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.

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 #33: Live At Big Sur

 While I do still want to see them live someday, there is a small, cynical part of me that is glad I've never seen Phish in concert because they have such a high capacity to disappoint me. As I became a fan during the dark times (late 2004 to early 2009), I had a lot of time to catch up on old shows, diving deep into online fan tapes and the official LivePhish.com store/site. Having already heard a lot of the most recommended “best” and “fan favorite” concerts, I decided to listen to shows that I might have actually gone to in my area, to get a sense for what an 'average' show might have been like. While not outright terrible, Phish—especially in the post-hiatus, 2003-2004 incarnation—are sometimes known for playing sloppy or jam-light shows from time to time. And this is where my disappointment would always come in. I could forgive forgotten lyrics here or there, a flubbed section of a song here or there, but if a show had no tasty improv, or at the very least, some interesting segues between songs? Count me out. So, while I don't mean to rush the conclusion of this Retrospective entry, I have to say up-front that I was not looking forward to revisiting Live At Big Sur. Will I be just as let down this time? We'll find out in a bit.

Live At Big Sur was released on January 9^th, 2021. For whatever it's worth, it was recorded on December 19^th, 2020, so a pretty quick turnaround. It's officially known as Live At Big Sur, but sometimes also referred to as Live At The Henry Miller Library Big Sur. I'll be going with the shorter designation for sake of ease. The webcast, now posted for free on YouTube, is preceded by 12ish minutes of a bizarre improv jam over footage of...well, I'm still not sure for the most part. Best experienced for yourself. Now, please correct me if I'm wrong but I think this was purely a digital release, so no limited edition color variant vinyls to lust after. Maybe I'm alone in this but I find it exceedingly odd that there's been no physical release at all, even on CD. But I digress. It's not on the Bandcamp page for this release so for those wondering, here's what John Dwyer had to say about the performance/release: “We’ve dipped deep into the dark waters of our song-sack of holding and found several more never-before-performed-live tunes & paired them up with some oldies we’ve knocked the dust off of as well as some fan favorites and general surprises to make the merry very. That’s right, we’ve been paying attention. Recorded from dusk till dawn 2 at the gorgeous Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. Same killer crew, similar killer vibes. An enchanting pre-holiday evening to tell you that we miss and love you. Play it loud and have one on us. And keep your chin up for goodness sake."

As usual, here's the tracklisting, with the album the song is from in parentheses:

1. Rogue Planet (Mutilator Defeated At Last)

2. I Can't Pay You To Disappear (Dog Poison)

3. Opposition (Carrion Crawler/The Dream)

4. Crushed Grass (Carrion Crawler/The Dream)

5. Heavy Doctor (Carrion Crawler/The Dream)

6. Ticklish Warrior (A Weird Exits)

7. Gholü (Face Stabber)

8. Withered Hand (Mutilator Defeated At Last)

9. Voice In The Mirror (Dog Poison)

10. Tunnel Time (Floating Coffin)

11. Gelatinous Cube (A Weird Exits)

12. Poor Queen (Mutilator Defeated At Last)

13. Lupine Ossuary (Mutilator Defeated At Last)

14. Dead Medic (Dead Medic 12” single)

15. Jealous Again (Black Flag, Jealous Again 12” EP)

16. Nervous Breakdown (Black Flag, Nervous Breakdown 7” EP)

17. Wasted (Black Flag, Nervous Breakdown 7” EP)

18. Fix Me (Black Flag, Nervous Breakdown 7” EP)

19. Levande Begravd (Liket Lever, Levande Begravd/Hjärtats Slag 7” single)

20. J'ai Mal Aux Dents (Faust, The Faust Tapes)

Live At Big Sur is a very scattered release, in terms of choices of covers as well as the band's own songs. It's weird to have three songs from the same album in a row, and it's also weird to have four songs from the same album in total. Not sure if those were conscious choices or just how they wanted the set to flow and feel. Overall the songs are heavily biased towards short tracks and I think it's easily my least favorite setlist of their recent live releases. Before 'Dead Medic', a welcome rarity, there is only one song that is over four minutes long! I will say it's cool to get some bustouts and never-before-performed-live tracks but that only goes so far in my book.

