Bert Jansch - 'Birthday Blues' (Reprise)

Promo issue with white labels and no liner notes. Skipping ahead a little bit from the last few records, we now find Jansch immersed in the Pentangle supergroup, whose extremely rewarding records we'll get to in due time, but for those curious and unfamiliar, there's a new CD box set of essentially everything available. Back here for a solo record (perhaps songs that didn't fit into Pentangle's prolific output?), Terry Cox and Danny Thompson from Pentangle join Jansch, and with Shel Talmy's production, this is an entirely different beast than the folky, traditional-leaning content that came before. It's a bit like Dylan's similar stylistic change circa Bringing It All Back Home, I'd say. Acoustic guitar still dominates, but Jansch is content to pull back from the firestorm of fingerpicking and give more space to the songs, focusing on his delivery and letting the first-rate rhythm section drive things along. As a songwriter, Jansch has a clearly expressed romanticism with a dark edge. 'A Woman Like You' is a driving, melancholy force that is followed by 'I Am Lonely', one of the record's more delicate songs; the juxtaposition of the two is Jansch in a nutshell. His voice is so convincing on both tracks, warbling with vibrato that isn't overdone. Similarly, 'Poison' grinds forward with a mean edge, Jansch striking chords or sparse riffs while the song pulses along, driven by the full band. There's the presence of flute and harmonica on a few tracks, and a big saxophone part on 'Promised Land', but it doesn't feel overproduced. This was Talmy's genius, perhaps. Folk moved into folk-rock, but these Jansch records feel slightly resistant to it, hence the jazzy presence of the Pentangle team. This is expressed most overtly on 'Blues', a 12-bar instrumental with some improvisation, but as an album closer it feels a little bit, well, off. A record with such great songs ('Tree Song' should also get a shout-out for its childlike and earnest vibe, which also utilises the full band instrumentation nicely) should conclude with a bigger statement than 'we also like blues and jazz records'. Still, it's overall finely nestled into that sweet spot where bigger, more pop-orientated production dovetails with quality songwriting and thus it feels like a step forward, not a desperate commercial reach.

Bert Jansch and John Renbourn - 'Bert and John' (Transatlantic)

Finally, after guesting on Jansch's last few records and a few solo records of his own, John Renbourn makes a full-fledged collaboration with him. This is recorded in hard stereo, but it's not credited (at least on my copy) who is whom; I think the right channel is Renbourn because he has a punchier style of playing, but both of them do this really close-mic'd and forceful. It's almost like the entire record was done with a 'line-in' recording style, except these are pure acoustics and there's enough glow here to really feel that they were playing together. The record is almost entirely instrumental and the pair wrote most compositions, with the exception of Jansch's 'Soho', Anne Briggs's 'The Time Has Come' and a wonderfully inspired cover of Mingus's 'Goodbye Porkpie Hat'. The latter, when rendered on two acoustic guitars, emphasises the bluesy quality of Mingus's nature and it feels fresh, like a new spirit brought into the melodies. It certainly doesn't come off as an act of appropriation or anything of the sort, and of course it presages the Pentangle records to follow. The rest of the record has a brisk pace, with both guitarists favouring flashy, quick strikes and brisk interplay. The more careful numbers, like 'Orlando', are placed to bring a sense of breath to the sequencing; 'The Time Has Come' as well manages to be contemplative under Jansch's vocal line, without sacrificing any momentum. 'Soho' is a nice paean to city life and the overall tone is very modern, especially against Jack Orion's more traditional material; the records were released in the same year, I'm not sure which one first, but it's a sensible curation. I hear a lot of Gastr del Sol's Crookt, Crackt style here, especially on 'After the Dance', which is absolutely percussive; there's something of the same appeal, the acoustic guitars as razorblades, the occasionally jaw-dropping effects of construction. It's not about their technical mastery, because I'm sure these are raw and green compared to their more mature recordings, but that energy and vitality is felt without being showoffy or retrograde.

Bert Jansch - 'Jack Orion' (Vanguard)

Renbourn has moved up to full collaborator here, getting a subtitle credit on this, though he doesn't play on every track; the music is a touch more polished too, as the opener 'The Waggoner's Lad' indicates. Here, Jansch's banjo playing pushes against Renbourn's sharp guitar and it's a traditional rendered in a flashy, aggressive style, but I like it; the recording on the banjo is way closer, or maybe it's just a nicer sounding instrument than the one on '900 Miles'. It's the same version from the previous album - here, re-included, a difference between this Vanguard issue of the record and the original UK release. The cover is not the most flattering photograph of Mr. Jansch but it clearly indicates a break from the Village-aspiring folk hipster look on the previous records; I'd say the presence of all traditional material here (well, all but one, but that one is a short instrumental by Ewan McColl, so it's effectively "traditional" in intent) also indicates this turn. It kinda reminds me how the Incredible String Band were total karma hippies on their second album but by Hangman's they were going for something, well, earthier. I've heard a few versions of 'Black Water Side' over the years but this one has a punchy guitar and confident delivery; maybe it's the male vocals as compared to Sandy Denny or Anne Briggs's takes, but it feels distinct and fresh, and I like it. The title track is the big sell, almost ten minutes long, telling the epic story of Jack Orion, a horny fiddler/lover who gets involved in some intrigue with another guy's wife, or something like that. There's a strange, scratchy line drawing of Mr. Orion on the back cover, and I guess it's another cautionary tale, like 'Needle of Death', though not preachy or pushy. Or maybe not; while it's a great track in its monotony, accented by Renbourn's second guitar which drives things forward and building in intensity as it goes along, I must confess that I find the story hard to follow by the end. It's not that I often listen to traditional British music hoping for a good yarn, and in particular I'd say these re-booted versions from the late 60s are even more enjoyable when letting go of the myth. Or maybe it's just my attention span, shot through with holes from a generation's worth on online gratification, YouTube culture, and general meda-overstimulus. Or maybe just from this self-imposed quest to listen to eight Bert Jansch records in sequence.

