I Got the Influenza Blues

Sorry folks, but I haven't been feeling up to writing much over the past few days, due to a rampant sickness that has overtaken my house!  I thought I was going to avoid the flu this year, but alas, no luck!

Stay healthy out there, folks!

Dire Wolves - Paradisiacal Mind (Feeding Tube / Cardinal Fuzz / Pome Pome Tones, 2018)

Continuing along the lysergic snail trail that was birthed last week with the Wilder Gonzales Agreda release, here we’ve landed in an American neo-psych boogie spiritualist mode with this new beast from DireWolves – who refer to themselves on this release as Dire Wolves (Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band).  The roots of this crew stretch way back into the 1990s.  Their subterranean tendrils originate both in the Darla Records sunshine pop-psych-tronica zone – Brian Lucas was a member of the should-be-legendary Mirza – and the equally ancient strange folk ways of The Iditarod, whose Jeffrey Alexander has gone on to play with Black Forest/Black Sea, Jackie-O Motherfucker and these Dire Wolves we’re speaking about.  Their tunes sail within all of these influential orbits as well as the various Kosmische rock and astral jazz landmarks that have woven their way into the contemporary psychedelic streams of thought.  It’s a sonic brew that’ll put you out, in the best way possible!

Paradisiacal Mind is a five-track epic from this San Francisco outfit, hitting all the high notes mentioned previously, and leads off with a flavorful rock-n-roll creeper called “Unfettered and Alive”.  This relatively short jam incorporates delicious stabs of violin and mysterious ghost vocals, which fog up the already misty windows and leave us hungry for what’s next.  “Just Live Your Life Behind Your Eyes” is a hazy vision, one which evades being recognized at the outset, but which eventually achieves clarity over its lengthy running time.  It’s a woven droner that takes off toward the heavens with a maddening energy.

“We Are Stardust” is a stream of proggy jazz that disappears into a cavern of acoustic guitar and bizarre field recordings.  The lysergic energy of 1970s Kosmische out-rock is smeared all over “In and Out of Den Garten He Goes”, which is a swirling, bleary-eyed maelstrom of madness that sets us up for the monumental psych rock blast of the title track.  Coming in at just over seventeen minutes, this piece is the motherlode.  It’s a folding together of all of Dire Wolves’ influences into a single, soaring epic that alone is worth the price of admission.

I highly encourage sourcing out a copy of this maddening slab of free-rock mania.  You can score yourselves the wax over at Cardinal Fuzz in the EU or at Feeding Tube in North America.  However, if your preferred flavor is digital, head on over to Bandcamp to reel in these cosmic sounds.

Wilder Gonzales Agreda - Violahorizontes (Superspace Records, 2018)

Beams of psychedelic light emanate from the north of Lima, Peru.  These radiant streams are peppered with global ornamentation.  The post-blues wafting of Spacemen 3, the alien electricity of Autechre, the washed-out haze of Enya and the chiaroscuro patterns of The Cure.  The source of this luminosity is a single human: Wilder Gonzales Agreda.  The musician and curator of the Superspace Records imprint has been producing a timeless psychedelia for what seems like forever, nearly in a vacuum outside of his home country.

His latest missive, Violahorizontes is a unique endeavor in that it features only three new tracks, with the other six tunes being remixes courtesy of a host of unique collaborators from around the globe.  Ian Masters of Pale Saints fame appears (as Friendly Scientist), as do Peruvian ex-pat Takeshi Muto, Dutch experimental guitarist Lukas Simonis and New Zealander Sam Hamilton. 

With the three originals, Agreda demonstrates his extended tenure in sound production, offering a variety of experimental modes.  “¡Estoy Vivo CSM!” is a Jackson Pollock-esque spattering of synthetic glee, with layers of molten sound gurgling and chirping over a sub-bass thump.  The atmosphere is significantly more relaxed on “Mensajes Tántricos”, with its loping rhythm and thunderstorm samples.  Eventually, garbled messages are beamed in from the stratosphere to spice up the proceedings.  “Surrounded By Social Climbers / Feeling Much Better Alone” is a unique beast of a track, kicking things off with a warm drone which is quickly overrun by a bizarre series of miniaturized explosions.  Disembodied radio transmissions argue with a very bold synth sequence until a collapsing carousel and its broken calliope lead us to an uncertain conclusion.

One would be remiss not to mention the remixes, which offer a variety of takes on Agreda’s signature brand of psychedelia.  There are groovy moments (Takeshi Muto, Friendly Scientist), noisy moments (Lukas Simonis, j̶o̶z̶e̶f̶a̶l̶e̶k̶s̶a̶n̶d̶e̶r̶p̶e̶dr̶o, DJ Miami) and moments of bliss (Sam Hamilton).  Each is worth investigating in its own right, whether you’re up for a head bobbing or a head boggling good time.

