dancing on my boomerang

Crippled Dick Hot Wax has done us a great service by recently reissuing some great releases from the late 70s/early 80s post-punk scene that just keeps getting more and more attention of late. A number of months ago it was GRLZ: Women Ahead of Their Time, which featured a fantastic set of songs from the Slits, Rip Rig & Panic, Bow Wow Wow, Delta 5, and much much more. The leadoff track was from Bristol, UK's Maximum Joy- a Pop Group offshoot that was as funky, political, dubby and experimental as any of their peers from the era. Now, Crippled has decided to also give Maximum Joy the full reissue treatment with a wonderful collection of rare and hard to find 7", 12" and some album tracks too called Unlimited (1979-1983).

Fuelled by Thatcherism, inner city race riots and growing protest amongst young and old, Maximum Joy’s songs and melodies were about getting conscious and waking up to life, " …stay positive, stay plus, pulsate, pulsate no terminate, no end, it’s only just beginning…"

Sidenote: Their releases were found on the uber-hip Y Records and NYC's 99 Records (pronounced Nine Nine). The story goes that 99 was desperate to license Pigbag's 'Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag' from Y Records. Y's owner was really trying to push Maximum Joy so said he would only license the Pigbag if 99 released a Maximum Joy record first. 99 agreed and put out an EP. Initially the plan was that 99 would release Y records in the States with Y releasing 99 records in the UK. This didn't work out and when it came to 99 releasing the Pigbag, 99 felt too many copies had been sold on import and decided to release Pigbag's next record instead. When he heard it he didn't like it, and decided not to release it and that was the end of any arrangement with Y.

While the boys often got the most attention from the recent rounds of revisiting, its great to see the girls getting their voices heard again as well. Some other blogs have already covered Maximum Joy recently so I will try to do some different tunes...

Maximum Joy - Building Bridges
Maximum Joy - Searching for a Feeling

possible dawn

Loren Connors is a relatively unknown living legend of guitarists. Lots of critics love to elevate his name beside the likes of other masters such as John Fahey and Derek Bailey. With over 50 releases to his name on two dozen or so labels for over 25 years as a soloist or collaborator, you'd think even dad would have stumbled onto him by now. He has performed with Keiji Haino, Alan Licht, Jim O'Rourke, Chan Marshall, Darin Gray, Rafael Toral, John Fahey, Thurston Moore, Henry Kaiser, Dean Roberts, Jandek and the list goes on.

My favorite works of his are his slow-motion meditations. Sparse, empty spaces that wring emotion out of wood and steel. In a live setting, his fragile frame hunches over and gently reverberates out into the room just as delicately as the sound, leaving just enough pause to hear the chair underneath creak as weight shifts. Intaglio ambience.

Family Vineyard has been doing a great favor to us in recent years by releasing a half dozen recordings to the masses. Next year will see the completion of an amazing long term project for FV, Night Through: Singles & Collected Works, 1976-2004 triple CD boxed set. Painstakingly remastered by Jim O'Rourke from the original masters, this combines nearly all of Loren's scarce releases in one place and runs for 3.5 hrs and has an extended essay by William Ferris and even a song from Loren's mother. I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, to whet our appetites and minimize the holiday explosion of thanksgiving weekend, a couple of lo-fi tapes have been uncovered to help bring the merriment to a crashing halt. Silent Night has always been one of the prettier songs of the season and nothing warms a heart quite like a child singing along to dad's playing. Recorded at home in 1995, his son was around 8 at the time.

Music is silent when it's still inside you. When you let it out, it takes on a sound, just one hand held toward another. - Loren Connors

Loren Connors - Silent Night
Loren & Jamie Connors - Silent Night

Bonus tracks:
Loren Connors -The Departing of a Dream, Part 4
Loren Connors - Her Death
Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille - Why We Came Together

the rumble has ceased

Saturday night I was out DJing a whole buncha 45s at a local club and didnt even realise that I played some of a legend that just passed on into the dark night. The man had a sound and look that were completely his own. Perhaps the first cool dude. Some say he invented the power chord!

R.I.P. LINK WRAY
May 2, 1929 - November 5, 2005

It is with great sadness that we inform you that Link Wray passed away from heart failure at his home in Denmark on November 5, 2005. He was buried after a private service at Christians Church in Copenhagen Denmark on November 18, 2005.

He was a Korean War veteran and proud of his service to his Mother Country.

Link Wray played music for over sixty years, always staying true to himself. Not settling for the "oldies circuit", Link continued to release new music throughout his career. He recently completed a three month tour of the USA just four short months before his death.

Link Wray laid the foundation of rock and roll guitar, influencing the likes of Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, as well as hundreds of thousands of musicians and fans all over the world.

Punk rock, grunge, garage, rock guitar, surf, heavy metal and more...it all started with Link Wray. He shared the stage with everyone from Patsy Cline to Bruce Springsteen. He is truly an unsung hero of rock and roll.

Link's "Jesus God" has called him home and Heaven is rocking a whole lot harder tonight.

AP News Story

Link Wray - Rumble
Link Wray - Raw-Hide
Link Wray - Ain't That Lovin' You Babe

deep sea divers

Grizzly Bear began as a home recording project of Ed Droste. But soon it took on a life of its own and has now blossomed to four. I could easily namedrop Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Nick Drake, Earlies, Syd Barrett, Pet Sounds, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jim O'Rourke, Unicorns, Super Furry Animals and the Castanets. Just don't call them another progression of the same tired Nu York formula of freakdom.

