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.

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.

Oh Sees Retrospective #31: Panther Rotate

 

In 2021, during a bumper-crop year for live albums and collaborations, John Dwyer released an album called Endless Garbage. Though seemingly of-a-kind with the Bent Arcana and Moon-Drenched improv records, it's actually quite a different beast. As explained by the man himself, “...one 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.” So, rather than a group playing together in a room, Dwyer presented each participant with the different drum tracks and had them freely improvise over it. He also added some of his own playing, and mixed/edited the whole project into something a bit more consistently interesting and intelligible.

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

In 1998, Bill Laswell released Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974. Though it is ostensibly billed as a remix album, Laswell did far more than just add some beats here or there or elongate the music to danceable lengths. As Allmusic.com put it, he “...occasionally deleted the rhythm sections, brought up obscured instruments, added Indian and electronic droning sounds from elsewhere on the tapes, constructed moody transitions, and premiered previously unreleased passages from Davis' sessions.” This is interesting because in some sense this makes Panthalassa a remix of a remix. Much like what Can was doing contemporaneously in Germany, Miles Davis and resolute collaborator/producer Teo Marcero would edit down tapes of lengthy jams, sometimes repeating vamps/run throughs of different song sections, other times cross-editing different takes of songs together. A great example is found on the seminal Bitches Brew album. The song 'John McLaughlin' (which features no trumpet or playing from Miles Davis at all) is actually an edited excerpt of an especially great solo from McLaughlin during a take of the album's title track.

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

Panther Rotate was released on December 11^th, 2020. As near as I can tell it was entirely done by John Dwyer, as no liner notes or info I found indicated that any of the other members of the band worked on it—well, other than obviously providing the original source material. It's billed as a remix album, and was made concurrently during the Protean Threat sessions. Before listening, I always had the impression it was just the standard modern-style remix album; the truth isn't quite so simple. The official description goes like this: “A companion LP of remixes, field recordings, and sonic experiments using all sounds generated by the hum and crackle of the desert farm.” Meanwhile, the blurb accompanying the original limited edition 3D lenticular vinyl edition of the release goes as follows: “Remixed, Reimagined, Respooled takes from the Protean Threat tapes. Served Up Piping Hot On Half And Half Colored Vinyl And Featuring A Special Lenticular Cover.” So perhaps the best way to think of Panther Rotate is as a companion piece, though in my mind it can also fairly be considered as its own thing. Even though the track titles directly reference the song names on Protean Threat, this certainly isn't as simple as 'Scramble Experiment' is just 'Scramble Suit II With Beats And A Rapper.'

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

Late in his career, Miles Davis became hugely interested in the popular R&B and hip hop of the day. Though finished after his death, Doo-Bop became an early example of mainstream jazz acknowledging the links to newer genres like hip hop and electronic music. Though far from his best album, Doo-Bop gives us a glimpse of what Miles might have continued to make. Inadvertently, it does give us a preview of the future. Album producer Easy Mo Bee took unfinished trumpet takes by Miles and built songs around them to finish the album, even adding samples and rappers in a pseudo-remix technique. It does beg the question though: if Miles Davis didn't finish/approve of the record himself, is it really his album? Is it even an album at all if some of the tracks are effectively remixes of unfinished songs?

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

Let's talk for a bit about what this album is before I get to my thoughts on it. Panther Rotate, along with the Damaged Bug side project and the recent improv collaborations he's been doing, is a clear indicator that John Dwyer is a restless spirit who wants to bring the truly experimental bent back to this creations. And mind you, I'm using the word experimental in the true sense of the word, not the lazy shorthand for “it's a weird and/or noisy album.” Hell, most of the tracks on Panther Rotate are titled with the word experiment in them! Listening to this release, I can't help but imagine Dwyer wanted to amuse himself between sessions with the full band. Maybe this started as something he was only doing to challenge himself and only later decided to release it. Who knows.

If anything, I would say there's two immediate touchstones for this album: early OCS records and Alien Soundtracks by Chrome. Now, anyone familiar with the latter may assume I'm thinking of it because Osees did covers of songs from it for the Levitation Sessions II performance. However! I had actually heard of/heard this record before their covers, and the abstract, fragmentary nature of the music on Alien Soundtracks is mirrored in the structure and feel of Panther Rotate. It's not quite a 1:1 comparison of course, and that's where the early OCS output comes into play. I'm going all the way back to the very first OCS release, the double album known variously as 1, OCS, and 34 Reasons Life Goes On Without You/18 Reasons To Love Your Hater To Death. Oh wait, on the OCS Bandcamp it's now 35 Reasons. Whatever! I digress. The point is, it's not the early folky aspects of the OCS sound but the experimental stuff that Panther Rotate calls to mind. True it's not as noisy and droney and atonal as OCS 1 can be, but the spirit and similar “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks” vibe pervades both. I mean hell, 'Untitled 3' from OCS 1 is a found sound recording of someone walking in gravel and doing something with water(?), while 'Poem 2' on Panther Rotate sets a whimsical, bizarre Dwyer poem to vintage crowd sounds and a distant brass ensemble. I don't remember any of that on Protean Threat, do you?

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

Madlib, early in his career, began to learn instruments and perform jazz under the Yesterday's New Quintet name. These records, which began releasing in 2001, were not actually a real quintet. Instead it was just Madlib playing all the instruments and doing the production. In 2003, Madlib released Shades Of Blue. Though early in his career, legendary jazz label Blue Note Records invited (soon to be legendary) jazz-head hip hop producer Madlib to take a journey through their archives and see what he could come up with. As with the equally influential work of his friend and collaborator J. Dilla, Shades Of Blue would cast a long shadow, influencing a new generation of music makers, crate diggers, producers, and beat makers, in particular the then-nascent lo-fi hip hop scene. Anyway, Shades Of Blue is a hard release to pin down, not a typical remix album at all, seeming to bring the past, present, and future together by being equally jazz and instrumental hip hop at the same time.

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

All of this leads us to....well, I'm still not entirely sure. I've been struggling with Panther Rotate, in a good way. It's a difficult record to wrap your head around, not in terms of “getting it” but in terms of “getting it and deciding if you like it.” I suspect this was and will continue to be a very divisive release in the ol' Osees discography, much like OCS 1. The simple fact is that experimental music just isn't everyone's cup of tea, and though Panther Rotate ain't exactly Metal Machine Music (which still holds up today, and just keeps getting funnier every time I listen to it) I can for sure see some fans tilting their heads, puzzled at what the hell this is supposed to be. As for myself, my reaction thus far has been similar to other experiments by bands I love, like Metal Machine Music or (No Pussyfooting) insofar as Panther Rotate is also:

1. Interesting but inessential listening

2. Not especially compelling to listen to on repeat

3. Best enjoyed on as many drugs as you can get your hands on

Like a lot of experimental releases, there won't be certain songs you gravitate toward. Rather, this is very much a collection of ideas and moments. Some are but brief flashes of chaos, like the electronic beeps and whooshes of the breakdown during the end of 'If I Had An Experiment', which sounds like a drunken, lurching, inside out version of its parent song. Others will go for extended grooves that fade in and out, or stop and start, like the opening 'Scramble Experiment', interrupted at 1:13 by a glitch escaping from an Autechre song before it continues on until 3:00 when we apparently enter a swamp or marsh with buzzing flies and mosquitoes. For my money the most thrilling parts of Panther Rotate come when no familiar terrafirma is below us and we're in the dark realms of Dwyer's restless urges. 'Terminal Experiment' presents us with a slow motion bassline that feels like it's being played by someone actively fighting falling asleep, over and over, as all sorts of flotsam and jetsam goes by in the background. It reminds me a bit (a bit!) of some of the more free floating and spacey moments from really out there Grateful Dead jams from the late 60s to mid 70s, part free jazz skronk and part psychedelic fireworks and daisies being sprayed across the sky.

When is a remix album not really a remix album?

