expanses of minimal krautdrone noise-dub, that weds rhythmic mesmer to lush layered minimalism, churning hypnorock throb to gauzy softly caustic ambience.
Opening track "Rogues" is pretty much all we've been listening to lately, a slow building sprawl of chiming soft focus shimmer, peppered with squalls of white noise, and wreathed in washed out sine wave tones, the bursts of static building a barely there rhythm, that gradually solidifies into a Necks style jazzy skitter, the sounds growing more and more dense and intense, and when the rhythm proper comes in, it's epic, a simple stuttery pulse, but it changes the whole tone of the piece, giving it some serious heft and momentum, mix in some dubbed out snares, add layer after layer of hiss and hum, and it's total psych-jazz-kraut-noise bliss. Ten minutes is way too short. This could have been the whole record, had they stretched it out to 40 minutes and it STILL would have been Record Of The Week.
The group explore similar territory on the rest of the record, but in smaller chunks, "Sighted" is a churning expanse of tinkling melodies, wavery low end thrum, and buzzing static, blurred into some seriously mesmerizing (and subtly propulsive) ambience, the title track veers into a sort of This Heat beholden post rock / post punk, all big chiming brittle guitars, woozy rhythmic churn and gloomy atmosphere. "No Path To Claim" revisits the vibe of the opener, creating a sort of soft noise raga, laced with chimes and bells, the churning low end miasma lush and textured, the track's propulsion more implied than explicit, finishing off with a haunting swirl of psychedelic guitar drift and woozy low end pulsations. "Quartz" lays down a gorgeously dense stretch of grinding minimal dronemusic, thick and viscous, but weirdly warm and hypnotic, underpinned by soft shimmery chordal swells, and the record finally finishes off with "The Harvest", the most abstract of the bunch, and one which sounds strangely like another one of this week's Records Of The Week, the bowed reindeer antler music of Hornorkesteret, with its creaking and rumbling, dark swirls of rumble and drone, distant keening melodies, what sounds like field recordings of clatter and shuffle, hints of some creaking ship abound, it's haunting, atmospheric and very evocative of some ancient mysterious ritual. Fantastic stuff!
We've been consistently impressed with past Immune releases including Expo 70's latest Where Does Your Mind Go? and Steven R. Smith's Cities. So it's no surprise this debut release from Chicago duo Cleared is another noteworthy addition to the Immune catalog. Cold, bleak and utterly gorgeous long tone music from Steven Hess, a member of On, Haptic and Ural Umbo, and Michael Vallera, a solo artist who has released numerous recordings on Complacency Records and Catholic Tapes, to name a few. Champions of the blurred, electronic soundscape, the duo patiently craft five carefully composed pieces that recall the melodic density of Wolfgang Voigt's GAS in cahoots with the percussive, noise-dub antics of the late Yellow Swans. Sweeping washes of white noise, field recordings slowed down and filtered through an opaque haze, veils of distant synth tones reflecting white light and cold tones into the night air. Chiming bells and glistening echoes offer a gentle lull into an utterly grey world. Cleared certainly deliver the dense, gleaming walls of droney, melodic wash that we can't get enough of, but there is a fragile quality to this self-titled debut, an attention to melodic detail. This focus on detail, in combination with a keen rhythmic sensibility filtered through an industrial lens, results in what we'll call spectral dub. A disoriented pairing of urban decay against fog-shrouded landscapes, visions of grey, snow covered roads and ghost inhabited warehouses, abandoned suburbia under a moonless sky.
While most of the album's percussive elements remain masked in distortion, reverb and filth, "False Mornings" reveals the only shinning glimpse of an apparent drum kit. Rolling toms, splashing cymbals, hypnotic repetition and creepy synth-craft guide the slow-paced procession into the bleak caves of the 'Occult-kraut' underworld. Limited to an edition of 500 lps on top quality white vinyl, don't miss out on this ghostly gem. �
Oooh, my pretty! Bye Bye Beaute is the debut album from Ms Coralie Clement, and yes, it does certainly beg to be renamed "Bonjour Beaute" 'cuz chances are you're gonna wanna get to know her music better (rather than bid it au revoir). Her voice enchants with a soft, airy sophistication, but some songs have a bit of a kicky sashay to them too. Providing the occasional contrasting energetic drive to her whispery bliss are a buzzing electric guitar strum, some '70s soft rock horns and a YeYe girl stompin' beat -- all composed and produced by her own brother Benjamin Biolay. Very much in the tradition of lovely French chanteuses such as Francoiz Breut, Jane Birkin, and Francoise Hardy. Plus there's even a very Gainsbourg-esque duet with Daniel Lorca (of Nada Surf!!).
