John Cale & Terry Riley - Church of Anthrax

An ole pal returned me to this just last summer. I had a copy in college that didn't see much needleplay as it was naively dismissed by this arrogant author as two avante egoist auteurs aping Kraut/Neu. Recent listens bring new angles.

The AllMusic bit: A one-time-only collaboration between former Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale and minimalist composer Terry Riley, 1971's Church of Anthrax doesn't sound too much like the solo work of either. Around this time, Riley's works were along the lines of "A Rainbow in Curved Air" or "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band": pattern music with an obsessive attention to repetition and tricks with an analogue delay machine that gave his music a refractory, almost hallucinogenic quality.

Though Cale was trained in a similar aesthetic (he played with La Monte Young, surely the most minimal of all minimalist composers), he had largely left it behind by 1971, and so Church of Anthrax mixes Riley's drones and patterns with a more muscular and melodic bent versed in both free jazz and experimental rock. Not quite modern classical music, but not at all rock & roll either, Church of Anthrax sounds in retrospect like it was a huge influence on later post-minimalist composers like Andrew Poppy, Wim Mertens, and Michael Nyman, who mix similar doses of minimalism, rock, and jazz. On its own merits, the album is always interesting, and the centerpiece "The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles" is probably the point where Riley and Cale approach each other on the most equal footing. The low point is Cale's solo writing credit, "The Soul of Patrick Lee," a slight vocal interlude by Adam Miller that feels out of place in these surroundings.

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Funkadelic - Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan, September 12, 1971

Holy Shit - Free yr ass, fer sure. Includes a Maggot Brain that will eat your whole family.

In celebration of Barack's selection of one tight honkie to fight the fight.

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The Yardbirds - Having A Rave Up

A lot of hipshaking pop 'n wiggle with a ornry moodiness herein. Enjoy with a nice cheese, some cords, yr favorite gal and a bedhead. There's a nice dark lining around this cloud, recalling some of the hazier/angry Zombies efforts.

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Danger Mouse and Banksy - Laugh Now

dangermouse and Banksy administer a beating

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The Baby Huey Story - The Living Legend

listen to me

hear what I say

I come back to Huey annually for a capsule of ecstatic/indignation/expansion/electricity. Nut-seizing Chicago soul.

Baby Huey Story

Did I mention it's produced by Curtis Mayfield?

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Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums

He was very personable selling me a t-shirt on a ping pong table while a match transpired. In a dark, musty bottoms loft, the smelly art kids, fucked on puckr, compare navels, toss each other about on a dirty mattress and compete their well-trained eccentricities. He was definitely unimpressed, tho smelly too. He jerked off their richsuburban E! notions of oddballoutsider iconoclast.

Buried under the hiss, the skeletons, cicada hulls, rotting leaves, the melodies don't want to be found. Takes effort. Like a super choice American-made performance automobile, the floorboards cluttered knee-high with ATM receipts, Taco Bell bags, shoes, old birthday cards, textbooks and fruit peels.

A thing of sprained beauty - an examination of flaws.

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Caroliner Rainbow - I Am Armed With Quarts Of Blood

Maybe it's the several Sundays Pastis that makes me nostalgics for Caroliner. I've never been able to adequately genre-ize these folks. Gothic art 'tards maybe? Regardless of my inability to pigeonhole, I will always have tremendous respect for this outfit not just for their unadulterated DIY chutzpah, but because they are really decent chaps.

It was maybe 15 years ago on a hot summer day like this. I probably wasn't wearing a shirt then either. I probably had a low grade buzz in effect. The phone rang. There were answering machices then. They contained analog tape that was reused and reused a infinity or indecipherable. I played this message over and over before understanding. "This is Bull Lips from Caroliner. About those records you ordered, man... Yeah they'll be getting to you soon. Sorry about that."

I'd almost forgotten I'd order a record or two via mailorder (this is pre- heavy WWW use). Here I was, some punk almost 2,000 miles away in a small Bible Belt lake town, and I deserved the gold standard service (not that I imagine Caroliner's mailbox was overrun with mail order requests).

