Vladimir Martynov is a very special Russian composer. He’s one who is primarily interested in minimalist, avant-garde, and religious music. I’d venture a guess that there aren’t very many of his type. Night In Galicia takes all of his fascinations, churns ’em up, and spits out a stunning and endlessly intriguing piece of work.

Galicia is a little over an hour long with 13 separate tracks but it’s the 15 minute opener that stands out as the epic focal point. It starts out nice and pure, with a man and woman going back and forth, unnervingly reciting the various pronunciations of our alphabet’s vowels. When I first played this, my wife hated it. She wouldn’t let me get past the 2 minute mark, which is a shame, because that’s exactly where it gets a bit more dynamic. More and more vocals come in and they form some sort of syncopated beat. Eventually, everything bursts into a grandiose chorus that sounds halfway African and makes you want to stomp your feet and and break out in tribal dance. It’s seriously amazing and hypnotic. The CD could end there and it wouldn’t even matter. But there’s still another 50 minutes left to knock you off you feet.

The remaining songs on Night In Galicia alternate between edgy orchestral string drones and majestic vocal work that brings me to the same place as Yoshi Wada’s Lament For The Rise & Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile. The moods may be dissimilar but the technique and approach are very much alike. And considering how highly I regard Lament, that is one honorable compliment.

My guess is that Galicia might take some getting used to. Granted, that’s only due to my wife’s reaction, but I guess it never hurts to take precautions. I was immediately hooked but it’s possible this might be considered a “tough listen.” If you’re feeling brave, give it a go. I know I’m new here so my word doesn’t mean much, but I 100% recommend this record and will defend it indefinitely.

Vladimir Martynov (Long Arms bio) (Wikipedia)
Long Arms Records

Musicians have to mature. If for nothing else they have to have “continued professional development” but equally if an act or songwriter continues to regurgitate the same turgid shit year after year it becomes insincere and even worse, boring. Bands that have a career (or yearn/strive for a career) tend to find their formula early (often a variation of someone else’s sound), stick with it and wind becoming stale and boring in the process. This can often carry an act through a long career as the quality of the material gets distracted by hype, personality and whole set of other elements that do not relate to the art therein. This album represents a victory against that kind of complacency and the beauty of evolution.

The two headed monster that is Yonokiero is the enduring partnership that fuelled the fire of Hirameka an indie generation ago and provided many noisy lo-fi moments and dreams rejuvenating a small circle of people and daring to brush up against some big dreams while tussling with real (professional) indie heavyweights.

At this point I have to admit I could never truly be subjective about these guys. I have lived with them, toured with them, argued with them, been sick on them but that is all in the past and with this record I am sufficiently detached and genuinely presented with something I was neither expecting nor recognise. Sure I have been hearing demos of many of these songs for a couple of years now but nothing in this form. I remember their first gig at a house party called the Green Man Roundabout Festival and how thrilling it was to witness the rebirth and reinvention.

The most noticeable transition and addition to their arsenal is the expansion of instruments and sounds. Pleasantly sedate, after all the noise and furore of Hirameka, this is very much their Unplugged In New York (especially on the intro on “Randolph Bourne”), echoing a similar direction that other heroes have taken in evolution with bands such as The Evens.

The highlight tracks amongst the Nick Drake enthused collection include “Hey Now”, one of the older songs on show full of gliding pop with an “About A Girl” feel and Larry Sanders nod in the song title. Conversely in a batch of carefully crafted tunes it is the loudest and heroically lumbering of “Rewound” with its “time for reunion” mantra coupled with beautiful disorientation in its distortion which provides a real bipolar response.

With vocals that are generally hushed in delivery, adding an air of mystery and often menace, it is difficult to decipher what is being said all of the time but for those that are clear the lyrics flow as closely coded and guarded riddles only a spectator next to the trees could fathom, a kind of antidote to the Neil Strauss way of thinking and a different take on making sense of situations. This is the work of a yo yo ego.

It’s not perfection but in a world so cold you have to welcome and support such a rank contender/outsider.

Thesaurus moment: restoration.

Yonokiero
Front And Follow

Ocean Bottom Nightmare (or rather OBN for short) find me on a fortuitous day as I desire something heavier, heavier than heaven, heavier than hell.

Hailing from Nottingham, what we have here are a hardcore snapping three piece leaning more on the metal side of hardcore as opposed to the punk.

Happily citing bands such as Mclusky and Reuben as their inspirations, here is something of an uninspired take on that sound, a sound that lacks a sense of humour that the genre so needs/requires to thrive on. If you really take life so seriously, as this EP title would suggest, soon you’ll adopt some kind of straitjacket as modelled by the latest version of the emo crowd.