This new Clientele EP drifts effortlessly into shore on gently shimmering guitars, then lingers for eight soothing minutes on a misty organ drone track aptly named "The Sea Inside A Shell". Sooo pretty. A hushed piano number follows, and then the EP's lone vocal song closes out the proceedings on a more familiar Clientele note. Each of the five soft'n'dreamy songs was inspired by Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico's Ariadne paintings.
Soft, swirling and as fleeting as a snowflake! These two new songs sound just like the title of the B-side "Breathing Soft And Low". Quiet and uncluttered, but with a soothing presence. This is a much too brief slice of these Londoners' captivating twilight pop. Yet, please note: their new full length isn't due until late spring, so this might be just the thing for all of you Clientele fans needing a little something to tide you over. Nice.
Clientele, a London area trio, play dreamy, lo fi, Brit pop that is reminicent of The Zombies, Nick Drake, The Go Betweens, and The Byrds. Suburban Light has an atmospheric '60s quality throughout but the songs vary enough from each other to keep ones interest.
No better time then the onset of autumn to get all warm and fuzzy with a new Clientele record. They have proven to be masters of creating the kind of rich, textured pop that just soothes so right and feels like the musical version of that perfect sweater you just never want to take off.
Bonfires On The Heath finds the UK band in top form with a set of songs that flow so perfectly, as they create the kind of soft glowing sonics that are just nearly impossible to resist. Much of the strength of the Clientele is how incredibly warm their records sound, this is a band that could run a workshop on the craft of how use the studio to imbue music with an impossibly deep and burnished warmth. Able to capture both the sound of classic FM radio as well as the lush and dreamy quality of bands like Felt, Galaxie 500, Mojave 3 and the like. Makes perfect sense that they hit the road with Beach House on their last tour, what a dreamy pairing that was! Such a perfect sound to share with that special someone you dig a lot as you spend lazy afternoons together and wander through warm autumnal afternoons with no specific destination. Perfect for whiling way the days, walking hand in hand, or cuddling beneath blankets, by the fire, as the air grows cold outside. So dreamy and divine.
Well, what do you know? We were expecting some ultra soothing and wistful pop with downy male vocals from the new Sea & Cake album, but instead got it from the new Clientele! This ever level headed UK pop band keep things even more even tempered that usual on their third full length. As God Save The Clientele plays, we watch the needles on our imaginary volume and dynamics meters almost imperceptibly rock gently back'n'forth, and we follow suit. Understatedly charming.
Go ahead slip this new Clientele album right in next to your Big Star and Go-Betweens albums. Strange Geometry fits like a glove, don't it? These Londoners continue merrily along on their gentle retro pop path, and that's a very good thing for them to do. Check out the mistily wistful "My Own Face Inside The Trees". Geez, band leader Alasdair Maclean has such a charming voice and great taste in art to boot... the cover features one of surrealist Paul Delvaux's train paintings from 1963! Darkly beautiful just like the music.
Right from the get-go, The Clientele's debut full length is a dizzyingly swirly trip. Hard to believe this is their first album proper! The Violet Hour is the follow-up to their excellent collection of singles, Suburban Light, which was released a couple of years ago. The highly affected drowsy vocals and woozy reverbed guitars both courtesy of Alasdair MacLean, Mark Keen's fluttering piano and James Hornsey's languid bass all keep things wonderfully reeling and quite reminiscent of '60s psychedelic pop. Often very Donovan-esque. The only thing to keep you grounded is Keen's steady tick-tock drumming. Simply put, The Violet Hour is a gorgeous listen -- a baker's dozen of softly glistening and understated songs to warm our chilly San Francisco summer eves. Oh and this cd includes bonus treats in the form of two videos! Recommended.
