REWIND JANUARY: NEW TUNES AND NEVER-HEARDS. BRISTOLIAN PSYCHE AND LEGENDARY FUNK

This always feels like a great time of year for music – still wading through festive gifts and purchases, still digging the old-school retro licks dug out over the hols, and still not quite back in that work-life zone they call n*rm*l*ty. Hibernation is still viable. And now, those 2018 teasers and new arrivals herald a quiet awakening of noise – all the more exotic when the days are still short.

Here are some snatched tracks that have caught the ear this past month. Stay hunkered.

ANTHROPROPHH: Oakmoll
Yeah, who am Anthroprophh? Peddlers of fuzzed-up psycherama, if Oakmoll is any measure. Filthy heavy riffology with freeform squallin’ for a never-ending ending, like Holy Mountain jamming Funhouse or Mudhoney burning up some Space Ritual or whatever other combo brings GARAGE SPACETRIPS and FREE YOUR FUCKING WAH attitude together in one massive beaster. Headed by Heads man Paul Allen, no less. All new to me. Album imminent on Rocket Recordings, get a bandcamping sample right here.

FIRE!: The Hands
Slacker hypno riff over part-moto groove and spiced by Mats Gustaffson’s sax powerage, this is tough-sounding but mightily laidback too – muscular, yet without the need to showboat or flex. Unlike the sprawling free jazz and noise this Swedish three-piece tends to be tagged with, The Hands is a relatively straightforward, disciplined lock-in, but who knows what the album will bring? Check the Rune Grammofon label for Fire! news and sounds.

SKULL DEFEKTS: Clean Mind
So, you hear a band for the first time and they’re putting out their last record? Yep. No matter. Clean Mind breaks off a sparse three minutes of tribal post-punk and gothic no-hope squalor creep that almost caves in on itself. Hear it here.

BLACK MOUNTAIN: Space to Bakersfield
Stuart Maconie has played a couple of tracks from 2017’s IV album on his radio Freakzone lately, and this one’s a beaut. Space to Bakersfield is Black Mountain’s Maggot Brain – a 9-minute drift speared by gut-deep soloing that aches and lifts. More IV here.

PARLIAMENT: I’m Gon Make U Sick O’Me
The voice is cracked, like Gil Scot Heron’s I’m New Here, but it packs the G Force. Rhythm is ultra tight pared-back funk with space invader stabs and sweet brassy uplift. The band is PARLIAMENT. It sounds so now you’d never guess, and I didn’t when it bust out of the radio the other day. Life-affirmingly funked.

Right, that’s it for this Rewind. Don’t forget, new Robert Plant live DVD out in February.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind