The second album by husband and wife duo Windy and Carl, Depths, is a total immersion in psych-rock’s love of distortion. As waves of feedback cycle past, you hear maybe two or three notes ring out, fighting their way past the overdriven din.  Unlike My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, which countless critics and listeners got once they heard the melodies underneath, Depths isn’t about using overdriven feedback and loop pedals to transform rock music, it’s about making those things the whole show. And yet there are melodies there, or at least repetitive pleasant tones. If Windy and Carl were trying to make difficult music, they would constantly shift the structure of the music and interject dissonant notes and sounds just to keep the listener off balance; instead they find a few gorgeous notes, then rinse (in layers of feedback and echo and reverb) and repeat.

Because the group uses such simple melodies, interjecting a minor note or chord has a huge impact on the mood of the song. On “Sirens,” a reoccurring minor chord spoils a two note ascending melody line and the whole song becomes tense and scary. And yet, by the end of the song, you’ve adapted to this sound and what sounded tense before now sounds majestic. In a similar way, “Undercurrent” begins as a menacing ballad, with a reverb heavy bass line very similar to the one on Sonic Youth’s “Shadow of a Doubt,” but unlike that song, it never builds into a rocker, content to just be creepy and full of foreboding.

One of the most exciting things about Depths (and space rock in general) is that when it clicks with you (and chances are if you’re reading this site it’s going to click with you), you realize that dynamics in music can be very overrated. Why does a song that starts out slow and calm have to build in intensity? So many musical tricks appear to be utilized for the benefit of someone listening to a song for the first time, and those same tricks can begin to sound stale and unnecessary on the fourth of fifth listen. Claiming music like this “goes nowhere” is to assume that music has some sort of destination and that it will only ever sound fully realized when it gets there.

With song titles like “Aquatica” and “Undercurrent” and “Set Adrift,” Depths is clearly connected to water and thus–horrible, horrible cliche alert–it makes for perfect rainy day music. But don’t read “rainy day” as shorthand for melancholy and sad; what makes Depths such a perfect soundtrack for rainy weather is the way the sound of the rain on your window or the hood of your coat melds so naturally with the music, or the way the music mimics closeness to water without total immersion in it.

On more recent albums like Consciousness and 2008’s Songs for the Broken Hearted, Windy and Carl have begun to clean up their sound a little bit, and as much as I like the way better production has revealed the beauty of their guitar and bass work, I also miss the heavy, frayed at the edges sound of their earlier stuff. There are moments on Depths where you can hear a guitar note bend and break under the weight of distortion, and that for me so perfectly sums up the way space rock fulfills psychedelic rock’s mission of finding beauty in pushing sound to its breaking point.

MP3 :::
Windy and Carl – Set Adrift

First, I love the band name. The versatility of trying to decide if The Late Virginia Summers is honoring a deceased woman or if they’re indicating an attempt to capture the mood of September in the mid-Atlantic region is a nice enigmatic touch. And the colorful yet lamenting mood on “Golden Cypress” seems to suggest both. The dangling threads of reverberated guitar notes, astronomical low end, and aquatic rhythm bring to mind Mogwai circa Rock Action and more ambient Do Make Say Think. Space rock is still very much alive, and it’s gotten intensely melodic as of late. (The Late Virginia Summers on MySpazz)

For fans of:  Mogwai, Experimental Audio Research, Set Fire to Flames

MP3 :::
The Late Virginia Summers – Golden Cypress

About a week ago, I spent a couple of hours on YouTube looking up a bunch of space rock bands I was unfamiliar with, like Tomorrowland and Fuxa and Auburn Lull. What I came away with was an even greater appreciation of the genre and the moods it evokes, as well as a clearer understanding of how space rock fits into the history of psychedelic music as a whole. Thus, in the hopes of increasing appreciation for the sort of forgotten genre and of exploring the reasons for its demise (as well as its interesting resurgence in odd places like TV soundtracks and commercials), I’m starting a series called Lost in Space: Lost Space Rock Classics.

Most popular in the late 80s and early 90s and often shoehorned into a Michigan based scene because so many of the bands came from there, space rock is the sound of psychedelic rock letting go of its roots in blues rock and folk music and embracing a sound that is equal parts heavy, hypnotic, and gorgeous. Often epitomized by the title of Spacemen’s 1990’s demo collection Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To, space rock is certainly catnip for stoners and folks taking magic mushrooms, but it can be just as powerful to someone with a good pair of headphones. Borrowing heavily from ambient music and the raga drones of La Monte Young, space rock often abandons typical music dynamics, instead spending its time working away at one perfect riff for nine or ten minutes, using guitar pedals and E-bows and various production effects to subtly tweak the sound of the music without disturbing its blissful center.

