Averse Sefira – Battle’s Clarion

Went to the used store the other day to trade garbage for credit with the idea of grabbing a few DVDs. After looking through their selection and deciding there wasn’t anything I really wanted, I headed straight back to the used metal section and began skimming for evil. And then the new metal section, where I found a new version (with a video I haven’t watched yet) of this American (Texan I believe) black metal trio’s debut album. The concept lyrically is like someone blew up the kaballah (The Age of Geburah) and slapped a bunch of Enochian symbols over it. Two of the members look like they could have walked right out of Immortal. Musically they’re of great interest as they are one of the more purer black metal groups out there (especially in the bible belt) and created music with very dark and dissonant melodic lines, eschewing anything consonantly melodic in the same way a lot of avant rock and RIO does. While it doesn’t have the kind of roller coaster death metal energy I like, it’s still a pretty strong debut and I’m quite curious about their more recent material.

Odious Mortem – Cryptic Implosion

Probably one of the most intense and technical death metal albums I’ve ever heard in my life and as such almost impossible to comprehend in a first listen as this group spits riffs and blastbeats out like they were cramming two hours into 35 minutes. Amazingly enough, I also got the impression a lot of this was pretty well written in that through all this flying technicolor, certain riffs and patterns stood out as islands in the midst of chaos. The booklet reveals a bit more under its rather fantastic (especially for the genre) cover in the liner notes where the members list everything from all the usual death metal associates to bands like King Crimson, so you know where their hearts lie. Let’s hope a few more are in store before their ages get the best of them. Very impressive.

Pig Destroyer – Phantom Limb

Another new death metal (well death/grind really) album with a great cover, what is this world coming to? Pig Destroyer, however, are nearly sociopathic in terms of lyrical content, which is often as violent as their music. Perhaps the main thing about this group always stands out to me, they go by in such a fast blur that I’m usually left feeling that all the songs sound the same. But at the very least, this is at least as energetic and intense as anything they’ve put out so far.

Machin – Moi, Je Suis un Folkeux
Machin – Tout Folkant

In the 90s I wigged on both Gwendal and Malicorne and began a so-many-month jaunt trying to check out a bunch of French (usually Breton) folk. My experiences ended pretty quickly as most of what I turned up tended to be very straight folk, rather than folk-rock or something a little more experimental or genre-crunching like the two aforementioned bands could be. Every once in a while a gem would show up, such as the second Gwerz album. Machin was one of the bands I was undecided on and I don’t quite remember coming at them as a folk band, I seem to remember at least one musician overlap with the progressive rock group Wurtemburg.

These two albums actually are fairly different and I listened to them in reverse chronological order. Tout Folkant is a pretty jaunty and rather typical folk album, not something you’d be likely to find on a label like Hexagone or Ballon Noir. Sometimes it’s so goofy, I almost self consciously turned down the volume. Folkeux, on the other hand, would have made a perfect addition to Hexagone, as it’s much more of a folk/progressive rock crossover with lots of electronic accompaniment, particularly synthesizers. The jauntiness is still there on a couple tracks, but I was kind of surprised at how inventive some of this is in the style and raised it up a point or two to a 9. Not sure it’s any better than that.

Grateful Dead – Dick’s Picks Vol. 15  Englishtown, NJ 9/3/77

For some reason I’ve been listening to a lot of 77-78 Dead of late and this is probably the standout of those shows. I believe this was the tour after a break needed after one of the band members was in an accident or something, but it seems to follow quite closely on the magic of May and June. Looks Like Rain, Eyes of the World, Estimated Prophet, the big disc 3 suite and finale Terrapin Station are all very strong.

It’s been a few years since I saw Izz at ProgWest, and the band is much improved, yet there is still nothing here requiring two drummers. Most of the time they are simply playing the same thing together, not complimenting one another. Ore one is taking a break (playing a shaker or something) while the other is drumming. Better utilization of the two chick singers, though, and the new songs are far more interesting.

Then Nebelnest came on and just put me into a friggin’ trance. Undescribable. Five guys on stage just kicking my ass, and I loved every minute of it. These guys need to just get in a van and start going club to club across the country, like UJD used to. When regular people (meaning non-proggy-proggers) see this band, they will be taken by them. They are wasting their time at prog festivals, where half the audience walks out on them.