Bert Jansch - 'Lucky Thirteen' (Vanguard)

I don't have Jansch's first, self-titled album; only this American issued compilation of selections from the first two. Being that I just took It Don't Bother Me off the turntable there's going to be a feeling of repetition/overlap here, so I'll announce here that I will happily swap this copy of Lucky Thirteen for any decent-condition pressing of Bert Jansch. Cause that's one I'd like to have - it contains Jansch's most notable song, 'Needle of Death' on it, which is thankfully also represented here at the end of side one. I don't think it's even the cautionary tale of heroin that I'm moved by, because really, who cares, but the catchy ascending melody, ripped off by Neil Young on 'Ambulance Blues'. It's a classic for a reason, a timeless anthem that's fun to sing despite the macabre tone. There's other great stuff from the first album here, like 'I Have No Time' and 'Courting Blues'; Instrumentally this is a strong collection, as Vanguard chose about half instrumentals, no doubt wanting to push this to their traditional folkie crowd. Jansch's fingerpicking has a way of actually being catchy without having lyrics of hooks; 'Angie' is positively infectious and hummable, and a nice way to open the set. 'The Wheel', though I just heard it, is placed at the end and it winds down a (let's face it) decent compilation, feeling reflective of the cycles of life and existence and reality, or maybe that's a lot to read into a guitar instrumental. This compilation is named after a track that Renbourn wrote and played lead on, yet Vanguard failed to credit him here; poor guy, he really makes that cut scream. And thanks for another peek into your flat!

Bert Jansch - 'It Don't Bother Me' (Transatlantic)

One of Glasgow's finest exports (better than Tennent's), Jansch's second album is a classic example of 60s folk, delivered in a straightforward fashion and with adorably awkward liner notes. ("In this song the meaning is maybe too deep for me to describe.") His fingerpicking is stunning as always and if he's trying to create the Bohemian image of a sexy late 60s folk star, he's done a great job. Beyond the cover photo, the essence of cool, Jansch isn't afraid to flex his vocal chops (on 'My Lover', he essentially delegates the guitar shredding to Renbourn and spends his energy crooning) and to emote with a genuine honesty. The title track is a great one, where he also draws on the phrasing and adds a level of honesty to lyrics would could come off as escapist or snotty if sung by someone else; here, it feels like a statement of purpose and a worthy claim to the album title. The liner notes offer 'no comment' on 'Anti Apartheid', I guess letting the song speak for itself; 'To separate the colours and break the rainbow sign / To ask the finest painter to draw a crooked line / would only slow the journey to here another time' is a beautiful lyric, one that can be completely removed from the context of political protest, and tick the box for social consciousness, even though being against apartheid wasn't exactly a gutsy position to take. Renbourn appears again on 'Lucky Thirteen', also writing it, and the ending rendition of '900 Miles' is done on a scratchy banjo, the tonality of which works beautifully with his voice. There's no presence of rock music's influence here, at least not that I can tell, though maybe I'm not great at separating folk scene 'tude from rocker style. It's not until Pentangle that Jansch really experiments with genre-melting and that's a long ways away, alphabetically. In the meantime we got a glut of these to get through, and while all are enjoyable, it's going to be tough to keep writing something unique about each one.

Jandek - 'Lost Cause' (Corwood Industries)

Skipping ahead a decade from Six and Six, Jandek is certainly a lot less monotonous than before, but not any more accessible. Lost Cause is split between acoustic and electric halves, though the electric half is a side-long free-form freakout (titled 'The Electric End') where plodding tom toms are layered with clangy electric guitar and a high-pitched whistling sound that's from some unidentifiable instrument, with the occasional vocal yelp from Mr. Sterling. It's nineteen minutes long and never lets up, and there's some pretty great parts - it's actually the reason I keep this record - though not exactly a smooth experience. The seven songs on side one are occasionally pretty, around themes of heartbreak ('God Came Between Us') and genitals ('Babe I Love You'). There's a whole lineage of loner, private-press acid folk casualties from the 70s (Kenneth Higney, Perry Leopold, Peter Grudzien, etc.) and Jandek's sound is like the most extreme version of this (and privately pressed, too) but somehow minus the acid. Or maybe he was a total tryptamine visionary, I can't presume to know, but his portraits of the mid-to-late 20th century American experience feel removed from any sort of Dionysian rites. I wonder if people thought this was going to be his last record at the time; its no bleaker than usual but just the 'End' in side 2's title and the LP name as well... it's not like anything could stop Jandek, and by this point (1992) he had developed quite a fleshed-out, complete musical vision. I was thinking during the last record how much Jandek's aesthetic has become a trope of today's avant-garde song people, certainly in terms of mood and vocal delivery; this has gotta be seen as some success for him, since initially he appeared to be both uninfluenced and uninfluenceable. Nowadays, he seems to be on a quest to perform with every one of today's active musicians, and that's actually admirable. However, I'm reminded of that story about a famous British wrestler who always wore a mask, and was known for his real face being secret, who announced he was going to take off the mask for a match, got huge attention for it, and then found his career essentially over, once the mask was off. (British wrestling fans will know who I'm talking about, but it doesn't matter). That's Jandek, to me – I was as stunned as everyone else when he suddenly played live in 2004, and then I saw a concert in 2005 and it was good, interesting kinda free rock, but nothing I would get too excited about. And since then, I haven't cared at all. But if I ever change my mind, there's been about 600 hours of new material to digest, including 6 and 9 CD box sets, some albums being entirely a-capella; but I'll pass, for now.