As I mentioned above, the influence of space rock has crept into TV soundtracks and commercials, with the incidental music on shows like Friday Night Lights sounding like Auburn Lull or later Windy and Carl. The sound of ringing guitar lines and gentle airy synth pad major chords has become the new piano and strings. With the hindsight of almost twenty years, this makes perfect sense. Besides being gorgeous sounding and repetitive, two prerequisites for most TV and film music, there’s also something ambiguous about the space rock sound, a strange tension between uplift and sadness, drugginess and clear minded meditation, flying and drowning, that can be used to great effect in multi-layered dramas like Friday Night Lights.

Anyway, see you here next week for the first entry in the series, Windy and Carl’s Depths.

MP3 :::
Auburn Lull – Direction and Destination

Time again for the obligatory year end list. However, ours is a bit different than others you may have seen. For example, this list is not enumerated. Empirically ranking albums rather trivializes the music, yes? Nor is the list in any particular order, save for the fact that we assembled it based loosely on aesthetics – meaning, we encourage you to mash on the little javascript media player in the bottom left-hand corner and enjoy our best-of picks as a mixtape or an uninterrupted block of music. Not only is this a fine collection of altered states laments, but each and every one of these albums is better than the Grizzly Bear borecore collection. Believe it!

>>>>> FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2009
The full length jam hives that we found the most innovative, intriguing, enjoyable, or all of the above.

Outside Trish Keenan’s traditional channeling of Margo Guryan and The United States of America and Julian House’s spooky samples, it’s hard to distinguish where Broadcast ends and The Focus Group begins. The collaboration is seamless and ornate, and is a strong addition to the flawless curriculum vitae for both Broadcast and The Focus Group. The Be Colony | Review

Did you know ambient music can be funky? When White Rainbow drops the tablas on his bliss outs, it’s time to hit the floor. All the Boogies in the World [excerpt] | Review

A more optimistic and concise effort, yet still saturated with her signature melted synths, junky keyboards, cough syrup vocals, and general underwater timbre, Hors D’oeuvres finds Tickley Feather as the compromise between Movietone and Ariel Pink. Trashy Boys | Review

Explosive dream pop with a slight electro edge, A Sunny Day in Glasgow burn the best sounds of Flying Saucer Attack and Cocteau Twins together in the same white-washed celestial head stew. Failure

A west coast sludgy summoner of stoner rock, Nothing People’s Late Nite is a less spastic and noisy sophomore effort, straddling the median tremolo-saturated, syrupy acid rock and shoegaze – another definitive post-millennial primer for more ominous trips down the rabbit hole. It’s Not Your Speakers | Review

Songs of Shame is more extroverted and less antiquated than 08’s At Rear House, and is pushed out of the womb with such fervor that I can finally get behind the strained falsetto, Elliott Smith experiencing zipper-trouble vocals. Gypsy Hand | Review

More and more artists are paying homage to Thoreau lately and recording their music in the midst of a hermetic retreat. Many return with nothing more than a bruised ego and a full beard. Damon McMahon returned with Dia after his pilgrimage in 2006 to the Catskill Mountains. Both insular and cavernous, this debut LP is an uninhibited trek through McMahon’s psychedelic mindscapes. Patagonian Domes | Review

The aural equivalent of an Ektachrome dusk, Lockett Pundt proves himself as Deerhunter’s understated force and the the undeniable ying to Bradford Cox’s yang, pinpointing exactly where and how the band gets its balmy, sedated atmosphere. A gorgeous second-wave shoegaze statement. A Threaded Needle | Review

Reverberated fuzzy guitars, punchy rhythm, a shoegaze aesthetic, totally damaging heaviness, and a touch of retro chic on acid – Chicago’s Disappears are everything that’s great about rock and roll. They lit a fire under my ass so severe that I still keep the Solarcaine stocked. Hearing Things | Review

Phantom Family Halo’s sprawling 2LP post-apocalyptic lament is evil and would make you think Louisville is a scary place or something. While the entire body of work can be classified as psych garage rock or acid rock, the record’s all over the place within the parameters of brain melting. A bit of Boards of Canada style ambient explorations here, a bit of krautrock motorik rhythms by way of Faust there… and then insanely reverberated crunchy guitars ascend from the primordial ooze scary enough to make Fever Ray poo her trou. These dudes are sonic warriors. Child of Light | Review

Phased surf guitar working and a dejected tropical attitude operate in tandem with autumnal acoustic overtones and gossamer melodies to produce something along the lines of a slacker Yo La Tengo. Fake Blues | Review

City Center was probably recorded underwater. I’m not sure how Fred Thomas did this without shorting out his gear, but this record’s precise aquatic timbre and dark reverb could’ve only been achieved submerged. Another gold star for the sampsycore camp. Bleed Blood | Review

