Play One Note

Leave it to me to find a new gem, spawned from my hometown, by reading a Poland-based psychedelic blog.*  The release in question is Austin-based quartet Storm Shelter’s self-titled EP.

On her website, Storm Shelter drummer Michelle Devereux labels her group an “apocalypse inspired chick band.”  The “chick band” part is true enough: Four women grace the release’s cover—but the apocalypse-inspiration part is no feint either.  This EP is entirely unapologetic in its worship of low tom beats and basic blues-scale guitar ambling, the perfect soundtrack to a post-urban witch’s coven.

Storm Shelter plods menacingly through these three tracks, purposeful tempos doing absolutely nothing to disguise this release’s shamanistic aggression.  Drumming is more spirited than precise, and unnecessary nonsense like “chord progressions” are unceremoniously shunted aside.  What we’re left with is some seriously bare-bones Road Warrior incantations, airs and dirges for post-civilizational shindigs and sacrifices.  Yes, Storm Shelter is positively elemental in its construction, there is an undeniably elemental joy in listening to these perfectly primitive stoner pop jams.  You try listening to the swampy, grimy churn of “Stoneatopia”† without getting all fist-pumpy.  You shall fail.

That’s all I got.  I’m mighty proud to live in the same town as these supremely talented ladies, and I earnestly hope to be able to catch them live one day soon.  Until then, I’ll be smearing soot on my face, gorging on grilled flesh, and jamming out to the deliciously tribal Storm Shelter EP, which you can stream on the band’s site.  It’s getting gross over here, people.  Come revel with me.

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*That just ain’t right, gawdammit!

†Surely the national anthem for the baddest land around.

As we find ourselves firmly ensconced in winter’s dreary frigidity, Bvdub’s I Remember (Translations of “Mørketid”) is an ideal record for those who, like myself, use music as an aural mirror.  This record accurately reflects the chilly milieu with compelling, often devastating, accuracy.

I Remember echoes the downcast widescreen panorama of downbeat beatsmiths like Burial and Gas, sounding not unlike some long-lost collaboration between those two artists.  At times, as on “We Said Forever” or “Would it be the Same,” clinical house beats occupy the foreground, and the resulting sound is reminiscent of a Luomo track wrapped in suffocating layers of heartache and hiss.*  Usually, however, Bvdub untethers his loops and haze from rhythms.  The resulting sound is aggressively immersive and consuming, at once powerfully bleak and gorgeous, strongly reminiscent of the dramatic, windswept snowscape that is I Remember‘s cover.

Regardless of the elements Bvdub employs, the tracks on I Remember are uniformly monolithic and relentless and unapologetically heart-wrenching, echoing the hopeless, ruined beauty of another emotionally unflinching work of loop-based music, William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops.  ”A Taste of Your Own Medicine” closes the album on a particularly naked note, in which shards of shattered, bleak drones insistently threaten to obscure the fragile, despairing melody at the piece’s heart.  I Remember is undeniably harrowing, but its emotional heft, while considerable, always engrosses and never overwhelms.

Grab a blanket (or Kleenex):

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*And if that doesn’t sound awesome to you, I can’t help you.

It has been a year of rediscovery for me, and Labradford ranks as one 2011′s two most breathtaking re-unearthings.*  Prior to giving them another listen, I’d categorized them in the same mental box I put Jessamine, Third Eye Foundation, Quickspace, Cul de Sac, and so on:† servicable, moody, and occasionally (but not consistently) fascinating.  I thought I appreciated them, and I listened to them on occasion, but I never really fell in love with anything I heard.  I would visit and revisit Labradford’s Mi Media Naranja perhaps yearly, find its spaghetti Western-tinged bleakness arresting at times and overly mannered at others, and then forget about it.  But that staid, prim respect I paid Labradford is no more, and I have their self-titled album to thank for that.

To paint it with an extremely broad brush (more of a roller, really), Labradford’s career is a progression from the deliberately rough to the finely burnished.  There were variations and gradations within and among albums that bucked this trend, but again, by and large, that’s how their career worked.  And Labradford caught them right in the middle of this transition, presenting the late, great band in a particularly versatile and varied light.