Jandek - 'Six and Six' (Corwood Industries)

I guess this is one of the 'classic' Jandek records, as it sounds like an early Jandek record is supposed to sound, and the cover photo is iconic. Hailing from '81, Six and Six finds Jandek with an electric guitar, intoning over it slowly while picking some open strings in an erratic rhythm. And that's all it sounds like, moving through 9 songs, one in two parts, but really all one piece. It's a work of alienation, but aren't they all? Fragments of meaning come and go, there's a lot of 'you' in there and some stark images of animal and plant life about. 'Point Judith' is a work of total isolation, at least lyrically; musically, it sounds exactly like the other songs. I wonder how much Jandek worked out a complete artistic vision or how much he was making it up as he went along. For example, 'Forgive Me' mentions a "blue corpse" and six years later he put out an LP with that name, but I'm not sure if recurring imagery along is enough to create a mythology. The power in Jandek, if you find any, is that there's so little to grasp and it's completely unburdened by influence, yet it can be incredibly evocative. I must admit I haven't played this since the day I got it (at a yard sale for $3!), remembering it being an endurance test, but that this listen is occasionally sending chills through me, and from the strangest lyrics, too ("a label, a fable" ... wow!). The invariance of the guitar playing is astounding - though the track lengths vary, you could swap the music from any track with any others and it would be hard to notice; it's almost comedic the way the 10 minute 'I Knew You Would Leave' ends, and then after a track gap there's the sound of a tape recorder being turned on, and the guitar plucking starts up again. Sometimes I think Jandek actually has a classic rock and roll voice; there's a little bit of bluesy swagger to his intonation, like a Texas Mick Jagger with a bit of Lou Reed mixed in. Another observation tonight is how this music sounded so fucking alien and strange to me fifteen years ago, but now I've heard a lot of avant-songwriter types who sound just like this. An old friend used to say about bands like Anal Cunt: "Well, someone has to be Anal Cunt". I don't think that's the case here - no one had to be Jandek, and yet someone was.

Bob James Trio - 'Explosions' (Get Back)

The 60s are full of amazing recordings that push music into new directions; this Bob James Trio LP is often overlooked, maybe because James himself had a long career playing more standard jazz afterwards, and he wasn't there for the long haul. Despite the title, this isn't fire music, but an early exploration of electroacoustic improvisation meeting the jazz idiom head-on. It's credited to the trio of James, Barre Phillips and Robert Pozar, but the frequent incursions of tapes and electronics are the work of Gordon Mumma (on opening track, 'Peasant Boy') and Robert Ashley (on 'Untitled Mixes' and 'Wolfman'). The credits make it unclear if Mumma and Ashley are just responsible for the compositions, or maybe the tape material was supplied by Mumma but not actually, technically 'played' by him on this recording. It's a stunner, though - opening with a bumpy, centreless improvisation between James's piano, Phillips's bass and Pozar's drumkit, it soon withers to almost nothing and the players do an Art Ensemble-esque exploration of space. A few plucked strings, something scraped, a few tonally confusing notes - and this is when Mumma's sounds come in. Sounding like only tapes can sound, you can hear the squleching and squirming movement push the musicians to redefine their approach to colour and mood. This segues perfectly into 'Untitled Mixes', where Ashley's somewhat more present electronics are in place, but it feels like a seamless transition, just a handoff of tapes. The band continues their spacious interplay, with enough emptyness at the core that the surface noise is often alone (or the echo of the studio if your hi-fi equipment is good enough). Slowly, the musicians come back together, and it's harmoniously disharmonious, if that makes any sense. James's 'Explosions' closes the first half, a curiously named piece for something so quiet and spare. Phillips's bowing take centre stage and it sneaks around sonorities not unreminiscent of baroque European composition, eventually puttering to halt which is a false ending, before a few plucked strings resonate to the run-out grooves. Side two begins with Phillips's composition 'An On', which starts with a carnivalesque whirring of some sort of motor and a tin whistle, until the trio comes in and teases out a plodding theme. While neither Mumma nor Ashley are credited here, there's a heavy presence of tape loops, garbling and spinning slowly enough to interplay with the tonalities of the piano and bass quite beautifully, if you find this sort of thing beautiful (I do!). The piece utterly refuses to gel into a recognisable jazz form; that's saved for 'Wolfman'. This closer is the weirdest moment, simple because it sounds like Ashley's 'Wolfman' work (radios and voices) played overtop of a standard post-bop Bob James Trio jazz recording. It's a nice wall of sound, I guess, but there's no interplay, and it just comes off as a failed experiment, albeit not a terrible thing to sit through. The rest of the album is so curiously, cautiously groundbreaking that it fits because of the way it doesn't fit, and Ashley's work is pretty interesting on its own. I never really hear this record talked about much, which is a shame, because it's phenomenal, and tonally it's unlike anything else from the era that I've heard.

