Gong Splat- Gong Splat

 

Despite finally releasing a new studio album in 2022 after an almost two year gap filled with live albums, a remix album, and various improv sideprojects, this year turned out to be a relatively quiet one for Osees. Outside of extensive touring and somewhat under-the-radar releases of a couple live performances by the improv sideprojects, there simply wasn't a lot to discuss this year. We keep expecting a surprise EP or something, as previous years have been capped off with, to no avail. Maybe this means 2023 will be bursting at the seams? Maybe we'll finally get the badly needed Singles Collection Volume 4? Regardless, the year has also turned out to be a bit of a wash as far as my life is concerned. This time last year, as I started to listen to Gong Splat and had recently begun a new job, things were looking up and the next year felt full of promise. Instead I'm ending 2022 in a real rut, unemployed and rudderless, with the same amount of debt as I started with...though I am more frequently sober than I have been in years, which is something! Anyway, my apologies that it's taken way longer to finish this run of reviews than I had anticipated.

Gong Splat was released on December 17th, 2021, the last in the slate of improv sideprojects “recorded in the peak of dope smoke lock down” according to John Dwyer. While this one doesn't stray too far from the rest in terms of overall sound, it's quite unique in the line-up, which is stripped down and for once doesn't include Tomas Dolas:

John Dwyer- guitars, etc.

Ryan Sawyer- drums

Greg Coates- bass

Wilder Zoby- synths/Mellotron (on tracks 2, 4, & 9 only)

Andres Renteria- misc. percussion (on tracks 1, 3, & 5 only)

From this you may have noticed that a full third of the songs only feature the trio of Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates, while Zoby and Renteria never appear on a track together. Speaking of Zoby, he's the wildcard here as we haven't heard him on an improv record yet. Gazing at his discography reveals he's worked with El-P and Run The Jewels as well as production work and various appearances with bands I won't even pretend I've heard of (Chin Chin, Lanoiraude) and some I have heard of but haven't listened to (Cass McCombs, Blockhead). At least on Gong Splat his style of playing tends toward the abstract/atmospheric and is used as a background rather than a foreground element. To put it another way, I'd describe him primarily as a synthesizer player and not a traditional keyboardist.

Given its smaller pool of musicians, I would definitely put Gong Splat more on the Witch Egg side of the equation than the Bent Arcana/Moon-Drenched side. Which is to say it's more jazzy, spacious, and atmospheric, though lacking saxophones and a traditional keyboardist/pianist. Ryan Sawyer on drums means it certainly has more of a krautrock and groove-oriented vibe as well. With less cooks in the kitchen, Gong Splat showcases more of a small-group interplay that allows ideas to happen and develop with more immediate focus in a more rapid fashion. It's quite telling that the three tracks that only feature Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates are the shortest on the album, and among the shortest in the entire improv sideproject run. Judging from the plays on Spotify, I get the sense most people start off strong on Gong Splat and their enthusiasm kind of wanes as it goes. I can understand that. This album doesn't do anything terribly surprising and different than the records that had come before, so despite the fact it's probably some people's favorite in the run and has some excellent material, some fatigue has no doubt set in among fans.

With the bookend of Gong Splat it was now easy to differentiate these releases as if one is going into an options menu in a videogame and tweaking the settings here and there. “What if Witch Egg but no sax, more guitar, different drummer...”, you get the idea. Anyway, we were talking about the album starting off strong, yes? The opening title track is certainly one of the strongest harvests from the entire improv run, with its deep bass stabs, blurting synthesizers, noodling guitar teleporting in and out of the mix, and a typically addictive Sawyer kraut-groove that could go on for days if they'd let it. 'Cultivated Graves' yet again demonstrates how effective using an acoustic bass with this kind of music can be, doubly so if it's mixed in a way that it isn't overcome by the rest of the instruments. The song builds to a frenetic and loud peak before letting out the breath and ending with a reverberating crescendo. 'Toagut' is a showcase for percussion and drums, though Dwyer's expansive, effects-coated guitar solos burn straight through to the Earth's core before we suddenly shoot off into deep space and the remaining minute is given over to peaceful keyboard sounds that flutter in-and-out across the stereo sides. As for 'Anther Dust', which my spellcheck and I both keep desperately wanting to be titled 'Another Dust'...well, it's a bit of a non-starter. There's a huge mess of sounds going on but I'm not sure the abstraction of it all ever adds up to anything interesting other than a bunch of people making a lot of formless racket.

Side B opens with 'Yuggoth Travel Agency', a title which promises more of a spirited and motorik-beat infused good time than what we actually get. But I'm fine with that; not every long song on a Dwyer project needs to be interstellar overdrive, as it were. The sleighbells are certainly a nice touch, as is the skipping/skittering beat machinations of Sawyer. For those curious, “Yuggoth” derives from Lovecraft mythology and is a planet you probably wouldn't want to visit unless you like freaky fungus/crab creatures and impossibly old ancient godlike beings who couldn't care less about your existence. But I digress. 'Hypogeum' has lots of layers of keyboard/synth sounds from Dwyer, including wind-like whooshes and twinkle-twankles, and suddenly is cut off just as the groove is getting going. 'Oneironaut' brings the energy level up a couple notches, with a loping bass-and-drums led stride that...um, also is suddenly cut off just as the groove is really getting going. Huh. The even shorter 'Minor Protocides' tries to see what would happen if you mixed Endless Garbage with Moon-Drenched, and the result is every bit as calamitous as that sounds. Frankly all it does for me is hurt my ears and make me wish I was listening to either of those albums. I'm happy to report, then, that the Dune-referencing 'Giedi Prime' completes the album with more a more graceful and eerie version of what Side A's ending 'Anther Dust' was trying to do. Just as I would say Gong Splat's album cover is mirrored by its opening title track, 'Giedi Prime' sounds like what happens when you travel all the way down that dark road into the 2001 rings of psychedelic color and come out the other side, no road or drums/percussion to ground you. Coates's masterful use of bowed bass on this track finally makes me concede that, if Sawyer is the obvious MVP of the improv records, then Coates is the most underrated player.

My general takeaway from Gong Splat is that it makes for an uneven capstone to the improv sideproject run. It simultaneously always leaves me wanting more and yet wishing a couple tracks had been cut. It should be more consistently interesting and fresh than it is, especially coming after the four albums that preceded it and did more to differentiate themselves. I suppose in some ways you can posit Gong Splat as a sampler for what the improv sideprojects have to offer, but this kind of implies that it's not the inherently satisfying and coherent feeling record that should be, too. It's especially weird for me because for most of the last year, it was unquestionably my favorite of the improv records. But in revisiting it more closely for this review, I've been continuously left underwhelmed by it. I dunno, I'm having a hard time coming to grips with my take on this one. Just as 2022 in my personal life ended up being a confused and confusing mixed-bag of feelings and events (both minor and major), this record similarly doesn't settle out into something I can easily explain and summarize. Thankfully I don't do scores for albums anymore, because this one would be a tough nut to crack. All of that said, in my opinion it's the weakest of the improv sideprojects in the sense that it sits as the least unique and the most imbalanced record in the lot, with some obvious highlights (in particular the title track) and some forgettable filler. It's essential if you like the other improv records, or even music in this vein in general—just be ready to chew and swallow the gong with the splat. Err, I mean, the wheat with the chaff.

