acid mothers temple & the melting paraiso u.f.o

acid mothers temple & the melting paraiso u.f.o. -lord of the underground vishnu and the magic elixir (alien 8, 2009)

We are celebrating Acid Mothers Temple’s return to North America by honoring them with a new release, their fourth for the label. The band toured North America in early spring 2009 in support of “Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir.” The album is made up entirely of new studio recordings that have documented the band in fine form. The band is flying at full speed dishing out 3 slabs of Turkish Psych meets Krautrock, served up Acid Mothers Temple style. “Lord of the Underground” will see the light of day on both limited edition vinyl and CD.

Continuing on their winning streak, Acid Mothers Temple bringing their J-psych alchemy to Alien8, dispensing three new pieces. 'Eleking The Clay' begins with some church-like organ figures, ushering in a bit of a Keith Emerson vibe before the guitars kick into an echoing drone-raga, venturing into some outlandishly protracted fuzzed up riffing hinging on Eastern harmonies. Offering a brief interlude, 'Sorcerer's Stone Of The Magi' arrives with a hushed, folksy and acoustic feel, washing your ears out in time for the epic 'Vishnu And The Magic Elixir' a sludgy, meandering twenty-five minutes that holds off the overdrive pedals for a good twelve minutes or so, spending time delving into deep, dark sixties weirdness laden with sitars and cavernous acoustics. When the band do hit their stride you get the obligatory fuzz solo payoff with plenty of far-out blues licks and all those trademark AMT oscillator sweeps.

aldea f.: have you seen the other side sky, iao chant from the cosmic inferno

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of (loren chasse)

of (loren chasse) - rocks will open (digitals, 2009)

Loren Chasse is responsible for a whole host of vital albums. He was a founding member of the Jewelled Antler label and has sparked so many great moments from the likes of Thuja, The Blithe Sons, Softwar, and of course his main solo guise, Of. For years this project has evolved into something of absolute magical grandeur. "Rocks Will Open" is the latest opus in Chasse's catalog. The music on this album is as organic as it gets. Each tone, each sound feels like it has been culled directly from the Earth's crust. Gentle drones arc toward the hazy sunlight, flickering like distant birds sailing out over the sea. Between the ghostly echoes rises a cacacphony of plucked strings dancing toward oblivion. Loren Chasse's vision is perfectly expressed on "Rocks Will Open." Limited to 500 copies. Special Edition limited to 100 copies and includes exclusive cassette, "Morphological Echo.

Mainstay of Thuja and the Jewelled Antler collective, Loren Chasse is the man behind this album, and it's a wonderful distillation of the San Franciscan's art. In part reminiscent of his work for the Naturestrip label, these compositions draw heavily from environmental sounds and recordings made in the field. Chasse's proven himself a skilled sound recordist on releases like The Air In The Sand, and Rocks WIll Open finds him incorporating these abilities into a more sculpted, more 'musical' context. 'Trail Of Hornfel' is a wonderfully illustrative piece of music, placing you in some imaginary sonic wonderland filled with creaking environmental texture, endless sustaining tones and chiming bells. Next up, 'Coal Seam' draws on quiet yet massively resonant filtered acousmatics, followed up by the more openly melodic 'The Paper Raft' which makes clear its use of instruments to carve out melodic routes. Dulcimer figures jump out from a cavern of muted reverberations and singing on 'Agate Cups' and 'Oolitic Feelings', but it's during the album's rich centrepiece 'Violets In The Mountain Have Broken The Rocks' that Chasse is at his best, unfurling dense, unpredictable soundscapes that are as grounded in mysterious concrete sound as they are in subtle, supplementary instrumentation. Highly recommended.

aldea f.:donovan quinn & the 13th month , ulaan khol - ii, ulaan khol - i, skygreen leopards, hala strana, franciscan hobbies
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scott tuma & mike weis

scott tuma & mike weis - taradiddle (digitalis, 2009)

Scott Tuma made his triumphant return earlier this year with "Not For Nobody" and continues to answer the call with this new, exquisite offering in collaboration with Zelienople's Mike Weis. "Taradiddle" is a new journey down similar terrain, searching out something new in a landscape that's been visited before. Take Tuma's capable hands and add the fantastic percussive talents of Weis and it's like the wheel reinvented. These two play off one another beautifully, with Weis creating layers of havoc beneath Tuma's pastoral missives. It's beautiful and dissonant.

Weis is the perfect foil for Tuma's brittle sound world. The music breathes underwater, building and building on itself until it's risen into this majestic monument of glass. Archaic drones spit bombastic blasts of fire while the resulting sparks flicker into a million directions, flourescent in the night sky. Acoustic guitars drenched in reverb ring hollow with pianos echoing in the distance. Weis creates a river with swishing cymbals puncuated by fragile bells. Everything is bright, vivid, and new on "Taradiddle." Everything is perfect.
LP comes in fold-out silkscreened poster-style sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies.

El el que fuera miembro de Souled American regresa tras el cautivador 'Not for Nobody'. Disonancia y belleza, dos palabras son suficientes, paisajes subterráneos, poesía en desorden, Scott & Mike crean su propio mundo al son de drones y percusiones, uno tan bello y utópico que no puede existir. Jamás Digitals publicó algo tan ensoñador, no quiero salir de 'Tried'. En estos momentos algo más que el disco del año.

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matt elliott

Matt Elliott, Valladolid, 14/03/09

Hace un par de semanas Matt visitó un sábado noche Valladolid, yo me acerqué hasta la ciudad y junto a unas escasas 50 personas, asistí a uno de esos conciertos que no se olvidan. Enseñé la entrada, y una vez en la sala, me senté en uno de los bancos que había a los laterales, a mi lado estaba Matt quién sonrió, cuando ya estábamos todos comenzó: la primera fue 'Our weight in oil' para sorpresa y regocijo personal a la que ya le siguió todo Howlings Songs: una magnífica 'The kübler-ross model', la resquebrajante 'Something About Ghost, 'I name this ship the tragedy, bless her & all who sail with her', 'A broken flamenco'... y la apoteosis final recordando a Third Eye Foundation.

Gélido e impasible ese es el Matt Elliott que se vislumbra en el escenario en esa búsqueda de la tradición eslava y de si mismo en la que se ha sumergido con su trilogía. Un continuo enfrentamiento entre el folk y el ruido, entre sus miedos y secretos. Matt se confiesa desde lo más profundo sin ningún ápice de grandeza o pretensión, se expresa con tal naturalidad y frialdad que su viaje sin regreso a través de soundcapes, ecos y rasgeos de guitarras es de lo más verdadero que he podido experimentar.

Ya fuera del escenario me acerqué, cruzamos unas palabras y es una persona encantadora, cercana, con esa naturalidad que le caracteriza y agradecido con aquellos quienes valoramos su trabajo, hasta tuvo un detalle. Gracias Matt.

Pd.: aquí está la sorpresa -no muy favorecedora-.

torngat

torngat - la petit nicole (alien8, 2009)

Torngat return with “La petite Nicole”, the follow up to the critically acclaimed 2007 effort, “You Could Be”. This time around the band is sporting a grittier, propulsive sounding record that more closely resembles the bands live sound. “La petite Nicole” offers forays into dub-heavy elements of post rock as well hints of kraut rock and the occasional miniature freak-outs. Aside from these flirtations in new directions, the same sound that has made them popular in Canada and festival stages remains. One gets the feeling that the band is creating music for yet-to-be-made films; while cinematic references may be considered standard when describing instrumental music, Torngat’s creations are particularly evocative of the medium.

Torngat put on a very energetic and inspiring performance and sound a lot bigger than a trio. The heavy use of organs recalls elements of Tom Waits and even hints at the pre-jazz era of Soft Machine. Up until now much of the hype about this young band has been linked to their affiliation to Chamber-pop sensations Bell Orchestre and the Luya’s, amongst countless other guest appearances with various Montreal projects.
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Ghostly keyboard figures take the lead with a distorted organ creaking into life, gathering up momentum for the haunting title track - a piece of music that owes as much to Harmonic 33-style library music pastiche as it does to instrumental prog and post-rock. Throughout the record the sound takes on a warm, muffled and generally rather enigmatic feel that's just the right side of lo-fi, with the comparatively full-blooded closing number 'Going What's What' permitting just enough of the track's lamenting brass melodies to poke through the mix. A beautiful album, and one that doesn't quite sound like anything else. Bookmat

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no neck blues band

no-neck blues band - clomeim (locust, 2008)

Clomeim is the new studio album from New York's No-Neck Blues Band.
Clomeim is an evolution, a vital document of Change in The No-Neck Blues Band's 15+ years of para-musical activity. This pivotal recording is a creative distillation of the collective at a new and startling saturation
point.

