Kinks - 'Face to Face' (Pye/Zafiro)

When I lived in Scotland, someone once drunkenly ranted at me about how annoying they found the American music hipster fascination with the Kinks, particularly their more English-empire themed material. This may have been a case of a Scottish guy feeling irritated with something so English as to be almost like musical imperialism, so I understood it, but there's also the fact that local Glaswegians were buying Trinidad & Tobago football jerseys en masse that year, since they faced England in the same World Cup group, and that's when it just gets silly. The English have a lot of crimes to answer for, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson merely being the latest, but things are a bit more complicated than that, so I took with a grain of salt (though I perhaps slightly dialled back my outward passion for this music after that conversation). It's been a few years since I fell into a Kinks hole, but this section of the blog-project comes at a nice time, because these songs are brightening up the dark end of this winter, or at least they are tonight. Face to Face is the one where the truly GREAT run starts - I had all of them between this and Arthur on the Castle reissue CDs, which featured all of the right bonus tracks in the right places. And to be honest, I'd put the Face to Face - Muswell Hillbillies era up against any of the other unfuckwithable streaks in rock music history; maybe it doesn't quite equal, say, Propeller through Under the Bushes in terms of total amazement, but it comes close. And like GbV then, there's a plethora of non-album material that turned up over the years in various places (compilations, singles, etc.) which are part of the complete picture. So used to the CD am I that this LP feels a bit weak without 'This is Where I Belong' and 'I'm Not Like Everybody Else', but that's ok, cause I still have the CD (we're just way out of sync between the two blogs, sorry!). Comparing this to Kinda Kinks just a few albums back, the difference is remarkable - where the Kinks in 1965 were a singles band who padded out their album with some filler, just a year later they're creating near-complete statements of purpose. Even the lighter fare here - 'Holiday in Waikiki', 'Party Line', 'Session Man' - are great songs. There's a sense of drama that doesn't compromise the catchiness - 'Rainy Day in June' is positively epic, but when the chorus comes in, it's a slow and addictive march that shows messrs. Quaife and Avery as being so much more than just backing musicians. Track two, 'Rosy Won't You Please Come Home', is a work of heartbreaking beauty, though maybe I'm just a sucker for these family dramas. 'House in the Country' doesn't quite reach Village Green levels of pastoral nostalgia, but the seeds are sown. It's all bound up in Shel Talmy production again, so the guitars ring, the drums quake, and everything is more psychedelic than you might remember it being, with flourishes of harpsichord on 'Rosy', musique concrete overlays on 'Rainy Day', and Dave Davies' hard guitar edge starting to emerge (listen to that crazy tone on 'Waikiki'!).  No, it's not their best album, but it's undeniably solid throughout.

Henry Cow (Virgin)

Henry Cow started here! Which means that a lot of other things did too, ultimately; this is the source of a great series of rivers and tributaries, and a whole movement in music called 'Rock in Opposition' which sounds funny now but maybe not so much in these times of socio-political upheaval. But really, Henry Cow were a progressive rock band, simultaneously a shining example of rock music and also far more experimental than most of their British peers. I haven't actually sat down and listened to this one for a long time (which is the whole point of this project), and I must say I've come away more impressed than I remembered being. The individual musicians all have had such storied careers that it's charming to listen to them at their point of origin, but so much is already established. Chris Cutler's style of drumming is unmistakeable - crisp and light, yet driving and confident, and he locks in with John Greaves to drive the compositions forward. Greaves is the most heavily felt, especially on opener 'Nirvana for Mice', and he's the reason this is pulled so heavily in the direction of rock music, I'd say. But he shows he can improvise, too, although there's not much extended technique at play from him compared to the others. Over the weekend, I read David Toop's recent-ish book on improvisation before 1970, which focused mostly on the English scene, so improvisation is on my mind. The improv moments of Henry Cow (I know this is commonly called Legend or Leg End, but those words appear nowhere on the sleeve, spine or labels of my copy) mostly take place on side two, during the middle part where the reprise of 'Teenbeat' segues into 'The Tenth Chaffinch', a collective work which has some utterly dazzling moments. Fred Frith, again starting out here as a plucky young guitar player, can hold down prog riffage as well as skittery, bumpy Derek Bailey-style runs, and I found myself drawn back to the memory of the one time I saw him play live, at a weird session with some Estonian musicians. Frith has this way of tossing off moments that sound like no one else in terms of technique -- not flashy, but expressive, and with a focus on tonality and mood that is lacking from a lot of stick and poke guys. The weirdly, possibly microtonal shifts that open 'Extract From "With The Yellow Half-Moon And Blue Star"' on side two turn into the same kind of thing, like a conventional rock guitarist melted with some distant, hazy lights in the distance on a cool summer night. It's amazing to think how he had this ability to paint on the very first record he ever played on (I think). The whole band sings on 'Nine Funerals of the Citizen King', which I guess is technically the closest these guys get to sounding like Genesis, though the lyrics feel more modern, probing and poetic. It's a great song and one I forget about; generally I wish there were more vocals in Henry Cow, even the truncated glossolalia we get at the end of 'Amygdala'. Somehow this band turned into an institution, but one that kept challenging and reinventing itself; I can only imagine what this must have seemed like in 1973, especially coming during that time when British music was started to harden and become somewhat immobile. Compared to Egg or Hatfield and the North, this is madness, but like many enduring records (for example This Heat's Deceit, or Animal Collective's Sung Tongs) it manages to be from a scene/style but totally singular, kicking the ass of everything around it (non-aggressively!) with a purity of vision and purpose. And I write this as someone who even gets bored a little bit during this record! But there's more to come, so much more to come....