On their side is a distorted bass that briefly makes the music breath and stand out but as the stern demeanour of the apparent personality of the band and its music take over and overwhelm such touches, the whole thing is inevitably lost to the ages.

In the end, this music is rock leaning towards the metal tone and taste of Kerrang readers, the music just feels too well adjusted to cause any real ripples in the grand scheme of things and you can shout as much as you like and you just will not be taken seriously. Unless of course you are good looking and goth girls want to fuck you.

Thesaurus moment: Zavvi.

Ocean Bottom Nightmare
Phat Phidelity

(Originally posted January 2005)

Records that were good in 2004

That time of year has wound around again, and everyone who’s got an opportunity to make themselves heard (and this being t’internet, that means a lot of people) has compiled inevitable endless lists of what they liked about the previous 12 months. You may have noticed that diskant towers itself plays host to such humdrum marvels – though I have to be a back-slapping sonuvabitch and say that I’ve always enjoyed reading our lists and bolshy arguments far more than yer average boring coolometer measurements on all those other boring sites…

Annnnnyway, it was when I started thinking about what candidates I would be putting forward as my nominees for the diskant team top few musical recordings of the year that it slowly dawned on me: there’s only the tiniest chance that more than a couple of my favourite records of 2004 would receive a single vote from anyone else. Why do I know this? Because I’m a fucking obscurist cuntbag. As mentioned in the last time I shat one of these incubi out I’ve developed a worrying affection for/interest in tiny CDR labels dealing in obscurer-than-thou artists and miniscule print runs (you know Davenport have got a tape coming out in an edition of 11? Bastards!). So, is this gross arrogance and patronising behaviour on the most disgusting scale? Fuck knows. But honestly, there’s no posturing here: the records I’m going to blather about are genuinely far more interesting and exciting to me than pretty much any of the ‘properly’ released records you’ll find us arguing over in our annual records round-up. As the mainstream “industry” stagnates, and independents are increasingly either swallowed up or bankrupted, why shouldn’t music released on CDR format be considered ‘valid’ or ‘proper’? I’m not directing this at you, good reader, for I am sure you are pure of heart and clear of head, but alas others are more ignorant and prejudiced, whether they realise it or not. Obviously, this argument also dates back to tape labels, but with no discernable quality difference between a ‘proper’ CD that was produced by the thousand in a pressing plant and a ‘homemade’ CDR that was burnt at home, the case for considering all this music is ever more pressing. Whatever.

“C’mon Dave,” you might want to say to me, “could you not at least talk about how great the latest Sonic Youth LP is?”

“NO!” I would knock back like a cancer-ridden Bill Hicks preaching to the unconverted, “It’s a disgraceful half-asleep assortment of soft-rock songs knocked out between too many arty side-projects, and it’s the worst fucking thing they’ve done in years!”

“…”

Honestly, that’s my genuine opinion. 2004 was the year I fell out with the Youth. It’s pretty sad really. Almost made me cry.

Ahem. Anyway. Now with you suitably hushed (and no doubt wondering exactly what kind of delusion I am suffering from this year), please allow me to begin detailing precisely why I’d choose a bunch of no-budget recorded-in-a-shed lowlifes over a particularly turgid offering by a band that (admittedly after 20-odd years of being mostly incredible) sound like they’re lost the central idea about why music is such a beautiful thing to get excited about in the first places.

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The Jelas are a puzzle. Blood Smash is the trio’s new EP conundrum to be unravelled by the hardy listener – the EP literally is a puzzle. Each song has multiple ‘shapes’ according to the inner sleeve that matches whatever combination the listener feels fit.

In fact the songs themselves sound jumbled, with each player carving out their own line regardless of what ever noise that attempts to overwhelm them. The male/female singing is blended and pushed further out, triggering a nicely jarring tune. Different keys clash, drums slow to super snail-pace – it’s a compliment that The Jelas sound like they’d be great to see live.

Blood Smash isn’t terribly well produced and has a flat demo feel. It’s hardly a criminal offence and I like a good old messy and rough record, but the drums deserve better mic work, or whatever it is that producers do. With terrific cartoon designs and a tidy aesthetic, Blood Smash is worth buying just for the great cover art, and £5 isn’t an unreasonable price. A decent release from Bristol’s fledgling independent label, Ingue Records.

The Jelas

Ingue Records

Pascal Ansell

(Originally posted November 2004)

DAVENPORT: A minor love letter

Dear beloved,

Let me introduce you to my favourite band of 2004. Personally speaking, these past twelve months have been pretty thin on the ground for ‘proper’ releases by bands on ‘proper’ CDs and vinyl, and slowly but surely I have found myself increasingly immersed within the ever-burgeoning world of ‘free’ music and homemade CDR labels. Thanks variously to the element of random chance and a couple of excellent UK-based distro kids (namely Melody Boa and Shoryobuni), I bought my first Davenport record a few months into this year, and was instantly smitten. Being the voracious music-consuming monster I can be (when meagre finances allow), I knew I had to seek out everything I could by this mysterious group. The problem was, as soon as I thought I’d managed to get everything I could, something new would pop up. Here’s a list of Davenport’s discography, as of 25 October 2004:

• self titled CDR – limited to 20 copies (sold out on 23 Productions)*
• Springtime on Saturnalia 3″ CDR (on PseudoArcana)
• self titled c60 cassette – limited to 23 copies (sold out on 23 Productions)
• Little Howling Jubilee 3″ CDR (on 267-Lattajjaa)
• Loki’s War 4.6.04 – limited to 18 copies CDR (sold out on 23 Productions)
• Free Country CDR – limited to 93 copies (sold out on Foxglove)
• Sun Your Open Mouth 5.18.04 CDR – limited to 41 copies (sold out on 23 Productions)
• split w/ Maths Balance Volumes CDR (sold out on 23 Productions)
• split w/ Son of Earth CDR (out now on 23 Productions)
• O, too high Ditty for my Simple Rhyme CDR – limited to 100 copies (sold out on Time-Lag)
• Owl Movement CDR (sold out on 23 Productions)
• split w/ Seen Through CDR (on Haamumaa)

I’m pretty sure all this came out this year. And then there’re at least a dozen more releases in the works. They might even squeeze out a couple of new CDRs before the end of the year. I certainly wouldn’t bet against it: there’s a whole two months to go just yet.

So who the fuck are these pricks? And how the hell have they managed to release so much material? And why do it in such ridiculously small quantities? Here’s the official bio from their website:

“Davenport was started in Madison, in the Summer of 2002. It was originally a vehicle for folk song experiments by Clay Ruby. By Fall [otherwise known as Autumn] of 2003 many others had been invited to participate in improvisations, rituals, and recordings with Davenport. Since then there has been a surge in activity and output.”

What this means is that Davenport is a loose collective with a rotating cast that revolves around Clay Ruby. Some releases have only a couple of contributors; others feature a massed army of new-psych pseudo-folk avant-dreamers, wielding anything they can get their hands on: guitars, organs, drums, kongas, vocals, all kinds of percussion, and an awful lot of stuff you can’t readily identify, which they probably picked up from the street on their way to practice. Inevitably, there’s a whole lotta on-the-spot experimenting and improvising going on. Davenport apparently record live pretty much every single one of their get-togethers and performances, and then pick the cream of the crop for release. What is so breathtaking is the range and sheer quality of the crop. Don’t get me wrong, Davenport aren’t some awful ‘genre-straddling’ bunch of electrotwats or Jamie Cullum or whatever his name is; it’s the depth of mood, feel and texture that they generate which allows for some fantastic diversity between recordings. Here’s a reverse-chronology guide (call it a whimsy) to a few selected highlights of the Davenport 2004 oeuvre (and roll on the new stuff, which I’m told is even better)…

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Broken Arm’s ‘Shields Mystical’ CD is worth picking up for its fantastic cover alone:

What’s more, it’s printed onto nice rough card so it’s a tactile delight.

What’s more, the music is great and it’ll be directly up your street.

What’s more, the band features diskant.net alumnus Hugues Mouton. A man you can trust.

Broken Arm, yo.

More proof that there’s no real new music any more, just retreads and rethinkings of what’s gone before. Still, it’s not like that’s a new state of affairs I guess; but the arc of history seems to be getting ever shorter these days. The Asteroid No.4 are a shoegaze-jangler band, referencing those heady late 80s/early 90s days of Ride, Stone Roses, experimentation with cheap LSD, frolicking in parks, etc etc. They pull it off pretty nicely, moving from a dreamy Neil Young-tinged opener in ‘My Love’, through a droney freakout session over ‘I Look Around’ and ‘Hei Nah Lah’, ending up with the simultaneous invocation of My Bloody Valentine and a combination of Ride’s first two albums on ‘She Touched The Sky’.

The album is subtitled A Treasury Of Witchcraft And Devilry, hinting at either some kind of Stones-go-Satan cheeky devil-raising or some hard-drug shenanigans that’s best left alone. Across the whole album we’re only a couple of times exposed to the true devilry of bland, pseudo-epic songwriting, and as a piece it sits firmly in this odd neo-shoegaze place that’s all the rage right now. There’s reverb and echo aplenty, and enough of a nod to authentic late ’60s psychedelia to make this more than a simple knock-off. It’s their fifth album too, I believe, so they’re certainly persistent and no foot-draggers. I have my fingers crossed that right now The Asteroid No.4 are sitting cross-legged in kaftans, smoking hookah and creating action poetry – anything less would be unbecoming.

