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.
Here it is folks (finally!): by overwhelming popular demand, it's The Great Spacerock Continuum Podcast Experiment! New! Improved! Transportable! The deluxe take-it-with-you version of this month's "podcast" is ready for the busy spacerockers on the go. Remember: this isn't a true podcast, just an mp3 that you can download:
1. Click on the Divshare logo instead of pushing the play button.
2. Click "download" when redirected to the Divshare site.
3. Once downloaded drag it to yer iTunes and sync it with yer pod - simple!
Unfortunately you'll still need to refer to this blog's text to know what song yer on, but hey... baby steps. Let me know what you think!
Startin' this set off with a bit of poppiness, (as "pop" as I ever get on the SRC). Not that this stuff would get played on pop radio, but let's just say it's more accessible and less challenging than your average space rock. KC Accidental is the precursor to Broken Social Scene, who are ostensibly a pop band. But most folks don't know that BSS's first album was pure instrumental post rock, and this track shows where that ethos originated (the titular K & C being BSS bandleaders Kevin Drew and Charles Spearin). In honor of the legendary Aussies The Church's current tour, where they are playing, in their entirety, three full albums: Starfish, Priest = Aura and their latest, Untitled #23, I offer you a track... from none of those albums, but instead a stellar track from the sleeper album I wish they were playing (thanks to Brian Wilcher for turning me on to it). Beach House is hardly space rock, being more somnambulant dream pop, but they veer close enough that they've always intrigued me, so I include here a track illustrating their associations with the genre. And San Francisco artist Christopher Willits is light enough to be considered on the pop side, if you could possibly include shimmering shoegazey guitar-through-laptop artists like him and Fennesz "pop".
What better place to drop White Noise Sound's most epic bliss rock anthem? This band has got all the touchpoints nailed (Spacemen 3, Primal Scream, Love & Rockets, et al.) and I can't stop listening to 'em. Speaking of epics... I don't usually plop a 20-minute track in the middle of a set, but using such a track as the closing coda risks less people hearing it, so right here, demanding your full attention, is quite possibly THE most epic track ever from legendary and prolific Japanese psych rockers (pictured above) Acid Mother's Temple's entire massive catalog. And it's not even close in intensity to some of their extended psychotic guitar-mangling face-melting freakouts, some measuring over an hour, so chill out, relax, absorb it into yer brain... and be exalted when the guitar solo comes in at around 14 minutes. You'll be glad you did.
Guess what? The mighty Mogwai has a new one, and it's their best in many years, and their most diverse and atypical collection of songs, as this track illustrates. Silly song titles aside (they tend to excel at this), this slow burner rivals their best work. Brit improv collective Mugstar is another band I can't get enough of lately; their motorik madness is unparalleled except perhaps by their stateside equivalent Oneida (whose wry psychedelic impressionism is detectable in this track). Speaking of triumphant returns, enigmatic Finnish absurdists Circle have managed to top themselves yet again, with a succulent stew of mind-melting manic/mantric prog they call, tongue firmly in cheek, the New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. And speaking of metal, who knew that bands like this could rework such a tired cliche of a genre into one of the most viable musical art forms out there? Kylesa did. This multi-guitar, multi-vocalist Georgian (as in Savannah, not Russia) outfit is unlike any other nu-metalists out there. And they RAWK.
Grails continue to evolve; their more esoteric 70s influences (Popul Vuh, Ennio Morricone, et al.) continue to emerge from a slow thaw of more trad psych and post rock, and their experimentation is fearless, as this recent installation of their Black Tar Prophecies series shows. San Francisco vets The Alps (featuring Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of Tarentel) reside on similar terrain, and this sitar-laden exploration is among their best work. Jackie-O Motherfucker recently released one of their most accessible albums to date with Ballads of the Revolution, surprising even the legion of fans of their psych-Americana free-musik improv.
Next up, a little surprise in the form of Noel Redding's obscure post-Hendrix project, simply and cryptically titled Road. Rawkin' track, no? Circa 1972. One of last year's major discoveries for me was Wolf People (see January's set), a crew of young Brits paying homage to and expanding upon classic Cream, Blind Faith, Blue Cheer... even Jethro Tull (and a slew of 70s British baroque folk rock). I dare anyone to not jump out of their seats air-guitaring to this track. And again, in reference to my putting lengthy and challenging tracks as the ultimate mindfuck of each set... well here ya go: free-associative modern power trio Heavy Winged.
For you traditionalists who don't mind streaming, the following tracks should appear in the player below:
Nancy And The Girdle Boy - K.C. Accidental - Captured Anthems For An Empty Bathtub Block - The Church - Uninvited, Like The Clouds Mile Stereo - Beach House - Teen Dream Sun Body - Christopher Willits- Tiger Flower Circle Sun (In Both) Dreams and Ecstasies - White Noise Sound- s/t Pink Lady Lemonade (May I Drink You Once Again?) -Acid Mothers Temple - Myth Of The Love Electrique You're Lionel Richie - Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will Technical Knowledge As A Weapon - Mugstar- ...Sun, Broken... Vaellus - Circle- Rautatie Unknown Awareness - Kylesa - Static Tensions Self-Hypnosis - Grails - Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 4 Telepathe - The Alps - Le Voyage Skylight - Jackie-O Motherfucker - Ballads Of The Revolution Spaceship Earth - Road - s/t One By One From Dorney Ranch - Wolf People - Steeple Breathe Life - Heavy Winged - Sunspotted
You will be missed. You remain fast 'n' bulbous...
