I'd started this movie a couple of times before, and don't really know why I never got further. The insectoid fairy shapeshifter guide works well, the faun is pretty wild, magical portals are always a plus - the fable portion keeps moving along sprightly. A good mix of cliché classics and original ideas.
The human actors perform well, but for whatever reason... As much as I hate fascists, I never got too caught up in the El Capitan-guerillas conflict. The family drama was definitely fine as a back-story. Really though, outside of the item-gathering quest-line, I cared most about the double-agent infiltrators.
The special effects and design were often really nice - the faun, the mandrake root, the Pale Man I guess he's known as. A good-looking film! It was an interesting touch to match up the creepy menace of the unknown magical realm with the very real dangers of a sadistic torturer ruling over your house.
I suppose maybe I was hoping for something more, or expected it to be more in my wheelhouse. Occasionally I'd really get pulled out of the world, like with reading the newspaper report about D-Day. And especially when Ofelia explains the grapes with nothing more than "I thought no-one would notice." Yeah.
Overall, good enough to give it another shot - definitely possible that it just suffered from the (recent) 'competition.'
Filled in a blank with The Owl's Map (2006), second CD from Belbury Poly (between #4, 2004 and #17, 2009). It's got the usual mix of Belbury radiophonic soundscapes, but "Scarlet Ceremony" is up to something hauntingly different.
"Hocusing for Beginners" from Other Channels (2008)
Since I haven't really covered The Advisory Circle as much, I might come back later with a dedicated post on this, his/their first full album. Consider this a bonus track! (Bonus bonus info: debut EP is reissued on vinyl, and main guy has a blog/podcast...)
Fujiya & Miyagi are not a duo, and they are just pretending to be Japanese. In reality, three or four British guys on some kind of electronica. But also playing out as a band, like live and everything! And sampling aspects of the giants of Krautrock for good measure.
"Ankle Injuries" from Transparent Things (2006)
Apparently, this was actually considered appropriate dance-club music somewhere at some time, which is weird but fine by me. It's upbeat, catchy, propulsive. If this was typical club music, I might actually go more often (ever). But it really makes me want to drive around rather than dance. That's from the motorik, because Fujiya & Miyagi are British, minimally fronting as Japanese, playing under the influence of Neu! and Can.
The rhythm for opener "Ankle Injuries" compares favorably with the opener from Neu! (1972). Then "Collarbone" adds a bit of Isleyesque guitar funk to the stew, and "Photocopier" some even more funky organ sounds (plus a middle-eight break straight from Pong). What all three have in common, though, is a modern, restrained, British version of Damo Suzuki's mumbly, breathy vocal style. The words are all there, written in crazy-meter verses, so the syntax and timing fit together all wrong. Things get even Krautier on the instrumental tracks...
"Conductor 71" from Transparent Things (2006)
I had to make videos for that one and "Cassettesingle," because apparently people only like good music with vocals. Who knew? Okay, back to the singing songs with the words... Title track "Transparent Things" gets super-deep about that reassuring feeling one gets from looking through plastic or whatever. And "In One Ear and Out the Other" serves up quite the groove as well as such chantable lines as "You've got to know your place on the food chain."
Because I think it's funny, I went ahead and got the Japanese import of the fake-Japanese band's cd. It has two Japan-only tracks, and here's the more interesting one:
"Electro Karaoke in the Negative Style" from Japanese cd
Lots of music covered here is unlikely to interest even the three people reading this. That's practically the whole self-defeating purpose of the Headspace. But I think Fujiya & Miyagi is for everyone but the most soul-wrecked among us. Otherwise: "your little arms swing on monkeybars in search of applause, like pixelated scraps of jazz mags in your head..."
The Angelic Process was a musical duo from Macon, GA, who mixed dark dirge drone-doom with ambient soundscrapes and blasting noisebursts. Like extreme metal genres with all the pointy spikes eroded under a gauze of sludge. Others also mix these elements up, but they were the first I'd heard. Unfortunately, the male half of the duo, K. Angylus, died last year from causes unpublicized.
