Marc Ribot - Asmodeus: Book Of Angels 7

This is Volume 7 in John Zorn's massive Book Of Angels series - a series I have found it pretty impossible to keep up with, what with all the other music in the world. Not to mention the stuff. The others I have heard: Secret Chiefs 3, Zorn with Medeski, Martin and Wood; Bar Kokhba have all been excellent, so it's probably worth checking them all out. Marc Ribot is perhaps most famous for playing with Tom Waits, but on this disc he is eschewing his tasteful embellishments in favour of acid-jazz/rock onslaught, in power trio mode with Trevor Dunn and G. Calvin Weston. The results vary from chugging heavy riffs such as the opening of 'Dagiel', to more free jazz explosions, such as the opener 'Armaros'. Whilst they stay in touch with Zorn's East European/Klezmer themes, they rock them up beautifully, and intersperse wilder, freer passages of group improv and fret burning. I don't mind admitting that I prefer the slightly more structured numbers, and 'Mufgar' and 'Sensenya' are fantastic masterpieces of controlled acid power trio chaos: superb riffs backed up by relentless chugging bass runs and beautifully swinging propulsive drumming.

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Various Artists - 2009 favourites

I was just putting together a best of 2010, and realised I never posted my 2009 version, so here it is. The picture is unrelated - just a good one I took last year. I probably would have had more to say about these tracks if I'd done this post at the time. I do remember that Various Production ft. Gerry Mitchell 'The Invisible Lodger' was my album of the year - I highly recommend it. Actually, looking at these tracks, they were all from excellent albums - something that cannot be said for my 2010 selection - these were all pretty good albums.
You can find these in itunes by album artist, which is 'White Dot 2009'.

2009 tracklisting:

1-Various Production feat. Gerry Mitchell: This Invisible Blood (The Invisible Lodger)

2-Oneida: Luxury Travel (Rated O)

3-Lord Newborn and the Magic Skulls: Escape From Prism (Lord Newborn and the Magic Skulls)

4-Valet: Blood Is Clean (Blood Is Clean)

5-Bardo Pond: Silver Pavilion (Peri )

6-Fever Ray: If I Had A Heart (Fever Ray)

7-Alva Noto: Xerrox Tek Part 1 (Xerrox Vol. 2)

8-Wolok: Transubs(a)tantiation (Caput Mortuum)

9-Various Production feat. Gerry Mitchell: A Hole In Your Memory (The Invisible Lodger)

10-Alexander Tucker: Bell Jars (Portal)

11-Cave: Made in Malaysia (Psychic Psummer)

12-Oneida: What's Up, Jackal? (Rated O)

13-Shackleton: Let Go (Three EPs )

14-Ben Frost: Peter Venkman Pt II (By The Throat)

15-Bill Callahan: Eid Ma Clack Shaw (Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle)

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Since Blogger decided to remove my best of 2010 this posting looks faintly preposterous. Ho hum.

Phantomsmasher - Phantomsmasher

Phantomsmasher is the pet project of avant guitar master James Plotkin, who has collaborated with a large and fine array of weird-beard musicians, including harrowing mega-doom merchants Khanate. This album couldn't be further from Khanate's crawling, crushing music: it's often hyper fast, with the beats ranging from metallic blast beats to splattercore drum & bass style, played by grind master extrodinaire Dave Witte. It's severely ADHD, manic and brilliant. Smeared across the top are harshly edited and scratched vocal loops, and Plotkin's spangly clanging guitar and bass - often heavily processed, playing queasily grating riffs, and chords that tremble like metal pylons in an electrical storm. It's pretty harsh, and totally unhinged, but is great fun. Plotkin's level of invention on his instruments, and the crazy range of noises and brilliant editing keep up the interest, although the music can be challenging.

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Bardo Pond - Set And Setting

I love Bardo Pond - a fuzz/drone/psych/space ensemble, heavy on the bongtastic distortion and wasted atmospherics. Their particular formula is a lush, sludgy, hedonistic sounding one that especially appeals to me. Isobel Sollenberger's drawled vocals aren't too dissimilar to Kim Gordon's, and perfectly fit the super-loose, bluesy psych-fuzz riffs. First track, the 11 minute 'Walking Stick Man' sets the tone in wonderful fashion: a swaying groove churns along, with perfectly damaged vocals, and a wall of glorious fuzz, helped along by Sabbathy harmonica: it's a woozy worshipful hymn to the power of distortion and the guitar. Actually, the whole album is. 'This Time, So Fucked' steps it up a notch, with some wailing wah fighting off feedback. There is a bit of variation - the disembodied and detached 'Datura' is on the verge of descending into shaking-eyed psychosis, and is following by the chugging and thunderous rock out of 'Again', before the 9+ minute 'Crawl Away' returns to the meandering, head nodding fuzz waves. If you like this, check out 'Peri' and 'Amanita', although all their albums I've heard are pretty good.