Jailbreak - 'The Rocker' (Family Vineyard)

We haven't checked in with Mr. Chris Corsano for awhile, so this comes a nice a surprise. Jailbreak was a duo of him and Heather Leigh, which put out two releases in 2010 and then that was it; hardly a surprise as they were living on different continents so rehearsal must have been a bit tough. Leigh's pedal steel and vocals would threaten to take over the whole soundstage here if it wasn't for Corsano's thunderous drumming. It's safe to say that there's no other pedal steel player out there who sounds like this, as the strings are drenched in a fuzz pedal, amped-up just to the edge of feedback, and moving in 50,000 different directions at the same time. It would also be safe to say there's no drumming anywhere else like this, except on other records Corsano plays on; together, it's a balancing act that works well.  Yet this isn't to suggest that The Rocker is teetering or restrained; it's aggressive to the max, with building blocks of pure energy, forcing the listener to strain to find the subtleties. 'Brought Down' starts off with solo Leigh for a minute or two before the drums kick in, and there's no going back one this cork is pulled out of the bottle. The vocals are twisted and shouty, enough in the background to be lyrically unintelligible but directly conveying power, wonder and energy. It's reminiscent of hardcore punk, an influence surely felt throughout The Rocker, as if that anger was merged with a free music approach. The flipside, 'Sugar Blues', isn't a huge departure, suggesting that maybe these edits were made out of one massive, epic blowout recording session. The dynamics at play are unified; when Jailbreak shifts they do so together, thus the moments when Corsano drops out (particularly about halfway through side two) are the most dramatic; when he comes back in at the moment parenthetically referred to in this sentence, it's like a massive weight dropping, and manages to incur a jolt of higher-level energy into a record that at this point has been almost a half-hour of being cranked up to (presumably) 10. The sliding strings, when distorted like this, genuinely reminds me of the pick-slides used in a lot of 80s metal guitar bands, which I'm sure is a comparison Jailbreak wouldn't object to. When Leigh hits the higher register vocally, it's like a banshee soaring over this violent chaos, and that world of destroyed possibilities is a beautifully rendered one. The Rocker isn't an easy listen - or rather, it's not a relaxing listen - but it's a rewarding one, and one that may be forgotten already among the prolific output of these two.

Jackie-O Motherfucker - 'The Magick Fire Music' (Ecstatic Peace!)

Once one cuts through the duct tape, one can start working through The Magick Fire Music. Four sides is a lotta Jackie-O, and they use this larger canvas to take their time, spreading out, at least compared to their Road Cone releases from around this time (2000-2001), Fig. 5 and Liberation, which I'm somehow more familiar with despite never owning. Jackie-O Motherfucker are actually a lot more Apollonian their the name and reputation may suggest, as these lengthy pieces (about two per side) mostly improvise around groove-based indie rock instrumentation – a jam band! It's hardly Medeski Martin & Wood, but the foundations are easy to feel, and even when they bring in squealing saxophones, keyboards/synths and tape loops, it's only dressing on the surface of a harmonious path. Mostly, this is music of meandering, and it strikes a nice Morricone-esque vibe sometimes ('The Cage', 'Quaker') which never threatens to really challenge the omphalos. Yes, The Magick Fire Music takes awhile to get anywhere, and maybe once it does, if it does, you aren't sure if you're back where you started. For a band that's been just "Tom Greenwood + collaborators" for a long time, it's interesting to listen back here to when they were somewhat more collectively a group, or at least that's my impression. There's no personnel listed so it's hard to know who's actually on this recording - hell, it could just all be Greenwood solo - but it feels like more, albeit surely live studio jams, offered with some restraint and a surprising amount of polish. Maybe "meander as philosophy" is a lot more difficult than it sounds; the I-IV-V chord progressions reached here feel a bit too easy, in which case we should turn to mood/texture/atmosphere for our pleasure. Departures from this deliver the most joy: '2nd Ave 2 M' is a twisting maelstrom that veers into space-jazz territory; 'Lost Stone' goes for tremolo-driven sky paintings and eschews rock instrumentation the most, and is a beautiful moment. It all comes to a summation on 'Black Squirrels', the jam with the most energy, the most psychedelic use of layered sound, and the presence of a banjo to tie the band to the 'Americana' influence they expressed more strongly on other releases. I had no idea that these guys are still together (in some form) and have been putting out a steady stream of records ever since this; I'm not sure how this stacks up against their whole oeuvre but someone out there's gotta be a completist.

Iran (Vulgar Tango)