As for the covers...Well, I'm not that huge of a Black Flag fan. I've always been of the opinion that hardcore punk bands got truly interesting when they started to get weirder. I mean, do more people know Double Nickels On The Dime or Paranoid Time? Given their recent style and penchant for improv I think it's odd Osees only did songs from Black Flag's very early hardcore punk era, before they started to get more ambitious musically and had tracks that routinely went past four minutes. I'd love to hear Osees tackle the legendarily sludgy, stoner metal-esque side two of My War: three songs in 18 minutes, an eternity by hardcore punk standards. Featuring Greg Ginn's guitar insanity at its first true flowering, side two is sort of like if early Bardo Pond had an angry frontman. Anyway. They're well done and faithful covers, and...that's it.

As for the Liket Lever cover, I'm not even going to pretend like I know who this band is. They're apparently a punk band from Sweden who, as far as I can tell, only released one 7” and then disappeared from the historical record. Much like the Black Flag covers, it's well done and faithful, but I can't think of much else to say about it. The Faust cover is much more exciting, given that Osees constantly get compared to Can (for good reason, mind you!) but not other krautrock mainstays they also definitely draw from. Faust aren't as well known for their lengthy jams but give a listen to the original version of 'J'ai Mal Aux Dents' or their quintessential song 'Krautrock' and you'll hear the parallels quite easily. Though in some sense just as well done and faithful as the other covers, this one benefits from having more of an open musical template to play with, as the original song isn't a digestible pop song either. It's also nice given how short and jam-less most of the rest of the show is to finally hear them get psychedelic with it.

Which is, in addition to the somewhat strange song choices, my biggest gripe with this live album. I gotta have my jams, Johnny boy...and Live At Big Sur is like dry toast. That said, if you really like 'Dead Medic' and the studio albums this draws heavily from, you might find a lot to enjoy here.

Next time: Levitation Sessions....II!

Oh Sees Retrospective #20: Mutilator Defeated At Last

One of the most fascinating stories in music history has to be King Crimson. Though their various lineups over the years tended to be more stable than the legendary upheavals of The Fall, the story of them transitioning from the mid 70s lineup to the Discipline era makes for a fascinating tale. I highly recommend at least reading the Wikipedia entry to get the quick and dirty series of events. Effectively resetting the sound and style they had been known for in the 70s, the influence of new members Adrien Belew (who had recently been touring/recording with Talking Heads) and Tony Levin (a criminally underrated and unique bassist, check out 'Elephant Talk' and 'Discipline') didn't so much completely change the band's reputation for virtuosic playing as it did redirect the focus onto polyrhythms, post-punk, and new wave. Of course we all know by now that, other than John Dwyer, there's no certainty with the lineup (and current name) of Oh Sees. They've gone through at least three distinct eras in terms of sound and stylistic focus, to say nothing of the personnel changes. I wouldn't have minded if the mid-era lineup (from 2008 to 2013) stuck around. However, it would have meant missing out on the influences of the members that have rotated through/joined since then, just as King Crimson staying the course would've meant missing out on Discipline and everything to follow.


Oh, right, Mutilator Defeated At Last. That's what I'm here for. I should warn you now, this is going to be longer than usual. There's a-fucking-lot to cover this time out. Anyhow, it was released on May 18^th, 2015...and that's it. Wow, no contradicting release date, it must be my lucky day! Though still retaining Thee Oh Sees as their moniker, this album featured the trio lineup that Dwyer had recruited to tour after the release of Drop. The new drummer, Nick Murray, would only be around for this release (well, he is on Memory Of A Cut Off Head, though that's an OCS release). New bassist Tim Hellman, meanwhile, began to solidify the modern-era lineup. It's worth taking a moment to appreciate what a difference he makes to the overall sound. This is the first time Oh Sees had a dedicated bassist, giving the band a low-end bedrock to stand upon. It's true that Petey Dammit! played bass at times, and sometimes downtuned his guitar and/or played it through a bass amp, though just as often he would strictly stick to guitar, repeating the same riff while Dwyer's own guitar went crazy around him. Oddly, around this time Dwyer was quoted as saying he was tired of keyboards for live shows and that “...the future of the band doesn't hold much keyboard...” Sure, until Tomas Dolas joined in 2018 they didn't have a dedicated keyboardist, though I'm almost positive I've seen live clips on YouTube before he joined the band where Dwyer is playing the organ lines of 'Sticky Hulks' on a little synth or MIDI keyboard...But I digress.


