What are you listening to now? : Non-metal Edition

The Flaming Lips - "The Soft Bulletin" (1999)

Some poppy neo-psychedelia to keep me interested while I play with the kids & do some housework on my Sunday morning. It's not really my thing as it's a little too quirky & happy for my taste & is more of a pleasant background distraction than being genuinely engaging but fans of this sort of thing will no doubt love the shit out of it.

For fans of MGMT, Dorgas & Animal Collective.

My top neo-psych album is Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.  It takes the poppiness of Soft Bulletin and combines it with the experimentation that would later dominate another brilliant album by Flaming Lips: Embryonic.

Currently listening to a 90's blues album by Junior Wells: Better Off With the Blues.  The previous album was called "Undisputed Godfather of the Blues," but you wouldn't know it from this album.  I like blues enough, I've got a few blues albums in my top 500 excluding rock, including Muddy Watters, Wells himself, Etta James, Howlin' Wolf, B.B King and Albert King.  But this album is so standard, overlong and boring.  I'll finish it because I always do, but this has the makings of being the second worst non-rock blues album I've ever heard.

Cephas & Wiggins - Bluesmen (1993)

Genres: Piedmont Blues

Since I've got quite a bit of freetime today, I have time for a longer album.  This is a 70-minute blues album.  So far, it's not very spectacular.  Let's see if they have anything new to add.  Otherwise, it looks like 1993 just wasn't the best year for blues...

Elvis Presley - "From Elvis in Memphis" (1969)

My father-in-law was over on Monday so out came the old Elvis records. This one saw Elvis taking on soul & country music. Jeez, he sounds a lot like Cher at times here. She must have been seriously influenced by him. I can also hear a fair few similarities to Tom Jones on this album in particular. It's not my bag by any means but the old man seemed to dig it. It does include the classic "In the Ghetto" to close out the album though of course.

Somi - "Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba" (2022)

Vocal jazz with genuine soul & emotion. I believe she resides in the USA but a lot of this is heavily influenced by traditional African music. It's made for a more than decent background accompaniment over the last few days when I've wanted to wind down a bit.

I have an outside-world friend (NOT the Audiomachine-loving one) who's into metal-ish darksynth projects like Carpenter Brut, Scandroid, and Dance With the Dead. The new Carpenter Brut album Leather Terror has a few guest appearances, including The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato in this killer tune (actually this song's single was given the Alternative Metal tag in RYM, and that seems slightly accurate, but this is from a mostly darksynth artist, so here):

Found the worst folk artist in history: m_AJ_ik.  I heard his album "Wai Guo La" back in 2014.  He tagged the damn thing as gunge, metal and punk, but it's really avant-folk.  Just rediscovered his bandcamp page, and he's been busy.

The Story of a Colorblind Painter (2006)

The playing has a nice and dark mood to it that occasionally sounds like darkwave, but the playing can be very monotonous and occasionally really dull.  Still, while it was very flawed, it wasn't unlistenable.

Wai Guo La (2014)

This was the album I discovered him on.  There are a few more efforts to experiment and try out some new sounds, but the production and the voice still sucks.

precarious/vicarious: winter nocturnes (2018)

This is the worst folk album I've ever heard.  This was four years after Wai Guo La and he hadn't recorded anything in between.  How did he end up with such a downgrade?  Every song is drawn out way longer than it needs to be, even the four minute songs, and one of the four songs is EIGHT.  Ugh.  The guitar playing is all over the place, repetitive, ugly and annoying, as if this joker just decided that experimenting was all it took to impress the experimental audience.  If this guy wants to be as good as Natural Snow Buildings or Comus, he's gotta actually write songs.

Nine Inch Nails - "Still" (2002)

A deep, stripped back & introspective record from Trent Reznor that you need to be in the right mood for. You can expect some reworks of past works, some new material & also some more ambient stuff. It's pretty close to essential listening if you're a fan of the band & I found it pretty interesting.

Veniamin D'rkin - "Крышкин дом" (2001)

Man-&-his-guitar style singer-songwriter Russian folk music. Didn't really dig it much but there are a couple of pretty cool stripped-back tracks in the back end.