I used to have this on CD but 'upgraded' to the LP, which comes with a bonus 45 rpm 10", recorded about a year later and having zero presence on the usually infallible discogs.com. Iran are a group I know essentially nothing about except I received this to review for something, as a CD back in the early 00s, and always liked its warped, art-rock approach. At a time when I was looking to both drone/minimalism, textural approaches to composition, and collage material such as The Faust Tapes, it seemed to tick a lot of boxes. No one would ever describe Iran's sound as 'precise', but it's not a giant mess either. There's not a total abandonment of guitar-based indie rock, clearly their roots, but they were obviously looking to push forward beyond that sound. There's noise without chaos; tracks like 'Radio Galaxy' revel in static, hiss and its variable possibilities, but stay aware of space, time, and pace. 'The Music Plays Itself' (found on the bonus 10") continues the interplay of radiowaves and guitar, on a bed of tremolo and with some delicately expressed singing for just a second before a wave of thicker buzzing takes over. Though the guitar playing in 'Sailors' sounds like someone falling down the stairs, it's herky-jerky for good reason, and the various layers of buzzing guitars, static, and electronics throughout it (and other tracks) all seem to be there for a common purpose. It's not a kitchen-sink band, but rather a band that was seeking a way out of the easy disharmony of the spacey jam. We get flavours of genres - 'Spherical Cockpit' is one such example, a deconstruction of anthemic guitar post-rock, which by '98 when this came out was already pretty tiresome. Here, the chords build up, but there's zany synth sounds challenging the rigidity, like a shortwave radio broadcast of Mogwai or something. "Deconstruction" is such an easy term to throw into music writing, and it's often used to describe approaching a song from the inside-out, but Iran is actually more about construction - about choosing layers to mean something and combine for important textural form. It's lo-fi hi-fi, if that makes any sense - there's a clear soundstage on 'Crickets', Western Avenger', and even the hissy static of 'Yellow Tiger Lemons'. When vocals are present they're often processed beyond intelligibility, adding to the overall aesthetic with just enough odd words slipping out to steer things; or in 'Goodnight, Goodnight' they're delivered conventionally but with everything else out of balance to make it a parodic pop song, and a solid album closer.'San Diego' is the shortest incursion into this direction, with crisp acoustic guitars and even ending with a clearly emoted lyric!  'Drugs' and 'DC', the 33rpm side of the bonus 10", don't appear on the CD version of this album and are rendered in glorious fidelity, with the indie/post-rock presence of 'DC' a bit like if Bedhead got taken over by a computer virus. Overall it's a great assemblage that stood a bit ahead of its time – this type of experimentation felt a bit more common a few years later, by which point Iran had moved on to their second and third albums. I'm not sure where they are now, if anywhere.

Invisible Sports - 'The Future Tastes' (Alt.Vinyl)

If we ever make it to the Vs you'll discover I have a bunch of Volcano the Bear records; most of them, in fact. I love those guys, and just recently got their 20th anniversary box set Commencing, which is massive. Somehow along the years with all of the side projects,  I totally forgot about Aaron Moore's solo song-based LP from 2012, The Future Tastes, which is some of the most polished and 'accessible' songcraft the man's ever released. His voice is unmistakeable, not a conventional singing voice but not a bad one either. These are fully arranged pop songs, a bit off-kilter (it's hardly sounding like Lady Gaga), but not as demented or damaged as Volcano (until the end). Some VtB tracks could just be Aaron solo, but they are of a different ilk - The Future Tastes is approached from a different philosophy, and that translates into a slightly trance-like take on post-rock, with an almost lounge flavour. And they're nice tunes, whether it's the jazzy inflections of 'Jesus Auto Sound' or the surreal psychedelia of 'Man Wakes Up With Wins'; Aaron's songs are oddly genteel, often using piano or keyboards, a light touch on percussion/drums, a lot of trumpet (some quite processed or at least played weirdly), and some nice details around the edges. 'Silence is What We're Made For' invokes a sentimentality rarely heard in Volcano songs, and I like it - it's an updating of 'Hello, Graham' in terms of mood, brought into a later stage in his musical career but coming from the same place of odd thoughtfulness. There's a lot of tonal percussion throughout this record –xylophones, or maybe it's marimba, or vibes, or even some sort of tuned drums – and they give the proceedings a mildly exotic flavour. Rhythmically, it's more subtle than it sounds at first, with the bass playing (upright, I think) often pushing against the vocal melodies and the drumming to make something not quite hypnotic, but suggestive. Side two has some more loose experiments, such as 'Hopfull' (a pause-button edit work that's the most 'electronica' this record gets, or 'Lovelove', which is all dub-like studio fuckery around a few repeated vocal phrases. It all concludes with 'It's a Warhorse', a thick song built over two endless organ chords, with all manner of scraping and screaming smaller sounds layered within. This is close to the mic, breathy, deep Moore, an intimate experience that is offset by the strangeness of the music. It's like all of the light grooves of the rest of the record are pushed away in favour of an intense, somewhat monotonous epic. It feels the most like a VtB outtake here, and I wonder if it was added to fill out running time or to make a link back to the mothership, so to speak. Either way, it's intriguing, and it wouldn't be Aaron Moore if everything was too harmonious from start to finish.

Insayngel (Heavy Tapes)

Blink and you may have missed them; Insayngel was two members of Sightings with a few other people, an ex-Excepter guy and people who were also in a band called Vizusa (according to the infallible discogs - I've never heard of 'em). The Pusheadesque cover art may give a hint as to the direction of these sounds - this is harsh, sick noise-rock, straining to get free from some imagined shackles. 'Plastic Ancestor' begins things on a percussive note, with Caitlin Cook's voice definitely in 'caterwaul' territory and stretching over a nervous thumping bassline and what sounds like a bunch of cans being kicked around in a bin liner. It's really, really messy, but the rhythm section knows what they're doing and they shift into different movements, which gives it just enough of a centre to lurch along. I don't know when or how this was recorded, but when I listen to it, I just feel hot; perhaps it's because every time I remember being in Brooklyn it's always somehow summer so it's sticky and muggy. This, I can imagine, came out of jam sessions during this time, scraping away at distorted guitar strings and pounding on drums just as a way to stay cool. No lyrics are intelligible, and it's lo-fi enough to distort in all of the right places. The guitar playing sometimes has this weird slide sound, sometimes there's an incursion of low end that glows underneath it all, and sometimes the cymbals cut through everything else in a really unbalanced way. 'Hard to Handle' is not a Black Crowes cover, but a big mess of a song that is kinda fun to listen to. I keep coming back to the word 'lurching' to describe things, even though it kinda swings. The Sightings guys are the rhythm section and you can tell they're an ongoing musical relationship, and I should really listen to Sightings more because they're somehow underrated after all of these years. 'Black Rock Way', the longest track, is also the furthest away from a cohesive song though I'm not sure how much, if any, of this record was composed to begin with. This reminds me of the Godz, Cro-Magnon or some other primitive 60s thing, and has an oscillating keyboard/electronics part to take this firmly into bad trip territory. It slows to a crawl, with nothing but static and bumping notes and stammering, and it conjures an element of madness that's weirdly fun. I think back to that Hospitals LP discussed back in August and how these both come from a similar place, but one is quite clearly West Coast and the other quite clearly from a more high-octane lifestyle. Insayngel might be a terrible name, but if madness is the state attempting to be portrayed by this music, they kinda nailed it, or at least aspects of it. 