Now, I mentioned Labradford’s ever-evolving career arc, but there are more constants between records than there are differences.  These include a masterful sense of pacing as deliberate as it was inexorable, a deep and abiding affinity for particularly dust-blown Spaghetti Western guitars, and a resolutely nocturnal atmosphere.  And when I say “nocturnal,” I mean it as much as I’ve ever meant that used and abused word and then some.  This stuff is dark, begging to accompany a solo behind-the-wheel nighttime exploration, wan headlamps vainly casting their guttering arcs into the monolithic inky void, marking time against some serious internal thought processes hashing themselves out.  Car washing music this is most certainly not.

The mood on Labradford ranges from the sinister nocturnal menace of “Midrange” to the lovelorn nocturnal dissipation of “Pico” to the stately nocturnal melancholy of “Lake Speed,” but Labradford is hardly monochromatic.  Rather, the band mines the fine gradations of nighttime introspection as good as anyone, assembling an aural case study examining the subtleties of each shade of black.  The result is an engrossing, hypnotic exploration of an already-preoccupying set of emotions.

Don’t forget to turn off the lights:

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*The other being rediscovering Zelienople.  It was truly a year of stumbling across forgotten gems.  Also, I understand that there are still almost two months left in 2011, but my appreciation for these bands has been deep, long, abiding, and consistent, and unless I happen across something in these final 100 days that, I don’t know, fundamentally alters my socioeconomic beliefs or makes me want to get like facial tattoos, I feel comfortable sticking with the asterisk’d statement above.

†I really could go on, but that’s the point: Labradford was another member of a perfectly fine but otherwise undistinguished crowd of dark, textural post-rockers.

Happy Halloween!  You want a treat, you say?  Well that’s cool, because I’ve prepared one for you:

Not what you were hoping for?  Okay, well, I have a back-up treat.  I figured I’d give a shout ‘n’ tout* to some of the blogs that keep me informed and fascinated and blown into the next goddamn week with psychedelic yumminess.  That’s right, into the next week.  I am currently in the future right now, and I can report that it’s pretty chill over here.

Enough of that.  Here we go, in the totally arbitrary and frankly lazy order that the feeds are in my Google Reader:

exp etc: Not a whole lot going in the way of commentary (oftentimes you have to use a combination of the album art and the post’s tags to guess at what the album you’re downloading will sound like) but a pretty consistent flow of largely experimental psychedelia, noise, drone, jazz, and avant-garde jams.  That isn’t all, not by a long shot, as they really cover all their bases.

Dr. Schluss’ Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities: A total classic, featuring witty, conversational ramblings on psychedelic music new and old (mostly old).  Blessedly, Dr. Schluss avoids a lot of the barrel-scraping you find on a lot of blogs that revisit the 60s that seem to favor rarity over quality.  None of that baseless snobbiness here!  If he writes about it, it’s probably pretty damn good.  Bonus points for the dual metrics he uses to rate albums (“Quality” and “Trip-O-Meter”).

soundweave: The blog generally focuses on post-metal and post-rock, but throws enough curveballs to keep it interesting.  It’s basically the only blog I use that mines those areas, so it’s my go-to for keeping abreast there.  Post frequency is down lately, but I’m not really one to complain, so…

Weed Temple: Weed Temple is my absolute jam.  Jacob (aka Panzerfaust) posts primarily (but by no means exclusively) drone tapes.  It’s a ridiculously rich resource for two reasons.  First, you are not finding 90% of this music anywhere else, so you get a lot of absolutely left-field gems (like this brilliantly humid Ocelote Rojo record) that you wouldn’t have found any other way…unless you, too, maintain a blog focusing primarily (but by no means exclusively) on drone tapes.

Deleted Scenes,Forgotten Dreams [sic]: Thankfully, as of yesterday, they appear back after a two-month hiatus.  It’s all beatless ambient drone and New Age bliss here, and the best, most comprehensive blog I’ve found that tackles that area.  One minor quibble: They recommend everything as HIGHLY,HIGHLY RECOMMENDED [sic] which, like, is nice if you say that in contrast to other records, but if that’s your default comment, it’s kinda extraneous character typage, ya know?  But the music on here is largely unimpeachable.