Moon-Drenched- Moon-Drenched

 

As a dues paying member of the night owl union to begin with, I definitely am the sort who stays up way too late when I'm unemployed. Thus the last few months I've been acutely aware of the passing of the hours during late nights, as my wife sleeps in the other room, but also of the phases and positions of the moon in the night sky. I know a lot of people consider themselves stargazers, or at the very least will notice the beauty of painterly colors often seen during sunrise and sunset. I currently live in very flat, very rural Northwest Ohio so it's very, very hard to miss these views. All of this said, I think there's a particular sort who actively engage in moon watching, as it were. Weirdos and night owls and insomniacs and addicts, to name a few. While I can't say for sure, I've just never imagined John Dwyer as the kind of guy who wakes up bright and early to go for a jog and is in bed, asleep, by 11 P.M. Listening to things like the first Damaged Bug album and reading the descriptions he gives to his music using phrases like “...the familiar liminal twilight of skittering hues of black-blue...in pursuit of lunar prism beams heretofore unseen...”, I get the sense he's nightkin, too, y'know?

At the very least I'm sure he's had some acid comedown late nights, smoking a joint to ease the long journey into morning as the trip has long since ended yet the brain cells keep pinging off your skull, demanding something by turns eerie and primal and unreal to feast upon. Back in the day, proper non-musical fodder would be called 'midnight movies.' Nowadays I get the sense 'cult movie' is the more common term, though I personally think there's important distinctions between the two as much as the similarities might filter them into the same bubbling brew. I won't spend time here going into these differences, that's for another article. However this does make me think about one film that's always toed the line between 'midnight' and 'cult', The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Perhaps it's all the time I've spent unemployed and drenched in the moon but I've been thinking a lot about this movie recently as I've been trying to find a way to enter the orbit of Moon-Drenched and return with my astronautical findings. Which—and I'm not making this up—has turned out to be pretty serendipitous because the title of today's improv sideproject likely comes from the only released song (in the form of a demo), 'The Moon Drenched Shores Of Transylvania', from the scrapped sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, under the working title Revenge Of The Old Queen.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's just the poverty and insomnia getting the best of my senses. But I'd like to think I'm not. Anyway! To the music, already...

Moon-Drenched was released May 28^th, 2021. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this album might as well be credited to the group Bent Arcana, since it's all the same people (plus one), and some of the songs from this would eventually be performed live under that name. But I'll still consider this its own deal and not the sophomore album by Bent Arcana. Frustratingly, you'll see this album's title with or without the hyphen, though the album's back cover art and stickers/spine clearly have the hyphen, so I'll continue spelling it that way.

Sure sure, I know, I'm the only one who cares, let's move on! Here's the lineup:

John Dwyer- guitar/etc.

Ryan Sawyer- drums

Peter Kerlin- bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synthesizers

Kyp Malone- synthesizer

Ben Boye- Wurlitzer/electric piano

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

Marcos Rodriguez- guitar

Lanea “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita- violin

Andres Renteria- misc. percussion

Joce Soubiran- saxophones

Ben Boye is the new addition to the already established Bent Arcana crew. He's probably best known for playing keyboards with Sun Kil Moon/Mark Kozelek and in Ty Segall's Freedom Band. While I'm not familiar with his work prior to this record, Boye is credited as playing Wurlitzer, and so his contributions are more melodic and lead orientated as compared to the synth abstractions of Tomas Dolas and Kyp Malone.

If Bent Arcana felt a bit tentative and varied in its approach, Moon-Drenched throws down the gauntlet. Despite its lunar title, the record as a whole tends more toward a high energy, high octane approach punctuated by shorter, more abstract tracks. As I alluded to earlier, Moon-Drenched is the perfect soundtrack for that point of a late, late night following an acid trip where you aren't actively tripping anymore but it's rapidly approaching 4 A.M. and your brain is equal parts fried and fully awake. Perhaps you find yourself fixated on existential questions, like, “when, exactly, does the transition from night to morning happen?” or “how late is too early in the morning to eat some ice cream?” You may never find an answer but this record will keep the journey going as it gives you music that is by turns funky and Earth-y, spacey and free-floating, intense and energetic, relaxed and somnambulant.

Overall Moon-Drenched feels like the musicians are playing and interacting in a much more coherent and ever evolving way than on Bent Arcana. I still feel like I can never really hear the violin, making me wish Dwyer had used Myers-Ionita in a different improv group with less players, but otherwise I don't think there's a weak link. The rhythm section has really locked-in together, providing the perfect launchpad for everyone else to play off what they're doing. On 'Der Todesfall' and 'Spoofing', Kerlin's bass finds an interesting phrase and the other players seem to lock in on it and fill in the musculature upon his skeletal ideas. As always when he's involved, though, I think it's Sawyer who steals the show. His subtle, jazzy contributions to 'Get Thee To The Rookery' are the perfect choice to compliment the ghostly void of sounds. 'The War Clock' has to be one of his best performances, ever, a constantly shifting groove that, by itself, justifies the song's almost 13 minute length. With all due respect to the current two drummer lineup of Osees, I'd love to see what the band would sound like with Sawyer taking the rhythmic reins for an album and/or tour.

Perhaps the slimmest moonbeam of a complaint I have is that I think this album is a bit more obvious (perhaps earnest is a better word) about its influences. 'Psychic Liberation' features an edit/transition from an opening spacey section to a band in full-flight set to middle-velocity mode; a minimalist bassline and exploding guitars punctuate the full-group interplay, all in a way that feels right out of Miles Davis's On The Corner playbook. Everyone rightfully picks up on the krautrock influences on these improv records but 'Terra Incognito' absolutely feels like it could've come from the more experimental and abstract edges of Tago Mago or Yeti. Moon-Drenched feels more guitar/jam focused than Bent Arcana and certainly Witch Egg, as a result openly echoing the more jammy end of krautrock, such as heard in Agitation Free and Guru Guru.

How much of an actual issue this is for you will vary. Personally I can't get enough of this stuff, but I do think I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention that there's definitely a precedent for this music; you'll clock it instantly if you're familiar with the chemical compounds and alloys being synthesized and welded together. To be fair, though, this is like docking A Foul Form by Osees because it's a love letter to the punk and hardcore music the band grew up on. Moon-Drenched is inarguably a worthy addition to the jazz-fusion/krautrock/jam pantheon. There's plenty of people out there who will have their first taste of post-acid brain cell ping ponging with this platter, and perhaps seek out the old masters who can further feed your new hunger for this type of aural sustenance. Everything old is new again; the 1970s wave and the current era waves back as we all stare into the night sky, together, across time via the wormhole passageways of mind-bending trips, musical and otherwise.

Endless Garbage- Endless Garbage

 

Though his self titled debut is rightly considered a classic of 1980s jazz, Jaco Pastorius wanted to surprise people with his second solo album, Word Of Mouth. As such he really fought to make the song 'Crisis' the opening track. Though I haven't been able to find a verifiable written source, it's said that he recorded the song by keeping each musician in somewhat isolation from the others, fading in and out the ever-evolving track so that no musician was truly playing along with all of the others at any given time. Jaco was not particularly thought of as being part of the avant garde or free sides of jazz, so 'Crisis' was forefronted to demonstrate that artists are rarely just one thing. Personally I always took its spotlight placement on Word Of Mouth as a statement of purpose, to show fans and critics that he wasn't just the smooth sounding fusion guy who was a lynchpin of Weather Report and some of Joni Mitchell's best jazz-leaning music. What, then, do I make of the title of John Dwyer's Endless Garbage sideproject and its placement smack dab in the middle of the improv album run? Well, as we'll see in a bit, he himself explains the moniker pretty poetically, so I won't bother. As for the placement, hmmmm...It honestly isn't as important as what the album itself is telling us about his music world: All along, I was never as basic as all those garage rock albums made you think.