"Sigh" from Sigh EP (2006)
Well, not sure what else to add to that. This is an EP, which makes it a good introduction to what can be sometimes extreme and sometimes pretty, sometimes both and sometimes experimental or even improvised sounding. Songs generally move from section to section, often abruptly, without the natural flow of post-rock or metal. I've also noticed that different records have certain songs named "Mouvement" with a subtitle - so that might be some inter-album arrangement. Supposedly, the last album is their best, and I really like the artwork, but haven't picked it up yet.
How 'bout some more music?
"Trance to the Sun" and "Mouvement: With Mouthfulls of Blood"
Black Mountain certainly is a strange cast of characters. These two side projects couldn't be more different, from each other and from their main gig. Sinoia Caves is keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt, who also does album art as a sideline. The early-'70s prog and Krautsynth influences are crystal clear. Pink Mountaintops comes from singer-guitarist Stephen McBean exploring lo-fi indie-folk, garbage-funk, and beatbox drone-gospel.
"Naro Way" from The Enchanter Persuaded (2006)
Schmidt's art (for this, Black Mountain, Zombi, and Majeure) recalls the early-'70s glory days of UK rock arthouse Hipgnosis, forever to be linked with Pink Floyd covers. Rick Wright on synthesizer would be a proper touchstone, and to be honest, Rick Wakeman too - although I can't imagine him wearing a cape or eating dinner during a show. Epic #1, "Dwarf Reaching The Arch Wonder," opens the album with a swirling ambience, journeying through the underworld and outer space, maybe Middle Earth too. "Naro Way" was all over Top 40 radio in some wonderful alternate dimension, but atypical here with its vocals, guitar, and inviting rhythms. The next two songs provide a perfect balance between its directness and the otherwise epic sprawl. Check them out here:
"Through the Valley" and "The Wicker Chair"
Groovy! Can you dig it? Epic #2, "Sundown in the New Arcades (Milky Way Echo)," makes it about as explicit as possible, verging on a sound-sample collage of Pink Floyd's "Echoes" (but just the spaciest parts). I'm not sure if final track, "Evil Ball," intentionally references the Loknar. But it would definitely make suitable soundtrack for Métal Hurlant illustrations. So now it is.
"Comas" and "Cold Criminals" from Axis of Evol (2006)
The no-beat "Comas" leads into the downbeat "Cold Criminals," having like many songs the distored sound of a reverse-engineered dashboard casette deck recording (plink!). Also the garage-punk-dance-hit "New Drug Queens." The closest to Black Mountain's sound, dronepic "Slaves" seems to point the way to prog-suite "Tyrants." (Epics here are half the length of Sinoia's.)
"Plastic Man, You're the Devil" kicks off a concluding trilogy of righteous God v. Devil tunes. It's a bit Dylanesque, with a corroded slide hook. "Lord, Let Us Shine" is the aforementioned beatbox drone-gospel with laid-back, revival-tent-testifyin' rap. Finally, "How We Can Get Free" (live excerpt) is seven-and-a-half of minimalist guitar pluck and reverb-laced lines like "Jesus in a holy rage, won't you tell us... aw, how we can get free?"
A supergroup of noiseniks, AEthenor takes avant-experimentalism into dark new realms. They are: Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))), Daniel O' Sullivan of Guapo, and Vincent de Roguin of Shora.
Part I of Deep in Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light (2006)
The title seems to be a quote from The Iliad (~8th century BC), and I believe it's intended to describe the content of the record. It sounds like it's supposed to represent the non-anthropomorphic journey of the lamp. Somewhat... maybe. It's possible I'm too literal, and projecting too much from the title/concept to the various sounds. These are site-specific recordings, to the extent that each member is even credited with playing "room." And although there is guitar, keyboards and percussion, it does come off as a spatial audio experiment - in four parts.
Part I starts quietly, with an ambient wash and clattering noise coalescing into a metallic waveform. Gradually it builds, from shoreline tide to the open sea crashing. The rhythm transforms, with more percussive clattering, and we're closer to a wooden vessel creaking on those same heavy waves. There's music somewhere, submerged in the noise. It won't get any more literal for quite awhile, but suddenly the surface wave phenomemon recedes. Part II is more diffuse and open, centered on brittle electronic noise and keyboard. The contrast with Part I's rhythm does evoke peaceful descent through the icy void beneath a stormy surface. Part III becomes less literal still - spooky and ambient, it feels dark and claustophobic. The lamp seems to be in the lower depths, blackness closing in, with the occasional blind and phosphorescent monstrosity swimming much too near. Finally Part IV has the most musical activity and motion since Part I, and in my imagination, huge cliffs above the ocean floor rise and surround with accelerating speed.
