Jason Lescalleet's Due Process - 'Combines XIX, XX' (We Break More)

It appears that Due Process was previously a trio or quartet featuring not just Mr. Lescalleet but also Ron Lessard of RRR/Emil Beaulieu fame and some other collaborators. This is billed as being led by Lescalleet so I've always filed it under L next to his others. But while the first moments of 'Combine XIX' suggest the ringing, haunting resonance of Electronic Music is going to be the vibe here, it quickly combusts into a grab bag of layers and intentionally conflicting ideas, containing some vocalisations even which give it a nice throwback 80s industrial feel. The name of this group draws attention to their working and editing methodology, though I guess almost all music is just 'processing' now, and maybe it always was. The middle drops back to breathe, and it really does, gaining some wind through a chilling, distant echo that started to bring in ringing ghost echoes. It's not a long side, and the short runtime is probably partially responsible for it sounding so good - this is experimental electronic music (you can call it 'noise' even, if you insist) that really has a great mastering job. 'Combine XX' opens the B-side with a wavering, uncentered continuation of the previous side's feel. I'm not sure what the material comes from –– if the processing in question sticks to strict source material, or if it's incorporating the work of other artists, or if it lacks the formally defined rules. But the palette is stark, carefully chosen, for this is the deep listening part of the record. Static is there as on Electronic Music, not so much a foreground element here as a mood, a colouring. About halfway through it fades into a more demonic movement, with an Ash Ra ambience, a pulse that slowly becomes relentless, and disembodied, unarticulated voices that combine with mysterious higher frequencies to resemble a malfunctioning shortwave radio. This is night music, all the way, and the explosive bursts, French accents, and squealing pitches recall the greatest mysteries of the evening sky, transcribed into sound and funnelled through a vision of these Northeastern guys. I tend to overlook this record as it's filed between two bigger 'statements' by Lescalleet, but it's a pretty well-structured and complete work of its own that was really nice to revisit here. 

Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, SIXES, Sharkiface & Loachfillet ‎- 'Dr. Octopuss' (Fish Pies/BOC Sound Laboratories)

Five weirdo outsider types got together and made Dr. Octopuss, two side-long works of fucked-up sound interaction (or I guess it's one long composimprovisiation,  since it's listed as parts 1 and 2, but who knows for sure how it's meant to be taken?). Ju Suk and Oblivia are of course from Smegma and I don't know the others, but this certainly comes from a similar soundworld to Smegma – one that eschews not just all traditional musical patterns (notes, chords, harmony, rhythm etc.) but the orthodoxy of experimental and improvised music as well, if that makes any sense. I get the title mixed up with Dr. Octagon/Dr. Octagonecologyst, though that's about the only similarity beyond the mad scientist, inhuman theme. Actually I think it's the name of a misspelled Spider-Man villain, a mutation human-robot hybrid with scary mechanical tentacles if I remember correctly (no, I haven't seen the films). The hybrid human/machine concept carries over, but perhaps the malevolence is left behind, because this is a pretty fun trip, or maybe my baseline for fun is villanous. This record does have an underwater feel, as many of the layers are surrounded by a slow, encapsulating pulse, holding the rest of the sounds in a sort of permanent stasis. The electro/acoustic (human/machine? too simple, too simple) balance feels roughly 50/50, and with such a layered approach it's impossible to know who is responsible for which elements. It does feel like it was a live take, maybe even in front of an audience, and there are sampled elements (French media speech, other urban sounds) which impose the heaviest themes, even though they are used sparingly. Sometimes the fidelity makes these samples sound like they're coming from an unwatched television in an adjacent room, which is an eerie pathway to postmodernism which I heartily endorse. Whatever sounds were generated by traditional musical instruments, those sources are treated with all manners of household effects, which furthers the sense of otherworldliness. There's clearly keyboard and saxophones, occasionally getting into a dialogue against a mild oscillating background wind. Some moments are delicate and spare, but never exactly silent - an errant keyboard run or bumping bit of static will always poke through. It moves briskly through both sides, a concoction that is at once a unique meeting of some true American outsiders and also another run of the mill jam. This contradiction isn't a blessing but its an unavoidable conclusion when trying to remember the last time I actually listened to this.