Guided by Voices - 'Propeller' (Scat)

Eventually, everything from my formative years will be reissued in some deluxe vinyl package. I'm not unhappy about this; owning an original of Propeller was an impossible dream, and I never jumped on the twofer CD with Vampire on Titus since I had already had an original LP of the latter. Scat reissued this a few years back, selecting cover #14 for immortality (a good choice!) and thus enabling me to complete my dream run on vinyl of GbV's most fertile, amazing period. Except my original-ish white vinyl Bee Thousand disappeared mysteriously some years ago, leaving me with only Scat's Director's Cut, which is not bad and has 'Shocker in Gloomtown' on it, after all, but doesn't have the original sequencing which makes me feel that I need both. Anyway, we'll get there. But yes, this is the start of a fertile, amazing period which I would argue is not just GbV's finest era but one of the finest eras of any artist ever, in any medium. Yeah, 1992-97, starting here and going through Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, including most of (if not all) of the EPs and singles from this time - it's a run that is just utterly perfect. Now, Propeller I had listened to a zillion times on a dubbed Maxell type II (high bias!) cassette I got in high school from some enterprising soul online, back when I was actually trading dubs of albums through the mail, such was this high school kid's budget. It's a record that is so brilliantly conceived from start to finish that by the time I finally got this vinyl version, well, I didn't even need to listen to it. I could go through song by song and try to describe them, or even better describe what they mean to me, but maybe that would be boring or pointless. I could try to write something smart about the ironic rock and roll chant that opens the album, the arena-rock aspirations of these basement dwelling weirdos from Dayon, Ohio, and something about the failure of stardom being what makes this great, blah blah blah, sprinkle in some comparison to Kevin Coyne, and we're done. But what's the point? When they broke in '94 or '95 everything that could have possibly been written about them already was. And I can't even really say how great this sounds on vinyl cause it really just sounds like the cassette did - after all, it was recorded on cassette to begin with. So while the pressing is lovely enough (and includes a collection of some alternate handmade covers), it's not like the discovery of some great lost soundworld. OK, here's something I'll actually say: I love Pollard's more optimistic songs, and this record is covered in them: 'Quality of Armor', 'Exit Flagger', 'Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy' - these and most of the other cuts have been live staples for 25 years, through various lineups, and these must be songs I have listened to 3000 times each and I'm not the slightest bit tired of them. If I remember correctly they were gonna 'quit' the band and this was to be their final album, though given how many times Pollard has broken up and reformed the band, at this point I just see Guided by Voices more like a celestial force than a band, so I don't take that too seriously. I was just talking about the pre-Propeller Box that had all their albums up to this point, and was thinking about how actually great a lot of them are; I made a great mixtape of the best 4 or 5 songs from each of those. But Propeller is a step forward beyond belief; this is where Sprout really starts to shine ('14 Cheerleader Coldfront'!) and the band became, to me at least, the greatest fucking rock band of all time. Even the weakest cuts are epic soundworlds to me - the collage 'Back To Saturn X Radio Report' is made up of fragmentary songs that are found on King Shit and the Golden Boys, Static Airplane Jam, and other outtakes compilations from this era, and somehow the clumsy pause-button editing just strikes me as a brilliant vision. This is the first cornerstone of an amazingly rewarding vision, and I'll just knock off the superlatives now because I got a few more albums to spread them over.

