Hi all. This is the first post from a new member of Sonic Masala, Graham - enjoy!
A few years ago Wolf People were ascending the folk psych ladder with 70s inspired blues-infused psych prog. They were the type of band that openly nodded to their influences; but with Ruins they have stamped their own mark with an assured and heady album. Opening track 'Ninth Night' is a scribe writing about the coming storm, with acoustic guitar swelling into a fuzz-laden groove based on the legend of the ‘Hand of Glory’ – the severed hand used to render all in its presence motionless.
It is like an omen of what is to come. With the stand-out tracks of serious jammed-out wah with smatterings of fluttering flute on 'Rhine Sagas', the Sabbathy 'Night Witch', the Cream-infused 'Thistles', and 'Crumbling Dias', with its beautiful flute leading into a groove laden stomp, and like the lyric states there definitely should be no reason to leave. It is on track 'Kingfisher' where there is a moment of clarity amongst the dirge and feedback, reflecting that there is beauty all around and yet are our eyes are rarely open to see it in its truest form? That’s how you could sum up Ruins; for all the comparisons to bands of past and present they have found the balance, the beauty in their sound, and have created an album that deserves to be heard.
Ruins is out now through Jagjaguwar Records. They play Oslo tonight with Dean McPhee - get tickets here.
Tonight Liverpool psychers Mugstar launch their Rock Action lauded album Magnetic Seasons at London's Electrowerkz (with excellent support from Henge and SM favourites Cavalier Song - check it out here). This is something to get excited about - it is a proggish noise fest, not afraid to stretch out and run (all bar one track is over five minutes long, with two exceeding the fifteen minute mark). The 70s space drawl and Sabbath sprawl of 'Unearth', the reverb subterfuge underline a psych drive on 'Flemish Weave' (with a harmonised nod to the likes of Clinic), the kosmiche cowboy groove of 'Time Machine', the patient, subdued flutter and float that looks to the cool blue of an endless rustic horizon of 'Sky West & Crooked' - these instrumental soundscapes feel both restless and timeless, improvised and envisioned, embryonic and set in stone. Those two monoliths I mentioned? 'Remember The Breathing' is a classic Krautrock spiral - not downward, but through time and space, a kosmiche mantra that breathes new life into the staid term "classic; while closer 'Ascension Island' plays at once like a static-drenched grey post-apocalypse bit of aural residue, and a titanic uprising, the elemental Gods of yore rising up, the colossi casting us in their hypnotic shadow without ever going close to toppling us into the sea. It's a magisterial exercise in undulating restraint. Mugstar are masters of their domain - pre-order this excellent double LP here. Grab tickets for the show on the door for a tenner.
It's a case of the hairy monster Adelaide band that could - many-headed rockers Hydromedusa brought out their self-titled album through Tyms Records, and the fucker keeps selling out! It first came online back in April of last year, and word of mouth spat fire on its brilliance, but every time I rustled the cash for it, it was gone. Now into its third pressing, with behemoths Tee Pee Records pushing its wares around the US, Hydromedusa is only going to get bigger, more gargantuan, more debauched, more raw power. Now in split black/purple vinyl, the record is sexier as well! I won't miss out on their pumped-up 70s metal extravaganza (with Sleep injections, just to keep you on your toes) this time - and neither should you.
I really wanted to head along to the Lexington tomorrow night to catch the launch of sonic madmen Hey Colossus' new album, In Black And Gold. I am heading along to the Disappears show at The Lexington tonight instead (sorry guys - double booked!) which will (hopefully) be a killer show in itself - but if this album is anything to go by, that show will go all Scanners on people, painting the venue red with exploded heads. It isn't as all-out batshit crazy as their brilliant album of 2013 Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo, but there is a tempered aggression held here that underscores a more deliberated and calibrated cerebral attack. It starts off with 'Hold On' which is all contemplative, a mystical drift more akin to the Jason Pierce end of psychedelia - but don't worry, the darkness returns with the cantankerous yet plodding march of 'Sisters and Brothers', a syncopated stutter imbued with thunder that Pere Ubu have mined of late. 'Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!' strikes a balance between blues-addled excess and Monster Magnet-fried excess - the two excesses finely complementing each other - and all just over three minutes in fermentation. 'Wired_Brainless' is as meticulous in its lurking in the shadows creep as it is ludicrous; 'Black And Gold' takes a closer take to doom before dragging it out into the desert and burying it up to its neck; 'Lagos Atom' is a synapse surge of bio-engineered horror; 'Eat It' is Black Sabbath for the 21st century unhinged maniac. Closer 'Sinking, Feeling' owes as much to the Spaghetti Western gunslingers as it does to the molten earth axe-slingers. It is all a much more studied and serious release - but then again, this is Hey Colossus we are talking about here. Short, tethered, acutely focused - but you can't escape the gurning insanity that lies therein.