A few weeks later a large box arrived at my door. Yeah I was expecting a few 12 inches from Bull Lips but this was like a full-on, packing tape-sealed serious shipment. Inside the entire Caroliner discography to date, complete with customized handmade covers, a few handmade buttons and gobs of other readables, listenables, seeables. My respect was sealed. One of those buttons sits on my messenger bag to this day.

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The Clash - Combat Rock

I'll skip the AllMusic Guide/Trouser Press analysis of this record since either you love it or you hate it. Hate it for being the tipping point where it could be said The Clash went bigtime 'mersh; or love it because it personified a really salient time in your life, a jumping off point, if you will. It's brilliant hybridization of genre, lefty politics and pure party formed (in my head) a standard, an expectation of what a complete record should contain. Something like the full range of emotion, starting with indignant resistance to the ugliness, celebrating the war against all that shit that drags you down, throwing hats in the air because there will always be more hats, swallowing your pride in the face of adversity and overcoming injustice with a populism and a twist of red humor.

Ok, that was rambling... Anycrap, Combat Rock came out when I was 12 years old and was, at that time, already sick of the crass commercialism of the MTV VJ death squad and their 24/7 Billy Idol/Duran Duran rimjob. So when "Rock The Casbah" came across it signalled something a little different to me. Can't put finger on it. Maybe the chaos and stupidity of the video was in such hard opposition to the well quaffed, emotionally lit "Rios" and 'Rebel Yells" shat out left n right. Yeah I knew the Clash already, and was a daily consumer of Black Flag, JFA and DOA at the time. But this "Rock The Casbah" moment of open market accessibility was a sea change in some ways (kinda like "Nevermind" going triple platinum) -- taking the message big time.

Whatever you think about this record, try it again. "Straight to Hell" is still one of the finer moments transferred to magnetic tape.

Sadly, the kids won't know the significance of "Should I Stay Or Should I go" outside of a challenge to their fingering proficiency in Rock Band.

Lastly, an open question: Is there any band out there right now as important as the Clash were?



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Sun City Girls - Self Titled

Trouser Press: They may not be girls, but this elusive trio does hail from Sun City, Arizona. (It's a bit northwest of Phoenix.) From raga-rock to saxophone squawk, the fractious pieces on their hallucinatory debut album convene into coherent groupings beneath Alan Bishop's avant-political rantings. From utterly riveting to impossibly muddled, the seventeen sketchy tracks include "Uncle Jim" (a ranting monologue with jazz guitar and sax); "My Painted Tomb" (a raga with toy piano), the impressive "Your Bible Set off My Smoke Alarm" and "Metaphors in a Mixmaster" (presents free-form guitar improvisation). Bewildering, aggravating and intriguing, Sun City Girls is an imposing bow.

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Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

Pitchfork: Earth's "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)" is a steady, sedate, chiming march, a primary-colored burst of guitars, organs, drums. For a man whose scuzzy, Melvins-mainlined Earth 2 remains the document for drone-and doom-minded depressives-- some of whom actually named their bands after Earth songs/guitar equipment-- Dylan Carlson's return as the Ennio Morricone of metal continues to confound. The band that borrowed their name from Sabbath's earliest, nuclear-paranoid incarnation have become optimists, purveyors of uplift. Where Earth once pounded chords flat, the newly reconfigured quartet pulls them out like taffy. "Miami Morning Coming Down" nods at Johnny Cash, spaghetti twang, gospel hymns; even Carlson's newest title, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, turns his band's fearsome reputation inside out, offering up metal's ubiquitous skull as the birthplace of something sweet.

CF Note: Huge and beautiful, with a twist of despair

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Santogold - Santogold

Blender: If Santi White were any more plugged in, she would short ­circuit. She has produced GZA and written a song for English miscreant Lily Allen. And the severe, sumptuous beatbox dub, punky reggae and black-lit new wave on her debut as Santogold is brought to you by a cast of many—outre producer Diplo, the former drummer for Bad Brains, several “legends” of high-end club music and a snowboarder who’s also White’s boyfriend. Beware the CD that includes a collaboration with a star of the Winter X Games.

Her great first single, “L.E.S. Artistes,” bristles against the chic world that adores her, and rides a taut guitar riff into Manhattan’s trendy Lower East Side to poke fun at suburban kids who revel in high-rent alienation. “I am an introvert, an excavator,” she pouts with a commitment that shows at least a little empathy. Sure, this former record-industry talent scout knows lots of fabulous people, but she’s her own girl. Santogold bursts with the arrogance of a world-beating hip-hop debut while thriving on vulnerability. “Creator” is a squelching march-time banger with a brash speed-demon rap, and an album-closing remix of the vaguely No Doubt–ish “You’ll Find a Way” is fierce dancehall with the island sun sucked out. Santogold’s reflective, needy moments are even more arresting. Against chunky Cars guitars and a plaintive early-MTV synth, her shy come-on “Lights Out” is butterfly fragile. On the murderously slow “My Superman,” she pleads with a bad boyfriend like a blues mama in neon legwarmers. Frayed and hungry, rugged and sweet, bringing R&B sass (“I’m a lady”) over sad rock or rewriting Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” in the voice of a screwed-up Catholic girl, Santogold remembers that the weird sounds she loves aren’t there just to fire up the underground. They exist to save underdogs as well—people like ­Santi White, and even the L.E.S. Artistes she knows so well.

CF Note: I've been so stuck on this for several days now. I skip the MIA mimicry and jump straight to the tight pop numbers.

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Flower Travellin' Band - Satori

All Music: Flower Travelling Band was Japan's answer to Led Zeppelin meeting Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath at the Ash Ra Temple. Simply put, they played grand, spacey, tripped-out hard rock with a riffy base that was only two steps removed from the blues, but their manner of interpreting those steps came from an acid trip. Flower Travelling Band was an entity unto itself.

There are five tracks on this set, originally released in 1971 as the band's second album proper. It has been reissued on CD by WEA International in Japan, with the cover depicting a silhouette drawing of the Buddha in meditative equipoise filled in with sketches of an inner universe mandala of the sacred Mount Meru, stupas, and the hash smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, Japanese sci-fi robot cartoons, and more. And the music is reflected in this inner universal realm on five different sections of Satori. From power chords to Eastern-tinged, North African, six-string freakouts, to crashing tom toms, to basses blasting into the red zone, Satori is a journey to the center of someplace that seems familiar but has never before been visited. It is a new sonic universe constructed from cast-off elements of the popular culture of the LSD generation. Forget everything you know about hard rock from the 1970s until you've put this one through your headphones. It's monolithic, expansive, flipped to wig city, and full of a beach blanket bong-out muscularity. In other words, this is a "real" classic and worth any price you happen to pay for it.

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CF Note: I got my Japan on this morning. I wish I could correctly copy embedd video code for Youtube. There's some pretty amazing BnW 9MM footage of FTB. For some reason I can't get the whole embed code to copy from YouTube. Any tips?

Boris - Feedbacker

Dusted: Boris are the only living band (with the possible exception of Electric Wizard) who have mastered the art of out-Sabbathing Black Sabbath. Obviously, a ton of groups play in that crushing, occult style, and many do it quite competently, but only Boris have been able to consistently break on through that wall of rock into the experimental wasteland that lies beyond. And, once there, they thrive.

A single 43-minute composition (broken into five tracks for easier access), Feedbacker begins at the core, with ambient waves of Earth-like drones rippling across an otherwise silent nine minute expanse before Atsuo spills into his cymbals, commencing a funereal march. Bassist/vocalist Takeshi drawls up and down his double-necked bass while Wata (the femme fatale guitarist) curls out little tongues of blue flame, the band awash in anticipatory shimmer.

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Saccharine Trust - PaganIcons

Trouser Press: Too early to be post-hardcore but too uncommon for any simple classification, this Southern California quartet doesn't try to create a blizzard of noise — they go at it more artfully, but with equally ear-wrenching results. On Paganicons, singer Joaquin Milhouse Brewer tunelessly barks lyrics (as in "We Don't Need Freedom" and "A Human Certainty") that aren't bad in a pretentious mock-intellectual vein; the music is loudly abrasive, but with spaces and dynamics largely uncommon to the genre.

