Grails

So I just got to see my favourite band in the whole world play in a pretty intimate venue, and it was absolutely magical. I’m still high as a kite from it and wishing I’d spent every last penny I could find to see all the shows on the tour. The core four members of the band, Emil Amos, Alex Hall, Zac Riles and William Slater, were joined by two friends Jesse Bates and Jay Clarke, who lent their talents on a range of additional instruments and were completely essential to the live experience. I’m rather incapable of being objective about this band, so I’m not even going to try…if you want a review of the show instead of an unabashed outpouring of affection, you might need to look elsewhere.

For those who haven’t heard them, Grails are an instrumental band from Portland Oregon, who draw inspiration from a vast array of eclectic music that ranges from Pink Floyd and Sun City Girls to Italian film soundtracks and library music. Their sound changes from song to song and album to album, and is sometimes dark,  sometimes exotic, but always beautiful, atmospheric and amazingly descriptive.
It was pretty great to see each musician up close and get a better grasp of their individual styles, as most of them play a number of different instruments both live and on the recordings. Standing right up the front with only a couple of people occasionally blocking my view, I watched Zac work his magic on 12-string guitar, William lay down his distinctively mellow bass-lines whilst juggling a few keys and even some vocal texture, and blood pour out of Emil’s left hand after some over-exuberant drumming (if you’ve seen Emil play with Om you’ll know this isn’t particularly uncommon).
Jesse Bates (lap steel), Emil Amos (drums) and Bill Slater (bass):
Zac Riles (12 string and guitar):


Sitting quietly to the side of the stage, Jay contributed melodica and other keyboards as well as some samples and extra percussion here and there, while Jesse proved to be an incredible lap steel player who sat up the front and played many of the familiar lead guitar lines throughout the show. He also added some extra percussion here and there, and played drums on several songs including the wonderful ‘Almost Grew My Hair’ which was possibly the highlight of the whole show for me.
Jay Clarke (melodica):

Jesse Bates (lap steel):
 
Alex Hall (guitar) and Bill Slater (bass):

If my memory doesn’t fail me, the set was opened with the semi-spooky ‘I Led Three Lives’ from their latest album Deep Politics, and then proceeded through a surprising catalog of my personal favourites from every album after and including the Black Tar Prophecies collection.  We were treated to a synth-driven re-imagining of ‘Back to the Monastery’ that gave it an awesome futuristic prog vibe, the majestic ‘Silk Road’ and ‘Origin-ing’ from Burning Off Impurities, ‘Reincarnation Blues’, ‘Immediate Mate’ and ‘Acid Rain’ from Doomsdayer’s Holiday, ‘Take Refuge’ from Take Refuge in Clean Living, and also from Deep Politics was the gorgeously cinematic ‘All the Colors of the Dark’.  I couldn’t have really hoped for a more perfect set-list, and every track sounded even bigger and more intense than I expected.
Emil Amos (guitar), Jesse Bates (drums) and Bill Slater (bass):

Not many people were filming or recording, which was actually a nice change from the majority of shows I see these days, so I doubt many videos will surface of this show, but someone did catch the second half of ‘Take Refuge’ which you can enjoy below (bummer they didn’t get the first). If you ever get the chance to see this band live, do yourself a favour and go. They don’t tour often, and when they do it’s a rare and special experience.

Thanks Grails, you’re the best!

Lilacs and Champagne

This new project by Emil Amos and Alex Hall - roughly one half of Grails who are definitely my favourite band of recent years - is ruling both my turntable and my iPod at the moment. I've always loved sample-based music, and in fact one of my first musical obsessions as a young teenager was Pop Will Eat Itself, a band with a philosophy of recycling music (hence the name) that consisted of live instruments and vocals coupled with layer upon layer of samples, some impossibly obscure and others as blatant as the vocals from Mel & Kim's Respectable which they used in Hit the Hi-Tech Groove (their song from 1987 that describes the aforementioned philosophy)....but I digress. Lilacs and Champagne bear no resemblance to PWEI and have more of a spooky instrumental hip-hop vibe, which is better described and reviewed here. Below is one of the neat videos Emil made to promote the new L&C record:


LILACS! from The Fact Facer on Vimeo.

I think what I love about sampled music is the juxtaposition of soundbites both new and familiar, arranged in unexpected and harmonious ways to create mood and texture and narrative unobtainable by conventional instrumentation or vocalisation. Perhaps it's partly to do with referencing or capturing someone else's sentiment and re-framing it to say something different, or to emphasise something that would be difficult or awkward to express more candidly...either way, it's fun and I hope L&C have more like this to come. If you're into it, order the CD or LP from Mexican Summer here, check out the L&C Facebook page here, and check out more of Emil's effed-up videos on Vimeo here.

Dylan Carlson solo project.

Dylan Carlson makes some of the most melancholic and profoundly beautiful music I have ever heard. I don't know exactly how to describe it, other than that it's slow and patient and meditative, and at times incredibly sad. To me, this music is the sound of a man's intimate relationship with his own being; a life-time of painful reflection, and an exploration of the way chords and melodies and lingering moments of empty space can become extensions of ones self in order to communicate those abstract sentiments that words can't possibly express.

Appropriately, Dylan's band, for which he is the founding member and principle songwriter, is called Earth. The only comparison that I can think of is Popol Vuh, because their spacious and repetitive music, used to great effect in Werner Herzog's slow-paced movies, invokes the same kind of meditative visions that Earth do for me. I remember discussing both bands with Shaun once, and saying that I felt it was impossible to have mundane or vapid thoughts whilst listening to their music - it almost demands that you slow down and reflect, and contemplate matters of  importance instead.

But enough about Earth; the reason for this blog post is to bring some attention to the fact that Dylan Carlson is currently trying to reach his funding goals for a solo project called Wonders from the House of Albion, and he only has one week left. The album sounds like it will be an ambitious and deeply personal work, involving a visit to his ancestral homeland in the UK to make recordings at megalithic sites, and investigate his experiences with suspected ffayre-ffolke or familiar spirits. As Shaun and I shall be making our own gnostic odyssey (to put it in Julian Cope's words) to the UK in about 5 weeks time, the concept behind this album is particularly exciting to us.  If you would like to help with his project, no matter how small the amount, please visit his Kickstarter page and donate what you can. In the meantime, enjoy some Earth.

Sleepy Sun

I’ve acquired quite a lot of new music recently, but right now as my poor workmates know all too well, I just cannot stop listening to Sleepy Sun. I’ve been addicted to both their albums ever since I heard them a few weeks ago, but it’s this amazing first track on their latest album Fever that kills me every time. Here’s some cool footage of them playing it live in Barcelona.

Unfortunately Rachel, the female vocalist featured on those albums and in the footage above, has since left the band which is such a shame because I find the male/female harmonies in Sleepy Sun thoroughly mesmerizing. Hopefully her absence won’t spoil my enjoyment of any future offerings they have in store, but I’m definitely sad to hear she’s gone.

You can buy their albums and some pretty great merch from their website here. Fever especially is worth getting for the gorgeous cover which was done by one of my favourite artists, David V. D’Andrea who I talked about on here a little while back. 

Go buy some of their stuff, and with any luck they’ll be touring our neck of the woods some day soon.

Thrones

I just arrived home from the second Thrones show of the past week, and  feel compelled to express how wonderful I think Joe Preston is. Aside from making solo music that is entirely unique and personal, utilizing primarily a bass guitar and drum machine, Joe exudes a certain  intelligence, loveliness and humour that all contribute to his enormous charm as a human being and performer.

I remember when I decided that I really liked this man, and it was several years ago after reading a blog post  on his myspace page about the passing of a Portland wrestling icon named Buddy Rose. In the post he had expressed with absolute sincerity his sadness at the loss of someone he associated with his home town, and underneath it someone had thoughtlessly commented “LOL”, presumably because of Buddy’s now-outdated blonde hair. Joe responded with the line: “do you honestly think someone's death is worth laughing about? fuck you”. A small thing perhaps, but in a sleazy world where bands often pander to their fans in an attempt to sell them more albums and merch, I found the integrity of his sentiment rather touching.

Unfortunately both the Thrones shows I was at were woefully under-attended, especially last Saturday’s in Geelong to which approximately 12 people turned up, including the support acts.   Despite being visibly saddened by the rotten turnout, Joe proceeded to play one of the most hypnotic and intimate live sets that I have ever seen, opening with the slow and melancholy Ephraim from his album Sperm Whale. His delivery was surprisingly gentle and I found myself mesmerised by his use of string bends and vibrato which I’d never seen played on a bass guitar before.  Sadly, he only played a few tracks and the whole show was over in less than half an hour, leaving me hanging for more; but as Shaun remarked at the time - “he’s Joe Preston, he can do whatever the fuck he likes a far as I’m concerned.”

