Not all spacerock, and not all the time. A compendium of artful noise brought to you monthly by your favorite aficionado of the spacier side of rock music, BeeDub.
And what better way to wake up (and bake up) than with this decidedly HEAVY and SPACEY playlist. Sometimes they just come together that way. This one's like strongass coffee spiked with psilocybin!
This installment of the Spacerock Continuum contains a continuous mix of the following tracks (see Mixcloud and Soundcloud players below):
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Astral Plane Parts 1-3 - Ecstatic Vision - Sonic Praise
Ancient Astronauts - The Holy Mountain - Ancient Astronauts
Vow - Naam- Vow
Acid Head - White Manna - s/t
Smell of Physiqal -Sungod -Contackt
Duck and Clover - Pond - Frond
9 - Follakzoid - II
Back Of Your Mind - Asteroid #4 - s/t
11:32 - Sleepy Sun - Maui Tears
Guitar Voodoo - The Darkside - All That Noise
Pseudoephedrina - FoneZ- Adhesivo De Contacto Espacial
Grass - The Black Ryder - Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
Starting Over -LSD And The Search For God -s/t Homage -Causa Sui -Euphorie Tide
The Ballad Of Freer Hollow - Chris Forsyth And The Solar Motel Band - Intensity Ghost
Dream Team - Mark McGuire - A Young Person's Guide To Mark McGuire
The End - Daniel Lanois - Flesh And Machine
Just TWO WEEKS from today we will be back at Pappy and Harriet's roadhouse in Pioneertown, near Joshua Tree in the California Mojave Desert! It's an amazing place, and an amazing festival. Come join us in the desert! Here's a mix of the artists who will be performing:
Sci-Flyer - Swervedriver - Raise
Young Men Dead - The Black Angels (Alex Maas) - Passover
Six To Let The Light Shine Thru - Dead Meadow - Warble Womb
Dandelion Seeds - The Lemonheads- Varchons
Moving - Lou Barlow - Brace The Waves
Upon Your Shore -The Spiral Electric -Upon Your Shore
Lonely Alibis - Sky Parade - label compilation
Fadeaway Girl - Darwin - Souvenir
Solar Chariot (Apollo) - Gateway Drugs - Dr. Flower demos
Fall In - Chatham Rise - s/t
Vanilla - The Cosmonauts - Persona Non Grata
The New Theme - Hollow Sidewalks- Hollow Sidewalks Are Not People
Got Gratitude - The Love Dimension - single
Hide It... -Drinking Flowers - Sanity Restored 1972 The Wind -Spindrift -The West
Grim Reaper Blues Part 2 - The Entrance Band - s/t
Redrum - Dumb Numbers - s/t
No Easy Way Down - Rain Parade - Explosions In The Glass Palace
Quite the playlist this time around folks (but aren't they all?). This one is particularly relentless... must be my mood. Some familiar faces, which is a result of composing these playlists over roughly the same time period, then mixing 'em up at the last minute just for fun (in the sun).
Beginning our journey to the center of the summer sun, we set the controls with the blazing Spacemen 3/Stooges space punk of the legendary Heads. The suburban wasteland of Orange County, CA, is an unlikely place for a spacerock band like Dagha Bloom, but space IS the place. Another place, A Place To Bury Strangers' riled the late night crowd with their crowd-surfing, instrument-destroying and eardrum-exploding destroying set at this year's Austin Psych Fest - it was definitely in the top three of that festival, and their most recent album is one of their best.
Some new discoveries for me this year include The Asteroid #4, Drinking Flowers, The Shivas, (erstwhile Primal Scream guitarist) Little Barrie, and The Spyrals, and I have Desert Stars Fest to thank for most of them, if memory serves. And the crushing sludge of Meatbodies is the project of Chad Ubovitch, collaborator with the creme de la garage rock, including Ty Segall, Fuzz, and Mikal Cronin. This segment of the set veers from the garage to the surf and back again. Hold on to your hats and glasses - it's gonna be wild ride!
The brothers Pontiak continue their dark, swampy, stoner rock bombast with their latest release. We can thank The Brian Jonestown Massacres' Anton Newcombe for exposing Cologne-based Dead Man's Eyes to the rest of the world. Another track from Swedish enigma Goat, the mysterious pagan cult of mind-melting tribal ritual music. Velvets-y transcendentalists Acid Baby Jesus bring the hypnotic torpor to new levels.
Californians (the former from the south, the latter from the north) Wand and Sleepy Sun have also in common the ability to bring an ecstatic catharsis well beyond what psychedelic usually means. Portlandia's Daydream Machine combines classic Brit pop with Cali-psych for an uplifting and unique sound. Eagle's Gift,from France, start with the Jesus And Mary Chain and feeds it through a shoegazer's effects board and a danceable beat. Continuing the dance-able theme, the motorik genre's forward motion rhythms have always brought the boogie to the bombast (or at least some serious head nodding), and Chile's Follakzoid do it better than most.
