We're back! Let the sun shine on!
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:
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
