Two Lakes

On Two Lakes, there are few sounds at any given moment.  Those that are present at said moment compose a gorgeously wrought vignette of nearly austere reserve.  However, what gives the record its considerable power is the deliberate movement between these sounds, how and when certain pieces fade into and out of the track.  The mixing on Two Lakes is impeccable: The resonant burbling churn and slosh of water on “Meroo Rockshelf,” for example, dissolves into the clean, pastoral drones of “Meroo Sedgeland Pt. 1″ in a way that’s surprising and gripping, yet somehow still feels inevitable.  And the album is nothing less than a succession of these revelations from the beginning to the end.

Music like this—and by “like this,” I mean music that’s designed to be beautiful, peaceful, contemplative, and impressionistic—is rarely actively engaging.  If it weren’t for albums like Two Lakes, it would be easy to assume that listener engagement and drifting, naturalistic, minimalistic ambient music are mutually exclusive.  The fact is, few albums reach this level of imposed contemplation,* but Two Lakes is certainly one of them.

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*Two other albums I can think of that do are the Olivia Tremor Control’s Explanation II: Instrumental Themes and Dream Sequences, one of the most unfairly forgotten ambient records of all time, and Taylor Deupree’s Northern.

K-l-a-n-g-!

Elsewhere, as on “Caught in the Underfield,” songs (more or less) coalesce out of a swampy haze, during which the New Mummies channel No Wave-primitivism through a particularly bleak form of outsider folk to create a sort of desolate dark pop.  These songs, with the exception of the anthemic closer “Campaign for Wellness,” feel lucid only in relation to the trio of drones that open K-l-a-n-g-!.  Indeed, the New Mummies take every opportunity to tear these songs apart, plunging them in cascading reverb, ripping out the low end, tightly wrapping vocals in rapidly decaying delay, and subjecting them to the microphone-on-the-other-side-of-the-room lo-fi recording methods of early Magik Markers.  The result is a series of particularly emotionally direct songs made moreso by their obvious fragility, their precarious cobbling-together.

Given multiple, divergent threads of influence, it would be easy for the New Mummies to try to do to much here.  But  like Sparklehorse’s classic Good Morning Spider*, K-l-a-n-g-!‘s willfully de(con)structive production methods serve as a crucial binding agent, providing the common thread that runs through these quietly unsettling drones and dirges.

Enjoy it on their Bandcamp.

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* Which, despite sounding absolutely nothing like K-l-a-n-g-!, is a surprisingly handy signifier for it, being an album similar in fractured lonesomeness and fractured construction.

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, and 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: