Spacin' - Deep Thuds

Rock and Roll has a long running history of imitation and appropriation.  Artist take elements from their  influences and mix them together until something new comes steaming out of the pot.  Spacin' are a prime example of a new group taking age old rock tricks and applying them to a new frame. Spacin' at it's core is a bare bones garage rock band, but instead of being content they take their power chord riffs and use them as a foundation for drawn out experimentation and psychedelic jam sessions.

Spacin' is a muddy home recording project from Philadelphia, featuring members of the group Birds of Maya.  They take the same approach to heavy guitar shredding sessions, but instead keep riding on a riff instead of exploding into a storm of electricity.  Spacin' take most of their cues from the Rolling Stones (obvious from the cover art) and the Stooges.  However, they take the solid riffage of these bands and use it as a backbone for more Krautrock experiments.  

The opener, "Empty Mind", sounds like the stoned boogie of a Stooges riff or possibly even the Velvet Underground, with the rhythm section hanging on the down beat, while the lead guitar spirals in and out.  The simplest of chord progressions becomes a droned out repetitious exploration.

Tracks like "Chest of Steel" and "Sunshine, No Shoes" could sit at home on either "Funhouse" or Iggy's "Lust for Life".  They both take a bright three to four chord riff and turn it into a gritty stomper with some swelling guitar melodies in between verses.

While tracks like "Oh, Man" and "Ego-Go" truly take after the space rock name.  The beauty of all these songs is the bands capacity to take a single progression or idea and stretch it out without it getting dull.  All the solos and riffs are  in exactly the right place.  It is experimental within the confines of a traditional rock and roll frame.  It isn't earth shattering or even genre defying, but it is new music made by a group who love rock and roll, and who love riffing into space.  If that's all you are looking for in contemporary music, look no further.

       

Easter Everywhere

I've been waiting to review this album for sometime.  Today seems as appropriate a day as any, so here it is...  

"Easter Everywhere" by the 13th Floor Elevators is an album which may very well be the band's masterpiece before their inevitable unraveling.  This album is cohesive and versatile, the songs sit comfortably with each other, combining the repetitious and cyclical Psychedelic jams they pioneered with R&B, as well as the more subdued yet beautiful acid folk songs like "Dust" and "I Had to Tell You" Roky brought to the table.  This record is a success on all fronts, in the instrumentation, the cryptic lyrics, and even in the production which is much cleaner and tighter than the first album.  

The album's opener, "Slip Inside This House", is an 8 minute epic, a hypnotic head banger, chronicling the path of self discovery and introspection brought on by the psychedelic experience.  This is one of Tommy Halls better lyrical pieces and Roky Erickson howls them out like a spoken word poem over top of the bands razor sharp cyclical rhythm.  The band effortlessly weaves in and out of phrases blurring the lines and sounds in a truly original fashion.  

Rock stompers like the ethereal "She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)" and "Levitation", as well as the thunderous "Earthquake" keep the record in the vein of their garage rock roots, taking feedback and manipulating it into a slithery sonic snake that continues to shift it's form, masking the structure of each song.  This is largely indebted to Stacy Sutherland's guitar lines which are incredibly melodic and bridge the gap between the rock tunes and the folk ballads.       

The Bob Dylan cover "Baby Blue" may be the best cover of the song I have heard.  The band takes it and makes it their own, turning it from a lovers goodbye into an LSD comedown.  Roky's voice is perfectly suited for the emotion of the song and subject matter.  While Sutherland's sliding guitar sneaks back into the arrangement and gives a new psychedelic poignancy to the lyrics "the carpet, too, is moving under you".  

"Easter Everywhere" is a perfect example of a band finally capturing the sounds they have been striving towards.  I have never heard a record anywhere close to sounding like this.  I can trace the roots, but the band blends southern folk, with R&B, and Blues based rock in a way that is all their own.    Listen to the record as a whole and let it sink in.  

  

Ty Segall and White Fence- "Hair"

                  

Just when it feels like psychedelic rock has been rehashed to the point of generic predictability, Ty Segall and White Fence take the past and hack it to bits, splicing together a new vision of a well worn piece of rock history.  You can call it psychedelic, you can call it garage, or lo-fi, you can call it whatever you want but I guarantee none of those terms accurately describe 2012s "Hair".  It is a scuzzy collage that embraces slithering psych harmony and punk rock thrash into a disjointed tape-warped frenzy.

Ty Segall and Tim (White Fence) Presley bring their respective influences and styles, fusing them in psych freak outs until they are indiscernible.  Imagine a band of punk rock kids taking acid in the garage and chronicling the trip with some battered mics and an old tape recorder... you'll have some idea of what this record is all about.  That is not to say that their isn't serious thought put into the production.  Tracks pan left and right as quickly as Ty and Tim jump from ideas.  Like both their solo works this record embraces the home recording aesthetic.  Beneath the crackling layers of fuzz there are some great songs with some jam on the side.  