Released March 19th, 2021, Endless Garbage was recorded under very different circumstances than the rest of the slate of improv albums. It's inarguably the most pure improv record of them all, by which I mean the songs were completely played with no guiding principles, and other than Dwyer (who edited it together) all they could hear was the drummer, who himself wasn't involved at all beyond providing the initial spark and percussive bedrock. Since I really enjoy his writing, perhaps I should just let Dwyer himself explain. According to the press blurb for the release, it came about like this:

“...[O]ne day, I hear a frenetic, free drummer playing in his garage a few blocks from me. And I think “interesting”. I stand outside his garage staring at the wall, like a fool, for a minute, then decide to leave a note on the car parked there. This is how I ended up meeting and working with Ted Byrnes. He wasn’t creeped out, and he ended up sending me a pile of truly spontaneous drums recordings from the carport to work with. I decided to have every musician come in one at at time and just take a wild pass at their track over the drums. None of these people had ever met or played together. I was the connecting thread. I scratched the surface...but soon realized I would need heavy hitters to make this place habitable...After I spent a bit of time mixing and editing this down to a palatable offering I couldn’t help but think about human consumption. Our limitless need for material possession, for emotional acknowledgment, for as much information to be thrown in our faces in our very short time here on this mortal coil...We leave behind us a wake of destruction. Of course, there are moments of great beauty, ingenuity and compassion along the way. You just have to know where to look. Thus, “Endless Garbage” seemed a fitting title. A cacophonous and glorious sketch of ourselves.”

Anyway, here's the lineup:

John Dwyer- guitar and a bunch more

Ted Byrnes- drums/misc. percussion

Greg Coates- bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synthesizers

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

The only person we haven't seen yet in a previous sideproject is the crucial element, Ted Byrnes. A prolific solo artist and musical collaborator, his website and social media are pretty interesting and some video clips show him experimenting with non traditional instruments. In one performance he is literally playing in and on a stairwell. This makes a lot of sense given that I would describe his style on Endless Garbage as sounding like a free jazz drummer hopped up on caffeine determined to hit every single drum and surface in his house every few seconds, over and over, in a rollicking, continuous clatter. It's the sort of thing you're either going to dig and find intriguing or absolutely hate, and you better get used to it because it's most of what's going on here. Suffice it to say, though, that he isn't going too out there with the textures, so unlike the aforementioned videos you won't be listening to a man play a metal staircase handrail, broken pieces of glass, random metal dishware and, um, a pinecone and an incense holder. I feel like I've either done too many drugs or not enough to 'get' his more junkyard-derived playing, if I'm being honest, but it sure is...something.

More than any other record in his discography outside of the very first OCS release and the Sword & Sandals sideproject, Endless Garbage—like Jaco's 'Crisis'—shows John Dwyer's affinity for the experimental and free/out avenues of music. In its chaos and push-pull between melody-less instrumental texture, its rhythm-less drumming/percussion, its edited layers of sound sculpted to an extent by him, it shows that the improv sideprojects and the Panther Rotate remix album helmed by Dwyer aren't the outliers they initially appeared to be. That said, even more than Sword & Sandals, Endless Garbage is a genre-less exercise in pure sound and experimentation. One can relate something like Sword & Sandals to classic 1960s/70s free jazz/avant garde, but comparing Endless Garbage to even the most 'out' moments of a jazz group like Art Ensemble Of Chicago or live improvisations by Henry Cow and King Crimson doesn't quite cover all the gene sequences, so to speak.

I think we're getting there, though.

Let's further consider 'extreme' music I've explored in the past, unique albums that only partly conform to any strictures or genre conventions, like John Zorn's Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman (free jazz/hardcore punk), Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (noise/drone), and Autechre's glitchy, enigmatic Confield (IDM/experimental). Ah, but still not quite on the nose enough to fully explain what Endless Garbage is without hearing it for yourself. And maybe that's just it...If anything this record reminds me more of pure free-improv and pure-experimental music, completely untethered to any particular genre, the stuff that writing alone can't come close to capturing. Kissing cousin records that I also find exceedingly difficult to readily define (as I do Endless Garbage) would be things like AMM's AMMMusic, Fred Frith's Guitar Solos, some of Nels Cline's work outside of Wilco but especially Destroy All Nels Cline, the two albums by Don Caballero offshoot Storm & Stress, and, of course, Singable Songs For The Very Young by Raffi.

Maybe rather than try to define what Endless Garbage is, precisely, let's just take a swim in it. 'Vertical Infinity' starts things off, immediately setting the table with Ted Byrnes's clattering everything-and-the-kitchen-sink free drumming. Dwyer pokes around the margins with noodling guitar lines, all while Greg Coates tries to offer any kind of foundational rhythm or melody. A very overt deep breath opens 'No Flutter', which pours on the saxophones and has more of a breathing, droney feel to it before suddenly bursting into 'Goose.' This track sees Byrnes taking the forefront with an especially chaotic solo performance before blurting keyboards increasingly penetrate the dense layer of percussive clutter, giving way to a peaceful drone around the 1:30 mark. The accurately named 'Four' follows, all players seemingly blowing their brains out, including some fluttering flute in the background and a wah-wah pedal coated sax. Side B comes roaring in with 'Lucky You', sounding much like how Side A began, though Coates's booming bass repetitions create a much welcomed pulse to power the circulatory system of the eerie chaos going on, including indistinct vocals/spoken word.

'Pro-Death' never gels into anything memorably different from the rest; it could use something to set it apart on an already short and also-short-on-ideas album. This really undermines how the process used to make this record never creates chance moments of serendipitous synchronization, instead resulting in music that sounds like what it was: completely disconnected musicians improvising freely to already-recorded drumming, with no awareness of each other's playing (other than the glue that is John Dwyer holding/editing it all together). Even he can't seem to make much sense, or interesting nonsense, out of 'Pro-Death.' Things get a bit back on track with 'A Grotesque Display' thanks to the vaguely psychedelic effects processing on some of the instruments. Endless Garbage lets off the gas with the five minute closer 'No Goodbyes', fed by pretty keyboard lines, which is a bit more relaxed in its chaos. Coates attempts to stir up some excitement on bass with a energetic melody around the 3:30 mark but since only Dwyer could hear this, only he can respond with a short lived guitar interjection before we go back to the usual playbook—in other words, formless folderol.

Maybe that should've been the title.