As you are reading this, I am in Braintree. That is a little town in Essex. A killer, pagan-horror name for what is essentially a quaint little town. I am off to a wedding. I'm sure I will have a good time at said wedding. But it is a themed wedding - no not Game Of Thrones or something as dreadful (although I do enjoy the show), but possibly something infinitely worse - "festival chic." Jesus. Further investigation brought about the dress code for men as being checked shirts, decent coloured trousers, BOW TIES AND BRACES.
This had me physically trying not to retch. If EVER I dress like a member of the fucking Mumford & Sons you have the express wishes and gratitude of yours truly to beat me to death with my own braces and brogues.
So here is my antidote, to get me through the day. Oozing Wound is a band from Chicago that deal out thrashy metal in garish floods. Their influences (as labelled on Facebook, so you know they are true) stand as High On Fire, Black Sabbath, and the Beach Boys. I'm gonna take them on face value and agree wholeheartedly. And fuck it - I'm gonna need everything I can to get over the line here, so 'Drug Reference' - with its thrashing drums, lacerating vocals, and exact 4:20 minute runtime - is the kind of thing that will help elevate things above mere pretension and allow me to drink this free bar dry. In my Roku Music shirt at a twee wedding. DONE.
I have made no bones about my immense for the fried psych squalls that inventive brothers Carney develop as Pontiak. Yet even I was surprised by the brevity of the tracks that litter Innocence, their latest album on Thrill Jockey. I'm not complaining - one of my all-time favourite tracks of last year was the title track, all two minutes and 17 seconds of it, and it came out at the tail end of the year. Every time I hear the crunch, the scree, the wails, the moans, the groove - fuck everything else, I'm out the door and gone to lose myself. The rest of the album doesn't entirely live up to such a balltearer of an opening, but with the sludgy groove of 'Lake Lustre Rush', the insistent crunch driving forth 'Ghosts', the fat 'Sabotage' bass and fuzzed out and deep Black Sabbath riffs of 'Surrounded By Diamonds' - there is just so much blasted rock here to enjoy.
There has been a bit of stick thrown at Innocence though, mainly reserved for a triptych of songs in the middle third - 'It's The Greatest', 'Noble Heads' and 'Wildfires'. I must say that having these slower tracks after the hectic opening is a bit strange - on first listen. But after a while it's like John Cusack says on High Fidelity - you have to take it down a notch, you don't want to blow your wad too early. And these tracks are great - an organ-fuelled malaise floods the first track here, before becoming an arms outstretched ode to Jason Molina at his most Neil Young/Crazy Horse; 'Noble Heads' is actually a sonorous country ballad that resonates the more it gets played. 'Wildfires' is quite sedate, and this is where I think this is my love of the band that allows me to rise above the lull. Those crashing cymbals and brotherly harmonies, though!
Innocence roars out of town after this on a brace of pretty killer tracks, especially closer 'We've Got It Wrong', what I can't help but think that I've actually experience the truest example of an album that displays the band's personalities. There is a ruggedness, a playfulness, an innocence that comes from being in a close-knit group, heightened all the more by the fact that the trio are kin. And whilst the next album might see them back to their brilliantly experimental full-bore psych ways, Innocence stands as an album that shows that Pontiak can do pretty much whatever they want and turn it into gold.
Clearly I'm loving my big riff noisy heaven this week. Windhand hail from Richmond. They aren't new - they have been driving the doomwagon for at least three years now - but their sophomore double-album Soma (out on Relapse Records - you can pick it up here in blood red vinyl no less) is the first thing I've ever heard from them. And damn it's good. In the first thirty seconds of the first song, 'Orchard', there is some heaving drum kicks, a dire dirge of a riff, and then we have the echoing seething wails crash over the top. It's all dark and melodramatic, but in the best way that doom-laden metal can be. True metal heads might disagree with me - this is veering into Black Sabbath territory, especially due to Dorthia Cottrell's vocals - but this album is pretty much go-to-woah killer.
Out-of-control shredders Zig Zags have certainly done some shit in their two years as a band. Having released a few 7"s (one on Mexican Summer, believe it or not), a split with grinders The Shrine, a cassette on Burger Records and a collaboration with Iggy Pop, the LA trio show no signs on letting up the squalling fury. They have released their two sold-out singles 'Scavenger' and the most excellent 'Monster Wizard' on excellent German label Who Can You Trust?, and it's a stone cold slayer. Black Sabbath, the Stooges (obviously), Fu Manchu - the touchstones are loud, spun out and are set to kill.
I stumbled over this Texan thrashy garage psych band a couple months ago, they're called π(pronounced Pi) and they have whipped out two EPs since September. The latest one came out in March, it's called Ubik, and it wails all over the place. Surely must be Hendrix heathens, lovers of the Leddest of the Zeppelins, Creedance creepoids, Black Sabbath worshippers...and are probably librarians. You can get their gear for the price of genital warts, if you knock on their trailer door - or for free, if you go here.
