s is for sky burial

Sky Burial -- PAS THE SARVERING GALLACK SEAS AND FLAMING NEBYUL EYE [Obfuscated Records]

Sky Burial's latest release, with a cryptic title taken from a line in Russell Hoban's dystopian novel RIDDLEY WALKER, builds on the expansion of sound and ideas found on the previous release THERE I SAW THE GREY WOLF GAPING. Spearheaded by Michael Page and originally intended as a dark-ambient counterpart to his industrial / noise project Fire In The Head, Sky Burial's sound has gradually morphed over the years into something far more complex than mere dark ambient drone, a notion made obvious by the first track, "Na Fir Ghorm," which announces itself with a burst of keyboard notes swaddled in ping-pong delay and a scratchy rhythm that eventually resolves into long keyboard drones and a synth-driven sound reminiscent of early Tangerine Dream. Piper Craig McFarlane and Nocturnal Emissions sound-sculptor Nigel Ayers also contribute to the sonic tapestry, which winds and unfolds into layers of sound that rise and fall against the bedrock drone. The title track, whose drone center is leavened with cryptic sounds from Page and several collaborators (John Balistreri of Slogun and Self, Pentti Dassum of Umpio and The Kali Ensemble, and the mysterious Stargazer's Assistant), is a bit closer to Sky Burial's original aesthetic -- plenty of unearthly sounds processed from unidentifiable sources, some rhythmic and some textural, all flowing through and around a dark cosmic drone.

The next two tracks -- "Vessel" and "The Longest Day Heralds The Darkness To Follow" -- take up the bulk of the album, with each one in the neighborhood of twenty minutes. "Vessel" begins with deep, bleak drones from the blackest realms of space, but that ominous sound is eventually augmented by elements of sparse, clattering percussion and high-pitched keyboard wailing, then by looped cyclotron sounds and a wide variety of shifting keyboard textures that keep the lengthy piece from ever becoming static. The next track continues the motif of the interstellar drone, but adds more rhythmic elements and an edgier sense of dissonance, along with intermittent explosions of sound just to keep you on your toes. The final track, "Fuligin Cloak," is a stacked ensemble of keyboard drones constructed with assistance from Andrew Grant (aka The Vomit Arsonist, whose name conjures up images you would probably never wish to have floating around in your skull). Those majestic drones are peppered with the audio equivalent of cosmic stardust, and the sound that results is as elegiac as they are haunting.

As always with Sky Burial, not only is the album itself excellent, but the packaging is worthy of its own attention. The disc comes in a beautiful spot-laminated digipak with original photography by Daniel Page, and its overall design is simple but elegant, with blue and white hues that nicely complement the album's mysterious, ethereal feel. Another essential purchase for the discerning dronehead.

Sky Burial

Obfuscated Records

f is for flaming fire

A wee piece written for the liner notes of the forthcoming new album by Flaming Fire:

FLAMING FIRE

Flannery O'Connor reinterpreted for Greek theater, pagan Americana by way of the bar room singers from THE WICKER MAN, unconventional spirituality channeled through pop music… these peculiar juxtapositions of genre and intent go a long way toward explaining how impossible it is to easily explain the phenomenon that is Flaming Fire, a musical collective from New York who combine elements of baroque music, Greek theater, performance art, and a traveling tent revival to create one of the most unique groups currently passing as pop music. Led by eccentric musical polymath / preacher man Patrick Hambrecht and a revolving cast of participants (too many to even begin to keep track of, although his wife Kate and Lauren Weinstein remain regular players), their sound owes much to the seventies new wave / post-punk era, inviting comparisons to off-kilter bands like Devo, Gang of Four, Romeo Void, and the Residents, just to name a few. What separates them from the rest of the pack is their lyrical focus on spiritual concerns, couched in a peculiar form of pagan Christianity steeped in the kind of archetypes and apocalyptic signposts common to Flannery O'Connor's vision of the South. Like O'Connor, their visions of the Holy Spirit are not without a certain level of black humor and irony -- reflected most intensely in the brilliant "Kill The Right People" and the equally creepy "Goddess of War" -- and while their approach is oblique and unsettling enough to make one initially wonder just how serious they are about anything (much less religion), they are certainly no strangers to the concept that a great and unknowable mystery is at the center of all religion.