Released in two parts initially in 1994 and 1995, John Oswald's two-CD set called Grayfolded is one of the more interesting cult items of a cult band. The title is a pun on the Grateful Dead, and as this “plunderphonics” project was officially commissioned by bassist Phil Lesh, Oswald was given full access to their vault, choosing to focus on two album length suites edited together from over a hundred different performances of 'Dark Star' from 1968 to 1993. Nowadays you can find innumerable mixes on YouTube of jam band performances, themed around certain ideas: Phish Ambient Mix, Grateful Dead Space Mix, Phish's 'Tweezer' megamix, and the like. But in his time, Oswald's project was unique, a for-fun-only release still beloved by fans who remember/know of its existence.

Kinda like what we'll tackle next time, Weirdo Hairdo.

Oh Sees Retrospective #28: Protean Threat

 

I know a lot of people who maintain the same look for most of their lives. It's as though they reach a point and they say, y'know what, this is going to be what I look like for the next 30 years. Same general style, same haircut, same overall health, etc. Not me, though. Over the course of my life I've been very restless, sometimes exercising regularly, sometimes living like a sloth...sometimes shaving my hair and facial hair off entirely, other times letting my hair go for more than a year. I seem to just...get bored of being the same way all the time. It's interesting to see a new face in the mirror every once in awhile. I feel like John Dwyer understands this fundamental truth, and this is why he changes Thee Oh Sees to Oh Sees to O Sees to...wait, wait, don't tell me...

Oh wait, after Face Stabber they became Osees. Right? Right. Well, then.

Welcome back to the Retrospective series! And so we enter the new era, the Osees era. Another name change, another change in direction? Let's find out.

The elephant in the room before we get to the actual Protean Threat album is the preceding rehearsal webcast/performance, on March 21, 2020. I have to admit to only watching/listening to this a couple times since it happened, and I don't know that I want to do a full-on side-by-side comparison. In fact, I know I don't want to do one. I will say that for fans of this record, it's a unique look into songs before they were quite 'finished.' To these ears the performances sound pretty darn close to the album versions (with one exception), albeit this rehearsal performance has a shuffled order. Here's the rehearsal tracklist, for those curious, with their position on the eventual album in parentheses:

1. Terminal Jape (5)

2. If I Had My Way (9)

3. Mizmuth (8)

4. Red Study (4)

5. Scramble Suit II (1)

6. Gong Of Catastrophe (11)

7. Canopnr '74 (12)

8. (I think this might have been changed a lot since the rehearsal, or I'm totally wrong and this is some unreleased song, but I think this is Wing Ruin. Nothing else on the album matches closer to it...) (6)

9. Dreary Nonsense (2)

10. Said The Shovel (7)

11. Toadstool (10)

12. Upbeat Ritual (3)

13. Persuaders Up! (13)

14. At first I thought it was a cover of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' by The Clash but, nope. It's their cover of 'Don't Blow Your Mind' by Alice Cooper & The Spiders. Not sure if it should be counted as a separate track but at some point I think they're just jamming.

Finally, to Protean Threat proper. Released on September 18, 2020, it followed Face Stabber by just over a year. It featured the same core group from those sessions, with no additional/guest musicians this time out. Dylan McConnell, who has done several covers for Osees over the past few years, in addition to side projects like Moon-Drenched, gives us a typically abstract dose of jagged, vaguely digital looking reflective shards, like an early 80s post-punk album cover designed on a Windows 3.1 Printshop program. In keeping with trying to gather all the info about various pressings, my research on Discogs.com turns up pressings in 'Half Glass Of Kool-Aid', Neon Orange, Neon Pink (a Rough Trade exclusive that came with a sampler CD of earlier Osees songs), and black.

Just as Face Stabber answered the question, “what would it have been like if a punk band eventually made a prog rock record?”, Protean Threat answers the question, “what if that band then immediately went back to making punk rock, but forgot to turn off their effects pedals and keyboards?” In other words, it's a glorious bit of whiplash for a band who seemed destined to make either the next Tales From Topographic Oceans or, shudder, the next Be Here Now. Instead, we got a transformation that is more akin to what it would have been like if after Kid A Radiohead had said, “dy'know what, let's have a bit of that grunge/Pixies stuff again lads”, and it was actually really good.

If I'm being honest, however, I have to say on first listen I was underwhelmed by Protean Threat. It wasn't that I disliked it, since the rehearsal had prepared me for the change in material and song lengths. Moreso my initial impression was of a band who were simultaneously trimming the fat and just kind of sounding like themselves. In my younger years this lack of constant innovation and/or pushing to extremes would have derailed my enjoyment of this record. But nowadays I can look past my own taste preferences and enjoy this album for what it's trying to be, and what it succeeds at.

Further listens have revealed a wealth of great songs and moments.' Said The Shovel' and 'Terminal Jape' prove for the umpteenth time that this band has a hell of a lot of range and the ability to shift between styles. The former is a ghostly slow rhythmic groove that gives way to 60s keyboard stabs and an off-kilter bassline, and the latter, a new contender for “heaviest fucking song since the last album's heaviest fucking song.” 'Toadstool' kind of sounds like Primus or a jammier Residents. Am I crazy? Anyway, it's the longest track and shows how this new, svelte style of song lengths doesn't mean a dearth of undeveloped ideas or multiple filler tracks of half-baked sub-three-minute clangor. 'Toadstool' almost repeats in a circular song structure, like riding on a carousel while the band is all around you.

Now, can we just take a minute and talk about how incredible the Osees rhythm section is? Tim Hellman, Dan Rincon, and Paul Quattrone own tracks like 'Gong Of Catastrophe', a fitfully sleepy Can-esque jam that puts on autopilot as it cruises into the desert sky hitting its afterburners here or there before coming in for a controlled landing. The trio gallop all over instant classic 'Dreary Nonsense', sure to be a banger in setlists for years to come. Lastly I have to gush over the Stereolab-like pop-kraut groove on 'Canopnr '74', propelled by Hellman's throbbing bass.

Now, all of that said, my current tastes tend toward the psychedelic, the jammy, the elongated, the languid, so I find I can't quite reach the level of adoration for Protean Threat as I have with the last limb they were going out on. I was happy to continue cruising along the Mutilator-to-Stabber ley lines to further revelation, terror, and terrible revelations. True, we don't exactly know if Protean Threat is the start of a new branch on the Osees tree, with dense but brisk songs sounding mostly like their sound up until now, because they haven't had a true studio followup to it. Anyway, maybe a better way to put it is: Protean Threat is like microdosing, I enjoy it in theory but I honestly think I'd want it to be more intense and to last longer.

While we eagerly await the next studio album, we'll continue the Retrospective by taking a heavy swing onto the tree next door, harvesting studio outtakes/jams, a remix(!) album, and live albums. Oh boy do we have us some live albums to get to!

Oh Sees Retrospective #24: Orc

I have to be honest, when I first saw the announcement back in 2017 that the forthcoming Oh Sees record would be called Orc, I thought man, that's lazy as hell. This is a band with a series of excellent album titles—yes, I even like Drop for its varying meanings—and Orc just seemed arbitrary. Sure, Dwyer was turning up the fantasy influence in the lyrics and overall aesthetic of the band, but “Orc”? Really? Plain and simple “Orc”? Not even “Warrior Orc” or “Orcs Brew” or something? Well, perhaps this paring back of the title was a nod to the band changing their name to simply Oh Sees, dropping the Thee. As it turned out, while a couple listens of Orc won't sound so different from A Weird Exits/An Odd Entrances, there's more changes going on than the surface level name change and stripped back album title indicate.


Orc was released on August 25^th, 2017, and along with the band name shortening to Oh Sees, there were a couple other crucial changes. As discussed in the last retrospective, Ryan Moutinho quit the band two days before the release of An Odd Entrances, and in early 2017 Paul Quattrone took his slot, maintaining the dual drummer setup we've all come to love. This addition would also solidify the modern-era lineup (minus Tomas Dolas, who only became an official member after Smote Reverser). By the by, for those curious, Quattrone is always in the left stereo channel and Dan Rincon is always in the right. I'm assuming they kept this convention going forward though I don't recall if the liner notes continue to specify this. The other big change is that this is the first Oh Sees album not to have Chris Woodhouse as recording engineer/producer/collaborator, after a streak stretching all the way back to Sucks Blood in 2007. I'm sad to report I wasn't able to find any information explaining why Woodhouse stopped working with Oh Sees. Judging by his Discogs credits, he hasn't been very active in the last year or two. He even left The Dock recording studio he helped found. Hopefully nothing bad happened to him, or anyway, between him and Oh Sees. Anyway, this led Orc to be a production handled by the team of John Dwyer, Eric Bauer, Ty Segall, and Enrique Tena (who is referred to in Smote Reverser track 'Enrique El Cobrador', which means “Enrique the debt collector”). It's weird, I always forget Ty Segall worked on Orc. I'd think this would be a bigger deal to people but I don't remember anyone bringing it up or commenting on it. By 2017 Ty Segall was arguably more mainstream and popular than Oh Sees, yet none of the professional music magazine/website reviews made even the smallest fuss of his involvement.


To these ears, Orc is a slightly-more-modern sequel to Mutilator Defeated At Last. It's solid all the way through, has no weak tracks, and it's an across-the-board fan favorite. It also has a reputation as a dark/heavy album akin to Floating Coffin. This isn't completely deserved, at least musically. Yes, lyrically the album is pretty dark and heavy, a strange mix of almost self-consciously poetic turns of phrase and disturbing imagery, continuing the apocalyptic scifi/fantasy concepts of the last two records. For example, opener 'The Static God' is from the point of view of a self-destructive/masochistic character, trying to bum cigarettes and wondering aloud, “I'm leaning in/into the whip/does it satisfy me?” Not to mention there's a track called 'Cadaver Dog', for god's sake! Musically, the album is quite heavy though it does have more variety than Floating Coffin, so the reputation is only partly deserved. Before I get to said variety I should touch on the heaviness, as Orc has some of the band's most crunchy riffs and metal-tinged moments. 'Animated Violence' is one of the heaviest tracks of the modern-era, rivaled only by 'Face Stabber' or 'Heartworm.' However, this heaviness is leavened expertly with slower/calmer moments and songs, like the five minute long viola-led second section of 'Keys To The Castle' and the slow dance fantasia of 'Drowned Beast.' There's also the aptly named 'Cooling Tower', which sacrifices heaviness for grooviness, and has a churning/chugging up-and-down riff that reminds me a bit of both parts of 'Unwrap The Fiend.' Also, is it just me or does the drumming on this track really sound like Can circa Ege Bamyasi? They've been a huge influence on Oh Sees for years but the grooviness and repetition of the drumming on this track is absolutely out of Jaki Liebezeit's wheelhouse, specifically 'Vitamin C.'


The main difference that sets Orc apart from the previous few releases is that the songs are more dynamic and sectional. This is part of where the increased prog rock influence comes in. Sure, the songs being a bit longer than normal, overall, accounts for this feeling as well, but only partially. 'Nite Expo' and 'Keys To The Castle' both have a rather linear development instead of the usual pop song verse/chorus/verse, while 'Raw Optics' is the kind of solid album ending instrumental that you want to write home about. It's a classic 70s prog rock/acid rock track and I absolutely adore the drum solo section. It's a much more interesting and enjoyable version of the 'Drums' improvisation sections of the second set of Grateful Dead shows. This song, more than any other, points to the jammier direction of Smote Reverser and Face Stabber. While we're on the subject of instrumentals, it's worth noting that Orc has three of them, and two of them are back-to-back in the tracklisting, with the third coming one song later. In theory this risks backloading the album with samey sounding material, but Oh Sees have mastered so many styles of music and the dynamics of instrumental songwriting/jamming that they're among the most compelling songs on Orc.


Since I'm not going to do a retrospective on it, I want to briefly mention the Dead Medic EP. At only two tracks it's difficult to call it an EP though both tracks add up to 20 minutes, so maybe this is one time I need to stop being so pedantic and listen to the artist's intent. Near as I can tell the title track is an in-studio jam, with frenetic drumming and all kinds of psychedelic splurts and burbles going off like slow motion fireworks reflected on the surface of a lake. The other track is a cover of an old school Swedish band I won't even pretend to have heard of. Reminds me a bit of what I remember Amon Düül II sounding like, though I haven't listened to them in years so I recommend finding out for yourself.


As I don't have anything negative to say about Orc, I do want to also take the time to briefly detour to mention a truly terrible and insulting review of the album on Under The Radar. They gave it a ridiculously low 2/10 score, and that's whatever; I hate scoring systems, I haven't used them for years, and that's not why I was so bothered. Moreso I'm blinded by rage with the condescending tone and jabs at nerd culture in this useless, masturbatory excuse for a review. I don't know what it is with the “professional” music press in the UK always being huge pretentious assholes in general, and especially about psychedelic and prog rock music. If you guys sometimes disagree strongly with what I write, prepare yourselves for this bullshit: http://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/oh_sees_orc/


OK, detours are over. Given the context of the records to follow, you can look at Orc as being the svelte and focused version of what Smote Reverser and Face Stabber mutated the sound into. By this I mean that Orc lacks most of the jammy/noodly stuff that turns some people off of the latest two albums. This isn't to say Orc is a pop record with short songs, far from it. A better explanation is that it trims all the fat and the sprawl and only leaves the best, most essential parts in these songs. Myself, I love the fat and the sprawl, too. Sometimes I want 'Nite Expo' and sometimes I want 'Henchlock', just as sometimes Oh Sees want to title an album “Orc” and not “The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In.” What else is there to say? You know Orc, you love Orc. Zug zug.

Weekly Whiskey Episode 6

I am really learning to hate how blip.tv's upload process works, but at least I managed to get this up before it was no longer Wednesday!

Album of the Week: The Silver Apples- Silver Apples/Contact

I generally don't take guidance from my dreams. This is because they have little to offer my real life, consisting mainly of nightmare scenarios, violent confrontations, or regressive nervous worries from years past. But sometimes music creeps into my dreams. I find myself in a situation where I'm listening to something I've never heard before, as if my subconscious mind is creating new music that it knows will appeal to me. Then, in the dream, I ask someone what is playing and they tell me and it's a band I already know and the music suddenly changes to that. Last night, it was the Silver Apples, so here we are.

One of the best ways to start an argument with someone is to ask them what they think the best decade or era of music is. My gut reaction is to say the 60s, but then to revise to "the mid 60s to the mid 70s." Even though I'm ensconced in the music of my time, I think the only stuff worth following is the so-called 'indie/underground' music. During the mid 60s to the mid 70s, the best music was also, seemingly, the most popular. Yet as we revisit the past, we find that there were still a lot of bands that fell through the cracks. Some were very ahead of their time, others just didn't fit in with the on-going psychedelia and hippie-centric writing of the day, and there's something about the experimental music outside the typical Woodstock fare going on at the time that I find endlessly fascinating and timeless.

The Silver Apples were one of those bands. Possessing a bravura and willingness to make the kind of music they wanted to make, the duo produced two albums of futuristic electronic music that doesn't sound like much of anything before or since. Mixing the dreamy vocals and homemade synthesizer washes, drones, loops, and bleeps of Simeon Coxe with the endlessly imaginative, ever-evolving funky/jazzy percussion of Danny Taylor, the Silver Apples were like an American answer to the German krautrock bands of the era such as Can and Neu!, two bands also notable for being 'ahead of their time' and influencing many later bands yet still sounding contemporary and unique.

The first two Silver Apples albums, from 1968 and '69, are currently available on a single CD, and while I admire the bargain, I hope that people view these albums as separate entities instead of one long listen. They each have a character of their own even if they superficially sound the same with those crazy keyboards and that booty-shaking percussion groove that probably launched a thousand samples. The self-titled debut has more of a pop bent, with shorter songs and a more explicitly psychedelic tone particularly when it comes to the lyrics. Highlights here include the band signature tune 'Oscillations', droney synths meet ultra-tight drumming on 'Lovefingers', the tribalistic stomp of 'Dancing Gods', and 'Program', which will get you nodding your head along to the beat before you know it.