Ever since Scratch Perry lost his goddamn mind, we’ve needed someone to don the dub crown. We nominate Sun Araw. The Message | Review

New Zealander Annabelle Alpers’ debut for Drag City, and second proper album, has been described by a couple of writers as a sort of quirky “bedroom pop.” I wholeheartedly disagree. My Electric Family is expansive, radical, and ionospheric. Packed with reverb, sweeping moods, and surrealistic lyrical motifs, Bachelorette is way too large for any bedroom. It also has a hypnotic quality so acute and permeating that we can safely say that Alpers has invented “cult pop.” The National Grid | Review

The Columbus total damage trio makes Robert Pollard look like Phil Spector. Punk as fuck. And underneath all the shit – great pop songs. Hustler, Psycho, Son

If there’s anyone that can remove the fashion-conscious aspect of noise-pop that creates filler and polarizes bands like Wavves, it would probably be a bunch of kids in their basement playing to no audience. Recently championed by Psychedelic Horseshit as “the greatest band in the country,” Fungi Girls are these kids, and they’re surprisingly more nihilistic and creeping than most of the recent shitgaze bands who paved the way for them. Crystal Roads | Review

True-to-cannon heavy shoegaze with a cavernous and dramatic eastern flair, all focused through the ominous looking-glass of their native Detroit. Tiger Fighter | Review

Gentle fingerpicking, bright tonal sprays of analog synths, and an impeccable ear for vocal melody holds every song on Childish Prodigy. A disciple of both Neil Young and R. Stevie Moore, Vile’s amalgamation of influences is arresting in both its musical scope and bravado. All the while, Vile’s signature, a bourbon-soaked Avey Tare croon with a shot of impenetrable confidence, steers and unites this eclectic, cohesive work. Inside Lookin’ Out | Review

While the Bolt hasn’t exactly gone verse-chorus-verse on us just yet, the newfound tightness Earthly Delights is much more structured and, at times, almost hummable compositions. That is not to say that LB has lost any edge, but simply that Earthly Delights throws a little Occam’s Razor into the mix. The group’s opting to keep their disposition a bit simpler and less freeform. Transmissionary | Review

Dream folk like “Criminals” makes Logos a good album. Epic motorik anthems mixed in, a la Cox’s collaboration with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier on “Quick Canal,” make Logos a great album. Quick Canal | Review

While the subterranean groove and minor key construction evoke a more haunting, nighttime-appropriate flavor, there’s also a visceral optimism that runs underneath the LP like groundwater. Perhaps it’s the playfulness between genres and moods, or the freewheeling construction of the songs… or perhaps not all noise/freak psych kids like to make nihilistic records. Not to be confused with The Nuge. Two Hands | Review

While some of her recent work has adopted a more intimate and traditional folk approach, A Ways Away is lush, weird, and engrossing. Psych folk is the closest reference point, yet TJO is also entirely something else. In a way, A Ways Away is a return to form and a maturation. The crafty utilization of space and syrupy slow tempo is reminiscent of the Louisville scene in which she came, while at the same time, TJO is fully owning her sound. The result is a beautiful and accessible work that relishes in desolate sounds and bucolic late night wandering. Beast, Go Along | Review

Strongest effort from this definitive freak folk collective since Cathedral, and certainly the most ominous of his career and a textbook example of brilliant use of sonic space. Sometimes it’s the notes you don’t play. On Beginning

Scary-ass Bjork releases a spacious and minimal analog electronic creeper that’s better than The Knife, and comes equipped with the best/funniest lyrics penned in quite some time. Still can’t listen to this shit at night without getting all paranoid in my head tech. When I Grow Up

Closer in spirit to experimental figures of yesterday like Moondog and Bernard Herrmann than current artists, Marc Richter seems dead set on completely disorienting our frame of reference. Richter does manage to arrive at moments of extremely cinematic avant-garde music that’s unlike much we’ve ever heard before. Rauschen | Review

Even in an increasingly noise-tolerant music culture, this is an adventurous listen, and that alone should have your earbuds watering by now. Auto Dimmer | Review

Ducktails masterfully crafted an album with a lulled but not quite hypnotizing quality, similar to the nature documentary sound that Boards of Canada achieve, with occasional lo-fi tape tinkering like on “Backyard,” with its phased bucket-toms and Robert Fripp inspired distortion shifting. Beautiful. Dancing With the One You Love | Review

Bird-Brains is completely demented and angular, kinda like Xiu Xiu, but without treading the blurry line between “artistic vision” and “sonic bullshit” that Mr. Stewart always straddled firmly. Everything from dub to yoddeling finds itself on what I’d guess you could call a kitchen sink freak folk album. Whatever it is, this shit is gospel. Fiya | Review

