New:
Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band – The Rarity Of Experience. I raved about his last album (Intensity Ghost), but this one might be even better – mostly instrumental widescreen American guitar rock, in the same (slightly skewed) lineage as Crazy Horse, Television and Sonic Youth: https://chrisforsyth1.bandcamp.com/album/the-rarity-of-experience
Motorpsycho – Here Be Monsters. They just keep coming. This one sounds like Floyd if they’d got religion post-WYWH.
Damien Jurado – Visions Of Us On The Land. Really warming to this, a consistently great song cycle of cosmic Americana and proggy folk rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhL6jN00FBo (love how this slowly turns into ‘Like A Hurricane’)
Mamiffer – The World Unseen. Nice lead track from droney/doomy/dreamy types: https://soundcloud.com/sige-1/04-mara but the album went over my head a bit
Rangda – The Heretic’s Bargain. This is rockin’, Dick Dale meets John Fahey: https://soundcloud.com/drag-city/rangda-to-melt-the-moon
Crumbling Ghost – Five Songs. I was slightly underwhelmed by this on first listen, but I’m amazed by how quickly it’s since got its melodic hooks into me. I particularly like their own, non-folk derived track and its less declamatory vocal: https://witheredhandrecords.bandcamp.com/track/lose-and-get-something-good
Immersion – Analogue Creatures EP
Less new:
Boogarins – Manual. Missed this last year, essentially the Brazilian Tame Impala/Dungen. Not earth-shattering, but a very nice listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQxN7hqcCic
ESB – s/t. Ooh, feel a bit bad dismissing this after one listen, it sounded really good this week! Analogue electronic excursions from Yann Tiersen and friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR_cjblisIM
Breathless – Blue Moon. OK, I am now properly loving this, the great missing link in the post-Talk Talk tapestry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDPixO3eAwE
TaiTaiTo & Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Ghost Box ‘Other Voices’ 6 & 7 singles
Hawkwind – Doremi Fasol Latido / The Text Of Festival. Voyaging onward. Doremi really does sound like they’ve been up on some mad binge for 72 hours prior to recording. Is it just me or is the bass completely out of time at the start of ‘Lord Of Light’? Lemmy refers to a mistake in ‘Brainstorm’ that they left in, but perhaps he meant this track? I didn’t realise until very recently that TTOF was compiled from the early radio sessions they did for John Peel. I remember getting this when it first came out during my first flush of Hawklove, playing it and feeling royally shafted, such was the taped-from-the-inside-of-a-sock quality of the recordings. However, I can now see them in a different light. If you can put up with the aural fog, there’s actually some cracking versions on here of ‘MOTU’ and ‘You Know You’re Only Dreaming’, plus ‘Hurry On Sundown’ recorded as more of a ‘proper’ HW track rather than the glorified busking number you get on the debut. If you want to hear their first session in much better audio than TTOF, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAEa-sE-3G0 which also includes ‘Came Home’ aka ‘Some Of That Stuff’ (listed on TTOF, but not actually there), worth sticking with despite its Lonnie Donegan-esque intro.
Oh, and a couple of things from the telly…
I caught the last episode of the Brian Pern thing on BBC4, which is fatally hamstrung by the fact that Simon Day isn’t very funny and can’t act. However, it was almost redeemed by the closing titles sequence, which I won’t spoil if you haven’t seen it… http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06yrqzm/brian-pern-brian-pern-45-years-of-prog-and-roll-episode-3
The third part of the excellent Music Moguls series on the same channel (of course!) featured some dodgy geezer (or certainly somebody playing a dodgy geezer) talking about music PR, a subject uncomfortably close to what used to be my heart. Watch it for the extended Uriah Heep anecdote, which includes Lee Kerslake wrestling a bear… http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p039x5f7/music-moguls-masters-of-pop-3-myth-makers
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