Violahorizontes is available in digital format via the Superspace Records Bandcamp, so tune in and prepare to be energized by these effervescent emanations.

Voicehandler - Light From Another Light (Humbler, 2018)

Happy New Year and welcome to 2019!  I hope everyone had a swell conclusion to 2018, with moments of energy, love and light!  For me, I still have a stack of submissions from last year on my docket, so I’ll merrily continue to ingest and investigate them as the new year unfolds…

Light From Another Light is the sophomore full-length effort from Voicehandler, a Bay Area duo comprising vocalist/synthesist Danishta Rivero – half of noisy reggaetón duo Las Sucias – and drummer/percussionist Jacob Felix Heule, who many may recognize from his album with Bill Orcutt called Colonial Donuts.  Together the pair conjure up heavy duty clouds of free-form, catatonia-inducing madness perfect to drive away the winter blues.

The album arrives courtesy of Humbler Records, which I believe is a Heule-directed effort, as all of the label’s releases feature him in some way, shape or form.  It features a trio of extended live recordings from a prolific Spring period likely in the year the disc was released.  The first piece, “June 8”, immediately tears open the space-time continuum with frenetic drumming, gurgling modular synth vapors, and a glossolalia that is at time raw and guttural and at others processed into oblivion.  The spastic ripples emanate a sense of exalted abandon – beatific and bombastic all at once, arresting and entrancing simultaneously.  At the mid-point, Heule’s drumming takes center stage as Rivero’s vocals become shrouded in processing, and then a barely there crackle remains as the piece comes to a close.

“June 1” is a synth-forward exercise, more drone-based than its predecessor.  There is a percussive element present but it’s nearly obfuscated by the buzzy layers of synth.  The drones themselves seem to beat against each other as well, adding another layer of complexity to the proceedings.  Rivero’s voice slips in as a sampled element that is granularized and stretched out to the edges of a non-existent horizon.

“May 25” steps back into the territory mined by “June 8”, but in a more fully-realized form.  The piece is certainly noisy but there are shreds of delightful sanity revealing themselves throughout.  A buzzing drone appears amidst a series of drum rolls that may be meant to introduce an entity that never arrives.  The rolls peter out to reveal a cascade of synth/cymbal washes that vanish into the most introspective passages on display so far.  These final lowercase moments had me stretching my ears in an attempt to catch the subtlest of sonic events.

This gentle-not-gentle silver slab of sound is still available at the source, so direct yourself to the Humbler Bandcamp and prepare to be transported to unknown zones.

Etelin - Hui Terra (Soda Gong, 2018)

Reaching back into my memory banks, the details are fuzzy as to the first Taiga Remains music that I experienced, and I’m lost as to the first Students of Decay artifact that I acquired.  But it’s safe to say that Alex Cobb’s music and curation have carved out a great deal of my attention and appreciation over the past ten-plus years.  It was probably around the time that I started writing for Foxy Digitalis (RIP) that Cobb’s dronescapes first penetrated my cerebral cortex, the thick tendrils of tone wrapping themselves around my fragile consciousness.  Over time Cobb’s sound has evolved and the Students of Decay catalog has evolved with it.  The format of the releases has matured: from CD-Rs through to cassettes and LPs; the curation has also become more varied stylistically, with artists as diverse as Caroline No, Anne Guthrie, Kyle Bobby Dunn, and Ekin Fil being represented.  Cobb’s sensibilities are finely-tuned toward music that is both intriguing and engaging.

Hui Terra marks a few new beginnings for Cobb.  It’s his debut LP as Etelin, a project that sees his focus veer away from straight drone work.  It’s the first release on his new Soda Gong label, which aims to transcend genre and explore a sense of playfulness and naiveté in modern experimental music.  It was also recorded in the months after Cobb became a new father, in fits and starts as opportunities presented themselves – often at all hours.  Crafted using a pared down setup of digital synths and a sampler, the album sits squarely at the crossroads of musique concrète and effervescent ambience.

“Vixen and Kits” presents Cobb’s new modus operandi in its nearly eight minutes of drawn out bell tones, spatters of ringing chimes, and thunderous rain drop roaring.  The series of sonic vignettes plays like a slide show of percussive elements that veers from the delicate to the outright vigorous.  “Hour Here Hour There” is named after the intermittent snatches of time in which Cobb could record – in between tending to a new infant’s needs – and picks up where its predecessor left off, adding digital filigree and a healthy coating of ambient sound dust.  The processed coos of a newborn baby morph into alien synth tones on “Little Rig” before a melodic pattern appears and gracefully concludes the piece.  Closing track “Been Really Good Today” features subtly warped bells played over a muffled sample of what could be the goings on in Cobb’s domicile in a subtle, perhaps unintentional, nod to folks such as Graham Lambkin or Luc Ferrari.