The Specials - "Specials" (1979)

A legendary 2 tone ska album from Coventry, England. It's a bit of fun but doesn't have much lasting appeal for me stylistically.

claire rousay - "t4t" (2019)

I thought I'd give some Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response recordings (otherwise known as ASMR) a shot & see if they made my head tingle like they're supposed to. They certainly did at times. They can also be boring as shit to tell you the truth. I'm not sure the pay-off is strong enough to justify the effort involved unfortunately. Perhaps if I was lying still in a quiet room & trying to relax with headphones on it'd be more effective than cleaning up the kitchen & making dinner with it playing on a Bluetooth speaker? Yeah probably.

Grouper - "A I A: Alien Observer" (2011)

Angelic female-fronted ambient from California, USA. It's a classy effort & I really dig it.

Sixteen Horsepower - "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes" (1996)

Some very cool country music with a darker gothic edge. I haven't returned to this one for a while but it really suited my morning chores nicely as I've prepared to have friends around for the NRL Grand Final this afternoon.

Burial - "Untrue" (2007)

This classic sophomore album from London electronic producer Burial is a wonder of the future garage movement & has been a long-time favourite of mine when I wanna chill out on a lazy Saturday afternoon drive.

Sweet Trip - "Velocity : Design : Comfort" (2003)

The second full-length from this San Francisco group which combines glitch pop, IDM & shoegaze in a quirky & joyous package that's probably a little too sweet, happy & child-like for my taste.

Nature & Organisation - "Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude" (1994)

A very popular English neofolk album. I found it to be quite pleasant but was probably looking for something a little more imposing.

Boris - "flood" (2000)

Tokyo-based trio Boris have been a major player in my musical world since I first discovered them upon my return to metal in the very late 2000’s. Their classic 2003 sixth album “Boris At Last -Feedbacker-“ proved to be quite the initiation & this earlier release (their third full-length) would be the next in a long line of wonderful records I’d experiment with over the many years since. It didn’t hit me quite as hard as “Feedbacker” did at the time but it’s fair to say that I’ve always regarded it as a high quality piece of work & a testament to Boris’ artistic ambition.

Unlike most of Boris’ releases from this period, “flood” generally isn’t claimed as a metal record as such. It usually slips into the drone & post-rock brackets but in truth it’s a collection of widely disparate ideas (none of them conventional drone in my opinion interestingly enough) with each of the four lengthy tracks taking a very different direction & possessing its own unique personality. Strangely the band elected to open with a highly unusual choice that categorically proves that the band have very few fucks to give about commercial success because the first of these four untitled tracks is pretty tough going, even for the more patient & educated musical connoisseur. It reminds me a lot of the minimalism of an artist like Steve Reich & is essentially made up of one short guitar loop that’s manipulated in a call-&-response fashion with constantly changing delay intervals seeing it trying very hard to sound & feel psychedelic however I’m sorry to say that it fails dismally in this endeavour & ultimately represents a rare failure for Boris. But fear not dear academics because this artist is an elite exponent of their craft so music of the most premium quality was inevitably just around the corner. The remaining 55 minutes of the album's run time is nothing short of spectacular with the deep psychedelic post-rock of the second piece being not only my album highlight but one of Boris’ best efforts overall. The third track is a twenty-one minute, slow-building excursion through post-rock, post-sludge metal & crushingly cerebral drone metal that easily maintains the top tier standard while the equally long final track sees things winding down for a deep, drawn-out ambient soother that has me curling myself up in the sound & letting all of the troubles in my life fade away.

As an overall package I'd suggest that the post-rock tag is as close as you're gonna get to a genre tag for an album like this one but even that broad term seems to short-change a release with such a vast scope. There are very few artists that can create something as special as Boris have achieved across tracks two through four here. Their knowledge & understanding of texture & nuance & their incredible attention to detail in relation to tone are rarely matched in the modern music scene. They almost seem like they belong in another era, perhaps the late 60’s or early 70’s. “flood” is mostly instrumental with Takeshi’s vocals being more of an accompaniment than they are any sort of protagonist. The use of repetition to put the listener into a calm, trancelike state is next level as usual which is why I find it so hard to accept the inclusion of the opening track which I’m afraid to say fails by such a margin that I’d even suggest that it's pretty pointless & even boring. Thankfully the rest of the tracklisting is strong enough to see me just about forgetting that early blip, even if it is a full fourteen minutes in duration & more than enough to test most listener’s patience.

The fact that I don’t place “flood” in my top five Boris records is hardly a major criticism. I simply hold this band up on such a high pedestal that there’s quite a traffic jam at the top of my list. Outside of the opener this is a genuinely remarkable collection of music that covers enormous ground but flows fluently from track to track with clinical professionalism. The warmth & depth in Boris’ guitar tones is always an attraction & I simply can’t get enough of the amplifier reverberation, the mature use of space & the sheer patience at times. All of these things make “flood” another rewarding release from a band like no other.

For fans of Earth, Godspeed You! Black Emperor & This Will Destroy You.

4/5

Randy Holden - "Population II" (1970)

This album seems to be getting a few mentions as an early heavy metal release these days so I thought I'd better check it out. It's definitely got a couple of tracks that sound surprisingly like traditional doom metal (see "Fruit & Icebergs" & "Fruit & Icebergs (Conclusion)" but overall it's much more of a heavy psychedelic rock release that provides clear indications that Randy's been majorly influenced by the blues rock of Cream, the first Black Sabbath record & particularly the Jimi Hendrix Experience who he semi-plagiarizes at times. It's not a bad listen though if you like that authentic 70's heavy psych sound (which I do).

For fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Buffalo & Iron Claw.

3.5/5

Randy Holden - "Population II" (1970)

This album seems to be getting a few mentions as an early heavy metal release these days so I thought I'd better check it out. It's definitely got a couple of tracks that sound surprisingly like traditional doom metal (see "Fruit & Icebergs" & "Fruit & Icebergs (Conclusion)" but overall it's much more of a heavy psychedelic rock release that provides clear indications that Randy's been majorly influenced by the blues rock of Cream, the first Black Sabbath record & particularly the Jimi Hendrix Experience who he semi-plagiarizes at times. It's not a bad listen though if you like that authentic 70's heavy psych sound (which I do).

For fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Buffalo & Iron Claw.

3.5/5

Another really good early seventies heavy psych release. There were some brilliant albums released around this time that contributed hugely to making rock music heavier and heavier and were certainly an influence on early metal bands. Unfortunately a lot of these records are really underappreciated by the wider community but are actually some of my all-time favourites.

Most people seem to believe the dividing wall between rock and metal is at it's thinnest betwen the hard rock of Purple and Zeppelin and late-70's heavy metal, but pesonally I think it is between early 70's heavy psych and traditional doom metal where there is most affinity (Sabbath were basically overdriven heavy psych at first).

Rainbow - "On Stage" (1977)

I have to admit that, despite the steady stream of unanimous praise that seems to be heaped on them, London supergroup Rainbow have never been my cup of tea, at least not when looking at their back catalogue holistically. Sure, their classic 1976 sophomore record “Rising” is certainly a very solid effort & I’m not denying that I get a lot of enjoyment out of it but the only other one of the band’s eight studio albums that I find much appeal in is 1982’s “Straight Between The Eyes” which is arguably Rainbow’s least popular release. This is a pretty good sign that Rainbow simply don’t play in the same playgrounds as I frequent & I’ve kinda found myself subconsciously accepting that I may never achieve the same sort of adoration that many of my metalhead peers do over the years. Recently though, I found myself in need of something to listen to while looking after my two young kids for the day & Rainbow’s 1977 “On Stage” live album popped up in my Spotify feed. For some reason I thought to myself “You know what? Everyone else seems to gush about this record. What can it hurt giving it a few spins, eh?”. So here I am…. full of high hopes & the promise to at least fill an obvious gap in my knowledge of rock/metal music history.

“On Stage” is made up of live tracks that were recorded between September & December 1976 when Rainbow were on tour in Germany & Japan so it’s not a showcase for a single performance but the best of several. Interestingly though given the timing of the shows, the tracklisting includes virtually nothing from the “Rising” album that the band were touring for at the time with only a short snippet of “Starstruck” (clearly the weakest track on “Rising” in my opinion) being represented. The majority of the record is made up of material from 1975’s “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow” debut album with the addition of a cover version of Deep Purple’s “Mistreated” (which Ritchie obviously wrote) & a sneak peak at a future classic in “Kill The King” that wouldn’t see a proper album release until 1978’ “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll” record. Most of the tracks are extended & include lengthy improvised jam sections which see the six tracks stretching out to a 64 minute run time.