The two gals and one guy in Mexico's Mirror Travel explain their ethos through the sound and title of this track. Scotland's saviors, and near-inventors of post rock, Mogwai continue to transform, Lately in the guise of stately and dynamic keyboard-driven soundtrack rock, but the wittiness of their song and album titles remains constant. Ex-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore's solo album was one of the best of last year, a strangely uplifting album, throughout the dissonance (and the dischord of his personal life). This track illustrates exactly all of that. And King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, from Down Under, continue to entrance with their spasmodic yet hypnotically enthralling psychedelic nirvana.
Since Divshare's demise I've not found a widget player where you can select individual tracks, so you get continuous playlists instead. Here's the playlist:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Legavaan Satellite - The Heads - Everyone Knows We Got Nowhere
Space Is The Place - Dagha Bloom - No Curtians
I'm So Clean - A Place To Bury Strangers- Transfixion
Rukma Vinama - The Asteroid #4 - s/t
Hide It... -Drinking Flowers -Sanity Restored 1972
Swimming With Sharks - The Shivas - Whiteout!
Surf Hell - Little Barrie - King Of The Waves
Lying - The Spyrals - Out Of Sight
Mountain - Meatbodies - s/t
Soma - Dead Man's Eyes - Meet Me In The Desert
Gathering Of Ancient Tribes - Goat- Sun Structures
Diogenes - Acid Baby Jesus - Selected Recordings
Fire On The Mountain (I-II-III) -Wand -Ganglion Reef The Lane -Sleepy Sun -Maui Tears
Sounds Like Anesthesia - Daydream Machine - Twin Idols
Opposing Alliance - Eagles Gift - s/t
Trees - Follakzoid - II
Stoner - Mirror Travel - Mexico
HMP Shaun William Ryder - Mogwai - Music Industry:3, Fitness Industry:1
Forever Moore - Thurston Moore - The Best Day
Head On/Pill - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard- Float Along - Fill Your Lungs/Oddments
AKA Levitation this year, next week will be the eighth annual Psych Fest, and the third I've attended in a row! It's the mellowest, coolest, most transcendent festival in the world - the exact opposite of Lollapa-loser or Bro-a-smella - and of course all the bands can be at least loosely defined as psychedelia (akin to my loose definition of space rock). And this year's lineup in INCREDIBLE! Some seriously big names and heavy hitters which you can check out on the website.
For those of you not lucky enough to have attended Psych Fest, check out some of LAST YEAR's performances:
So, in honor of my annual pilgrimage (and let's face it, the only real reason to go to Texas... well besides breakfast tacos and BBQ) I offer a mix I made featuring many (but not nearly all) of the bands playing this year.
Playlist as follows:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Unconsciously Screamin' - The Flaming Lips - In A Priest Driven Ambulance
Young Men Dead - The Black Angels - Passover
The Dream - Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/The Dream
Slip Inside This House - Primal Scream- Screamadelica
Run - Spiritualized - Laze Guided Melodies
Desire Be, Desire Go -Tame Impala -Innerspeaker
How Long Have You Known - Diiv- Oshin
Die Slow - Health - Get Color
Remember The Future - Soft Moon - Zeroes
Drippin' - ZZZs - Magnetica
Wet Blanket - Metz - s/t
Loose Sutures - Fuzz - s/t
Ain't Dumbo - Night Beats - s/t
Swagger Vets and Double Moon -White Fence - Family Perfume Vol. 1 & 2 Too Deep -The Goastt -Midnight Sun
Native Dreams - Rose Windows - The Sun Dogs
Sunburst Impedance Machine - Mugstar - Lime
Swans - Indian Jewelry - Free Gold!
Odisea - Vaadat Chirigim - The World Is Well Lost
Gone Without Feeling - The Black Ryder - Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride
Mild Confusion - Tamaryn - The Waves
Hymn To The Pillory - The Nothing- Guilty Of Everything
Tambourine Girl - Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip
In Your Heart -A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Trees - Follakzoid - II
Temporal Starshine Voyage - Eternal Tapestry - The Invisible Landscape
Smell Of Physiqal - Sungod - Contackt
Keep Your Lantern Burning - White Manna - s/t
Center Of The Sun - Samsara Blue Experiment - Long Distance Trip
Most of the time here on The Spacerock Continuum we indulge in lengthy psychedelic excursions like this EPIC one:
But we're not at all averse to the occasional pop aesthetic along with the snap, crackle and fuzz, and this month's installment indulges in a little pop (meaning light-hearted and accessible, but not implying "pop"-ular among the great unwashed masses), albeit still spacey psych-y garage-y and always mild altering. Because, you know, spacerock... and cereal (surreal?) elves:
The lead-off track isn't exactly pop (none of these are really, but about as close as you're going to get to pop on the Spacerock Continuum), if anything it seems a little new-agey, which is what's intriguing about guitarist/multi-intrumentalist Mark McGuire's work: he's generally considered to be avant garde, especially in his collaborations with drone freaks Emeralds and the like. But on this and other albums he crafts epic guitar instrumentals that journey into the stratosphere accompanied by keyboards, loops and drum programming all performed by the man himself. The Heads aren't pop, but they are the most accessible and rockingest of the post Spacemen 3 psych/shoegaze breed. Ty Segall's always got at least one foot in the garage, but the other reaches for psychedelic pop as well as monster guitar jams. Meatbodies and of course Thee Oh Sees follow a similar course, easily navigating between power pop and juggernaut RAWK.
The Shivas bring a distinctly surf rock flavor to their power pop, while King Tuff summons the skewed whimsey of Syd Barrett for inspiration. Parquet Courts and Blank Realm have their poppy moments and both draw on a distinctly early 90s indie pop aesthetic, the former imagining the Archers of Loaf going on extended jams with the Dream Syndicate, the latter conjuring the damaged art pop of the Downtown NYC no wave scene.
And that's about it for the pop; now that I've got my hooks (or Hookworms) into you it's time to blast off into some de rigueur space rock from some familiar names and some new ones I'm introducing for the first time. The aforementioned Brits Hookworms are manic motorik psychedelicists. Goat, featured many a time here, are an enigmatic Swedish cult of shamanic tribal jams. Bo Ningen are Japanese spazz-psych. And Chicagoans Cave take trance-inducing repetition to an extreme, here offering a kinder, gentler version of their track "Bobby's Hash" which was featured in the January 'Best of 2014' installment below.
Now for some less familiar names: Shit and Shine are, as the name implies, absurdists and improvisers, most of whose catalog is too extreme to feature even here in the outer realms of space rock, but their most recent collection is positively tame by comparison. Tobacco is the leader of schlock rockers Black Moth Super Rainbow and his solo material is relatively similar, in a "the thing that crawled from the swamp" pulp fiction theme songs kinda way. Trans Am have always been kinda schtick-y as well, and their more recent material finds them delving into vintage synths and away from epic guitar jams. The same can be said of Mogwai, who have all but abandoned the quiet-loud-LOUDER-EVEN LOUDER-IMPOSSIBLY LOUD triple guitar dynamics of old in favor of imaginary 70s sci-fi film scores.
Some more relative unknowns of an international flavor follow: the Argentinian kraut-psych of FoneZ, the Chilean cosmic trance of Follakzoid, the Greek mesmerists Acid Baby Jesus, Portland OR's acid rock explorers Eternal Tapestry, the Floridian brother-duo of Tonstartssbandht (strangely American, despite the foreign-sounding name), and culminating in Australia with the blazing psychedelia of the mighty King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (see video above). Whew! What a journey!
So, Divshare seems to have taken a dump - haven't been able to upload to them by "press time", so you won't see the individual track player below. The file storing site which has been the host of choice of the SRC since Day One has been having problems for a while now and may be gasping its dying breath. Luckily, both Soundcloud and Mixcloud are hosting the continuous mix. The playlist is as follows:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Earth Grid (Activation) - Mark McGuire - Noctilucence
Fuego - The Heads - Everyone Knows We Got Nowhere
Feel - Ty Segall - Manipulator
Two - Meatbodies- s/t
Savage Victory - Thee Oh Sees - Drop
Stalking Legs -The Shivas -You Know What To Do
Eyes Of The Muse - King Tuff - Black Moon Spell
Every Day It Starts - Parquet Courts - Content Nausea
Falling Down The Stairs - Blank Realm - Grassed In
The Impasse - Hookworms - The Hum
Bondye - Goat - Commune
Inu - Bo Ningen- III
Butthash (Harsh Mellow Mix) - Cave - Release
PG-13 -Shit And Shine - Powderhorn Eruption (Gonna Get My Hair Cut At The End Of The Summer) -Tobacco -Ultima II Massage
Nightshift - Trans Am - Volume X
Remurdered - Mogwai - Rave Tapes
Nola - FoneZ - Adhesivo De Contacto Espacial
Sky Input I - Follakzoid - s/t
Troublemaker - Acid Baby Jesus - Selected Recording
Wholedome - Eternal Tapestry - Dawn In Two Dimensions
Alright Medley - Tonstartssbandht- Overseas
I'm In Your Mind/I'm Not In Your Mind/Cellophane/I'm In Your Mind Fuzz - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard - I'm In Your Mind Fuzz
1. Ty Segall 'Manipulator'
2. Thurston Moore 'The Best Day'
3. Cave 'Release'
4. Tonstartssbandht 'Overseas'
5. Temples 'Sun Structures'
6. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra 'Fuck Off, Get Free, We Pour Light On Everything'.
7. Les Big Byrd 'They Worshipped Cats'
8. Wand 'Ganglion Reef'
9. Meatbodies s/t
10. Dagha Bloom 'No Curtains'
BAKER'S DOZEN (HONORABLE MENTION):
The War On Drugs 'Lost In The Dream'
Watter 'This World'
Sleepy Sun 'Maui Tears'
Purling Hiss 'Weirdon'
Blank Realm 'Grassed In'
Opeth 'Pale Communion'
The Pink Mountaintops 'Get Back'
Kikagaku Moyo 'Forest Of Lost Children'
Dream Police 'Hypnotized'
Quilt 'Held In Splendor'
The Holy Mountain 'Ancient Astronauts'
Daydream Machine 'Twin Idols'
Pontiak 'Innocence'
What a year for space rock! As such I've had to limit my Best Of 2014 playlists to a mere FOUR AND A HALF HOURS! Call it holiday indulgence. Here's PART ONE:
Starting off with some trippy guitar mantras from William Tyler and Steve Gunn, a departure from my more noise-loving inclinations, just because, you know, they're great! Also great was The War On Drugs' new release, their best to date, one that made many a writer's top ten (although not mine... quite), and one of few bands that can pull off a perfect meld of space rock and americana. Stephen McBean took time off from his main band Black Mountain to bring back his solo/collaborative side project, the mostly acoustic Pink Mountaintops, but this time with material aggressive enough to make it onto his other band's albums.
The young Brits also had a banner year, especially The Horrors, who have streamlined their shimmering goth-gaze into something wholly their own, and newbies Temples, who arrived seemingly fully-formed with their take on classic British psychedelia (the track on this playlist also brings to mind their Aussie counterparts Tame Impala). Bell Gardens is an offshoot of Stars Of The Lid who bring that band's quiet cinematic ambience to a psychedelic country/western setting, sounding quite unlike anybody else out there. And speaking of British new-gaze, The Raveonettes have distinguished themselves beyond their Jesus and Mary Chain-esque dream pop with their heaviest and best release to date. Philly-based Bleeding Rainbow are ostensibly a post punk band, in that they wear their Nirvana/Dinosaur Jr. hearts on their sleeves, but boy, when they take off on a tangent, it's most always psychedelic (or downright shoegaze as on the track on this playlist)!
Speaking of psychedelic, the young upstarts have been popping up like magic mushrooms after an acid rain, with relatively new artists like Quilt (jangles and harmonies conjuring Haight-Ashbury in the 60s), The Allah-Las (Donovan visits Laurel Canyon), White Fence (prince of lo-fi Syd Barrett-isms), King Tuff (stoner-garage-psych with a dose of dark magick), and the man who rocked the shit out of The Desert Stars Fest, Primal Scream guitarist and auteur in his own right, Little Barrie (British mod meets American surf rock rave-ups).
Les Big Byrd are enigmatic Swedes who like block rockin' beats in their swirling psychedelia, not unlike vintage Primal Scream, bringin' back the Madchester riddims! And while we're shakin' it, let's have a listen to the collaboration that HAD to happen: electro-pioneer Brian Eno meets Karl Hyde of techno-experimentalists Underworld... it just makes sense. Eno and Hyde, two great tastes that go great together! Riding out the danceable spacerock theme, Brian Jonestown Massacre have gotten decidedly more dancefloor-friendly since relocating to Berlin. Must be the motorik connection. And while we're on a Teutonic groove, actual GermansThe Notwist have always been a bit more subdued in their glitch-tronica pop but the track included here shows they're heading for more aggressive territory of late.
Switching gears from Germany to Japan now: Kikagaku Moyo borrow from krautrock's finest like the acid jamming collective Amon Duul, while Bo Ningen take us into the stratosphere with their manic flailing and wailing. And Goat take the freneticism of Jap-psych and layer it over African polyrhythms, belying the fact that they're actually Swedish.
LA garage-psych rockers Wand know how to bring the trance to the heavy. Portlanders Daydream Machine also indulge in hypnotic trance Love (And perhaps some Rockets, eh?). Mississippians Bass Drum of Death, despite the name, bring life affirming bliss from heavy guitar groove. And the Virginian monster rock trio of brothers known as Pontiak continue to exist out of time and place, somewhere primitive, primal and existential.
And now things get weird(er): what can you say about a band like Tonstartssbandht? How do you even pronounce their name (tone-starts-bandit). Who the heck are they? Two Floridian brothers, guitar and drums, borrowing from Black Sabbathy riffage and Animal Collectivist tribalism and everything in-between, mostly lo-fo live and bedroom recordings, LONG jams and little ditties, and one of the most astounding finds I've made in recent years. The track included on this playlist only scratches the surface - expect a lot more from them in the future Continuum. Keeping it heavy, Glaswegians The Holy Mountain... um, yeah... keep it heavy... heavy and hard like dolomite.
San Francisco's Sleepy Sun goes without saying - they've been a staple here. Their take on classic PSYCH RAWK is uniquely there own, and they just keep getting better and better. And the ongoing Silver Mt. Zion saga keeps growing, and this year's Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra installment is every bit as good as past efforts. And epic way to end this set... but it doesn't end here. Once you digest this 2-1/2 hour series of appetizers, next come a 2-hour main course to complete your meal (don't ask for dessert - it's all gravy). Indulge yourself, cuz you can't get fat off SPACE ROCK.
For you traditionalists who don't mind streaming from this site, the following tracks should appear in the player below:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Whole New Dude - William Tyler - Lost Colony
Tommy's Congo - Steve Gunn - Way Out Weather
Burning - The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream
Ambulance City - Pink Mountaintops- Get Back
Jealous Sun - The Horrors - Luminous
Mesmerize -Temples -Sun Structures
She Does - Bell Gardens - Slow Dawns For Lost Conclusions
Kill! - The Raveonettes - Pe'ahi
Phase - Bleeding Rainbow - Interrupt
Saturday Bride - Quilt - Held In Splendor
Nothing To Hide - Allah-Las - Worship The Sun
Afraid Of What It's Worth - White Fence- For The Recently Found Innocent
Black Moon Spell - King Tuff - Black Moon Spell
Realise -Little Barrie - Shadow Indus Waves -Les Big Bird -They Worshipped Cats
Witness - Eno And Hyde - Someday World
Vad Hande Med Dem? - The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Revelation
7-Hour Drive - The Notwist - Close To The Glass
Smoke And Mirrors - Kikagaku Moyo - Forest Of Lost Children
Psychedelic Misemono Goya (Reprise) - Bo Ningen - III
Goatslaves - Goat - Commune
Clearer - Wand- Ganglion Reef
Spacement - Daydream Machine - Twin Idols
Sin Is In 10 -Bass Drum Of Death - Rip This
Beings Of The Rarest - Pontiak - Innocence
Electric Dragon Sword/Speculatin' - Tonstartssbandht - Overseas
Star Kings - The Holy Mountain - Ancient Astronauts
Everywhere Waltz - Sleepy Sun - Maui Tears
Take Away These Early Grave Blues - Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Fuck Off, Get Free, We Pour Light On Everything
But don't forget, you also have the option of spacerock to go:
1. Click on the Divshare logo instead of pushing the play button in the player above.
2. Click "download" when redirected to the Divshare site (put it on your desktop for easy access).
3. Once downloaded, drag it to yer iTunes and sync it with yer pod.
And I must reiterate, this is the way to take your spacerock mix to go! You can DOWNLOAD it! It's YOURS now! It's an mp3 mix that pops right into your iTunes - it couldn't be simpler.
Ready for PART TWO?!?!? First off, since this album, another great release from 2014, has no pauses between songs, and thus I can't separate a track for these playlists, I suppose it's meant to be heard in its entirety, so here ya go:
Starting this set off with a little psychtronica... Liars... what to say? Experimental to the core, starting off as an old school NYC no-wave outfit with traditional rock 4-piece instruments, they transitioned to electronics and unconventional instrumentation, writing songs about characters like "Drum" and "Mt. Heart Attack" and concept albums entirely about the Salem Witch Trials. Their 2014 release was no less compelling. Quirky Brits Shit and Shine dwelled in lo-fi obscurity for quite some time, favoring 30-minute blown speaker percussion and fuzz guitar workouts with macabre themes, but this recent release shows maturity, not only in regards to recording but with modern sampling techniques, to great effect. You can hardly tell they're the same band. Tobacco is the leader of Black Moth Super Rainbow, and they both feature kitschy analog synths and drum machines distorted beyond all recognition, yet still manage to groove in a black light day-glo bad acid trip sorta way. And Damaged Bug is the electronic side project of Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer, and it sounds like his instrumentation was picked up cheap and slightly damaged at Bay Area flea markets, which of course fits his ethos perfectly.
Speaking of Thee Oh Sees, yet another instant classic from this prolific band this year. As always, they bring the manic motorik. Garage rock brethren, Dwyer's equally prolific peer Ty Segall has gone and done it: the album of the year, my criteria being its length, diversity and maturity, and also coming from a younger, lower-profile artist than the close second, Thurston Moore (we'll come to him soon). Segall manages to explore and encompass every aspect of garage/psych/space rock that has come before and has yet to be invented on one long album which is amazingly cohesive as a whole. While we're banging our heads, Dagha Bloom, coming from behind the stigmatic "orange curtain" of suburban Southern California, and consisting of three bassists, some keys, a drummer and a frenetic frontman, are requisite in this mind-expanding explosion of rockingness. Meatbodies fit quite well here too, based around the monstrous riffage and face-melting soloing of one Chad Ubovich, who has played with or been associated with the usual suspects, from the aforementioned John Dwyer and Ty Segall, to lesser known garage rockers Fuzz and psych-folk troubadour Mikal Cronin. Here on his debut he gets the chance to shine with his own material. Equally manic are the Brits known as Hookworms, whose unrelenting motorik rave-ups on their sophomore release seem about to burst then implode like a supernova into a black hole.