The Asteroid No.4
The Committee To Keep Music Evil

(Originally posted March 2004)

It always feels awkward to launch straight into a bunch of barely-related rants masquerading as reviews for these column things, but how the hell do you introduce a series of moans about music as disparate as I’ve found fit to write about this time around?

I was wondering whether I should protest that my favourite film of 2003, All The Real Girls (enjoy the fucking waiting for anything to happen if you click on that link), didn’t even get a mention in diskant’s round-up of last year’s films, but it all seems a bit pointless now. Or earlier today I was wondering about the socio-political implications of Friendster on a community/scene, but that’s probably because almost all of diskant’s staff members have been mugged by this particular online popularity contest, and it’s hugely distracting when you’re trying to write shit like this. Plus, I get to count Will Oldham amongst my friends, so nerr. Ahem. Whatever.

Anyway, this Growing album, The Sky’s Run Into The Sea, on Kranky/Southern has been hanging around waiting for me to review since last October, so maybe now’s the time to actually get around to it. Fittingly, following January’s tribute to Sunn 0))), here’s another band mightily influenced by shotgun enthusiast Dylan Carson’s Earth project and its massively detuned guitars. A mysterious art trio, Growing comes across as much more of a minimalist art project than a band. Their ‘songs’ are drone pieces that shift from textured rumblings of electric guitars into cymbal crashes, or the occasional startling, scratchy melody. Sometimes, as the first track exemplifies, this works fantastically – we shift from an opening gambit of five minutes of soothing ambience into an appropriately stoned chugtastic* riff by a very loud guitar, which quickly fades out into the same riff played on an unplugged guitar. All very affecting. But there are some moments on the album that just grate – some of the textures of the distorted guitars are more annoyingly fuzzy than warm and entrancing, and the movement of the last song into a folk melody hazily sung by a few folks but dominated by a yowling guitar is actually not very good at all. I’m sure that the guitar is supposed to be reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s infamous shagging the Stars & Stripes up the arse, but to these ears it sounds like he was reincarnated as a stillborn baby that’s playing with someone else’s mucky shitter. Not good. Bad, bad. Which is a shame, because about half of this double LP is class.

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(Originally posted January 2004)

SOUTHERN LORD: AN APPRECIATION OF SOME BANDS

Metal’s shit, isn’t it?

I mean, it’s just a lot of ugly chest-beating and testosterone thrown around most of the time, and when it’s not, it’s this awful po-faced ‘serious evil’ bollocks. I mean, all that crap about hidden subliminal satanic messages being audible when you play Kiss’ ‘Destroyer’ album or Black Oak Arkansas backwards – what all the cultural commentators neglected to mention was that the only reason you’d play a metal record backwards was because it probably sounded better than going forwards.

And then you’ve got black metal – the prime exponents of such are generally held to be Dimmu Borgir, a band that was once described to me as ‘The Backstreet Boys of metal’. I mean, come on! I spent the entirety of the 90s taking the piss out of people into metal, and its newfound ‘credibility’ hasn’t changed my mind a bit – I still think that Slayer suck shit, despite any protestations from well-meaning friends.

Unfortunately, Southern Lord has managed to blow my theory to pieces in the space of little over a year of exposure to their darkest manifestations. The primary source behind all this can be found in the output of SL’s finest, Sunn0))). Ostensibly SL gurus Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, Sunn0))) is in essence the sound of two massively detuned guitars playing Sabbath riffs at about 20 beats per minute. And that’s pretty much it on their second album ’00-Void’ (their first release ‘The Grimmrobe Demos’ is kind of hard to get hold of); there’re four songs, each around 15 minutes long. No hooks, no discernable versus and choruses, no goddamned drums! Just pure slow-crunching riffs submerged in low-end drones that seem to increase the density of the air in the room you’re in, if you turn the volume up high enough.

As they say themselves, ‘The Sunn0))) mission is to create trance-like soundscapes with the ultimate low end/bottom frequencies intended to massage the listener’s intestines into an act of defecation.’ Joking aside, the beauty of Sunn0))) is their dedication to taking the blueprint established by Dylan Carson’s legendary Earth project and pushing at the boundaries of what you can do with extreme low-end signals created by guitars. On last year’s ‘3: Flight of the Behemoth’, they perfected their guitar-only approach on the first two songs, then invited Merzbow to remix the next couple of tracks, and then put drums and even some vocals all over the climactic closer! Though Masami Akita’s piano samples occasionally sound a little clumsy over such refined noise, the rest of the album is little short of absolutely fabulous. Involving enough to demand your attention at all times, yet droning and repetitive enough to push you into some kind of meditative state, ‘Flight of the Behemoth’ is an hour of pretty much utter bliss if you’re in the mood for it.

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