Triple Bardo Pond Record Store Re-Treat

Record Store Day Trilogy is the new offering from Bardo Pond, an amalgam of their last three RSD EPs (2013's Rise Above It All, 2014's Looking For Another Place, and this year's Is There A Heaven?) that Fire Records is collating for us all. Rise Above It All was a two-hander, featuring covers of Funkadelic's 'Maggot Brain' and Pharaoh Sanders' 'The Creator Has A Master Plan.' Apart from loving Bardo Pond for years, and their set a couple years ago in Brisbane blowing my psych-addled mind, this EP is monumental for me for finally making me indulge in Sanders' work. An article in The Wire on him not long after this had me delving into the free jazz genius' back catalogue, and I've been lost ever since. And the version of 'Maggot Brain' sees the band drift off into the stratosphere for 22 glorious minutes. Looking For Another Place saw the Philly five-piece turn their attention to Eno (a harsh squall rendition of 'Here Come The Warm Jets' that with Isobel Sollenberger's vocals plays out like a dream pop song stretched to sixteen minutes) and Velvet Underground ('Ride Into The Sun', which is wonderfully messed up). And then the triptych was completed back in April when Is There A Heaven? - and for me their best cover yet, Bryan Ferry's 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache'. I am a closet Roxy Music fan already, but the devastating 14-and-a-half version here slays me with its slowburn menace - it's almost unhinged but not quite (one thing about this band - they let go but are always in control). The other offering is Albert Ayler's 'Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe' which is even further in the bottom end of the psych doom spectrum.

If you haven't heard these songs, you must. Check out 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache' below, and pre-order Record Store Day Trilogy here.

FRIDAY COVER UP - Sketched Tempos

Oakland duo Tempo House have released this downer cassette, Sketches, that embraces the goth crawl of SM stablemates Gazar Strips, yet is pitched from the bowels of a well. Featuring a member of Bicycle Day (who we wrote about here), Tempo House offer monochromatic sound, faint static washed over acrid white smoke, dealing out bruised discomfort and brooding disquiet. There is even a whiff of Merchandise in their earliest days, crafting no-fi droning ballads on the roughest of equipment. It breaks into the slightest of downer garage with ‘Regression’, the plodding repetition a narcolept’s swamped-out fever dream. Then there is 'Burning Airlines Give You So Much More', a more unashamed pop offering that shuffles to its own tempered elliptical beat – no surprise seeing as it’s a Brian Eno cover. ‘Underground’ takes us back into some more familiar Joy Division territory, but the different throughlines that have come to pass earlier in the EP makes the song feel less derivative as pleasantly recognizable. Sketches seems to be exactly that – sketches from a duo just tentatively pushing out the feelers, getting a taste of the dark. A lot of promise here.

You can buy Sketches on incredibly limited supply (50 cassettes in total) through Digital Regress here.

Wonderful! Steve's Had Delicate Visions!

David Byrne's Luaka Bop record label usually delves into the weirder, somewhat world-music beat-infused side of guitar pop, having pushed along the fledgling careers of Geggy Tah and Cornershop, whilst currently housing Os Mutantes, Javelin and Tom Ze. Still, when I heard the first track off Delicate Steve's instrumental whizz-bang whimsy that is Wondervisions, I wasnt sure that Byrne had it right. "Welcome-Begin" has more incoming with Pavement than Cornershop's "Brimful Of Asha". But then the album spins some more, and the revelations become clearer. 'The Ballad Of Speck And Pebble' (which I featured here) is a rambunctious funbucket of a track, and the only track to share the slightest resemblance of a vocal track. From here in there is so much surreal trickery going on, with Steve (AKA Steve Marion, 23-year-old New Jersey multi-instrumentalist) flicking in sonic electronics, Afro-tribal drumming, ecstatic distorted riffs... Nothing is straightforward here, but yet it feels so utterly effortless - listen to the way in which the guitar veritably sings on standout track 'Don't Get Stuck (Proud Elephants)' whilst soaring synths and basic bass drum and percussive taps all meld in the background... Or the incessant beats on 'Butterfly' coalescing with the insanely sweet twanging guitar lines before the eruption of heavy distortion that rather than intimidate, heightens the lucidity of the colours emanating from without.

This is experimentation of pop and guitar conventions at its most infectious.How could Byrne NOT resist this? Its as if Fang Island and Dirty Projectors got together one night after taking some Quaaludes and threw as many musical outbursts as they could into the path of Brian Eno's touring bus, just as James Murphy enters an ice-cream shop nearby, and Byrne smiles maniacally from the shadows. For an instrumental record, Wondervisions is incredibly lyrical (and in a similar vein to Fang Island's self titled debut last year in terms of contagious instrumental melody). Its also a hell of a lot of fun - and deserved of a hell of a lot of recognition. Akron/Family are doing their bit, pinning him down to do their entire Stateside tour. Damned fine - and so infectious that I am getting Wondervisions of my own.

Delicate Steve - The Ballad Of Speck And Pebble
Delicate Steve - Don't Get Stuck (Proud Elephants)

Best Bits of 2010...by Tunabunny

So, we are a bit slow off the mark here, but it is December! Exciting times for the most part, due of course to the upcoming festive season, the parties, the presents, the drunken mishaps - but also because it means its the impending end of 2010. This is always interesting in music circles as everyone huddles over a drum fire (or a kiddie pool filled with ice and beer if you are south of the Equator) and discuss your favourites of the year. We love lists - they are endless sources of comment, debate, outright outrage, and sometimes a gift of their own (as in 'Shit, how did I ever miss that? Ive gotta go chase that up stat!')

So not only are we going to be giving a bevy of debatable lists of our own (best songs/live shows/albums/EPs/new bands etc), we thought we'd rope in some outside influences to put their two cents/pence/pesos in. So this month, be prepared to hear from diverse corners, just to allow you to get into the mindspace of some of the people we think really made our 2010.

First up is one of my favourite 'new bands', Athens Georgia messups Tunabunny! Their debut LP Tunabunny was a nice mashup of lo-fi dirtiness and Ponytail-esque spazzouts - a worthy release indeed - so I thought Id ask them what they liked most about the year that has seen them rise up like a burning pile of rubbish shot out of a cannon...

Tunabunny’s Top Ten of TwoThousandTen: a Tribute To Terrificness

1. The Fall – Your Future Our Clutter

2. Brigette got a 25-cent raise at the video store where she works

3. Toy Story 3

4. David Mitchell – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

5. David Shields – Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Actually, pretty much anyone named David. Did David Lee Roth write a book this year?)

6. Reading Katy Perry’s wikipedia entry out loud

7. Brian Eno – Small Craft On A Milk Sea

8. American Profile – In the early part of the 20th century Alexis d’Toqueville wrote, ‘In order to understand America, you have to undestand baseball.’ In the early 21st century, you have to understand American Profile, a weekly insert in most newspapers—a clusterfuck of feel-good americana, celebrity profiles, and shameless advertising.

9. Kristen Hersh – Rat Girl: A Memoir

10. Vampire Weekend – Contra

Interesting guff indeed! From today onwards, look forward to a new list as we close down 2010, and also celebrate the end of the 1st year of everything that is Sonic Masala...

Tunabunny - Gasmasks