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Sonic Boom - Spectrum

Sonic Boom's first solo album after leaving Spacemen 3 continues in pretty much the same vein, and has some really great stuff on it. The kind of wasted-on-drugs/gospel vein runs through virtually all of Sonic and Jason's work, borrowing liberally from blues music (Lonely Avenue); although in this case the presentation is pretty lo-fi, with drum machines and trashy organ accompanying the fuzz and reverb guitar. The formula is often incredibly simple, as on 'You're the one' - a simple riff is repeated, and the layers of fuzz guitar/organ are gradually turned up until the tune is rocking nicely. The only track that deviates slightly is my favourite track on the album, a masterpiece, and a worthy successor to 'How Does It Feel' from 'Playing With Fire'. It has a flotation tank feel, with a heartbeat-like pulse, some guitar loops, and distantly spaced keyboards. Occasional descending bass notes, chimes, and some brilliant use of reverse echo embellish this moody yet blissful track. It really does evoke the feeling of someone drifting off this mortal coil in an incredibly smashed state.
I saw Sonic Boom perform this a couple of years back - it was pretty special, even though his vocals haven't really improved over the years ( I like them for what they are). I can also recommend seeing the current incarnation of Spectrum. I saw them last year and they were excellent: it was a joy to behold excellent live versions of 'Transparent Radiation' and 'Revolution'. I was lucky enough to see Spacemen 3 once, and I must have seen virtually every spin off band since, including Spectrum in 1990, and even The Darkside. I seem to recall that Sonic supported My Bloody Valentine at ULU, accompanied by some bloke with a harmonica.

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Boredoms - Chocolate Synthesizer

Another band I saw recently, although their current incarnation sounds quite different to this album from 1994. They currently play with varying amounts of drummers (7 the other night), and churn out a kind of bludgeoning performance art space rock. Main man Yamatsuka Eye had a pretty cool multi-necked guitar totem thing, which he would bong occasionally with his wand.
Ideally the picture of this would be here, and not at the top, but I can't get blogger to upload pictures where I want them to go, which fits in nicely with the general air of retardation that imbues this album. It's full of greasy mong-riffs and guttural imprecations, screaming derangement, bursts of noise, hardcore style rock outs and general freakish lunacy. Probably best not listened to with a raging hangover, at all other times this is great fun, and often hilarious - generally for the nutty vocals: 'Smoke 7' is a particular favourite. The cover gives a good impression of the music, prompting the question 'What the fuck is going on?'

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Skullflower - Orange Canyon Mind

Utterly glorious noise psych-out from Matthew Bower. Euphoric, blasting, coruscating waves of fuzz; juggernauts of pulsating bass. Warping witches' fingers of liquid sound lick at your ears like cold flames while crashing planets destroy the gravity in your brain. That's just track 1. Despite being cacophonous, this is beautiful to my ears: it's a richly harmonic maelstrom of overdriven analogue. I'm not sure how it was created, but it's super-effective: all kinds of power-electronics mayhem, plus some acid guitar, and barely audible percussion in a thick, lurching, surging syrup of cosmic goodness.
Sometimes the tracks are underpinned by spacy nodding grooves, sometimes there is just a clenched roar of sound, an electrical storm of wild sonics; but there is always a dense and captivating tapestry of noises, tunes and distortion.

Buy it from crucial blast

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Ulaan Khol - I

Ulaan Khol is an alias of Steven R. Smith, who is a prolific guitarist in the realms of ambient/psych/drone. I didn't know anything about him until I decided to post this album, whic I have been enjoying immensely for quite a while. Composed from layered guitar and feedback, enveloped in an atmosphere of reverb. It begins with a full band fuzz psych-out sound, but most tracks have minimal, distant percussion, or none at all. There are ringing overtones, angelic choirs and space horns singing in the mix, conjuring an epic devotional vibe of mystic depth. This is the first part of a trilogy, which I must acquire now that I know about it, especially as the last track is like a laser of distilled and focused Popol Vuh at their most ecstatic. Beautiful and cosmic.

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Korea Soundblaster - Korea Soundblaster

From 2003, this album is a wild blast of completely acid-drenched mayhem. It's a full-on, saturated melting pot of metal riffs, deranged warbling vocal samples, bombastic organ, stumbling drums, outrageous dub echo and distorted noise. Not to mention the OTT moog-style burblings, atonal guitar leads, screams, bleeps and unidentified scary noises. All this is mashed together with little regard for niceties such as song structure or pleasing melodies, but it's such good fun to listen to that these absences are irrelevant. The songs tend to fade into each other, making this one long, crazed assault on your senses.
Thanks to Dimitri for this one.

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Simply Saucer - Cyborgs Revisited

Fantastic psych fuzz punk from Canada, recorded in 1974/75. Completely out of step with prog and FM pop, and seemingly every other prevailing sound throughout their short career, this band sank into obscurity. A shame, because they had a tremendous sound - one that bordered on deranged: a pummelling rhythm section, psych-surf guitars, and wild use of "recently purchased 'audio generators' and theremin" to quote the liner notes. Add a great vocalist, in the wasted-Lou-Reed style, and a great formula was achieved: and there are cool tunes to match the distorted sonic overload sequences.
As well as the original 9 session tracks are two excellent sides of a 1978 single, and a load of live/demo tracks that don't really add much.

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Null - Ultimate Material III

And here we have the Yin to Rafael Toral's Yang. Or vice-versa. A roaring, squalling, relentless blast of noise. A bit like putting ones head into a wind tunnel on full power, except that it's not just wind coming through the tunnel, it's everything. Ferocious, yet still quite beautiful; and the monolith on the front is quite apt. These two pieces total almost 58 minutes.
The notes on the back say:
"All music composed and performed by Kazuyuki K. Null with guitar, percussion, ultrasonik and voice. No synthesizers of samplers were used on this disc." Which is quite impressive.

Download RS

Acid Eater - Virulent Fuzz Punk A.C.I.D

Mental overdriven fuzz punk guitar wig out. A paean to the joys of distortion and shouting. Totally fantastic album by Japanese noiseniks.

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