If I am sounding a bit critical and unimpressed, I don't intend to. I'm not so sure Endless Garbage is the sort of record you can really rate or recommend anyway. What I mean is, like the aforementioned records I also find indescribable, I feel like I seek out these extreme fringes of music when I need something to really shake my world up, to give me something new and beyond the usual parameters. It's the same reason people watch weird ass movies like The Holy Mountain. You don't watch it to decide if you enjoy it or don't enjoy it, but to think about and react to something in a pure way that eludes the standard, established vocabulary used to discuss the artform. I remember once showing various clips of that movie to a longtime friend and I think it freaked him out. Likewise I am sure Endless Garbage would lead him to declare “yeah that album title sure is accurate” in a definite, dismissive way. This isn't some elitist art snob slam on him, or anyone who doesn't like what they're experiencing. I guess what I am ultimately trying to say is, you probably already know if something like Endless Garbage or The Holy Mountain is for you. Like me, you may also occasionally want to seek out things you can't easily digest, let alone explain. You may not listen to this album too often, but it'll always be there to re-open the seams of your musical mind palace and allow you to pierce the veil of the mirror held up to you and your established knowledge. There's that famous and famously overused Nietzsche quote about gazing into the abyss and it gazing back...but I don't think Endless Garbage is at all about that negation or annihilation, that evil corruption of the self by an outside/other. Rather it is, to quote Dwyer, there for you to “experience a cacophonous and glorious sketch of ourselves.”

Witch Egg- Witch Egg

 

There are times where a band name can be both illuminating and obfuscating at the same time. I find this to especially be the case when it comes to psychedelic and experimental music. The Grateful Dead is very evocative and lets you know there's going to be something otherworldly about their music, yet if you listen to Workingman's Dead you'll find the moniker confusing—shouldn't this have been made by a band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions? Similarly, groups like sunn O))) and Nurse With Wound signpost it's not going to be something especially digestible, but if you had no knowledge of what kind of music they make, you might assume they're an ambient and a hardcore punk band, respectively. While the ever-changing moniker of John Dwyer's main band, Osees, has nothing to do with the sound of the band over the decades, his side project names are squarely in the illuminating/obfuscating category. So it is with Witch Egg. Of course, a cursory Google search will reveal two possible origins of the name. Witch's Egg is the nickname for the Stinkhorn mushroom, in particular its immature egg-shaped fruiting body. The Witch's Egg, by contrast, is a children's book from 1974, summarized by user AbigailAdams26 on LibraryThing.com as the following:

“Agatha was a nasty old witch who lived alone in an abandoned eagle's nest on the top of Lost Mountain...[O]ne day a cuckoo's egg was left in her nest, and the cantankerous witch decided she would hatch it, in defiance of the mother birds who offered to take it off her hand...[R]aising Witchbird, Agatha learned to enjoyed [sic] the company of another being, and for the first time she was happy. Then in the fall Witchbird left for the south, and Agatha went back to her solitary life. Was it the end of their friendship, or would Witchbird return...?”

For all I know, though, Dwyer arrived at this name independently of these two sources. So let's put an end to this preamble and get to the good stuff. Witch Egg was released January 22, 2021 as the highly anticipated second entry in the improv side projects. Much to my surprise I found I had missed that Witch Egg had more than one release, so maybe I should ignore what I said in the Bent Arcana review about these not really being band names and moreso album names. I will be maintaining the use of italicization to indicate the album and not the band during this review. But I digress. Witch Egg's second release was a live album, simply titled Live, put out only on cassette on October 21, 2022. It captures a short four song set from August 6, 2022 featuring the full album lineup. (They opened for Flipper, which is sure a weird contrast!) There are no current plans to further release it on streaming services or other physical formats. While I couldn't find an upload of the cassette there is thankfully a HD recording of the entire show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/T2Lbm0OFcz4

Let's get back to Witch Egg, which has a smaller, different lineup than Bent Arcana:

John Dwyer- guitars & much more

Nick Murray- drums

Greg Coates- acoustic bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synths

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

Nick Murray, of course, was a member of Osees for the post-Drop tour and the Mutilator Defeated At Last album, as well as the OCS 'reunion' record Memory Of A Cut Off Head. Greg Coates seems to be one of those under the radar musicians who plays a lot of random local shows where he lives, including a somewhat recent Soundgarden/Chris Cornell tribute show according to his Instagram.

On first listen, Witch Egg isn't too different from Bent Arcana. I feel that with more revisits, however, there's a real day/night, sativa/indica, Ocarina Of Time/Majora's Mask divide going on between the two records. You may have noticed that the lineup has an entirely different rhythm section, and this is the Rosetta Stone to beginning to understand where the differences come in. Nick Murray is more of a light handed drummer than Ryan Sawyer or the Osees duo of Paul Quattrone and Dan Rincon. His playing features a snare-forward, skittering, drum-rolls-and-cymbal-crashes sound that is founded more in traditional psychedelic rock and jazz-fusion. Greg Coates, meanwhile, exclusively plays acoustic bass on this record, while, interestingly, Dwyer contributes the electric bass parts, such as on 'City Maggot' (you can tell; his playing is tentative and a bit flat by comparison). Coates lacks the slippery elasticity of Peter Kerlin's playing style though his acoustic bass (and use of a bow at times) give Witch Egg part of its unique jazzy texture. I've always liked acoustic bass with an otherwise electric/amplified/woodwinds improv-heavy band, such as heard in early Medeski Martin & Wood.

The best way I can more tangibly explain the sound change from Bent Arcana is that Witch Egg as a whole has more of a jazz-forward, spacey/cosmic focus, de-emphasizing the rock, krautrock, and psychedelic/experimental elements. Outside of the rhythm section personnel turnover, the other huge change is that John Dwyer's guitar is either absent for most of the album or used as more of a background texture. Seriously, go back and pay close attention to this record and I don't think he plays a single solo or lead line! More intangibly, meanwhile, I would say Witch Egg has a hazy, late night, and eerie vibe going on, though you wouldn't know it at first.

Opener 'Greener Pools' jumps to life with a bellowing bassline and cacophony of saxophone/keyboard/guitar before quieting down into a spacey, drumless ending that segues immediately into 'City Maggot' led by Brad Caulkins' screeches and honks. 'Your Hatless Friend' maintains a low-gear chilly groove that isn't funky but makes you want to tap on the steering wheel or desk, with saxophones breathing in and out at the edges of the music, the full-band pulse gradually increasing while keyboards/synths quietly stir up the background fireflies. Suddenly all is dispelled by a chunky guitar strum that is a bit abrupt and awkward, if I'm being honest.

Side two turns down the lights even further. 'Baphomet', aptly named after an occult deity with a goat's head, has a deep, frightening synthesizer line that howls echoingly at you like a creature opening its multiple maws to begin the song that announces the end of the world. The free-floating 'Sekhu' feels like you're in the long dark of the Mines Of Moria, trying to spy apparitions in the foggy darkness, ending with a comfortingly traditional jazz bass solo. Finally, 'Arse' and 'On Your Way Now' cap off the mostly-mellow-yet-sometimes-menacing record. The former has an oddly catchy ascending saxophone line and a gibbering wordless vocal that reverberates in the backdrop, as if you're turning a corner and coming upon a ceremony being performed before it's all washed away by a staticky synthesizer. 'On Your Way Now' starts with a cycling keyboard line and a bass-heavy groan nodding back to 'Baphomet' before a dusty dusk shuffle kicks in led by airy saxophone leads and slow motion drumming. I always picture incense trails or maybe smoke from freshly blown out candles wafting in the air when I hear this song. Faint arcane babbling and Nick Murray's echoing snare hits see us out the door.

