Idea Fire Company - 'Stranded' (Swill Radio)

The anti-natural manifesto is not anti-human in any sense, and I'm struck by the physical effects of listening to multiple Idea Fire Company records in a row. Stranded bears little resemblance to the Roxy Music classic, but also takes a great step forward from what the duo of Karla Borecky and Scott Foust exhibited on Anti-Natural. Here, the group has expanded to a quartet, though that doesn't alter the clarity of their vision one bit. I find that the different tracks affect me in different ways, physically, here; there is a breathing ebb and flow that generally is present in every piece, but it moves from placid and contemplative ('Heroes') to edgy and nervous ('Wünderwäffen', 'Artificial'). Foust is entirely relegated to radio and tape duties here and his preparations are masterful, particularly the murmuring voices buried beneath 'Stranded II's music-box melody. Where a lesser musician or sound artist might gravitate towards sentimental nostalgia with such material, IFCO eschews any such reading and infuses a cold isolation, using the radio to conjure mysteries that do not reflect on culture's reading of the future from the past, like so much music called 'hauntology' today. The voices on 'Heroes' are shockingly beautiful, rotating in an echo of a dream; here's where more traditional musical aesthetics are dabbled with, and it's extremely rewarding. 

Idea Fire Company - 'Anti-Natural' (Swill Radio)

This is a two-part manifesto, being both language and sound. All sound is a form of language of course and Anti-Natural is a clear example that even the most conservatory-trained traditionalist could understand. Karla Borecky and Scott Foust's synth interplay, accented with reedy guitar and tape loops, stakes out a universe that redefines musical concepts such as metre, pitch, and duration. With all of the tracks on Anti-Natural, it's really one complete work, the concept of the 'album' being probably the most traditional music-industry one being adhered to. Shorter tracks tease out pinching tones, a murky ambience that breathes and pulses, and these support the longer explorations, for example the 13-minute 'Magnetic Fields', which glows with an organic repetition that feels so attuned to the human body that while listening to it carefully, closely, I feel a change in my own breathing. This LP feels like a complete statement of intent even without the printed manifesto included, but that is an intense and I'd say recommended read, especially for me over today's morning coffee. No one in academic art history circles is even aware of the 'Anti-Natural' manifesto, a fact that serves to prove the manifesto's own points about the conspiratorial blanketing of capitalist commodification, Judeo-Christian morals and positivist scientific thought. It's a convincing work, one that should be taken seriously and applied to this and all future Idea Fire Company recordings, for it stakes out their aesthetic position and radicalises a music that should be already radical, were it not for the context of the music industry which de-radicalises by definition, and of course the LP (pressed and sold by IFCO themselves on the Swill Radio imprint) is a commercial product. Anti-Natural, not music you'd listen to with Grandma, is a vital document of sound exploration that forms around a much larger context than simple electroacoustic experimentalism. And thinking about this as an aesthetic, one that a younger version of me would have happily summarised as an 'alien' one, really raises the question about how to live our lives through art, uncompromising and true. Some of the shorter tracks have great titles like 'We Are Nothing and We Want to Be Everything' or 'On Your Toes, Intellectuals!', which could be seen as jokes or as serious provocations, and somehow I vote for the latter, though the Anti-Natural ideology doesn't feel heavy or dogmatic. The music is ultimately what matters and over the last 25 years or so, IFCO has tended towards lightness, with sounds that are lifting, expanding, and evolving, generating a sensation of a world to explore. It starts here for me (though there are a few earlier records that I haven't heard) and as a statement of purpose, it's marvellous.

Ici La Bas (Black Noise)

A prized possession here, Ici La Bas would be normally filed under H for the Homosexuals, or maybe a bit deeper down in the Is for 'Les Incroyables' (credited as the producer), but I'm going with the Discogs.com hierarchy here – they have it as a self-titled release by the artist Ici La Bas (their only release, of course).  All six of these tracks appear on the indispensible first disc of the Homosexuals Astral Glamour compilation, though most are pushed towards the ass-end of the sequence. And this is a prime slice of the experimental side of these guys, with 'Regard Omission', 'Galore Galore' and 'Cause A Commotion' all experiments in reverbed guitars and other studio assemblages. I mean, it's all studio assemblages - 'Nippon Airways' is a dub song, getting away with it in the way that so many UK artists of the late 70s were able to do. The middle cuts from each side are the most coherent songs; I've listened to 'The Total Drop' so many times that it feels like a part of my own heartbeat, though it's a bouncy and bubblegummy entry for the Homosexuals canon and probably not one many others adores as much as I do. 'Flying' is a bit more on the jagged, sneering side of things but it's propelled with a beautiful momentum. In many ways, the genius of this broken collective only comes together when compiled as a larger body of work. Had I only this 12" to go from, I would find it occasionally brilliant and slightly frustrating, which is of course exactly what the Homosexuals were, but hardly anything to build a religion around. There's no 'Hearts in Exile' or 'False Sentiments' here, but knowing those cuts from the other releases it congeals into something magnificent, work that inspires not just in the mysterious nature of their public identity, but in the music itself, which is timeless and brilliant. Tiger makes it better.

