December Double Play!

Last year when the holiday season rolled around, I felt compelled to offer up a double playlist, in the spirit of giving and all that blah blah blah. So why not do it again this year? It's not like there's a shortage of stellar music to choose from. So pour yourself a hot toddy, sit back by the fire, spark one if ya got one and enjoy your double dose of spacerock. In fact, these two playlists are absolute monsters, a nonstop barrage, no punches pulled, no holds barred. In fact, I'm not even sure you people are ready for this... ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?!?!? Okay then...

A funny thing happened after Mercury Rev's second album Boces: they lost their lunatic frontman David Baker, and guitarist Jonathan Donahue, upon seizing the reigns, seemed to have lost his distortion pedals. The lighter, more mercurial Mercury model has done some great work since then, but nothing comes close their first and best album, represented here with our lead-off track. Completely unrelated come Portland's mysterious freejam ensemble Eternal Tapestry with a track from some limited-release CDR. Next up, yet another track from Oneida's sprawling triple CD from this year, one of '09's best releases.

So with last month's epic and ever-expanding americana set I finally realized that Memphis' gritty lysergic blooz punx the Grifters have been sorely underrepresented here, so I'll be making up for that in the future, and here we have a quintessential stomper from them, followed by more dark South(west)ern Gothic from from Spindrift, and another of this year's best, Sleepy Sun (more to come from them!). Another band I dearly love that I had to shake free of the mothballs and give new life is the mighty Snowmen, from San Francisco's pre-dotcom musical renaissance, circa '95. Transitioning nicely, Sonic Youth have yet another entry from their best album in years, also from 2009, followed by the refreshingly noisy Wavves and the jarringly berserk Mahjonng.

Right about there we get a taste of African (and African-American) psychedelia with Johannesburg, South Africa's BLK JKS and Brooklyn, NY (by way of Cleveland, OH)'s Dragons of Zynth. Where else to go but with one of the greatest bands of all time, The Flaming Lips, this track culled from their current release, another contender for Best of '09. Okay, so I can't get enough Cave, so sue me - this track's from this year as well, as are the next few contenders for the year-end roundup, slightly mellowing noisemongers Fuck Buttons, lo-fi garage trippers Crocodiles, and the "loudest band in New York", A Place To Bury Strangers.

Demented and demonic prog-metalist Maynard James Keenan gets alternate ends of his career represented with his recent side project Puscifer and his full time band Tool's very first album. Keeping it heavy is metallic postrockers Russian Circle, then a psychedelic tribute to an obscure 80's porn star by non-Seattlites (they were from Providence, Rhode Island) Space Needle. Wrapping up our first set is one of the dreamiest-ever tracks from sadly overlooked Aussie psych-pop godfathers The Church.

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Chasing A Bee - Mercury Rev - Yerself Is Steam
Brain Drain - Eternal Tapestry - Mushroom Owl
Luxury Travel - Oneida - Rated O
Holmes - The Grifters - Crappin' You Negative
Colt's Crime - Spindrift - The West
White Dove - Sleepy Sun - Embrace
V-8 Vega - The Snowmen - Soundproof
Anti-Orgasm - Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Vermin - Wavves - Wavvves
Blivable Dogggiiiieeeee - Mahjonng - Raydoncong
Lakeside - BLK JKS - Mystery
Breaker - Dragons Of Zynth - Coronation Thieves
Silver Trembling Hands - The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
High, I Am - Cave - Psychic Psummer
Rough Steez - Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Refuse Angels - Crocodiles - Summer Of Hate
Ego Death - A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Vagina Mine - Puscifer - V Is For Vagina
Sober - Tool - Undertow
Geneva - Russian Circles - Geneva
Hypatia Lee - Space Needle - The Moray Eels Swallow The Space Needle
Is This Where You Live? - The Church - Of Skins And Heart



Ready for Round 2?!?!?

This one starts off with an extended motorik motif featuring enigmatic lo-fi deconstructionists Blues Control, continuing with Cave (YES AGAIN!) off their first album this time, Eternal Tapestry (see above), jangle-psychsters The Feelies (circa 1980), and early Can, with original vocalist Malcolm Mooney at his most unhinged. Speaking of Can, and speaking of Thin White Rope (weren't we? see the November installment!), the next track, a Can song, would have fulfilled both the americana and spacerock cover versions sets in one fell swoop! Well, better late than never. And no spacerock set would be complete without an homage to a particular line of guitar fuzz effects pedals, this time from skullfucker extraordinaire Skullflower.

From this point on I relinquish all responsibility as to the damage the next couple tracks are capable of inflicting upon the unsuspecting listener's mind. Suffice it to say, it's an extended mid-set mind journey courtesy of free-folk improv ensemble Sunburned Hand of the Man, and oscillator-'n'-tapes pioneers White Noise (featuring 60s-era BBC composer and temptress Delia Derbyshire - Dr. Who anyone?!?!?!). To bring us out of the analog synth morass is a feedback symphony from electronica producer Nathan Fake, the bliss pop of a digitally forged variety from Delorean, and a slip into an electronic epiphany with Mountains.

A slow return to consciousness via Piano Magic, then being transported into the ether with yet another self-referentially titled track from the stellar new Oneida collection, and finally taking it into the stratosphere with Iowan shamans Raccoo-oo-oon should be about all you need to ring in the new year and hang in there until January's BEST OF 2009 installment! Bon voyage.

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Good Morning - Blues Control - Local Flavor
4.24.06 - Cave - Hunt Like Devil
Temporal Starshine Voyager - Eternal Tapestry - Mushroom Owl
Forces At Work - The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
Uphill - Can - Delay 1968
Yoo Doo Right - Thin White Rope - Sack Full Of Silver
Big Muff - Skullflower - Ruins
No Magic Man - Sunburned Hand Of The Man - No Magic Man
The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell - White Noise - An Electric Storm
The Sky Was Pink - Nathan Fake - Drowning In A Sea Of Love
Seasun - Delorean - Ayrton Senna
Summer Of Dub - Color Filter - I Often Think In Music
Add Infinity - Mountains - Choral
Waking Up - Piano Magic - Low Birth Weight
O - Oneida - Rated O
Forever/In The Woods - Raccoo-oo-oon - The Cave Of Spirits Forever

Don't be a fool...

...stay in school.

Pay attention, class... school is still in session. Here we are with the third and final installment of Spacerock School before we break for the winter solstice holidays. I hope you've been studying!

Quiz #1: What the heck is this?!?!?


Quiz #2: What do spacerock and the musical genre known as americana have in common? Trick question? Nothing, you say? Wrong! Despite the inherent earthiness or implied groundedness of americana, as it were, many of its practitioners over the years have dabbled in the spacey and psychedelic sides (outer space and inner space, respectively) of rock music, and this set should illustrate that beyond dispute.

Starting off with a bang of a Neil Youngian stomp from MV & EE (aka Matt Valentine & Erika Elder) in one of their many incarnations (here with The Golden Road - see Tower Recordings below) and leading into the neotraditional 'Merican southern gothic ravings of Nick Cave, on his first solo album from back in '85, and the beloved Gun Club (RIP Jeffrey Lee Pierce) and you should be getting an inkling of where this journey's headed. Next up a triple dose of the defunct but influential "Paisley Underground" scene of mid-80s Los Angeles where many of the loosely affiliated bands also had a cowpunk edge (see also The Long Ryders, Rank & File, The Knitters, et al.), here represented by the inimitable first draft of The Dream Syndicate (well, second if you count a bass player change), their frequent stagemates Green On Red (bandleaders Steve Wynn and Dan Stuart even collaborated on the barroom bluster one-off effort as Danny & Dusty), and Davis, CA's mighty True West (sadly I have no Thin White Rope, their hometown brethren, to offer you at this time, although they would fit nicely). *