Now on to the spacerock champions! Why wait any longer? Here are BeeDub's Top Ten Albums of 2010!
1. Tame Impala 'Innerspeaker' 2. Black Mountain 'Wilderness Heart' 3. Wolf People 'Steeple' 4. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra 'Kollaps Tradixionales' 5. Sleepy Sun 'Fever' 6. Nice Nice 'Extra Wow' 7. White Noise Sound s/t 8. Mugstar 'Lime'/'...Sun, Unbroken...' (tie) 9. Liars 'Sisterworld' 10. White Hills s/t
Honorable Mention: 1. The Flaming Lips 'Dark Side of The Moon' 2. Sleigh Bells 'Treats' 3. The Besnard Lakes '...Are The Roaring Night' 4. Woodsman 'Collages' 5. Neil Young 'Le Noise'
Where to begin on 2010? It was a harrowing year for my family, but that's all in the past now, we survived and are stronger for it. But were my listening choices a bit... darker, this year? Or is that just coincidence? I think it was a dark year for most of us. But here's to an auspicious 2011...! Meanwhile the music was rife with heavy riffage, hypnotic repetition, haunting refrains... a whole lotta psychedelicism and altered state-inducing sounz, and dang if it didn't RAWK! Bring it on... all 3-1/2 hours of it!
UPDATE! New! Improved! Transportable! The deluxe take-it-with-you version of this month's "podcast" is ready for the busy spacerockers on the go. Remember: this isn't a true podcast, just an mp3 that you can download:
1. Click on the Kadoo logo instead of pushing the play button.
2. Click "download" when redirected to the Divshare site.
3. Once downloaded drag it to yer iTunes and sync it with yer pod - simple!
We start with a doozy of a new album by Neil Young. Just his ragged voice and inimitable electric guitar, with cinematic production by the master Daniel Lanois (hence the album title, "Le Noise"). It's epic, timely, angry, a balm for our souls' abrasions, and it feels like a great intro to this year-end set. Cuz, lookout! Next up is a leftfield entry from bubblegum punk duo Sleigh Bells, running the needle into the red with blown out beats, scuzzy guitar and little girl vocals, one of the most arrestingly enjoyable guilty pleasures in a long time. And with their nod to modern R&B, we slink into the closest thing to a dance-rock set ever seen on the Continuum, with !!!'s spacey slinky boogie that's equal part NYC no wave and rave-friendly dancefloor workouts, Soft Circle's newfound beat-orientation augmenting his usual ambient mantras, Holy Fuck still living up to their name with another album of ecstatic booty-shakers, and Squarepusher taking a rather rare departure from his spastic breakbeats and bassisms with a stop at the heavy metal disco.
Liars put out yet another album meeting or surpassing their best, and this track is a throwback to their early angsty-young-punk days. Jesu brings the dark metal of his Godflesh past to modern shoegaze dirges resulting in monolithic slabs of sorrow like this one. Serena-Maneesh put out their scattershot second collection exploring everything from saccharine bliss pop to swirling shoegaze to art-scuzz instrumentals recalling midperiod Primal Scream. Abe Vigoda took a departure from their arty afrobeat postpunk to dark anthems in an updated 4AD vein (dang if the singer's not channeling Robert Smith from The Cure!). And Tamaryn released a debut chock full of swooning shoegaze of a vintage variety (Pale Saints, anybody?).
This seemed to be the year for druggy dark & hazy back-alley mantras from bands who worship Spacemen 3 and their ilk, which is a dang fine thing! Crocodiles, Suuns, Royal Baths, Weekend and Moon Duo (the latter featuring members of Wooden Shjips!) could all fall into that category, although each has its own unique take on the template.Texas psychsters The Black Angels continue their homage to all things Roky on their third release.British newcomers Mugstar, who meet in a collision at the crossroads of acid rock and motorik, released two albums this year (hence the tie) of mindsplitting improvisational pyschedelia. And, as a gift to us all, White Noise Sound is like an unholy alliance between Spacemen 3, The Jesus & Mary Chain, and Love & Rockets - proudly wearing those influences on their sleeves, they may be derivative but it's derivative done right!
Among the more exploratory and experimental of the psych/improv realm are Nice Nice, who ventured from the cerebral math rock of their past to a more visceral approach (like in the way peyote is visceral), and two bands featuring members of Oneida, People of The North and White Hills, who expand the blueprint of the Big O's manic motorik sound. Woodsman appeared like forest pixies out of thin air with an album that, despite the separate tracks and titles, is basically one long improvisation, a magically hypnotic one. And The Alps and Citay continue to lead the pack of SF instrumental psych (although Citay balances its albums with songs drenched in soaring harmonies).
Nick Cave is still on a role with his second release as his Grinderman alter ego, where he and some of his Bad Seeds explore how sexual depravity is affected by middle age. Speaking of SF psych, the scene sweethearts Sleepy Sun have done it again with their sophomore album, which doesn't quite live up to the first but could hardly be called a slump. Black Mountain have also triumphed with their third album, more accessible than ever yet just as unabashedly RAWKING as ever.