A recent live performance wheezed a warm breath into a cold room. Autoharp, handclaps, woodwinds, electronics, strings and more all mixed in perfectly with a more traditional set-up, leaving plenty of space for the sounds to have a shape of their own yet combining for something strangely magical. Songs shift, evaporate, coalesce. A hazy dreamlike state shrouds everything. The limitations of the recording become its intimacies and draw you into its world.

A recent remix CD of their recordings has appeared with the talents of Tim Sweeney of DFA, Castanets, Soft Pink Truth, Ariel Pink, The Double, Efterklang, Hisham Bharoocha, Simon Bookish, Solex, and more. Do yourself a favor and grab their album from Kanine.

Grizzly Bear - Don't Ask
Grizzly Bear - A Good Place
Grizzly Bear - Owner of a Lonely Heart

nowhere near

Dawn Smithson might be a familiar name to a few. Perhaps if you are a Kranky nut like me. She played in and sang in the spacey Jessamine during the 90s and lately has made appearances with Sunn O))). These moves did little to reveal what would happen on her new solo release, Safer Here.

Eschewing the volume of her other projects, Dawn chooses an incredibly intimate environment of mostly acoustic guitar and her lovely voice. A few synth warblings and guitar washes run underneath. But the centerpiece is absolutely the isolation and woe of Smithson's story. The sound of someone locked up in their own home. To me, each song must be listened to in order as they seem to tell a story and the emotions that pour out over time. A great break-up record, if there is such a thing.

As she describes it, "I have been the most extreme hermit I could possibly be during the year plus it took me to make the record, having neither the time nor the desire for most human company. Because this album so personal and intimate, I think it is also best listened to alone - like a melancholy movie that might deeply affect you, but that you don't want anyone to see you being affected by."

Safer Here teaches the thought that you know the variables at home, you won't see anyone you don't want to. Nothing can affect you. Nowhere Near has a deep nearly Labradford guitar figure over the sad realization that the hurt you have is not nearly gone. it may be time to watch the waves crashing...

Dawn Smithson - Safer Here
Dawn Smithson - Nowhere Near

gradual music and active listening

Apestaartje has been slowly dispersing quiet pieces of exquisite beauty since 1998. Releases from Anderegg and Minamo have been filling in the "audio wallpaper" to my monotonous day job in a very calming manner. So when I learned that the latest project from the label, Mountains, wanted to come to my town to play a show, I was very excited. This new "group" combines the electronic with the acoustic, I guess making them electro-acoustic. Mixing in field recordings with their sparse live instrumentation and subtle digital tweaking, I can easily hear this album melting into the rising din of summertime crickets, locusts and other night-time critters as the sun goes down. A new classic of ambient minimalism.

They already have a wonderful review that nearly perfectly captures their sound:

Often sounding like classic Apollo era Brian Eno recorded during a tropical downpour, while at others bringing to mind the glorious sun-drenched layering of genre-master Fennesz, this album evokes the feeling you had as a child when opening boxed presents only to find another box inside and then another ... until you finally reach the gemstone kept heavily under wraps.

I wish I wrote that, but they did. Check them out now, live, through the end of November.

Mountains - Blown Glass Typewriter

flags of the sacred harp

Jackie-O Motherfucker have been flying their freak flag for a decade now from the evergreens of the pacific northwest to New Orleans to Baltimore and to NY. While their line-up both on album and live has been moving and constantly growing and shrinking for years, the constant that has remained has always been Tom Greenwood. The newest line-up has shaved the group down to a lean, mean four piece. But the sound is as full as ever, full of every bell, whistle, drone, and noise imaginable- so really not much has changed.

Their newest release, Flags of the Sacred Harp, there first new album in three years, is perhaps their most realised and accessible release yet. It is also the first new album for their newest label, ATP, which are also doing us the kind service of reissuing much of their hard to find back catalog from the likes of Road Cone and beyond. The new songs are still long and meandering, but now also have more of a melody than ever before. While deconstructing genres from song to song they still somehow maintain a coherence that makes perfect sense. JOMF have further proved their abilities to capture a mood to build on and slowly away from seamlessly.

The album starts with a psychedelic sound in the round, but about half way through falls apart into fragments that can never get put back together. Rockaway is a downright country song with guy/gal vox. Hey Mr. Sky is a Nyquilfolk Sweet Nothin'. Spirits builds to Dreamweapon 2: Another Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music. Good Morning Kaptain might be what J Spacemen has been trying to capture for years: alien-abducted Appalachian spirituality. The Louder Roared The Sea deconstructs and reconstructs. Slow-mo sunlight refractions off of a shimmering golden body of water. Classic JOMF.

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Hey Mr. Sky
Jackie-O Motherfucker - Good Morning Kaptain

what up brah?

Brah Records is the name of the new imprint started by NYC freakprogthing's Oneida. And I gotsta say, I love the logo.

They have three releases so far, the first being their own split with Chicago's nu-psych legend Plastic Crimewave Sound. Each band fills a side and well, you won't get any songs from it here cuz they take up the whole side and I am feeling lazy today.

The second release is by NY's Company. They draw from a country-folk-fried sound that you might not expect from an Oneida sponsored joint.

The third release, from Pittsburgh's Dirty Faces is much more of what you might expect, Index calls it “classic Rust Belt punk, a frenzied take on drug use and crumbling relationships in a city where everybody knows everybody.”

Check em all out! Dirty Faces is on tour now in a town maybe near you... I know I will check em out this weekend when they roll into town.

Company - Red Army Blues
Company - In The Jaws Of The Lion

Dirty Faces - New Wicked Stepson
Dirty Faces - 1974