Gregory Jones & Roy Sablosky - 'No Imagination' (Vinyl)

There isn't much more one could want from a record of experimental electronics. No Imagination does quite a lot across its four tracks, and it's the only release by these guys apart from a new wave band called Standard of Living that they were both in; so this was probably seen as their experimental 'side project' if anything, which is a shame, cause I'd love to hear how their musical relationship may have developed over time. The four cuts traverse fairly different territory for a record that is built around two guys with electronics, though my favourite track is Jones-less, only featuring Sablosky plus James Gable on 'transducer guitar' and Marianne Fraenkel on vocals. It's a 15 minute long dirge called 'Intro (Summer Names)', perversely not the first track, but coming after 'No Moon No Mirror' (which is a proper intro). But 'Intro' the song consists of a heavily repetitive guitar strum, firing ecstatic overtones in conjunction with Sablosky's electronics, and the faint intonations of Fraenkel's spoken text. It's just there to feel more than listen to, obfuscating the urge to interpret verbal meaning. Her delivery reminds me of the voice on Blue Gene Tyranny's 'A Letter From Home'; this, to me, is an aesthetic device that I associate with the American avant-garde circa the time of my birth, when this was made. It's a beauty, a real storm of a musical work that feels romantic, adventurous, warm and cold all at the same times as it howls along. There's no acoustic presence on the other three tracks, but they're no less impressive; 'Diverted to Frankfurt (for Twelve Pulse Generators)' is, unsurprisingly, written for 12 pulse generators and the stark palette of their timbre makes this an active, complex convergence of sound. 'No Moon No Mirror' is an ethereal piece for synthesiser where the two musicians tease each other through space, sounding like something from the Kranky records catalog two decades later. It's marred only by a very audible scratch on my copy, which if it were on 'Diverted to Frankfurt' might not be so noticeable but here it shocks the stillness between the synth pulses. 'Forced' is the final cut, another long one, and it resembles the 'Amazon rainforest' approach to electronic improvisations. There's not so much a tonal basis as that of a swarm of insects, and it's as manic and active as the previous two tracks. It's best played loud - the whole record is - so the juxtaposing staccato bursts of static and square waves can get the resonance they deserve. This is a great record for turning your head slightly while listening, to change the way the overtones interact with one's hearing - the best minimalist/drone records have that, and it's nice to be achieved on something so compositionally distinct. Totally great and singular!

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.

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.

Idea Fire Company - 'Stranded' (Swill Radio)

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

Kenneth Higney - 'Attic Demonstration' (One Kind Favor)

For a record as legendary as Attic Demonstration, it's not a long listen, but it's pretty satisfying. Thankfully this reissue is easily available, because originals go for a fortune, as this was never actually 'released'. Higney, in the liner notes, explains that this was a series of demos he recorded to show his songwriting talent, and he sang these as drafts, without ever intending to be the ultimate singer or musician. This was pressed up as an LP to make it easier for him to send it to people (as this was the late 70s) but I don't completely buy that explanation. I mean, why would you put a photo of yourself front and centre if you're just trying to sell some songs to others? I think the answer is somewhere more in-between; clearly Higney was operating out of the privately-pressed lineage (though I guess it's hard to declare that as ever being a scene, being so geographically dispersed and also recording-based rather than concert-focused; I guess it's a scene that came together 30 years after the fact with The Acid Archives and all that). Additionally, the music is so fleshed out, a vision of dark ramshackle psych that is so complete (in how bare it is) that I would think a potential 'customer' would be overwhelmed by the flanged guitars shredding solos and the burnout pulse throughout. Well, no one bit. The instrumentation isn't credited to anyone specifically but the reissue liner notes thank a now-deceased musician named Gordon Gaines for the guitar playing; I wonder if he's also the bassist and drummer, or if this is Higney himself bashing around. I don't want to buy into a narrative that Higney couldn't sing or play, but certainly there is a rawness in the vocals that goes far beyond the Dylan/Reed school of the unschooled; at times the melody isn't even remotely clear, lost in a flurry of missed corners -- and you think a clear vocal melody would be the goal if one was genuinely trying to sell songs. Lyrics are printed on the back, which allows the lengthier tracks ('Rock Star' and 'Ley Us Pray') to be examined more thoroughly; the latter of these is the most fragile, and also populated with unclear characters (perhaps allegorical). Throughout all songs, though, the more visceral parts of Attic Demonstration jump out from the recording, burrowing into my mind, and making the lyric sheet feel disconnected anyway. I've always put 'Children of Sound' on mixtapes as it perfectly captures the dream of psychedelia after being watered down through a few years of disappointment. The cadences are often jerky (opening cut 'Night Rider' appears to start on the off-beat; 'Quietly Leave Me' feels like it's being made up as it goes along) and the mix is uneven too; again, I suspect this was meant not to be a serious foray into the music world but were any of these self-released items genuinely mistaken for stabs at greatness? In the annals of broken/outsider greatness I personally think Attic Demonstration comes from a place more primal, more desperate and more authentic than a lot of the others - it's a very male (hairy) attack on songcraft, but a convincing one, and it never slides even remotely close to novelty territory as many others do.