The second album, Contact, has a rougher feel to it while also adding strangely effective banjo(!!) on two tracks. Contact is less obviously hippie-ish than most of the self-titled debut which works in its favor in my book. It's hard to choose between the two albums in terms of favorites because they're equally good and it, then, comes down to personal preference: the more groovy and poppy debut, or the more experimental and varied Contact. At any rate, as far as I know the only way to get these albums today is in the single CD form so all this hairsplitting is meaningless from a consumer standpoint. So, then...'You and I' and 'I Have Known Love' pick up where the debut left off, crafting classic Silver Apples grooves you just want to ride forever. The two aforementioned banjo tracks are shockingly good: 'Ruby' is a short-ish electronic bluegrass drone and 'Confusion' is a nice breath of fresh air to what is mostly an oppressive electronic throwdown. The album draws to a close with the amusing 'Fantasies', which has Simeon Coxe talk-singing and guiding drummer Danny Taylor through the song with orders like "change course now" and "come back home."

If you're the kind of person who's always looking to expand his or her palette, to try out new things in the arts but also to go back to the undiscovered masterpieces of the ages, then this album is the kind of thing you need to pick up. It's adventurous but rewarding music, timeless but of its time, electronic yet not machine-like. In short, it's a must have.

Halloween: Spooky Songs On Otherwise Normal Albums

Well, we're in the home stetch of Whiskey Pie's month-long Halloween celebration. All this week I'll have Halloween themed posts, including a special Album of the Week entry that is fairly ambitious (in that, it'll be ambitious for me not to ramble on for 10,000 words).

But today we're going to talk about scary music. I've already done scary movies and scary games (one more post each on those forthcoming, in fact) so it's time I gave music its due beyond the videos I've been posting. Rather than talk about 'scary albums', because I don't own any I think are scary all the way through, I'm going to explore some songs that are surprisingly creepy considering the majority of the rest of the music from the albums they come from is straightforward in comparison.

Aphex Twin- 'Grey Stripe' (a.k.a. track four of the second disc of SAWII)
Actually, Aphex Twin probably deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for tucking away scary songs on his albums. In the case of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the order of the day is mostly free floating texture and mood pieces. But 'Grey Stripe' is a terrifying song that sounds like indescribable echoes through deep space and the howls and shrieks of alien lifeforms as they bound through the corridors and ventilation shafts of some haunted space station. It's unsettling and unforgettable.

The Beatles- 'Revolution 9'
I may have told this story on here before, but the first time I listened to The White Album it was on a Fall afternoon. I just happened to put it on to coincide so that, when I got to the side four of the vinyl version, the sun had gone down and it was dark and cold outside. 'Revolution 9' is an infamous piece of musique concrete that most people hate and skip when they listen to the album. I never skip it, but it's still creepy as hell. Even while listening to The White Album with a friend, it leaves you with an eerie feeling that the final song, 'Goodnight', with its Disney-esque majesty, only partially dispels.

Boards of Canada- 'The Devil Is In The Details'
While much of the music and album artwork of Boards of Canada trades on psychedelia and the darker aspects of the 60s, this song takes things a bit further, with a horrifying female voice talking to you over the sounds of a disembodied child crying in reverse (??) and bizarre tape loops. Eeek.

Brian Wilson- 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow'
So much history has been built up about the Smile album that it's hard to get past it and put this album in the context of 1967 even though it wasn't finished until 2004. Reportedly, while originally recording this album (and going crazy on drugs, naturally) Brian Wilson thought that this song had caused a fire in his area. True or not, 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' forms part of the 'Elements Suite' of Smile representing fire--another tale says that Brian Wilson made the band and gathered orchestra put on plastic fire helmets while recording the song. Its title references the cow that--true story--started the great Chicago fire all those years back. It's intense though short, mostly notable because of its supposed historical fire causing and for helping 1967-era Brian Wilson seem even crazier than he already did.

