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.

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.

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.

David V. D'Andrea

I have a new favourite poster artist and his name is David V. D'Andrea. I found him whilst perusing Om's myspace page and discovered that as well as being an incredibly gifted illustrator, he has made art for a number of my favourite bands including Grails and Earth. His beautiful hand-drawn gig posters possess a human quality somewhat lacking in a lot of graphic art today, and his use of skulls, birds, flowers and pagan figures impart a certain grandiosity that I feel is appropriate for the music his posters represent. I bought one of his 'Scratch and Dent' tubes last week, which is a tube shipped for a flat rate with an assortment of slightly damaged posters in it, and not only was he a perfect gentleman to deal with, he also sent me an Om poster on request and threw in a few extra goodies that I wasn't expecting. The posters are also only very slightly damaged, and in some cases I haven't even figured out what's wrong with them. David, go to the head of the class and collect a gold star.

I feel a new obsession coming on....

Holy Sons is the solo project of Emil Amos, current drummer for Om and member of the almighty Grails, an amazing band that I've been listening to a lot lately. This video is the first I'd ever heard of Holy Sons and it really stayed with me so I'm sharing it with you here. I'm still too intrigued by this man and his music to really know what else to say, so I'll leave it at that for now.

The Feral Kid from The Fact Facer on Vimeo.