Not all spacerock...

...and not all time. That was the original motto of my previous webcast and it still stands today for this monthly podcast. Just to clarify, spacerock is the blanket term I use to describe the majority of my taste in music, whether it's more accurately described as psychedelic, post rock or just plain trippy shit, THAT's what I like (along with a modicum of straight up rock, pop, jazz and/or electronica), and I hope you do too. This installment is full of hard-to-categorize esoterica that only loosely qualifies as spacerock even under my guidelines, and although it's all over the place I hope it all makes sense together and is sequenced to flow into your cerebral cortex and release it into the stratosphere. As the Beatles once said, "Turn off your mind, relax and float..." into the Spacerock Continuum.

We start with the enigmatic Akron/Family - are they a cult? a commune? well they're definitely more than a band - whose unique take on freak folk takes a cue from the more lysergic moments of said Liverpuddlians (if you're not acquainted with or enamored of free-form noise then I must advise you to please bear with this song past the first minute mark) and then abruptly dropping in on vintage Butthole Surfers in atrack from a 1989 live performance that rips both The Doors' "The End" and Black Sabbath's *cough cough* "Sweet Leaf" a new one. Then in honor of tomorrow night's San Francisco appearance (which yours truly will be attending) a track from mighty Japanese sludge-rawkers BORIS, from their fantastic latest release Smile, which finds them really stretching their own boundaries (there's a Japanese version and an American one which feature different songs, different mixes of the same songs, different titles for the same songs and a different sequence, both of which are indispensable).

From there it's deeper into undefinable esoterica with No Age and Indian Jewelry, two hot young undie rock bands that write their own rules, then a dip into the sublime with Mogwai's subdued take on the Spacemen Three chestnut "Honey" (a rarity included on the new remastered version of Mogwai's seminal Young Team album), followed by the rockier side of shoegaze from Swervedriver and Eric's Trip, one of whom recently reformed and the other who definitely should. The next sequence of tracks really expands the limits of my spacerock definition by dabbling in English electronica (Fourtet), Finnish free-folk (Paavoharju), French pop-tronica (Air) and two groups who have gone so far past blurring the distinction between electronic and organic that I could coin the term post-triphop to describe them (The Notwist from Germany, Portishead from the UK), but I won't.

Next up, some modern psych with roots firmly in the past (The Black Angels, Grails), some forward-looking postrock (Collections of Colonies of Bees, featuring members of the late/great Pele, and Chicago O.G.s Tortoise), some modern kraut-tronica from Cloudland Canyon - think Cluster or Tangerine Dream - and some classic Japanese acid rock influenced by the krautrock school from Acid Mothers Temple - think Amon Duul or Guru Guru - bringing this set full circle. I won't claim it's always an easy listen, but it's not supposed to be. It takes work to free your mind, and I'm always happy to assist!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Moment - Akron/Family - Akron/Family & Angels of Light
Sweatloaf - Butthole Surfers - Double Live
Statement - Boris - Smile
Sleeper Hold - No Age - Nouns
Seventh Heaven - Indian Jewelry - Free Gold!
Honey - Mogwai - Young Team Remastered
Duel - Swervedriver - Mezcal Head
Belly - Eric's Trip - Love Tara
Sun Drums and Soil - Fourtet - Everything Ecstatic
Valo Tihkuu Kaiken Läpi - Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää
Surfing On A Rocket - Air - Talkie Walkie
On Planet Off - The Notwist - The Devil, You & Me
We Carry On - Portishead - Third
Never/Ever - The Black Angels - Directions To See A Ghost
Take Refuge - Grails - Take Refuge in Clean Living
Untitled - Collections of Colonies of Bees - Fa.ce (a
Gamera - Tortoise - A Lazarus Taxon
Silver-Tongued Sisyphus - Cloudland Canyon - Silver-Tongued Sisyphus
5 Seconds Demon - Acid Mothers Temple & Cosmic Inferno - Demons From Nipples

Happy In-independence Day!

As the smoke from forest fires and celebratory fireworks clears - and the floods pass and the twisters subside and the disasters of biblical proportions diminish somewhat - did you take the time, earthlings, to ponder the fate of your country on your Independence Day? Or the fate of your world on this upcoming Election Day? The future health of your blue-green planet (which is getting browner all the time) hangs in the balance. Please take the time to educate yourselves and vote accordingly. Meantime, I'll provide a spacerock soundtrack to sooth and inspire!