Can- 'Aumgn'
You could probably play this song in a haunted house and get away with it. 'Aumgn' is the most extreme and experimental song that Can ever produced, a 17 minute monolith that is indescribable. Spooky sounds, tape loops, screeching violin, keyboards, free jazz, free noise, scatter shot percussion...and at the heart of it all, Damo Suzuki saying/singing "AAAUUUUUMMMMMMMMGGGGGNNNNNN" over and over, slowed down, stretched out, treated with effects, or brought back and forth in the mix. The whole thing crescendos with a rising synth chord, frenetic tribal drumming, and a whole lot of studio trickery. Mind blowing.

Low- 'Don't Understand'
This is Low at their most gothic and deliberate, slowly building the tension of the spiralling keyboard atmospherics until the primitive death march led by drums kicks in. Then Alan Sparhawk holds a gun to our heads and relates how he doesn't understand while leading us through the woods to the spot where he'll leave our bodies after offing us. At least, that's what I picture in my head when I listen to this song.

The Microphones- '(Something) Cont.'
The Glow Pt. 2 has an otherworldly vibe that I can't explain. You really have to listen to it on headphones to get the full effect, but it traffics in sonic extremes. There are many quiet moments that linger, with barely audible sounds spread throughout, taunting you. Reportedly there are foghorns from boats at various parts of the album though I've only noticed a few. But on the other end of the sonic extreme, there's noisy storms like this that move in and then off like thunder, scaring the shit out of you before another unexpectedly catchy moment of lo-fi indie rock restores you to your senses.

Miles Davis- 'Rated X'
If you didn't know this song was by Miles Davis before listening to it, you would have no idea. It features no trumpet at all and comes from his late-electric era circa 1973/1974, when he would occasionally play atonal organ blasts during live performances to shake up and/or signal transitions to his band. This track, released on a compilation, is spellbindingly crazy, with a pounding drum/bass beat that predicts all manner of beat driven experimental electronic music to come. Over that we are assaulted with churning wah-wah guitar and ear splitting, Phantom Of The Opera-pissed-off-and-high-on-cocaine organ "chords." There's a remix of this track on an album by Bill Laswell that is actually listenable but therefore not scary. If you need a song to clear guests out of your house/apartment at the end of a Halloween party, here you go.

Pere Ubu- 'Thriller!'
No, not that 'Thriller.' This is a spooky instrumental with incomprehensible vocal samples, a slow, stumbling drum beat and guitars lazily detuning and tuning themselves. Eventually, odd scratching/chewing sounds show up and bury the rest of the mix. A very spooky song and one that, if memory serves, ends side one of Dub Housing in an oddly appropriate fashion.

Sonic Youth- 'Providence'
In all fairness, once you read that this song is simply a combination of an overheating amplifier, an answering machine message from Mike Watt, and Thurston Moore plunking away on a piano, it loses some of its power. But like all great double albums, 'Providence' is an anomalous, creepy track that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the album but sort of does. Anyway, yeah. Spooky.

Sufjan Stevens- 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.'
The song itself is actually quite pretty, if a bit sad. When you realize he's singing about infamous clown/child murderer John Wayne Gacy, it instantly becomes creepier than anything you've heard that week. Certain lines from this song give me chills and that's because this stuff really happened and is not just some lame ghost story.

Talking Heads- 'The Overload'
Primarily known for being a funky and vibrant album, Remain In Light leaves us with the intense conclusion of 'The Overload', all oppressive atmospherics, David Byrne's monotone delivery, and zombified drums. Phish took this a step further when performing the album live on Halloween '96 by adding an electric drill (!!) and stage antics (including a random crew member saying "where's my coffee?!") that confused the audience.

The Velvet Underground- 'Sister Ray'
Actually, the entirety of the Velvet Underground's second album is crazy and off-the-rails. But 'Sister Ray' brings the built-up tense atmosphere to its inevitable conclusion, rolling up into one 17 minute ball of evil all the drugs, sex, violence, and terror that marked the songs of the Velvets up to that point. The first time I listened to this song I was genuinely frightened of it because I didn't know what to expect. Now, I find it oddly exhilarating. Sometimes it's nice to just let go and become one with your inner nihilist psychotic drug addict.