Next up, Memphis' gritty Grifters showcase the explicit connection between these genres with one of their many space-twang epics, and New Jersey's Velvets-via-southern folk originators The Feelies take us to a space rodeo. Things take a turn for the truly psychedelic with two of Portland, OR's most enigmatic experimental ensembles (and there are many, make no mistake - what's in the water in Portland?), the currently prolific Jackie-O Motherfucker with a nod to the traditional side of their "music", and the manic hippie bluegrass of 60s-era absurdists The Holy Modal Rounders. Dropping off the cliff into somnolent valleys are kinfolk Brightblack Morning Light and Sleepy Sun, before we are jolted back to "reality". Can it get even weirder? Any regular Spacerock Continuum subscriber knows the answer to that. Howzabout a Kiwi guitar mangler known only as Pumice? A Belgian faux-Appalachian bloozist who takes his name from a cartoon cat named Ignatz? Or the peyote-saturated wisdom of Arizona postpunkers The Meat Puppets?

Many a hand
Began to scan
Around for the next plateau
Some said it was Greenland
And some said Mexico

Others decided
It was nowhere
'Cept for where they stood
But those were all just guesses
Wouldn't help you if they could

The vast vista of the western horizon is audible in the wide-open expanse of the music of circus sideshow snakeoil salesmen Spindrift, transcendent brother 'n' sister-led SF rockers Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, LA surf cowboy harmonizers Beachwood Sparks, and desert-fried heavy minimalists Earth. Then we're a-goin' folky with Ben Chasney's Six Organs of Admittance, Matt Valentine (aka MV)'s Tower Recordings and the godfather of experimental acoustic guitar John Fahey. Vancouver, BC weighs in with The Sadies' twist-n-twang, the enigmatic psych-rock traveling commune Akron/Family drops another lengthy epic, and a band I never thought would grace this podcast, The Grateful Dead, illustrates the direct lineage between American traditional music and free-space jams.

A quintessential example of the genre of americana, Wilco, is also at times one of it's most avant-garde explorationists (especially since inviting spazzjazz guitar hero Nels Cline into the fold), here bringing a krautrock noise drone to the mix. Avant-folk refugees from the Chicago post rock scene Califone see fit to take us on a 16-minute trance-inducing ramble through the brambles. Sardonic indierock stalwarts Pavement start off with an epic twang-guitar workout and devolve into a nightmarish motorik hellride up the canyon. And to lighten the load just in time, everyone's favorite space cowboys (aren't you glad I didn't include the Steve Miller Band?) The Byrds, of "Eight Miles High" fame, here jangle their way through a sprightly ditty requesting a ride on a UFO. And honestly, who wouldn't want that?

* UPDATE: Since having come across some digital manifestations of the aforementioned Thin White Rope it was impossible for me not to include a track from them, and I chose one that couldn't be more aptly named to illustrate our point. In the process I have also decided to undo a couple glaring omissions in the form of southern-fried spacerockers My Morning Jacket and desert atmospheric spaghetti-westerners Calexico, which I have peppered throughout the original set below. Enjoy!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Susquehannah (Sole Art Trample) - MV & EE And the Golden Road - Gettin' Gone
Tupelo - Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - The Firstborn Is Dead
Watermelon Man - The Gun Club - Miami
The Medicine Show - The Dream Syndicate - The Medicine Show
Abigail's Ghost - Green On Red - Gravity Talks
It's About Time - True West - Hollywood Holiday
Americana - Thin White Rope - Sack Full Of Silver
Get Outta That Spaceship And Fight Like A Man - The Grifters - Crappin' You Negative
The Last Round Up - The Feelies - The Good Earth
Rockaway - Jackie-O Motherfucker - Flags Of The Sacred Heart
Mobile Line - The Holy Modal Rounders - The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders
Hologram Buffalo - Brightblack Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin
Sleepy Sun - Sleepy Son - Embrace
The Radiant Sheen - Ignatz - II
Eyebath - Pumice - Pebbles
Plateau - The Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II
The Wind - Spindrift - The West
Run Thru - My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves
Kolob Canyon - Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound - When Sweet Sleep Returned
Once We Were Trees - Beachwood Sparks - Once We Were Trees
Rise To Glory - Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull
Shelter From The Ash - Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash
Other Kinds Run - Tower Recordings - The Galaxies' Incredibly Sensual Transmission Field Of The Tower Recordings
Portland Cement Company At Monolith, CA - John Fahey - Days Have Gone By
Translucent Sparrow - The Sadies - Favourite Colours
Mid-Town - Calexico - Hot Rail
There's So Many Colors - Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
Cosmic Charlie - The Grateful Dead - Aoxomoxoa
Spiders (Kidsmoke) - Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
Heron King Blues - Califone - Heron King Blues
Half A Canyon - Pavement - Wowee Zowee
Mr. Spaceman - The Byrds - Fifth Dimesnion