The Incredible String Band - 'The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' (Elektra)

By The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, the psychedelic affectations of the previous record's cover are shelved in favour of some back-to-the-roots medieval roleplay, though maybe this is just a more British, stylised form of psychedelia. Joe Boyd's back, and his mark is felt even though the ISB themselves are credited with the arrangements. Still, I think Boyd knew how to record the piano so it sounds like it's being played in a great stone room; how to place microphones near the right part of the acoustic guitar to let the high-mids flow and interact wth the harpsichord so beautifully; how to incorporate a distant waterdripping sound with the string improvisation in the middle of 'The Water Song' to create an amazing atmosphere without things becoming too gimmicky. Heron's 'A Very Cellular Song' is the epic, a 13 minute mega-song which is really just like a few shorter pieces smashed together, and likewise has good and bad moments. About 2/3 of the way through is an instrumental breakdown with jaw's harp, some beat-boxing (really!) and mandolin chip-chop, which is wonderful, fruity, and just brief enough to leave one wanting more. But there's also a strange faux-gospel part (the 'goodnight, goodnight') which is a somewhat painful listen. I guess the idea of 'cellular' means that the song is just an assemblage of parts, rather than a reference to cellular phone technology (though such technology did exist in 1968, it would be called 'mobile' in UK parlance anyway), so it ends up just being a grouping/sequencing/labelling decision since these could have been broken into five or six different songs, and honestly the weak part of the album, especially when compared to some of side two's energy. Lyrically, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter feels a bit more adult than The 5000 Spirits; there's no 'Way Back in the 1960s' or 'Hedgehog Song' here, no simple love songs. Instead we get sinewy narratives, with proper names dropped here and there, and a loose, hippie take on British myth imagery. 'Waltz of the New Moon', 'Nightfall' and 'Koeeoaddi Theme' contain the florid, colourful adjectives that fit this vibe; the freakout jam at the end of 'Three is a Green Crown' matches it with an appropriate musical exploration. Shirley Collins contributes just a little bit of piano and organ but it goes a long way. Maybe this is the best balance they ever reached, but I've only ever heard The Wee Tam and Big Huge in passing so what do I know?

The Incredible String Band - 'The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion' (Elektra)

Talk about a shift in marketing - the cover alone would suggest that Messrs Heron and Williamson, reduced to a duo here, majorly 'turned on' after their first album and in their cosmic dialogue with the universe decided to reinvent the Incredible String Band as a fully psychedelicised wonder. I don't know if the music carries through on this promise, though it's a huge step forward in confidence and originality, and furthermore the duo plays together as a band on almost every track, making this feel much more cohesive. I'd say its more a step towards pop accessibility than drugged out wonderbliss. One can hear this from the get-go, on 'Chinese White', where Williamson's bowed gimbri adds a thick drone behind the song, sounding a bit like a Dylanesque harmonica only with a fourth dimension added. That's maybe the psychedelic-influenced ISB in a nutshell - or maybe the confident production of Joe Boyd is to thank. Danny Thompson guests on a few tracks and hand drums are occasionally present, though it's hardly a rock and roll ensemble; the presence of sitar (or guitar affected to sound like a sitar) and flute, weaving through the melodies is a bigger presence throughout. Without any traditionals here, the songcraft feels more akin to the 60s Village scene than to Anne Briggs or Shirley Collins, with only their accent really linking things to any UK folk movement. There's a syncopated quirk to some of the tunes, like 'No Sleep Blues', others look to jazz and blues for direction. Heron's tunes in particular have the hooks, like the indefatigable 'Hedgehog Song' and 'Painting Box'. If I try to imagine this accompanying a late 60s psychedelic/mystical 'trip' I'm sure there's some great psychedelic value; 'Little Cloud' is whimsical and jaunty but lyrically about floating to distant lands; 'My Name is Death' can be the bummer note or the key to understanding the whole experience, perhaps. The closer, 'Way Back in the 1960s', takes a fun, tongue-in-cheek look back to this time, and holds up well as a quasi-novelty number. I realise that writing about so many records here runs the risk of being pointless or uninsightful, and I can't think of what I can personally add about these mega-famous ISB albums, since I have little personal connection to them beyond just enjoying them now and then. The best I can do is to try to relate it to other music experiences, but apart from the resurgence of interest in 60s folk in the 00s noise 'underground', I couldn't think of music further away from the current Now/zeitgeist than this. And even within that decade-past underground, ISB was way too well-known to be seen as cool, when there were an endless stream of obscure burnout loners to discover instead. Still, this album and their next one have gotten many a play, not just my beaten copy (whose lifespan was already worn down long before it entered my possession) but among people in general, as these records remain immensely popular for good reason.