Two young bands who put out such amazingly mature albums this year that my mind is still spinning (as are their CDs, constantly) are Australia's Tame Impala, whose breezy Floydian psych is like floating in a hammock, swinging in a warm breeze and the bliss of an acid comedown; and Wolf People from the UK who channel their forebears in Cream, Blind Faith, Blue Cheer and British baroque pop as if having been summoned as spirits from the past. If I had to pick three albums from 2010 to be the only ones I listened to for all of 2011 these two and the Black Mountain album would easily be my choices.
A couple weird ones, of the hard-to-classify variety, are Women, an enigmatic band of all men who incorporate 80s jangle pop, 90s indie rock and a load of experimental acts from This Heat to Swell Maps - a very diverse collection, this one; and Parlour, who, despite their sedate moniker, put together a collection of angular and energetic post rock designed to simultaneously confound and delight.
A band who shamelessly borrow from anthemic pop-metal and manage to make it all their own, Fang Island was the surprise sleeper of the year for me. Cloudland Canyon continue their dreamy stream-of-consciousness homage to vintage krautrock, and Deerhunter follow in a similar darkly nostalgic feel that I think is so appropriate for this last year. And The Besnard Lakes have perfected their combination of Canadian post rock and melodramatic torch songs.
And not to be overlooked - ending the set is high praise, don't forget - the band I predicted to take Number One Album... got close, but the first three positions were usurped by some young upstarts. Nevertheless A Silver Mt. Zion outdid themselves and most of their peers in the world of pathos-ridden apocalyptic post rock. All-in-all an AMAZING year for the ol' space rock. I'm just glad it's over, and happy to have all this incredible music as a result.
The following tracks should appear in the player below:
Walk With Me - Neil Young - Le Noise Infinity Guitars - Sleigh Bells - Treats AM/FM - !!! - Strange Weather, Isn't It? First Time - Soft Circle- Shore Obsessed Lucky - Holy Fuck- Latin Maximum Planck -Squarepusher - Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator Scarecrows On A Killer Slant - Liars - Sisterworld Dethroned - Jesu- Heart Ache & Dethroned Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain - Serena-Maneesh - S-M 2: Abyss In B Minor Crush - Abe Vigoda - Crush Mild Confusion - Tamaryn- The Waves Billy Speed - Crocodiles - Sleep Forever Gaze - Suuns - Zeroes Needle And Thread - Royal Baths - Litanies Coma Summer - Weekend - Sports Motorcycle, I Love You - Moon Duo - Escape Yellow Elevator #2 - The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream Sunburnt Impedance Machine - Mugstar - Lime It Is There For You - White Noise Sound - s/t Set And Setting - Nice Nice - Extra Wow Tunnels - People Of The North - Deep Tissue Three Quarters - White Hills - s/t Spirit Stone - Woodsman - Collages Crossing The Sands - The Alps - Le Voyage Secret Breakfast - Citay - Dream Get Together When My Baby Comes - Grinderman - Grinderman 2 Desert God - Sleepy Sun - Fever Old Fangs - Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart Morning Born/Cromlech - Wolf People - Steeple Desire Be, Desire Go - Tame Impala - Innerspeaker Heat Distraction - Women - Public Strain Simulacrenfield - Parlour - Simulacrenfield Sidesweeper - Fang Island - s/t Hope Sounds Dry - Cloudland Canyon - Fin Eaves Desire Lines - Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest And This Is What We Call Progress - The Besnard Lakes - Are The Roaring Night There Is A Light - Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Kollaps Tradixionales
The writer who supposedly coined the term post rock (generally attributed to Brit-crit Simon Reynolds in 1994) probably immediately regretted it, but it has become a blanket term for bands that use rock instrumentation in nonstandard formats (ie, not blues-based) or who rock the non-rock instrumentation (which makes me want to include bands like Rachels or Stars Of The Lid or World's End Girlfriend, but they don't rock... at all). A lot of it could be considered closer to classical in its arrangements, but you need to some have some semblance of guitar-bass-drums (preferably well-amplified) to be considered rock, therefore without those you become experimental or ambient or avant garde or whatever, which is very worthy, but not post rock.
As with last month's installment, it's impossible for me to include all the appropriate candidates in the field, and have left out some to avoid redundancy. Some artists, of course, are more influenced by what came before within the genre - call them the second generation - than they are totally innovative in and of themselves (Destroy All Dreamers, Jakob, Parlour, Maserati, The Mercury Program, This Is Your Captain Speaking, Kriedler, To Rococo Rot, Beans, Dreamend, etc.). And some straddle multiple genres - math rock, prog rock, post metal, psychedelic, and good ol' space rock - and aren't purely post rock (Cul De Sac, HiM, Kinski, Turing Machine, Don Caballero, Grails, Red Sparowes, Mare, Pelican, Russian Circles, etc.). Hey, we're gonna have a really long set* even without including EVERY band, ya know? So I tried to include primarily the groundbreakers, or at least those who do/did it best, as well as some of my personal faves, this being one of my all time favorite classifications of musix.
And I'm sorry, but despite numerous sources identifying bands like Bark Psychosis (ironically, they're the band Reynolds was reviewing when he first used the term), Talk Talk, Hood, Stereolab, Pram, Main or Bowery Electric as post rock, they just aren't in my book, okay? Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to.
For simplicity's sake there can be ascribed to the genre two primary schools (oversimplification in a Beatles/Stones dichotomy way, to be sure, but it helps): the Mogwai school and the Tortoise school. Mogwai are best known for developing the quiet-loud-louder-LOUDER STILL crescendo technique. They later abandoned it as the cliche it had become, but not after influencing countless other bands, including the Montreal school (Godspeed You! Black Emperor et al.)... it's all about the dynamics. And the flipside is the jazz and world music informed tendencies of the Chicago school of Tortoise and their ilk. Of course there are many other aspects to the genre (in fact, each band may be its OWN genre), but suffice it to say: it's mostly instruMENTAL, quite experiMENTAL, and just plain MENTAL.
*Another aspect of post rock, as you'll surely see, is the near-universal propensity for rather lengthy compositions. And despite omitting some major players to try and condense this list I've nonetheless left you with four and one half hours of the stuff! Merry freekin' xmas!!!
Hmmm... where to start? Well, what better intro than the opening salvo on the second of multitudes of Trans Am releases, a decidedly guitar-centric intro to a long and consistent catalog of their trademark rhythmic retro robot rock? Follow up with a quintessentially Canadian post rock template track from Do Make Say Think's debut? Yes, please! San Francisco's on-again off-again Tarentel have spanned the gamut from prog to ambient to clattering noisescapes, this track reflecting the chameleonic outfit's contribution to the traditional post rock blueprint. Their hometown peers in Rumah Sakit could be called math rockers, with their complex and unorthodox time signatures, but I think they fit nicely in this context. And the scene vets in Battles have dabbled in many aspects of boundary-pushing instrumental rock, but this early track demonstrates their take on our featured genre.
Returning to the Canadian avant garde, Le Fly Pan Am are confounding iconoclasts, simultaneously revering and shattering traditions with the firm force of tongue-in-cheek yet trance-inducing grooves and absurdist studio manipulations. Their forebears in This Heat took dissonance and arty noise to their zenith - they were one of the biggest influences on the genre. From Torino, Larsen delve deep into the music-as-a-living-breathing-being ethos; their songs pulse with a pulmonary primalcy. As the story goes, the enigmatic Italians invited trendsetter Michael Gira (of New York no wave innovators Swans), although they'd never met, to produce their first collection, supposedly playing silhouetted behind a screen and never once speaking to him in English, but occasionally erupting in chaos invisible to him. Legend has it he paid to put it out on his own Young God label sight unseen, as it were. And mysterious Detroit thunder trio Paik (two guitars and timpani drums) take outer space to the core of the earth and back to the garage where it belongs.
My next choice is bound to be controversial, in that My Bloody Valentine are most commonly (yet simplistically) categorized in the shoegazer realm, but this particular track illustrates the post rock aesthetic par excellence. What better way to take the rock out of rock than drop the rhythm tracks, leaving only undulating abstract sheets of sound? Supposedly it's all guitar and feedback and no keyboards. Speaking of enigmas, the obscure and prolific Finns in Circle have long and patiently toiled in the underground, perfecting, varying, expanding and contracting their namesake circular mantras. Reinvention is their modus operandi, yet their repetitive motif remains the same. Louisville KY legends Slint put out two highly influential yet oft-overlooked paeans to the po-mo ethic that still inspire countless bands to this day.
Earth started out stripping sludge metal to its core of massive fuzz and grind, moving at glacial speed and weight with the sparest of rhythmic elements, emulating the elemental music of the spheres, as heavy as the rotation of the planet we call home. As they evolved they eventually eroded away the veneer of gauzy distortion that encased their songs until all that was left was a gritty twang and thud, like the hulking pace of giants wandering through a desert landscape, wide brimmed hats pulled down over their eyes (cinematic, ain't it?). Another act balancing earthiness and ethereality, Jackie-O Motherfucker mangle free-folk faux traditionals and experiments in hypnotic repetition born of the purest improvisation. Labradford excel at soundtrack music for imaginary films, with a spaghetti western slant, skewed by otherworldly drones.
Yume Bitsu seem to hover in the stratosphere, where shimmering layers of atmosphere are refracted by effects-laden guitars and the occasional ecstatic vocalization. Continuing the rarefied anomaly of song-oriented (ie, utilizing vocals) post rock the wistful and transcendent (and lamentably defunct, as are Team Yume) Rum Diary capture an innocence and melancholy well beyond their youthful vim. The post rock project of Fourtet electronicist Keiran Hebden, Fridge ranged from rhythmic complexity to pure abstraction, often within the same song. And Jim O'Rourke's Gastr Del Sol was rarely grounded in the mundane fundaments of la musica rock, preferring fractured avant folk and musique concrete. He and his fellow Chicagoans in Tortoise led the charge in the formative years of American post rock, oft-imitated but never duplicated, as this track from Tortoise's first album clearly shows.
SF Bayrea skateboarding guitar stalwart Tommy Guerrero gathered some like-minded friends for some explorations of the Chicago school's tenets with Jet Black Crayon. Pele perfected the clean guitar interplay and diving, dodging rhythm patterns that inspired many imitators (they devolved into Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, a much more challenging logical progression of their previous band's sound). Salvatore bottled up a more clearly distilled version of the style in sip-sized portions. And Souvaris may play within similar constructs but they make them their own through sheer frenetic enthusiasm.
Finally we make it to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Montreal scene's most admired and influential orchestral apocalyptic soothsayers, who combine dystopian found recordings with an unrivaled climactic pathos. Unrivaled except perhaps by Sigur Ros and A Silver Mt. Zion; the former a swooning Icelandic crew whose leader bows electric guitars to coax the soar of cellos in space, and croons in elfin falsetto to lure the listener into imaginary worlds hidden behind earthly shadows; and the latter an extension of Godspeed steeped in even heartier melodrama with creaking strings augmenting the cracking voice of heartbreak.
Another band wallowing in string sections, and electric guitars that sound like string sections, Japan's Mono have taken the extreme dynamics (see Mogwai below) beyond the pale - not only do they get loud, louder and insanely LOUD with a finesse rarely seen, they also take songs into impossibly quiet moments, barely-there whispers that forebode the inevitable explosive transition. Speaking of which, Texas' Explosions In They Sky borrow from the same songbook of pathos and orchestral-sounding fretwork, all staccato shimmer and incendiary combustions of dangerously overdriven amps. German trio Daturah bring an hallucinatory quality to their crescendo-focused opuses, where the instruments crackle like arc lightning, truly cathartic reflections of Wagnerian sturm und drang.
And the most obvious place to conclude, especially while on the subject of dynamics, is with the Glaswegian godfathers Mogwai, largely credited with the invention of this aspect of post rock. Although they've moved on from the crescendo-for-its-own-sake model, this early track sums up their essence, their manifesto... where beauty comes from ugliness, peace from violence, calm from turbulence... and the world has never been the same.
The following tracks should appear in the player below:
Motr - Trans Am - Surrender To The Night 1978 - Do Make Say Think - s/t Steede Bonnet - Tarentel - From Bone To Satellite I Can't See Anything When I Close My Eyes - Rumah Sakit- s/t S Z 2 - Battles- B L'espace Au Sol Est Redessine Par D'immenses Panneaux Bleus -Le Fly Pan Am - s/t Health And Efficiency - This Heat - Health And Efficiency Tu Ark - Larsen- La Fever Lit Purple - Paik - The Orson Fader To Here Knows When - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless Dedofiktion - Circle - Prospekt Good Morning, Captain - Slint - Spiderland Land Of Some Other Order - Earth - Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method Bonesaw - Jackie-O Motherfucker - The Magick Fire Music Up To Pizmo - Labradford - Fixed::Context I Wait For You - Yume Bitsu - s/t Back In The Hardcore Days - The Rum Diary - We're Afraid Of Heights Tonight Five Four Child Voice - Fridge - Happiness Hello Spiral - Gastr Del Sol - Upgrade & Afterlife Ry Cooder - Tortoise - s/t The Mentalist - Jet Black Crayon - Inaccuracies Of The Mind Machine Pickled Pear - Pele - Elephant Easy - Salvatore - Tempo Nobody Is Fine and Everybody Needs a Drink - Souvaris - A Hat Blaise Bailey Finnegan III - Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada Svefn-g-englar - Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun I Built Myself A Metal Bird - A Silver Mt. Zion - Kollaps Tradixionales Karelia - Mono - Hey, You Catastrophe And The Cure - Explosions In The Sky - All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone Warmachines - Daturah - s/t Mogwai Fear Satan - Mogwai - Young Team
Okay, kids! Edu-muh-cation time! For those of you who regard my references to krautrock and its sub-genre motorik with suspicion and unease, this month's installment (which borrows its title from eccentric British musician - of The Teardrop Explodes and multitudinous solo albums - enthusiast and historian Julian Cope's long out-of-print fanboy tribute) should help clarify things.
What I won't do is get bogged down in history - there are numerous tomes dedicated to just that, including Cope's more subjective musings. In fact the playlist is organized by flow, not chronology. Sticking with my policy of never repeating a track I may have not been able to include my first choice of tracks from these bands, but you can search the previous posts for various other appearances of the artists featured here. Nor will I attempt to be comprehensive - only the major players, the most influential and innovative, some of whom cross-pollinated the scene by playing in more than one of the bands I've included, will be featured. Sorry Cosmic Jokers. Sorry German Oak. Sorry Agitation Free. If I tried to include everyone we'd have an even lengthier set than this one already is (hey, the songs are long too! which is typical of krautrock). I'm more concerned with who did what and how they sounded. The various modi operandi of the krautrock scene are wildly disparate, from psychedelic to free rock to proto-prog to analog electronic to pure avant garde... and everything in between.
Suffice it to say... it's the late 60s/early 70s in Berlin, in Cologne, in Dusseldorf... and it's one of the most exciting times for rock music, momentous at the very least, as many of these bands never made much of an impact outside the European and British undergrounds music scenes until many years, even decades, later. Oh, at let's clear up a misconception: the term krautrock was coined by the pigeonhole-crazed British rock press - the politically correct term, coined by Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese, iskosmische. As in COSMIC.