Joe seemed a little more cheerful tonight, and opened the set with Manmtn, a much heavier, dirgier track than  Ephraim, and his song choices followed suit for the rest of the show including The Anguish of Bears, Nuts and Berries and Obolus, which was the closing song for both nights. Admittedly I was so blown away by his performance in Geelong that he wasn’t able to top it, but the show was highly enjoyable nonetheless. I especially liked the timing of his pleas for the audience to buy shirts with the repeating Exorcist sample “the power of Christ compels you!”.

The video below shows a live version of Ephraim, although it’s really not the same as being there. People often talk about Joe Preston’s stints in bands like The Melvins, High on Fire and Sunn as if they bring the man some kind of prestige;  much as I enjoy those bands -and I really do enjoy those bands - I’d take Thrones over all of them any day.

Amazing Holy Sons live footage.

A rare treat; The Feral Kid, More Mind Briars, Drifter's Sympathy and Gnostic Device, live from SXSW.

Deep Politics 2

The new Grails album Deep Politics, from which I shared an awesome video recently, has now been released and as expected it's absolutely superb. If my word on the matter doesn't count for much, and I suspect that it doesn't, you can listen to it streaming here and decide for yourself. You even get the bonus of an amusing commentary by Emil Amos to accompany each song.

As I discovered today while I listened to it through headphones on my way to and from work, this is one of those albums that has the ability to elevate the way you perceive almost everything around you to a whole new level: the junkie lady you see every day on the tram suddenly wears an indescribable sadness on her face, the drunk meatheads on Chapel Street seem more hostile and sinister than usual, and the sun coming through the trees or the sight of a kid rolling down a hill in the park feel somehow profoundly beautiful. Inspired in part by a love of long-forgotten library records, these lush instrumental songs are like the soundtrack for a movie that's playing out in front of you in realtime, with no script and no direction - just pure atmosphere.

Something about the use of piano and strings together on several of these tracks is completely magical to me, particularly as they're instruments I'm not usually fond of; Daughters of Bilitis has been stubbornly stuck in my head since the day I first heard it. I think the thrill of discovering a love for something I didn't know I had, and hearing something unlike anything I've heard before, might be what makes this band so special to me.

Buy the album here.

Deep Politics

The new Grails album 'Deep Politics' comes out soon, and by the sounds of this I predict it'll be sensational. Like there's any chance that it would't be.


GRAILS - Daughters of Bilitis from The Fact Facer on Vimeo.

Loving the dolls and theatrical Argento-style stabbing in this clip - I might have to hunt down the original movie this footage came from, 'cause it looks like it might be a corker.

Holy Sons live.

"THE FACT FACER" (live in Bloomington) from The Fact Facer on Vimeo.

Survivalist Tales!

After months of anticipation the new Holy Sons album is out, and I have eagerly commenced the relentless back-to-back listenings that accompanied the arrival of all the previous albums. I'd already become thoroughly addicted to 'Look of Pain!' and 'Slow Days', two songs from the album which were available before its release, but now I have a bunch of new songs to wrap my head around which is wonderful.  I struggle to find any appropriate words to describe how I feel about this music, which whilst frustrating is probably part of its magic; I think if you can pin-point exactly why something is pleasing to you it maybe loses some of its lustre.

One of the reasons I love music so much more than other art forms is precisely because I feel as though the creation of it requires some sort of supernatural power that I simply don't have, so it's a constant source of wonder and excitement for me. Sure, you can break a song down into its more mundane parts like words and melodies and rhythms, and that may help towards understanding why the song is successful...but no matter how great your appreciation of those elements, with truly great music there's always something infinitely more mysterious and alchemical going on under the surface of its creation. Here's hoping the mystery of why I love Holy Sons so much remains a mystery to me forever.

Appropriately titled collage by Emil Amos.



My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky.

The new Swans album is finally out, albeit with a delay on orders due to ‘overwhelming demand’. Nonetheless, you should go to the Young God Records Webstore and buy it. Why?  Michael Gira himself can explain:

“What, are we all supposed to be hippies or anarchists with rich parents or something? I work extremely hard at what I do, with considerable financial and personal risk involved in the making of the music, and the same scenario applies to just about everyone else I know that’s made the disastrous decision to make music a career, so we deserve to be paid for our efforts. You wouldn’t expect a book by an author you admire to be free, nor would you expect an electrician to come to your house and rewire it for free. How are we any different? This is our work, what we do for a living (of sorts), and if you like the final results, buy it, you spoiled brat.”

 

While you’re waiting for it to arrive, you can listen to some of the new material on their Myspace page.

Arthur Rackham’s Comus

Comus is a 17th Century masque written by John Milton, which I will confess right now to not having read. But according to someone at Escape Into Life:

"The masque is a semi-allegorical portrayal of sin, or temptation, in the character of Comus, and chastity or temperance, in the character of Lady. Despite Comus’s attempts to trick Lady into drinking a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure), Lady refuses to give in to the sinful Comus. Comus challenges Lady in various other ways, such as arguing that desire is natural to a human being, but Lady will not be seduced. The rest of the masque involves the Attendant Spirit, an angelic figure, who comes to rescue her."

If you really want to read the text, you can do so here, or you can read more about it on Wikipedia. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll get the general gist of the story and then lose yourself in these amazing illustrations by Arthur Rackham.  To see the entire collection, visit archive.org, and if you really like them you can buy prints here. 

One of the things I like about Rackham’s work is that his goblins and ogres are strangely reminiscent to me of the numerous satyrs scrawled by my favourite artist and all-time hero Austin Osman Spare, whose work I will post about on here one day when I can be bothered scanning all my books. I say strangely because from what I’ve read the two men could not have been more different in their characters and ideologies. There will be more of Rackham’s work to come on here too.

Incidentally, there is also a superb psychedelic folk band from the 70’s named Comus, who have recently reformed and played a few live shows at festivals like Roadburn. They sound a bit like the deranged love-child of Amon Duul II and The Residents, as you’ll find if you play the clip below.

Killing Joke

I fucking love Killing Joke. There's not enough hours in the day for me to elaborate too much on why, but have a listen to the three tracks posted below and you'll have some idea. Even though they're still going 30 years on, and still making amazing records, for some reason my favourite tracks are all from their earliest years, and two of them are b-sides. First up, a song from their 1979 debut ep (Turn To Red) called Nervous System, which doesn't appear on any of their actual albums:





Pssyche, the b-side to the 1980 single Wardance which appears on their self titled first album.





Tension: the second track on their second album called What's This For...! which was released in June 1981, which is precisely when I was born. I will never get this rhythm out of my head, ever.





Killing Joke have a new album coming out soon, and I'm very excited about it. I hope they tour.

The Ballad of Daykitty

The Ballad of Daykitty is a rather sentimental song by Lou Barlow about his cat Ray, pictured here in one of the many cat photos you'll find on Lou Barlow's Vast and Confusing Website.  Clearly a bona fide cat fanatic, Lou invites his fans to mail him photographs of their own cats, saying "I find collecting pictures of them calming...send me some."  What a lovely man.

Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Having recently purchased an iPod and begun the painstaking process of loading all of my music onto it, I've been rediscovering a lot of my favourite albums from days gone by. Music has always been important to me, and a great many nostalgic feelings are attached to the various soundtracks of my youth, but I've been somewhat surpised to find that a lot of the music I am most sentimental about is electronic. While most of my peers in the tattoo world seemed to have spent their teenage years drinking and going to punk or hardcore shows, I was more likely to be found at an outdoor doof party in the Adelaide hills, with bonfires and U.V. art, and teepees with weird dudes selling chai tea and space-cake. Unfashionable as it may be to admit, this underground rave culture and the characters I met within it shaped me a lot as a person,  in ways I am still only realising now. 

Some of the most profound moments of self discovery that I experienced occurred in the year I turned 16, which was also the year I attended my first outdoor doof party (and the year I made that awesome holographic, toy fur-trimmed purple number that I'm proudly displaying in this photo). I was living away from home with some slightly older teenage girls, and we were playing in a band together and making art and philosophising about things we didn't fully comprehend but really wanted to. We had lots of older friends who would lend us books like T.A.Z. and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and it made me desperately want to be an adult so I could escape the ridiculousness of adolescence and experience life in ways I could then only imagine. So I guess it makes perfect sense that my favourite music from that year of my life would remain some of the most important and nostalgic for me as an adult.  