Speaking of dying stars, Stardeath And White Dwarfs (sic) also put out their second full-length, a psychedelic sludgefest that hearkens back to bandleader Dennis Coyne's uncle Wayne's band The Flaming Lips' earlier material, which makes us early-Lips-favoring fans happy (whither Wayne now? his current efforts are sadly overindulgent and underwhelming). The word motorik comes up here a lot, and if you don't know what it means by now you're probably beyond hope, but Cave embody its propulsive rhythm, taking it from its humble origins in the Krautrock canon of Neu! and Kraftwerk and infusing it with punk energy and lysergic trance. Another stellar release from this Chicagoan juggernaut.
Heading into a melodic singer/songwriterly direction with a basis in americana, Purling Hiss is one Mike Polizze, who shows an equal adeptness at Springsteen meets the War On Drugs atmospheric folk and feedback laden Crazyhorse rockers. Thurston Moore's solo work has been in a singer/songwriter vein, and largely acoustic until he assembled a supergroup for this album, a real stunner that's even greater than the sum of its parts (former Sonic Youth co-hort Steve Shelley on drums, My Bloody Valentine bassist Deb Googe, and somewhat more obscure yet no less prolific English guitarist James Sedward). This outfit has as much or more chemistry than Moore's previous outfits Sonic Youth or Chelsea Light Moving, and the stunning diversity and maturity, a streamlining of his more chaotic tendencies, is promising for the future. A close second place for album of the year. Also quite chaotic and quixotic, brother-and-sister-led Aussie noise rockers Blank Realm released a somewhat more accessible album in 2014 that hints at the melody existing below the mess. Expect great stuff from them in the future.
A pleasant discovery at the Desert Stars Festival this year was Drinking Flowers, who embody the term spacerock, as in forbears like Spacemen 3, et al. Not far off from similar territory, Dream Police summon the same trance-inducing head nodders, but forget the Cheap Trick reference, this is a spinoff of psychopunks The Men, who actually quote the Spacemen 3 epic "Revolution" in one of their songs. So there's that - fun stuff, and keeping it fresh, since The Men seem to have gone almost alt-country on their latest. As evidenced in various spots in recent playlists, shoegaze (or "new-gaze") was quite prevalent in 2014, and Cheatahs are heads above the rest. Forming in London, but with international origins, which may explain their unique take on the genre, with a Canadian singer/guitarist, a Californian bassist, and a German drummer. Another animal-pun monickered retro-styled British band Eagulls melds classic shoegaze with anthemic political sloganeering a la Killing Joke.
Previously straddling the line between shoegaze and experimental metal, French guitar texturalist Neige, under the ensemble name Alcest, has/have gone full-on dream pop on his/their latest album, which seems to suit him/them just fine. Also metal-derived, Seattlites Helms Alee have always incorporated disparate elements seeming incongruous to the genre, resulting in a sound forged from a different element, a heavy metal that's also as ethereal as the cosmos. Taking a turn for the HEAVY, the slow-core metallics of Earth, the most aptly-named band one can imagine, as their sound is that of the revolving of this slowly revolving sphere of rock that sustains life in the cold blackness of space. Their modus has evolved to incorporate elements of country twang and even vocals (!) on some tracks.
And now, adventures in prog rock! Opeth, those enigmatic Swedes, once practitioners of black metal (complete with "cookie monster" vocals), stunned their old fans and made new converts with an album of metallic prog and actual melodic singing on Heritage, the best album of 2011. Three years later they've gone even deeper into classic and complex prog, all but abandoning the blackened sound of old. Let's hope they keep it up. And let's wrap it up with a lengthy epic from the debut album by Watter, a supergroup featuring Britt Walford of Louisville post rockers Slint and Zak Riles of Portland psychedelicists Grails, with guest contributors ranging from Rachel's pianist Rachel Grimes, and The For Carnation's bassist Todd Cook, to King Crimson's legendary Tony Levin. The result is atmospheric, panoramic and captivating, as it should be, considering its contributors. And a great way to wrap up this overload of 2014's bestest musix, in reality a mere overview. Now it's time for you to EXPLORE!