This episode begins with some mind-altering pummeling (that would be the brown acid) from stalwart weirdos like The Butthole Surfers from a classic '89 live performance, 2-piece newbies No Age channeling a prog-damaged version of vintage SST Records, noise transcendentalists Fuck Buttons, and the arch-drude hisself, Julian Cope, performing his most bombastic tour-de-force ever. Pay especially close attention to the brain-frying Jucifer track from their astoundingly diverse and delicious latest album, one of the best of the year so far (every song is about Marie Antoinette!), and the somewhat stunted yet sincere cover of Pink Floyd's sprawling epic "Echoes" by David Yow's Qui (Scratch Acid, The Jesus Lizard, et al.).

From there we move into some classic/modern psych from the Chameleons (covering the Beatles' spacerockingest song) and Austin's Black Angels, who effortlessly blew minds, mine included, in their Chicago appearance with The Warlocks for which which I beamed down last month. Then into some languid love songs of the lysergic variety from shoegazers Slowdive and M83, as well as... Queen?!?!? Next up, a track from Brad Laner's latest solo album back-to-back with a track from his finest work with nineties noisegazers Medicine, followed for good measure by a track from one of the many collaborations between ambient pioneer Brian Eno and krautronica originators Cluster, circa '78.

The last third of the sets goes from weird to weirder to weird-and-HEAVY, with some esoteric instruMENTALists and the monsters of post rock. Pay particular attention to the tracks from offkilter agitprop primitivists Indian Jewelry and psilocybic psychrockin' Portlandians Grails, whose respective latest albums are among the very best of 2008. Hang on to your hats and glasses kids, it's gonna be a wild ride...!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Behind Every Great Man - Jucifer - L'Autrichienne
Teen Creeps - No Age - Nouns
Ribs Out - Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
Dum Dum - Butthole Surfers - Double Live
Echoes - Qui - Love's Miracle
Reynard the Fox - Julian Cope - Fried
Tomorrow Never Knows - The Chameleons - Strange Times
Deer-Ree-Shee - The Black Angels - Directions To See A Ghost
Some Velvet Morning - Slowdive - Souvlaki
She Makes Me - Queen - Sheer Heart Attack
Graveyard Girl - M83 - Saturdays = Youth
June Gloom - Brad Laner - Neighbor Singing
Aruca - Medicine - Shot Forth Self Living
The Belldog - Cluster & Eno - After the Heat
Recent Bedroom - Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Carolina Foxtail/Sea Chirp - Cloudland Canyon - Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004
B - Ecstatic Sunshine - Way
Embryo Imbroglio - Thank You - Terrible Two
Too Much Honkytonking - Indian Jewelry - Free Gold!
Death Rides A Horse - Russian Circles - Enter
Stoned at the Taj Again - Grails - Take Refuge in Clean Living
Ex-Cowboy - Mogwai - Come On Die Young

Summertime...

...and the livin' is easy. I just got back from beamin' myself down to the vineyards and valleys of Sonoma CA to laze about in hammocks with a chilled glass o' earthly (yet heavenly) vino. What a day of fun in the sun... a spacerocker could get used to this. But instead I zapped myself right back to my cold, metallic orbiting satellite to bring YOU some serious spacerock! Cuz it's time for another installment of the Spacerock Continuum, and this set really brings the RAWK!!! From the ballistic motorik juggernauts of Finland's Circle, Japan's Solar Anus and the American sister bands Turing Machine and Maserati (with their irreverent piss-takes on the Synchronicity tracks by... The Police?!?!?) through the neu-metal of The Sword from Austin, Boris from Tokyo and Danava from Portland, and on through some slinky/sinuous American post rock and some classic "unclassifiable" (especially note the track from the always amazing and enigmatic Sun City Girls, from a recently-released collection recorded at the same time as their 1990 epic Torch of the Mystics), culminating in some experiMENTAL electronica from the ancient kraut masters, Cluster and Kraftwerk (80's-style robot rock this is not! So very psychedelic these fine young Teutons once were!). So, pour yourself a cold one, lay back in the sun, and enjoy...

Is it summer where you are?