We’re very pleased to hear that, seemingly, the band is taking acid again. Worm Mountain

Mind altering modulating jungle boogie bogged down on purple drank and tribal bangin’ replete with sinister ragas and general skulduggery, Mirror Eye is one of the more pleasantly evil releases reared in ‘09. Eyes Closed | Review

Dragon Turtle’s debut, Almanac, is an expansive 45-minute trek that explores an alternating fear and awe of the natural world, and everything in between. They didn’t pack lightly either, hoarding a curious mix of folk, kraut rock, post rock, and small touches of calypso. Belt of Venus | Review

The massive arsenal of antique analog equipment that defined BMSR’s first three albums remains in tact – the vocoder-saturated vocals of Tobacco, the thick and swirling novatrons and mellotrons that cultivated a general feeling of sunshine and old 8mm films about nature, etc. However, Eating Us showcases a more organic band, incorporating more acoustic instrumentation and mellow moods without disregarding the group’s traditional glitchy, Technicolor timbre. Iron Lemonade | Review

The original keyboardist from Broadcast peaks out from his lair to release another fantastic testament for Ghost Box who, like Motown and Creation, created a whole new aesthetic in music. Roj has distinguished himself as the tinty, rhythmic, retro-futuristic sci fi voice in hauntology. What I Saw

Super positive rural psychedelia best experienced with peace pipe in hand and vision quest in front. Made from warm tape excursions from them to you. Feels good to vibe this hard. All the Good Songs Have Been Written

The girls’ new album Fraushaus! has one foot in the shit-gaze movement and another recalling the gleaming-amateur looseness of the Shaggs, complimented by unexpected touches of found sounds and flea-market synths. Round Vox | Review

>>>>> FAVORITE EPs OF 2009
Though no longer than 20 minutes a piece, these nuggets of joy deserve some mention

There are certain sounds synonymous with the Summer of Love, but what about the winter that followed? Bronx trio Pigeons have a decent guess in mind. Their account of classic psychedelia is a much colder affair than most’. Stringing together a bizarrely addictive mix of paranoia, mystery, and seduction, their new tape-splintered 7? Lunettes is something I could only describe as psych-noir. Tendress | Review

No Age demonstrates here, moreso than Nouns, a mastering of their craft in profound ways. They’re no longer trying to capture the sound of My Bloody Valentine’s early EPs. They’re becoming completely their own thing – dream punk. Losing Feeling

The Philly subterranean brooding fuzz plus flute collective does no wrong, and their contribution to the Three Lobed subscription series is no exception. Do you know what a Bardo Pond is? Me neither, but it’s probably where God kills Republicans. The Path

We could tell the girls of Pocahaunted were getting antsy when they started injecting dub and dance hall elements into their trademark campfire drone sessions on last year’s Island Diamonds. To remedy this, they’ve teamed up with members of Sun Araw, Robedoor, Magic Lantern, and Fantastic Ego to ditch the delay pedals in favor of some wah-wah. Honeycomb | Review

Sloppy yet lush psychedelic punk that hits hard. Consider Atlanta’s The N.E.C. the southern response to No Age. Old Medicine

Lush arrangements, non-grating noise walls, and oceanic melodies, Banjo or Freakout is the tech-savvy, post-millennial incarnation of Slowdive. Looking forward for the full-length! Like You

Super retro, super cinematic crunchy garage stomp with interstellar overtones, dramatic turns, and harshed mellows. Blood on the Sand is exactly what is sounds like – beach times gone wrong, Weekend at Bernies style. Blood on the Sand

Ovals & Emeralds is full of disorienting growths of sublime field recordings, toy-chest noises, and coarse synths. Bibio’s signature creekside guitar is barely present, but here he has crafted his ambient work to equal perfection. The sun goes down on his usual idyllic pastoralism to bring out a bleaker landscape with a slightly menacing air to it like the meditations of Wolfgang Voigt. Carosello Ellitico | Review

Not to be cliche, but no other piece of music partied like it was 1879 harder than the vinyl-only issue Among the Gold. Silver Threads | Review

No, The Books didn’t take the bad pills. Lucky Dragons are the jovian trance music of the century after next. With woodwinds. Power Melody

>>>>> FAVORITE REISSUES/COMPILATIONS OF ‘09
Our ten favorite that needed to be heard again

Everything you all do is amazing. Great job! Keep ‘em coming. Fans of weird field recordings and anthropologists owe you a big batch of homemade cookies at the very least. Night Recordings From Bali – Peliatan Night Walk

