| |
|
Admittedly, The Wire did a thing last year about "New Weird America", but I didn't buy the issue, so I don't know what they said about it or who they included in it, but beyond that…. I don't know if this stuff's really been given a name yet, but I get the feeling that it's developing a bit enough following and a well defined enough aesthetic to cement itself as a record shop rack category in much the same way as, say, post-rock or underground hip-hop have in the recent past.
Basically:
I still haven't yet had a chance to hear a lot of this music, but over the past 18 months or so, reading websites and magazines, I've been seeing more and more references to, and reviews of, lots of weird bands whose thing seems to be fusing the experimental sounds and fantastical imagery produced by the weirder end of 60s/70s psychedelia with the more self-consciously arty and abstract world of contemporary avant/post-rock.
This appears to me to be a particularly rich field to explore, in that a lot of the more far-out elements pioneered by the hippy-era stuff were never quite fully explored at the time - obviously the new technology and mind-expanding ideals of the period allowed for some uniquely crazed records, but historically speaking they were always stuck between a rock and a hard place, on the one hand compromised by the prevailing ethos of '60s pop demanding recognisable tunes and record company approval, and on the other hand by the rising behemoth of prog and the tedious worship of musicianship for it's own sake.
But by taking the mysterious elements shining through the big mess of original psychedelia and applying them to the far more free-form and DIY ethos of the post-Thrill Jockey/Constellation world of avant garde rock, and the freedom to explore all this fascinating weirdness, often at great length, is surely too good to turn down. Folk music from the hippy-era - "acid-folk" I suppose, if that's not a ridiculous label to retrospectively apply to a bunch of music made decades ago - also seems to exert a huge influence on this new stuff.
I'm not writing this in order to try and lasso together a bunch of wholly disparate artists into some farcically non-existent 'movement', NME style, but simply because there are now a LOT of people doing this kind of music, and I find myself, say, going to Dusted and reading a review of some weird new record and thinking "oh yeah, it's one of THOSE bands, like… hang on, it doesn't really have a name yet, does it?".
Time to name names I guess:
Well it's not a new thing I guess... the likes of Bardo Pond have been at it for years, admittedly with one foot still in the realms of post-Sonic Youth noisy indie-rock, and the Acid Mothers Temple 3CD 'Family' compilation, comprising of AMT side-projects and bands they're friends with and stuff, presents a vast and beautiful selection of obscure psyche/folk/post/drone music made in Japan, France and America over the past decade or so.
The prolific Animal Collective seem to be the current figureheads for.. this kinda thing.. in America, but there are lots of others emerging too;
People who attended this year's All Tomorrow's Parties may have witnessed Fursaxa, OOIOO and the Vibra-Cathedral Orchestra doing their respective things, and to that list I think I can safely take a guess in adding the likes of Grails, Jewelled Antler Collective, Cerberus Shoal, Sun Burned Hand of Man, Black Sun Ensemble, Faun Fables, Mandible Chatter, Six Organs of Admittance and probably loads more that I’ve forgotten about or missed. (I don’t actually now very much at all about most of those bands, other than that I love their names and cover art and that I’d be fascinated to hear what they do.)
Perhaps more telling than the actual music though, this genre or whatever has a very definite aesthetic style and form of presentation - vinyl in hand-painted cardboard sleeves?, extravagant neo-psychedelic artwork?, little in the way of straightforward information?, tiny record labels who care not for any form of promotion or publicity? – this feature on Timelag records, and the website for this UK based record distro should perfectly exemplify what I'm getting at.
As I say, I'm largely an outsider to all this - I'm just interested really, and all this fits in quite nicely with the fanciful notion discussed briefly in some other thread a while ago that there’s a bit of a wider psychedelic revival going on in the festering swamp of pop-culture at the moment. So really my analysis could be completely wrong and I welcome anybody who wants to put me right by suggesting other precedents and trains of thought behind this stuff, other examples of it I may have missed, or anybody want to discuss it, comment on it, help define it etc…? Recommendations from anyone who’s listened to a lot of this stuff would also be welcome.. |
|
|
Actually, I think DB is rather good, especially live. I know he tours around the UK once and a while with M. Gira. You should check him out. Of course, when you look into his influences like Vashti Bunyan and Karen Dalton you understand where he get's much of his style. I still think he's one of the true originals, however.