Andrew Graham's Swarming Branch - 'Classic Glass' (Tonk)

This is one hell of a sound sound, and it warms my heart that there's a gang of youngsters in Columbus, Ohio making music like this. Do you like Tin Pan Alley, musical cabaret and a Harry Nilsson/Van Dyke Parks vibe? But also fuzzy, jammy indie rock with psychedelic riffs galore? This might be for you, and I can guess this might be a love-it-or-hate it aesthetic; it's about as far from macho posturing as I can imagine while still being 'rock' music, yet to me this doesn't sound affected, even though Graham's singing technique is a bit like the guy from Cockey Rebel crossed with Basement Tapes-era Dylan. As the band name indicates, Mr. Graham is the singer-songwriter behind the Swarming Branch, but keyboardist Dane Terry (creator of a a fantastic solo album we'll get to, one day) is a pretty strong presence, and the bright, springy drums of Sean Leary aren't to be overlooked. This trio makes up the core, I guess, but there's guest musicians galore, including three 'lead guitar' players, obviously not found on every track. It's a bit messy to unravel but it doesn't really matter, because it sounds like a BAND. Their self-administered label is called Tonk and the concept of the honky-tonk rears its head from the majestic/shambolic opening cut ('That Constant Country Thirst') and lyrically in the amazingly cryptic and simultaneously anthemic 'Holy Joeys, Cognoscenti, Tar Babies In Love'. But I wonder what honky-tonk even means to them? There's hints of Nashville in places, sure, such as the slide guitars on 'The New Age Succuba, Susie Jean', but everything feels warped as hell -- and not through a druggy or surrealist haze. It's actually a really hard aesthetic to put a finger on, but it's one that feels confident and open at the same time. The rising and falling guitars and keyboard lines are occasionally chillingly beautiful; 'The Pounce' is as close as this record comes to a ballad, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. And sometimes it just drives straight ahead in the way that rock and roll does best. The high point of the album (and of music overall for the past few years, to these ears) may be the medley of 'This Water Does Not Reach The River' and 'I Warn You' that ends side 1. The first of these is a manic, high-energy stomper and the latter a 4/4 mid-tempo dirge that has some simple, yet stunning interplay between the instruments that makes this feel like a genius chipping away at a rock to reveal some sculpture. When Swarming Branch fall into these more straight-forward moments, it's incredibly satisfying; besides 'I Warn You's powerful punch, 'Final Boss' feels practically like a stadium-rock song, with a relentless pounding on the piano, some synth creepage courtesy of Ryan Jewell, and Graham's irrepressible voice soaring over it all. It crashes to an epic finish and effectively ends the record as the last track is an electro-pop oddity by a guest artist - a strange choice, but this record is a bouquet of strange choices, really, which all gel together to make some odd sense. I am more excited to hear what they do next than I am about just about anyone else actively making music today.

Gastr Del Sol ‎- 'Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly' (Drag City)