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Andexelt - Circle - Andexelt
The Extreme North - Solar Anus - Skull Alcoholic
Synchronicity III - Turing Machine - Zwei
Synchronicity IV - Maserati - Inventions for the New Season
Next Saturn (My Neighbor Satan) - Boris - Smile
To Take the Black - The Sword - Gods of the Earth
The Emerald Snow of Sleep - Danava - Unonou
Hippies - Tall Firs - Too Old to Die Young
Hanging from the Rafters - Human Bell - s/t
Disco & Haze - Do Make Say Think - The Whole Story of Glory
The Dog's A Vapour - Bauhaus - Go Away White
Drugs - Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Out in the Kitchen - Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Wormed by Leonard
100 Pounds of Black Olives - Sun City Girls - You're Never Alone with a Cigarette
Nice Butterfly Mask - Sunburned Hand of the Man - Fire Escape
Hollywood - Cluster - Zuckerzeit
Kling Klang - Kraftwerk - Kraftwerk II

April showers bring May flowers

...but not in SPACE. Out here all you have is vast expanses of distance, the better to fill with the very best in mind-expanding music. This month's installment blasts off scattering red-hot shards of shoegaze, both original-era and 21st century, then careens throughout an asteroid field of psychedelia in all its guises, from underground garage psych to Madchester rave-psych to vintage krautrock and modern motorik... get the idea? If you don't, you will. So just sit back, smoke 'em if you got 'em, and enjoy your journey!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Need - Pacific UV - Longplay 2
Come In Alone - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Sugar Crystals - Airiel - The Battle of Sealand
Everso - The Telescopes - As Approved by the Committee to Keep Music Evil
Drain Cosmetics - Serena-Maneesh - s/t
Hurricane Heart Attack - The Warlocks - Phoenix LP
That Timothy Leary Shit - The Volta Sound - This Is the Yin and the Yang
Brainstorm Interlude - The Verve - A Northern Soul
The Woods - Tall Firs - s/t
Mars Ascendent - Souvenir's Young America - An Ocean Without Water
Mosquito Lantern - Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound - Ekranoplan
Forever - Racoo-oo-oon - The Cave of Spirits Forever
Raw Backwards - Sunburned Hand of the Man - Fire Escape
Pulses - White Rainbow - Prism of Eternal Now
We'll Never Make It Out of Here Alive - The Shalabi Effect - Pink Abyss
Slip Inside This House - Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Donkey - Working for a Nuclear Free City - Businessmen & Ghosts
Don't Mind If I Don't - The Turing Machine - Zwei
Will You Smile Again for Me - And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Worlds Apart
Amboss - Ash Ra Tempel - s/t

Okay, we're back!

No theme this time, just a random assortment of tunes representing the spectrum of spacerock, chosen and sequenced for maximum listening pleasure. We start with some blissed-out Pacific Northwest artists, from Portland's sadly defunct Yume Bitsu, to their spinoff collaboration with members of Landing heavily-conceptualized as Surface of Eceyon, to their homegirl Honey Owen's enthralling Valet (look for her video at the bottom of this post!), to former Yume Bitser Franz Pritchard's solo work as Version (keep an eye out next time for White Rainbow, featuring his Yume co-conspirator Adam Forkner, who also plays with the aforementioned Eceyon gang), to Seattle's Voyager One's take on Spacemen 3-inspired rawk. A foray north of the border for Canada's finest including Valley of the Giants (a supergroup featuring members of Montreal's postrock elite), The Besnard Lakes and Sam (Osama) Shalabi's Shalabi Effect. A quick side trip to Norway for Salvatore's tribal stomp and down to Belgium for the strangest-ever nonamerican New Weird Americana from Ignatz. We then venture into a somewhat motorik set from artists both new and old, San Francisco's Tussle and Wooden Shjips, krautrock OGs Can (with Malcolm Mooney's stream-of-consciousness vocal ranting, straight outta 1969!), and the mighty motorik triple-threat of Trans Am, The Turing Machine and Quickspace, followed by the "8-bit shoegaze" of the Depreciation Guild. Then things get weird, with the loopier side of psychedelia from Black Moth Super Rainbow, Animal Collective, and a kraut-psych gem from 1972 by Guru Guru. Whew! That should keep you busy for a bit! Expect another installment sooner than later - we've got to make up for lost time!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Song One - Yume Bitsu - Golden Vessyl of Sound
The Open Sea - Surface of Eceyon - The King Beneath the Mountain
Kehaar - Valet - Naked Acid
Come Out (K-Hole Version) - Version - Comeoutoshowdem
Asleep In A Stereo Field - Voyager One - From the New Nation of Long Shadows
Westworld - Valley of the Giants - s/t
Devastation - The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
Imps - The Shalabi Effect - Pink Abyss
Roots and Weather - Salvatore - Luxus
The Dreams - Ignatz - II
Kindermusik - Tussle - Telescope Mind
Father Cannot Yell - Can - Monster Movie
Losin' Time - Wooden Shjips - s/t
Cologne - Trans Am - Surrender to the Night
Bleach It Black - The Turing Machine - Zwei
Coca Lola - Quickspace - Precious Falling
Digital Solace - The Depreciation Guild - In Her Gentle Jaws
Sun Lips - Black Moth Super Rainbow - Dandelion Gum
Peacebone - Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Oxymoron - Guru Guru - Kanguru



Valet - "Kehaar" Live 2-19-08 in Atlanta @ drunken unicorn from analogmonkey.tv on Vimeo.