James Twig Harper ‎– 'Intuitive American Esoteric Vol. 2' ( American Tapes/Ecstatic Peace!/Gods Of Tundra/Heresee/Slowtoe)

Another multi-label collaboration (and you gotta hand it to Harper for his vision), this one contains far fewer liner notes - none at all, apart from a now-faded gold sticker on the cover - and is split into two side-long pieces, with no label on the LP and an etching on one side saying to play at any speed. I chose 33 because I was too lazy to lift my turntable's glass platter; I started with the etched side, which is almost entirely locked groves so it's particularly difficult to listen to. It's fun to watch my Rega Bias cartridge skid all over the place trying to grab onto something, though I worry if it's damaging, so I'm glad to play this now before upgrading to a new cart. I'm reminded, of course, of all those Brinkmann records I never listen to, which are also joys of physical groove mastering. There's a similar skittiness here, though the materials feel more analogue and the beats more like byproducts. I'm not sure how many grooves I missed while going through this so it's probably safe to say I heard 70% of this at best.  It's the other, 'normal' side of Intuitive American Esoteric vol. 2 which is the real doozy. Here, Harper goes through just about everything in his toolbox, and while it has a fairly tighter 'electronic' soundbase than vol. 1 (meaning: there are less obviously acoustic tones that aren't processed into something space-aged), it really moved through a lot of territory. And it's LONG - I wasn't timing but it felt like it went on for about a half-hour. There's parts that sound like they are underwater, parts that are out-and-out aggressive percussive noise, and parts that pull in eight different directions at once. There's so much motion here that it would be insane to try to follow all of the parts, and everything collages together as it's happening so it's a dense psychedelic journey, for sure. I think the sense of movement and composition here is more accomplished than volume 1, though the fidelity is not quite as high and the range of pitches and sound-hues starts to congeal about halfway through. That's not to say there isn't plenty of space here - Harper is not a 'wall of noise' artist - but it's busy even within the spaces, if that makes any sense. Volume 3 happened but I haven't heard it; the completist part of me wants to seek it out, however.

James Twig Harper - 'Intuitive American Esoteric volume 1' (Audiobot/Heresee/Ignivomous/No Sides/White Tapes)

It somehow took five labels to get together to release this LP, in an edition of 555 so each label got 111 copies (I assume), and I'm not sure of which respective stash mine came from. It's funny to be served this immediately after Blake Hargreaves (as the alphabetical decrees) since it was in Baltimore, in the same room as Mr. Harper, that I saw Dreamcatcher/Hargreaves. Though I didn't get this LP until a bit later (I think). Hazy memories of those central Bush years, you know, but some great LPs came out of them, such as Intuitive American Esoteric Volume 1. This is an amazing document of outsider music, one that is worthy of it's slightly ambitious title. I'm not going to make a judgement on whether or not it is intuitive, but American and esoteric for sure, and this is a record where the physicality of the vinyl is inseparable from the music. Harper's approach to 'esoterica' is crafty, and the two untitled side-long pieces could be small symphonies of electronic assemblage. Buzzing, hissing and dissonance are welcome here - a high pitched squeal is present throughout so much of this record that it becomes unnoticeable, and most sounds are electronic/tape-manipulated in origin. But it moves fluidly, opening with a very well composed piece (even if it was composed through the improvisation + editing technique) which suggests a music box gone awry. As the record progresses it never loses momentum, and most of the energy is in small gestural sounds though it gets pretty 'noisy' (meaning, distortion, hiss, errant sinewave tones, etc.). Tapes are the real currency here, with the speed-up/slow-down of the motors and reels bouncing around like skeleton bones carried by a rickety train. When clearly audible bits of other recordings are present, they only leap out for a moment before accelerating or decelerating into something more maddening. Yet despite all of this movement, it never becomes tiresome to listen to. Side two is mastered through a tin can (really!) which isn't a gimmick - it limits the dynamic range of the music somewhat, but gives it a nice antediluvian sheen, and the physical grooves on the record itself are lovely. Speaking of grooves, this side is full of locked ones, mixed all throughout - sneaking up on you like a frustrating video game boss and requiring the stylus to be manually bumped ahead. Even though you can't fall asleep to it, the whole thing works as a complete piece of its own, developing mountains and valleys of madness
throughout. 

