diminished men

diminished men - shadow instrumentals lp (abduction, 2009)

Seattles Diminished Men present a full-length record for the Abduction label. This LP is a limited edition of 500 copies and comes pressed on 180 gram vinyl. "If current instrumental music was always as majestic and compelling as this, Id hang up my retro-Italian soundtrack collectors boots for good. From the explosive drums rolls on the opening track, the only cover on the record, "LAppel du Vere," from Roman Polanskis The Tenant (music by Philippe Sarde), to the darkly exotic finale, "A Housewifes Dram," this album is a superbly crafted mosaic of whip-cracking vengeance, speak-easy hallucinations and haunted geography. Besides the Italian-Western overtones, the carnival-esque freakshow backdrops, Korshid-Egyptian guitar passages, and flipped-out electronic space-psych, are perhaps the best surf-inspired tracks Ive heard in years. Its spine-chilling how producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Eyvind Kang, Sun City Girls, Secret Chiefs 3, Six Organs Of Admittance, Wayne Horvitz, Matt Chamberlain, Grails, Wolves In The Throne Room, etc.) managed to make this record the ultimate mid-60s surf-vampire-Western revival soundtrack. Elements of Joe Meeks best Moontrekkers productions cross with a dash of Badalamenti murder blues-drama, setting the stage for Steve Schmitts cobra-twilight guitar work and the outlaw drums of Dave Abramson to leave their indelible stains across this 41-minute epic journey." - Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls).

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helena espvall & masaki batoh

helena espvall & masaki batoh - overloaded ark (drag city, 2009)

A sequel to last year's eponymous debut as a duo, this new Drag City LP from Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh delves even deeper into traditional and ancient musics, making use of an armoury of instruments that extends beyond 'mildly obscure' (renaissance harp, sho, hurdy gurdy, etc) and enters into the realm of 'are you sure you haven't just made that up?' (auschpfeife, crumhorn, cornamuse, rig and darbuka). On hand to assist in this piece of instrumental archeology is ancient music specialist Haruo Kondo as well as two of Batoh's Ghost bandmates (namely Junzo Tateiwa and Kazuo Ogino). Overloaded Ark reinterprets songs dug up from a variety of different cultures, from Scandinavian folk to French and Italian medieval court dances - with a spot of German madrigal thrown in as a crowd-pleaser. In addition to the album's appropriation of Cuban protest songs and Latin hymns, you do actually get to hear some original compositions by the duo themselves: beautiful, elongated pieces like 'Until Tomorrow' and 'Over The Luminescence Land' find the pair on terrific form, with the former in particular capturing the unearthly prog-folk magic (possibly with a 'k' at the end) these two can summon up. Recommended.

Esperaba con inquietud e incertidumbre una segunda colaboración y al final llegó... y que decir, Ghost es un favorito entre favoritos, el primer disco parecía difícil de superar pero lo han conseguido. Helena se deja llevar y aterrizan en un universo más cercano al de Ghost pero en él sólo aflora una hipnótica y diversa tradición, hasta Helena se atreve en español rodeada de serpientes. Habría tanto que decir que lo voy a dejar aquí: mistery-magic-folk.

aldea f.: in stormy nights, helena espvall & masaki batoh
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united bible studies

united bible studies - the jonah (camera obscura, 2009)

The album title is a reference to the James Herbert novel where a "Jonah" is a cursed person who brings bad luck everywhere, and is also the title of the 16 minute avant/progressive folk suite that forms the record's centerpiece. Richard Youngs' progressive rock project Ilk provided the impetus for the band to make a "Prog Album" (which was the working title) so they started with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink opus "The Jonah". It was the first track recorded for this album during a two week burst of industry and creativity when the band locked themselves away in Mullingar. David's imagery for the first section was partially inspired by the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black and it takes flight in all kinds of different dream directions from there. Running the gamut from delicate acoustic guitar to Sunn 0))) style doom metal and back again, it's an extraordinary feat of the imagination.

