Worlds remote n dead, space deep n sombre. Expansive yet claustrophobic. A stranded nexus between something and nothing. Colour n emotion bled out in protracted keyboard drones of Eno produced ambient wash. Anaemic flickers from n exhausted star.
Shimmering testimony to the occult attraction of total ur-drone immersion. Required listening for doubter, neophyte n aficionado alike. Layered loops, sprinkling echoed guitar in delayed wash n fuzz filter. Ideas, moods, repetitions morph just as the groove threatens stagnation - perfect. Melody hovers on the edge of emotional audibility amid a gurgling folky mess n glinting murk n mire. Occasional layered vocals. Ends on dark chanting coda into the shadows.
Do Good's deeds live on? No, Evil's deeds do, O God. Touchstones. Lewis Carroll, Alan Watts, R. D. Laing, C.S. Lewis, John Everett Millais, Albert Hoffmann and Donovan Leitch. Pure class and oh so very easy to slip under its mimsy spell.
True psych-folk eastern fusion. Blended sitar (Clem Alford), keening vocals (Alisha Sufit), guitars (Jim Moyes and Alisha Sufit) and Indian tablas (Keshav Sathe).
High quality combination of classically trained sitar player - as opposed to usual home counties chancer - imaginative songs delivered in slinky timbre and quick moves from lower to higher register. Hypnotic, dreamy and melodic chime.
Like some thoughtful Euros Childs inviting Sufjan Stevens in for a cuppa and semi-serious ontological chat. Ddy Bobs has got summat to say and he's not giving up. Acoustic taste 'o tasty growers. Get this fellah's stuff at Welsh music specialists Sadwrn.
Lightly psychedelicised, mildly experimental folk rock. Eschews gossamer flummery typical of period ssw acid-folk genre in favour of open throttle roister doister. Well worth a shufti.
Selection of Czech composer Zdeněk Liška's muscial scores for Švankmajer's animated art pieces. Sound, atmosphere and moving image in perfect thematic harmony. Nowhere more so than on Jabberwocky's layered though entirely legible evocation of innocence had and lost.
01 a game with stones 1965 02 punch and judy 1966 03 et cetera 1966 04 historia naturae 1967 05 byt 1968 06 the ossuary 1970 07 don juan 1970 08 jabberwocky 1971
Or the hangman's beautiful Thelema boys and girls. David Michael Tibet leads post-industrialist cast - Rose McDowall [Strawberry Switchblade], Steven Stapleton [NWW], Tony Wakeford [Sol Invictus], Douglas P. [Death In June], John Balance [Coil], Boyd Rice - in acoustically driven meditation on impermanence and immanence.
01 The Dilly Song
02 Hourglass for Diana
03 Earth Covers Earth
04 Rome for Douglas P.
05 Time Tryeth Truth
06 Hourglass for Rosy Abelisk
07 The Dilly Song (alternate version)
08 At the Blue Gates of Death
09 She Is Dead and All Fall Down
10 God Has Three Faces Wood Has No Name
11 The Blue Gates of Death (Before and Beyond Them)
12 The Dreammoves of the Sleeping King: I He Falls Into Fields of Sleep II the Dreamer Dreams a Dream
Essential addition to C93 canon and Tibet caught in media res defining his apocalyptic vision. Both versions of At the Blue Gates of Death are needful recordings: one a shorter, somewhat paranoid rendition, all grinding backwards bass; the other, a gorgeous ode to life well lived. Enormo slab of incongruous noise constituting bookend track is patented Stapleton - be warned.
Little wonder that C93's David Tibet obsessed on this album to the extent of reissuing on Durtro label: gnostic Christianity, proto new age revelation, love found / lost, and sex. All handled with deftness mixed with a manic, sinister edge. Strong meandering melody and conflicted lyrics very much in Bill Fay vein - another notable Tibet lost and found project.
Centre piece track is Jerusalem, all maniacally strummed acoustic guitar, swirling church organ, hand drums and muddy bassline. Sets redemptive and apocalyptic tone. Satan gets a look-in too on Where's Your Master Gone. It's not all unsettling Jesus freakery, mind. We get a number of obliquely gentle love songs too.
All in all, cynical, creepy and a rather beautifully poetic psych folk ornament for our times.
Ancient religious evensong and Lisa Gerrard's glossolalic forays into antique incomprehension. Like some immense home cinema in a cathedral. The Goth stops here.
Easy pastoral love pump action. Electrick prelude to bopping elf rampant. Great god Pan priapic, no mistake: First Heart Mighty Dawn Dart (at a push Organ Blues n' Woodland Bop). No more arse sitting cross-legged acoustic Tolkien schtick. Be upstanding for mighty Marc n' Micky. Less warble, more strut.
Eerie teenage home recordings. Darkling whimsy in acoustic Hitchcock / Barrett / Bowie tradition. Gauche with uncanny knack to zero in on melodic heart of each song.
Finnish multi-media artist Jonna Karanka and her home-baked loops, lo-fi drones, partly improvised sweet cakes, clattery nick nacks, found melodies, time travelling toys, and spooky boogie tapes. Oh yes.
Absurdist auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky - film maker, composer, graphic novelist, astrologer, tarot adept, poet, painter, mime and mystic - takes us to The Holy Mountain: epic, unbridled and maximally surrealistic; a stunning mystic imagistic mess. Cinematic occult revelation, divineacid trip, science fiction-fantasy, socio-sexual-religio-cultural critique...have it which way you will. Jodorowsky certainly does.
Sledgehammer subtle symbolism onslaught all over the shop. Eclectic pastiche is reflected in multi-genre hopping soundtrack composed by Jodorowsky, aided and abetted by Ronald Frangipane & Don Cherry (not methinks beloved Canadian hockey commentator - that would be surreal - but Don the jazz cornetist of some renown). Weirded out chantTrance Mutation, ritual riddimsPissed and Passed Out, jazz flute liteViolence of the Lambs, free folk acidDrink It, Cecil B. DeMille big orchestra soundtrackChrists 4 Sale, and them's just the first five tracks. We go on to Albinoni baroque, bachelor pad lounge core, fuzz garage and proto-dubstep. Last one's not true but you get the picture. Or maybe you don't...
Because da picture finds Christ figure wandering amid bizarre, grotesque scenarios, meeting mystical guide who introduces H/him to seven far our beings (1+7 = 8 planets in solar system folks). Said stellar signifiers, our protagonist, guide and guide's assistant divest themselves of worldly goods and seek out the Holy Mountain in order to displace the gods/old ones and so become immortal - innit. Enough references alchemical, tarot and astrological to give occultist freaks their spot the meaning kicks.
Harum scarum trailer on cinema release gives flavour - though film is, frankly, stranger:
Kaleidoscopic, crude, and thoroughly spiffing in both sound and vision. Check it out.
(Spoiler alert: film's ending suggests everything, even the film is, like...you know, an illusion...)
Llythyr i'r wasg: Yn ddiweddar bûm mewn Cabaret lle'r oedd y Tebot i fod i gymryd rhan, a gallaf eich sicrhau imi glywed un o'r perfformiadau mwyaf gwael a diymdrech gan unrhyw grŵp pop Cymraeg erioed. Ni chredaf eu bod wedi cyrraedd terfyn unrhyw un o'r caneuon oherwydd y gwamalu a'r lol. Roeddwn yn teimlo dros y rhai a weithiodd yn galed i geisio gwneud noson lwyddiannus, a'r gynulleidfa yn gorfod dioddef y fath sothach.
Y Cymro 22 Rhagfyr 1971
Ha! Arloeswyr Be Bop a Lula'r Delyn Aur...
Anarchic pioneers Welsh language folk-rock-pop scene 1969-1972.
Bonus documentary: Gwreiddiau Roc - Y Tebot Piws [w/subs]. As bois Sbardun, Pws, Ems & Stan move on to other groups of era - Mynediad am Ddim, Edward H Dafis, Ac Eraill - expect potted overview of era.
Mr Huw, y dyn, y chwedl. Dal i wenu a casau pob un? Blydi Holly'n jeifio i'r indie stomp llachar. Losing ei head over suicide, dead best friends and cannibals n' sex combos. Drinking poison wid butter fingers, he got bones to pick. Swimming in da bloodily morose, feeling dirty, fearing da fear. Ffycin grêt. (Dim ots, mae pawb yn dal i wenu).
Mordant, jocular and fucking great. When dis boi gets serious, look out!
Garage psych excess no home should be without. Culled from titular three Volume collection.