Hair Police - 'Constantly Terrified' (Troubleman Unlimited)

A year later from Obedience Cuts and it's clear that Hair Police have definitely 'progressed' as a band, but describing exactly how can be a challenge. But why else do this if not to challenge myself, to attempt to articulate music into words, futile as it may be? Constantly Terrified is four long cuts, beginning with a low rattling and slowly building into the full-on assault of 'Rattler's Echo'. This is like one of those great free jazz sides from the 70s recorded live, where a group builds to a total interplay of free expression, except here the aesthetic is much more a white/basement/scuzz one. But that's not a massive depature from the world of ESP Records circa '68 - Trevor Tremaine's drumming is not unlike that of Sunny Murray, and if you replace saxes with homemade/hacked electronics, this really could be a bizarro, hung over Globe Unity recording. Connelly's voice is yelping and shrieking and everything seems so violent, yet cohesive. And then it fades out and we get 'The Haunting', where slowly bending tones make a warped bed for the buzzing, scraping and hiss to interact on. The drumming is fake primitive, lots of floor tom and stickwork, and the processed vocals (I guess?) give this a really nasty, sick edge which suits the cover art's portrayal of fear and helplessness. It suddenly ends, in a locked groove of bassy rumbling which mirrors the low rattling at the start of the side. On the flip, 'My Skull is My Face' is built around a monotonous rhythm, with echoing drones (so beautiful they could be taken from a new age record if not juxtaposed with such teethy bile) and more vocal caterwauling. And the title track closes it out, which is an experiment in stasis - a holding pattern which nonetheless has a great diversity of sounds within it's edges, but never giving into the clichés of dynamics. It's here that maybe Hair Police have set their M.O - that is to be 'Constantly Terrified', where the monotony and feeling of being trapped reigns supreme. Overall it's an utterly unpleasant LP, but that was the idea, and it's executed marvelously.

Hair Police - 'Obedience Cuts' (Gods of Tundra)

This is Hair Police's second full-length album but the first where they really found their footing, and it's enjoyable to revisit it after so many years. 'Let's See Who's Here and Who's Not' explodes immediately into a lurching, violent chaos, and it's home-recorded at just the perfect fidelity. A lot of warm, thick electronics blanket the sound - what I'm struck by on the first side is just how incredibly warm this sounds, which isn't all attributable to the vinyl version specifically but Hair Police's preferred frequencies (lows and low-mids). Trevor Tremaine's drumming is sometimes overwhelmed by it, and you can hear his cymbals and snare flailing about, cutting through the mix now and then, and he's content to pull back (or maybe he contributes some other role to the mix). The aesthetic is dark, as the puke-green ink on the cover hints, and unpleasant, but there's a life in this music that finds itself during the quieter moments. The title track is one such place, where the sturm-und-drang pulls back and lets the oscillations take over. This sound-soup is where I most enjoy Hair Police - there's a real subtlety to their interactions, a tension that swells and never releases in the way you'd expect from a regular 'band' vibe. 'The Empty Socket' on side two almost approaches the Dead C's 'Now I Fall' before it tumbles down the hill; 'Bee Scrape' likewise ends up in a rolling ball of noise, but one that has synths slicing through like a ninja throwing star. Robert Beatty might steal the show on this record, but it's hard to tell where his noiseboxes end and Mike Connelly's feedback guitar begins; even the drums get heavily processed with echo on 'Full of Guts', and it gels really, really well. There's a few more Hair Police records coming up and it's funny now to revisit this music after what doesn't feel like such a long time, but was over a decade. The American 'noise' peaked in popularity a few years after this and then seemed to fade away, though I think this may be more a product of changing marketplaces (and my own interests shifting) rather than any sort of decline in output. Still, among all the hundreds of projects and bands that came to prominence in the following years, Hair Police somehow distinguished themselves against the rest, and with fresh ears and a spin of Obedience Cuts, it's easy to hear the reasons.

Guided By Vocies - 'Bee Thousand (The Director's Cut)' (Scat)