Dick Hyman - 'Moog: The Electric Eclectics of' (Command)

I've never had an amazing charity shop find - no rare private press Christian psych originals for $1, or even a decently obscure classic or anti-classic. About the best I can do is this, which was only $0.25, many years ago and has lingered in my collection even though I rarely listen to it. Moog is pretty good though, moving between novelty/lounge exotica sounds ('Topless Dancers of Corfu', 'Evening Thoughts') and pure synth fuckery ('The Moog and Me', 'Tap Dance in the Memory Banks'). 'The Minotaur' is the true killer jam, with an addictive pulse that reminds me of Can or some motorik Kraut thing, and noodling, melodic solos with huge tone sweeps that remind me of British (perhaps Cantebury) prog. Hyman's compositions have a lot of air in them, allowing the high and low tones to really reverberate. This record sounds beautiful, even when the vibe is a bit too goofy to fully enjoy. 'Four Duets in Odd Meter' is a sparkling adventure through ecstatic electronics; the titular odd metre gives it an unsettling feel that somehow is still inviting, drawing me into its imagination. I situate this as coming from the final wave of mid-century Americana, where there was some strange fantasy that this could be the music of the future - where machines and computers were distant dreams, rather than tools of enslavement or at least narcissism. And marketed, of course, through pop/sci-fi ideas as the album artwork indicates, but with a rather commercial (or perhaps a better term is accessible) musical edge, at least if you were to compare this to, say, Luening & Ussachevsky. And I suspect that as time passes, this will sound increasingly interesting, in a paleofuturistic way; we are definitively in an era where we cannot dream of a future any longer, unless it's cast as some Silicon Valley-driven capitalist bullshit. Aesthetically, we're stuck, which is what Mark Fisher wrote a lot about before he died, so this Dick Hyman record could be Exhibit A from the final generation of imagination, and inspire us to once again dare to dream.

Hüsker Dü - 'The Living End' (Warner Bros)

We skip ahead to this posthumous live album, the only other Hüsker Dü vinyl I ever accumulated, and quite recently as I came across it in a discount bin earlier this year. This is a great document of the band's final tour, and it's masterfully assembled to sound like one concert, even though it's culled from a variety of recordings. You'd never know - the opening two cuts mirror the opening cuts of New Day Rising and the segue is seamless, even though one was recorded a week before the other. No one ever thinks about this record, much like the Minutemen's Ballot Result, but it's a worthwhile listen, as the recordings are clear, with audible lyrics and a heavy bass thump. Mould is really focused on clear enunciation, especially during the batch of Warehouse songs that follow the opener. It's a great live sound, with some echo thrown on vocals when needed - 'Ice Cold Ice' sounds totally psychedelic during its chorus, and while their dynamic never really lets up from fast and loud, it still provides some variety. As this was the Warehouse tour, it's not surprising that the song choices weigh heavily towards that record and hardly from Candy Apple Grey which was probably a bit played out then, or Zen Arcade. But there's a nice selection from Everything Falls Apart, including 'From the Gut' and 'In A Free Land', broadly spanning the band's career and giving those songs a nice fresh take. What's crazy is that Everything Falls Apart and Warehouse are only separated by four years. Greg Norton also has a song here, 'Everytime', which I guess was a B-side from the time. LP #2 dives into a bit more older material, including a version of 'Books About UFOs' with a scorching guitar solo, and a take on 'Celebrated Summer' that's of course more raw than the studio version, but with Hart's background vocals, attains transcendence. This is still a punk rock band, heard more clearly in 'What's Going On' than any of the earlier material. And that means there's a directness, a fury, and a purity that you can really feel in these live recordings; they're a tight band, but not overly precise, and the crowd is felt more than heard, except between songs a few times. The strangest thing about The Living End (beyond the cover version of 'Sheena is a Punk Rocker', an odd choice for the final cut of a final Hüsker Dü album, though it proves that it's pretty much impossible to cover the Ramones without affecting Joey's accent) is how the songwriting split is almost a perfect 50/50 between Mould and Hart, unlike the records, which were more 75/25. Hart has some fine songs for sure and many of them are represented here, but I think the balance is better on the records. This was done probably to placate the tensions between the two after the split, but even still Wikipedia claims that Mould claims to have never heard this record. I hope the time passed would heal some wounds and he might actually enjoy it now.

Hüsker Dü - 'New Day Rising' (SST)

This is imperfect perfection, a joyous contradiction. Your surroundings are still a wall of screaming, distorted electric guitar, and the speed is always above average. Yet comparing this to Metal Circus is like comparing adults to kids. Of course, in between came a 70 minute double LP concept album which I don't have a copy of to discuss here (but I wish I did); that may have been a conditioning exercise. On the other side, well, it's a new day. The voices are a hell of a lot higher in the mix here, and it's like all of the screamy angst gets out during the title track. Mould's first song here is 'I Apologize', a great and catchy song that deftly analyses communication breakdowns in a relationship. Such mature territory! I don't like to oversimplify the intention of a pop song, but one of the things I love about music is how it can be so simple and so complex in a four-minute package. And what I love about albums is how they assemble to a narrative, even when not a concept album. This one has a really cohesive first side and then a messy, blocky second side. It starts and ends with almost abstract ragers, the title track a focused, monotonous banger and then 'Plans I Make' at the end, a total jam-mess with guitar that sounds like Lee Ranaldo is playing it, and a false ending too. Hart's songs are more schizo in tone; 'The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill' is a perfect minor key pop song while 'Books About UFOs' has a lurching rhythm and even some honky-tonk piano in it. Mould is incorporating more arpeggios and chorus into his guitar sound than the earlier work, and understandable as the pace slows down a tad so there's actually space for it. 'Celebrated Summer' is a slice of gold, weaving together nostalgia and regret into something still uplifting, and with a beautiful acoustic outro. On 'Perfect Example' and '59 Times the Pain' he's mumbling, even moaning, as if Michael Stipe was crossed with a Beluga whale. It's a mid-LP mood slump, a vocal delivery that absolutely suits the songwriting, and by the end he crawls out and screams again to great effect. I've been listening to Mould for so long that I kinda forget how uniquely odd his voice is; his background vocals behind Hart's 'Terms of Psychic Warfare' are the secret ingredient that makes it click. It's amazing to me how far this band progressed in such a short time; I always think they broke up at the end of the 80s, but Warehouse came out in January '87 and they were kaput soon after. This is the first of two great albums in 1985 alone, and that's coming off Zen Arcade. This may be the peak, but it's a tiny peak among a long, high plateau.

Hüsker Dü - 'Metal Circus' (SST)

My copy of this classic has a really bad warp, the kind that sends the stylus flying with each of the 45 rotations per minute. It's so bad that it renders the first song on each side unplayable - in fact, unstartable, as the constant pushback of the skip means it can never get into the opening groove for tracking. So 'my' Metal Circus begins with 'Deadly Skies', and an already short EP becomes a bit unsatisfying when two songs shorter. Serves me right for buying this so eagerly at a weird cheap punk shop in Copenhagen - we should always inspect the vinyl, right? 'Deadly Skies' is a fucking great song though, where the lead guitar lines and Bob Mould's voice work perfectly together. I never thought of the title of this record in terms of 'heavy metal' as this sounds properly like early mid-period Dü, but there is a way that lead guitar/voice combo sounds like a banshee screaming, plus the shredding on 'Out on a Limb' has a few pinch harmonics inside. Grant Hart bats 1.000 here, with 'It's Not Funny Anymore' and 'Diane' being two of his greatest songs. The latter of these may actually objectively terrible, if music could be objectively anything, but I love it; it's creepy, built around a simple, plodding rhythm, and with a strange violence that definitively ties this to the earlier, more adolescent period of the band. The drumming throughout this record is mixed really high, and something feels really imprecise about it; I don't think Hüsker Dü would ever again sound (at least on record) like a bunch of midwestern freaks jamming in a garage, and that's another reason to love this. Minus two songs, it's a shame, really just like a good 7". It's almost hard to believe that Zen Arcade was about to follow, but that's also part of the charm of this.