Sharing is Caring <3: Posting has currently been reduced to a trickle for the Sharing is Caring bro (lack of a consistent internet connection, apparently), which is a shame, because when his blog was kicking, it was a great catch-all resource.  No real rhyme or reason to what was posted, but that was part of its necessary charm.  Great for helping me break out of the psych/drone box I often find myself.

GLOWING RAW: This blog posts in batches, and when I wake up and see four unread GLOWING RAW posts, I feel like someone just showed up at my desk at work with a Taco 12-pack all just for me, you know?  I feel all warm and special-like.  Alex’s obsessions are minimal/dub techno & microhouse, ambient/drone, psych of all flavors and assorted other experimental genres.  Though he doesn’t do much pigeonholing, he is a nearly peerless curator: Of all the blogs I follow, his is the one I trust almost instinctually.

Raven Sings the Blues: This guy posts what he likes, and he likes komische, psych folk, and garage rock.  Well, two out of three ain’t bad.  I scan all the posts and if I see “garage” anywhere in it I just pretend it didn’t exist, and with good reason: The other stuff he posts is largely spectacular.

WE FUCKING LOVE MUSIC: Yeah, they really do.  Absolutely no genre-imposed limiting here.  The last five albums posted include a popular film soundtrack, modern classical remixed by Detroit techno artists, a Ventures album, classical piano, and the Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency & I.  That basically says all you need to know about this fantastic blog.

And that ought to do it!  I follow a couple other magazine-type sites, but those are all the blogs.  Have I missed any awesome ones?  Lemme know!

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*I totally thought I made this unfortunate phrase up.  A Google search proves otherwise.  Darn.

A quick hit for the the Chaw, a Concord, CA-based psych band responsible for a delicious little morsel that came my way earlier this week.  Their new EP is dark and you know what I’m gonna be frank here it’s honestly some pretty bonerrific music, plenty well-suited to trysting and heavy make-outs.  It’s true.  What’s more, listening to the Chaw has made me re-realize how much damn fun that uniquely sexy dark strain of late-aughts psychedelia is,* and how I need to listen to approximately 900% more of it stat.  This stuff is made for charged hip-shaking and is practically begging to be paired with a really badass party populated by people cooler than me.

So: The music is fun.  Highlights include “The Road,” which is deliberate and menacing and nocturnal and is bound to get someone pregnant one of these days, and “Horizon,” a magesterial, surf-tinged ballad characterized by all sorts of tasty crescendo and catharsis.  The EP sounds absolutely great, too.  Everything is appropriate huge and hazy and smudged.  Guitars brightly chime and blearily soar, leaving brilliantly arcing psychedelic chemtrails in their wake.  The vocals have an affected, brash confidence about them, situated in that commanding, sexualized space occupied by Elvis, Nick Cave, and Chris Isaak.  It’s well-suited to this kind of dissipated, sultry psych.

In the spirit of forthrightness begun by my use of the adjective “bonerrific,” I’m gonna say that the Chaw sounds pretty cocky on this EP, and I’m usually—usually—more the introspective type.  But you know what?  They have every right to sound that way.  Because that cockiness, that swagger, makes this EP a goddamn blast.  I can imagine it kicking all kinds of ass live.  (Yo, Black Angels, put these fools in Austin Psych Fest pronto!)  Here’s the Chaw’s Bandcamp and website.  Get some.  No, really, get some.

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*I’m talking about the Black Angels, Black Mountain, the Warlocks, Sleepy Sun, et al.

I first heard about the transformative sonic immersions of Sister Waize on Dr. Schluss’ Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities.  Dr Schluss operates a truly phenomenal blog.*  It’s the Loaded to my Squeeze, and it’s where Sister Waize’s The Realignment Series garnered an exceedingly rare 5 out of 5 on the Trip-O-Meter (a finely calibrated and sensitive instrument, that).  That score right there was enough to appeal to me so I listened to what I could find on Grooveshark, which was My Army of Stars Will Get Me There.  It was exactly what I was hoping for, a crisp trip through synth arpeggiations recalling the more clear-eyed side of komische practitioners like Emeralds and Jonas Reinhardt.  It was undeniably up my alley.