While the band's religious underpinnings are unquestionably a focal point of their sound and vision, unlike a lot of God-centric bands, they have never allowed it to overshadow the music; they've never denied their spiritual roots, but they've never made a big deal of it, either. It just it is, present for you to take it or leave it. Their pagan take on Christianity -- strange as it may be for a leader who grew up in the Southern Baptist church -- makes it considerably more accessible for those creeped out by the more conventional (and judgmental) brand of evangelical Christianity common to most Christian bands. It also helps immensely that their lyrics are unencumbered by the tedious and predictable dogma of most Christian bands, and that the band's revolving roster includes members who don't even share Hambrecht's religious views. Their surreal pageantry, best compared to a psychedelic form of Greek theater, lends yet another layer of spectacle to their epic performance art.

Of course, the band's memorable songs, built around catchy beats and melodies and anchored by beatific singing, make it entirely possible to appreciate the band without even agreeing with (or paying attention to) their lyrics. Certainly the jaw-dropping spectacle of their whacked-out live shows provides plenty of entertainment even for those totally uninterested in their spiritual side, and this is the diabolical genius of the band's existence: the way they have couched their message and their belief in such a deceptively festive and theoretically ironic manner means that they are able to appeal even to those ideologically opposed to their entire existence. It doesn't hurt that they have been consistently listenable for over more than a decade as a band, with a thematically consistent vision that has not wavered despite a revolving door of players. One can only hope that the band will be plying their subversive form of theological performance art for another decade to come.

c is for cassette culture

Yeah, what he said: 

CASSETTE ANARCHY NOW!

HEARING: ZZ Top -- TRES HOMBRES 

READING: Ed McBain -- THE LAST DANCE

f is for facelift

Like most people who weren't in Seattle in the late eighties, my first exposure to Alice in Chains was the song "Man in the Box," an arresting slice of blatant talkbox abuse and landslide guitar coupled with a big beat and a creepy guy singing exquisitely morbid lyrics. I first heard the song on the radio in its censored version (and saw it later in the video that gradually ended up in endless rotation on MTV), and when I bought the FACELIFT album, I was surprised to discover that a couple of lines were considerably ruder (but made more sense) on the album. I also discovered that it wasn't even the best song on the album (that would be "Sea of Sorrow," which the video version butchered by removing the first verse and editing it badly), and that the album was actually pretty good, with a lot of variety in the sounds, some catchy songs, and seriously dark lyrics steeped in alienation and paranoia.

I keep coming back to FACELIFT long after the scene around them disintegrated (much like the band itself) in a long string of overdoses and suicides because of its combination of catchy, guitar-heavy songs and near-psychotic intensity. The first side of the album is a series of bleak vignettes of futility, nihilism, and madness that culminate in "Love, Hate, Love," a deeply psychotic declaration of confusion and violence whose disturbing lyrics are only heightened by Layne Staley's unhinged vocal performance. The second half of the album isn't quite as tight, but it has its moments, and ends with "Real Thing," Staley's first peek into the world of the addict just waiting to relapse. It wouldn't be the last Staley had to say on the subject -- DIRT, one of the starkest and most honest depictions of addiction, from the perspective of people with plenty of first-hand experience regarding the world his drug-addled fuckups, remains one of the most compelling albums from the grunge era -- but it would be the catchiest.

The album is uneven, to be sure -- the album loses momentum in the last half of the album, a fact that's not helped by the ridiculous "I Know Somethin (Bout You)," whose terrible lyrics are made even more irritating by the bad attempt at funk. But "Sunshine" and parts of "Confusion" make use of the dark vocal harmonies that would come to dominant their later albums, and "It Ain't Like That" has a great creeping guitar riff that just adds to the morbid lyrics. And then there's "Real Thing," the rehab song that would prove gruesomely prophetic as the band's future was ultimately derailed by Staley's descent into hardcore heroin addiction, which ended with his death in 2002. Still, while this is not the band's best album -- that honor goes to DIRT -- it's certainly a lot more listenable and not quite as relentlessly bleak and hopeless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facelift_(album)

e is for excuses

THE TERRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT DEAD ANGEL

or

I WAS A SHAMELESS MIDDLE-AGED WHORE JONESING FOR RECORDS, LOTS OF RECORDS, ANY OLD RECORDS AT ALL HOO BOY

or 

LET'S SEE YOU REVIEW 3,000 ALBUMS WITHOUT TURNING INTO A JADED AND BITTER ASSHOLE

For those late to the party, THE ONE TRUE DEAD ANGEL was a long-running publication best known for reviewing lots of exquisitely strange music by incredibly obscure bands. It kicked off in 1994 as a cheap print zine for the express purpose of getting to talk to Bliss Blood and K. K. Null -- seriously (you only think I'm kidding) -- and once those goals had been achieved, it theoretically shouldn't have lasted more than two or three issues. I certainly never imagined that it would soldier on through several format and location changes for over eighteen years. Here is a scary truth, my troubled li'l children: this is the longest span of time in my entire life I've been associated with any one thing, especially one of such importance. (Korperschwache, formed six months after the launch of DEAD ANGEL, comes in second place.) Long-term dealios have never worked out real well for me, so it's nothing short of miraculous that something as labor-intensive as DEAD ANGEL should have lasted as long as it did. 