The individual tracks flow together in a stream of conscience fashion.  The start of the trip "Time" finds them in a tug-a-war between floating along the acoustic chord progression and smashing their guitars into a wall of feedback.  It stops and starts, pulling back and forth between sleepy groove and wailing thrash.  The organ and two chord chop of "I Am Not A Game" feels like the anxious rise of a roller coaster about to drop.  When it does, it falls into a pool of blissful harmonies that swirl around your ears, before starting its rigid climb once again.  "Easy Ryder" and "Black Glove/Rag" relaxes a bit and starts to enjoy the less aggressive side of their sound at least for a moment before the wailing punk rock side pushes it's way back into the mix.  "Cry Baby" is a buzzed out boogie featuring Ty's sarcastic howls.  While "(I Can't) Get Around You" is a taste of Tim Presley's Anglo folk psychedelia.  The bipolar thrash returns one last time on "Scissor People"which is a defiant stomp that builds into an electric guitar cacophony as Ty and Tim trade solos.  As the band begins to finally comedown from their high, they ride it out on the sleepy groove of "Tongues", a fitting swan song for this particular go around.  

The record finds both artists in a areas that neither would have been before or are likely to go again.  I for one would welcome another collaboration, especially if it moves on to new territory in the way that "Hair" does.  Check the live jams below.   

    

               

   

  

                                      

Blues Creation

Back to it.

I've been neglecting this page, but the good news is I have a full catalog of (relative) obscurities to post about and share. So we're kicking it off with one of my favorite lesser known psych bands- Blues Creation! Not the Creation and not the blues explosion, we're talking Japanese Hard Psych!

When the fuzzed out tones of 60s psychedelic rock resonated in ears world wide, it did what all good music does, it inspired imitation. Musicians could appropriate the sounds they heard into a new mixture of ideas and sounds from their own culture and thank God. Hardcore fans of the genre will be no strangers to Blues Creation and for good reason. Inspired by the popular American Blues Rock as well as the sludgy riffs of Black Sabbath Blues Creation formed in the late 60s/early 70s. By 1971 they had recorded two albums, but it was their second album "Demon & Eleven Children" that would solidify them in Psychedelic Rock history and lead to an eventual collaboration with Felix Pappalardi (of Mountain). But that is another story.

"Demon & Eleven Children" opens with a sample of lightning and thunder, horses crying out in the storm, giving way to a spiraling electric guitar which swells until the band bursts out of the haze and into a tight and heavy blues rock groove. It is a great introduction to a band that seems to come out of the elements like the psychedelic Japanese priests they were. As soon as you get comfortable with a groove or the band starts to fall into comfortable territory they immediately turn the opposite direction jumping back and forth between styles and tempos alike.

The song "Mississippi Mountain Blues" the second track on the album turns from a traditional acoustic blues song, with harmonica and all the other trappings, and jumps into an electric, ascending run that goes off-kilter before going right back into a more comfortable blues progression. Other tracks like "Just I Was Born" and "Brain Buster" hint at proto punk power fused with the psychedelic guitar wankery that would become a tradition of Japanese Psych. They even mellow it out on the dreamy, slow tempo "One Summer Day". The album could be considered Prog it jumps around so much.

If you love guitar based music this band is a must.  If you are looking for something out of the ordinary this is it.  It may not seem out of this world anymore, but it must have in 1971.

Unfortunately it seems all of "Demon and Eleven Children" has been removed from youtube, otherwise I'd link it.  But here's this--

http://youtu.be/rh1DreByNFQ

Psych for the Road

I'm off to the wild lands of Alaska to spend my summer slowly but surely depleting the salmon population (forgive me great salmon god!), and I'm driving my way up there this afternoon with a pack of hippies in a pick up truck. So hippies in a truck need their fill of psychedelic grooves to get there way down the road. Here are some highlights. First up Mr Mikal Cronin! Sweet beach melodies with dirty garage psych! Oh how nice. The Lemondrops! You know how they do. KAK! Dig the electric sailor if you are from space, or you'd like to visit. I'll just leave you with this gem.

Darker My Love

HHhmmm... ok. So I've returned. Only because I haven't posted a thing in almost a years time and I'm going to be out of reach for another set of months. Not that it matters. So it's time to recirculate some psychedelic music into the inter-fi-net. The band is LA based Darker My Love. The two frontmen of the band, Tim Presley (White Fence in other realms) and Rob Barbato both had a temporary stint in the reformation of the Fall, but since then have continued to turn out the tunes with Darker My Love. They put out their first record in 2006, which was solid effort full of dirty garage psych sounds- a wall of sound and texture. They might bring to mind Brian Jonestown Massacre (and actually now have the former drummer Dan Allaire), but I don't want to draw too close of comparisons. These dudes have chops of their own and have developed their own style. Particularly on their most recent record "Alive as You Are" which takes a more mellow psych folk turn. Anyway, here is a little taste.

Ariel Pink

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti covers the Rockin Ramrods "Bright Lit Blue Skies" and its waaaaaaayyyyy better.

Not to knock it. Just saying.