The Incredible String Band (Elektra)

Mono pressing. Clive Palmer has a great reputation, maybe because he left the Incredible String Band after this debut album, before they found more commercial success, which cements him along with Syd Barrett, Howard Devoto, Judy Dyble and others who got out while the going was good. Listening to this lovely sounding (mono!) pressing, I realise that he wasn't a phenomenally large presence anyway. This debut is more like a "songwriter's guild" type of band, without all three members playing on every track, and a few being solo pieces. There's a very unfortunately titled solo Palmer track which should be enough to ruin his reputation except maybe because it's a jaunty banjo instrumental (and also a traditional tune) he gets away with it; otherwise it's only on 'Empty Pocket Blues' that we get to hear his voice. It's a nice song, though Robin Williamson's furtive tin whistling is what really makes it. Other gems are 'Dandelion Blues', which is whimsical and fleeting; 'When the Music Starts to Play' and the closing stomper 'Everything's Fine Right Now'. This type of winking contemporary folk came at the right place right time; I don't hear anything particularly 'psychedelic' here beyond the general lightness of tone and colour of the arrangements, but England was maybe more of a mushroom culture at this point, 1966. Heron and Williamson were actually both from Edinburgh as we're told in the notes on 'Smoke Shovelling Song', but this isn't a band I tend to remember when chronicling Scotland's greats. The liner notes are great -not quite lyrics but rambling written riffs on the themes of the song, which bring a nice accompaniment to the listening experience. This recording - did I mention it's in mono? - sounds clear and balanced, with the chop-chop of the strummed strings echoing for all of eternity, whether it's guitar, banjo, or mandolin. It's funny to think that Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span et. al formed in the wake of this, though I'm not sure how strong the influence was, and they were more rockin' when they started. Still, ISB managed to ultimately build a myth around themselves and it's hard to hear why in this first record. I saw a reunion show of the original trio circa 2004 and Clive Palmer seemed so goddamned old they pretty much had to wheel him out and prop him up --  though Wikipedia indicated he was only 61 at the time. I never did hear those C.O.B. records, maybe they're good?

Inca Ore - 'Brute Nature Versus Wild Magic' (Weird Forest)

'Voices by Inca Ore', it says on the sleeve, suggesting that 100% of the sounds on here are voice, but the liners state 'All instrumentals lent by Rob Enbom'. Eva Saelens is Inca Ore and her voice is certainly the dominant centre here, but these instrumental loanings give many tracks a strong framework. That's little rhythmic plinks and plunks, guitars skittering around the place, kalimba and bells, sampled concrete elements ('Stay Wild Child'), and other small percussion. Is this all due to the generous Mr. Enbom? I don't want to diminish Saelens' vision, because she's certainly the one shaping the pieces, but there's so much more present here than her voice. That voice, on the best parts, stays away from Meredith Monk abstractisms or overly affected drone-processing for the most part. Other tracks are some excursions into pure vocal waaaaah ('The Mystery of Healing: A Guided Meditation' being a good example, though actual meditation would be pretty difficult with the thorny edges to this uneasy ebb n' flow; also side two's lengthy drone work) but feature smaller, more uniquely strange/beautiful segments as well. What we get here are actual words, fragments of language – sang at times and spoken at others – all with a demented hodge-podge assemblage. Brute Nature Versus Wild Magic is drenched in tape hiss, sounding like it was collaged together from experimental cassettes and other fragmentary explorations. The short pieces on side one have a distinctly west coast outsider feel (this is from the same universe as early Bügsküll, for sure) and there's a pleasantly 4AD-inspired take, though more like if 4AD's classic sound was patched together with Scotch tape and paperclips. The atmospherics ('Rainbows and Inca Teeth' or the aforementioned 'Mystery of Healing') are fine, lovely even, but start to pull this towards a recognisable mid-00s 'sound' (which of course this was part of); a few years after this she ended up on Not Not Fun, which was surely a suitable home for her music, but the art-damaged textual pieces are what I find the most mesmerising here. The best bits of this album I think are those, but maybe it's the way they are balanced against her soundscapes. Side two is one lengthy piece with a beautifully long title, and where voice does become front and centre, moving through a series of layered moaning movements. It's a long listen and not one I frequently go back to, though the lo-fi nature is everything and the moments where it slows and rests are the most eerily human and rewarding. Breath is behind everything here and it finalises into a repeated sense of wonder, in that Saelens is literally chanting 'Wow... wow....'. The possibilities of the human voice and some over-the-counter effects pedals are endless.

Inca Eyeball ‎– 'He Has A Brain The Size Of A Fifty Pence Piece' (Fusetron/Carburetor)

Nonsense music is a grand tradition, and it tends to operate on an inverted bell curve in relation to the artist's position in the music industry. At the far left end lies this Inca Eyeball record, coming from the 'underground' anti-tradition of absurd nonsense, shared (at least in spirit) by artists such as Caroliner Rainbow, Sockeye, parts of the Very Good Records roster ... there's a commitment to the craft, and I don't consider it to be 'novelty' music but just, well, stupid. In a good way! (On the other end of the curve would be established commercial artists doing crazy career suicide acts like Van Morrison's contractual obligation ringworm recordings, and I can't really think of many other examples there; the middle would be the wide gamut of novelty music, I suppose, which is generally lacking in non-effort). There's 117 songs on this Inca Eyeball LP, all improvised on the spot by Phil Todd and Joincey in 1995 and moving through such visions as 'Yellow Silt in the Crimson Flow', 'I'm in a Sieve', and 'I'm Gonna Get My Head Kicked In!'. Except 'THESE AREN'T SONGS', according to the proclamation on the back cover, without any explanation why. I guess improvisations don't count? I had a band in high school that sounded almost exactly like this, acoustic plinking and extemporaneous babbling, though our songs were a bit longer. There's a pleasure in listening to this, sure, and little point in singling out specific outbursts. It's hard to actually tell which tracks are which for they really run together. Go find this and buy all of their other albums too; then start an Inca Eyeball cover band and spread the gospel.