As mentioned a few posts ago, I no longer have my original copy of Bee Thousand, as it was loaned to someone years ago and never returned. It's OK, I suppose; I've committed every second of it to memory over the past 20 years anyway, and while I'll happily replace it when I come across it cheap-ish, for now I survive. Bee Thousand (The Director's Cut) actually contains every song anyway - the first two LPs recreate an earlier, longer version as assembled in 1993, and the final platter contains the seven songs from the official Bee Thousand that weren't on the 1993 version (which includes some of the most definitive tracks of the album: 'Buzzards and Dreadful Crows', 'Hardcore UFOs', 'I Am A Scientist', and 'Gold Star for Robot Boy') as well as The Grand Hour and and I Am A Scientist 7"s. But sequencing is everything, as one listen to any side of The Director's Cut will indicate. So much of the genius of Bee Thousand is how it fits together as a complete whole, without any filler and with the transitions carefully chosen. 'Echoes Myron' without 'Yours to Keep' preceeding it (and that awkward tape splice) just isn't right! And opening the whole thing with 'Demons Are Real' is a bold choice, but the first chords of 'Hardcore UFOs' are the most iconic opening in indie rock history (except, perhaps, for 'A Salty Salute' on Alien Lanes) so it's hard for me to really think of this as Bee Thousand without it. And yeah, not every song here is great - the would-have-been third side gets pretty spotty, so it makes sense that 'I'll Buy You a Bird' and  'Zoning the Planet' were dropped later, when the album we know and love took its final form. And I don't know that the world needs the falsetto-filler of 'Rainbow Billy' for any reason except the historic record. But still, at this point, Pollard and Sprout were just hit machines, churning out such an incredible body of work that fan-assembled outtakes collections are still being assembled to this day. The liner notes, written here by Robert Griffin of Scat, are really nicely done, telling the story of his relationship to the band, and how this album took form over so many iterations. The other running orders are reproduced with Pollard's lyric sheet for the third one, and his cassette track listings for the others; it turns out it's Griffin himself who put together the iconic sequencing, and that the album was actually assembled on an early version of ProTools (not bad for 1994!). So all of this is rather disjointed - Christ, it's a cluttered mess - but it's a glorious one. Some of the songs turned up much later - 'Why Did You Land?' was sped-up and re-recorded as a b-side to 'The Official Ironmen Rally Song'; 'Stabbing a Star' came out on a 7", and bits of 'Bite' and '2nd Moves to Twin' turned up elsewhere on Bee Thousand itself. And even shaken up and put in a blender, there's so much here to love and enjoy, and so much meaning and associations to draw, maybe even amplified by its new juxtapositions. 'Smothered in Hugs' retains it's magic nostalgia; 'Hot Freaks' and 'Her Psychology Today' their rampant sexuality. 'Myron' feels like it ties together many threads, and 'Deathtrot and Warlock Riding a Rooster' has some beauteous self-harmonising. And this is before even getting to this final LP, which contains a few of the greatest GbV tracks (two versions of 'Shocker in Gloomtown', a song so great the Breeders covered it; and an Andy Shernoff-produced version of 'My Valuable Hunting Knife' which never ended up anywhere else, somehow). So even though I still wonder why Pollard originally wanted to end the album with 'Crocker's Favourite Song' instead of 'You're Not An Airplane'. Yes, listen to the original first, but thank God for Griffin's efforts in releasing this, both musically and writerly - this is an important bit of history, at least to people like me.

Peter Grudzien - 'The Unicorn/The Garden of Love' (Subliminal Sounds)

Peter Grudzien is an outlier among outliers; in many ways you could call this just another acid-drenched, home-recorded privately pressed psych record, albeit one deeply rooted in country/western traditions and affectations. But Grudzien's 1974 statement is one that is militantly gay, wistfully fragile, and perfectly balanced on the damaged/cohesive axis, and somehow feels completely unlike anything else in the genre. The songs on The Unicorn are almost all based around a strummed acoustic guitar and his yokel yodel, but then there's some weird fuckery throughout; 'Redemption and Prayer' is built around processed voice loops, and feels akin to something that might come out of the San Francisco Tape Music Centre a decade earlier. 'Kentucky Candy', an epic ode to his lover, has some delay-heavy, operatic background vocals that (according to the liners) were just ripped off an LP recording of Tannhäuser, and the effect is stunning. There's a plodding bass throughout most of the album (which is just enough to make it all feel off-kilter, despite Grudzien's excellent technical abilities) as well as pedal steel, banjo and some electric guitars. It feels like a vision - one that begins with the title track's mystical allusions (for the unicorn, according to Grudzien's original liner notes, is a 'frail creature that will redeem mankind', though the 2007 reissue notes state that it's about a guy whose profile looked like a unicorn) and on through the unambiguous 'White Trash Hillbilly Trick' and 'Queen of All the Blue-Eyed'. He digs in and shreds on the instrumental 'The Lost World', and the lyrical themes throughout don't avoid the big issues of religion, love, and guilt. This is a lovely reissue too; the home-recording makes everything a little bit uneven, as levels tend to jump from cut to cut, but the acoustic instruments sound warm and full, and the musique concrete parts feel appropriately spooky, with enough midrange to clearly identify them as tapes being reworked. Everything climaxes on the finalé, 'Return of the Unicorn', which moves through a variety of different recording fragments, including a lo-fi, instrumental keyboard theme which feels anthemic, and a full-band (though of course, all Grudzien) conclusion which sounds decisive, even visionary. The second album was culled from recordings ranging from the 1950s to the late 80s, and it sounds appropriately hodgepodge, but strong. There's more country stylings but even some homemade doo-wop ('The Bills', from 1957), a few versions of the title track, and some cover versions. Spotty, yes, but overall enjoyable, and it feels more like a window into the mind of a person who is just absolutely in love with sound and its potential. And he was at fucking Stonewall, according to the haunting cut of that name, from 1987, made up of nothing more than his (deeper than before) voice accompanied by bells. His chronicling of the story revises the official history and talks about clones and conspiracy theories, too! The aforementioned liner notes, written in all capital letters, are pretty difficult to read but tell Grudzien's story, and one of the things that I think makes this so strange is that Grudzien is a New York City guy through and through, despite the Nashville/Bakersfield influence on his music. Given that Merle Haggard died last weekend, it's interesting to think about the whole sense of identity in country music; Haggard played his cards when it suited him but is mostly remembered as a right-wing or even reactionary figure against the counterculture (though it's of course more complicated than that, sorta like, say, Neil Young). Grudzien seems like he's from another planet, and maybe he was -- he was a total outsider in every way, not just because of his sexuality, and you could argue that country music represented a true freedom to him, and his obscure private-press rendition of it captures a genuine essence that the commercial products only pretended at. Though I hesitate to ever call one form of art/music genuine and another not; what I mean is that Grudzien, who even after this gorgeous double-LP reissue remains super obscure, represents the untold story of 1970s counterculture. Not that The Unicorn necessarily stands alongside any traditional country or underground gay art music of the time - it's just a singular creature, and shaped a bit like a unicorn.

