BEEHOOVER – live@Wheatsheaf, March 25 2014

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‘We’ve got a new one for you … but mostly it’s the same old shit’.

That’s how Caravan of Whores introduce themselves on tonight’s Buried in Smoke event, but when it’s high grade no-messing-about shit dealt primarily from the Road to Kurti stash, there’s nowt to grumble about. New track Blackout (I think) fits the Caravan MO pretty damned well. Spacey bits are spacier, heavy bits are more chargin’ and apart from drummer Jamie losing a stick halfway through Your God is Dead, it’s a job well done.

Rising locals Undersmile are in no danger of such stick-losing accidents. That would be like driving a milk float up Shotover Hill and getting done for speeding – it just ain’t gonna happen. No, their mournful harmonies and so very very loud-and-slow anti-groove is a nightmare soundtrack pulled from the Khanate school of doom. It is relentless. Brief relief comes when they wind it up – yes, UP – to a mid-tempo hurtle past the finish line after some Godflesh-inspired menace.

Following Undersmile’s punishing slo-mo we get a total contrast: Beehoover. Shoeless, sockless drum-and-bass action from Germany and these guys don’t hold back. At no point does this sound like just two people. No way.

With bass amplified and no guitar to get in the way, you get echoes of that thick warm Kyuss woomph but it’s not fat, woozy or dusty … it’s superlean and shifting fast. No nod-outs or loose jams here. Ingmar Petersen plays bass like rhythm AND lead, with a progger’s itinerary of riffs, patterns and shifts. And the drums? Same full-on deal. Claus-Peter Hamisch seems to switch every time Petersen does, a joint lead attack that’s totally locked in. They play hard and give it everything, and the only band that really comes to mind with this kind of sound and set up is latter-day Melvins rhythm-meisters Coady Willis and Jared Warren, aka Big Business.

How Beehoover come across on CD I’ve yet to find – 2013 album The Devil and His Footmen didn’t arrive in time for the gig – but live, they’re tonnes fuller and more propulsive than on Exile on Mainstream’s Worship the Riff label sampler a few years back.

The one downside to this great line-up tonight is the attendance. Only partially filled at best, even that meagre crowd thins once Undersmile exit, and it’s criminal that bands as strong as this – and especially Beehoover – weren’t seen by a few more rock-loving bods.

 

 

 

 

 

CARAVAN OF WHORES – Road to Kurti

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The Caravan rolls into Oxford this week to kick off a night of heaviness at the Wheatsheaf, supporting Undersmile and Beehoover, so it’s about time we snuck in a warm up for the Oxfordshire three-piece. Time to get on the Road … to Kurti.

And where does it lead?

To a four track, 30-minute nugget of doom-ish riffs and space trippin’ expansions, that’s where. I’ve been listening to this 2012 release loads since seeing them support Naam last year and at first, I thought the dooooomy-ness held sway. Sticky blackened riffs on Mr Bendyman and Your God is Dead are airless and sunshine free … Wino comes to mind (sort of), as does the cold-air essence of 80s Celtic Frost (sort of).

Oh, and so do four geezers (sorry Geezer) from the black country who unwittingly spawned this whole thing anyway. You know how Masters of Reality was the first Sabbath record to sound consistently just too slow, like your turntable was spinning a couple of revs under the magic 33? That’s where Road to Kurti’s riffs are pitched: leaden enough to lurch with a wee bit of drag, no doubt intoxicated by Into the Void’s daddy-of-them-all stoner spirit.

But what really elevates this EP is the stuff that isn’t riff-based. The stuff that breaks down and stretches out. Anyone who’s a sucker for those spacious head-nodding jams that cast off their earth shackles and make for some higher orbit – the cosmic side of Kyuss, Dead Meadow, Monster Magnet and the like – will find pure drifting satisfaction here.

