Music Reviews

Flato, Steve/Microtonal Guitar

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   A Library, CD

Steve Flato is a composer and guitarist from San Diego, CA. He is interested in using the wide vocabulary of sounds and techniques found in experimental music to express and process his own internal experiences. He aims to use sound as a therapeutic tool by exploring anxiety, trauma, and loss and its potential for generating personal growth and meaning. Flato is concerned with process, chance, and the line between improvisation and composition, synthetic and natural sounds. A little drone, a little raga and a lot of great guitar. Experimental but strangely familiar.

Aural Hallucinations – "Hearing What You Want to See" – [Self Release]

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   A Library, CD

Although there are tacks listed on the back of the CD this is one long spacy/psychy track which runs 1:18:58. “Floating Thru Asteroids – Black Liquid – Running Squirrel – Terrorized Smoke Man – Ruptured Brain Valve – December Flashes Bye – Meditation 6 – Sour Lemon Kraut – Meditation 5 – Half Of A Stink Bug – Phat Werk – Meditation 1 – Drone” is the name of the track but Spidey does not like long track names so it will be shortened when you see it on the screen. Spoken word & Audio both with plenty of distortion and interesting twists and turns. Aural Hallucinations is a new project featuring Matt (ex-Elder) on multiple instruments (Synths, guitar, drums, bass, vocals) and Dr Space (Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, Doctors of Space) on synthesizer and mixing. They also collaborate with Luis Antero who provides us with field recordings made in Portugal. Aural Hallucinations says: “The music is meant to be listened to in one long session, therefore, we have not split it up into individual pieces. Have toke, a vape, a smoke and a really far out trip with Aural Hallucinations and we hope you get to hear what you want to see!!!”

Music From The Motion Picture Black Snake Moan [coll] – [New West Records]

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   12-inch, Soundtrack

This soundtrack to the film written and directed by Craig Brewer is steeped in the Southern blues. The big surprise here is how well actor Samuel L. Jackson holds his own as a blues singer. There are tracks from Son House and R.L. Burnside so Jackson had some tough competition. He sounds like a throwback to the classic Delta bluesmen on “Just Like a Bird Without a Feather,” does a convincing take on the Blind Lemon Jefferson title track and rocks the juke joint on “Alice Mae” and “Stack-O-Lee.” Also on this record is the Black Keys’ “When the Lights Go Out”, Bobby Rush’s classic “Chicken Heads” and Precious Bryant’s “Morning Train”.” The Son House tracks run 12 and 22 seconds so if your “Current” tank is a little low – top it off.

Black Snake Moan is a dark modern tale of love, betrayal, sex, and salvation set in the Deep South and stars Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake. The film is the 2nd feature by writer-director Craig Brewer, whose 1st film Hustle & Flow won an Academy Award for Best Song and the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. Black Snake Moan was filmed in Memphis, Tennessee and surrounding environs.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 66% based on 157 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site’s critical consensus reads, “Uninhibited performances, skillful direction, and a killer blues soundtrack elevate Black Snake Moan beyond its outlandish premise.” On the television program Ebert & Roeper, filmmaker Kevin Smith described the film as “the best of the year thus far”. Smith praised Ricci and Jackson, saying this was “Ricci’s best performance and Jackson’s best performance since Pulp Fiction”. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone declared the film: “the year’s Worst Soft-Core Sex” on his list of the Worst Movies of 2007. When I first saw the album cover I thought “oh, boy – turkey” – maybe, maybe not. The music is great and Justin Timberlake doesn’t sing.  

Lamp of The Universe/Align In The Fourth Dimension

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   12-inch, A Library

This is the 6th chapter of the Psychedelic Battles. The concept of the Psychedelic Battles series is a split album between two bands. One must come from Italy. On this, Volume, 6, the band from Italy is Sherpa. The other band comes from Sweden and they are called Dean Allen Foyd. Both bands are playing modern psychedelic music.

