Faust - 'Seventy One Minutes Of...' (ReR)

Usually if the duration is in the title, I find the task of listening daunting. Maybe that's the reason I never gelled with Seventy One Minutes Of Faust, which is really a combination of their last LP Munich & Elsewhere with some 70s-recorded miscellany, released much later. This hodgepodge lack of cohesion is also part of the problem - even though there's some great, zany art rockin' at play here (the blown out "Baby', or 'Don't Take Roots'), it's certainly not a coherent, self-standing statement like So Far or IV. And the presentation is murky and confusing - the titles are even hard to read on the back of the CD, the artwork rote and uninspiring. It feels a bit like the Faust version of Incesticide, scraping the barrel for completists, at least before their 90s reunion and subsequent split into two competing strains of Faust. Listening today, it's a lot better than I remembered it being, though there's no classic cuts, and the fact that there are seven tracks named 'Party' makes it hard for any to be memorable. These 'Party' tracks are actually the stronger material, though I'm not sure how many of them were intended for release; the fidelity is very crisp (the electronics on 'Party 1' float above the gurgling improv swamp, sounding like something from a more contemporary electronica-indie scene) and they just feel a bit jammy, even for Faust. There's some alternate versions of known Faust commodities; the first 'Party' is a slower take on the song from the beginning of Tapes, with a really nice layer of spacey guitar that brings this into Cosmic Jokers territory. 'Party 5' sounds like British art-rock, maybe some post-Art Bears RIO band. The closer, 'Party 4', includes everything and the kitchen sink (and lots of babbling in English and German). Despite how satisfying most of these tracks are if taken individually, it somehow doesn't add up to feel like much. Yet this stays on the shelf, and will be upgraded to a vinyl edition if one comes by, because, well... you never know.

The Fall - 'Dragnet' (COG Sinister)

I guess this is the second Fall album and it's just about perfect. It's recorded with a bit more of a gritty feel than Live at the Witch Trials and the songwriting seems more obnoxious (that's a good thing!) and the great Craig Scanlon has joined the band at this point, able to exude the maximum dissonance within what is still technically a pop song. You can hear it in 'Psykick Dancehall' which builds up a repetitive, annoying high-pitched riff during it's climax. Mark E. is ripping it up too, snarling throughout stuff like 'Printhead', a dark mishmash of punk and DIY singles and whatever else was happening in 1979 Britain. The original liner notes are reproduced here in annoyingly small CD quality, and maybe it's best summed up by Mark E.'s own bio, about his visit to the dry cleaners: 'How did your coat get so dirty, Mr. Smith? What do you do for a living? Answer: I hang around old buildings for hours and get very dirty in one of those hours.' Genius, I guess; dirty buildings do fill the corners of Dragnet, even if it's the 'Flat of Angles'. The longer form jams ('Spectre vs. Rector' and 'A Figure Walks' which is utterly brutal in its monotony) take the promise of early single 'Repetition' and run the course. The people making this would probably never have imagined that anyone would consider it a 'classic' today.

Black Sun Ensemble (Camera Obscura)

Guitar Jesus comes to life in this debut release, reissued in the 90s with some bonus tracks and resequencing from the original mid-80s private press. Black Sun Ensemble occupy a unique, sun-drenched southwestern band of instrumental psychedelia. They're confident enough in Guitar Jesus's licks that there's little need for effects, studio fuckery or vocals. What this really is about is the guitar playing, and some of the songs are fairly improvised over a rhythm section that locks into similar chord progressions and patterns on every song. The end result is a patchwork of blistering electric guitar solos, glistening hollow-body/12-string blankets, and tunes that all kinda sound the same. The liner notes subtitle each track with descriptions like 'Wacko guitar solo', 'Improvisation in C scale', 'Blues in B Minor' etc. but somehow it all melts into a unified whole. I bought this when it came out after reading a review that praised it as first-rate psychedelia, but at the time I thought all psychedelia had to be insanely exaggerated mind-bends or maximallist pop like Mercury Rev or something -- I found this kinda downbeat, not disappointing per se, but not what I expected either. But I still liked it because I was also going through my Fahey/Americana-guitar phase, and I realised that this was a record to bridge the two schools. Guitar Jesus knows he's the star and he's mixed so far up that everything else sounds like an afterthought. If there's one criticism it is that the Black Sun Ensemble defined their sound too much, because the weird strum-pattern is so similar from track to track that it feels almost limiting. I know they made later records and I think still exist to this day (though Guitar Jesus is the only one remaining) so maybe they branched out since this was recorded (which was 1985). Much of the 'success' of this CD, to these ears, is owed to the early 80's DIY recording quality. You're really in the room with these guys, yet it still somehow captures the 'Dove of the Desert' feel (to borrow a phrase from track 5). There's something 'inside' about this psychedelia and it's a great mood-setter in the midst of a long winter. Liner notes by Byron Coley!