Check the thick warm bass way up front in the mix on opener Drug Queen, then spend the next half hour wallowing in ego-less guitar (from the magnificently named John Slaymaker), dirgey riffs and some mightily hyperactive drum action which, after repeat plays, grabs your ears to the point that you’ll soon start having your favourite FILLS, never mind riffs (hello Mr Bendyman). And you don’t normally say that about drummers in so-called doom bands, which just shows how much more is going on here.

So then: Caravan of Whores. You wouldn’t name a taxi company after them, but as far as the psyche/prog end of doom or the dark side of the desert goes, they’re a name to call on. They deliver. Looking forward to the next batch of tunes, fellas.

DRUDION no more!

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No more Address Drudion! What are we gonna do????

For around 14 years the Arch Drude, aka Julian Cope, has been posting his monthly missives and under-the-underground reviews with the shamanic, preachin’-revolution flamboyance that only he can bring to a page.

Now he’s closing that particular chapter of his rock ‘n roll voyage – March 1st saw the last of his Monthly Drudions on Head Heritage as family Cope pack up and move on. Go check his last post if you haven’t already.

And if you fancy a trawl through some of the best essay-length record reviews this side of Lester Bangs, go check the Album of the Month feature from the Unsung section too.

For 10 years, Cope put a monthly review of an unsung (unappreciated, unrecognised, underground) record up, pulled from anywhere in the previous 50 years. Oriented towards the heavy/noise/psyche end of things, it’s an inspirational rock source from a great writer who’s a music FAN, and many of the reviews were compiled in his Copendium tome of a couple of years back.

While we’re on the subject of Cope, don’t forget the On This Deity blog by his wife Dorian – the link is at the bottom right of this page, or if you can’t be bothered going all the way over there, have a look at it right here.

TAPED

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In my Boris write-up the other day I made reference to the music fan’s buzz of stumbling across an unknown album – in other words, a find.

Well, this week I was reminded of a different but no less satisfying buzz that shocks us every now and again – unexpected uber-heaviness on the radio, like when (for those who were there) Harvester of Sorrow got an airing in the Top 40 and it gave you a four-day high because one of YOUR BANDS had broken into the charts for the first time ever.

This week’s radio buzz was a bit like that.

Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone on BBC 6Music is my must-listen radio programme, and which molten heaviness descends from our beloved DAB on Sunday evening?

I, the Witchfinder, by Electric Wizard.

WOAAARRRRRRR! Maconie’s only got Dopethrone – yes, bloody DOPETHRONE – as his featured album this week (soon to be last week coz there are only a few hours left to listen again on t’iplayer).

Now I’m taking this as a sign, an omen, a Dorset-sized kick up the you-know to finally get this little feature – called TAPED – off the notepad and into the blog. It might end up being unsustainable, or a fistful of cack, or both and/or worse, but we’ll get it started anyway.

TAPED. What is it?

TAPED is stuff from the radio that’s caught my ear, simple as that. In other words, the things you’d tape if you were still taping* (now is the time to check the thing of beauty splashed across the top of this page).

As I said, Freakzone is my source for getting turned on to new stuff. Not necessarily new by release date, but new to the ears. It’s not a rock show – far from it. It’s anything outside the mainstream … obscure prog, 70s fusion, avant rock, field recordings, free jazz, anything really, but it’s not Wire obscure either. The old stuff is as bold as the new so, in the spirit of discovery and general music fan-dom, why not a share a few new names and bits of music news?

That’s what TAPED will attempt. Next time we’ll get straight into the music but now, here are the Feb 2nd Freakzone highlights:

PORT SULPHUR – The Faith Healer, featuring Jock Scot. Sleazy industrial disco with guitars.

MUMPBEAK – Forlock. Track of the week! Crimson-sinister prog with Slint air of well-heavy dread. Who Mumpbeak? Dunno, but Bill Laswell and Tony Levin are among ‘em.

ALARM WILL SOUND – Cliffs. Non-electronic arrangement of Aphex’s opening drift on  Selected Ambient Works Volume II.