For you traditionalists who don't mind streaming from this site, the following tracks should appear in the player below:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Mess On A Mission - Liars - Mess
Blowhannon - Shit And Shine - Powder Horn
Father Sister Berzerker - Tobacco - Ultima II Massage
Gloves For Garbage - Damaged Bug- Hubba Bubba
Penetrating Eye -Thee Oh Sees -Drop
Manipulator - Ty Segall - Manipulator
Supa - Dagha Bloom - No Curtains
Tremmors - Meat Bodies - s/t
Birds Of War - Stardeath And White Dwarfs - Wastoid
Bobby's Hash - Cave - Release
Forcefield Of Solitude - Purling Hiss- Weirdon
The Best Day - Thurston Moore - The Best Day
Bulldozer Love -Blank Realm - Grassed In Your Head Is Reeling -Drinking Flowers -Shadow Show
Hypnotized - The Dream Police - Hypnotized
Geographic - Cheatahs - s/t
Possessed - Eagulls - s/t
Opale - Alcest - Shelter
Pinneped - Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Torn By The Fox Of The Crescent Moon - Earth- Primitive And Deadly
Moon Above, Sun Below - Opeth - Pale Communion
Small Business -Watter - This World
But don't forget, you also have the option of spacerock to go:
1. Click on the Divshare logo instead of pushing the play button in the player above.
2. Click "download" when redirected to the Divshare site (put it on your desktop for easy access).
3. Once downloaded, drag it to yer iTunes and sync it with yer pod.
And I must reiterate, this is the way to take your spacerock mix to go! You can DOWNLOAD it! It's YOURS now! It's an mp3 mix that pops right into your iTunes - it couldn't be simpler.
Well hello again. It's looking like the Spacerock Continuum is going to be quarterly from now on. Not from a dearth of amazing musix, just from a lack of my personal time. And speaking of TIME, I turned FIFTY YEARS OLD this month!
Los Angelenos Wand come fully formed as a unit comprised of local psych/garage vets and their debut shows a maturity and sophistication that many established bands wish they could achieve. Stardeath and White Dwarfs are back with yet another mindfuck of an album that exhibits its relationship with The Flaming Lips (the singer is Wayne Coyne from the Lips' nephew) while still maintaining their own identity. Speaking of the Lips, their de facto musical leader (after Coyne's apparent abdication) Steven Drozd has a solo project, Electric Wurm, where he delves even deeper into the depths of dark psychedelia and prog, to great effect (but it's still not the Lips by a long shot).
The Lushes (great double entendre, no?) are a two piece from Brooklyn that are both minimal and HUGE at the same time. A little retro-modern Liars, a little vintage downtown NYC no wave, and some serious stoner rock heaviness. Eagles Gift were a highlight of this year's Austin Psych fest (we met them downtown the night before their set and they convinced us to come check them out, and we're glad we did). In their own words (pardon the all caps): "EAGLES GIFT IS A PSYCHEDELIC BAND BASED IN ANGERS, FRANCE. THEY UNITE THEIR SOULS IN A STRANGE KIND OF TRIBE -SOMEWHERE BETWEEN INDIANS AND COWBOYS- TO CREATE SOME MYSTIC DARK ENERGY. THE LIGHT WHICH THEY RADIATE, HAS A HEALING INFLUENCE, IT IS THE SPIRITUAL PEACE OF THE HIGHER ATTUNED SPIRIT." Okay then. The Black Angels need no introduction here, but the Austinites have come up with something quite different with their current album. More light and accessible, more vintage garage-y... more pop, dare I say? Still rawkin' though.
Then things get WEIRD. Tonstartssbandht (tone-start-bandit) are a two-brother experimental duo that veers from kraut-stoned freak jams to dark forest Animal Collective-esque campfire songs, all lo-fi and deliberately abstruse. It makes sense to them, and if you let yourself fall into a suspension of disbelief you'll find yourself not only "getting it", but lost in it. They are my favorite discovery of the last year and it came about totally by accident. Quilt are a bit more traditional; youngsters born well after the Summer of Love but evoking a trip through Haight-Ashbury back in its heyday, all headspinning energy and melodic harmonizing (children of the Jefferson Airplane?). The Skygreen Leopards also harken to the sounds of 60s freak folk but filter it through a post-modern fracture and then reassembling it to end up sounding timeless. Wooden Wand (aka James Jackson Toth) has always had one foot in freak folk and the other in cosmic Americana (a bit of the original "psychedelic cowboy" Gram Parsons). This lengthy jam also has a kraut-rocky motorik rhythm that showcases Toth's genre-bending abilities.
Temples, speaking of arriving fully formed, are the UK's greatest contenders for a bright psych-pop sound that can reach audiences far and wide. Accessible and familiar-sounding enough to play stadiums yet textural and nuanced enough that a dark subterranean club would also suit their sound. Their debut is one of the most mature-sounding first albums I've heard since Tame Impala. The Brian Jonestown Massacre just keep on truckin', lately from figurehead Anton Newcombe's adopted home of Berlin. Sounds like standard BJM, just a bit more more diverse and better-produced than in the past. Les Big Byrd is a Swedish kraut-psych outfit "discovered" by BJM's Newcombe and their debut brings a propulsive dance element to their retro-modern space rock.