Half the audience never even showed up for Bob Drake’s set, which was limited to only about 30 minutes to begin with, and another half walked out before it was over, sadly. He was joined by a second guy playing bass, 2nd guitar and harmony vocals, and occasionally by Dave Kerman (who slept on his drum kit, pillow and all, on all the songs he didn’t play on). They worked through a number of songs in Drake’s catalog, in that rough-edged style that is his. The singer from Red Masque and keyboard player from Nebelnest made brief appearances also. Drake’s set was plain-old fun, but since proggy-proggers don’t know how to have fun, the bulk of the folks there didn’t know what to make of it. After all, there were no mellotrons or 30 minute bombastic epics.

Magenta started playing. I never even went in, instead choosing to hang out in the lobby talking with Tony Spada and Paul Whitehead. I saw this band in Baja a couple years ago, once was enough. My two friends I’m traveling with did, but they had both walked out well before the end of the second song, so we went to dinner and drank a bunch of draft beer at the pub.

Last up was Hawkwind. Wasn’t sure what to expect, having only seen the Nik Turner/Simon House “Space Ritual” version from seven years or so back. Tonight it was Brock and three other guys (not sure exactly who, I’m too bloody cheap to buy a program) but with all the visuals and lasers and lights, this set was surprisingly engaging. Again, I found myself in a trance for about the first 30 minutes or so. People started leaving in droves (I could almost hear them thinking “magenta was so much better than these guys. this isn’t prog…”). There was one very annoying thing in Hawkwind’s set – wasn’t their fault, but there was a screwed up PA that was making this loud clicking sound. They finally got it fixed midway through the main set, and all was well for the remainder of our journey through space. Nice long encore too!

There’s nothing quite like live music, but these festivals are far from the ideal way to take it in. One Shot, perhaps the most intense band of the evening, was only given a friggin’ 30 minute set. What’s with that (other than the people who run NEARfest are a bunch of complete musical retards). That said, these guys certainly met and exceeded my expectations. I went into a trance midway through the first piece and stayed there for the rest of the set.

Secret Oyster played for a bit longer, maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Guitarist, Sax player and drummer are original members, the bassist is from Burning Red Ivanhoe, and the keyboardist looked like a 18 year old kid but was positively amazing and didn’t miss a single note. For a band that hadn’t played together in about 30 years (this is only their 5th gig since the reunion) they sound mighty tight, though if one knows their albums there weren’t any real surprises, other than the live aspect and a few jams (although given their set length, they couldn’t stretch out too much).

Holdsworth’s set is pretty much what I expected, although Chad Wackerman’s presence ratchets the energy up a level… As usual Holdsworth pretty much played the entire set with the same effects gizmos and never got out of his comfort box. Bassist Jimmy Johnson turned in a few great solos, and the choice of material seemed to work well (a couple pieces recognized from Road Games era).

GAA – Auf der Bahn Zum Uranus

For Expose magazine, I did an article on the Garden of Delights label a while back that covered the first twenty or thirty of their releases at the time, including some unreleased music by this German group GAA, that turned out to be one of the worst things I’d ever heard. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go back and revisit the band’s original album. GAA are somewhat typical of a number of groups that got their inspiration from the beat and pop of the 60s, while attempting to transfer to a more progressive or psychedelic mode, and actually sound like a mix of both, meaning you’ll get some rather decent underground German psychy guitar stuff, but mixed with some really bad faux 60s pop pieces as if they combined some of those early Who albums with German Oak. It all ends up being barely mentionable, and very 8ish overall, that high mostly because I tend to like the guitary stuff by style.

Iconoclasta – Adolescencia Cronica

In the early 90s, the reissue of the first two Iconoclasta albums on Art Sublime was well talked about and deservedly so, so it’s strange that they seem to have fallen off of most maps by now, but that may be more an indication of the decline of the band than their essential early work. At the time Iconoclasta were a fairly original symphonic progressive, charmingly naive in terms of talent and instrumental tone, but audacious enough to create a few truly excellent releases that weren’t instantly comparable to anyone else. Adolescencia Cronica may have been the first album released after this initial peak period (although I’ve never been particularly fond of the EP Suite Mexicana), the first one that feels like something magical has left the building and I’m never quite sure what it is. It may be the production as Iconoclasta sound even thinner tonally than they did on their first three albums. The whispy thin tones on all the instruments prevent it from having much of an impact, especially with music as intricate and involved as Iconoclasta’s and as I type this, I’m thinking the music is less symphonic and structurally a little closer to fusion, something that would bear out even more over later albums. I’ve listened to this at times in the past and thought it quite good, but the last couple have made me feel this is a 9 in just about every way. Maybe they’ll do a Banco and rerecord some of these mid period albums some day. I’d love to hear some of this stuff with better production values.