And of course, ELECTRIC WIZARD’S DOPETHRONE, an unusually metal choice to even get played on this show but to be elevated to the status of featured album???? No complaints here though.

*I am still taping. A bit.

BORIS / CHOUKOKU NO NIWA – More Echoes, Touching Air Landscape

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One of the bestest buzzes when you’re raiding the racks of your favourite/local record shop is when you see something you didn’t know existed by one of your fave bands.

Cue More Echoes Touching Sir Landscape, spotted and then seized from the pre-loved (used) section in Oxford’s Truck Store.

Boris? THE Boris? Slug metal, psych drone, garage fuzz overlords from Japan?

Oh yeah. It’s them alright. The initial 1999 release date clues us in as to how they’re gonna reveal themselves on this split CD – I predict sloth and goo – and sure enough, Kanau Part I is 14 minutes of droning thrum that’s not so much a build up as a slow down: an adjuster. Part I slows the world so your clock runs to Boris time.

When Part II begins, it’s heavy as only Boris can be. Ludicrous. When a snaking colossus of a bass line announces the band’s arrival proper, they’ve got you – again. Coz when you’re up against such sheer fucking ENORMITY, what can you do but grin and give in?

The rest of Part II is Atsuo-dominated as his speed bash leaves all doom ‘n chug way back, pulling us fast through spacegun-zap psychedelia and classic riffage. Kanau might not be Feedbacker singular or Sun Baked Snow Cave extreme – it’s too up, too rock-out for that – but it IS Boris, breaking out of the pure-slow-heavy and well worth adding to your stash.

But while Boris are the big name draw here, Choukoku no Niwa are the big find.

Who?

Exactly. I have no idea and, tempting though it is to give in to the google god and revel in right-now certainty instead of savouring a little mystery, that’s the way it’ll stay. At least til we’re done here*.

So what do we get? 24 minutes of fluid long-form rock, that’s what. Tom toms and congas, rolling rhythms and a circular bass-riff – like Primal Scream’s Exterminator but with more sway, less menace – bring a thickened-up Can to mind while on-off guitars flow, moan and wail but never shriek. There’s no Acid Mothers frazzle or Mainliner blowout here. Groove – immersive and endless – is king.

 

BORIS/CHOUKOKU NO NIWA – More Echoes, Touching Air Landscape

Inoxia Records, 1999 (reissued 2006)

Choukoku no Niwa – Fukurou (24.07)

Boris – Kanau Part I and Part II (26.08)

 

*I looked. Briefly. But nothing useful came up …

 

 

 

WINNEBAGO DEAL – live@The Cellar, January 18th 2014

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It’s a bit of an Oxford spesh tonight as Winnebago Deal break their mini exile for a Cellar blast with Desert Storm in heavy support. Tickets are door-only and demand is high so we’ve got a pretty full house from the off, and there’s a definite buzz in the thickening Cellar air. Everyone’s up for this.

Here’s how it starts:

8.00pm Cellar doors open

8.10 first band starts

8.21 first mosh breakout

Yep, it’s one of THOSE nights – fast and physical, and that’s no surprise when Act 1 is Flack Blag, a Black Flag covers band featuring the Winnebago Bens. Blag and their two vocalists rip through Flag classics like Rise Above, Six Pack, Thirsty and Miserable, Depression and Slip It In without break or breath, finally shutting the set down with a mighty My War.

As they dismantle their kit, Melvins spill out from the between-bands PA to plant fat riffs back in our heads and that’s EXACTLY the right prep for Act 2: Desert Storm. Cue mighty rockin’ and bellowin’ and more rockin’ – the Storm know how to intoxicate the punters with a good-time brew, and tonight they do it by the keg load.

Armed with stacks of riffs and breaks and tempo changes, all threaded by a taut-but-just-loose-enough elastic groove that swings in all the right places, there’s no denying there’s a massive Clutch vibe coming off this crew – and that is meant in every way as a compliment. Pantera have been described as groove metal but, great as they were, to me they seemed a bit rigid for that tag. A bit too PRECISE. Tonight, however, that tag fits. Clutch fans, latter-period Corrosion of Conformity fans, get out there and support this band when they next have a stage.

Where Desert Storm had Melvins, Winnebago Deal have Huey Lewis and the News. Yes, Huey and his current affairs buddies waft across the Cellar while the band handover is made, as if we’re being slipped a sly sweet melody to counteract the evil anti-melody that awaits.

Winnebago Deal: heroes to many, gods to some, and a mighty kick in the head to everyone  who crashes their scuzzy orbit. I’m no diehard Deal-er but I do remember seeing them at the Wheatsheaf a few years back and the live version of the band obliterated the CD version – louder, faster, more brutal, more everything and tonight, it’s the same. They have not mellowed. AT ALL.

Tonight is nothing less than a total shitstorm.

You want grooves and breaks? Go anywhere but here because WD’s punk thrash ‘n roll offers no remorse, only assault. Seriously. The Line Up, Takin’ Care of Business, Manhunt, George Dickel and the Karma to Burn-esque instrumental Dead Gone all get played I think but really, it’s pointless trying to recognise tracks because it’s too loud to hear anything.

Better instead to soak up the screech and the fury, the flailing limbs and low-clearance surfing and enjoy it (yes) for what it really is – a spectacle. When Winnebago Deal are in town, you get battered.

By music.

End of.

PALMS – Palms

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Released on Ipecac, 2013

If you’ve missed the post-metallic majesty of Isis since they called it quits three years ago, get your hands on Palms – and prepare to fly.

Palms is what happens when Jeff Caxide, Aaron Harris and Bryant Clifford Meyer finally emerge from their post-Isis existential fug to decide that yes, they WILL make a record and it will be with each other

but it won’t be instrumental. They want a singer. Question is, after thirteen years with Aaron Turner on vocal command in the old band, who’s gonna fit their bill?

Step forward Deftones frontman Chino Moreno. After striking up a hiking friendship (yes, really) with drummer Aaron Harris, it’s clear he’s keen and wants in on this new post-Isis project.

ISIS + DEFTONES: big-name rock merger or what?

Sure is. But whereas some all-star join-ups sound assembled and bolted together instead of organically grown – Audioslave’s debut being a case in point – this one is seamless and effortless and fully formed from the off. A strong Isis current flows throughout but it’s not the raw, guttural Isis of Celestial, nor does it dominate. No, this record takes the clean vocals and spacious musicality of Wavering Radiant (Ghost Key, Hand of the Host) as a starting point and then bursts skyward. This is a record that takes you places.

Musically that’s no surprise, given the pedigree of the players and the nature of their previous band(s), but in the same way that Om took their own legacy – Dopesmoker’s dense mantra – into more airy terrain, Palms do a similar evolution job with the layers, surges and flows that defined their Ipecac forefathers. Future Warrior’s hypnotic intensity and Mission Sunset’s slow build to bruising/beautiful low-end payoff – one of THE peaks of this expansive set – are most Isis-like, but there’s other stuff going on too. Electronic hues usher in a cool, hushed ambience, none more so than on the gently euphoric dream-state closer Antarctic Handshake. You get a sense of elevation, movement and open spaces, if that means anything. Twilights and sunsets and pre-storm stillness. That’s Palms.

Crucial to this new ID for the ex-Isis three is, surely, Chino Moreno. Deftones revel in both sensitivity and rage, and Moreno’s vocals here traverse that same spectrum. Sometimes hushed, sometimes screamed but never hostile, his soulful yearn sounds caught in the throes of ascension – just not departed yet.

And somehow, that’s exactly where the album belongs. Music to be swept with, and lifted by.

‘Ascending into heaven

while staring into hell.

We’re staring into heaven

descending into hell.’

Lyrics from Shortwave Radio. Says it all.