So when David Mekler, the aural architect behind Sister Waize, contacted me with possibly the most heartfelt review request I’ve ever received, I seized the opportunity, feeling, I’m not ashamed to admit, the faintest hiccup of fanboy excitement.  After all, here was someone whose art I admire, and, it must be said, who I’ve heard of reaching out.  It was a warm feeling.

So I downloaded The Realignment Series and gave it a listen and, well, it is safe to say that I was not anticipating what I found on at all.  Based on my limited experience with Sister Waize, I was expecting chugging, Teutonic synth explorations.  I was not expecting a drone record, and I certainly wasn’t expecting a monolithically huge slab of canyon-deep drones like this.

Because I’ll say it: I have never heard drones this deep.  To listen to The Realignment Series is to be thrust entirely into roiling gray continental cloud-banks of sound.  The music is directionless in the best possible way, suggesting scale and mass and intelligence and otherness and unfamiliarity on a Lovecraftian scale.  It begs for that subset of adjectives and verbs we typically use for drone, ones that suggest an immersion, a transformation, a transportation from Here to There.  And it sounds absolutely huge.

Everything about The Realignment Series takes time.  No track is below 15 minutes in length, and most take around a minute for discernable sound to become detectable, a brilliant tactic that all but forces you to pay intensely close attention to these roiling gray continental cloud-banks of sound.  Yes, my friends, I’m afraid this is one of those albums that demands the ol’ quality headphones treatment, as Sister Waize is almost obsessively detail-oriented, and a great amount of The Realignment Series‘s finer points will be lost if decent stereophonic speakers aren’t pressed up against your ears.  This is true with most drone, but is particularly accurate here.

The closest thing I can compare the staggering size and engrossing scope of The Realignment Series to is Gas’s classic 2000 album Pop, which approaches similar depths of sensory-overwhelming mass, albeit by employing a much more humid, organic palette.  The Realignment Series, by contrast, leans on sounds altogether more alien, ominous, and sterile.  And with that frigid, unrelenting template, Sister Waize has crafted a starkly inexorable experience.  It’s uncompromising, challenging, and undeniably rewarding.**  It’s not at all what I was expecting, and that is fine by me.

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*Something you probably already know.  If you’re reading this blog, there’s about a one-in-one chance that you’ve read his.

**Mekler maintains a blog where you can download Sister Waize releases.  (He terms My Army of Stars Will Get Me There ”progressive romantic bitpop.”  Brilliant!)  You can also read “instructions” for listening to his “folding drone,” as he terms it.  One prescription suggests to begin by listening to one or two songs at a time on The Realignment Series before building up to the whole thing.  I’d never disagree with a set of instructions straight from the artist himself, but I have to say that blocking off three hours of your time and losing yourself in the entire thing all at once sounds like an absolutely transformative way to spend a weeknight alone.

So I don’t really get much into songwriting on here, but let’s honor a spectacular song here, one whose merits rest almost entirely on its brilliance as an emotive and expressive vehicle.  I’m referring to “Tropical Brainforest” by German-American roots-prog group Percewood’s Onagram.  Nobody’s heard of this band (173 listeners according to last.fm), and I sure as shit wouldn’t have myself, if it wasn’t for the ProgNotFrog blog,* which I unwittingly stumbled across and which unwittingly turned me on to one of my favorite songs of all time:

Hyperbolic, sure, but also true.  About the only less-than-perfect thing about this song is its admittedly rather embarrassing name, which would lead you to think it’s a slice of low-budget psychedelic wankery way too overcooked for the Nuggets box.  This, blessedly, is not the case.  Rather, the criminally unknown Percewood’s Onagram has crafted a heartfelt, melancholically triumphant masterpiece by marrying Beatles-esque phrasing, rootsy instrumentation, and suite-like pop-song construction.  So get over the name and listen to “Tropical Brainforest.”  You’ll become a Percewood’s Onagram evangelist, I swear!  Become that 174th listener!  Impress your friends!  Enrich yourself!

*A breathtaking admission from someone who was categorically allergic to anything even tangentially referred to as “prog” just four short years ago.

Now, I like weird, and much Appalachian folk is plenty weird, but give me Bascom Lamar Lunsford and his decidedly welcoming Ballads, Banjo Tunes, and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina, a collection of recordings repackaged and released by Smithsonian Folkways, any day.

Lunsford’s approach differs from many of his Appalachian brethren.  For one, his strengths more closely mirror those of balladeers like Buell Kazee and lie in opposition to the cascading torrents of notes and shrill vocals favored by the likes of Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs, and Hobart Smith.  And though I tend to prefer the approach of the latter group of musicians, Lunsford’s quietly awesome emotional range is damn hard to dislike.

For another, that “high lonesome sound” of which Bob Dylan spoke (and which is the name of Roscoe Holcomb’s peerless collection of Folkways recordings) isn’t as evident on this record.  Lunsford’s selection of songs is entirely peaceful, soothing, and warmly inviting.  That doesn’t mean these songs aren’t moving.  It just means that they trade more in nostalgia and simple prettiness, as on the quietly gorgeous “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” than they do haunting eerieness.  Even when Lunsford puts down his banjo and goes a capella, the results are comforting, not estranging, as on the sweetly affecting “To the Pines, to the Pines,” with its deliberate, lilting melody.

“To the Pines, to the Pines” is as good an example as any to illustrate another crucial difference in Lunsford’s music—his voice.  It’s not his range, which, while certainly adequate, isn’t remarkable.  Rather, it’s the elusive character of his singing, which is at once lived-in and yearning, imbued with a deeply affecting warmth.  While Lunsford may never blaze up the fretboard like many other clawhammer masters from the mountaintops, these tunes don’t demand that he does, and his voice is the perfect complement to his stately, unadorned banjo playing.  An extra treat: the spoken introductions he often gives his songs.  These intros, which serve to provide lineage and personal color to the recordings, are sometimes found on similar folk catalogs, but here, Lunsford’s conversational homeyness makes these positively endearing.

Ballads, Banjo Tunes, and Sacred Songs is incredibly evocative, reminiscent of lazy afternoons spent sitting on a porch, sipping cool sweet tea from a tumbler beaded with sweat, the warm sun filtering through the still hickories, a sweet grassy fragrance in the air.  It’s perfect summer music.  While it might not be representative of the otherworldliness characteristic of other Appalachian songs, that absence of unfamiliarity might actually make Lunsford’s collection of songs an ideal entry point for folks interested in the genre but a little spooked by the off-key caterwauls of many of Appalachian folk’s more wild-eyed practitioners (I love his voice now, but the first time I heard Roscoe Holcomb’s shrill, nasal squawk, I was, shall we say, not immediately won over).  Close your eyes and hum along:

Forget the introductory throat-clearing: Sleep’s second album, Sleep’s Holy Mountain, is the undisputed pinnacle of a genre two decades old and counting.*  It’s a concise, digestible, addictive, stoned masterpiece of head-nodding riffage, mind-melting solos, and incantatory mysticism, all enveloped in gloriously pungent analog haze.  It follows the slow-is-heavy formula of ancestors Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus but adds a heavy element of droning glory.

Sleep’s Holy Mountain begins with ”Dragonaut,” an immediate highlight, easily one of the greatest metal songs ever recorded, and undoubtedly one of my 10 favorite songs of all time.  I know I exhale hyperbole here on Play One Note, but I’m being totally fucking serious.  It’s druggy, heavy, nimble, aggressive, mellow, diffused and deceptively suite-like.  It’s iconic.  Check the absolutely awesome, gloriously lo-fi music video:

Matt Pike losing his goddamn mind, Chris Haikus looking exactly like Curly, Al Cisneros making being a stoner somehow look totally cool:** Yes, this video kicks.

“Dragonaut” might be the best thing on Sleep’s Holy Mountain, but it’s by no means the only highlight.  To list them all would be to essentially present you with an annotated track list.  Here are a few moments, then: the unhinged, fast-forward solo two-thirds of the way through “The Druid,” the deliberate, one-note menace of the first 17 seconds of “Holy Mountain,” the creeping bluesiness of the expertly managed crescendo halfway into that same song, the fist-pumping optimism of the chorus on the anthemic “Aquarian,” the way “Inside the Sun” devolves from a stoned, bizarro version of punky thrash into a Leviathan monstrosity of brutal sludge, Haikus’s crashing, metronomic, and tinny cymbals throughout, Cisneros’s disembodied chanting, the seamless meshing of Pike’s high-wire shredding and Cisneros’s melodic bass playing on every second of every song, and the way the album sounds like it was recorded on a reel-to-reel that was then buried in moss and mud for a millenium.