If I listen to Witch Egg more than Bent Arcana, it's only because I love how much it simultaneously narrows/focuses the sonic palette while also having a unique vibe and sound all of its own. Aside from Damaged Bug, it's rare to hear Dwyer play so little guitar, and the spacey, late night jazz atmosphere of the record really implants itself into your subconscious. Listen to it a few times in the right mood and setting and it'll infuse into your goosebumps and the hair on the back of your neck. For those who prefer In A Silent Way and Can's 'Future Days' and 'Quantum Physics' to Bitches Brew and Tago Mago, you may find Witch Egg to be one of your new favorite albums. Hell, even setting aside these pedantic preference discussions, it can become so. I know it did for me.

Bent Arcana- Bent Arcana

 

Despite notable attempts by Television and The Wipers, punk and garage rock bands have traditionally shunned long songs. To open that forbidden door is to venture beyond the sacred ground of simplicity, to betray everything they were reactions against, namely the excesses of prog rock and fusion bands. Can these warring factions ever be united? Well, ask a man like John Dwyer and he'll just laugh it off and go back to making whatever the hell he wants. After telegraphing the future with Warm Slime's title track, Osees truly opened the gates with Face Stabber's 'Scutum & Scorpius' and 'Henchlock', the latter of which is a side-long jam session that brings to mind Can's Tago Mago and Miles Davis's On The Corner and their ten-plus minute throwdowns. Were you to merely continue following Osees' studio output, however, you'd see a band who seem to have walked it back from the edge, with the transitory Protean Threat and (as of this writing) most recently the sub-half hour punk/hardcore love letter A Foul Form. It's in the extracurricular activities—live albums, The 12” Synth, Metamorphosed, Weirdo Hairdo, and Panther Rotate—the threads of Face Stabber were followed, whether long songs or otherwise. Sail even further over the edge of the known map of the Osees world upon the good ship S.S. Dwyer, and you'll land in the New World of Damaged Bug and improv-based side projects.

Bent Arcana would bookend this series of side project improv sidequests with a self-titled studio album and a live album. Today we're only concerned with said studio album, released in the depths of the covid pandemic on August 21, 2020. The sessions that would give birth to Bent Arcana took place over five days in December 2019, and featured the following players:

John Dwyer (guitars and a bunch more)

Ryan Sawyer (drums)

Peter Kerlin (bass)

Tomas Dolas (synths/keyboards)

Kyp Malone (synth)

Brad Caulkins (saxophones)

Marcos Rodriguez (guitar)

Laena “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita (violin)

Andres Renteria (misc. percussion)

Joce Soubiran (tenor saxophone)

Most of you will probably recognize Kyp Malone from the amazing TV On The Radio, while Brad Caulkins will be familiar to Face Stabber fans as the man on the saxophones. I won't pretend I know any of the other players prior to this record, but I do want to point out Joce Soubiran is one of the co-owners of the Zebulon venue, at which Bent Arcana will record their eventual live album.

Before we get to the album, a short side discussion. It can get a little weird talking about these side projects because other than Bent Arcana, the other releases are only really given an album title and not a group name. I will continue to use Bent Arcana as the band, since they do have two different releases billed to their name. Where it gets confusing is that the Moon Drenched album features all of the same players on Bent Arcana plus one, and the live Bent Arcana album has fewer members and has two songs off the Moon Drenched album. Nonetheless I will discuss them as separate bands/music projects for an attempt at simplicity. In addition, I'll italicize the album name if I'm talking about it specifically and not the band of the same name.

Anyway! Setting aside Sword & Sandals and Endless Garbage, the improv side projects led by John Dwyer are concentrated on varying combinations of jazz fusion, psych, and krautrock. Some tracks do seem like pure improvisations created on the fly through group interplay ('Outré Sorcellerie', 'Mimi') while others have a more linear progression suggesting a predetermined chord structure and framework, possibly multiple takes with different soloists leading while the others react and interact ('The Gate', 'Oblivion Sigil').

Something I keep thinking about when I listen to these albums is that, while Miles Davis was absolutely and rightly celebrated for his skill on the trumpet and his drive to innovate music, his most underrated asset was his ability to seek out other musicians who could not only help him realize his and stalwart producer Teo Marcero's vision, but to push him in new directions. (One could also credit some of his love interests with introducing him to new music). After all, the first and last songs on Bitches Brew weren't written by Davis, and the various players on that album are as quintessential to its depth of sounds, motifs, and ideas as he was. I would, of course, say the same about John Dwyer. There's no denying the talent of the current five-man Osees lineup, as well as previous members of earlier incarnations of the band. The people he got together for the improv side projects, despite not being “names” to me outside of Kyp Malone, gel with Dwyer and each other so well you'd think they'd played together for years. I will say that I don't really hear violinist Laena “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita much on Bent Arcana, and it's tough to tell if it's Dwyer or Marcos Rodriguez playing guitar. Anyway, he really knew exactly what he wanted to explore musically and had the ear to recruit people who were as skilled as him, if not moreso, and who could contribute equally. There's a reason he never names his bands something like “John Dwyer Band” or “John Dwyer's Bent Arcana” or something.

Bent Arcana is a beast of modern improv adjacent musicians collectively playing their asses off without ever letting their ego get in the way or dominating the conversation. You'll walk away with Ryan Sawyer as your new favorite drummer, a genuinely gifted player who can do loose, ever evolving funky krautrock/jazz grooves just as well as he does the kind of free-rhythm shock and awe that lives in the edges and the foundations of tracks like 'Outré Sorcellerie' and Gong Splat's 'Another Dust.' Were I tasked with choosing a MVP of Bent Arcana, though, I'd have to give it to Peter Kerlin. Whether on electric bass on 'Misanthrope Gets Lunch' or acoustic on the closing 'Sprites', his playing has a way of bringing everything into sharper focus while propelling everyone around him. The bassists of Phish and The Grateful Dead also have this style, part rhythm and part lead, that I tend to prefer in improv-heavy music, though the deadset bass repetitions of Can and Fela Kuti are obvious exceptions to the rule. Anyway, before I get to my closing thoughts I have to praise 'Mimi', a truly beautiful mid-album duet between the saxophonists that feels like stepping outside for fresh air in the midst of hotboxing a jam session. Perhaps a strange comparison, but it actually kind of reminds me of the (mostly) solo improvisations that Keith Jarrett plays on the Miles Davis boxset of live performances from late 1970, The Cellar Door Sessions 1970.

Given the ten member lineup, Bent Arcana is something of a fully-realized prelude to the coming side projects, containing bits of all the styles that would be more narrowly focused later on. This could result in the album feeling somewhat overstuffed with ideas and instruments, depending on your taste. Yet every time I give it another listen, especially on headphones, I seem to pick out things I missed before—the vocal groans and possible cuìca on 'Outré Sorcellerie', sonar-like pings and pongs from synthesizers throughout the album, what sounds like Out To Lunch-esque vibraphone on 'Oblivion Sigil'—and my appreciation for this record further deepens. Outside of Endless Garbage I sometimes think of these side projects as interchangeable. The devil is in the details, as always, and Bent Arcana is an unholy, otherworldly fine start to some of the best modern arcane musical rituals led by psych shaman/D&D dungeonmaster John Dwyer. And it only stays great from here.