Dean Allen Foyd is a psychedelic band based in Stockholm, Sweden, with a wide range of music styles. Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, Arthur Lee’s Love and Captain Beefheart can be seen as some of their influences, but at the same time the band takes a step forward making their sound modern and updated.

Sherpa are from Sherpa, Italy and are described as psychedelic occult band. Bandcamp says of Sherpa: ” Sherpa is the new course. Sherpa is what was born from the ashes of Edith Aufn. It’s a necessary change, a natural evolution.”

The A side belongs to the Swedish guys. Dean Allen Foyd have managed since 2010 to establish their own unique style and the opener here “Atlas” is a characteristic Dean Allen Foyd track with a bluesy psych aura and a sharp late 60s rock edge. “The Return Of Burt Burrito” is a heavy rock instrumental while “The Shifting” is a psychedelic rocker, infused with huge amounts of high quality “psychedelic substances”.  The ‘A’ side closes with “My Bloody Walls”, full of acoustic guitars, harmonica, and a bluesy attitude emerging an acid spacey psych feel.

Side ‘B’ is two tracks by Sherpa. “Look To La Luna” starts by creating modern trippy soundscapes, atmospheric and mind-bending, with a spacey edge, becoming “controlled” heavy towards the end with this lazy torturous guitar feedback. “Moon’s Biology Portrait” has a creepy atmosphere under a foggy haunted psych background, a late-night effected tune becoming psychedelically trippy.

Dean Allen Foyd Vs Sherpa: Psychedelic Battles 6 [coll]

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   12-inch, A Library

This is the 6th chapter of the Psychedelic Battles. The concept of the Psychedelic Battles series is a split album between two bands. One must come from Italy. On this, Volume, 6, the band from Italy is Sherpa. The other band comes from Sweden and they are called Dean Allen Foyd. Both bands are playing modern psychedelic music.

Dean Allen Foyd is a psychedelic band based in Stockholm, Sweden, with a wide range of music styles. Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, Arthur Lee’s Love and Captain Beefheart can be seen as some of their influences, but at the same time the band takes a step forward making their sound modern and updated.

Sherpa are from Sherpa, Italy and are described as psychedelic occult band. Bandcamp says of Sherpa: ” Sherpa is the new course. Sherpa is what was born from the ashes of Edith Aufn. It’s a necessary change, a natural evolution.”

The A side belongs to the Swedish guys. Dean Allen Foyd have managed since 2010 to establish their own unique style and the opener here “Atlas” is a characteristic Dean Allen Foyd track with a bluesy psych aura and a sharp late 60s rock edge. “The Return Of Burt Burrito” is a heavy rock instrumental while “The Shifting” is a psychedelic rocker, infused with huge amounts of high quality “psychedelic substances”.  The ‘A’ side closes with “My Bloody Walls”, full of acoustic guitars, harmonica, and a bluesy attitude emerging an acid spacey psych feel.

Side ‘B’ is two tracks by Sherpa. “Look To La Luna” starts by creating modern trippy soundscapes, atmospheric and mind-bending, with a spacey edge, becoming “controlled” heavy towards the end with this lazy torturous guitar feedback. “Moon’s Biology Portrait” has a creepy atmosphere under a foggy haunted psych background, a late-night effected tune becoming psychedelically trippy.

Suzuki, Damo / Numinous Eye / Eto, Steve/High School Pharmacy

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   12-inch, A Library

Recorded live at Pink Noise, Tokyo March 8, 2007.

Damo Suzuki is a Japanese musician who has been living in Germany since the early 1970s and is best known as the former lead singer of Can (1970-1973).

Numinous Eye is a project of guitarist Mason Jones (formerly of SubArachnoid Space). Usually working with a drummer, plying psychedelic waters filled with noisy waves of guitar, synth, and more.

Steve Eto is a Japanese percussionist. Born April 20, 1958 in Los Angeles. His younger brother is the percussionist Leonard Eto.

Mason Jones says: “In the spring of 2007 Numinous Eye had a short tour of Japan planned. We had all the shows booked and our plane ticket purchased. Then I discovered that Damo was visiting Japan around the same time. After a quick email we found that he was free to play on March 8, which was the date we would be arriving in Japan! It was providence, so we arranged to play together, and Damo invited Steve Eto as well. Playing an improvised show, with no planning ahead of time, after a transcontinental flight, was probably not wise, but it was psychedelic. And it was great.”

Bipolar Explorer/Recordings For The Dark Outside

carsonstreet   1/12/2022   A Library, CD

The Dark Outside began as a pop-up radio station playing obscure new music in a remote forest. The Dark Outside FM is an eccentric radio station where 24 hours of tailor-made music, that’s never been heard before, is broadcast to the remote Galloway Forest Park in southern Scotland. It began in 2012 when the forest’s artists in residence offered “noise terrorist” Stuart MacLean, aka Frenchbloke, use of a radio transmitter and he “came up with this stupid idea to play music that nobody has ever heard to a place nobody might hear it,” he says. “As far as I know it’s the only radio station where you have to leave your house to listen to it.” Bipolar Explorer has gathered their contributions to The Dark Outside from the years 2019 to 2021 on this CD. Experimental tracks one and all so take a listen.

Crust “Stoic” [No Name]

atavist   1/11/2022   A Library, CD

I slipped a limb into the Slim Bin to reveal a fresh cut of doom metal from Russia. Crust wear their hearts, and their rather earnest lyrics, on their sleeves—all in English, and surprisingly easy to discern. What sticks out to me is the unusual production that brings the vocals to the forefront more than other projects working in the same vein. Mournful, dabbling in faster death metal passages on one track, and stonery guitar meanderings on the next. It was a riff on the third track, A Blind Man in Darkness, where something clicked and I started to see Crust’s full potential emerge. I find myself enjoying the instrumentation despite the self-help/don’t fall victim to your urges/be a stoic! vibe to the lyrics. This is one of the weirder doom records I’ve reviewed for that reason alone. Once we settle into the second half of the album, the works seem more encumbered by resignation than truly unbridled by rage. Tracks six and seven nearly collapse under their own weight, but a more patient listen will discover finer elements. The instrumental closing track, Desert, provides a relief from the vocals with some borderline psych feels from the soaring guitar.

Rider / Horse “Select Trials” [Ever / Never]

atavist   1/11/2022   12-inch, A Library

Those familiar with Spray Paint will recognize the spoken/chanted vocal stylings of Cory Plump. Here he’s getting through a pandemic with some jangly, angular, minimalistic rock in collaboration with Chris Turco, who has contributed to projects like Trans Am and Les Savy Fav. We encounter pounding rhythms, jittery guitars, and various electronically induced textures running underneath. Some amorphous weirdness on the last two tracks must be the pedal steel by Zoots Houston. The sound quality is a little sharper than some Spray Paint stuff I’ve heard—props to Turco for handling the engineering where they opted to make this thing, in Plump’s COVID-shut down music venue. The sound is sharp, anxious, and full despite the minimal instrumentation. A dance of structure and discohesion. Chime Inn and Code Clicker are early favorites. “I’m growing tired of getting tired” he says in The Windows are Your Arms. For real.

File #733 UFO: Further Investigation [coll] – [Modern Harmonic]

Jay Omega   1/9/2022   12-inch, A Library

This is a unique double LP. It is basically a kit for blending a narrated interview with a Psych/Experimental/Electronic bed. The first LP is a reissue of a series of interviews narrated by Jack Jenkins from 1966, with the vintage sound and production you’d expect. The interviews are all with people who have either seen UFO’s, interacted directly with aliens, or have some other relevant expertise. The second LP is designed to be the bed for the first LP and consists of a collection of pieces by various musicians, including some A-listers like Mugstar, Kikagaku Moyo, and White Manna. These contributions have been overlapped and cross faded into one continuous track per side.  What’s great about this format is you can create your own blending by substituting something for one of the LPs. Or forgo the mixing and just play any part standalone. The point, I think, is to have fun with this.