Back To School Part II

First, a report from one of your classmates on how to school a wingnut evangelist:



Bravo, young lady! You deserve an A for atheism.

Okay, attention class, this next subject is a fun one! It's a survey of the plethora of cover songs within the spacerock realm, whether it's spacerock bands covering songs not normally considered to be part of the genre, or bands not normally considered to be spacerock indulging in a little lysergic pleasure. It allows us listeners and aficionados to peek into the psyches of these artists and discover more about them by exposing their personal tastes and influences - after all, you wouldn't cover a song you hate, would you? Except ironically, of course, and there's a modicum of irony or satire in spacerock (look at Hawkwind, for example), but it's definitely not the modus operandi. Seeing which covers these bands choose, and how they choose to cover them - whether in sincere homage or by completely dismantling the song to reassemble it their own way - helps us to discover the lineage between these musical movements, develop contexts and histories, and better understand the solar systems and larger galaxies of spacerock.

In this segment we also get to break three rules of the Spacerock Continuum: we can play the same artist in the same set, and we can play two versions of the same song in the same set. AND, we'll be going a bit over the two-hour mark this time, so get comfortable class, this will be journey of discovery for us all.

Ready? Begin:


We start in an obvious place (at least for those of us familiar with the LA supergroup featuring members of Failure and Tool who formed purely to put out a one-off collection of radically reinterpreted cover songs) with The Replicants and their take on a "silly" Paul McCartney & Wings ditty, and a track from Pink Floyd's spacey soundtrack for the obscure 70s film 'More'. Speaking of the Floyd, we follow with Japanese electronicists Color Filter and their dreamy version of one of my favorite Floyd songs ever from the Meddle album, and Red Temple Spirits doing another track from 'More' as well as a track from 'Umma Gumma'. We then have two drastically different versions of a 13th Floor Elevators' chestnut from Oneida and Primal Scream. Red Temple Spirits put out more than their fair share of covers and here we have another one from them in the form of their version of a Spacemen 3 gem, which was actually a cover of a 13th Floor Elevators track. Confused yet? How about Spacemen 3 themselves (who put out and album coincidentally called 'Sound of Confusion') with an unrecognizable cover of a Sun Ra song? Speaking of the Spacemen, next up are two of the best tracks from a tribute album to the opiated astral travelers from Frontier and Asteroid #4.

Okay, let's get a bit more down to earth (as much as we ever do in spacerock): next up, The Gun Club's fitting rendition of an oldie-goldie from Creedence Clearwater Revival, followed by True West making their acquaintance with Syd Barrett's friend Sam and Bauhaus meeting an entirely different Sam, a friend of Marc Bolan and T. Rex. Paying tribute to The Rolling Stones' ill-advised foray into sci-fi rock are 80s goth favorites Danse Society, then Maynard James Keenan from Tool feting Bauhaus survivors Love & Rockets with his side project Puscifer. Also from that album of L&R covers is Film School sounding reverential to their obvious forebears. Also proudly displaying their influences are Jessamine covering Suicide and Loop doing Neil Young. We then have a bizarre take on another Neil Young classic from The Flaming Lips, as well as their surprisingly faithful rendition of Queen's quintessential (if overplayed) rock opera. Another surprise choice is Husker Du, here mangling a slice of Byrdsian psychedelia. Then Th' Faith Healers demonstrate where they tuned up their motorik by covering vintage krautrockers Can.