You wouldn't know it from the Metacritic scores, which are surprisingly consistent for Oh Sees, but Mutilator Defeated At Last got some of the band's highest scores yet—outlets like Allmusic and The Needle Drop gave it high praise, rather than the usual middling to above average scores. Ironic, then, that I didn't like it that much when it first came out. I couldn't place my finger on why until I went back and listened to their previous albums. “It's different...it's too polished....it's not as unhinged and wild...it's dialing back the garage rock and experimental elements...” Part of it may have also been that in late 2015 I began to date the woman who would go on to be my wife, and she was introducing me to a metric fuckton of EDM, vaporwave, and lo-fi hip hop. So Mutilator was set to the side and I didn't really think about it.


A funny thing happened on the way to the final opinion. I was in the throes of another serious Diablo III obsession in early 2017, often playing it for hours with the sound turned way down and my own music selections blasting on a Bluetooth speaker. One night I decided to throw the last few Oh Sees releases into a playlist and hit shuffle. Now, in my mind, Mutilator was the poppy/polished album, and A Weird Exits/An Odd Entrances was where they once again really got weird and cool. Pleasant surprise after pleasant surprise hit my dopamine receptors as I thought to myself “damn, this song is fantastic, what album is it from again?” and I'd look down and see that more often than not, the ones that got my attention were from Mutilator. Turns out, this record was the true start of the modern-era Oh Sees after all. If 60s garage rock was the soup base before, then this new era changed to a buffet of 70s music as its foundation. Psychedelic and krautrock stuck around, now seasoned with spicy druggier/jammier classic rock, meaty prog rock, and a few herby dashes of proto-punk, post-punk, and even boogie rock. That's right, Oh Sees beat King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard to boogie rock with Mutilator's excellent 'Turned Out Light.' Let's not get into that tired Sees Vs. Gizz debate, though.


All of this is a long build-up to getting around to saying I now regard Mutilator as a flawless record. It wouldn't be hard to make a case for it being the band's best album ever. I love everything about it—even the strange album cover, with the vinyl record wear-and-tear making it look and feel like something you might discover in the collection of one of your parents from back in the 70s/80s. No song on this release is less than great; many are stone-cold classics that still appear in live sets. 'Sticky Hulks' showed us that they could slow it down and get a bit moody/atmospheric while still giving us something that is undeniably Oh Sees, almost as if they were working on a cover of 'Riders On The Storm' and it mutated into something else. Even the slighter/shorter tracks bristle with inspired ideas and playing: I won't rest until 'Rogue Planet' is the theme song to an Adult Swim show about surfers/skaters in outer space. Meanwhile, 'Holy Smoke' is how you do an instrumental right. Using acoustic instead of electric guitar is a subtle but brilliant change, giving Mutilator more sonic variety while still working well in the overall flow. On a side note, listen to this track and OCS's 'Memory Of A Cut Off Head' back-to-back, the guitar and strings on the latter are highly reminiscent of 'Holy Smoke.' It should go without saying that Mutilator opens with the commanding one-two punch of 'Web' and 'Withered Hand', but I guess I did just kind of say it by saying it didn't need to be said. I think I just made myself dizzy.


Let's move on. Discuss amongst yourselves how it is that this album is only a couple minutes longer than Drop but feels so much more fleshed out and satisfying. Please also take careful notes as I present my TED Talk, “'Palace Doctor' Is An Amazing Cooldown Of An Album Closer That Deserves More Love.” And since I won't be covering them as part of my required curriculum this semester, I'll point those who want extra credit to submit a minimum 300 word essay on how the non-album single made up of the songs 'Fortress'/'Man In A Suitcase' could have been crammed onto the album to bulk up the runtime but it was smartly allowed to breathe on its own. Discuss artistic integrity vs. giving people quantity over quality; compare and contrast this single with the similar Moon Sick EP in regards to it being a fine dessert course following Floating Coffin.


Oh, and a quick reminder before you're dismissed, students: next class we'll be covering Live In San Francisco. Prepare to analyze the form and function of a live album vis-á-vis a band's relationship with their own body of work and the chosen performance style(s). As always, we'll have a purely voluntary luncheon and bong rip session after class. Dig in.

Oh Sees Retrospective #16: Floating Coffin

It's always a little strange when something obscure you hold near and dear to your heart bumps up against the mainstream. I'll never forget back in 2000 when Radiohead (a popular band, to be sure, but not as legendary as they are now) appeared on Saturday Night Live. I was nervous as shit to see the reaction of my high school peers. Would everybody suddenly jump on the bandwagon, and as a result, steer the band further into the mainstream, perhaps even dragging them there, kicking and screaming? Turns out I shouldn't have worried because nobody was talking about it. I bring this up because in some sense, 2013 was the peak of mainstream crossover for Oh Sees. 'Tidal Wave' was used in 2011 in an episode of Breaking Bad; 'The Dream' was used in Grand Theft Auto V in 2013. More and more mainstream press started to cover them and review their records. I'll admit, I was a bit worried they might steer into more poppy/populist music. I needn't have worried, just as with Radiohead. Floating Coffin may have come out at the height of their mainstream dalliance but it's an Oh Sees record through and through.

That said, I don't think anyone could deny this era was where Oh Sees started to become a band that you might see on a late night talk show. I have the sense that the 2011-2013 era was the real jump in fandom numbers for Oh Sees. A lot of people seem to say either Carrion Crawler/The Dream or Floating Coffin is the first Oh Sees album they heard; even more people view them both as cornerstones of the Oh Sees discography. It's interesting, then, that Floating Coffin is the last gasp of the classic mid-era of Oh Sees (this is with the exception of the Moon Sick EP and Singles Collection Vol. 3) as the four-piece of John Dwyer, Brigid Dawson, Petey Dammit!, and Mike Shoun. People were just coming on board as Dwyer pivoted the band into another effectively-solo album, Drop, announced a hiatus, and then came roaring back with a new lineup and album. But we'll get to all that in good time, my friends. I should note that Lars Finberg did contribute drums and guitar to this record, helping achieve its beefy sound, but he didn't tour to promote the album and never officially joined as a member.


Floating Coffin was released on April 16^th, 2013, and thankfully, there's no confusing mentions of it being an EP unlike the last two albums. Ironic, then, that a mere three days after Floating Coffin came out, the band released the four leftover songs from the recording sessions as the Moon Sick EP for Record Story Day. But I digress. Setting aside its reputation for quality, Floating Coffin seems to also have a reputation for being a heavier, more energetic, and darker album than what had come before. Sure, it is more focused than the scattershot Putrifiers II, though I do think this “ALL HIGH ENERGY ALL THE TIME LET'S ROCK!” idea is a bit overblown. Don't get me wrong, side one of the record especially goes for the throat and never lets off the gas even if it's not always going a thousand miles an hour. Listen a little more closely, however, and you'll see hints of the psychedelic and prog rock styles that dominate modern Oh Sees records. The sludgy, gooey 'Night Crawler' has wonderfully zonked out sounding keyboards and a blown-out wall-of-sound that suffocates the ears. 'Strawberries 1 + 2' starts off like the rest of side one before evolving (devolving?) into a slower paced swagger. The increased psychedelic influence is also felt on the underappreciated 'No Spell', a krautrock jam that spends its last minute or so zoned out, receding into the background like the visual trails you see on acid.