Hui Terra is not to be missed, both for long-tenured fans of Cobb’s work and for those who appreciate early electronic music and/or modern electroacoustic composition.  Dive headfirst into its dreamlike, cascading narratives by pointing your browser to the Soda Gong Bandcamp.  For a physical manifestation of Cobb’s transcendent imagery, visit Forced Exposure.

Dachsund - Dachsund (Fall Break Records, 2018)

The Atlanta underground is burgeoning, a buried treasure ready to leap out and shout “Surprise!”  Case in point is label Fall Break Records, a label that traffics in “pop, experimental and psychedelic music.”  The imprint’s latest release is a self-titled cassette from Dachsund, the out-jazz duo of Peter Webb (sax, synth) and John Gregg (drums).  These two are part of a wider outsider world, both participating in the post-genre nonet Faun and a Pan Flute (check out the double LP on Feeding Tube, why dontchya?!).  Having been piloting their craft within similar orbits since 2010, Webb and Gregg are tuned into each other as master improvisers are apt to be, and this pair of live sets – imprinted onto a spool of magnetic tape nestled within the confines of a yellow cassette shell – epitomizes this phenomenon.

The A side is ushered in on a synth chord that rises above the din of the audience, around which a languorous saxophone slithers.  Melodies unfurl, timidly at first, until a floor tom gallops into earshot.  At this point, the pair lock horns and begin to telepathically release a collective energy that bobs and weaves, spins and twirls, and flat out leaps around the room.  That such a sparse arrangement can contain such fiery intensity is mystifying.  The set closes as it opened, fading into single synthetic chord.

On the flip, the opening synth passage unfurls melodically, a smoky mist that wafts about with an increasing thickness.  Gregg’s drumming kicks in furiously before Webb picks up his sax and gingerly begins laying down droning notes.  The almost spiritual way that the pair change modes – from extremely vigorous to outright melodic and sweet – is captivating.  It begs mention that both of these sets were recorded direct to iPhone, and this fact is just baffling!  The live-in-the-room essence, the spontaneity and the puissance have been faithfully captured for the universe to enjoy.

Only 30 physical copies of this bomb tape exist, so direct your own energy toward the Fall Break Records Bandcamp and prepare to be shell-shocked!

Prana Crafter - Enter the Stream (Cardinal Fuzz / Sunrise Ocean Bender / Eggs in Aspic, 2018)

Seattle-based Will Sol is Prana Crafter, a musician and songwriter who straddles the blurry line between psychedelic folk and kosmische drone a la Six Organs of Admittance, and who channels Neil Young & Matt Valentine with his unique vocalizations and six-stringed deftness.  Sol’s been active in the psychedelic sub-underground for a few years now, with efforts for esteemed labels such as Eiderdown, Deep Water Acres and Beyond Beyond is Beyond, but it took three labels to harness the hallucinatory energy of Enter the Stream.  This psychotropic slice of modern folk arrives courtesy of the Cardinal Fuzz, Sunrise OceanBender and Eggs in Aspic imprints.

Sol employs multiple elements to weave his gravity-defying sound worlds.  In addition to a high register croon and multiple layers of fluid guitar, there are synths, singing bowls, field recordings, drums and other percussion threaded into the eight pieces presented here.  Thematically, nature and the spirit are intertwined.  Lush energies are kindled immediately as the eponymous opening track unfurls.

Introduced with a gong hit and book-ended by field recordings of rushing water, a simple strummed guitar and repeated lyric belie the cerebellum-shattering trip that comprises the two succeeding tracks.  “Moon Through Fern Lattice” and “Mycorhizzal Brainstorm” occupy the more trance-inducing edge of the Prana Crafter spectrum.  Thick contrails of juicy synthesizer waft overhead like curlicues of colored smoke as Sol’s guitar writhes melodically.  A miasma of drone prevails until “The Spell” introduces a more grounded sort of reverie.

The Crazy Horse-inspired “Old North Wind” shifts the proceedings homeward with its loping rhythm section and sparsely ornamented arrangement.  It fades into a pair of shamanic drone pieces, which provide a feverish dreamlike drift.  “At the Dawn” closes out the proceedings with an air of melancholia, and the album ends as it began, the rushing water this time fading into echoed whispers of ‘nothing’.

Dream with the mountains in a kingdom outside of time with Prana Crafter; Enter the Stream is available in all three physical formats from the labels involved, and digitally via Bandcamp.