We begin whit La Dusseldorf, which, like I said, isn't the best place to start chronologically. But I think it's a great track to start the set off with a bang and also introduce the concept of motorik. The word means just what it seems to: it describes a form of music that is motorized, moving, propelled ever forward by a propulsive, usually minimalistic, 4/4 beat. Bass, guitar and keys should be interlocking with the percussion, flowing and lush, embellishing the rush of movement. It is the very antithesis of "free" music drumming (think free jazz, where the beat purposefully never settles into a locked groove). The drummer who, if he didn't "invent" it (he very well may have), excelled at its simple tenets, is one Klaus Dinger. He developed it duringhis tenure with a very early incarnation of Kraftwerk, who continued the style with their synthesizers and drum machines after his departure along with guitarist Michael Rother to form Neu! (who are next up in the set) where he perfected it (as well as heavily influencing loads of modern bands from Stereolab to Trans Am).Rother and Dinger split and while Dinger did La Dusseldorf for a few albums, Rother birthed a large catalog of solo albums (the next track is from one of them) continuing his bandmate's drumming style but focusing more on his own guitar explorations, then Rother joined up with members of Cluster to form Harmonia, a perfect midway point between those two acts. Harmonia blended a streamlined motorik vision with the more amorphous electronics of the experimental electronic (krautronic?) duo Cluster (aka Kluster). The tracks from those two artists I've featured are of their more straight-forward variety rather than the free-drifting experiments both dabbled in.
Speaking of free-drifting electronics, I guess now's the time in the set to showcase Tangerine Dream, who dabbled in the formless masses of sound of avant garde eletronica, but also had some more structured pieces, like the slow-burner I've included here, as well as the hackneyed 80s soundtrack work most Americans know them for. They actually used traditional instruments along with their proprietary electronics! Who knew? Guitar, bass, drums, flute, strings, etc. are featured in their early work. The same can be said for Kraftwerk, who in the early lineup mentioned above (Rother and Dinger along with Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider) , who ventured on into their more widely known robot rock on the Autobahn)were downright experimental, as evidenced by this track which should catch many of you by surprise.
I think it's about time to bring the ROCK, don't you? Ash Ra Tempel and Guru Guru were acid rock afficionados, who combined traditional blues-rock format, blazing wah-wah guitar solos and swirling psychedelics with the occasional foray into avant gardism and lysergic exploration ("Wouldn't it be great to get Timothy Leary to sing on an album?"). Then we bring the weird: no less rockist OR psych-inspired, Amon Duul literally began as a hippie acid cult/commune; the more refined version II laid out the template for future prog rockers to follow, all multi-part song suites, virtuoso soloing, and histrionic fantasy story-telling.
Let's quiet things down a bit with the elegiac/ecstatic compositions of Florian Fricke, who as Popol Vuh (taken from the Mayan creation myth), drew from classical, ethnic and devotional music to create, if not all actual soundtracks (he composed for Werner Herzog, among others), at least soundscapes. Popol Vuh was the least rockist of all krautrock, but entirely kosmische and utterly essential. It would be impossible to chronicle the krautrock bands without including their most legendary possibly their most influential wunderkinds, known as The Can (later amended to just Can). Combining ethnic music elements, circular improvisatory song structures, and unhinged stream-of-consciousness vocals (first briefly from the American Malcolm Mooney then more prolifically from the Japanese Damo Suzuki, who both sang in English). Can were and continue to be one of the greatest spacerock bands of all time, as this epic illustrates.
And we wrap this survey up with the enigmatic Faust, the tricksters of the bunch, who dabbled in folk, experimental, musique concrete, tape manipulation, and the heavy instrumental psychedelia that would influence multiple future genres, especially that of sturm-und-drang post rock (next month's segment will be my definitive post rock set!). The track I've included is somewhat atypical of their sound, but is featured for two reasons: the title is a piss-take on the musicians of the genre's disdain for the demeaning label kraut, but simultaneous beats the motorik bands at their own game in a blazing maelstrom of hypnotic sonic mayhem that only Faust could pull off (check their latter day "comeback" work in the 90s and 00s for examples of where this has led them).
This, kids, is krautrock! What do all these bands have in common? Well, in a nutshell, they're all... sehr kosmische. I highly recommend continued study here: The Crack In The Cosmic Egg
The following tracks should appear in the player below: Düsseldorf - La Düsseldorf - s/t Hallogallo - Neu! - s/t Erikönig - Michael Rother - Fernwärme Walky-Talky - Harmonia - Deluxe Sowiesoso - Cluster - Sowiesoso Fly And The Collision Of Comas Sola - Tangerine Dream - Alpha Centauri Stratovarius - Kraftwerk - Kraftwerk I Amboss - Ash Ra Tempel - s/t Immer Lustig - Guru Guru - Kanguru Soap Shop Rock - Amon Duul II - Yeti Hosianna Mantra - Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra Halleluhwah - Can - Tago Mago Krautrock - Faust - Faust IV
Oh yes... the SPACEROCK! Sorry for the delay, but since we were getting off our target of a new post on the first of every month, and because of a multitude of terrestrial issues and events to attend to, I decided to blow off September completely and move right on up to October. Okay by you? In the long run I not only managed to put together a singularly smoking set for this month, but to get a head start on some "educational courses" for the November and December installments, not to mention beginning to compile the auditory event that is the January Best Of segment which will reflect on 2010. Quite a year it's been, and what a massive couple-few months we have left. Of course there are those that say there is no time in in space...
