Livin' Friel

There is an absolute corker of a tour hitting the UK next month. One of my all time favourite bands, Lightning Bolt, is playing a show at Electric Ballroom in London alongside the excellent doomers Om. But the tour continues throughout Europe with another excellent act - the playful noisenik Dan Friel. He has proven his acrobatic musical chops with Parts & Labor, but there is something with the way Friel's frenetic effects burn and fizz in aural technicolour that ups the ante considerably - imagine a Final Fantasy game scored by by a fried and gagged Dan Deacon. What's more, his new album Life includes a Joanna Gruesome cover - how great is that! Oh, you want even more awesomeness. The new video for 'Rattler' includes a bunch of toddlers losing their shit, an infant glitter rave in Heaven. Pre-order Life here.

Novels In The Dunes

I have somehow missed the myriad delights that solo guitarist Sarah Lipstate has put into the ether under her Noveller moniker, but with Fantastic Planet due out on Fire Records next year, there is no excuse. She has been around since 2005 though, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus she has collaborated with the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Cold Cave and Parts & Labor, so her explorations of the electric guitar form is well versed and admired. And my first taste of it rose the hairs on the back of my everything. The haunting ethereal grind on album opener 'Into The Dunes' is spacious, dark, gritty - it's as if Lipstate has taken some of the contemplative latter-day musings of Dylan Carlson, run it through a crystallised synthesiser, distilled it in a modular vacuum, headed back to 1968 and handed the results to Stanley Kubrick. It could go for seven times the size and still be as astrally hypnotic. Fantastic indeed.

You can pre-order Fantastic Planet (on delectable aqua vinyl) here.

Friday Cover Up - Dinowalrus Are Like A Rolling Stone

Here's a little Friday cover up to close out the week. Brooklyn rambling rockers Dinowalrus have taken a step away from their normal shtick (if you can call it that - the trio have wavered between Titus Andronicus histrionics and Part & Labor noodlings, and seeing as various members of the band have inhabited said bands at one stage or another, it's no wonder at all). Their take on The Rolling Stones' classic 'No Expectations' is an understated, pastoral amble through the grass-stalks of a burnt field, embers floating in the bruised air, eyes reddened from without and within. Jagger has never sound so elegantly wasted - that's saying something.

Dinowalrus - No Expectations (The Rolling Stones cover)

Dinowalrus are prepping their third LP, set for 2014. Stay tuned on that front.

Friel's Feral Sonics Become Total Folklore

 

Ex-Parts & Labor anarchist Dan Friel released an EP on Thrill Jockey late last year, and has wasted no time pumping out a full-length. Total Folklore is loud – a headscraping raspberry popsicle of noise that somehow manages to maintain a childlike wonder. Industrial electronics shouldn’t be able to exhibit such playfulness, but Friel’s aural exploration plays like a madcap mage, a sonic 8-bit loving Willy Wonka with tinnitus.

 

'Ulysses' is a lengthy track to open things up, and the first twenty seconds is an aural assault, alluding to a relentless cavalcade of abrasive white noise. But then the rhythms come in, the melodies, the soaring harmony – and Friel’s genius is realised. ‘Valedictorian’, the standout on the Valedictorian/Exoskeleton EP last year, still packs a candy-coloured wallop here, yet is propped up by the thumping gaiety of, well, ‘Thumper’ (and that melody is killer, I would actually buy a ringtone of that – not a glowing recommendation maybe, but I hate ringtones, so it works for me) and the frenetic squall of ‘Landslide’ (a schizophrenic cousin of what Civil Civic do in my opinion – yet more freeform and unhinged). The warped field recordings that make up the three Intermissions are necessary respites – seriously, this level of squealing, decibel-eating sound needs space to breathe – but Total Folklore stands as an exciting sonic scrapbook of confection and confusion, a cacophonous candy cane that rushes to the head. Expect headaches of happiness with this one.

 

You can pre-order Total Folklore through Thrill Jockey here. The first 500 LPs are orange, always an incentive to get in early. Even more exciting, Friel has crafted a series of homemade music boxes that play ‘Thumper’ on repeat for some lucky pre-orders. How fucking rad is that!?! Get in there!!!

Dan Friel – Thumper
Dan Friel - Valedictorian

Shining On Invisible Things

 

Sometimes when wading through the inbox messages, dreading another day in the office, something will drop down like manna from heaven and brighten the day. This is what Invisible Things, the new project for Mark Shippy (US Maple) and Jim Sykes (Parts & Labor, Grooms) has been for me today.

Sykes has always been an incredible drummer, and Shippy well equipped with extended guitar rock jams, but here it is taken to another realm, the duo both extending and contracting the form at will. With studies of Sri Lankan percussion and the elasticity of guitar exploration the driving forces, the 17 tracks on their LP Home IS The Sun becomes at once an experiment, a composition, a sonic wigout and an exercise in control. Whilst in similar realms to the likes of Hella or Lightning Bolt, there is an innate accessibility and verve here that opens itself up to a wider audience, but this is not a detriment – experimental rock is allowed to be warm and fuzzy sometimes! Such a psychedelic, progressive adventure should work as well as this clearly does, nor should it be such fun – but it easily commits to both. This is the kind of aural alchemy that makes existence on this mortal coil worth every shitstorm and concern.

 

You can get Home IS The Sun via Porter Records here – and you really should. It’s incredible.

Invisible Things – BEFORE The Seventh
Invisible Things – INTO Engine

Belated Ships A Tall, True Discovery

I received On Tariffs & Discovery, the second LP from San Diego trio The Tall Ships, last week. I initially thought it was from the UK band of the same name, who we have mentioned on Sonic Masala before and are pretty great. It wasnt, obviously (the THE at the front should have given it away...), and the fact that this was initially released back in March filled me with trepidation. I wasn't disappointed when I sat down to listen to it though - far from it. Whilst distinctly American indie in composition and general structure, it is the interesting, moody instrumental breakdowns that add the guts and gristle to this tracks and makes them incessantly listenable. To hear that they have shared the stage with instrumental behemoths Sleeping People explains a lot there. The rhythms inherent in tracks like 'D Is For Dogs' is an exemplary example of this, understated yet insistent, and the precise guitar compositions are such a strong ethereal influence throughout that when it combines with Steve Kuhn and Kyle Conwell's hushed, often urgent vocals it becomes an organic entity. Part Constantines, part Parts & Labor, part Sleeping People, On Tariffs & Discovery (out on Minority Records)is an impressive release from an impressive act.

The Tall Ships - D Is For Dogs
The Tall Ships - Freight Train Riders Of America

Video Vacuum - Ding Dong, The Witch Is At Sea...

So the geriatric cave dweller who is our modern equivalent to a Bond villain has "finally been killed". Im not a conspiracy theorist as such, but Oliver Stone's JFK is my fave movie of all time, so...yeah, the US govt are evil and its all faked like the moon landing! There! Now watch my life go all Will Smith a la Enemy Of The State over this one...

So anyway, better get these top toons out at ya in a/v glory before I get my arse tasered and deep fried. First up is this nice little one from Parts & Labor, showing an awesome rehearsal shack building up as they math out, before some multicoloured hand trees sprout out the front... Trust me just watch it!



Next up is Times New Viking - their clip for 'Ever Falling In Love' is a futuristic Be kind Rewind esque affair crossed with Wall-E if done by Tim Burton when E-ing off his face. Which is EXACTLY what it is - Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory told me so...




And what about The Glass Canoe? We spoke about their album Chimera recently as part of our Hits From The Box Easter special here, and now here is some viz for the audio fizz that is the track 'First Ideas'. If this isnt subliminal for Allah is Great, then I don't know what is...

First Ideas - The Glass Canoe from Michael Shainblum on Vimeo.

Now get back to work!

Labouring over Parts Of The Future

Just a quick post for Brooklyn math noise band Parts & Labor, as they prep upcoming LP Constant Future. The title track has been released as a taster before the album comes out on Jagjaguwar on March 8th. The intricacy and intensity are all present and accounted for, and with producer Dave Fridmann at the controls (Mercury Rev/Flaming Lips), it will be a polished affair. You can go over to Parts & Labor's official website to stream some of the other tracks.

Parts & Labor will be playing a glut of show at SXSW in March before coming over to London and taking over Camp Basement in May.

Parts & Labor - Constant Future