Despite the Tenzenmen Chinese rock three-way earlier today, Monday the 26th day of March 2012 will go down as a day that I wished I was in the hallucinogenic era of 1970s rustic America. And tonight I'm going to leave you with a band that straddles the then with the now. TS & the Past Haunts is an LA outfit whose raucous sprawler of a debut album Gone & Goner(out through No Sleep Records) is more in sync with the White Denims and Thee Oh Sees of the world, yet with the right amount of chunky riffage that evokes the Black Sabbaths of the world. It isn't an exemplary release, but is a bloody good one, with plenty of promise. And based on this album alone, if I resided in LA I'd be fucking off most plastic prostitutes posing as musical artists and getting down and sleazy with these guys.
I do love my 70s rock. As cliched as people try to make Led Zeppelin/Black Sabbath/et al out to be, they knew how to make fucking great rock music. There are many bands that take elements of these gods and make them their own - White Hills comes to mind of a band that I have seen recently that invoked that feeling - but only a few fully embrace it and come out on top.
Earl Greyhound is one of them.
Originally a two-piece consisting of Matt Whyte and Kamara Thomas, they have been kicking around since 2002 in NYC. They brought in a drummer, Chris Bear, but he left the band in 2005 to try his luck with a little known band called Grizzly Bear. However it wasnt long before they caught the eye of The Root's guitarist Kirk Douglass, who introduced them to friend and Gold Crowns drummer Ricc Sheridan. The line-up became complete.
They have just released an LP, Suspicious Package.
Im a huge fan of Low, and therefore a huge fan of Alan Sparhawk.Not the biggest fan of the band’s sound/genre moniker – slowcore- but that is not the band’s fault in the slightest.They have made an indelible mark on the indie scene for the past 15 years.And it is of immense pleasure that I can say that they are performing their 2004 masterpiece The Great Destroyer in its entirety at Barcelona’s incendiary Primavera Sound festival this May.It is on this record that we get more of a sense of Sparhawk’s rocking sensibilities, and whilst tapered down for the simmering menace inherent in Low's follow up album Drums & Guns, it was only a matter of time before it all came bubbling to the surface.
And so it is with Sparhawk’s side project, Retribution Gospel Choir. Sparhawk, along with Steve Garrington and Eric Pollard, have created a rollicking record that incorporates Low's song structure and sensibilities, but with the amps opened up, allowing for Sparhawk to let loose on all the aggression that is meticulously maintained in his 'day band'. This is certainly evident in the penultimate song Electric Guitar, a 8 minute sprawler that evokes Low in almost every way, except for the soaring finale. Its almost like Low is the sexual prelude, the major prick tease, whilst RGC is Sparhawk's money shot.
In saying all that, it must be said that 2 doesnt offer us all that much outside of what Low offers in the first place. Granted, absent is the gradual building of pressure inherent within the framework of Low's songs, with these taking more of a leaf out of bands like Crazy Horse in their guitar fuelled wig outs. 43 second short stop '68 Comeback is exactly that - harking back to the rock of yore, evoking a little Led Zep or Black Sabbath, albeit in bite-size format. Single Hide It Away is a great opener - a soaring shimmering gem of a song that builds in radiant glory around a beautiful and joyous melody, double helixing into the sun - a true kicking off the shackles of Low. But what must be remembered that live, Low know exactly how to temper their dark menacing songs, their slow crawlers, ekeing out the tension before exploding - in some cases, such as 08's End of the Road festival, LITERALLY - into bursts of glorious, visceral, melodic, feedback drenched violence. So songs such as Poor Man's Daughter and Your Bird arent that far removed. Not that this is in any way a disservice to RGC - it just proves to underscore the notion that the band really is Sparhawk's energy outlet.
Except for the closer. It has been a song that has perplexed critics thus far, not because its difficult to understand, interpret or justify - more in that its difficult to grasp how it works within the scheme of things. Essentially, Bless Us All is a Low song, through and through - and yet you cant help to note that it isnt, that the only place this song belongs is right here, bookending 2's set of Neil Young's Ol' Black era guitar noodlings (especially Workin Hard) and squalling rock jams with a dark, haunting ode to loss. It begins with the whisperings of strings and the murmurings of talkback radio, before Sparhawk's wavering voice kicks in. Backing vocalists chime in near the end, evoking the choir that their moniker espouses. It is like Low, then? True...but it is so much more affecting, so sad, that it takes the breath away, immediately stealing the mantle of song of the album.
So, 2 sees Low in a more rocking, balls out style, tied together by Sparhawk's songwriting sensibilities, but still offering more than just a louder version of their songs. And whilst not reaching the heights of the admittedly unique highs of Low, Sparhawk has created an album that excites, and elicits excitement in where he may spread his wings next time.
And sorry to glut this article up with visuals, but watch the comparison between Low and RGC - both brilliant songs, both wildly contrasting levels of 'restraint'...