For your information:
Uno I See The Light - Uglies It's What You Give - The Actress No Place For Lonely People - Adams Recital Which Dreamed It - Boeing Duveen & The Beautiful Soup For Your Information - The Cedars Take Her Any Time - The Longboatmen Get Back Home - The Majority One Baby I Got News For You - Miller Evil Woman - Pete Sully & The Orchard Line Of Least Resistance - The Reign Hold On - Rupert's People Through With You - Serendipity Lust For Life - The Wolves
Dos You're Too Much - Eyes Try a Little Sunshine - Factory Nine Til Five - French Revolution It's Shocking What They Call Me - Game Strange Walking Man - Mandrake Paddle Steamer The Bird - Nimrod Listen To The Sky - Sands Reputation - Shy Limbs Grounded - The Syn Vacuum Cleaner - Tintern Abbey Floatin' - Vamp I'm coming Home - Deviants When The Night Falls - Eyes Francis - Gary Leeds & Rain No Home Today - Kult Mister Number One - Kult Liar - Fleur De Lys Reflections Of Charles Brown - Rupert's People Security - Thane Russal + Three
Fresh n' refreshed aprés Lester "Goddam" Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (chilluns, how can it be that y brawd has come so late to this particular reading salon that cover of spanking new edition be tarted up - only semironically mind you - with "star of Almost Famous" come on? Come on! Sure, LB reveled in a name, a cipher for gunslinging hipster rock hackery from times antediluvian and pre sick joke Burchill & Parsons. Tony Parsons, marked for death! But sure, no way do we appreciate that ol' LB is A GREAT AMERICAN WRITER and we dinnae need Rolling Stone Magazine t'tellus so. Not one to willingly undersell an enthusiasm, m'lud Yatesbury of Cope's blurby effusion is rite on't money: "one of life's great gurus". Ever wonder where the Archdrude copped his music prosody mojo? You guessed it. Furthermore, in a double barrelled insult Julian once noted of Ian "Duke" McCulloch that it's not enough to call Bono a twat; you need to know why he's a twat. Relish in your jaded mind's eye if you will the field day LB woulda had with a review of The Joshua Tree if he hadn't overdone the Darvon and checked out in 1982. LB always knows WHY even when he is plain wrong) and having a yen to share the occasion, and in lieu of compiling a killer collection of Count Five, ?+the Mysterians, the Dictators, the Godz n' suchlike creatures you get this. (Get that utter nonsense: 15 EXPLOSIVE TRACKS BY BANDS WHO WERE PUNK BEFORE PUNK.)
Copywritten drivel aside, rock n' roll fire-cracking rockets and y brawd's idea of entertainment.
Lecture 1: el Cueva's field guide to "what is" & "how to write" a love song. Written for 1998 Vienna Poetry Festival and performed at London's Royal Festival Hall 1999, this is a studio recording including piano & voice West Country Girl, People Ain't no Good, Sad Waters, Love Letter, and Far From Me.
Lecture 2: Cave, Christ and the creative imagination. BBC recording 1996. Revealing stuff.
Whereat dirty ol' Lee revels in a decadence that passeth all understanding. Perfect! Brass blusters and zings like sleazed up opium fiends (whatever that is). Uh, look out! She may look like like a lady but oh brother.... Lee sings vignetted folderol about getting high, laid then buggering off sharpish. Just thought you'd like t'know.
Sydney Carter (1915 - 2004), folk poet, holy sceptic, gentle satirist, theological iconoclast and composer of two of the most popular songs sung in morning assemblies in British schools: One More Step and Lord Of The Dance. Neither appear on Bob and Carole Pegg's [ aka Mr Fox] collection of interpretations, though Lord of the Dance is covered on their contemporaneous He Came From the Mountain.
(Sydney wrote Lord of the Dance in 1963, as an adaptation of Shaker hymn Simple Gifts featured in Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring. Sydney sees Christ as "the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality... I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.")
Bob and Carole present a mix of borderline street cabaret (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Doctor Spock) and wyrdly Christian (Come, Love, Carolling, Shake and Shiver, Judas and Mary). To these ears, it's the latter pieces that continue to resonate most fearsomely.
Fearless and declamatory, Friday Morning has the robber crucified with Jesus cry out:
"It was on a Friday morning that they took me from my cell
And I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well. You can blame it on to Pilate, you can blame it on the Jews, You can blame it on the Devil, it's God I accuse. It's God they ought to crucify, instead of you and me, I said to the carpenter a-hanging on the tree."
If any church comes close to holding Sydney's allegiance, it is the Society of Friends, with its rejection of dogma, and reliance on personal experience, social activism, and affirmation of God's presence in every human being. Suitably Morris flavoured closing trackGeorge Fox then is a canny choice. Fox toured the country giving sermons arguing the irrelevance of consecrated buildings and ordained ministers to the individual seeking God.
Sydney: "Bibles, legends, history are signposts: they are pointing to the future, not the past. Do not embrace the past or it will turn into an idol." Jesus is central, not "the official Jesus - but the Jesus who is calling you to liberty, to the breaking of all idols including the idol which he himself has become."
01 Come, Love, Caroling
02 Run the Film Backwards
03 Glass of Water
04 Last Exit to Brooklyn
05 Up at the House of Cecil Sharp
06 Port Mahon
07 Shake and Shiver
08 The Holy Horses
09 Judas and Mary
10 Friday Morning
11 Doctor Spock
12 The Candlelight
13 George Fox