With a sound like expiring infant suns weeping for worlds they'll never warm, "The Jonah" should appeal to lovers of the likes of Espers, Black Forest/Black Sea, Sharron Kraus, and Nick Castro, as well as darker matter like Current 93 and Sol Invictus.

microphones in the trees: the shore that fears the sea

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noah howard

noah howard - patterns/message to south africa (1971/79)

Noah Howard remains one of the great, under-appreciated saxophonists of free America. The tension-fraught brilliance of his alto playing during the1960s &1970s has an edge of palpable liberation that is both unquestionable & unmatched. A student of Sonny Simmons & Dewey Johnson, Mr. Howard's success in transmuting thejoy-wedge of his instrument's post-Ornette identity is well documented on sessions issued by the ESP, Freedom, & America labels.

Originally issued on his own Alt Sax label in 1971, the "Patterns" session is one of the great mystery spots in the Noah Howard canon. Mr. Howard was in Europe, subsequent to the American jazz diaspora of the 1960s. His Parisian-based group with Frank Wright, Muhammad Ali & Bobby Few was in merge process with Alan Silva to form the Center of the World Collective. When a Dutch radio broadcast beckoned, Mr. Howard connected with fellow expatriates, bassist Earl 'Goggles' Freeman (who the following year would appear on Noah's Live at the Village Vanguard), & conga player Steve Boston. Enlisted for the rhythm section were Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg, then in the heat of their duo functionality as ICP, along with the guitarist Jeep Schoonhoven (Wally Tax, etc), who is blinding here. The resultant music was a thirty-eight minute spasm of creative thunder.

The 'Message to South Africa' session is another kind of spirit flare. Written in Paris the week that Steve Biko was killed, the date came together around two of the great South African jazz exiles, pianist Chris McGregor & bassist Johnny Dyani. Drummer Noel McGhee (who had played on Noah's Live at the Swing Club date) was enlisted to give the band Caribbean representation. In Paris as well was Kali Fasteau, who lends the proceedings some of the same vibrational magic she had used so notably on Archie Shepp's Bijou.

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the skygreen leopards

the skygreen leopards - gorgeous johnny - (jagjaguwar, 2009)

When the Jewelled Antler crew ‘broke’ all those years ago, most of us pigeonholed them as back-to-nature, field-recording characters – hippies, basically, though of a surer cut than usual. But while there was some overlap with the free-folk underground, their concept was more complex and fascinating than most of their contemporaries: each branch from the tree (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Giant Skyflower Band, Der TPK, etc) further complicated your understanding of what they were about. The Skygreen Leopards (a.k.a. Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn) first appeared a good number of years ago, and across a number of albums they’ve refined their chamber-pop duo-cum-collective approach, such that Gorgeous Johnny feels effortless while ticking all the right referential boxes. (...)

When listening to Gorgeous Johnny, I’m strangely reminded of the almost polemicalXYZ album. This was an important move, because it broke with general (and reductive) understandings of the ground that ‘underground artists’ could rightfully cover. With Gorgeous Johnny, avant-pop, folk, improv etc artists Donaldson and Quinn similarly light down in an imagined reconstruction – this time, of fey ’60s baroque – which, given how hampered underground discourse is by its language of unexamined extremity and drone/noise redundancy, feels pretty wilfully contrary, in a welcome way. But most importantly, all of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes. recuperation of country and folk undertaken by one-time shoe-gazers Moose in the early 1990s, their leap from the by-numbers guitar-noise-pop of “Jack” to the Buckley/Hardin/Gentry fantasia of 1992’s

aldea f.: disciples of california, donovan quinn & the 13th month, franciscan hobbies
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circulus

circulus - thought becomes reality (mythical cake, 2009)

Circulus make me want to take my clothes off. Not in a do a streak across the centre court at Wimbledon way, no, that wouldn't do at all. No, it's in the stripping away all the clutter and burden of modern life sense, I would of course then don the gold lamé jump suit or suit of armour that Michael Tyack, the funky medieval main-man of Circulus, demanded of me and board the good ship Circulus for a voyage amongst the glittering orbs of outer space...