Kikagaku Moyo carry on the tradition of Japanese psychedelia forged by their brethren Acid Mother's Temple, but are less acid-fried and monstrous, favoring a jammy bonfire party under the psilocybin stars vibe, not far from the Amon Duul collective. Bo Ningen are also Japanese but ecstatically frenetic in their approach with pummeling rhythms and soaring guitars, like their peers in Boris, minus the metal, but with equal affinity for theatrics. King Tuff is one Kyle Thomas (of Witch, among others), plus a rhythm section, tapping Syd Barrett as his muse for a his take on modern garage a la Thee Oh Sees or Ty Segall. Amps for Christ is one Henry Barnes (of Man Is The Bastard), a reclusive and elusive freak folkist who makes his own instruments and conjures his own folklore from them. And speaking of nu-garage rocker Ty Segall (featured here plenty of times in the past), what can I say but... album of the year?
Mirror Travel, two gals and a guy from Austin Texas, love their motorik as much as the next neu-kraut rockers, and churn out a palpably kinetic variation on psychedelia. Trans Am are veterans of retro-futuristic kraut rock, combining driving motorik rhythms and proggy guitar workouts. Their aptly-named tenth album finds them focusing on analog synths and sequencers, honoring bands like Cluster instead of their previous influences like Neu! The Nothing and Cheatahs also honor past trends in mind-altering music; the former, from Philly, bring the semi-retired (but resurrected frequently, of late) term dream pop to mind, while the latter might fit more in the modern shoegaze (new gaze?) genre. Both favor hypnotic drifts that burst into ecstatic noise and back again, and they do it well (I admit it: I've always been a sucker for dynamics).
Dagha Bloom have got their own thing going. Their closest reference would be bands like Spacemen 3, The Heads, etc. But even with three bassists, drums and vox they could very well be the definition of space RAWK. And believe it or not they're from behind the Orange Curtain, in Fullerton CA (Orange County, south of Los Angeles, the oft-maligned suburban enclave that has actually produced more great music than LA proper, IMO). The Holy Mountain are Glaswegian "psychedelia smiths" who blend trad psych and stoner sludge for a seemless sound, or as their website puts it: "Fast as fuck, fleein' all the time, running through the forest, traveling through time." And finally, Watter is a bit of a supergroup (to my mind), in that it features Zak Riles, guitarist of Grails, and Britt Walford, former Slint drummer, and well... it sounds like it. Soundtracks for psychedelic dreams, wandering the stars, seeking nirvana.
For you traditionalists who don't mind streaming from this site, the following tracks should appear in the first player below:
The Spacerock Continuum Theme - bRambles
Send/Receive (Mind) - Wand - Ganglion Reef
The Chrome Children - Stardeath and White Dwarfs - Wastoid
Transform! - Electric Wurm- Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk
Dead Girls- The Lushes - What Am I Doing
My Siberian -Eagles Gift -s/t
The Flop - The Black Angels - Clear Lake Forest
Shot To La Parc - Tonstartssbandht - Now I Am Become
Tired And Buttered - Quilt - Held In Splendor
Crying Green And Purple - The Skygreen Leopards - Family Crimes
Port Of Call - Wooden Wand - Farmer's Corner
Sand Dance - Temples- Sun Structures
Duck And Cover - The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Revelation
Tinnitus Aeternum -Les Big Byrd -They Worshipped Cats Streets Of Calcutta -Kikagaku Moyo -Forest Of Lost Children
Slider - Bo Ningen - III
Lazer Beam - King Tuff - Was Dead
All Messed Up - Amps For Christ - Canyons, Cars And Crows
It's Over - Ty Segall - Manipulator
I Want You To Know - Mirror Travel - Mexico
Night Shift - Trans Am - Volume X
Hymn To The Pillory - The Nothing- Guilty Of Everything
Kenworth - Cheatahs - s/t
Wampum/Rotted Man -Dagha Bloom -No Curtains
Ancient Astronauts - The Holy Mountain - Ancient Astronauts
Sea Water - Watter - This World
But don't forget, you also have the option of spacerock to go:
1. Click on the Divshare logo instead of pushing the play button in the player above.
2. Click "download" when redirected to the Divshare site (put it on your desktop for easy access).
3. Once downloaded, drag it to yer iTunes and sync it with yer pod.
And I must reiterate, this is the way to take your spacerock mix to go! You can DOWNLOAD it! It's YOURS now! It's an mp3 mix that pops right into your iTunes - it couldn't be simpler.