The clear & organic production job is very good for a live album from that period & it does exactly what any good live production should do by giving the listener the feeling of actually being there in the audience. I could have done without the silly “Over The Rainbow” intro from the “Wizard Of Oz” but once the band kicks into gear you’ll be treated to some of the finest rock performances you’re ever likely to hear, highlighted of course by the legendary talents of Ritchie Blackmore & Ronnie James Dio. Now, let me get something else off my chest. Despite being a guitarist myself, I’ve never actually had a lot of time for Blackmore from a technical point of view. I’ve always appreciated his creativity but he seemed a little sloppy to me in comparison to some of my more favoured axemen. But here we see Ritchie confidently pulling the wool from over my eyes so that I can finally see what I’ve been missing & by George he pulls off quite the triumphant victory over my stubbornness in the process. I can very easily hear where people like Yngwie Malmsteen have cloned certain parts of his technique here & it’s hard to argue that Ritchie was ahead of his time after experiencing this record. RJD’s contribution is simply perfect as always. I don’t think there’s a musician alive that could have taken the limelight away from Ronnie as he’s a star among stars & you’re unlikely to find a better example of that than you do here.

Now a warning for all you diehard metalheads that are stuck in your ways, “On Stage” is NOT a metal record &, to be fair, it never tries to be. Contrary to popular opinion, Rainbow were never a metal band. They were a hard rock group that contained unique elements that heavily influenced metal. Hell, a lot of the jam sections of “On Stage” aren’t even rock with Rtichie & co taking their audience into a wide array of different territories from blues right through to classical & it’s worth noting that his ambitions have ultimately produced the definitive versions of many of these songs in the process. The 15 minute version of “Catch The Rainbow” is really quite stunning & has taken one of the couple of tracks that I found enjoyment in from the debut & transformed it into an epic centrepiece that rewrites the book on melody & atmosphere. I’ve never liked “Sixteen Century Greensleeves” but this version comes a little closer to being interesting while the new packaging of closer “Still I’m Sad” has seen me paying attention for the very first time.

Perhaps a release like this one is tailor made for an old musician like myself. I'm more than open to the idea of extended improvisation, I live to hear musicians pushing themselves & succeeding & I love to see an artist take their art & give it a fresh coat of paint. Rainbow may still not quite fit into my taste profile from a stylistic point of view but boy have they pulled off an entertaining release here. It’s really pretty surprising how successful “On Stage” is when you consider that I don’t have any time for the “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow” album that most of the material is drawn from. How is it possible that they’ve not only managed to pull off an acceptable live album without drawing on any of the best material from clearly their best album in “Rising” but have actually gone one step further by forcing me to consider whether “On Stage” may just have pipped “Rising” out of the top spot for my favourite Rainbow release. Well done gents. This is a very fine performance indeed.

For fans of Deep Purple, Scorpions & Thin Lizzy.

4/5

I too was never a big fan of Rainbow's debut, but loved On Stage. I think that Blackmore was much more suited to live performances. Both Rainbow and Deep Purple tended to extend tracks in a live setting - look at Made In Japan and the 20+ minutes of Space Trucking for proof. It also seemed more acceptable for rock bands to improvise live in the 1970s, Led Zeppelin were another act whose live versions of songs often included extended improvised sections. I think a lot of people who go to see bands now just want to hear the songs they hear on Spotify as they are used to them and don't really tolerate improvisation as much. Of course it could go too far - Geezer Butler's bass solos for example could get a bit too much and I've never really got much from drum solos of which there were way too many!

Glaare - To Deaf and Day (2017)

Pottering about this morning doing some errands after the wedding on Friday and ahead of us going to Wales on honeymoon this afternoon and after a chaotic few days in the final run up to the wedding I am in need of something soothing and yet with life in it.  This post-punk outfit usually hit the mark whenever I need such relief and this has once again hit the spot today.  Drank far too much on the night of my wedding so I am now suffering with anxiety being off the chart whilst I come back down so I sense this record may get quite a bashing over the next couple of days whilst I am relaxing in my hot tub on honeymoon.

Glaare - To Deaf and Day (2017)

Pottering about this morning doing some errands after the wedding on Friday and ahead of us going to Wales on honeymoon this afternoon and after a chaotic few days in the final run up to the wedding I am in need of something soothing and yet with life in it.  This post-punk outfit usually hit the mark whenever I need such relief and this has once again hit the spot today.  Drank far too much on the night of my wedding so I am now suffering with anxiety being off the chart whilst I come back down so I sense this record may get quite a bashing over the next couple of days whilst I am relaxing in my hot tub on honeymoon.

Congrats by the way. Didn't realise the wedding had come around so soon. Have a great hooneymoon!!

Congrats, Vinny, and have a good honeymoon!