'In the museum / they set up the drums all wrong / reversed hi-hat and snare' is a lyric that, when you read it here, doesn't sound so odd. But once David Grubbs delivers it with his famous diction, and perhaps in the context of the overall song ('Parenthetically', which is clearly a hissy, caught-on-dictaphone improvisation) and the overall album (the sublime, strange and still singular Crookt, Crackt or Fly), it feels fucking alien. There's a forgotten generation of people like me, mostly male I'm guessing, and white, and quite a few who wear spectacles, who felt the power of the guitar but didn't want to sound like Yngvie or Satriani in our teenage aspirations. Gastr del Sol, and in particular this LP, was like manna from heaven. I never really listened to the first Gastr album, because it didn't have Jim O'Rourke on it. But here on the sophomore record, the two are equals, dazzling in their guitar interplay but not afraid of incorporating some piano or electronics when necessary. The thirteen minutes of 'Work from Smoke' make up the Gastr piece de resistance, the masterpiece that takes you through everything they do in a short period of time: Grubbs's idiot-savant lyrics, edgy acoustic guitar slashes, and a new dawn of droning electronics that sounds like George Crumb having a go at remixing the Spirit of Eden master tapes after drinking a few sixpacks of malt liquor. If this was the only track they ever cut they'd still live in eternal greatness for me, but there's actually the rest of the album to enjoy (and a few other records, too).  Side two's monster is 'The Wrong Soundings', a combination of processed ambient/field recordings (sounding mostly like somebody fucking around in a cave or other resonant space) with some circular insanity-guitar; the first half doesn't grab you by the throat and throttle like the best parts of 'Work from Smoke' or 'Every Five Miles', but it's a key transition to Upgrade & Afterlife's more O'Rourke-dominanted moments - and then the RAWK comes crashing in, and we remember the roots of this band (or at least 2/3 of them). It's not the most cohesive track, feeling a bit like a collage of several different parts, but the sum isn't shabby. I think part of the reason this record feels so perfect is that is sticks to a fairly limited palette, being mostly acoustic, though John McEntire shows up to rock out on side 2 for a bit. Crookt, Crackt or Fly breathes a heavy gust of the avant-garde into an indie rock carcass (remember, Grubbs was the dude from Bastro!) and if there needs to be a photograph of something in the dictionary entry for 'post-rock', this is a pretty strong candidate. You can laugh at Grubbs's vocal delivery (and I often do - it's great to open your junk mail and sing it in his style), and maybe the strangeness feels affected to some, but I'm never one to mock ambition and this is bathed in it, and I think confidently achieves its goals. Maybe it's mostly forgotten by now, but the legions of crookt crackt guitar players in contemporary bands (Dirty Projectors come to mind) surely owe some debt to this. It's absolutely wonderful, and despite the very distinct tone here, I'm almost always in the mood for it.

Game Theory - 'Blaze of Glory' (Rational)

'I never wanted to be tough', sings Scott Miller as the first line on this record, and that's sort of a career manifesto. It's not his debut release - there's the wonderful Alternate Learning LP from '81 - but it's the first one by Game Theory, and I've always viewed this as the Scott Miller band, so I take the Alternate Learning - Game Theory - Loud Family lineage as one more or less unbroken band (with apologies to Donette Thayer's later songwriting contributions). And it's impressive how fully-formed his vision is here. It begins with a snippet of more experimental sounds (like most GT records) before leading off with the one-two punch of 'Something to Show' and 'Tin Scarecrow', both brassy and buoyant. And the Sparks-like rave-up 'White Blues' follows, which ain't a bad tune either. Game Theory are such an exemplary band to me because they managed to sound very much of their milieu while being completely singular and remarkable at the same time - the cream of the crop, the crop in this case being early 80s college rock, or new wave, or Pasiley underground or whatever you want to call it. From this classification, I put them in the same league as This Heat, or the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or Animal Collective - brilliance within a vague framework of the then-'now' sound. The whole Paisley Underground thing I think came later and Game Theory were only really tangentially related to those neo-psych warriors; here, the psychedelia is restricted more or less to the lyrics, as the music is mostly bouncy post-punk with synth punctuations. Miller's voice has always been bright and somewhat effeminate (and an acquired taste which many people I've tried to turn on to his songwriting have never been able to develop), so any of the aggro edges from the fast-paced songs and bashing guitars are softened by this. This, like many first albums, is just a calling card for what's to come later with bigger and better production, which isn't meant to diminish the songwriting within; 'Bad Year at UCLA' is one of the earliest out-and-out classics by Miller,  and 'Stupid Heart' should make all the best-of mixtapes. His lyrics aren't yet as creative in terms of wordplay as what will come in the following decade, but even when grappling with the confusion of romantic feelings that takes place in one's early 20s, he displays a remarkable prescience and irony ('Date With an Angel'; 'All I Want is Everything'). I find myself listening to this just as much as the other ones, despite it's 'early' and 'rough' edges. Unfortunately my copy is packaged only in a plain 12" sleeve, so I'm missing part of the package.