After Sleep, Pike and Cisneros (with Haikus) went on to form High on Fire and Om, respectively.  Both bands are critically acclaimed, and Om nearly achieves the same greatness as Sleep.  But neither Cisneros nor Pike has since reached the bar first set by Sleep’s Holy Mountain 19 years ago.  That’s hardly a knock.  Indeed, with Sleep’s Holy Mountain, Sleep has constructed that exceedingly rare document, an album that manages to be representative and flawless all at once.  And perfection never strikes twice.

*Well, not undisputed, if we decide to include Sleep’s legendarily lost third album, Dopesmoker, a sort of stoner metal analog to Brian Wilson’s Smile.  Sleep coaxed the album out of the Weedian ether over a painstaking four-year period.  Record label red tape lead to multiple versions of varying officialdom which exist under different names (including 1999′s Jerusalem).  In its most Sleep-authorized, officially released version, it’s a 63-minute long seamless epic about…uh…well, weed.  Topic material aside, and flying in the face of stoner stereotypes, Dopesmoker is straight-up ambitious.  But at the end of the day, if I had to pick one to call the definitive document of the genre, it’s no contest.  Dopesmoker may be the apotheosis of stoner metal, but Sleep’s Holy Mountain is its essence.

**This is an incredible and underrated feat.  Watch this video and then try to tell me Al Cisneros is not a fucking awesome-looking dude.  You will fail.

Here we have Moscow, WV, a new, limpidly frigid, and unusually dynamic drone record by Berkeley-based duo Accentor.  There’s a crystalline grace and hugeness on display here, something that’s better appreciated by airing the music out and letting it get loud.  That’s right: Like most great works of ambient drone, Moscow, WV demands throaty speakers.  I found myself progressively turning the volume up while listening to it, the better to get enveloped by its intergalactic austerity.  It shifts tectonically between the quieter moments of drift on Michael Stearns’s Planetary Unfolding, Auburn Lull’s Alone I Admire, and William Fowler Collins’s Perdition Hill Radio.  To understate things a smidge, that’s pretty good company.

About those shifts: Like Auburn Lull’s aforementioned, turn-of-the-century masterpiece, Moscow, WV is often filled with brilliant light and airy space.  ”Winter in Moscow,” for example, basks in a frigid glare, a harshly bright cathedral of ice where frozen synths* trace the clean lines of a forbiddingly beautiful architecture with stark clarity.  At other points, however, things take a significantly darker turn, as on the queasy, foreboding ”Tomlinson Run,” which pulsates with blackened aggression.

Sometimes, the hugeness of atmosphere, so evident on “Winter in Moscow,” approaches the oppressive, as on “High School Sweetheart’s Baby.”   At points like these, the coldness and dryness of sound becomes vacuum-like and hermetic.  Elsewhere, drones painstakingly swell from barely-there wisps of aural spacedust into temporally and spatially immersive primordial stews reminiscent of the late, great Celer, like on “Winter in Moscow II.”  There’s a forboding maximalism to these minimal drones, and a stargazing feel of neck-craning wonder as well.

Moscow, WV is the first installment of a year-long series of monthly album releases.  Apparently, one of the upcoming records is, in the words of Jacob, an Accentor member, “an album of Appalachian noise-folk recorded using only a Nintendo DS.”  Yes, please!  You can stream Moscow, WV for free at Accentor’s Bandcamp, or you can download it for whatever you wish to pay.   Think about the latter option, because Accentor is donating all proceeds made from Moscow, WV for the next month to the American Red Cross to help victims of the Midwestern tornado tragedy.**   Accentor: Doing beautiful things with beautiful music.

*Or what sounds like synths to these poor, untrained ears, as Accentor apparently made this record using primarily electric viola and vocoder.  Good luck teasing apart and categorizing these icy, wefted tendrils of sound.

**This being relayed to me one week ago from today, so more like three weeks.