Hence we have the third Circulus album, Thought Becomes Reality, and it throws a teeny dose of psychedelic space rock into the bubbling witches brew of medieval pomp that we know and love. The line-up has changed slightly, most noticeably in the departure of the distinctive voice of Lo Polidoro, however the addition of Holly-Jane Shears and the 'Circulus Ladies Choir' more than makes up for her absence. Within You Is The Sun being a dreamy highlight.

Adiós a rise above, el tercer larga duración de Circulus llega desde su propio sello, no es ésta la única novedad, hay nuevas incorporaciones y Lo Polidoro ya no es la fémina de Circulus y se nota. Puede seguir hablándose de medieval folk-rock con las reverberaciones electrónicas acostumbradas, psicodelia... pero éste es su disco más preciosista, soleado, accesible, menos intricado, así Dando Shaft o Pentagle parecen ya olvidados. Otro horizonte es el que se ve tras la irrestible 'within you is the sun'.

aldea f.: clocks are people

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ilyas ahmed

ilyas ahmed - goner (root strata, 2009)

Portland, OR. bedroom wanderer Ilyas Ahmed emerges from the shadows and offers up his first new batch of songs in some time. Over a year in the making, ‘Goner’ sees Ahmed telescoping his previous acoustic wanderings into fuzzed out rockers and a hypnotic set of beautifully tight knit nocturnes. The whole things kicks off with a massive rush to the head called ‘Earn Your Blood’ which has Ilyas effortlessly channeling any number of stoned out trajectories found in a Topanga Canyon ditch circa mid 70’s. Massive waves of hiss still penetrate the mix, and so do the smeared vocal trails, it’s just that it’s all a little more in focus this time around. The comedown into ‘Exit Twilight’ with Grouper at the helm is a haunting broadcast that will for sure knock around in your skull for days. Edition of 1000 CD's in an offset buff case with maroon ink.

Warm tape distortion casts a little grime over the jangling arrangements, with Ahmed's swirling acoustic and electric guitars taking up the most space in the mix, providing a bluesy lynchpin for the recordings.organic percussion and filtered out vocals also adorn these songs, but you get the impression that Ahmed is first and foremost a guitarist - certainly that's how the album's been mixed, and it's always great to hear such a florid and accomplished musician rising out of the lo-fi dirge of underground Americana. With great songs like 'Some Of None' and 'Love After Love' Ahmed proves himself as a writer in the traditional mode, while 'As Another' finds him in Loren Connors mode, taking off with ether-dwellng lead guitars and spine-tingling, weightless melancholy. boomkat

aldea f.: towards the night
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sir richard bishop

sir richard bishop - the freak of araby (drag city, 2009)

Listen through Sir Richard Bishop's six readily available solo albums, and you get the picture that the worldview of the former Sun City Girls’ guitarist is not only complex, but also more than a little ambiguous. What exactly is Richard Bishop? A dealer in the exotic? A dabbler in esoteric mysticism? A “traveling salesman”? The Freak of Araby doesn’t make Bishop’s worldview any simpler for us, but it does clarify it some. He is, first and foremost, a traveler, picking up inspiration as he roams, but he is also a worshiper at the altar of the guitar, occasionally himself transforming into a guitar hero/idol.

On The Freak of Araby that challenge is the guitar styling of Omar Khorshid, an Egyptian-born guitarist and composer of music for film. After a period of immersion in Khorshid’s music, Bishop recorded a handful of standards from the Arabic world alongside a few from his own pen. Playing exclusively on electric guitar again and with a bare-bones band (bass guitar, drum kit and hand percussion), Bishop does his best to inhabit Khorshid’s spirit, eschewing any extended soloing in favor of concise variations on simple, sensual themes, some of them Morricone-like in their directness and memorability (...)