Honest Jon’s compilation of 1920s Iraqi recordings is truly a gem, but it’s not for everyone. It isn’t the type of “world music” employed for NPR bumper music or in the living rooms of people who like to feel “cultured.” Documenting very otherworldly dance and, for lack of a better word, Middle Eastern blues music, these recordings were remastered from some of the earliest 78s ever pressed. This disc features ardent vocal performances over violin, hand percussion, an occasional lute, and not much else, relying more on raw performances that, at times, resemble a prophetic view of west coast folk and free jazz. Badria Anwar – Lega Taresh Habibi

While their timeline coincides with New York’s no wave movement, their Deutsche no wave is something else entirely. Amalgamating the dadaist cool and nervous energy of Suicide, their homeland’s motorik rhythm, the loud and detuned psychedelics of Spacemen 3 (whom 39 Clocks actually predate), the organ-as-diving-rod experimental pop ethos of Silver Apples, and a Nuggets-ready proto-punk punch, the mensch of 39 Clocks chew up kraut and psychedelic subsets and spit them out into a ball of drug-riddled prophecy and rock and roll shenanigans. Dom Electricity Elects the Rain | Review

A lot of people complain about Kraftwerk, saying “oh, I can do that.” Yeah, well, they did it first, and you didn’t. Everything between Autobahn and The Man Machine rules hard and sounds beautiful, so shut the fuck up. It’s worth mentioning, and perhaps is a bit ironic, that the sound of Kraftwerk is slightly more powerful with the analog recordings, if for no other reason than to provide a timeframe. How ’bout that? Regardless, it’s nice to have all their best work in one place and sounding awesome. Antenna

The landmark 1972 record that should’ve included them in the same sentence as Faust, Can, and Neu, but for some reason didn’t. Perhaps it was because they sounded too much like Blue Cheer? Either way, Kanguru’s reverence is long overdue. Oxymoron

You put Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and Broadcast on the same release, and it’ll end up on a best-of somewhere on this blog. Like the Movern Collar soundtrack, but without the shitty movie that accompanies it. Boards of Canada – Amo Bishop Rodan

Believe it or not, Califone was Tim Rutili’s calmer project compared with Red Red Meat’s shit-blues zenith Bunny Gets Paid. Rosewood, Stax, Volts, and Glitt

This band was awesome. You can talk about how rad [insert hawt buzzband here] is until you’re blue in the face. But guess the fuck what. The Beatles did it first. Thanks for playing. While the only difference I can tell between the Remasters and the original is the volume, MagiMystour always gets royal treatment on this blog. Flying

The Vaselines were one mighty contradiction – a massive sound crafted by only two people, double entendre lyrics sung with coyness, gritty production and sloppy instrumentation coupled with truly soaring, gorgeous melodies – this duo was a real gem. Lovecraft | Review

A combination of bad timing, arguments with the label over the band’s presentation (namely, well, their name), and a generally ill-prepared state of music allowed this missing-link of punk rock to fall through the cracks until Drag City intervened this year. A remarkably well-aged time capsule of hefty hooks and driving power, For the Whole World to See is a blistering proto-punk artifact. You’re a Prisoner | Review

I’m making it my personal mission, my top task on the action items list, to spread the gospel of Detroit quartet Oblisk. This is an amazing new band that, no exaggeration, might be the best American shoegaze group (and it’s gritty shoegaze) these ears have ever heard. I will do everything in my power to make sure these guys sell billions of records, and it’s a goddman travesty that this is not the case.

Anyway, there’s no need for any sort of overlong, overhyperbolic review for Oblisk’s Weather Patterns, despite the fact I’m wont to do such. The brass tacks of the matter is that Oblisk has crafted an absolutely beautiful record that both travels at high speeds above the troposphere and slithers within cracks in the earth. It’s odd in many ways that Oblisk hails from a decaying industrial metropolis. Sure, the minor keys, grimey fuzz, distant tones, and distorted vocals suggest a bit of an ominous environment. But Weather Patterns is packed with mystique and excitement – a record that wonders and wanders.

Oblisk’s loyalties are outlined with a line in the sand – this is new psychedelia. That is to say, this is not a group rehashing flower power like the Paisley Underground did. Oblisk is a group that synthesizes what’s good in psychedelia and adds an opaque gloss. Weather Patterns evokes pure Spiritualized-informed space rock, kraut a la Amon Duul, a touch of post-punk, darkly veiled and midtempo pop-oriented shoegaze in the vein of Medicine and Slowdive, and eastern mysticism (best exemplified on instrumental “Blue Iceberg”).

The epic “Tiger Fighter,” and I’m calling this right now, is the “Leave Them All Behind” of this decade. It’s fucking gorgeous and I don’t want to ruin it by yapping on about it. The song is available below along with one other sample (and it took me forever to narrow down my selection for sharing to two because the album is sick).