[AND NOW A WEE DIGRESSION: For those all broken-up and stuffs about the zine's demise, I should point out the one person most responsible for the zine existing beyond the first couple of issues. That would be Mason Jones (Charnel Music, Subarachnoid Space, Trance), an early supporter of the zine, and the first label to start sending in promotional material. What little success DEAD ANGEL ever had was something that was built up over time, as the zine continued to exist while others folded, and a steady stream of good things to review from labels like Charnel Music, Public Eyesore, Edgetone, Public Guilt, Crucial Blast, and far too many more to mention, allowed the all-review format to really flourish. For a while, anyway. Until (lo! hoist thy irony and prepare for impalement!) the zine's success turned into its undoing as the promotional pipeline started coughing up so much stuff, month in and month out, that it eventually became impossible to deal with all of it. Charnel Music was there at the very beginning, though -- back when the entire idea of a review backlog sounded like a good problem to have -- and even after Charnel Music ceased activities, Mason continued to be around in the background. An all-around swell guy, and not just because he's the one who introduced me to Skullflower, Gravitar, and K. K. Null.]

I will admit right now that one of the biggest perks of running the zine was the swell listenables arriving in the mailbox all the time. As the zine's open-door review policy became known, I started receiving stuff as amazing as it was obscure, and over the years I was introduced to one exceptional band after another courtesy of the DEAD ANGEL review pile. In fact, the tantalizing thought that the next wave of mail might bring another soul-shattering musical discovery kept the zine going long, long after I had burned out on the actual process of doing reviews. This continued to be true right up until the end, with great albums arriving unbidden.

But eighteen years is a long time to do anything, much less something like record reviews. The earliest incarnation of DEAD ANGEL also included interviews and other random musings (not to mention the long-running and increasingly unhinged issue introductions, a narrative that culminates in THE ETERNAL CRIPPLING VENGEANCE OF THE EVIL PENGUIN, a document that defies all logic in a manner best described as "zen stupidity"). Over time, all of these other things fell away, one by one, until nothing was left but… reviews. Lots of them. A promotional stream that eventually turned into a whitewater rapids, churning out an unbelievable amount of product, far too much of it for one person to review in a reasonably thoughtful manner and still remain sane. This was ultimately the biggest factor in the zine's demise; I was simply drowning in stuff to review, with no way to review all of it fairly. Toward the end I went into complete vapor lock, unable to even look at the review pile without getting the old twitchy eyeball. 

Burnout is an occupational hazard of doing reviews of any kind for a long time. Even if you like what you're doing, even if what you're hearing is interesting, the novelty fades after about a thousand reviews. Even if you continue undeterred, by the time you reach two thousand reviews, a number of things will have become painfully obvious: one, there are too many bands who all sound too much alike; two, too many of those bands (or band members) are making too many records; and three, there are only so many things you can say about these bands and albums. By the time you reach three thousand reviews, you will struggle daily with the need for journalistic integrity and fairness versus the burning, aching, fire-breathing desire to round up all those bands with records that sound just like the last seven albums before them and set them on fire. 

All of which is to say that the scene, you know, was starting to bum me out. So much to listen to, all the time, no time to hear it properly, always stuff to be reviewed, so much like a job, only with no pay…. can we say blah? Toward the end, i approached the review pile with a sort of ritualistic dread, never certain whether the next album would be a brilliant work of genius or yet another band that looks like every other band trying to reboot Slayer Metallica Fugazi Converge Bikini Kill etc. and sounds just like what it's supposed to sound like and not much else. Part of the problem is that just keeping up with the increasing flood of bands and their albums has become an impossible task; it doesn't help that an awful lot of those bands are competent but unremarkable. The final slide toward the end came for me when I started having problems with reviewing certain albums, particularly hardcore albums, where it became increasingly difficult to separate what I don't like about certain genres from the review process. 

The moral of this story is: um, there is no moral. We don't do morals around here, boyee! There is, perhaps, the suggestion that if you do anything for too long, regardless of the reasons, sooner or later the center does not hold. Sometimes when the levee breaks, the shit starts running downhill. 

Please note that I'm not against doing reviews in the future (in fact, I'm planning to review a lot of stuff from my own collection here), although certainly not on any kind of schedule or deadline. Those who know me know where to find me if they have something for me to hear.

NOW HEARING: Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- I