Sword & Sandals- Good & Plenty

 

When the Bent Arcana album was announced in June 2020, John Dwyer's accompanying press blurb gave us this explanation: “[t]his is the first interstellar transmission from five days of electrified & improvised sessions recorded at Stu-Stu-Studio, edited down to 40 minutes for your earballs.” It didn't come as much of a shock, given that the most recent Osees album at this time was Face Stabber, a monolithic beast that ends with a 21 minute psych-jazz jam. The band had also for some years used soloing and group improvisation during live shows. So, yeah, what could be a more natural progression than Dwyer calling up a few musician friends and having a good old jam session? This was something that rock-associated musicians had been doing since at least Al Kooper's legendary 1968 Super Session, a record that saw the assembled players stretching out on blues and jazz jams interspersed with more traditional vocal-led songs. Culled from two days of jamming, Super Session is believed to not only have helped coin the term supergroup but it also called to mind already existing supergroups like Cream and John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. It's not too much of a stretch to say subsequent supergroups like Blind Faith, The New Yardbirds (soon known as Led Zeppelin), and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were inspired by it to push pure musicianship above pop songforms.

Anyway, no one has claimed Bent Arcana and subsequent improv releases were supergroups, so let's reel it back in. That's not the incongruity here regardless. The real problem with the press blurb above? It wasn't techincally Dwyer's first crack at an improvisation heavy sideproject. That would be Sword & Sandals, a free-jazz band that dates to circa 2006, which you can see in a rare live video from when they were a duo consisting only of John Dwyer on drums and Randy Lee Sutherland on saxophone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaI6w0H4VJw&ab_channel=KevinBrown

It wouldn't be until 2010 that Sword & Sandals were fully formed and released a studio album, Good & Plenty. Recorded and released during the same time period that gave us Warm Slime, which was not improvised but was recorded live-to-tape, this record of seven untitled songs featured a trio of John Dwyer (drums, flute, and bass), Randy Lee Sutherland (drums, bass clarinet, and alto saxophone), and Shaun O'Dell (tenor/alto saxophones and piano/keyboards); Anthony Petrovic contributes synth on the first track. It's worth noting for Sees-storians that O'Dell did all or some of the artwork for the first OCS album as well as for Good & Plenty. He maintains a personal website to this day and seems to be focused on visual art as well as being a college lecturer/professor. (Aside from Dwyer the other members have remained below the radar)

There are a few bootleg live performances floating around and CD-r/live releases from Sword & Sandals, but it's really hard to pin these down given their obscurity/rarity and the fact that the group's name is also a subgenre of films, thus making them kind of un-Google-able. There's also apparently some even more obscure Irish(?) band going by the name Sword And Sandals to confuse you further. Only the Rate Your Music website lists anything by Dwyer's Sword & Sandals other than the Good & Plenty studio album so tread carefully, hardcore collectors. As a result, it's all I'll be tackling.

Free-jazz is always a tough subject to write about, largely because it's so hard to define. Some people use it interchangeably with the terms free-improv and/or avant-garde jazz, so that even after reading a well written essay like Dom Minasi's Free Jazz Versus Free Improvisation (https://www.allaboutjazz.com/free-jazz-versus-free-improvisation-dom-minasi-by-dom-minasi), I'm still not sure I have a full grasp of the differences. Certainly as a jazz fan I've delved into the waters of landmarks like Out To Lunch (which I absolutely adore, and I believe is considered more avant-garde jazz with free elements) and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (which I still find just as baffling as the jazz magazine DownBeat, which after its initial release rated it five stars and no stars in two dueling reviews). All I will say with my dubious-authority on the subject is that I find it a bit elitist when people seem to believe it's only genuine free-jazz if it's performed by musicians who come from a traditional knowledge pool of their instrument and 'classic' jazz/blues forms/modes/scales/chord changes, and also because it still has some “form” and still, occasionally, “swings”...whereas free-improv pretenders do not possess this knowledge and don't have a true feel for “swinging.” Since we know with certainty John Dwyer does not come from a traditional jazz background, make of all this what you will. But I digress.

To these ears, what Sword & Sandals are doing draws more from the John Coltrane school of free-jazz, focusing more on the interaction between 'melodic' instruments freely improvising with a drummer pounding out scattershot rhythms. Though released after his death and therefore not part of his true canon, Interstellar Space, featuring Coltrane playing in a duo with Rashied Ali on drums, is a close touchstone for Good & Plenty. I've always been entranced by Interstellar Space; it's such an oddly beguiling and spectral album, exploring the chaos of the cosmos yet keeping one foot firmly planted in the terra-firma language of mid-to-late 60s jazz. The way each song begins with Coltrane shaking what sounds like sleighbells before Ali begins the space ritual is so distinct yet so simple. While it's obvious Dwyer, O'Dell, and Sutherland are not on the same level as Coltrane—shit, I mean, who is?—there's still a lot of ragtag fun to be had here, skilled amateurs getting in the ring to try to see how many rounds they can bleat, blare, and carom around before collapsing.

Good & Plenty was clearly something done as a vacation for Dwyer, allowing him to take a breather from leading one of the greatest garage-rock bands at the peak of the late 00s/early 2010s garage/psych revival. The obvious point of interest for Osees fans is his turns as drummer, something he's only done on Castlemania and Putrifiers II, but I also want to take the time to call attention to his flute playing, as subtle as it can be in something like the mix in the intro of 'Track 6.' Anyway, since the liner notes don't say which songs he's drumming on, we can't know for sure which bits are his, but I have to say he's actually doing a great job at mimicking what he's aiming for, even if it is a bit more stiff and bass-drum heavy than your usual 'true' jazz drummer. Also worth praising is guest Petrovic's synth during the first track, which is less like free-jazz and much more like the propulsive menace of doomed keyboards on Suicide's first album, in particular 'Ghost Rider.' This is all very interesting given that about ten years later Dwyer would get the itch to again revisit jazz/improv-heavy music, and these kind of instrumental textures would no longer feel quite as out-of-the-blue as they must have to then-Thee Oh Sees fans of Help and Warm Slime. In fact I'd wager that beyond the generally saxophone-dominant sound of Good & Plenty, you could easily put something like the last few minutes of 'Track 2', with its breakdown into smoky atmospherics of keyboard, piano, and bass around the five minute mark, onto side two of the Witch Egg or Gong Splat releases and nobody would notice. Of course then there's freakouts like the short 'Track 4', which is actually quite more familial to the free-jazz leaning moments of a certain replica of the trout mask variety. 'Track 6' is probably my personal favorite, starting out with droning, interwoven saxophone lines and cymbal washes with occasional bass drum pulsebeats before drum rolls begin to churn the ocean around you.

Assuming you come to this record from a jazz/free-jazz knowledge base, I would assume Good & Plenty will strike you as a bit amateur if inoffensive. As for Dwyerologists, unless Endless Garbage is your free-jazz-cup-of-tea, it isn't going to be some hidden gem revelation. Yet even those of you who can't enjoy this racket will find in it a crucial part of Dwyer's musical DNA, an artifact from an earlier time when Thee Oh Sees had only been around about as long as the earlier OCS incarnation had been. It's perhaps more useful to you, then, as a source to cite for the lead-up to the modern jam/improv sideprojects. For those of us who, to use a Grateful Dead metaphor, like our 'Eyes Of The World' as much as we do our 'Drums' and 'Space', Good & Plenty is an intriguing mid-period outlet for Dwyer's more out (in the jazz sense of the word) and outre musical excursions. It's a tantalizing “what if?” to imagine how Sword & Sandals might've developed if he had kept it going concurrently to his main band.