Buy this record at Candy Colored Dragon. Do it.

For fans of:  Slowdive, Deerhunter, Spiritualized

MP3 :::
Oblisk – Tiger Fighter
Oblisk – Epicenter

Big day at the blog office. We’ve heard two amazing records just today, which is amazing considering that all three of us are total haters – the new Lotus Plaza, and this mysterious offering from a massive cluster of trans-Atlantic musicians called Flowers of Hell.

I don’t care if no one told these guys that it’s not the late ’90s anymore and post rock is no longer en vogue and/or what the kids are listening to these days.  Fuck the kids.  The Flowers of Hell’s Come Hell or High Water is one of the sickest, most moving collection of songs I’ve heard in some time, and is unequivocally the first great album of 2009.

Actually, that’s not fair. Flowers of Hell are not exactly post rock in the strictest sense. Sure, the music is instrumental and tends to gravitate toward tension-and-release compositions. Make no mistake, though, there’s a fresh, revelatory element in their sound. I saw someone describe the record as “classical music for shoegazers,” and I have to agree.

“Opus 66″ opens the record right, taking a few pages out of the Do Make Say Think book, cultivating a crescendo that you could only measure in axehandles. All the ingredients for chamber rock is here – strings, piano, lots of reverb, tremolo-saturated guitar, et al.  Where Flowers of Hell carve their niche, though, is the incorporation of electronic flourishes and psychedelic boogie reminiscent of Spiritualized’s mid-career work. This makes sense, as good ol’ Sonic Boom performs on the album – not to mention members of British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes, Broken Social Scene, John Cale’s touring band, The Earlies, Guided By Voices, The Clientele, Do Make Say Think, The Hidden Cameras, The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa, Tindersticks, The Early Years, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. To add to the general radar blip this group exudes, band member and producer Greg Jarvis is a synaesthetic. Something to the effect of 3% of the world’s population has this gift: “The composing, recording, arranging, and mixing of Come Hell Or High Water was done largely by following timbre-to-shape synaesthetic visions. Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon where two senses are intermingled… With timbre-to-shape synaesthesia, sounds involuntarily trigger a translucent visual layer of moving shapes which follow a consistent audio-visual language. ‘I see sounds,’ explains Jarvis, ‘When I hear sounds, I see each timbre in front of me as shapes that follow patterns, often gliding, pulsing, and swirling with the rhythm and timing interlocking them all. Each timbre behaves differently, and that’s the main reason we’ve got such a variety of instruments on this album.’”

“The Inovcation” adopts a tribal rhythm with vintage electronic pings and pulses in the vein of the BBC Radiophone Workshop. “The Strength of String” is pure cinematic score – the foreboding mood of Morricone, but with a lot more melodic quality.  “Bleumschen” ropes in a Faust/Neu motorik meets Loop-style fuzz sludge climax that totally slays me. Well-placed moments of dissonance (i.e. “Forest of Noise”) are peppered throughout the record as well, helping to establishing an overall experience as jarring as it is pleasant. The minimal beauty of Mogwai’s EP+2 is stretched across a full band canvas on album closer “Occasional Tears.” Considering the amount of musicians involved – 16 total – expect to hear a little bit of everything, including but not limited to: chamber pop, post rock, space, ambient, drone, and heavy fuckin’ metal. Basically, you’re an asshole if you don’t like Come Hell or High Water.

And zounds! Czech this video. The 8mm projections in this live performance really add the visual ambience that I wish more artists offer. I think this was recorded from their opening set for My Bloody Valentine. I might be wrong.  Either way, my evening would’ve been a lot of better if the Flowers opened for MBV’s Chicago show instead of that shitty-ass Hopewell band.

Not to sound lame, but The Flowers of Hell offer everything I, personally, enjoy in my music.  Fuck guitar solos, fuck wankery – make your music sound awesome.  Sure, it’s nothing that you haven’t heard before, but Flowers of Hell offer the lush soundscapes, thick melodies, panned psychedelia known in the state of California to cause brain melting, and movements that, I would say, are rather triumphant.

Come Hell or High Water is out April 6 in Canada/The UK. Can’t tell if it will be available in the states or not, but you can grip it here.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
Flowers Of Hell – Opus 66 (Part 1)
Flowers Of Hell – The Invocation

One of the best compliments you can receive as a musician is the notion of irritating music writers.  The Dead C has always been one of the most difficult groups to describe.  Like many psych rippers and no wavers, much of the Dead C’s repertoire specializes in noise and structure breakdown.  But simply labeling it as noise is shortsighted, as the Dead C operates as more of an improv group.  There’s always been “structure,” more or less, and if you listen closely, the Dead C often comes across as a damaged Spacemen 3, Space Needle, or other fuzz-heavy, post-punk-informed groups with the word “space” somewhere.  There are solid songs throughout, always head warping, and always fed through multiple demonic filters to cultivate that otherworldly presence.