In addition to Pink Floyd and the 13th Floor Elevators, another iconic band to cover is, of course, The Velvet Underground, and here are just a couple from 80s experimental stalwarts Clock DVA and Japan (REM was too obvious). Another is, even more obviously, David Bowie, and here we have the late, great Zen Guerilla paying debt to a classic Ziggy Stardust glamrocker (which I had the tearjerking pleasure to witness live on the very day of Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson's untimely death). Then we come full circle back to the Replicants with their reinterpretation of Bowie's finest epic.

Last, but certainly not least, Built To Spill's Doug Martsch conjures the god of thunder guitar on Neil Young's most torrential opus. Exhausting but not exhaustive, this set is by no means meant to be comprehensive - there are simply to many choice covers from which to choose. What are some of your favorites not included here, class? Discuss.

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Silly Love Songs - Replicants - Replicants
Ibiza Bar - Replicants - Replicants
Fearless - Color Filter - I Often Think In Music
Nile Song - Red Temple Spirits - Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun - Red Temple Spirits - If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More
Slip Inside This House - Oneida - Come On Everybody Let's Rock
Slip Inside This House - Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Rollercoaster - Red Temple Spirits - If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More
Rollercoaster - Spacemen 3 - Sound Of Confusion
Starship - Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription
Hey Man - Frontier - A Tribute To Spacemen 3
Losing Touch With My Mind - Asteroid #4 - A Tribute To Spacemen 3
Run Through The Jungle - The Gun Club - Miami
Lucifer Sam - True West - Hollywood Holiday
Telegram Sam - Bauhaus - In The Flat Field
2000 Light Years From Home - Danse Society - Heaven Is Waiting
Holiday On The Moon - Puscifer - A Tribute To Love & Rockets
An American Dream - Film School - A Tribute To Love & Rockets
Cheree - Jessamine - Another Fictionalized History
Cinnamon Girl - Loop - A Tribute To Neil Young
After The Gold Rush - Flaming Lips - A Tribute To Neil Young
Bohemian Rhapsody - Flaming Lips - A Tribute To Queen
Eight Miles High - Husker Du - single
Mother Sky - Th' Faith Healers - Lido
Black Angels Death Song - Clock DVA - Advantage
All Tomorrow's Parties - Japan - Quiet Life
Moonage Daydream - Zen Guerilla - Trance States In Tongues
The Bewlay Brothers - Replicants - Replicants
Cortez The Killer - Built To Spill - Live

SPACE JAZZ...?!?!?

It's back-to-school time, kids! And our first lesson is about the intersection of spacey sounds and high-minded JAZZ! Now it's no secret that the illustrious Sun Ra claimed to be from outer space (Saturn, I believe), as have many African American auteur/musicians from George Clinton to Dr. Octagon (aka Kool Keith who insists, "Earth people: I was born on Jupiter")... what IS it with that, anyway? So this month's installment is a bit of an inter-disciplinary study, deviating from the decidedly rockist format of this spacecast; a chance to explore the spacier tangents of jazz from the bop era to the space age, from free jazz exploration to avant garde science fiction.

We begin with the band who brought jazz (along with dub, latin rhythms, spaghetti western and experimental electronics) to the nebulous genre known as post rock, the mighty Tortoise, standard bearers of the Chicago sound. Following them are their Chi-Town schoolmates Pit Er Pat who bring a skewed melodicism and scattershot rhythmic edge to the proceedings. Next up, a very a-typically jazzy track from no-wave avant gardist Rhys Chatham who's more known for postmodern orchestral pieces (if a composition for 100 electric guitars is your idea of orchestral) as well as inspiring the likes of Sonic Youth. And how could this playlist be complete without drum-and-bass DJ and all-around madman Squarepusher, who alongside his prodigious programming talents just happens to be one berzerk mofo on electric bass. Another entry from the realm of electronica, the former drum-and-bass experimental duo Spring Heel Jack have morphed in recent years into extreme avant garde jazzists along with many trad jazz players and other unlikely guests including Spiritualized's J. Spaceman.

Another couple entries from the Chicago school (are they dominating this genre?), Exploding Star Orchestra and Isotope 217, both feature an alchemical mix of trad jazz and avant players, from cornetist and composer Rob Mazurek to multiple members of Tortoise. Next we trip lightly through a segment featuring the godfathers of space jazz, the always angular Ornette Coleman, the free jazz pioneer Pharoah Sanders, and the spaceways exploring Sun Ra.