Bishop’s interpretations of standards little known in the West are enlightening and his originals a nice complement, but they feel a little dry at times, even flat. One would’ve wished for more of the adventure he shows on pieces like “Taqasim for Omar,” a brilliant solo feature, or the delay-pedal and reverb orgy of “Sidi Mansour,” a piece that reaches for the same psychedelic excess Khorshid could unleash. In this case, a little less tribute and a little more irreverence would have been very welcome.

Sir Richard Bishop prosigue su andadura de fingerpicking aventurero, despojado de ataduras y convencionalismos. The Freak of Araby, se desenvuelve en intrincadas melodías enraizadas en el middle-east. Junto a Rasheed Al-Qahira a la guitarra, Mohammed Bandari y Abdulla Basheem a la percusión y Ahmed Sharif al bajo, Bishop revisiona el folclore egipcio, marroquí y libanés, a Omar Khorshid, a Peter Walker, a Robbie Basho, hay ecos del pasado, terrenos fronterizos, psicodelia. Resulta sorprendente su habilidad para moverse en la tradición y dejar señas de su espirítu insólito y único. El mejor disco del ex-Sun City Girls, atrapado en 'Blood Stained Sands' y la maravillosa 'Solenzara'.

aldea f.: while my guitar violently bleeds
microphones in the trees: fingering the devil
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beth jeans houghton

beth jeans houghton - golden [ep] (static caravan, 2009)

Newcastle-based singer-songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton is only 18-years old, yet this single suggests a far more mature talent. The beautifully knitted together harmonies of 'Golden' bring to mind Josephine Foster (albeit with the 'mad old lady with too many cats' vibes toned down) and it's a superior piece of acoustic songcraft all round. 'Night Swimmer' keeps the densely woven vocals but favours glistening tuned percussion over guitar, lending a sense of breadth to Houghton's music and suggesting she's got a few more tricks up her sleeve than your run-of-the-mill troubadour.

En espera del disco, la jovencita Beth regresa con otro 7'', esta vez para Static Caravan y 500 copias que ya han volado. Tan sólo dos canciones en las que continúa en la senda de trovadora nocturna de su primer ep, son la brillante y preciosa 'Golden' y una inspirada y aventurera 'Night Summer'. Entre Joanna Newsom y Vashti Bunyan e incluso como dicen en Boomkat a una Josephine Foster en baja frecuencia. Cada vez me gusta más, habrá que añadirla a la lista de imperdibles féminas.

Os dejo este golden y su primer y homónimo Ep que ya estuvo en f. aquí.

aldea f.: beth jeans houghton

sand snowman

sand snowman - two way mirror (tonefloat, 2009)

Like a beautiful trilogy with a comparable compositional concept this is the third LP reissue (now also on a mini-double LP sleeve CD). The backing vocalists are Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Jason Ninnis and Moonswift. The whole album sounds like a well thought over large composition in different sections and with a natural, semi-improvisational nature. The mood brings you in an eternal timeless atmosphere where everything seems to disappear except sound and its visions expressed in time and harmony signatures. The acoustic guitar (or two) lead more often these quiet themes, while distant electrified guitars bring textures and confirm the feeling of being at that time in a bubble in space. When piano is added, this can change into a contemporary classical atmosphere, as something of a 20s 30s time adventurous perspective. Sometimes this piano is quiet as well. The intensity of this meditative different time-perspective can be intense in its minimal character, while textures surrounds and before like on one part other elements appear, when a voice comes in at a certain point it sounds as if this is a cello part for a classical composition. The whole music unfolds like colours seen from a drifting boat. But also songs are added or better said are part of the transformation of moods. Harmony vocals, flute arrangements all are able to become part of this expression.

Another rather brilliant album, from a highly recommended pair of three.

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