Cliffsides is the solo work of Ryan McGill, a Georgia native currently residing Brooklyn who is half of the kosmische synth project Afterlife. Where Afterlife tightly wound itself around the post Manuel Gottsching / Klaus Schulze ethos that led into so many of those great Emeralds related projects, McGill's solo work is all sleepwalking sprawl and narcotic mist. Bubbling abstractions, big sweeping oscillations, and lazer-shot synth tones work through the variable curtains of delay and echo effects that McGill pours over all of the synthesized sounds. Vast empty spaces with distant vocal and guitar signals cascade through those delay patterns creating a 'floating in outerspace' vibe from the onset, only to glide into a very choice step sequence of Schnitzler-esque melodicism.
By the second side, McGill offers forth some midnight electronica / sci-fi worship channelling Tangerine Dream's Zeit only to turn that into a very dark set of ambient passages, complete with ritualized chanting and industrially grim sawtooth synth lines. There's lots to cover on this tape, as McGill sprawls and drones for over 80 minutes here. Nice that somebody is using the long form medium of the cassette to its fullest potential! Limited to 100 copies; and like most everything on Hooker Vision, this will not last long.
Maybe it's a good thing that the Climax Golden Twins don't put out a lot of records. That way, when one of their damaged recordings of post-everything psychedelia marred with hallucinatory sound collages does come our way, we can savor it all the more. Along comes 5 Cents A Piece, and we couldn't be happier. Yup, this is a fucking great record. Is it their best? Maybe. But it most certainly ranks as one of the musical triumphs of 2007.
In many ways, the Twins have operated on parallel tracks to their geographical / spiritual brothers from the Sun City Girls, with the Twins mining more from the underbelly of Americana than the esoterica of South-East Asian pop. But Messrs Taylor and Millis are not without an appetite for such eccentricities, as Robert Millis continues to be an occasional contributor to the always exceptional Sublime Frequencies series. That said, the Twins are no longer a duo as they had been for so many years; here, on 5 Cents A Piece they've added the talents of percussionist Dave Abramson to their lineup. His quick turns from cosmo-rock hammerfist to free-jazz tumble down the stairs to plinkering vaudevillian backbeats make for the perfect foil to the twin guitar splatter of Taylor and Millis. As much as Abramson's presence is noticed on 5 Cents A Piece, the auditory dementia of Taylor and Millis steers the album (if it can be called 'steering,' that is). At times, they throw themselves into cacophonic skronk in a battle between finger tendon and guitar string as to which will snap first; then, they will slide easily into the ghostly folk melodies that paralleled their Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered album from 2004. Elsewhere, a blast of West Coast hesher rock erupts amidst a headspinning, subterranean echo, with the Twins giving Comets on Fire a run for their money.
Limited to 500 copies and bound to be out of print in a matter of minutes, what more do you want to know? You need this!
Newest release from this mysterious Northwestern band of ambient dronesters and another quite fine piece of work. Always unpredictable, and always sonically shifting, this time around, CGT have embarked on a more music based route and less a purely soundbased one. The main intruments here are sweetly reverbed piano and acoustic guitar, gently strummed and delicately finger picked. All settled in dense beds of lush ambience, whispery drones, found sounds, hazy Latin Playboys-esque guitar leads, displaced snippets of conversation, shimmering clouds of whir and hum, and even occasional brushed drumming. A very minimal, melancholic space-y post rock vibe. Fans of Godspeed, Calexico, Dirty Three and all sorts of drone-y dreamy indie drift will be in heaven!
Another brilliant, corroded, and demented facet of the Climax Golden Twins is found on the reissue of their 1996 debut full-length cd. From the release of this album, it became clear that the Sun City Girls were no longer the only game in town, when it came to fucked-up deconstructions of noise-rock propulsion with South East Asian overtones and painterly freeform improvisations. In a lot of ways, this album is a slightly more focused version of the Sun City Girls' 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, sans the Bollywood punk tunes blurted out by Alan Bishop. Yeah, it's that good!
