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.

Tim Buckley - 'Blue Afternoon' (Straight)

You can see there's been some gap since the last post, which is attributable to a holiday, but actually I've listened to Blue Afternoon about five times before being able to write about it - twice before the break and thrice since. Blue Afternoon is a 'sleeper' if there ever was one. Somber in tone, the avant-tendencies are stroked a bit further and one can't deny the Astral Weeks fuzz in the windscreen. Or maybe it's like if Happy Sad was just Sad Sad. A gentle guitar strum guides every song, but there's still some noodly bass and piano parts, and the occasional guitar flourish, like when Lee Underwood rips it up on 'So Lonely'. 'The River' is an epic in under six minutes, full of percussive swells, grand scenery and confident pain. 'The Train' takes us closer to 'Gypsy Woman' territory but that opening riffstrum is a classic rock gesture if I've ever heard it. I think the reason many of us are still interested in Tim Buckley in 2010 is just how far he pushed himself over a handful of albums. Things are so fluid here, the songwriting is freeform, there's jazzglue everywhere and its truly genre-defying. But you can go back to find more details every time. The wooly recording quality makes everything feel like it's from another time and of course his tragic death inflates the star. Maybe I've always been a halfassed fan of avant-garde music because it's most powerful to me when it combines some sort of forward-thinking whatthefuck innovation with something human that I can connect to. Pure experimentation can alienate me (sometimes) whereas using musical invention to extend human expression, well, fuck yeah, that has the emotional wallop I want. The crazy jamjazz breakdown about 3/4 through 'The Train' is almost out of place but when Buckley comes back in, wailing and gibberishing over extended dissonant jamming, something blows the hair out of my eyes (and it comes from the stereo speakers, readers). It's a weird contrast with the first half of the album, which are mopey yet beautiful songs, but it somehow feels cyclical, which is why I've listened to this 5 times now. Mine is a promo copy on Straight, with crystal-clear looking vinyl that somehow sounds crackly and dirty - maybe it's just a cheap promo pressing? Supposedly the material from this was recorded at the same time as Lorca and Starsailor's outer explorations so you can appreciate his sense of grouping. And now it's onto those....

Amon Düül - 'This is' (Metronome)

Source: Ross.

You ever wonder why Amon Düül split? I'll tell you the answer - "chops". Amon Düül II, which we'll get to soon, are total wizards with their instruments. I mean, it ain't King Crimson but it ain't the Ramones either. But you listen to this one, and it makes the Ramones look like Yngvie. I'm never one to fellate musicians for their technical ability, and in fact, it's the utter lack of it that makes this record interesting and compelling. The first track is the quintessential hippy strumjam. It goes on and on and on, sounding like a loop of a jam band being filtered through a kazoo. It shifts only so slightly, but mostly stayed locked to it's (somewhat irregular) ryhthm. When the track finally ends (it's hard to tell since the bands aren't clearly marked on the vinyl) it switches to a Teutonic guitar riff for a few moments before the familiar heavy rhythm lurches back into place. Bonehead German hippies - whose fashion on the sleeve make them look more like a biker gang, membership restricted to te back rows of the classroom. Stereo effects galore, mangled vocals, and megathick warm fuzz make a pretty sick blanket to picnic on. Side two "varies" a bit: the pieces open up and changes are actually recognizable. The vocals and synths sound haphazard, if not random, though the songs still don't go anywhere. At the very end we get some heavy tape manipulations overtop of a somewhat more frantic strum; it's fucking amazing and meatheaded and trippy, and unfortunately just too short. I did some Internet "research" to discover that this is the same album usually called Psychedelic Underground, just repackaged/retitled. That is a better title because it really sounds underground, as in covered in dirt and never seeing any sunlight. This (and the two subsequent records) all came from one big jam in '68, supposedly. I like how the songwriting credits on every track are all 'Amon Düül/Amon Düül' - lyrics and music?