Gordy Horn ‎- 'The Glue That Holds The Kids Together' (What The...?)

Four tracks spanning five years of Gordy Horn, a chaotic Cincinnati ensemble that has a bit of a kitchen-sink 'anything goes' approach to sound and membership, yet anchored by Scott Hisey and Tim Schwallie. These four tracks have a vaguely jazzy/swing feel to them, but the headscratchers is 'Aimee's Dream' (the earliest cut, from 2000) which exists in its own singularity entirely. This has a bizarrely sung female vocal line over a hypnotic string part (a harp!), but it sounds more like the outtake of a video made for some workplace seminar than any sort of identifiable art-rock tradition. It's mesmerising and unsettling, yet somehow still feels logical with the other three tracks. Two of them involve Clayton Gunnells, formerly of Funkadelic circa America Eats Its Young, which makes this an odd crossover with What The...? label head C. Spencer Yeh, who appears on 'Put the Rascal in the Pudding', contributing some of his distinct violin playing circa the era (2003). The horn is in Gordy Horn, not that explicitly in terms of there being actual horns (though there is sax and trumpet) but just feeling like this is from the free jazz lineage. But this reminds me more of parts of Smegma's Glamour Girl 1941 than anything from ESP-disk; it's an outsider aesthetic, for sure, as well as the sense that anything could be possible. One-sided LPs are sometimes frustrating; these four tracks fill out a side nicely, but why not more? Given that Gordy Horn has been active forever, one thinks there could have been more selected, though maybe economical concerns limited this to one-side. Their released discography is pretty sparse besides this and a tape set, on Yeh's other label Dronedisco, suggesting that maybe they were recorded less than one expected. In nearby Louisville there's a band called Sapat that I think is rather similar - a long-running institution, anchored by a few key members, that have had oodles of weirdos and freaks passing in and out of, and rarely recorded (or rather, those recordings rarely massaged into actual releases). Not sure if the Horn is still active these days but I would love to hear more.

Paul Flaherty - 'Aria Nativa' (Family Vineyard)

Another solo saxophone record I must try to write about both intelligently and subjectively. I was just talking with someone who mentioned a solo saxophone 7" release by some current artist (I forget who) and we were remarking on how that's actually the perfect format for solo sax. Though I've already weighed in quite positively on a few such longplayers in these pages (David Boykin, Hamiet Bluiett) and we're only up to the F's. Aria Nativa has the live audience that Last Eyes lacked, though they are quiet and attentive, leading me to only surmise the energy they must be fueling; it's like listening to something invisible and possibly a cultural construct. But maybe that's one of the beautiful things about music - that an audience can generate an undeniable effect on a performer, and that relationship is symbiotic - yet it's not scientifically measurable. I dunno, maybe the crowd noise is fake like some live records do, but I'm going to buy into the idea that this is a unique contract between Flaherty and audience, documented on wax forever by the Family Vineyard label. Flaherty's warm as blood here, letting the circular note patterns attain their overtones which build into something inviting, yet still challenging. When they eventually constrain themselves into dying shrieks (such as at the end of Side 1, on the short 'I Don't Live Here Antymore' piece), there's a sense of resignation. Maybe the tone is set by Ken DelPonte's poem, 'No More America', which plasters the back cover of this record, a 5 part revisiting of the turbulent late 60s (though copyrighted in 2008). He wouldn't have included this were it not meant to relate to what he was trying to express, and the longer piece at the start of side 2 reflects the most onto the history of "jazz", meaning there's some identifiable swing and blues residue. It's faint, but it's there; this couldn't be mistaken for having emerged from any other tradition, as extreme and attenuated as it might seem. But this is the jazz of Shepp, Ayler and Sanders; a jazz built on the same late-60s consciousness change that DelPonte's poem reflects. This is forty years later but the fire is still burning, and it seems (at the moment) that there's still something to say.