Epidermis – Genius of Original Force

Lots of albums are touted out as being derivative of one band, but few deserve it more than this Epidermis album, a clone of Gentle Giant if there every was one. In fact this got tremendous hype when I was first looking into rarer prog stuff, but it’s an album that just doesn’t hold up, an opinion I have possibly because I tend to consider most of the original GG canon as very patchy from album to album. But Genius doesn’t even really have a lot of good spots and there’s a feeling the musicians weened themselves on GG rather than their influences and thus a lot of swing and eclecticism seems absent. About the only parts of interest is the strange concept and weird titles, often sung in Gentle Giant-like harmonies and styles.

Traffic Sound – Tibet’s Suzettes (aka Traffic Sound) – Peru 1970

Can you say: “Ahhh, YES!”… ? You will, easily, after a taste of this calculated trip down lysergia lane – bumping down the road of certain sometime pre-Canterburian realms on another faraway continent fully intermingled with several psychedelic guns set on “stun.” Reverb, delectably melodious vocals (with periodic harmonizing), zoot flute, acid guitar lines, rumbling syncopation, saxophone squalls, chugging organ, and that about says it all. Fills and solidly bubbling bass get the listener’s shoulders on a zig-zag course to mesmerized genuflection. What’s missing? Nothing. Exactly why don’t you have this yet? Because you don’t know that if you have not grit your teeth to this, all you have is done is begun to realize that you’ve been gumming it.

Outcome:

Chugging, just get some.
You could not be disappointed, not in this lifetime, on this particular planet.

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::13/15 – A Classic.::

Tarkus – Peru 1972

How to begin? And where to end up? This album is a smattering of heaviness in a tube of multicolored lights. The fair portion of this album would give early Black Sabbath a run for it’s candles in its ability to create a brooding and heady atmosphere of roughhouse bass spilling out all over the place where your brain gets tumbled into mushpie. Yet, be certain to not get confused, this is no one-trick Tarkus. Their weighty excursions are balanced with segues of dreamy psychedelia along the lines of the acid-folk axis. The last track takes this tack for its duration. Pretty strange (but somehow strangely apropos) to have such a brazenly woozy disposition also readily dappled in pixie dust as well. Mind you, the major portion of the record will make you smash your face into your dash, keyboard, coffee table, or whatever else is in front of you.. and you will thank them for it – the pleasure and joy in being able to headbang and play air-guitar from Mars all over your couched glory because you are one of the few, the proud, the elite ones that know what the heck Tarkus is (originally pressed in a Peruvian run of 50!) and like the fact that people hear it and immediately say: “Yo! What’s hairy spider with a mole is this!?!?” It is that arresting.

Outcome:

Well-deserved legend, has the ultimate underground vibe. More some people’s bag than others – it just depends on whether you say paper or plastic at the grocery store, or both, depending on the contents. Welcome to the land of brow-furrowed feigned screaming into your mirror, head-jabbing and wondering if you should really keep racing to the stereo to keep turning it up and replaying this amphetamine-fueled section, or that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and: DAMN, I think I’m going to snap the back of this chair if I keep bobbing back and forth on it, wiggling silly fingers in front of my belly – like I could even keep up! Whoah, catch your breath.. do it again!

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::12/15 – Borderline Classic::

Socrates Drank the Conium – Greece 1972

The debut. A genesis of Greek rock-in-sounds. Same applies as below, so above. Heavy/hot. This one is better than that one. . .

Outcome:

Solid, good, classic sound – some effects, high-energy, rolling and tumbling, definitively ROCKING!

- ~ -

::11/15 – Excellent::

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Socrates Drank the Conium – Taste of Conium – Greece 1972

Anywhere you read on this bad boy, the ripping 13-minute cover of ‘Satisfaction’ is bound to come up, well, simply because it is a shredder of a long-turning jam based on that composition. The album is rock, through and through, recorded cleanly and with enough blues bars in there on side two to light up the dark and seedy corners off of late 60′s L.A. Sunset Strip. It is an amazing thing to notice how crisp and clean the production is on this heavy slab artifact. A bit of gritty guitar comes in and out of the phases passing through – it’s fuzzy, but not fuzz guitar. In some ways, the album is too ‘straight-ahead’ to be called psychedelic, except in the loosest sense of the descriptor. For fans of the classic rock bands that began to define an era: The Stones, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and their ilk; were they from the UK or US, they would have been contenders right along with them, they’re that good. Big in the motherland, one of the top billers back in the Grecian heyday of the early 70′s. Exotic, no. In your face, yes.

