The Cosmic Jokers (Kozmiche Musik)

Focused, no; nor are they even a real band! Actually this was a manipulating ploy by a producer to get a bunch of famous Kraut dudes super high and make 'em jam - and then release it as a "super group" and laugh all the way to the bank. What came out was majestic - two side-long jams, of plodding, slowly building guitar epics, washes of synth, occasional vocals, and the haziest atmosphere you could imagine. It's accidentally a true classic, and I think the musicians ended up suing the shit out of this guy, as they should have, but without really failing to thwart the endless stream of reissues. 'Galactic Joke' is the first one, and it's mostly instrumental apart from some muttering at the end. The pitter-patter of the drums sound pretty solid, and on this these Ash Ra members eek out their epic construction. Focused, no, but there's some higher power that prevents more discordant urges from taking over. On the flipside, 'Cosmic Joy' begins on a Popul Vuh vibe, but then clouds approach quickly. Over twenty minutes, the Jokers sketch out another slow, unfolding exploration of murky sonic space, this one less rhythmic and more textural. It climaxes into a tribal fury for brief moments, then pulls back and allows dissonant guitars to come in. The presence and fidelity is distant, obscure; when piercing guitar notes flicker around the edges, it's never close enough to touch. Of course we now know they were just some super high dudes in a (presumably very smoky) room dicking around, but dicking about with their brainwaves locked together due to the shared experience of whatever they ingested. I feel sluggish, yet opened to something, just by listening to it. These are jokers more in a Hagbard Celine way than Monty Python, if you know what I mean; but as the group Krautjams go, this is definitive and masterful, maybe even too much so (for while I do enjoy this, I'll take the weirder and fruitier songforms over the space jams 7 times out of 10).

David Bowie - 'Lodger' (RCA)

Lodger's a weird one because it's not actually that weird; it's considered part of a trilogy with Low and "Heroes" but it's not as dense and avoids the extended synth instrumentals. But there's something simultaneously wooly and rusty about Lodger which is why I've always had a soft spot for it. None of the songs are really catchy enough to be hit singles, and I guess the charts felt this way too. There's a turn towards multiculturalism, such as 'Yassassin' and 'African Night Flight', so this feels nothing like the concrete Berlin walls of Low. Maybe more like a Peter Kubelka film! But motion is the name of the game - 'Move On' and 'Red Sails' grip onto the way the world was becoming smaller at the end of the century. There's something very temporary about the whole thing - the band never gels, the lyrics suggest there's not going to be much happening tomorrow and the album is called Lodger, after all. The post-apocalypticism is most evident on the opener, 'Fantastic Voyage', but I think this track is brilliant because it sounds like it could be on John Cale's Paris 1919 album. So even though we're talking about bombs dropping, time unraveling backwards, etc. it's still has that feeling of sipping a cup of tea and staring out the window at the English countryside. I think Lodger is also interesting because even though it's the most pop-oriented of the trilogy in terms of construction, it's really hard to interface with. Adrian Belew plays guitar all over it and there's a few laser beams poking through the ozone layer, but generally George Murray's farty bass and Carlos Alomar's rhythm guitar keep things relatively contained. There's a lot of creaking in the edges; Eno's presence is so well-integrated that it's possible to ignore him. 'Red Money' is a great closing track that still escapes my brain as soon as it's heard; this is the detached, difficult Bowie, the one from The Man Who Fell to Earth. I've always felt like I never dedicated myself enough to Lodger, merely proclaiming it as "great" and then filing it away before I really could creep into the cracks. The distinct feeling that maybe there's nothing on the other side of the artifice should be troubling, but instead it's where the pleasure lies.

The Blue Öyster Cult - 'Tyranny and Mutation' (Columbia)

Gawlik's awesome artwork has taken on a new alien dimension here, accentuated by two pink moons (though this predates Dhalgren). Architecture is still the focal point of his drawing, but architecture perhaps without purpose, unlike the songs themselves. Things crunch a little harder here and any remaining psychedelia from the Stalk-Forrest hangover is almost totally jettisoned (though I can still hear a bit on 'Teen Archer'). 'The Red and the Black' is a great tune for testing out new stereo equipment, cause the louder you play it the more shaking and stirring you can here. It's crazy that such a fiery bit of boogie-rock is actually about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and not Stendhal. This is the one the Minutemen covered, and they probably called Eric Bloom "E. Bloom" in 'History Lesson, pt 2' because of the way all monikers are abbreviated here. I would probably call this my favorite BÖC record, though it doesn't have anything resembling a hit or even a radio staple. '7 Screaming Diz-busters' more than makes up for that, on a balancing act between dark vibe rock and proto-metal. 'Baby Ice Dog', penned by Patti Smith, is maybe my least favorite song - I prefer the evil Ren-faire tinges on stuff like 'Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicktime Girl)'. Seriously, could anyone come up with better song titles? Well, 'OD'd on Life Itself' and 'Hot Rails to Hell' sound like something from a Saxon record, but they're good stompers as well. I feel like The Blue Öyster Cult (note the addition of the definite article!) took a step away from accessibility here and really made their masterpiece, though it's got such a strange/goofy dichotomy going on that I still don't completely grok it. To go back to the artwork one last time - the back cover reminds me of that crazy acid-burned Nintendo game, 3D Worldrunner; this is a pretty good soundtrack to crash into those columns, though I don't know if any powerups will pop out.