All Music Guide: Formed in the early '80s by Joaquin (aka Jack) Brewer and guitarist Joe Baiza, Saccharine Trust metamorphosed from a dissonant, noisy, anti-rock quartet into a more sophisticated, but still jagged and noisy rock-jazz band. Frequently, the band's "songs" were semi- or wholly improvised using a basic riff or simple drum pattern for guidance, rapidy expanding into uncharted territory. Not the most important band to emerge from Los Angeles in the early '80s, Saccharine Trust is interesting for incorporating varied textural elements into a genre that was defined by volume and simplicity. This band took risks that many of their SoCal brethren would never have dreamed of taking. This, however, does not make Saccharine Trust better than their peers, simply different, and a little more intriguing. By the early '90s, Brewer started his own band called, big surprise, The Jack Brewer Band. Joe Baiza formed the fine, funky, and exciting Universal Congress Of.

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DJ Screw - Codeine Fiend (1995)

Wikipedia: DJ Screw, born Robert Earl Davis, Jr. (July 20, 1971 – November 16, 2000), was a central figure in the Houston hip hop scene. His innovation included the trademark technique of slowing down the basic tracks of a cut when he remixed it. This process is called "screwing" a song. Slowing down the song was supposed to recreate the effect of recreationally using Promethazine with Codeine also known as "lean" or "purple drank" in Houston slang. He was the main mixtape/street album mixer for the huge Houston hip hop South Park Coalition.

The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on DJ Screw concluded that Screw died of a codeine overdose. There has also been speculation that his death was caused by a "long-term buildup" of codeine in his body, but since codeine has a very short half life (just a few hours), and since the human body actually gains tolerance to opioid agonists like codeine after repeated use, this speculation can be dismissed. It is also possible that DJ Screw had an undiagnosed heart problem, but since death was by respiratory depression due to acute codeine intoxication, his heart condition was not particularly relevant to his manner of death.

In a 2006 interview, long-time Screwed Up Click member Z-Ro revealed that the DJ Screw's autopsy found a sample of methamphetamine mixed in with the codeine. Z-Ro and other members of the Screwed Up Click have stated that DJ Screw did not use methamphetamine, and that they fully believe that someone within their large group murdered DJ Screw by slipping the methamphetamine into DJ Screw's codeine.[3] However, Z-Ro's claims are not only contradicted by the autopsy results, which did not report any finding of methamphetamine, but also by DJ Screw's manner of death (respiratory failure - not usually a problem for meth users). Other speculations say that the methamphetamine was just an ecstacy tablet in his system.

In the wake of DJ Screw's death Chopped and Screwed music became a bona fide sub-genre of American music in the early part of the 21st century as nearly every major hip hop label in America released at least one Chopped and Screwed version of a Southern Hip-Hop release in their catalog. (See partial list below)

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Pärson Sound - Pärson Sound

Pitchfork: I might as well go ahead and divulge a tidbit or two upfront: Pärson Sound is a musical outfit with Swedish origins and a predilection for psychedelia. Depending on the take, it's a concoction capable of sending you on a run to the nearest exit or reaching for the knob to crank the volume. What's more, prior to this year, the majority of the music world had never heard the name, much less encountered any of the music. Hence, a little rundown is in order:
For a brief period during 1967-68, Pärson Sound was a frontrunner in the burgeoning Swedish music scene, leading to a few shows accompanying Terry Riley, an opening gig for the Doors and an invite from Andy Warhol to play an art exhibit in Stockholm. Regrettably, no album was ever cut and the band's activity ended almost as soon as it began-- although later manifestations would emerge and continue under the names Harvester (sometimes known as International Harvester) and Träd, Gräs och Stenar (translation: Trees, Grass and Stones).

Up until this recent release, Pärson Sound was basically just a blip on a musical roadmap, their name appearing sparingly in Warhol articles or Swedish musical histories. So I'll let you in on a little secret. As January rapidly approaches, I can say this two-disc set is by far the most unexpected surprise of the year. Serving up a platter of archival recordings (rehearsals, studio and live cuts), this Pärson Sound collection is drug-addled psychedelic mindfuckery at its best. And that's just the beginning. Successfully marrying the ideas of rock, jazz, and drone experimentalism, this Swedish quintet sounds like it wasn't just trying to break free of the limitations inherent in each genre; at times, it sounds like they were trying to blow the doors off the hinges.