Frosted Ambassador (Kindercore)

The Frosted Ambassador is another in the long line of pseudo-anonymous LPs, except the man behind this one (Eric Harris of Olivia Tremor Control) never was very good at keeping the secret. Naming the project after an existing Olivia Tremor Control song (and one that Harris's drumming played a prominent role on) was a dead giveaway, and when I asked him in person years ago if this was his work, he denied it with a knowing smirk. Anonymity isn't necessary though; this isn't particularly mysterious music, descending from the Olivia's neo-retro-psych pop (and I realise 15 years after their heydey, the "neo" and "retro" parts of that silly descriptor are already anachronistic and meaningless). This is largely instrumental, but has a bit of singing on a few of the untitled songs (where space is provided on the sleeve to write in your own song titles) - mostly on the opener, which is a real barnstormer. This could have all the members of Olivia Tremor Control playing on it, because the trademarks are all there: 4-track psychedelia that pushes the limits of the format's fidelity in occasionally spellbinding ways; thick, fuzzy basslines; steady, often marching band-styled drumming, and lots of little instruments peering around the cracks. Everything is pretty organic, including the electronics, which are limited to tape manipulations,  simple Casio tones and beats, and effects-pedal processing. It's as colourful as the album art indicates, with fluttering rock chords offset by chimes, bells, ethnic instruments (though played in a fairly major-key manner), and the occasional field recordings or other samples. It's very palatable accessibility, and it really stands up nicely against the Olivia's "proper" albums. The more goofy, erratic parts are built around the tape manipulations, which even when they jerk around in a start-stop way, they have a warm melodiousness to them. The penultimate track is the deepest work, with thick slabs of sound over which a million melted video games battle for some sort of supremacy. Maybe this is the record for people who would like Olivia Tremor Control if they removed all of the Beatles influence - if you wanted OTC to sound more like Bügsküll, here's your ticket.

The Feelies - 'Crazy Rhythms' (Stiff)

I listen to this record quite often. It somehow cuts through the familiarity that saturates so many other albums from this time; the songs have seeped deep into my cortex, with every note and tom-tom tap memorised to the point of instinct, yet it doesn't feel like I'm on a mental autopilot when listening to it. This early Feelies lineup is so different than their subsequent albums, probably due to the presence of Anton ("Andy") Fier, who left after this record. The opening cut is pretty much the roadmap - 'The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness', which explicitly lays out the nervous energy that made this early lineup so great. It's a song where only Bill Million plays any guitars, a studio assemblage for sure, and the rest of the band is on various percussion. Larks Tongues in Aspic this is not; I wish I could say layered guitars were influenced by Glenn Branca, but I doubt it; it's jittery, tight and coherent, but succinct and still a pop song. The more catchy songs, like 'Crazy Rhythms' and 'Moscow Nights', could be punk thrashers with different production and a different singer. In the voices of Million and Glenn Mercer, it's comes off as some hybrid of R.E.M. and Mission of Burma (both of whom the Feelies pre-date). It's all good, though. Nothing stays beyond its welcome, even the seven minute 'Forces at Work'; when the contrapuntal ascending and descending guitar lines break out at the end of 'Loveless Love', it fades out before it starts to be show-offy. This is a total guitar album; 'Forces at Work' is epic in the way it crescendos, yet it's never jerkoff Yngvie-style stylings - the players aren't necessarily virtuosos on the fretboards, but they have a masterful way of assembling things. The vibe of Crazy Rhythms is fun and hyper without being overly aggressive, and the fashion of the members from the cover and liner photos is so proto-indie chic it would be a cliché if this wasn't 1980. The Beatles cover is just in line with the rest of it, and it doesn't feel silly or gimmicky. This is a great band and this is a great debut, and it's nice that they change gears so abruptly on their next album (which took six years to come out!).  I don't have a bad thing to say here, nor anything insightful either; I feel like I've just been describing this record by pointing out how balanced it is and what it is not, more than what it is. I'll tell you this - I throw on 'Moscow Nights' or 'Crazy Rhythms' some time just when I want to jump around and play a weird sort of air guitar, and I'm glad no one sees me doing so.