Outcome:

Excellent execution, clean values over a dirty backdrop, rock-n-roll for a soul that feels.

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::10/15 – Very Good::
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Release/reissue notes – I have the new Anazitisi deluxe vinyl reissues of these and they area a beautiful package, to be sure, 180gm. vinyl, laminated covers, poster, inserts.. AND each has a killer 7-inch release, the sides of which, are even better than the album cuts!

Epitaph – s/t. 1971. It wasn’t that long ago, I reunited with this old Krautrock gem, originally released on the Polydor label. I stated late last year: “First song was the sort of breezy rural rock that made “Outside the Law” such a drag. But after that, Epitaph shows a strong progressive side, with plenty of complex structures to go with those guitar solos. And quite a bit of mellotron for a Kraut group.”. Shortly thereafter, I was pleased to find out that Universal had done a digi-pak re-master, with a nice history and 5 excellent bonus tracks. And now I have it here. I even take back what I said about the first song above, as it rocks harder than implied. Unfortunately, Epitaph weren’t able to repeat the quality found on their debut, though “Stop, Look and Listen” is still worth checking out. The group has actually reformed a number of times and are still active. They long ago became a run of the mill hard rock group, so I don’t hold out any hope for a return to their 1971 creativeness. Somehow I doubt the mellotron was theirs….

Abacus – s/t. 1971. Like Epitaph above, Abacus were another 1971 discovery for the Polydor label. Here you can find a lot of parallels to another quirky German band: Nine Days Wonder. Like NDW’s debut, this album is radically progressive, covering anywhere from Frank Zappa’s more complex works to any number of UK outfits. The vocalist is from England, and he writes much of the material, so this album doesn’t sound Krautrock at all. I’d only heard the band’s last 1970s work “Midway” (1973) and it was pretty horrendous. I’ll try their 2nd effort “Everything You Need”, but I’ve been told it’s quite a departure from the debut – and not in a good way (another similarity with Nine Days Wonder). As far as I know, Universal hasn’t reissued this one yet, and only bootlegs exist.

Jonas Hellborg/Shawn Lane with Felix Sabal – Lecco – Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, Warsaw, Poland 6/19/98 (DVD)

I puzzled over a number of things in watching this performance, particularly the sorts of judgements that hang over this style of music. Is it fusion or jazz-rock? Sometimes I wonder, most of the time bands like this just sound like extremely excellent musicians playing melodic rock music. However, in watching Jonas Hellborg play, it struck me that he seemed rather disengaged with what he was playing, having almost the same attitude and facial expressions the entire show. So in a way it feels like the “wank” thing is less a matter of the talent of the musicians but a seeming (at least to the audience – or just me) lack of engagement emotionally with what is being played. Lane doesn’t seem quite as affected by this and definitely seems to be moved at times, but after a good 45 minutes of this I was really worn out by a seeming lack of dynamics and feeling in the set. But again, perhaps it’s a certain set of aesthetics that inform my opinion of it and more on that in a sec…

Black Sabbath – Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, Santa Monica 9/75 (DVD) 

Assuming you’re a Sabs fan, how could this not be very cool? It’s a pretty short performance, I think well within half an hour but they perform material from post Vol. 4 albums and that doesn’t seem to be something as frequently documented as the endless trotting out of Paranoid classics (they do that too, just not as much). I watched it with a friend who seemed to be a bit bothered by the mix, although it was sort of hard to place why it was so, I almost thought it could have been too clean. But overall, this is the band still well within their prime and all I could think of is why don’t these guys get the musicianship kudos they deserve? Top notch, naturally.

Fates Warning – Disconnected

The perfect place where personal aesthetics come up and basically interfere for me, I don’t think all the personal reprogramming in the world is going to get me to like this style of music, despite what is a number of impressive facets from the songwriting to the musicianship. But for some reason the clean vocals/prog metal style just really reminds me of the 80s and hair metal, fans blowing, high concepts, big drama, all the sorts of aspects that just make me cringe. With that said, I do find this band breathes more, than, say, Dream Theater, and that they do tend to reign in the more excessive aspects of the style, which probably puts them close to the top for this style, especially when this isn’t an early canon sort of album. So basically my objective side is nodding and appreciative, while my subjective side is out at the barbers buying some sort of hair trimmer.