Osees- A Foul Form

 

Let's get this joke out of the way: two years is an eternity in Osees studio album land. Coming cold on the heels of Protean Threat, Osees took an uncharacteristically long amount of time to deliver A Foul Form. Instead, they focused on hunkering down to survive the pandemic and released a string of live albums as well as clearing the (recent) vaults with odds-n-sods collections and a surprise remix album. Oh yeah, and main Sees-r, John Dwyer, also unleashed a set of improv/jam records under various guises with various lineups just for good measure. So while the drought between new Osees studio material may have felt interminable to stalwarts, we were hardly short of other drinks and tinctures to slay our thirst. Still, speculation ran rampant, as speculation is wont to do, as to what direction the then-theoretical next album would take. Would the transitional-feeling Protean Threat be seized upon more fully, leading the band to complete said transition and return more or less to their roots, skinning it back to the garage abandon of the Help era? Would they, as some fans hoped, 'course-correct' by reloading their save so that the modern robust five-man lineup could continue harvesting the heady mines of prog/psych/jazz/metal from the preceding era? Or maybe they would truly curve our expectations with something new, like bossa nova drum n' bass?

As it turns out, A Foul Form is neither a course-correction nor a true return to their garage era. Instead, the svelte 21 minute album challenges the gifted musicians to concentrate their sprawl and power into short, sharp shocks that call to mind the Black Flag covers on Live At Big Sur as well as, to some extent, the murky, formless post-punk of the Chrome covers on Levitation Sessions II. All of that said, A Foul Form is no slavish tribute/sacrifice to the old “kill-your-idols” idols; instead, it's one of the most outright alive and heavy sounding dispatches from one of the best modern rock bands going. Which is a bit ironic, given that a sickly Dwyer was finishing the mixing and vocals while suffering from a second bout of covid in late 2021. (Eerily, as I'm writing/editing this I'm still fighting off a really nasty non-covid illness that has had me sleeping ten hours a night for more than a week. But I digress.) According to the same Aquarium Drunkard interview I got that info from, this short hardcore/punk album was something the band had wanted to do for awhile...So while at first glance it certainly is a huge change from the preceding era it's certainly not a reactionary record. It must've just seemed like it was finally time. After all, if you can barely breathe you may as well yell and bellow.

So, yeah, this is less a Let It Be stripping it back-to-basics than it is a Reign In Blood/Damaged all-killer, no-filler love letter to the music they grew up on. Or perhaps a better comparison in Dwyer's own sprawling discography is a less blown-out and lo-fi take on what he was up to with Coachwhips and Pink & Brown. Make no mistake, though, it's still an Osees record through and through. There's always going to be an element of psychedelic and druggy oddness peaking through like a rainbow sprung from the darkness. The brief song fragment 'A Burden Snared' is a dense, layered, and transitory piece that honestly makes me think of Panther Rotate or (as said earlier) the hazy, formless, shifting Chrome heard on Alien Soundtracks. Album highlight and longest song 'Perm Act' uncouples Osees from their usual krautrock prog-motorik train cars and reattaches them onto a semi-truck starting/stopping in traffic between smooth reggae/dub influenced rhythms and up-and-down proggy instrumental calisthenics. Overall there's a real sense of fun and irreverence that was sometimes missing from previous releases, and I don't just mean surface level things such as offbeat/edgy track titles 'Social Butt' and 'Fucking Kill Me.' The title track is right up there with the finest stock of Osees' patented “hardest rocking song on the album” classics, and the loopy guitars backing the shouted chorus are irresistible. I picture someone rolling their eyes all around their sockets and belting out “a foul form! A foul form!” Assuming I ever make a playlist to exercise to again, a lot of this record is going on there. Make calisthenics great again!

Though A Foul Form was telegraphed a bit by Protean Threat, I don't know that I could have predicted how vital and successful the dip into classic punk and hardcore would be for Osees. If I'm being honest, I'm a little sad they didn't give us at least one more in the same vein of the post-Drop albums, but I suppose I do feel this way about every incarnation of this band. I just really love more or less everything they do, with even personal-least-favorites like Dog Poison or Putrtifiers II giving up gems on further revisits. All of which is to say, if we get another string of forms most foul, I'll just have to spend the next few Halloweens digesting the next batch watching skate video compilations and pounding Bang energy drinks instead of hitting the bong and watching horror movies at half speed.

Oh Sees Retrospective #35: The Chapel, SF 10.2.19

 

I have this kind of litmus test for determining what band is my current favorite, were I forced to pick by some kind of bizarro music critic tribunal/trial. It's no more complicated than this: do I ever get sick of listening to them? This is how past giants were slain by the twin swords of apathy and time. Where are you now, Smashing Pumpkins? You Radioheads, you Deerhoofs, you Collectives Of Animals? Eventually all defeated by the simple fact that I got sick of listening to them. It could be they put out a bad album or two, it could be my tastes changed, it could be they were Smashing Pumpkins, who should never be anyone's favorite band (but I tease!). I can't say if and when it will happen with Osees, but I will say that I definitely had to take a bit of an extended break from them yet again before doing the final entry in this Retrospective. The live albums were starting to run together to an extent, and I was running out of interesting things to say. All of that said, I think we're about to have a real good time together. They play 'C' on this one, so we're already looking good as Gholü.

I have to say, I was somewhat surprised to learn that this release isn't the full show. I guess I had gotten used to all these double vinyl album/live stream deals with a full hour plus, complete show? Anyway, for those curious, the setlist that night was 19 songs deep and you can find the details on Setlist.fm. As for what's actually on this release, here is the tracklisting--as ever, with the original album noted in parentheses:

1. The Static God (Orc)

2. Jettisoned (Orc)

3. Henchlock (Face Stabber)

4. Together Tomorrow (Face Stabber)

5. Animated Violence (Orc)

6. Gholü (Face Stabber)

7. Plastic Plant (A Weird Exits)

8. C (Smote Reverser)

9. Nite Expo (Orc)

10. Encrypted Bounce (Drop)

The somewhat awkwardly titled The Chapel, S.F. 10.2.19 was released on June 12^th, 2021. It had several different variants of the vinyl release, always as a double record with an etching on side D. It took me a second to figure this out but the cover art and general aesthetic are based on a defunct but legendary live concert bootleg company, Trade Mark Of Quality aka TMOQ. The usual core quintet of the modern Osees lineup is supplemented by Jamin Barton and Scott Reams on horns but as far as I can tell only on 'Henchlock.'

In a lot of ways, this live album is the antithesis to the Levitation Sessions releases. As the press release rightly says, “[t]he Oh Sees at the peak of their prog obsession, super jammed out and totally dominating.” Now, sure, that should technically say Osees, but we'll let that slide. The important thing is, The Chapel is another excellent live album from a band who suddenly flooded the world with a bunch in quick succession. While the Levitation Sessions live albums contained full concerts and drew from throughout the band's discography, The Chapel, S.F. 10.2.19 exclusively pulls its ten tracks from the modern era of the band, with the oldest track dating only to 2014's Drop. If you're mostly a fan of modern Osees, the jammy and proggy and psychedelic and experimental and two-drummers-and-a-bassist rhythm section Osees, then this is the live album for you.