Curses!!!

Foiled by technology again! Why is it that I am eternally battling that which mankind has made to help mankind?!?!? My external hard drive (the LaCie d2 Quadra), the one that contains my entire space rock library, has CRASHED! Is this, as my lovely wife asserts, some sort of karmic retribution? What have I done to deserve THIS?!?!? I've got my orbiting tech support satellite working on it, but, obviously, there will certainly be a delay in my delivery of the next installment of the Spacerock Continuum. I sincerely apologize. Tune in again soon! In the meantime I hope to quench your endless thirst for quality space rock with this, THE greatest space rock song OF ALL TIME, by the almighty godfathers Pink Floyd, shown here shirtless and unwashed in the dust of the ancient coliseum, 'Live at Pompeii':

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:

What IS Space Rock?

Space Rock means many things to many people, but here it will be our blanket term for rock music that, sonically, takes the listener to outer realms... takes the listener on journeys, not to urban conflagrations or pastoral settings, not wild jungles, glacial wastelands, desert highways nor epic mountaintops, for, while those are all well and good, as the true devotee knows, "space is the place."

Space rock takes you to the cosmos and back again, and while the subgenres abound... psychedelic, acid rock, post rock, progressive rock, shoegaze, experimental, et al... the Germans had a term to encompass it all: KOSMISCHE. And that's where we're aiming for here in the Spacerock Continuum: sharing the truly COSMIC music of this world with the eyes-and-ears-wide-open listeners who are ready to ride that rocket into outer space.

We start, of course, with the Spacemen 3 and their progeny, Spiritualized and Spectrum, who, while they didn't invent it by any means, managed to create the best-ever simulacrum of space rock of the post punk generation: "Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To", although the music is all the drugs one really needs. Going back further, the obvious choice is Pink Floyd, who took us to the dark side of the moon, as well as their peers in the 1970's, the krautrockers, who skewered the po-faced psychedelians with a healthy dose of the absurd (Faust, Amon Duul) and the transcendent (Can, Tangerine Dream).

In the 90's we had a dose of fashionable space rock with the "shoegazers" (My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse, Ride, Slowdive), introverted noisemongering British stoodents who worshiped the Velvet Underground and never left home without their fuzz pedals. Throughout the post-rave era a handful of electronic artists, especially those lumped in the unfortunately-monikered IDM (Intelligent Dance Music?!?!? an oxymoron?!?!?) movement, endeavored to "take you there" without a guitar in sight. The new millennium brought us the dreaded journalist's coinage POST ROCK, a meaningless yet somewhat apt classification to describe new instrumental music (from Tortoise to Mogwai to Godspeed You! Black Emperor) whose sole similarity is a complete lack of concern for the pop charts, as was true with their predecessors. And of course, experiMENTAL music has always been around - say no more!

All in all, it's all SPACE ROCK. Here's a snippet, a taste, a wholly inadequate 2-hour representation of where space rock came from, and where it's going. It's only the tip of a vast iceberg, as subsequent episodes of the Spacerock Continuum will illustrate. But it gives this silly podcast some sorely needed CONTEXT, in case there was any confusion. Enjoy!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Revolution - Spacemen 3 - Playing With Fire
If I Were With Her Now - Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies
A Housewife Love Song - Starflyer 59 - Gold
Tall Winds - Paik - The Orson Fader
Sad and Lonely - Secret Machines- Now Here Is Nowhere
Young Men Dead - The Black Angels - Passover
Interstellar Overdrive - Pink Floyd - Relics
Run Run Run - The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
We Ask You To Ride - Wooden Shjips - s/t
The Chocolate Maiden's Misty Summer Morning - Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound - Ekranoplan
Oh Yeah - Can - Tago Mago
Christmas Steps - Mogwai - Come On Die Young
Over The Wall - Echo and the Bunnymen - Heaven Up Here
Rave Down - Swervedriver - Raise
Soon - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Le'espalace - Do Make Say Think - s/t
Belgian Wake-Up Drill - Grails - Black Tar Prophecies
One Million-Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning - The Flaming Lips - Oh My Gawd!
Arctic - Pan Sonic - Kesto