Flying Saucer Attack - 'Further' (Drag City)

Right about now feels like the time that Dave Pearce's music is due for a comeback, not that he ever went away, or became unfashionable. He just became less prolific, and seems a million miles away from any sort of music scene politics these days, still making music how he wants and releasing it now and then (the last being the Instrumentals 2015 record which I have not heard yet). I remember reading about Flying Saucer Attack in zines and other pre-Internet media in the early 90s; reading one particular publication, the name of which I can't remember, it seemed (to me) that FSA were aggressive sci-fi space-rock, as they were reviewed alongside more punk-orientated material. My teenage mind couldn't handle that type of diversity yet, because when I finally got around to hearing them (these were the days where one had to struggle to actually hear the things one read about, especially on a high schoolers budget) I was disappointed; it sounded too abstract, too empty to me. Of course that changed later on, once I started to investigate minimalism and drone, and to make my own music which wasn't a million miles away form this sound. Further is probably now the record of theirs I appreciate the most, as it feels like the best balance between all of FSA's various tendencies (folk song vs drone piece, harmony vs dissonance, lo-fi vs hi-fi). Owning it on CD gives it a glassy shimmer, and on a track like 'For Silence', which moves between all of these tendencies, I can only imagine how it must sound coming from vinyl's dynamic range. Acoustic guitars are dominant, and there's quite a lot of arpeggiated picking, making this more obviously folk-based than I was ready for as a teenager. Listening now, I can really hear the saturation in British traditional music, even if 'To The Shore' sounds more like Labradford than Shirley Collins. This reinvention of British folk form was something else totally lost on me not just as a youngster, but later when I discovered and really fell in love with FSA; it's only now that I really feel this is truly the next step in a lineage. Rachel from (the wonderful) Movietone was still a core part of the band here and her voice on 'Still Point' creates a spooky ambience that most directly recalls the strong tonality of the British female voice; that the song is drenched in delay and reverb doesn't inhibit this comparison, but if anything amplifies it. This is music that can be taken in peripherally, as a semi-ambient bouquet of suggestions, or full-on direct into the centre of one's skull. 'In the Light of Time' and 'She is the Daylight' function perhaps as the two anchors of this record, both built around Pearce's earnest voice, over delayed arpeggios, the mildest percussive elements (just tapping the guitar body, I think) and then the bright light tones that drift overtop, like the album artwork rendered into sound. This music has aged very, very well, and the close connection I feel to my physical body when listening to it separates it from that which is based in trends or the cultural context of the time. It's easy to lose oneself in this record, and somehow it feels short even though it's 'proper album length'. 

John Fahey - 'The Yellow Princess' (Vanguard)

Fahey goes 'serious' in the liner notes here, explaining that he's tired of writing humorous record notes, for 'such publicity stunts are no longer necessary'. Then it transforms into a beautiful description of the title piece, written for a boat, and with a description of one's place in the cosmos, Whitman-motivated, that is as stirring and majestic to read as the composition is to hear. 'The Yellow Princess' is Fahey strumming and picking frantically in standard tuning, creating a dazzling array of  guitar sounds. It's a momentum picked up a few tracks later in 'Lion', an open-G eulogy to his housecat that moves through moods, appropriately given it's inspiration. The Yellow Princess overall shows Fahey in the extremes - slow, mournful picking and jaunty whimsicality both share a loveseat. The longest piece is 'Irish Setter', another one for a pet, but that's only 7 minutes, making this very digestible overall. Fahey's accompanied by a band on two tracks, but it's minimal - 'Dance of the Inhabitants of the Invisible city of Bladensburg' is actually one of the most spare pieces on the disc, starting with a few cautious steps before building to a swirling tornado, with an additional guitar adding a shimmery, bendy feel to a lengthy buildup. Fahey leans slightly more towards severity, and away from beauty, with modal progressions and minor key explorations ('Irish Setter', 'Charles A. Lee: In Memoriam'). But when he drives straight-ahead with simplistic wonder (as on the sublime 'View'), it provides the complete yin-yang of the Fahey spirit, and you start to see what his reputation is based upon.