It's exceedingly rare that I consider something perfect, in the literal sense of the word. Floating Coffin doesn't seem to have a weakness in its armor that can be exploited, Smaug-style, to bring it down. The album cover is cool as shit, the title is awesome, there isn't a weak song in the bunch, it's paced well and never gets stylistically monotonous...so why is it, then, that I don't find myself reaching for this record as much as other Oh Sees releases? Well, if you'll allow me a brief detour back in time: do you remember how, in the retrospective about Warm Slime, I posited that it's possible to see the flaws in something but still love it? The inverse is the case for Floating Coffin. I think it's as flawless as any work of art can be; it knows exactly what it is, what it's trying to go for, and it completely succeeds. Yet, I don't love it. It's a fantastic record and believe me, I get why other people adore it and adorn it with high regard. It's taken me so long to write this retrospective not because I haven't felt like writing recently, but because I've been trying to tease out why it is that it doesn't click with me...and I still have no idea. I was going to say that I don't think 'Minotaur' really fits the album and is an odd choice for the closer yet the more I listened to this record the more it grew on me.


You can't tell, but I shrugged just now.


I suppose that's how it goes with art sometimes, and with life, too. Some things will always be inexplicable. I've never been able to explain why I don't love Inception, other than “it's not as deep and complex as people say it is”, but that's more about other people's feelings than my own, and has no bearing on how I feel about the movie. It simply didn't capture my heart the way it seems to for other people. So it goes with Floating Coffin. If you're one of its many lovers, I wish you both the happiest life together.

Oh Sees Retrospective #14: Carrion Crawler/The Dream

I've never been a Christmas kind of person. It's been my least favorite holiday for a long time, and it seems to always be a melancholy time of year. 2019's holiday season has so far been especially difficult because I'm on my own, living at a friend's place in Columbus. He's vacationing abroad with his girlfriend until after the new year, and my wife and I are in the middle of one of those awkward “we're not speaking” kind of arguments. This is all the cherry on top to what will go down as, no hyperbole, one of the worst years I've ever had. So while a lot of people seem to love the end-of-year seasonal traditions, like looking back on the past year by ranking movies and music in top ten lists, I just want this fucking year to be over. Given all of this, my preferred form of looking back is to revisit some of my all time favorite things and to not think about anything that happened in 2019. Sure, I just saw Knives Out in the theater (a fantastic film, by the way) but I've also been rewatching, say, Pulp Fiction and the best episodes of Trailer Park Boys.


As for music, you ask? Well, aside from mainlining Microcastle by Deerhunter and First Come, First Served by Dr. Doooom aka Kool Keith, I also can't stop listening to Carrion Crawler/The Dream. And no, it's not just because I'm writing this retrospective. Much as it may be a foregone conclusion that I love this album, we'll at least try to see if anything bahs my humbugs when I once again put down my fandom banner and put on my critical lenses.


Let's ignore the fact that the back of the record sleeve says this is an EP: Carrion Crawler/The Dream is the third and final full length release from Oh Sees in 2011, arriving on November 8^th. If anyone has a concrete answer as to why the back sleeve says EP, I'd love to know. I would speculate, based on interviews and comments from the band, it was because originally this was going to be an EP based around 'The Dream.' When they wrote 'Carrion Crawler' (and perhaps one or two more tracks) they decided to put it all out together. Recorded and mixed by stalwart Oh Sees collaborator Chris Woodhouse, the album was finished in only five days and done entirely live as a full band in the studio. This approach paid off like a hacked slot machine for Frog Eyes on the similarly bombastic and long-song-heavy Paul's Tomb (A Triumph). Whereas the key to that album was adding a second guitarist, Carrion Crawler/The Dream takes full flight by adding Lars Finberg as the second drummer. It doesn't hurt that Oh Sees also delivered one of their most cohesive batch of songs yet, with a special emphasis on krautrock rhythms and song structures.


Look, we all know that this record is a classic in the Oh Sees canon. Most fans I've encountered seem to adore it and keep it permanently in their top five. We also all know that 'The Dream' is one of their towering achievements; it's been a fixture in live shows for years now and it's still their most popular song on Spotify. What we all might not know, or perhaps remember, is how many other fantastic songs come alongside 'The Dream.' Nobody ever seems to talk about 'Robber Barons', with its patient pace and wall of sound guitars. Also undeservedly forgotten, 'Chem-Farmer' has an absolute unit of a bassline that will rattle your skull if you crank it on a good set of speakers or headphones. Speaking of skulls, I would totally buy this record just for the cover art alone. I mean, wouldn't you? Yeah you would; I knew I liked you.