For three rainy days in March 2007, the seven-headed hydra that is NNCK holed up in Black Dirt Studios, their newly outfitted recording studio in the foothills of upstate New York. With a discipline & a clarity of vision they've rarely displayed before,the collective channeled all of their energies into hours of recording live, real-time improvisation.After months spent sculpting and recasting the raw material, Clomeim emerged--a distinct whole, recalling in its parts the communal howl of Algarnas Tradgard, the dead spirit channeling of Geino Yamashiro Gumi, the glacial shadowplay of 'Heresie' era Univers Zero, and Krautrock zenith Faust at their finest hour.
Clomeim is that rare hybrid - a rock exterior with a cryptic, experimental core; a dense groover and a burning, exploratory psychedelic grimoire for the new dark ages.

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aldea f.: Qvaris, Embryonnck

donovan quinn and the 13th month

donovan quinn and the 13th month - donovan quinn and the 13th month (soft abuse, 2008)

The son of Dave Carter, bassist & vocalist for legendary 60's psychedelic group Country Weather (consult Pokora...), and named after Mr. Leitch, Quinn grew up on a horse ranch in Walnut Creek, CA and began writing songs at an early age. Donovan's growing reputation as a first rate darkly romantic penman (thanks to contributions to The Skygreen Leopards and solo as Verdure) has culminated with his latest endeavor, a new solo vehicle known as Donovan Quinn & the 13th Month.Rather than aping or ducking genres, Quinn has crafted a bright spectrum of songs best described as 'American.' X-ian folk, languid indie pop, VU cool, loner country, and west coast psych are touchstones, with Quinn's singular lyrical abilities & taste for sun-baked song at the fore.

Ever the flower bed romantic, Quinn has – at the risk of over-simplification - written a classic "break-up record;" albeit one filtered through surrealistic tenderness and riddled with red herrings & feelings of betrothal. Though not exactly lost in a sea of scarves, Quinn is indebted to the vulnerability, humor and bitterness present in the works of Ronnie Lane, Skip Spence, Nikki Sudden, Gene Clark and Basement Tapes-era Dylan. Weaving earthy melodies around Quinn's characteristically hazy vocals is The 13th Month: a small rotating cast of players that includes Jason Quever (Papercuts), Karl Bauer (Axolotl), Hélène Renaut, and Jess Roberts.

aldea f.: the skygreen leopards
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ignatz

ignatz - iii (k-raa-k, 2008)

III projects the atmosphere of Jack London and The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog onto a modern world ruled by technology. Devens brings us the most genuine melancholy contemporary pop music has seen since quite some time. This album leaves the underground scenery that is troubled by trends so often far behind and just shows us the pure essence of what Music has to be: raw emotions put to sound.

With his third full album Bram Devens has once again amazed us with a masterpiece. In his usual brain-melting retro-futuristic blues folk, he summons the devilish spirits of Bukka White, Robert Pete Williams and Sleepy John Estes as seen through the eyes of an adolescent Lou Reed. III tells a fictive and blurred story about the death of music genres. Tragedies built upon screeching, atonal and repetitive melodies. Smelling like a wet dog or a badly dried towel. III breathes a much more sentimental atmosphere compared to Devens’ previous work because of his grousing voice, that is not unlike Skip James’s. After the closing track “Dead By noon”, the tormented soul frees the listener from a heavy personal trip and leaves him dazzled. III projects the atmosphere of Jack London and The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog onto a modern world ruled by technology. Devens brings us the most genuine melancholy contemporary pop music has seen since quite some time. This album leaves the underground scenery that is troubled by trends so often far behind and just shows us the pure essence of what Music has to be: raw emotions put to sound.

El old-drone blues de Bram Devens, continúa cada vez más sumergido en escenarios subterráneos y atmósferas por las que sólo los maldecidos se pasean entre tormentas, aquellas en las que resúenan los ecos de Ornette Coleman y Henry Flynt. En III, el mejor disco de Ignatz, salen a la luz las melodías de un trovador del appalachian-folk, eso sí, uno extraño y misterioso a lo Jandek, pero más mutado por sus rasgadas guitarras. Como es seña de identidad, música para escuchar, imposible de describir.

aldea f.: ignatz

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