Electric Bunnies - 'Through the Magical Door' (Florida's Dying)

The gimmick of this album is in the packaging - a gatefold which opens into a board-game, complete with die-cut pieces. The game is pretty silly, containing commands like 'Smell someone's feet' and 'Admit your a racist'; I'll admit to being enough of a collector, valuing the sacred quality of record packaging, that I never punched out the pieces and played. If you're expecting similarly lighthearted fare on the record then you're wrong, though I wouldn't describe Through the Magical Door as sombre; rather, it operates on a level of sophistication that makes this the high water mark of the bedroom psychedelia glut of 2008-2010. There's as much jangly guitars and revamped 60's worship here as on the rest of the records on labels such as Shdwply -- but with far stronger songcraft and an electicism that transcends the rest. Compare to the Dead Luke LP, for example - that's a good LP, sure, but I think in ten years Through the Magical Door will be remembered much more fondly. How these guys have managed to escape greater notoriety (now a few years down the line) is beyond me. Each song has something distinct, yet it's all held together nicely. The title track leans towards folk-revival sounds and suggests a longer attention span than is immediate apparent. 'Marigold Flower' is pure retro magic, with the affable amateurism of 80s Flying Nun merged with Summer of Love icing. For a bedroom recordings, there's a shockingly huge sound on 'What's Your Favorite Thing?', anchored by a driving floor tom and being the purest bit of indie rock on the record. Closing cut 'Sweet Dreams My Dear Esmeralda' is a long, murky banger with lotsa layers and losta sauce. It would be my pick were it not for 'Psychic Lemonade', which outdoes the Dukes of Stratosphere using nothing more than backwards guitars, a perfect organ pulse, and some DOD pedals. No, wait, 'A Snowman on the First Day of Spring' is actually the best cut, loaded with searing organic tons and just enough electroacoustic bathwater to create something otherwordly and chilling. There's also 'The Green Octopus', a slow, longing ode that breaks into gritty guitar strums and ends with some musique concrete, another surprise. I assume these guys have broken up or gone on to college, which is a shame, because this is a remarkably adept entry into all-time great psych records, something that is very much of its time but also aware of its own antecedents - in just the perfect balance.

El Jesus de Magico - 'Scalping the Guru' (Columbus Discount)

Scalping the Guru was the original name of Guided by Voices' Alien Lanes album (which we'll get to, eventually) so this may be some sort of reference to their Ohio brethren. The only real influence is in the production, where the dirty, anthemic guitars of 'Summer of Luhv' could be lifted straight from those mid-90s GbV classics. But instead of catchy, hooky melodies, El Jesus's vocalist takes a different approach: less grandiose, without any element of being a 'front man'. The opening cut is more hi-fi though, appropriately titled 'Ancestor Worship', and laying down a pretty good Kraut-like groove, recalling Yeti's tectonic plateshifts (with with a bit less cosmic dust). I file this under E which shows my own Anglican bias towards respecting articles; just like Los Llamarada will appear under Lo, not Ll. But I don't think there's anything hispanic about El Jesus de Magico - this is a great synthesis of white avant-rock influences, an assemblage that is confident and experimental as well. Feedback, synths or some other electronic forms appear throughout - side two starts with a track built from static and space, sounding like a dirty needle, but in a hypnotic compelling way. When the band hits a mid-tempo groove, as on 'Whistle Cock', their improvisational side is allowed to unfold, as the drummer holds things together just barely. But I wouldn't call this noise-rock or even particularly ramshackle; it's a unique balance of together and apart, which is why I'd cite these guys as one of the more interesting rock bands in whatever passes for the American 'underground' today.

Dif Juz - 'Out Of The Trees' (4AD)