However, the recently releasedThe Secret Earth takes a large stride toward songdom.  “Plains” is the most impressive example of this.  A 9-minute sprawler (but also one of the shorter tracks), “Plains” lurches and squawks like a Suicide jam session, roughens the noise guitar edges like Loop’s most interstallar work, and comes replete with wrist-heavy jazz drumming juxtaposed against Mike Morley’s faint, paigned throat exercises.

Paul Haney from Tiny Mix Tapes sums the Dead C’s latest rather nicely:

Secret Earth finds The Dead C providing the comfortable thrills of their skewed take on rock music across an entire long-player without hitting cliché or repetition. As the band has remained consistently vital and perplexing over their 20-plus-year career, it’s not terribly shocking that Secret Earth is one of their strongest releases, but one still gets that tinge of immense satisfaction hearing them produce a record this far into their career with every wrenching noise and dissonant sonic standing unrelentingly strong.

MP3 :::
The Dead C – Plains

Since it’s Halloween week, and I always associate Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds broadcast with the holiday, it seemed like a decent time for posting proper on some Simply Saucer. Though their name sounds like an item you might pick up at your nearby intergalactic grocery stop, their astral psychedelic garage transmissions more than make up for poor title decisions (I mean, their quintessential album is titled Cyborgs Revisited… Ridley Scott, you own them some royalties, dudebro).

The influences are obvious – early Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators, the Velvets’ “Sister Ray,” Delay 68 Can, Electric Prunes, et al., but whereas those groups fine-tuned their sound and still maintained a compositionally tight feel despite their freewheeling image, Simply Saucer had no interest in aesthetic. Every song sounds as if it was recorded live with cheap tape recorders.  Its gorgeously raw sound and low-end clipping mix gives Simply Saucer extra (possibly unintended) atmosphere. It’s too bad that Simply Saucer was never known too far outside their native Ontario, as they really captured, at least in my mind’s eye, the archetypal ’60s/early ’70s psych movement from a candid, outsider perspective. Being removed from what was happening in England and the West Coast is totally an asset to Cyborgs Revisited. 

They were also to an extent, as a sign o’ the times, totally insane. “Illegal Bodies” was recorded live and begins with some poignant stage banter about the next song: “Here’s some heavy metaloid music. It’s called ‘Illegal Bodies.’ It’s a song in the future. It’s when, uh, unless you have a metal body, they’re not gonna allow you to walk the streets. No kiddin’.” Right on, man. I’ll post this song at a later point.

But first, I wanna discuss two of the strongest jams on Cyborgs Revisited. Both “Here Come the Cyborgs, Part 2″ and “Dance the Mutation” dabble heavy in United States of America-style noise, including theremin sounds and other flourishes. Rather than rip into solos and what-not, Simply Saucer resorted to their acumen for cultivating a disorienting mood, adding effects and textures that resembled some cross between a first respondent siren and sound effects from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Around 3:05 and after on “Dance the Mutation,” you’ll probably notice early rumblings of what will later become shoegazing. You need Simply Saucer if you’re a Spacemen 3 fiend.

Also, there’s a pretty sweet review of Cyborgs Revisited on Amazon.com from a dude who calls himself “Farmer Ted”:

“Yo. This album is hot.
They drop bombs and don’t mess around.
I can’t believe more popel have not heard of this.
When you want a band that just rips it up nice…
Simply Saucer.
It’s the mad sweet old just ripping and going for it.
No one wants to do that anymore…
Well…Simply Saucer did.
Buy it. “

MP3 :::
Simply Saucer – Here Come the Cyborgs (Part 2)
Simply Saucer – Dance the Mutation

I want to talk about my email for a sec [kb (at) thedecibeltolls.com]. Chuck Klosterman once said that music critique is basically being paid to read your mail. That’s pretty accurate, and in many ways, that was the largest chunk of my job as a talent buyer at the music venue. I miss doing such work, despite the funky hours, so I enjoy getting mail from publicists and label reps. These letters provide two outcomes, depending on if the publicist is good at his/her job: 1) point you in the direction of artists that will pique your interest, or 2) provide some serious lol time, such as “Rilo Kiley fans – take delight.” Have you read this blog? I rag on that shit daily. I understand this, of course, as music promotion is often throwing spaghetti against a wall – just launch your name everywhere, and see what sticks. However, sometimes these corrospondences point me in the direction of some bands I dig, and if you’re reading the blog, you’ll dig as well. Case in point…

Today, I’m happy to present The Great Northwest. And following the storied tradition of Boston, Chicago, and Kansas, they are indeed from the great northwest (Portland, specifically). The Great Northwest in a few words: absolutely gorgeous, expansive space rock. I plan on reviewing their recently released debut The Widespread Reign of… soon. This is good.