The principle Twins (maestros Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylor) invited eight musicians to join them and producer Scott Colburn for a series of studio driven improvisations, which were in turn sculpted into this "epic masterpiece," as Colburn later quipped and to which we can certainly agree. The urban gamelan infused improvisations meander through rhythmic tinklings upon metal bells and vibraphones, which provide a queasy Martin Denny air of tropical sicknesses abundant in every buzz, rasp, and clang of the ensemble's polyphonous scatter. As much as these elements do recall the equally skittering moments of the Sun City Girls, the Climax Golden Twins growl with the best of the post-hardcore noiseniks on Blast First (e.g. Sonic Youth, Big Black, A.C. Temple, Head of David, etc.) with some volatile, Mack-truck riffage scraping across lumbering backbeats with ample amounts of amplifier mangling distortion. Fucking great, we say!
We've always had much respect for Nels Cline, his guitar playing skills are undeniable for sure, but for SOME of us, it wasn't actually until this solo outing that we've been able to totally fall in love with a Nels Cline album. Coward is one of the most languid, eclectic, yet strangely and enchantingly fluid solo guitar albums we've heard in ages. While there have been no shortage of great solo guitar records lately, as good as many of them are they all tend to be quite narrow in scope. There are either the John Fahey/Takoma school followers whose records are filled with finger picked sweeping pastoral Appalachia from beginning to end, or the drone guitar records, many of which we love, but again don't show much of a range in scope or sound. It's definitely a credit to many of those artists that they stick to what they know and do it very well, but when you're Nels Cline, you know SO MUCH about the guitar and its infinite range of sonic possibilities, and Coward finds him exploring so many of those possibilities with brilliant results! Whether sprawling or rustic, melodic or deconstructed, he's found ways to create sounds and songs that are brimming with personality, mood and emotion. He's also not afraid to get all lush and beautiful, or dark and mysterious, this is most definitely a record that truly has something for almost any music lover.
We hear a spirit and adventurous streak similar to records by greats like Baden Powell, we also hear more moody elements that have us thinking of Loren Connors, as well as fractured noisy moments that could be on a Tetuzi Akiyama record, but most of all a sense of true songwriting and melodic capability with the guitar, that recalls the gorgeous guitarscapes of Roy Montgomery. Nels Cline has proven that he's not only an extremely talented musician but also an artist with a rich imagination and soulful way with sound. Highly recommended!
Newest outing by the ultra talented "jazz" guitarist Nels Cline, who has played in many non-jazz acts like Evangelista and most famously Wilco. Two whole discs (one studio, one live) that go from the really subdued and pretty to totally skronkin' and rockin'. If you liked previous Nels Cline Singers outings you'll like this too - and by the way, for those new to 'em, no, there's no singing!
Once again Cline is accompanied by drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Devin Hoff, and there's also plenty of guests including Greg Saunier, David Witham, Yuka Honda, and others. From mid '70s Miles-like fusion funk to Thurston Moore style noise guitar, these two discs would be good ones to "initiate" noobs into Cline's non-indie-rock stylings, as well as being satisfying for long time fans.
Yay! Our pal Nels ("the world's most dangerous guitarist" sez the sticker on here, quoting Jazz Times) is back with another album from his current trio, The Nels Cline Singers, who besides guitar-danger-guy Nels, consist of bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola, who are also...umm...hazardous on their respective instruments. As far as avant-fusion out-guitar jazz rock whatever goes, these guys are pros. And, don't let the name fool you, this is all instrumental, the singing part is an ironic joke, eh? It's all about shut up and play your guitar (or bass, or drums, respectively). Yet all this firepower is put to the service of a greater good, or beauty we might say. Able to shift from happy bouncy jazz to flesh-ripping skronk without so much as a how d'you do, these eleven new tracks provide exactly what we expect (and love) from Cline and Co. Free jazz improv, Sonic Youthesque squall, post-rock dynamics, abstract textural experiments... And yes, it all comes together into something quite beautiful and exciting. It's been a while since I've seen 'em play (Nels seemingly always pops into the store to say hello AFTER he plays a show up here, instead of before, which means I've missed a few due to not being on the ball) and this new disc sure makes me eager to see 'em again!