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.

Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra Of Excited Strings ‎– 'Nodal Excitation' (India Navigation)

A few months ago I had my ears cleaned out. I thought I had damaged my left ear after seeing a Neil Young & Crazy Horse cover band in a too-small bar, but it turned out to have nothing to do with that - I just had so much wax impacted in my ear canals that things were blocked. The moment of discovery, when the wax is removed (which looked like a dog turd from each ear) is a sonic rebirth. I immediately became aware of sounds I had not perceived for who-knows-how long. Instantly I heard static, crackling around everywhere; the sound of the fluorescent ceiling lamps in the doctor's office; the presence (if not actual sound) of the blood and sinus fluids in my own head. It was among the most psychedelic moments I've ever experienced. I'm glad this happened before I got to the D's here, because Nodal Excitation (like most of Dreyblatt's work) is best enjoyed when you can really perceive the details - otherwise it just sounds like one string being plucked for 40 minutes. I'll make a rare statement here - I used to have the Dexter's Cigar CD reissue of this, which I dumped when I found the vinyl. (I'll never pass up India Navigation originals, who would?) But listening today, with a cup of tea in a dark room, seated lotus style, I wonder if the more clear sonic frequencies in the high register of a CD might be preferable to this pressing. Admittedly, when the deeper sounds cut in (on the second movement of the first side), the vinyl's bass response give it an attack which is just glorious. But the highs are where it's at - the nodes being excited, if you will - and I fear I might be selling it short by listening to this 30 year old slab of wax, which is of course not crystalline. Or maybe this is just the limitation of my shitty amplifier and phono preamp (donations accepted to buy me a new one! Comment below if you want to be my sugar daddy/mommy). But the shifting overtones, fighting against the attack of the staccato strings, are where Dreyblatt works his magic. This is minimalism done right, but there might be deeper questions to investigate about what it means. What is the expressive, human statement of Dreyblatt's compositions? What makes this music, and not sound art? The act of listening, of course, is fundamentally human, and I am truly moved by a sense of wonder and amazement when I listen to Nodal Excitation. But how much of this is from Dreyblatt's hand, and how much is from the context I bring myself to the music? When I get back to Elbow Cinderblock we'll hear some more sides of Dreyblatt, and return to these questions. For now I can enjoy the vinyl's surface noise, dancing around the piano-wire plucks, creating a warm envelope.

Double Leopards - 'Halve Maen' (Eclipse)

We're back after a hiatus where we listened to no sound at all - a self-imposed anechoic chamber which means Halve Maen, where we left off, sounds like the most overwhelming and powerful sound of all (after the lack). The title must be Old English, or something, and the artwork is perfect to support the dark, cavernous sounds inside. This is primitive but not simple; a very careful, mature experimental field that builds on the experiments of the last album, adding some (dare I say?) polish to the proceedings. 'Druid Spectre' uses a piano to create something probing, beautiful in texture and tempo. The second side's long 'A Hemisphere in Your Hair' fulfills the promise of a new age; it moves, enveloping air like a cloud, not eschewing structure but rather jogging alongside it. The drums that come in at the end are like a wakeup call. Double Leopards might never transcend Halve Maen's intimacy; even the noisier tracks on the second record ('The Forest Outlaws' is a beacon of light towards the dirty 00s, a decade they would conquer, without trying) feel like they are made close to the heart, close to the ears. There's a constant folding at play - a representation of sound that is wet, layered, and unraveling all at once. The tools may be simple or may be complex - it's not relevant. It's hyperbole, perhaps, to say the promise of Pebble is fulfilled here, especially as they followed this with further explorations and more great records. But this is a masterful summation of the Double Leopards sound, at least their early sound, and records like this make me still love the sound recording object as art form.

The Cherry Blossoms (Apostasy / Black Velvet Fuckere / Breaking World/ Consanguineous / Hank the Herald Angel)