Now, about that “gorgeous expansive space rock”… Mercury Rev has similarly described, but I’ve never been into them. I guess I’m missing something. Their thick, orchestrated textures are engaging, but the melodies and vocals border too close on adult contemporary for me to really groove to them (this includes Deserter’s Songs). For my taste, The Great Northwest extracts what’s good about Mercury Rev without slipping into predictability or complacency. Exhibit A: “Chief John”

Hopefully, the song’s title doesn’t relate to this Chief John. Strict constructionism is not what’s up:

The Great Northwest really struck me when I fired up “Chief John,” a slow-burner but oh so fierce, because they don’t run down the check list of what you’re supposed to do to be a psychedelic, dream pop, or shoegaze artist. They exist in a strange nether-region between lush pop and psychedelia without subscribing to either respective genre’s tenets.

The Great Northwest is, tangentially, part of the BJM/BRMC contingent, as the group is on Kora Records with Matt Hollywood’s The Out Crowd, and band leader Brian Coates produced the aforementioned group’s debut Then I Saw… (and also seems to know everyone in said scene). In many ways, it seems obvious that the Great Northwest is in this circle. “Chief John” has the same slow tempo acoustic downstrumming found on a lot of Dead Meadow’s Feathers and older Peter Hayes ballads, but whereas those groups tend to take on a more expressive Tyrannosaurus Rex freak folk approach to rock vocals, Matt Coates melts his vocal swells into the mix and adopts a more whispy sound reminiscent of Roger McGuinn or Bob Markley of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Actually, Coates voice is one of the most pleasant instruments I’ve heard in quite some time. I can’t talk about it enough – angelic and stoned, really one of a kind.

Fans of classic 4AD stuff like Cocteau Twins and Lush, two bands who juxtaposed adventurous sounds with traditionally beautiful and seraphic vocals, will really love this cut. “Chief John” seems that it would fit in seemlessly with one of my favorite debuts of all time – the eponymous record by Engineers. Engineers, who remind me of Spiritualized on Quaaludes or Porcupine Tree minus the prog element, also emphasize celestial and crystalline vocals over beds of tripped-down painkiller pop. Their self-titled debut was my summer ‘05 jam. It destroyed me daily. Though it’s a couple of years old, I’m going to post an MP3 and hope to make the group a few new fans – the album didn’t receive as much attention as it deserved.

Like Engineers, The Great Northwest is able to balance solid, well-crafted pop hooks with enough fluttering weirdness and signal-to-noise confusion to keep them a few kilometers off the ground at all times. “Chief John” features slick production without sounding phony, too – a tricky act to pull off, and something I really appreciate as a recording hobbyist. So I’ll stop yapping – click that play button below and drop out. Go visit their website here while you’re dropping out.

MP3 :::
The Great Northwest – Chief John
Engineers – Forgiveness

Wouldn’t it be totally lulzy if I posted a picture of the Seattle landmark and was all like “no, not that Space Needle, silly?!” Oh em gee, that would be hysterical. But since I have no sense of humor that I’m aware of, that won’t happen. Instead, I’d like to talk about how Space Needle (the band) is the fuzziest ever. I’m talking Snuggle Bear fuzzy. And by the way, this is not product placement, I’m really into Snuggle Bear. I fucking love talking bears.

I want this shit, for real:

Space Needle hailed from the always forward-thinking Providence, RI scene in the mid-’90s, recorded some choice cuts, suffered serious identity crises, and retreated back to the bat cave by ‘97. In 2006, a retrospective, Recordings 1994-1997, was released to salvage these psych gems and make them accessible to a new generation raised on the Flaming Lips. Lush pop interwoven with noise experimentations and blissed-out astral jaunts, Space Needle laid the groundwork for a lot of what’s going on right now without proper attribution.

“Sun Doesn’t Love Me” sounds like a crafty, masterful prophecy of what was to become with The Soft Bulletin and the like. “Old Spice” features a minimalist approach with an amazing, driving, dilluted pitchshifting riff that melts into a squarewaving static explosion. Less is more. The totally viscous “Scientific Mapp” is my favorite, though. It makes the eyes dart back and forth. It’s also really fuzzy, as mentioned.

MP3 :::
Space Needle – Sun Doesn’t Love Me
Space Needle – Scientific Mapp
Space Needle – Old Spice