Special commendation must be given to 'Carrion Crawler' as one of the most perfect album openers in the history of Oh Sees album openers. It careens down the road with an addictive descending guitar riff that nods so heavily toward Pink Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive' it risks headbutting the piper at the gates of dawn, if you catch my drift. It makes me embarrassed because I didn't make the connection until they started using part of 'Interstellar' as a soundcheck/introduction to some live shows in the last year or two. Now, if I did have any nitpick with Carrion Crawler/The Dream, it's that 'Opposition' (or 'Opposition (With Maracas)', if you have the vinyl record) and 'Wrong Idea' are slight little trifles that seem underwritten by comparison to the rest of the songs...although...


...Although I do think they're purposefully positioned to mitigate the time and reality warping effects of 'The Dream.' I suppose this means I have to unpick that nit, then.


So, there you have it. A foregone conclusion about how great this album is...um, well foregone. No surprises, eh? Well, you know something? The holidays aren't always about surprises, wrapped gifts that tantalize with their mystery contents. Just as people still watch the marathon of A Christmas Story year after year, sometimes you want something familiar—indeed, something that familiarity has worn away the flaws of. You may not think this is a perfect record though I'd be willing to bet all the reindeer in Norway that you'd be hard pressed to name another Oh Sees album that is both a great entry point for newcomers and a hardcore fan favorite. But I digress. Happy holidays, and always remember: the dream, it seems, is peeking into real life.


[Unimportant footnote: I'm still not sure what part of Can's 'Soul Desert' is contained in 'Contraption/Soul Desert', even after listening to the original song and also the demo of 'Contraption' on Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2. I think maybe it's just some lyrics or a riff or chord....?]

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.

Album of the Week: Harmonia- Musik Von Harmonia

If you know anything about Brian Eno, you know that it would take a pretty outstanding situation for him to actively seek out a band and join it. Though he has collaborated with many, many musicians over the years, the only time I can think that he went out of his way to work with someone was in the mid 70s when he pursued Germany's Harmonia, a krautrock "supergroup" featuring members of Cluster and Neu!.

The band's first album, Musik Von Harmonia, was released in 1974, and led Brian Eno to declare the band "the world's most important rock band" (or something to that effect). It's not hard to see Eno's point of view, since he was splitting time between his brilliant experimental pop albums and his fledgling ambient work--Musik Von Harmonia splits the difference between those two extremes, creating something some have called "ambient rock."

But I'm getting off track here. Let's talk about the album.

Harmonia is made up of the two guys from Cluster and one half of Neu!. Though I'm hardly an expert on krautrock, I can tell you that the bands in the genre seem to range from the tribal improv of Can to the austere, robotic Kraftwerk. As such, Musik Von Harmonia ends up somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. I'm not sure "ambient rock" is quite the right term, but the album does meet the criteria Brian Eno set out for the ambient style: you can listen to it either as sonic wallpaper that colors an environment, or you can focus on it and enjoy it just as equally.

The emphasis on the album is decidedly textural, with fascinating soundscapes produced by keyboards, synthesizers, electronic drums, and guitars all over the place. Though the majority of the songs tend toward a rhythm-less free floating air, some, like 'Dino' have the distinctive relentless beat of motorik that tips the hand of the Neu! third of the band. Elsewhere, 'Ahoi!' has a delicate air that sounds like something you might hear in a massage parlor (and was possibly influential on Eno's ambient albums); 'Ohrwurm' is all sinister synths and a guitar tortured until it sounds like a groaning violin; and album closer 'Hausmusik', with its ethereal music box piano lines that are submerged beneath a shimmering glacier of sound before the latter recedes as gradually as it came.

Not much more needs to be said about Musik Von Harmonia. If you have even the slightest interest in krautrock or ambient music in general, you'll find it a worthy addition to your collection.