Continuing the theme of melding electronic to organic, we have the familiarly monikered Spacetime Continuum from San Francisco, the polyrhythmic dub-jazzniks HiM (not to be confused with the thoroughly awful Finnish goth-metal band Him), and a collision between British electronica composer Kieran Hebden (aka Fourtet and 1/3 of post rockers Fridge) and old school American free jazz drummer Steve Reid. And if that doesn't leave you exhausted, prepare to wrap up this astral traveling set with New Zealand motorik-monotonists The Necks.

Okay class, school's out! Time for a nap...

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

TNT - Tortoise - TNT
I Am The Jungle - Pit Er Pat - Emergency
Flash - Rhys Chatham - Hard Edge
Delta-V - Squarepusher - Just A Souvenir
Autumn - Spring Heel Jack - The Sweetness of the Water
Sting Ray and the Beginning of Time, Part 1 - Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else
Luh - Isotope 217 - Utonian Automatic
Civilization Day - Ornette Coleman - Complete Science Fiction
Astral Traveling - Pharoah Sanders - You've Got To Have Freedom
Lanquidity- Sun Ra - Lanquidity
Manaka - Spacetime Continuum - Double Fine Zone
A Verdict of Science - HiM - Sworn Eyes
Morning Prayer - Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid - The Exchange Sessions
Abillera - The Necks - Chemist

WAKE UP, SPACEMONKEYS!!!

Let us now celebrate the most uncompromising bands of our time from within and around the genre known as psychedelic. Surely it would too easy for me too just play All Pink Floyd, All The Time. Instead you're in for a dose of the obscure, noisy, and unrelenting.

I hope you enjoyed the above video from the all-time psych-pop masters of Oz, the Church, who just released their 23rd album this year (!). This track was recorded live very recently but comes from their second album of their mid-80s heyday (album title pun intended), back when I must've seen them at least a dozen times. These guys are pushing 60 (!) and rock like nobody else out there. There must be something wrong with me but this video brought tears to my jaded eyes.

So on to the blitz: there's a lot more I could've included in this set, but it started out just as any other, and only later did I attempt to classify it. I hesitate in my hasty inclination to call this my Best. Set. Ever. But whatever... "it is what it is" (to quote the most inane phrase ever coined in the English language)... and it RAWKS.

We start with the prolific favorite sons of Wales the Super Furry Animals, and the opening slab of psych/glam from the their latest (and greatest?) album, and follow them with their countrymen Future of the Left, who rose from the ashes of the mighty Mclusky, that postpunk juggernaut that was the Welsh answer to Fugazi but with a wicked sense of misanthropic humor. Both they and Death From Above 1979 could hardly be called psychedelic per se (although an argument could be made for their spacerockingness), but I thought they fit well in the set, so don't question it - you'll thank me later.

We then take a turn toward the dark side with spaghetti-western psychesters Spindrift, trance-inducing Texans The Black Angels, nerve-fraying Sacramentoans the Ganglians, raucous troglodytes Cave, and motorik madmen Circle, with a stomping tribute to their Finnish home town.

When it comes to uncompromising... with their proclivity for reinventing the same circular song pattern over the course of dozens of releases and a plethora of microgenres, all the while toiling in obscurity, Circle wrote the book. Other contributors to various chapters of this tome include Brooklyn's Oneida, and this monster of a track is culled from their umpteenth recording, an ambitious 3CD sprawl that succeeds in melting my mind easily 90% of the time. And with only 10% filler it's better for you than most American-made foodstuffs. The next chapter is writ large by Chicago postrock OGs Tortoise who, judging by this track, haven't decided to mellow into the tepid smooth jazz fusion of some of their contemporaries. They certainly backed that statement up at a stellar San Francisco show earlier in the month which I was lucky enough to witness. And of course, the foreward and epilogue to this anthology would have to be written by 70s-era krautrock pioneers Faust who are still at it today (this track coming from 1997, one of their many "comebacks"), and who continue to be more challenging and uncompromising than ever.