Parts III & IV of Deep in Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light (2006)
Regardless whether I'm over-analyzing the specifics, definite moods and sensations are created through the enveloping, impressionistic sound story. The music, noise, rooms, recordings, all work together impressively. It's not a rock band by any definition, but still sounds good.
Torche hails from the southeastern United States. Their brand of punishing stoner sludge metal incorporates such weird components as melodic hooks and pscychedelicism. But only sometimes, to add flavor.
First three songs, from In Return (2006)
I heard that last year's Meanderthal full-length was good, but so far, an EP's worth of Torche is enough for me. After the bludgeoning intro-mental "Warship," the title track shows some QOTSA stoner-rock influence before devolving into primordial sludge. Then "Bring Me Home" slows down and spaces out, with trippy lead guitar and drawled out shouting.
The rest of the album mostly covers similar ground. The walloping, galloping "Rule the Beast" goes into a psychedelic breakdown, before unleashing a metallic guitar solo. "Olympus Mons" is a short but stately doom instrumental. Actually all the songs are pretty short for this style of music - mostly under 3 minutes. Finally, it becomes most heavy with the appropriately-named "Tarpit Carnivore" and "Hellion."
The packaging was designed by John Dyer Baizley, of Baroness fame, and it's pretty nice 10" gatefold stuff. With like a million different versions of colored vinyl, included in the homebrew video above. So 7 songs, 20 minutes: a perfect dose!
Mono is a Japanese post-rock quartet, who play instrumental guitar music with an emotional tone and a soundtrack sound. Typically, a sad and slow section will build and explode into a louder and more distorted section, then then the cycle repeats. Strangely, their last few albums have been produced by Steve Albini. Not so strangely, the last couple have been recorded with small orchestras.
"The Flames Beyond The Cold Mountain" from You Are There (2006) [part 2]
I really dig Mono, and this (their fourth or fifth) is clearly one of the best - mostly considered the zenith of Mono-ness. I can't improve on this detailed write-up of the album, so I won't try. At times wintry and mournful, at times boiling over with heat and passion. That's Mono.
The songs are sequenced like a message in Morse code: long-short-long long-short-long. The short songs are quiet and lyrical. The long songs are quiet and lyrical, until they start gradually building up the intensity, then they ungradually break into loud and noisy, somehow working back to the quietude, until they settle back down to repeat, or end.
The first song is illustrated on the cover (below, live version embedded atop). The guitar interplay here seems more organic, especially during the gradual builds. The third song, "Yearning," is probably the most fully-formed and still a live staple. The quiet part sounds hesitant and spare, but when the noise churns up a head of steam, the drums break over the top, accentuating the chaos. I believe it may be Mono's most rifftastic song ever!
"Are You There?" Almost a title track, the strings feature more prominently here. It never brings the full-bore noise attack, staying relatively subdued throughout. Then a piano ballad? From Mono? Yes. And the message ends with "Moonlight," the most ethereal of the four epics. The distinct sound comes from even more symphonics, even more-reverbed tremolo-picking, and occasionally jazzy, swingin' drums. By Mono standards...
But the cycle must be completed, so there is one final crescendo before a long winter's nap.
Like I said in the Flaming Lips Discograph, I put Clouds Taste Metallic (1995) at the top of the Lips classics pyramid. With In a Priest Driven Ambulance with Silver Sunshine Stares (1990) and The Soft Bulletin (1999) directly below.
The evocative but irrelevant title, reputedly suggested by an airplane coversation with the band Tool, gets mirrored on many of the songs. "The Abandoned Hospital Ship," "Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles," "Placebo Headwound"... what does it all mean?! Nothing but great music: The album starts out with a film projector fluttering, soft piano, crackling guitar disruption, and Wayne Coyne singing like he means it. When the levee breaks, there is more bombast, guitar noise, tubular bells, and yet still a hovering sadness. "Needles" also follows a quiet electrical storm intro into a full-on rocker... about how a mixed-up food chain leads back to King Bug. Then "Placebo" asks the cosmic (and mundane) questions that Wayne would later become famous for: "And if God hears all my questions, then how come there's never an answer?" The classics roll on throughout the whole record, mixing insight with the whimsical, darkness with the lovely. And sometimes just the fun...
