Two tracks in -- There are Japanese 13th Floor Elevators fans? Why not?
It seems like almost all of the stuff on this CD is recorded live. Although it's not too easy to tell the difference.
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Up to track five now, and it's getting easy to see this stuff as a fusion of no-wave, psychedelia, garage rock and maybe post-rock, maybe not. Instrumentals seem to be favored -- or at least coherent vocals are devalued. If they ever made an action movie out of HP Lovecraft, this stuff would be the perfect soundtrack for, like, Bruce Willis disappearing into the swirling chaos of Azathoth. And his tiny, tiny spacecraft, too.
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If I was to make a new Barbelith soundtrack mix CD, I think I would have to put track 6, "Caged Fire Theme" by Plastic Crimewave Sound on it. It has tortured electronic sounds amid screaming and wall-like waves of distorted guitar. That's a wanky description. Let's just say it's loud and you can't really hum it.
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I think I could hum track 9, "Wide Awake" by Spires That in the Sunset Rise. It has the same odd beauty that some very early Jefferson Airplane does, only far less gentle.
In the Lovecraft movie (any genre), this might be the soundtrack to when Randolph Carter meets all the cats. There's something feline about the yowling and clanging.
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Ah, and tracks 9 & 10 usher us into the chill-out room with some slide guitar and ladies from space. I can't help but think now that this genre of music, if it is one, is somehow intimately tied up with the Burning Man aesthetic -- that whole create-your-own-post-apocalyptic-community vibe is heavy here, salvaging whatever stuff from the hippie movement that might have survived the honesty of punk rock.
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Track 11, Simon Finn's "Walkie Talkie" is everything a folk performance should be. Melancholy, has oblique lyrics, uses the word "cocks" (as in "holding onto our"). And the next one, Frankie Delmane's "Magic in Your Eyes, Murder in Your Heart" is gorgeous. Like that aforementioned Surrealistic Pillow-era Jefferson Airplane covering Nick Cave, via Kendra Smith or something.
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OK, by track 13, some of the brutality of the opening noise has been left completely behind by beautiful synths (I think -- might be even older electronic instruments) dueting with recorders, behind gorgeous female vocals. Espers, "Under the Waterfall" -- goes on mixtapes next to Pentangle & Fairport Convention, maybe Janis Joplin's "Summertime."
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My god, track 15 is built over a sitar riff. It's an improvisation, even. "Improvisation on 'the Unteleported Man'" by PG Six. I can't tell, but I think someone is singing along with this. Two sitars? A sitar and a guitar with a sitar pedal?
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Track 16, (edited in later: by Fur Saxa --on the label, it's two words, with an umlaut over the U) and I'm outright dozing off, having strange semi-dreams. By track 17, though, the Japanese are back in the house with ambient space noise. "Untitled Space" by Kawabata Makoto w/Kinski. Anyone remember the radio show "Musical Starstreams" which was all, like, Vangelis-type New Agey "space music"? This is like that, only with distortion pedals, too.
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Taurpis Tula's "Blood Red Lights Across the Snow" is for the Very Special Halloween Episode of Musical Starstreams when the sleepy-voiced DJ finally reveals that he worships Satan and has implanted hypnotic commands in all of his regular listeners to don black cat costumes and kill policemen.
(What is it with this music and cat noises? Are cats from space telepathically broadcasting the sheet music?)
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Track 19, MV Carbon "Smear the Scatter," reminds us that we are living in the post-Suicide, post-industrial era. I kind of wish I wasn't listening to this on a laptop, because that scares me.
Why am I doing this?
This is a song I will never, ever be able to play at home as long as the better half is around, because she won't stand for it.
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Finally, the hacking, choking noises over sitars, beeps, and cut-up laughter of "Cannibal Headphones" by Panicsville. Very much an "experimental soundscape," I think. I had a 45 by a band called... umm... Beyond the Promise Ring? Outside the Shadow Ring? It was definitely a something Ring, and not the alternative band, because it was all tweety noises like this.
If punk rock was the answer to Pink Floyd's Animals, this stuff is the answer to Umma Gumma. Or a tribute to it.
Ack! it crescendoes into a wall of feedback textures!
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Hidden track of goofy sci-fi chatter about master races and curious species -- maybe from the old Planet of the Apes cartoon.
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Yeah, there's definitely something "movementy" going on here -- I've heard stuff like this before, but only either at Burning Man (4am, once the shrooms kicked in, from the nightmare camp next door) or else on scattered 7 inches. And maybe from some Residents fans. Never all on one comp. |