From there we tackle some analog synthtronica from Cluster-philes like Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, who is really a solo composer dedicated to the Teutonic arts (Mozart, anyone? gene-splice it with some modern drone theory? add some Fahey-esque guitar? yes please!), Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, space-technoist Norwegians who occasionally fall off the dance floor and rise into something more cerebral, and Sinoia Caves, the keyboardist from Black Mountain getting his Cluster (aka Kluster) on.

Yanking us, sleep-deprived from our reveries, is everyone's favorite spacepunk superheroes the Trail of Dead with a devastating track from their latest magnum opus, which then leaves us in the hands of the unarguable godfathers of hyper-dynamic post rock, Tokyo's Mono, who show us how to go from very quiet to VERY LOUD to even LOUDER to LOUDER STILL, but Glasgow's mighty 'Gwai take it further still, to the heavens and back, with their side-length biblical epic that one-ups even their other lengthy classics like "Mogwai Fear Satan" and "Like Herod". Apocalyptic times indeed, but squint a bit and you might see that elusive light at the end of the long... dark... tunnel.

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Crazy Naked Girls - Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
The Hope That House Built - Future of the Left - Travels With Myself And Another
Turn It Out - Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine
Goin' Down - Spindrift - The West
Black Grease - The Black Angels - Passover
100 Years - Ganglians - Monster Head Room
Gamm - Cave - Psychic Psummer
Back To Pori - Circle - Pori
10:30 At The Oasis - Oneida - Rated O
Yinxianghechengqi - Tortoise - Beacons Of Ancestorship
Liebeswehen 2 - Faust - You Know Faust
Feuerprobe - Eine Kleine Nacht Musik - Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
Rothaus - Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas - II
Evil Ball - Sinoia Caves - The Enchanter Persuaded
Bells Of Creation - ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - The Century Of Self
Com (?) - Mono - One Step More And You Die
My Father, My King - Mogwai - My Father, My King

Space travel is fun...!

And we're traveling all over the place this month, which should explain my tardiness in posting this installment. I briefly touched down on terra firma for summer vacation the last couple weeks, ports o' call within my orbit from San Diego to Portland, but I'm back in the satellite now with a set of the heavy, the majestic and the obscure, just for you.

Attention metalheads! The first meaty chunk of this set is for you! If you're not so metallic don't let that frighten you off - this is only the most progressive of modern day post-metal, from Harvey Milk, Torche, Helms Alee and Oceansize. The once-defunct but recently regrouped Athens GA trio Harvey Milk bring the heavy to closeted metal lovers in the oft-effeminate indie scene. Torche, who I saw on a bill with Red Sparrowes and Isis (two bands that would fit perfectly in this set, but time doesn't permit), bring a surprising melodiousness to their manic punk-metal hybrid. Helms Alee came to me through the impeccable taste of my cohort Sully, who caught the Seattle three-piece at their recent stop at Petaluma's illustrious Phoenix Theater. Oceansize is a band I struggle with pigeon-holing, because despite hailing from Madchester UK, their drift and crunch conjurs not only their namesakes Jane's Addiction, but everything from Radiohead to Tool to vintage grunge circa Alice In Chains. Confusing? But not necessarily a bad thing.

We then transition to a proggier segment with the vintage keyboard saturated space travels of Zombi, the spaciest track from the stellar new Tortoise album, some shoegazin' bliss from Ulrich Schnauss, a motorik-inspired selection from the Phantom Band, and a Phil Spector worshiping slice of melodrama from Pink Mountaintops (side project of Black Mountain stalwarts Stephen McBean and Amber Webber).

Then it's time for a couple left-field departures, where Japan's Mono bring postrock ever nearer to neoclassical proportions on their latest release, and Australia's Necks launch jazz instrumentation into Space 1990. That's when things get really weird: Black Eyes are not for everyone, and can be just as painful as their namesake to those unaccustomed to the abrasive textures where ART meets NOISE. But fear not, after the band broke up their helium-voiced singer formed a new band Mi Ami that melded the sandpaper skronk of his previous outfit to mind-melting echo chamber dub! And as icing on the noise cake, three epics of endurance: one from the enigmatic Majik Markers, one from the latest installment of the saga that is Sonic Youth, and a lengthy closer from Kiwi atonalist Birchville Cat Motel a man who straddles the line between aural and textural as well as anyone in the history of spacerock.