Apparently, "Lightning Strikes The Postman" is about the only song written by Ronald Jones, who again was such an awe-inspiring lead guitarist. Also one of the few older songs to remain in the live set up until these days. The album wraps up with two bests of the best. The acoustic folkiness of "Evil Will Prevail" - folk as in "The magic bullet is the glowing mothership." And the righteous power-pop would-be mega-hit "Bad Days" - pop stuff like "You hate your boss at your job, but in your dreams you can blow his head off. In your dreams, show no mercy." How was this not a hit single? How was this not a best-selling album?!
As "Wayne's Intro... Smoking a 'J' with the Fearless Freaks" (the first track) explains, 20 Years of Weird (2006) started off as a handout for the SXSW showing of The Fearless Freaks, a 2005 documentary about the band. It sounds even better than the Warner release. For one, it probably didn't have "Free Radicals," which sounds like the Flaming Lips doing Ween doing Prince. But doing it poorly. On the plus side, it does have "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear" which was a much beloved and discussed song from the doc's never-released soundtrack. The rest is a sequential wander through the bootleg archives.
1986: "With You," the opening track of the debut full-length LP. 1988: "Whole Lotta Love/You Can't Stop the Spring," from the Exorcist-themed show. 1990 or 1991: "Shine on Sweet Jesus," with now-super-producer Dave Fridmann on keyboard. 1994: "Space Age Love Song," Flock of Seagulls cover at Ronald's behest. 1995: "Moth in the Incubator," Drozd!!! 1996: "When You Smile > Psychiatric Explorations," an epic couple of songs from Clouds. 1996: "Sleeping on the Roof," from the 1st Parking Lot Experiment. It would end up as the final track on The Soft Bulletin. 2003: "The Observer," yet another instrumental from the same album. This kind of thing would soon win the Lips a couple of Grammys.
They also released a double-album of new material in 2006, At War With The Mystics. It was just alright...
And that's the end for this explosion of Flaming Lips!
The Black Angels are an Austin, TX band that plays at events like Psychedelic Music festivals. They've backed Roky Erickson on a West Coast tour. Many times they remind me a bit of another Texas band, The Secret Machines. It might be the singing, but also some of the song dynamics. Whereas Secret Machines do with the '70s pomp and prog, Black Angels do more of a '60s psychedelic garage drone.
Whereas Secret Machines sound a sci-fi military glorification, a la Yes and Starship Troopers, Black Angels are still talking about "The First Vietnamese War," a la Hell no, We won't go!! By the third song on Passover (2006), "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven," they're referencing Pink Floyd's 1967 debut, sounding a bit like Jim Morrison fronting the Velvets, and still talking in deadly military metaphors. So, that's what you get: a druggy, droney guitar noise locked into your groovy rock songs, and delivered with an engaged, detached, passionate cool.
"Black Grease" is the fuzztastic standout hit song [official video], about like girls and stuff. I actually prefer the moodier, even more drone "Manipulation." About a Technicolor sitar vision of a crazy psychedelic girl, with a cool Red Krayola/Mayo Thompson style vocal part. But enough with the lovey-dovey, and back to the sociopolitical commentary (and pysch-rock dronin')! As the Black Angels will tell you, the "Empire" is very oppressive - epicly, Orgasmatron-ically oppressive! Good song here, nice drum and bass parts, a noisier outro, shows the band's reach without sounding out of place. Even the slight dip in quality with "Better Off Alone" isn't a significant mark on the record. It's pretty consistently good the whole way through. There's also the differentish, (Hats off to) Roy Harper-esque "Bloodhounds on my Trail," showing yet another facet.
Then at the end, they make it all clear with an acoustic "hidden track" (after a lengthy silence): It was all about the Iraq War!! Ahhh...