Now, it's worth pointing out again, this live album doesn't contain the full show from that night. Maybe that bums you out, but to me it speaks to the band's taste to limit the album to only 53 minutes long. This setlist is very heavy, jammy, and psychedelic without much room to inhale something other than bong hits; while the natural instinct might be to steer completely into this vibe and make it a two hour behemoth, I'm glad they didn't. It's also worth noting this live album doesn't even strictly follow the actual setlist order. But, again, I'm fine with this, particularly given that the amazing Red Rocks show is free on YouTube and is both long and jammy, too, if you need your double dose of spacey rituals.

Listening to The Chapel on headphones especially I'm made aware of how tight they are as a live band, and also how many little nuances they bring to the material. Tomas Dolas is really great at adding extra little keyboard lines and synth sounds to songs, and the rhythm section is killing it, constantly. I've always preferred the double drummer lineups of this band, and now that I've gotten used to a dedicated bassist I really love how much this frees up John to focus on vocals, guitar, and occasionally synths/keyboards. Speaking of....seeing as how this is the second live album in a row with a lengthy 'Encrypted Bounce', it's tempting to compare the two. Personally, I prefer this one, not just because it's several minutes longer. I just think they do a lot more interesting things this time out, getting very spacey while the two drummers gradually move in and out of lockstep, adding accents and rolls. This of course leads me to the beguiling spaciness of John and Tomas playing synths/keyboards during parts of the jam; laid over the dual drummers, it almost reminds me of the Grateful Dead layering the second set's 'Space' and 'Drums' improv sections over each other.

I also really dig how Dwyer's vocals keep looping after they leave the stage. I just think looping in general is cool, as is reverb and delay effects, but I am also the kind of person who likes to smoke weed and write long essays about bands, so no duh I do.

But I digress. Maybe not my favorite of the modern live releases, but still well worth a spin while you're spun.

As for the future....well, there's still no new studio albums or other releases for Osees on the horizon. And if I'm being honest, I've mostly been listening to all the improv releases from the past couple years, and I'm kind of itching to challenge myself to write about music that is instrumental, entirely, and often abstract and 'out' in the jazz sense of the word. I'm also still toying with the idea of covering other John Dwyer projects from the past, but there's so god damn much to cover there and I can't even begin to figure out where to draw the lines. To anyone wishing I would still cover The 12” Synth, since it's technically an Osees release...again, maybe someday. Hell, maybe I'll even do something nuts and start covering King Gizzard, as some have suggested...I did, after all, recently learn how to control my gag reflex.

But I kid! They're alright.

Some of the feedback to this post will help me decide, I'm sure. As always, thank you all for reading and providing feedback/your own thoughts. May your slime always be warm, and your face thoroughly stabbed.

Oh Sees Retrospective #34: Levitation Sessions II

 

Pop quiz: what's the better sequel, Aliens or Terminator 2: Judgment Day? The answer probably says more about you than it does either film; I suspect you really had to stop and think about your answer. I know for me it's a real gut check, since it's not as simple as “which do you like better?” Conversely, let me ask you this: is either sequel better than the original? The idea of sequels has become so ingrained in our society that I don't think people reflect on it that much. I find it endlessly fascinating, though. What makes a good sequel? What makes for a bad sequel but still a good product? Is a sequel that is derivative but does everything better automatically superior? Questions like these arose again and again as I've been mulling over Levitation Sessions Volume II. I must admit I had been taking a bit of a break from writing over the holidays, until this past weekend when I couldn't avoid it anymore. Kind of in a literal sense because the next live album in the Retrospective series beckoned to me from the rack of a local record store. Well, you can't ignore fate, so I feel my time has come to say: it's a great sequel to Levitation Sessions I to say the least.

Also, Aliens is the better sequel. Just throwing it out there.

As usual, we'll go over the details about the release before getting to my thoughts. But first, here's the usual tracklisting, with the album/release in parentheses:

1. Tidal Wave (Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2)

2. Grown In A Graveyard (Moon Sick EP)

3. The Dream (Carrion Crawler/The Dream)

4. Stinking Cloud (Castlemania)

5. Enemy Destruct (Help)

6. Poisoned Stones (Face Stabber)

7. Spider Cider (Castlemania)

8. It Killed Mom (Sucks Blood)

9. Meat Step Lively (Help)

10. Snickersee (Face Stabber)

11. Destroyed Fortress Reappears (Help)

12. Web (Mutilator Defeated At Last)

13. Encrypted Bounce (Drop)

14. Beat Quest (Smote Reverser)

15. Chromosome Damage > T.V. As Eyes (Chrome covers, Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves, respectively)

16. ST37 (Chrome cover, Alien Soundtracks)

17. Looking For Your Door (Chrome cover, Half Machine From The Sun: The Lost Tracks From '79-'80)

18. SS Cygni (Alien Soundtracks)

Levitation Sessions II as a stream premiered on April 10th, 2021 but the actual recording date is unknown. It was made available for download/purchase on April 23^rd. The info blurbs on the Levitation website say the the set was filmed in an old warehouse in Los Angeles somewhere. Speaking of, here's the important part of what old Johnny boy had to say about this show and release: “I personally got stoned and stuck my face into the muck of our past catalog to bob for some dusty tumescent gems. There will be some oldies, and some moldies and some surprises along the way. I’m quite happy with how this one turned out.”

Since I said earlier that this is a great sequel to the first Levitation Sessions release, let me quickly get to why this is. I think it does what that live album did, and does it better overall, and presents some interesting covers. To this I'd also add that the improv is more frequent and deeper than most previous live albums. 'The Dream', a song I've grown a bit tired of, earns its spot here with an interesting jam and eerily whispered lyrics from some other song near the end, while 'Encrypted Bounce' gets appropriately gooey and spacey as it continues to feather the accelerator past the eight minute mark. Anyway, let's take a peek back at the track choices for this release. If I'm being honest, it feels catered to my tastes; 'Destroyed Fortress Reappears' and 'It Killed Mom' are dream setlist additions in my book, and the two Castlemania cuts are absolute gems. And I gotta say the set closer 'Beat Quest' really reminded me of how fantastic it as, with John's wall of guitar loops giving away to the pounding and chugging closing section that always hypes me the fuck up. I keep forgetting there's still like 15 minutes of Chrome covers to follow!

I won't pretend that I'm an expert on the band. I only really know Alien Soundtracks and what I listened to for researching these covers. I do know that, like Black Flag, Chrome are another California underground favorite, and it makes total sense to me John and Co. would want to rep them with some covers. Chrome are definitely a difficult band to describe; they're one of those early post-punk groups who sound unlike every other post-punk group of that era. So while you could lump them in with the likes of Pere Ubu, The Fall, and Throbbing Gristle, they don't really sound or feel like them. The fragmentary song structures and experimental instrumentation/production of Alien Soundtracks have always been hard to convey to those who haven't heard Chrome already. But I digress. Osees do a great job reproducing these hypnotically strange sounds, giving 'Looking For Your Door' a Nick Cave/Grinderman-ish menace and doing some live sound muting/muffling on 'SS Cygni' to capture the murky, desaturated production style of Alien Soundtracks. Ultimately, they're fantastic covers, and if you're a fan of both bands it's an absolute dream come true to hear.

So I have to say, Levitation Sessions II is my so-far-favorite for the modern live albums. I really have no complaints about it, and I'm still surprised it was just hanging out there at the record store waiting for me! Anyway, next time: The Chapel, S.F. 10.2.19. Yup, another live one!