I hope this reaches you in time to annoy the neighbors at your Independence Day BBQ and ignite fireworks in your brain. Happy Birthday America! May your current trajectory carry us like a comet, arcing ever higher and never crashing to earth!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Death Goes To The Winner - Harvey Milk - Life... The Best Game In Town
Amnesian - Torche - Meanderthal
A New Roll - Helms Alee - Night Terror
Catalyst - Oceansize - Effloresce
Earthly Powers - Zombi - Spirit Animal
High Class Slim Came Floatin' In - Tortoise - Beacons Of Ancestorship
On My Own - Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place
Throwing Bones - Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage
Axis: Thrones Of Love - Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
Battle To Heaven - Mono - Hymn To The Immortal Wind
Next - The Necks - Next
Yes, I Confess - Black Eyes - s/t
Echonoecho - Mi Ami - Watersports
Axis Mundi - Majik Markers - Boss
Antenna - Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Chi Vampires - Birchville Cat Motel - Chi Vampires

June Gloom?

Got politics? What a clusterfuck this world is in! Ah, nevermind... the weather's great up here on the satellite, let's forget about petty human affairs and blast off into SPACE!

We start this month's installment with some seriocomic glam/prog entries from the Crazy World of notorious British eccentric Arthur Brown (circa 1968) and a tongue-in-cheek slice of "social commentary" from vintage Roxy Music ('73), winding out with THE all-time space-glam epic from our beloved spaceman Ziggy Stardust ('72) and a classic from little-known but highly influential analog synth oddballs the Silver Apples ('68). Our progression shifts to quasi-shoegaze with San Francisco's Halcyon High (a one-man psych-guitar extravaganza), and Chicago's notoriously "difficult" Labradford proudly wearing their influences on one of their most linear and accessible tracks.

From there it's a decidedly motorik affair with Swedish retro-futurists The Low Frequency In Stereo, the UK's The Horrors (suddenly dropping their Cramps/Birthday Party goth tendencies in favor of smooth krautrock for their second album), and San Francisco's Wooden Shjips from their fine second full-length release. Splintering off from that realm, the Phantom Band shows the motorik/instrumental side of their Beta Band/Super Furry Animals-style psych-pop which leads us to some acid-soaked americana from Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, from their long-lost first album (look next month for a track from their just-released third album, a contender for best of the year!), MV & EE, Dead Meadow and Comets On Fire. Aussies The Dirty Three then uplift us from the morass with an upbeat instrumental love-ditty composed of guitars, violins and... bagpipes?!?!?

Finishing this set on an up note, musical breathren Oneida and Pterodactyl drop some spaz-prog science, Fridge put the chill on post-rock and Unwound take their moniker to heart. All in a day's work, folks... enjoy!

The following tracks should appear in the player below:

Prelude/Nightmare - Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
In Every Dream Home A Heartache - Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Moonage Daydream - David Bowie - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Oscillations - Silver Apples - s/t
Close Your Eyes And See The Light - Halcyon High - Live on KDVS
Soft Return - Labraford - Prazision
Solar System - The Low Frequency In Stereo - Futuro
Sea Within A Sea - The Horrors - Primary Colours
Down By The Sea - Wooden Shjips - Dos
Crocodile - Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage
Creeping Spirits & Talkonaut - Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound - s/t
Canned Happiness - MV & EE - Green Blues
One And Old - Dead Meadow - Howls From The Hills
Brotherhood Of The Harvest - Comets On Fire - Blue Cathedral
Doris - Dirty Three - Cinder
Up With People - Oneida - Happy New Year
Share The Shade - Pterodactyl - Worldwild
Astrozero - Fridge - Early Output 1996-1998
Side Effects Of Being Tired - Unwound - Challenge For A Civilized Society