Jucifer – If Thine Enemy Hunger

Relapse are in a different universe I suppose, a few months ago I just got on their promo list after requesting to be on it when I wrote for Expose. It’s been a few years since I was there, so it’s kind of funny to be getting things now. Lotta tube pulling going on there. I forget where I put the first batch just now, but the second “batch” is this new album by the duo known as Jucifer, which is a female guitarist/vocalist and male drummer tandem. I’m immediately reminded of the Melvins with the slow sludgy pace and as I feared, with only two musicians there’s not a lot going on. I try to give everything a couple chances but in listing to this dreadfully tedious music, I knew probably from a few chords in that there wasn’t a lot of point to this ethereal vocals + crunchy bar chords + sludgy pace formula. I think there was a point in life when I really wanted to hear this sort of thing, but the window was swift and now I’m thinking you’ve got to have an entirely different set of musical and life aesthetics to appreciate something so atonal, slow and poorly played. And this is the better music on here, when they do decide to kick it up a notch, wow the vocals are icepicks to the ears.

Tirill – A Dance with the Shadows

The vocals on this album are of the tonality and pristine quality that gave me a similar buzz when Loituma and some of the other Northside groups started up, the feeling that it hardly mattered what was going on in the background if you had a siren like this in the fore. In fact sitting here a few days later I struggle to really qualify the music here because all I remember is being enchanted. It kinda pisses me off you know, if I’m supposed to have some sort of objectivity to an album like this, I need to be tied to a shipmast with wax stuck in my ears to make sure I don’t go plunging overboard. Because she’s like witchcraft and I feel a third listen is going to come after sailing on some ways and I’ll come to and won’t see the elementals in the rocks and trees anymore.

Indukti - S.U.S.A.R.

Let’s give a little shout out to one of the best new albums last year. I’ve taken a bit of a vacation from the ritual of buying too much music lately. Indukti seems to remain in rotation in a way that seems to defy all expectations. I’m the kinda guy that winces in pain when I see the Tool comparisons, even though I can’t deny them anymore, but if there’s Tool, there’s also Gong and this, perhaps, coincidental similarity gives the album a really spacey vibe. Even if they go at the riffs like they just got out of their teen years, the band manages to weave a sublime spell underneath. They’ve got my kind of kryptonite anyway, that way of playing with minor second intervals and slightly altered traditional scales that center droniningly around the 1 as if it was a mantra in motion.

Locanda Della Fate – Forse Le Lucciole Non Si Amano Piu
Locanda Della Fate – Live TV (?)

Floating around on internet is this lovely 33 (give or take) minute TV performance by a band that symbolically represents the swan song of the Italian 70s scene at least in terms of the major quality that came out of the country as a reply to British symphonic rock. I originally heard this band on a sampler cassette many years ago maybe days from when I finally got the CD and will always consider this one of the most gorgeously realized romantic albums ever created on the planet. I’m not usually one for foof or severe melodrama, but few albums in history have ever nailed the style as close as this sextet, a rare band that utilizes a dual guitar, dual keyboard format that strikes me as the closest successor to Banco del Mutuo Soccorso. I’ve had some experiences with Italian TV broadcasts to the point where I look for the lip synch when I see one, and for a few minutes I was convinced that was what I was seeing here. But despite the fact that the performances, give or take a nip or tuck, are almost flawlessly rendered, the betrayal of different mini-moog tones on the part of one keyboard and the stronger bass presence show that this was indeed the band live in the studio and in some ways you might call them a septet given the presence of the soundman out on stage. But wow, this was quite the artifact, reminding me that Sturgeon’s law is true even with foof, and that Locanda Delle Fate were probably one of the most accomplished, ornate, symphonic progressive rock bands that ever graced the globe. This video I played several times and it sent me running back from the album. Yeah, the penultimate song that profiles the guitarists isn’t the same caliber of the rest of the album, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever bump this from a Gnosis 15, it’s one of the greatest albums of all time, any style. Lame reunion album aside, there’s no way they could have followed this one up.

Duke Pearson – The Phantom

There’s this weird Runt Distributed San Francisco label called Water Records that seems to have no rhyme or reason to what they release in terms of genre, so it always seems like my kind of operation, jazz, early rock, pop, psychedelia, nuts what have ya. Some of the Blue Note things they’ve managed to reissue are pretty intriguing, including a couple Eddie Gale albums. This release features Bobby Hutcherson on it and the music reminds me of an alternate universe Herbie Mann with the flute and vibes, a style that relates a little to post-bop, a little to soul-jazz and a little to pop. It just simmers in a neat way through its length with Bobby often out in front. I’m not sure how much it’ll hold up over time but it delivers an atmosphere that’s worth the listen.