LISTING SHIPS – The Hayling Island Sessions

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You wanna bit of instrumental rock action? Tight AND fluid, amped by post-punk sparks and propulsive bass? Then clamber up on Oxford’s Listing Ships.

Having had the privilege of seeing these guys live – one of those supercharged support slots where a band you’ve never heard before just blows your head for half an hour – I can say that, despite the sombre motions their name infers, they’re not afraid to let it fly. Proficient and ambitious yet in no way ramming 10-ton egos in yerface, it’s no surprise they’ve become a bit of a fixture at Audioscope in recent years.

Describing themselves as ‘nautically-inspired post-krautrock’, your first thought on listening to the Hayling Island Sessions is … where’s the latter? Watery themes abound, there’s no doubting that – track titles include American Steam Company, The 100 Gun Ship, Baychimo and Then Venice Sank so you get the idea – but even the barest of classic Neu! grooves on endless repeat ain’t here, nor is the loose-limbed fringe funk a la Can. Maybe it emerges more blatantly on subsequent records or maybe the post tag renders all references void but this much is true: there’s zero scope for trancing out and drifting off here. First, the tracks aren’t long enough. Second, they’re just too restless to lock onto a single repetitive hook.

Opening track Alba Adriatica builds from Explosions in the Sky delicacy to climactic fuzz-out and it’s a hard-rocking start but really, it’s when you get to American Steam Company that these Sessions REALLY kick off.

Fugazi must be an influence, or at least an inspiration. Voluminous, rolling basslines wooze while guitars surge and break with the same roomy dynamism as the Dischord giants, deftly shifting from impending turbulence in the first half to sheltered calm in the second. Then Venice Sank flits between paranoid twitchfunk skitter and wind-tunnel oomph – massive, a proper highlight. Equus Ager takes you from melodic promise to Pumpkins-esque overload without you even noticing.

So while the Hayling Island Sessions isn’t an epic in duration terms – 7 tracks proper plus the dialogue/drone skit Nutcracker Six and two remixes (the Rackham mix and the Karhide Bass Bass mix) – there are more than enough ideas jammed into these taut, multi-part pieces to keep it fresh after a stack of listens. Definitely a worthy intro to a band who WILL be on a stage near you soon.

AUDIOSCOPE 13: a partial review

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12 bands in 12 hours from 12pm til 12am. That’s Audioscope 13, the annual Oxford all-day gig that raises money for Shelter by coaxing music fans out on a cold November night. How? With some shit-hot knowns, unknowns and soon-to-be knowns, that’s how. In its 13-event history, the late-night closing spot has been grabbed by the likes of Wire, Six by Seven, Damo Suzuki and Karma to Burn while countless bands have done the day shifts.

Unfortunately, the day shifts are beyond my grasp this year so let’s dive in unfashionably late to the Jericho Tavern and see what happens. All bands are new to me, in sound if not in name.

First, the news. Turns out that Thought Forms had to cancel due to illness. Now I’ve never heard them but their flyer bio (‘… Sonic Youth playing doom’) is the best of the lot and would surely win a prize if i) there was one ii) they turned up. Neither was the case but even if that bio is only half right, Thought Forms sound compulsory. Then again, you can’t believe all you read in promo bios – see Pet Moon later.

Eat Lights Become Lights are rhythmic nirvana for kosmiche heads. Two drummers – one sitting, one standing – hammer a relentless loco-motion that’s ultra repetitive, very Neu! and very nearly trancelike, shot through with bass, samples, drones and no vocals. At their best when Neil Rudd’s circular melodies build up to spacerock wah wah blowouts, this stuff really works live. Rave music for rock fans? Very possibly.

After the unpretentious, anonymous potency of ELBL, Pet Moon are an immediate contrast. Synth-heavy hook-heavy pop with R&B vox and fringe distractions (hair, not music) mean this band look way out of place on this bill at this hour. The dark-ish electro/Numan current is enough to divert at first but those currents fade fast when we’re hit with a mawkish pile of BALLS. Followed by another one. All benefits of the doubt evaporate and everything starts to irritate – the skinny jeans, the rolled-up t-shirt sleeves, the fringes, the Pop Idol frontman, the white vest …. no. Just. No. I leave them to it.

