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.

Thee Headcoats - 'W.O.A.H! - Bo In Thee Garage' (Get Hip)

Consistency is a virtue, right? And maybe so is prolificness (is that a word?). Discogs lists only 19 full-length albums by Thee Headcoats, which is fewer than I expected, but then Billy Childish has spread his vision over a variety of bands and pseudonyms (which are surveyed nicely on the Archive from 1959 compilation from a few years back) besides this one. Somehow this LP is all I have managed to accumulate, even though they're all eminently listenable examples of a real scene, postmodern primitivism
at its finest. This is a conceptual one, I guess, being entirely made up of Bo Diddley covers. It's recorded live in mono, and it sounds more or less like a dictaphone recording of a raunchy garage-rock band banging it out in some room somewhere -- which is precisely what this is.  Childish translates Diddley's swagger well through his vocals, and the covers are fairly faithful; nothing is sped up or riffed upon (as far as I can tell - I'm not quite super familiar with the originals), and there's a ramshackle quality that suits the material well. 'Greatest Lover in the World' sounds great when recast from the mouth of a white Englishman; 'Keep Your Big Mouth Shut' shows his own vocal capabilities, and has a nice sassy snarl to it. Somehow this all works and doesn't raise any obvious questions about race or appropriation: it's a tribute that is fun, heartfelt, and an easy listen. The rough fidelity helps - it's as much about the sound of this record as the performance, if this makes any sense. Mono records on vinyl often sound great, and this is blistering and raw, especially when the cymbals start to blur together into a tinny haze. Somehow everything is exuberant enough to work, and thus this document of a band likely just fucking around one afternoon, nearly 30 years ago now, is somehow completely fresh and living.

Roy Harper - 'Sophisticated Beggar' (Big Ben)

For the fist time (I think) in Dislocated Underbite's eight+ year history, I happened to buy an LP that was exactly the next one to be listened to alphabetical. So this is both the next LP in the gauntlet and also its newest addition. Sophisticated Beggar is Roy Harper's first album, and one of the three I was missing (out of the ones I want, not his entire discography - FYI contact me if you want to unload a cheap copy of Jugula or Ghenghis Smith). Harper wrote some cute liner notes on the back explaining how he used to dislike this record but didn't mind it so much anymore, and singled out his favourite songs. For a man who's not always left the most comfortable body of work in today's woke/PC times, 'China Girl' is a hell of a way to open his first album. It's wistful and slight and built around 'oriental' melodies, which is somehow more cringeworthy than the concept; but then again whenever I hear 'Turning Japanese' I don't mind it so what's the difference? This is way before Harper started writing epic seventeen minute songs, and also before he really started to flesh out his instrumentation - Sophisticated Beggar is remarkably unsophisticated in terms of arrangement, built around his guitar fingerpicking and voice, a classic late 60s folk record with the influence of rock and British counterculture. But the fingerpicking is fantastic - during parts of this, such as the title track, I realise how fucking great his guitar-fu was, which I tend to forget in the glow of his songwriting. 'Committed' and 'Mr. Station Master' feature a full electric rock band, recorded in a wooly, almost lo-fi way, the latter built around a languid shuffle and dominated by thick organ chords. But both songs are kinda throwaway, closer to bubblegum than the dirgey, intense lyrical dumps he'd become notable for later. The other throwaway stuff ('Big Fat Silver Aeroplane and 'China Girl') at least fit the era, and the album congeals nicely. Rather than being a Dylan copy, theres way more of a Bert Jansch influence (heard most evidently on the instrumental 'Blackpool'). 'Forever', 'Legend' and 'October the 12th' stand out as songs that would linger into Harper's subsequent live career; the latter could be a more colourful analogy to Nick Drake's work, except Harper's voice has the undeniably cheekyness that works well with his more extravagant lyrics. 'Forever' is fucking gorgeous, with his singing earnestly mellow ('drawing into an eternal horizon of time' blends with the hypnotic guitar pattern and is one of my favourite Roy Harper songs in his whole catalogue). With Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith he really takes a step forwards towards the frustratingly idiosyncratic and mostly brilliant artist he would be over the next decade and eight or so albums. Hang on, cause we're in for a lot of Roy Harper in the next few days.

Bingo Trappers - 'Sierra Nevada' (Shrimper/Sing, Eunuchs!)

My copy of this 1997 unheralded masterpiece still wears its $2 discount bin pricetag, and I'm still grateful for the bargain. These Dutch lo-fi folk-rockers formed in the mid-90s and spat out a bunch of tapes and a few full-length releases over the next 6 years or so, but this debut LP is the one I hold closest to my heart. It certainly helps that this was released on the two flagship labels of the "bi-fi" scene (or whatever it was called) during the pinnacle of my own interest/passion in such things. At the time I first heard this, I wasn't schooled enough in Bob Dylan or the Band or the Flying Burrito Bros or any of the other antecedents to this sound, but I knew I liked it. These are songs based around earnest melodies, simple guitar chords and arpeggios, cloppy drumming and occasionally steel guitar or organ when it needs to be particularly delicate ('Walkin' Through the Clouds' being a highlight of restraint). 'King in Exile' remains an all-time favorite bummer-rock tune, and when I saw these guys live in 2002 or so, they opened with it! There's a magnificence to the 4-track sound here, though it's not used to experiment as much as for mood. I would call this vaguely psychedelic music - 'Let's Hit the Road Again' reminds me of Syd Barrett, and 'Michael George' has a demented neo-psych feel. The songwriting is amazing - thankfully they sing in English so you can get all of the nuances of "Well I'm passing through" (in 'Deerhunter') and the very strict viewpoint of 'Pure Intentions' (which is actually a Mountain Goats cover; icing on the cake for me in 1998 when I bought this). Most of this mess comes from just two guys, who remained the core of the band throughout it all. 'Bastardizin' the Poet' veers into more popular 90s guitar fuzz sounds, but Neutral Milk Hotel this is not. Even behind the major chords, a European misery hangs over everything. The vocals get pretty dour, but there's some incredibly human guitar leads behind everything, poking through 'King in Exile's gloom like a flashlight. 'Joseph' could be a hymn, but instead it's a weighty meditative tune with a melody recalling traditional folk from the British Isles. 'Slice of Time' warps through the homespun drummin' and strummin' with a ghosty accompaniment; the slightly sing-song lyrics take on a creepy vibe that resembles a snake eating its own tail. It all wraps up with the sentimental 'Dream Horse', a carefully chosen act of sequencing that brings Sierra Nevada to a sweet conclusion. Weirdly, a band called Guv'ner released a record around the same time as this with the same cover photo. I don't think I've ever met another Bingo Trappers fan, but if I ever get around to writing that book about the Shrimper scene that I've always wanted to write, I'll hopefully encounter a few. Until then, it's nice to have this pleasure in solitude.