We begin with a bang of bombast in the form of a re-release of criminally overlooked 90s British garage/psych monsters, The Heads. Then, in tribute to their Bay Area appearance this Saturday, a track from The Flaming Lips' most recent album (not counting their song-by-song cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon), the epic double-album Embryonic. Another band toiling in relative obscurity, the underappreciated all-male Canadian 4-piece Women concoct a heady mix of post-punk dissonance (a stripped-down Sonic Youth?) and art-rock absurdity (a less-abrasive This Heat?), as this track from their second album demonstrates. And in what is perhaps the sleeper of the year, Sleigh Bells comes from left field, marrying a coquettish child star's saccharine R&B-esque vocals with a hardcore guitarist's blistering overdriven riffs , and leaving nothing but scorched earth and a smile on your face. Fun stuff!
A semi-contrived segue back into garage/psych of a dark and scuzzy bent is up next with tracks from Jesus & Mary Chain worshiping Woven Bones, newly-gone electro-shoegaze Crocodiles, and a new one from Texas trippers The Black Angels that adds newfound color to their previously dark monotone.
And now for something completely different: modern Swedish progsters Dungen are back with a more exploratory collection that expands on their early 70s influences, to great effect. Nick Cave and his new band of seedy old debauchers Grinderman continue to put a heretofore unseen ragged angsty edge to his Southern goth tendencies. And for comparison's sake the next track is from the late great Memphis originators of said genre The Grifters, whose 4-track fidelity surpasses most massive studio productions. They are sorely missed.
Where to go from here...? How about off the deep end with some damaged instrumental improv from enigmatic rockers Peeesseye & Talibam! (that's their exclamation point)...? An extended track from Oneida's likely best album of a few years back, Secret Wars...? A sincerely tongue-in-cheek homage to krautrock's motorik groove from electronic-gone-organic Norweegie "space disco" master Prins Thomas...?
Seems like the only logical departure here is for the heavenly climes of ecstatic dream pop, from blisstronic duo Viernes, the shimmering vocals of Scots one-offs Simian, and the homecoming kings of early-90s shoegaze Chapterhouse (this in honor to their upcoming San Francisco appearance). A pseudo-Eastern synth-psych mantra from Brooklyn/Boston hippie-futurists (a trio of current and former hare krishna practitioners - no shit!) Prince Rama next, followed by a new track from modern krautronica duo Cloudland Canyon, and a blast of shoegazing post-metal shrapnel from Miami outfit Torche.
The illustrious Black Mountain, featured in this space many a time, have put out a contender for album of the year... yet again. But you'll have to wait until January for a track from that one. Instead I wrap up this set with a slow-burn opus from their previous album that shows yet another dimension to the Vancouver rockers who worship at the altar of Sabbath, Zeppelin and Floyd, yet manage to make the trope of those godfathers sound new again.
See you in November! I'll try to be on time...
The following tracks should appear in the player below:
Spacerock Continuum Intro - bRambles -BeeDub's Spacerock Continuum Quad - The Heads - Relaxing With... The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine - The Flaming Lips - Embryonic China Steps - Women - Public Strain Treats - Sleigh Bells - Treats Creepy Bone - Woven Bones - In And Out And Back Again Stoned To Death - Crocodiles - Sleep Forever Bad Vibrations - The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream Högdalstoppen - Dungen - Skit I Allt Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man - Grinderman - Grinderman 2 Black Fuel Incinerator - The Grifters - Crappin' You Negative You Tried (To Eat It) - Peeesseye & Talibam! - s/t Changes In The City - Oneida - Secret Wars Sauerkraut - Prins Thomas - s/t Sinister Love - Viernes - Sinister Devices The Wisp - Simian - Chemistry Is What We Are Falling Down - Chapterhouse - Whirlpool Om Mane Padme Hum - Prince Rama - Shadow Temple Mothlight Pt. 2 - Cloudland Canyon - Fin Eaves Out Again - Torche - Songs For Singles Bright Lights - Black Mountain - In The Future
Ah well... all apologies, my friends. Those of you who know me understand that I've been attending to terrestrial affairs of a massively celebratory portent. That, and... well, I've been caught up in a lazy hazy summer - after all, it IS August. Sometimes you just gotta soak up some of the most glorious of earthbound pleasures before returning to the cold airless confines of the spacerock satellite.
But no excuses! The music must go on! And I think I've got a doozy of a set for you... a tad scattershot and helter-skelter perhaps, yet encompassing various and disparate factions of Ye Olde Space Rock as they enter my stream of consciousness. Onwards!