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Pentagram - First Daze Here (1972 - 1976)

All Music: Ever wonder how it felt for blues historians to uncover the lost 78s containing Robert Johnson's timeless Depression-era recordings? Well, if there's a heavy metal equivalent to this experience, then First Daze Here may well be it.

Yet another Pentagram collection gradually unearthing this once amazingly obscure band's rare singles and even rarer studio recordings, it's not the most comprehensive, nor is it definitive, but it boasts the best selection and certainly the best sound quality. Most of these tracks were recorded between 1973 and 1974 at various low-budget sessions in the Washington, D.C., area by the group's original lineup, and digital remastering has done wonders to resurrect their original power and appeal.

What most people don't know is that Pentagram's early work was hardly dominated by the Sabbath-heavy proto-metal which would characterize their mid-'80s releases. Rather, while this was certainly a core component of the band's sound (see "When the Screams Come" and "Review Your Choices"), their love for the '60s-based psychedelic hard rock of Blue Cheer was just as pronounced, especially on offerings like "Lazylady," "Hurricane," and "Last Days Here." Barnstorming opener "Forever My Queen" is probably their best-known early single, and with reason, as it remains a career high watermark; but it's long-forgotten gems like "Living in a Ram's Head" and the awesome "Be Forewarned" (later given a more traditionally metallic treatment in the early '90s) which will prove especially thrilling to fans of the '70s' sonic aesthetic. For them, as well as most serious metal historians, this is an essential purchase.

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Thinker Fellers Union Local 282 - Tangle

Trouser Press: The self-released Tangle includes a lot of similar songs, but with a noisier, meaner tone. The pendulous shifts in guitar sound and a complex train-chug of collective force are punctuated by any of the following: broken chords, keening choruses, accordion, trumpet and spoken bits. "Sister Hell" became something of a college radio hit.

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Pole - Steingarten

Pitchforkmedia: More than anything, Steingarten is a remarkably easy-going album. Like all great recordings, it opens up over time, yielding fresh discoveries with repeat listens, but it hardly guards its secrets. You can hear the simplest kind of joy in the way (in "Düsseldorf") a high-pitched, pinging note run through delay begins gradually to throb out of time with the rhythm track. The opposing shapes and textures in "Winkelstreben" create totally unexpected convergences-- improbable harmonies on a par with those found in the best abstract painting or Japanese fashion. Full of resonant, glistening, almost tangible sounds, Steingarten is a synaesthetic's dream; I find myself continually running up against the limits of my own descriptive powers in trying to tackle its pear-shaped bass drops, its corrugated ambient underpinnings, its frog-throated choruses.

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CF Note: Those rhythms from the dishwasher. The toe-tapping jet of water against dinnerware in 4/4.

Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman

Trouser Press: On Black Woman, presumably an ode to Sharrock's wife, Linda, Sonny and crew whip up a hell of a maelstrom. Sharrock's most obviously avant-garde statement, the album also contains a kind of theme song in "Blind Willy," here played solo (later to re-appear in Last Exit sets and almost two decades later on Guitar). What is striking about this version of "Blind Willy," ostensibly a tribute to Blind Willie Johnson but perhaps also to Blind Willie McTell, is Sharrock's audible breathing throughout the piece, pacing his phrases as a reed player would. The effect is intimate (and mildly unsettling) but entirely part of Sharrock's conception and approach to his instrument.

The remainder of Black Woman is entirely of its era, a slab of ESP Disk-like free jazz, including a stellar performance by the oft-cited but little-recorded drummer Milford Graves. Also notable is Linda's contribution, especially on the title track. The range of emotion — praise, worship, jubilation, eroticism, horror, torture — present in her wordless vocals is remarkable and entirely connected to the rest of what's going on. Much as Abbey Lincoln would do for Max Roach, Linda Sharrock's vocal lines accent rather than detract from the music, an integral part of the overall sound rather than a focal point in and of itself. Inexplicably re- issued with Wayne Henderson's soul-jazz statement, People Get Ready, in 2000, Black Woman is a vital item in Sharrock's catalogue.


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