Idea Fire Company - 'Beauty School' (Ultra Eczema)

I don't know if this Ultra Eczema release is meant to stand as a 'major' IFCO record, since it doesn't come with a manifesto and isn't released on their own home label, Swill Radio. It also features two side-long pieces, with the core IFCO duo accented by Matt Krefting and Graham Lambkin, as opposed to a collection of shorter pieces (if that means anything - probably not!). Those two guys are a perfect match for IFCO's style of sound slicing, and the resulting record is aptly named yet monolithic in its glamour. 'Buzzbomb' is the thunderous, unforgettable track which feels endless, timeless and other such superlatives. Like The Island of Taste we find piano used prominently, played not rapidly but with a resounding certainty, anchoring the piece or rather keeping its movement adhering to a wobbly centre. The tapes and synths and other Idea Fire affects are layered without overwhelming, no single individual sound emerging to take over, and summing up to build a strong feeling of weight. If the track 'Island of Taste' was slowly floating skyward under its own breaths, maybe 'Buzzbomb' is where we come back down. It's a long track and the second movement of it shifts the tone towards something more claustrophobic; this is simultaneously a beautiful concoction to get lost in and a heavy, affecting experience. The title track on the flip is build around an indefatigable tremolo effect and thus continues the stasis. Dennis Tyfus's artwork is perfect for this - monochromatic, yet inviting, cartographic textures which imply a huge universe within to explore and probe. After 'Beauty School' and therefore Beauty School concludes, there's a ringing left in the room, the overtone hangover caused by the greatest recordings of LaMonte Young, Vibracathedral Orchestra, etc. Something else lingers long after this record passes, and that isn't just tonal but perhaps a changing of the air, or the molecular alteration of the walls and floor in here cause by these soundwaves.

Idea Fire Company - 'The Island of Taste' (Swill Radio)

The Island of Taste is beautiful, gentle, and mysterious. Within the passages of its rotation lie rippling currents of sensation, shuddering rumbles, and delicate accents. In the hop, skip and jump through their discography that's represented in the sample that I own, this is where it feels like a summation. The relentless probing of Anti-Natural, the spacious negotiations of Stranded and the slabs of laminal elegance of Beauty School are perfectly balanced, supporting each other by only their own weight, which is actually nothing. The title and cover already take you to a place that keeps lifting, much like the way 'Heroes' on the previous album does (and that track is revisited with great fanfare here, not so much covered but extended as 'Heroes of the Last Barricade', substituting absence for the warmth of the voices, though they remain here, faintly, as a tease). The title track is simplistic in construction (extremely minimal sampler hiss, field recordings of birds, and a few carefully reverberating piano notes) but utterly fucking transcendental in execution. There's conventional aesthetic moves at play, for sure; dramatic movement, cautious interplay, phenomenal details (the scrapes of Tibetan bowl in 'Land Ho!'; the occasional garbled lighting in 'Heroes of the Last Barricade') and closure. I don't usually look online for secondary material while listening or writing this stuff, except when I do, but I found a blurb from Swill Radio's own press release, where Foust (I assume) declares this the third part of a trilogy with the two previous records I covered here. I can see (hear?) that – that these three records work together as a larger whole – but what jumps out even more from the blurb is the line 'perhaps the first LP to make explicit a certain nostalgia for itself'. This clever turn of phrase does wonders to recast the copious static and artificial antiquarian vibes saturating these tracks, and this is 2008 when this tendency in electronic music was just starting to peak. Now there's entire books written about 'hauntology' and the sound of artists like the Caretaker, that one Black to Comm album, etc; that's postmodern nostalgia where there's an implicit acknowledgement that the future isn't happening anymore, or maybe that our idea of the future was better in the past. The Island of Taste sidesteps that by distancing itself from any cultural touchstones; static itself is just a tool, one that's been on Idea Fire Company records before and since, and that would just be a shortcut to generating cheap nostalgia-effects anyway. No, I think what Borecky and Foust (and others - Frans de Waard, Graham Lambkin, Richard Rupenus and Dr. Timothy Shortell guest in addition to the expanded Swenson/O'Reilly lineup as heard on Stranded) have achieved here is the creation of a totally idiosyncratic and individual soundworld that (despite its often stark n' spare palette) is so complete in its vision that an infinite number of possible permutations is not only imaginable, but almost forcefully shoved into my imagination, purely by what's NOT heard on this record. 'Bitter Victories', for example, is a solo Foust synth track of a searing, circular drone that is elliptical yet mostly horizontal, unceasing in its intensity, and relatively dense compared to the rest of the record. Yet somehow, in less than three minutes, it conjures a universe of possibilities and then rests on its brief, sampled representation. There's a beautiful set of postcards inside with another stunning manifesto, but I'll leave that for you to discover on your own - $16 can still get you a copy of this from Swill Radio.