Dif Juz is a tough one to place - hard to say as well, but I've always pronounced it like 'diffuse'. This is their last release but chronologically drawn from their first, so I place it here. Out of the Trees takes their two 1981 12" singles and combines them into an LP, with some parts of the Vibrating Air 12" re-recorded in 1986. That material is the A-side, even though the Huremics 12" predates it, so the whole chronology is a bit messy. But that's ok, because this is music that's easy to slip away from consciousness. I don't want to call Dif Juz "slight" but that comes to mind - it's undeniably pleasant, even when vocals creep in (as on 'Heset') and create an odd, atmospheric post-dub 4AD soup. The bass is prodding, there's ripping rack effect textures on the guitars, and errant keyboard notes paint a perfect backdrop to the somewhat forgettable lyrics, which mention the title conceit of 'vibrating air' (isn't that what all sound is?). I really like Dif Juz though - they are a missing link between post-punk experiments such as Rip Rig and Panic and the second Slits album, and What We Talk About When We Talk About 4AD in the  1980s. The dub saturates the Vibrating Air tracks, but the flipside, Huremics, has a more driving feel, like Savage Republic gone surfing in Manchester clubs at the time. It's a bit simpler - 'Re' has triumphant guitar arcs over a solid bass foundation, and 'Mi' is populated with little guitar sounds, dancing in and out of the niches made by rhythm. 'Cs' is a great closer for the record, with psychedelic (almost sci-fi shimmer), bright sky dance beats, and a positive outlook - so maybe that's why it was sequenced here.

Bonzo Dog Band - 'Let's Make Up and Be Friendly' (United Artists)

These merry jokesters have a cult following that I have never participated in, but maybe that's just because my only recording is this uneven reunion album. Viv Stanshall is practically worshipped by a few people I know, and I do enjoy 'Sir Henry at Rawlinson End', so it's good to have a 9 minute track about this fictional madland at the beginning of side two. It's a semi-spoken piece that's a jolly bit of fun, indeed. But the music? There's a few great songs on here, but I like the Bonzo Dog Band the most when they take on a weirdo R. Stevie Moore vibe, like on 'King of Scurf'. Their whole music hall/eclecticism thing is nice - I guess it's a sort of lost art - but it's not for me. The humour (mostly) fails to tickle me - 'The Strain', a track about constipation, starts things on a juvenile level. Just because you have an English accent doesn't mean you're any more erudite than an Adam Sandler record. I think I will never be able to clearly articulate exactly where my fine line is with funny songwriting. Why is early Sparks brilliant, but I don't like Dead Milkmen? Why do I like early They Might Be Giants but hate the later stuff? Why do I love Camper Van Beethoven but hate the Barenaked Ladies? (Ok, that's an obvious answer). With the Bonzos, maybe I'm being too harsh - there are a few cuts that I enjoy here, but it feels a bit haphazard and, well, I already said 'uneven' but that's the best word I can think of. The liner notes are a marvelously automatic stream, but again, they would be better if the music wasn't so ha-ha Monty Pythonish. Neil Innes did actually write a lot of the Python's best known tunes, and I sure ate the up in my teenage years. If only I had heard the Bonzos back then! Things just weren't as easy to hear as they are now.

Area - 'Caution Radiation Area' (Cramps)

The Italian Get Back gang reissued this in a lovely package with super thick vinyl (preserving the original Cramps label) and a heavy cardstock cover that could stop a bullet; plus they were thoughtful enough to include a plastic inner sleeve mounted inside the paper linernotes, so you don't scratch the record like paper does, but it doesn't bunch up like plastic usually does. This second Area record came out in '74 and it's leaps and bounds beyond their first one. It starts with a super fast keyboard/gutar riff that suggests they've stepped up their game, instrumentally, since Arbeit Macht Frei, but then things start to get weirder. 'ZYG' stars with some arrows of synthy white noise fighting with each other, before forcing itself into a rock structure. Ten-minute 'MIRage ? MIRage !' which opens the second side, is a work of utter brilliance. We get a taste of free jazz; a sort-of-drum solo up against someother tape-affected percussion; a thickly layered bit of Stratos (whose first name is now DemeNtrio) whispering, moaning and gasping; and the usual progrock pyrotechnics though minus a bit of , um, whatever that thing is that Yes does that you hear a little bit of in Area's first album. If there's one criticism it's that the piece just feels like a succession of twisted parts rather than a cohesive whole - but thats totally okay if the parts are this mind-melting. The last track, 'Lobotomia', is the most fucked up of all, with shrill toys, delayed chimes, and the feeling of lifting into the sky. Yep, these Eye-talians have found their voice, and maybe they never sounded more on-target. For a band that's on the Nurse With Wound list, you can sure bash your head to it like it's a dumb guilty rock release. This may be the highest synthesis of all of the different strains of brilliance this band was capable of, balanced across one vinyl disc.