Guapo is a British experimental band, direct descendents from the outsider prog of Magma. They also count krautrock, soundtracks, jazz, minimalism, and 20th century classical composers among their influences. Capable of stirring up a noisy racket, sometimes they settle down into an ambient mood.
"The Heliotrope" from Twisted Stems 7" (2006)
Zeuhl... Rock in Opposition... we'll get to them in due time. Guapo follows in a proud tradition of certain iconoclastic anti-star rock-ish collectives of the '70s. I found out about them through AEthenor... we'll get to them eventually. And I think I found them through Atilla Csihar and Sunn O))). So maybe that defines the avant space Guapo inhabits, maybe not. I heard that Twisted Stems 7" was excellent and rare, so I grabbed it when I had a chance. Seems like it's not typical of their sound, but it's definitely excellent.
Both songs are available on the Elixirs cd (2008), and both are heavy with smokey ambience. "The Heliotrope" partly with a dark piano lounge blur, partly with a chiming Oriental, opium-den buzz. The pace somewhere between leisurely and stationary, the tone gloomy and mysterious. "The Selenotrope" similarly transports mellow jazz into exotic locales, somewhere incense wafts through spare shafts of light and temple gongs peel quietly against bare stone walls. The percussive sounds are key to both tunes, almost a lead instrument at times. And despite long stretches of repeated piano figures, there's a lot of variety - with different instrumentation subtly shifting in and out. At the end, there's even some muted, subterranean vocal frenzy. Restrained frenzy, of course...
Zombi is a synth-bass/drums-synth instrumental duo. They were originally from Pittsburgh, land of Romero. Zombi was the title of Dario Argento's Italian edit of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Argento's soundtracks were often done by Italian prog group Goblin, who are a key influence - on Zombi. Now based in Chicago.
"Digitalis" from Surface to Air (2006)
Not even my favorite Zombi! But every few times I listen to Surface to Air, it creeps just a little bit closer to the mighty Cosmos (2004). Ironically, as they made a bigger move towards blown-out prog rock, they also tightened up to a single-album format. Horror soundtrack auteurs Goblin (from Dario Argento's films) and John Carpenter (from John Carpenter's films) have to make a little room for Rush and maybe even early Genesis. Which is only half as nerdy as it sounds, but twenty times as cool. The change is especially evident on the first song, "Challenger Deep" - live 8/26/2006 in Phoenix (with "Digitalis"). The front section focuses on thumping bass guitar and flailing drum fills, which eventually pull back for a rising synth dread. Small details keep moving within the bigger scheme, but major changes are built towards gradually. It's great theme music!
"Digitalis" (embedded above) is more sequencer-based, shifting the soundfield around until the drums lock in. More synth layers slowly accumulate as the drums notch up the intensity. It's the most like previous Zombi stuff, taking a more direct path between start and end. And those are the two hit-ready, radio-friendly under-five-minute songs. "Legacy" is 9 minutes of pure prog dynamics, with several interlocking sections that flow into and out of one another. And plenty of impressive playing from really every direction: synth leads, drum parts, and especially the bass. (Okay, I made possibly the laziest, crappiest video ever. Might have to revisit this one later... Enjoy!!)
We finally get to the title track (above, and partial edits in Chicago and in Detroit). As it starts off, you might look over your shoulder for Michael Myers coming after you. But then the main riff kicks in, carrying the momentum forward and continually mutating. Once that theme's run its course, it drops back behind a drifting, extended tangerine dreamscape of synth fields.
And the record ends with the epic "Night Rhythms" (part 1/part 2). This tune really sprawls out... Starting with ominous foreboding tones, then heightening the tension with some tantalizing sequencer patterns, then finally breaking into a frenetic chase. So, kind of like an epic synthesizer concept track version of a slasher movie. At over 18 minutes, it's the longest song they've ever done, and possibly stretched a little thin at parts. But in my opinion, there's not too many groups even attempting this kind of thing, and if any are succeeding as well, I'd sure like to know!
[What I do for these long ones: open video(s) and immediately hit Pause, then allow the song(s) to buffer fully, then Play each without all the hitches.]
Still no repeats from the previoustwo lists, and I didn't have to try so much this time... We almost had a tie, but they don't make Top Eleven lists for a reason.
[As always, album name links go to a full post on the record. Song titles link to the sample video, where available.]