After the pretentious impotency of Pet Moon, Esben and the Witch are a total volte-face whose gothic tales transmogrify into huge post-rock walls of sound. I don’t know their albums and I don’t doubt their songs are more nuanced on record, but right now the Witch is a beast. ‘nuffsaid.

Closing the day and the event are Califone, the evening’s veterans. They’re late. Turns out that a guitar has gone missing – lost or stolen, we’re not sure yet – and that means ‘… it’s gonna be hard to play some of the songs. Has anyone seen a guitar?’ the singer asks.

‘It’s in a soft cover with Fender on it. The guitar is red-’

‘Is that it?’

A lone voice from the crowd. He points to a spot 5 feet behind the bassist. In that spot is a soft guitar case, solid in form, propped against some hardware. Bassist picks it up. Turns it, slowly – the word Fender appears. Opens the bag.

Yes. It is.

Califone then put their collective doofus to one side and turn in a 45-minute set that flits from piercing noise shards to dusty Americana, slide grooves, low-key acoustics and timeless classic rock with not even a bat of an eye’s lid. They cover a tonne of ground in their shortened stint but, sadly, not enough to make use of the red Fender. It stays in the corner, untouched.

And that’s the end of Audioscope 13 at the Tavern – a brilliant night of reps, vests and guitar thefts where a three-piece Witch nabs top plaudits.

See Audioscope reviews for 2014 and 2015, and Audioscope’s Music for a Good Home 3 CD

HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST

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Aaah yes… Halloween, the most metal of yearly celebrations. What makes the playlist? Sabbath, Maiden, Misfits, Cradle of Filth?

I’ve got two favourites for All Hallows’ Eve but two ain’t exactly a playlist so let’s pad it out a bit first with a few other choice, possibly bloody, cuts. In no particular order:

APHEX TWIN – Come to Daddy. Even without the video of Aphex-faced hoodie thug manchilds, tower-block terror and TV-horrorthing screaming G-force hell in a pensioner’s face, this nail-hard track never sounds less than wholly possessed. Demonic electronica, anyone?

SUNN O))) – My Wall. Yeah, the creep kings of low frequency unsettle the vibe magnificently with this 25-minute oozer. You could pick from a tonne of SunnO))) tracks but My Wall has Julian Cope’s ritualistic spoken word giving it that extra resonance.

EXTREME – More Than Words. A shocker on every level.

SCOTT WALKER – anything from The Drift.

MELVINS – Goggles. A slo-mo dead-body DRAG of noise, screams and distortion straight out of a serial killer’s basement. Find it on Stag. Goggles is mixed by Alex Newport so that’s some extra heaviosity credentials right there.

NINE INCH NAILS – Screaming Slave. A nauseating deconstruction … could it be the S&M mutilation screams and violent industrial production? Yep, reckon so. Total assault. Never EVER fall asleep to this, you’ll awake to a wide-eyed nightmare. Get it from the Fixed EP of Broken reworkings.

OK, top 2 time. In reverse order:

FANTOMAS – The Omen (Ave Satani). In a word, diabolical. Patton, Osborne, Lombardo and Dunn hit new peaks in mania with this dementedly OTT version of Jerrry Goldsmith’s classic score. Utterly inspired, check the Director’s Cut for more killer themes.

And finally …

TYPE O NEGATIVE – Suspended in Dusk. Type O Negative are made for the year’s twilight and this track – all 8 and a half minutes of it – shows the Brooklyn crew at their slow, suspenseful, vampiric best. A dark highlight of the entire Type O back catalogue, Dusk was hidden away as a ‘previously too embarrassed to release’ bonus on Christian Woman. Funny bastards. RIP Pete Steele.