I suppose we should just thank heavens that this LP finally saw release, even if it took years of effort and the collaborative talents of FIVE different record labels. To anyone who has seen the Cherry Blossoms in person (I count myself among those lucky enough), then my frustration is inevitable. How can one capture the bohemian circus that is a Cherry Blossoms live show, using merely the technology of stereo microphones and audio mastering/reproduction? It must fail, not because the Cherry Blossoms are some sort of sonic experimentation that defies the LP format, but cause they are too rambunctious and multi-faceted to be reduced to a mere "band". I mean, they have a tap dancer! (whose contributions are audible here, I suppose, but really the kind of thing you see on the side of the stage while the rest of this messy melée unfolds). The twelve songs on this LP are pretty much the same recordings that have been kicking around forever, mostly live recordings of disappointing fidelity (particularly on 'A Love of My Own', where it's hard to believe they couldn't get a better quality recording). There's a lot of room echo, and while Peggy Snow's voice is still angelic, one must strain to hear the washboard, banjo, tambourines and who-knows-what-else in the margins. Because it's the margins that matter here. When I saw the Cherry Blossoms six years ago in a old Louisville church, I became convinced I was seeing the reincarnation of the Fugs. This was a true celebration of an American anti-current, with members spanning all ages and offerings that went beyond mere music. I was enthralled and entertained; this was the greatest band I've ever seen, and they could barley get through their own songs! Now, the album format removes the spectacle; that first time I saw them, they never really started a song as much as stumbled into it, the melodies and vocals emerging from a morass of fucking about, spontaneously read poetry, and concurrent conversations. Despite the inevitable disappointment of The Cherry Blossoms (or should I say the impossibility) -- I love this album. The only band members pictured on the sleeve are lead voices Peggy Snow and John Allingham, and their individual contributions showcase both of their songwriting styles. Snow's 'Mighty Misissippi' begins the record, showing her tendency for lyrical landscapes and beautifully unfolding melodies. Allingham's tunes are nervous, repetitive, and simplistic, delivered with the same wide-eyed passion he spouts in person. 'Rockin' Rocket Ship' and 'Rocks and Stones' are practically Jad Fair-like in their monotony, yet strangely compelling; by the time I saw them for the second time, after letting this album seep into my brain, I was so pumped up to hear 'Rocks and Stones' that I practically started moshing. Allingham, drummer Chris Davis, and other member Chuck (who doesn't appear to be credited here) moonlight as the utterly brilliant band the Arizona Drains, and you can hear the same stuck-in-a-loop logic in Allingham's Cherry Blossoms songs (the Internet uncovers little evidence to suggest that they still exist, which is tragic.) It's the few chances where Snow and Allingham combine songwriting talents that the Cherry Blossoms manage to create something transcendent, even despite the unsatisfying recording. 'Golden Windows' is a good time, 'Amazing Stars' moreso; but then, 'The Wind Did Blow' knocks it out of the park -- it is a spellbinding piece of magic, the Cherry Blossoms finest moment. Other highlights include a skiffle band cover version of BÖC's 'Godzilla' that is discordant and amusing (driven by kazoo, of course) and 'The Rising Tide', a chilling, beautiful coda. I have come to accept that this is all we'll ever get; I'll probably never again experience their madness -- their website hasn't been updated since 2001! So this is another great tragedy of American art, or maybe the furthest thing from a tragedy -- just a reminder that we don't need to document everything. I'm re-inspired just thinking about that first live show, an unforgettable ephemeral moment. And who knows, maybe something else will surface one day.

Burning Star Core - 'Papercuts Theater' (No Quarter)

We've at long last reached the end of our Burning Star Core gauntlet, though if we were reviewing unspined CDrs we'd be here far longer. Look for Withholding Antiseptic Utilitarian Dental Inducers, our CDr blog, starting in 2013 after we get through everything else. But in the meantime we have this beautiful gatefold double LP of live material, where Yeh has taken the approach of collaging 11 years of various recordings together into four even sides. It's a 66-minute long behemoth that reminds me a bit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Live in Mandel Hall record from '71, at least in size, construction and density. Or maybe Metal Machine Music because that's also four evenly-split 16.5 minute sides that resist description. The bulk of the credits are the core Burning Star Core players since 1997 - Yeh, Trevor Tremaine, Mike Shiflet, Robert Beatty, Jeremy Lesniak and John Rich. There's some other notable guests whose contributions are indicated, but for the main players, they're anywhere and everywhere. Because everything blends together it's hard to tell what comes from when, but Yeh's assembled this with a sure hand, without any obvious drops in sound quality or levels. You can jump in at any place and swim as long as you want, and the mastering and vinyl really bring to life the dense arrays of movement carried in these grooves. Which if you think about it, is a real feat since I'm sure a lot of this stuff was sourced from minidisc and/or cassette. There are certainly bits I witnessed live or have heard before on other CDr releases, but it's impossible to say as everything has been transformed into a monolithic juggernaut. That's not to say this is an impenetrable, solid edifice -- there are moments of extreme delicacy, with swirling violins, spacious echoes and cavernous soundpits anchored by thundering rhythms. I'm not sure if this is a case of the sum being more than its parts or vice-versa, since I didn't hear all of the little bits that made this patchwork. If you think of Burning Star Core live as a certain thing, which this record clearly presents it as, then it makes sense to do it this way - it's an everexpanding sea of sound organisation, with various collaborators all anchoring around Yeh's own vision. There's glimpses of the rhythms we've heard on Operator Dead or the textural scrapings of Very Heart of the World, and though the vocal component is downplayed (or just buried), it's hard to mistake this music for anything else.