Above all others, the album that still wraps me up in a big soft blanket of wistful analogue happiness every time I hear it is Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. As you can see from the scan of my cd, I have loved it half to death over the past 13 years, and in fact for a very long time I would listen to this album every night while falling asleep, to the point where I couldn't sleep without it. To this day, it is still my go-to if I'm having a horrible time and need to induce feelings of childish happiness; for me, listening to this cd is akin to something like trepanation, but without the undoubtedly unpleasant drilling-a-hole-in-your-skull part.

Along with other outstanding electronic artists of the same era, like Autechre, Future Sound of London, and Boards of Canada, who I also love dearly and may post about down the track, Aphex Twin and his many aliases bring an emotive, human element to a genre of music often dismissed by non-believers as cold and mechanical. If you listen to the clip below of Ageispolis, probably my favourite track on Selected Ambient Works, I think you'll agree that cold and mechanical are the last words that spring to mind. Enjoy. 

Happy

So I've just had the privilege of attending three Om shows and a Holy Sons show in the space of a week, and they were without a doubt some of the best live performances I have ever witnessed.  Biased as I may be, I don't think I'm alone in feeling that these shows were pretty damn special.

I never got to see Om with their original drummer, but I really do think Emil Amos breathes new life into their older material, and even more so into the new music that he's written with Al for the God Is Good album. A definite highlight of every set was the song Cremation Ghat from said album, which features a simple but distinctive, stomping rhythm that departs somewhat from the traditional Om ride-groove formula, and provides Rob (also of supporting act Lichens) with an opportunity for some of his incredible vocal wailing.

The other track that had me grinning stupidly from start to finish was 'To the Shrinebuilder' from Om's split with Current 93, (as seen in my previous post here) during which Emil's drumming reached it's most exciting and bombastic, as did Rob's seriously enthusiastic tambourine playing. I've never had so much fun watching a live band before, and it really struck me how sad it is that Om get lumped in with the stoner metal and doom genre when to me they have very little in common with any of those bands, aside from the fact that Al was in Sleep.  Anyway, I enjoyed every performance immensely and can't wait to hear what they record next, which shouldn't be too far off according to an excellent interview with the band that you can read here.

As for the Holy Sons show, I wasn't quite sure what to expect that night because he doesn't play live often, and when he does it's usually with a band. I was thinking that being a solo show he might do some of his simpler songs accompanied by an acoustic guitar, perhaps in the style of 'I Want to Live a Peaceful Life', but instead we were treated to entirely new and stripped back arrangements of some of my favourite, more layered songs like Drifter's Sympathy (original here), More Mind Briars and Gnostic Device, played on an electric guitar with what seemed like a fair amount of improvisation, on both guitar and vocals. Needless to say, they sounded absolutely stunning and I feel extremely lucky to have witnessed such a unique and rare performance. I also had the opportunity to chat with Emil briefly after several of the shows and he was remarkably warm, funny and friendly, which was just the icing on the cake really. I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Om live.

I am so incredibly happy that Om, one of my favourite bands, will be touring Australia next month. In fact I'm sure that most people reading this are sick of me banging on about it, and about (drummer) Emil Amos in general, but I get like that about my music and I'm not gonna fight it.  Besides, I want everyone to come along and support them so the shows will be awesome and they'll come back again...and maybe they'll bring Grails with them next time! Although I think the excitement would kill me.

Anyway, in anticipation of the three Om shows (!) I'll be going to in July I've been watching lots of live clips and I thought this one was was particularly noteworthy.  As it says in the YouTube comments, "cymbal ecstasy"... enjoy.

Neurosis at Roadburn

Ok so I apologise for all the video clips I've been posting, but I've been sick with the flu and unable to think straight or be productive for nearly a week now. This is the most amazing live clip of a band I have ever seen, and one of my favourite Neurosis tracks, Through Silver In Blood. The drumming alone is worth watching it for, especially the finale where Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly drop their guitars to join in. Heavy music doesn't get any better than this.

Amon Düül II

This song has been stuck in my head for days...

Black Tar Prophecies IV

Emil Amos has just uploaded another one of his tenebrous film collages that I love so much. This one is a sort of commercial for the new Grails release, Black Tar Prophecies volume IV. I can't fucking wait.


GRAILS- BLACK TAR IV COMMERCIAL from The Fact Facer on Vimeo.