Superstar DJ duo The Chemical Brothers have always had a psychedelic side to their block-rockin' beats, as this track from their stellar return-to-form from this year aptly illustrates. Githead, led by former Wire frontman Colin Newman, spans the gamut from Wirey postpunk minimalism to shoegaze, bliss pop, and modern motorik, as in the case of this track. Another track here from Tame Impala's recent release, fast-tracking its way to best album of the year - this track shows why. I just can't get enough of them!!! Another surprise from the realm of DJ/electronica here from the illustrious DJ Spooky, from his recent album that sounds ever more like an electro-organic hybrid, and that features not one but TWO instrumental (and not sampled either?!?!?) Led Zeppelin covers including this one, probably the Zep's most psychedelic song.
Speaking of DJs, the Scottish dancefloor outfit Simian's Mobile Disco was not always such. They began, bizarrely enough, as Simian, a dream pop band saturated with blissful Beach Boys derived harmonies - this track is probably their most stand-out, and the refrain "chemistry is what we are" gets me every time. Berlinian post rock-tronica trio To Rococo Rot (love the palindromic name!) are back after a six-year hiatus, sounding more refined and sophisticated than ever, and we're the luckier for it. High Places are a primitivist mostly-electronic duo that incorporate a lot of faux-African rhythms in their play along with lovely soaring female vocals, but I chose this track for its relevance within this set, as the distant shimmering guitar sheen conjures vintage krautrock explorations (think Ash Ra Tempel). For the polyrhythmic portion of this playlist look no further than The Books, with their own fine return-to-form released this year and possibly topping all previous releases in vision and diversity, and also hyper-rhythmists Mahjongg, who returned this year with their most booty-shaking yet still head-spinning release yet (although I culled this track from their previous album).
Chicago power trio Mass Shivers come to me without much context, but I find their nerd-punk math-psych ramblings enigmatically compelling. Another difficult-to-quantify unit, Indian Jewelry returned with yet another album of dark-psych agit-prop electro-glam musings that doesn't quite measure up to their previous work but I plucked this gem from this less-distinguished album because I love them so much. Hopefully they've got plenty of heady material left in them for the next one. Next up, the bastard children of vintage German motorik La Dusseldorf show us how Neu! and Kraftwerk weren't the only purveyors of that uniquely Teutonic trance rhythm.
Speaking of enigmas (I was, wasn't I?) the next two artists define the "creative unit toiling in obscurity for the better of all mankind, so abstruse and unique that they defy category" ethos that I love so dearly, and they both rank with my favorite bands of all time. Not only are they obscure, they're from exotic lands: Larsen, despite the Swedish name, are from Turin, Italy, and supposedly laid down initial tracks from behind an opaque screen for producer Michael Gira (Swans), who never actually met them before signing them to his label. Myth? Legend? PR gimmick? Who cares? Their music often appears to pulse, to breathe, to be a living thing, and their inventiveness and diversity continue to inspire. Also musically diverse to an infinite degree is Pori, Finland's mighty Circle, a band who have put out dozens of hard-to-find releases encompassing everything from postrock, folk, ambient, free-improv and even hardcore metal. Their only constant is a self-referential repetitive circularity to their mostly instrumental (except when they're singing in Finnish or a made-up language they call Meronian) blitzkrieg. One of the most exciting avant-rock acts in history and still going strong despite the fact that most of the world has never heard of them and probably never will.
Bringing us a textbook example of instrumental postrock, Red Sparowes nevertheless manage to bring justification to the much-maligned genre. Beloved yet long-defunct Jersey boys Chavez managed to bring angular 90s indie rock (Polvo?) into the Marshall stacks guitar worship of arena rock (Smashing Pumpkins?) - after only two albums and a recent remastered repackage from which this is taken, they are sorely missed. Fans of the Spacerock Continuum know I love to stack the end of the set with longer more mind-fucking tracks, and this one is no exception: first a guitar sludge-and-shrapnel behemoth from Long Beach, CA's Magic Lantern, then an epic cinemascopic journey through the western high desert from the aptly-named Scenic (featuring former members of Savage Republic) that summons a peyote-fueled vista of Joshua trees, boulder formations, rocky arroyos, coyotes, rattlesnakes, sandstone canyons...
The following tracks should appear in the player below:
Spacerock Continuum Intro - bRambles -BeeDub's Spacerock Continuum Dissolve - The Chemical Brothers - Further Space Life - Githead - Art Pop It Is Not Meant To Be - Tame Impala - Innerspeaker No Quarter Dub - DJ Spooky - The Secret Song Drop And Roll - Simian - Chemistry Is What We Are Seele - To Rococo Rot - Speculation Canada - High Places - Vs. Mankind I Am Who I Am - The Books - The Way Out Tell The Police The Truth - Mahjongg - Kontpab Because The Sun - Mass Shivers - Ecstatic Eyes Glow Glossy Tono Bungay - Indian Jewelry - Totaled Time - La Düsseldorf - La Düsseldorf In Illusions Of Order - Red Sparowes - The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer Flight 96 - Chavez - Better Days Will Haunt You Deathshead Hawkmoth - Magic Lantern - High Beams A Journey Through The Outer Reaches Of Inner Space - Scenic - The Acid Gospel Experience
Here it is folks (finally!): by overwhelming popular demand, it's The Great Spacerock Continuum Podcast Experiment! New! Improved! Transportable! The deluxe take-it-with-you version of this month's "podcast" is ready for the busy spacerockers on the go. Remember: this isn't a true podcast, just an mp3 that you can download:
