John Fahey - 'America' (Takoma/Fantasy)

At the deepest point of my Fahey interest (1999-2001, roughly) I was convinced beyond any doubt that America was his masterpiece - though I must say that I hadn't heard them all, and still haven't. This was due largely to a friend uncovering a vinyl copy; he dubbed it to a tape, and during a long afternoon drive across central Pennsylvania we listened to it while trying to stay awake and the synergy was magic - the long sweeping guitarscapes were a perfect complement to the dim light of I-80, with rolling hills in the distance that seemed to write their own elegies. I immediately ordered this CD, which strangely expanded and contracted the LP at the same time. A lot of additional material was added - the first nine tracks, in fact - but one of the LP tracks was shortened to fit the fascistic 75 minute runtime of a compact disc. But it's great in both formats; I can't, at this point, imagine America without the beautiful 11-minute 'Dalhart, Texas, 1967' or the incredible version of 'Amazing Grace' (the best these ears have ever heard, with piercing shards of guitar cutting through the nonbelievers like machine gun fire). And neither were on the original LP. When we finally get around to it, I'm taken back to that drive and the transformative power of music (or whatever cliché you prefer) is in full effect. America is built around two 15- minute tracks, 'Mark 1:15' and 'The Voice of the Turtle', and the longer formats are where Fahey shines the most (although the former, I believe, is the truncated one). These pieces take their time to build, and especially in the case of 'Voice of the Turtle', represent probably the fullest evidence of his guitar genius. The shorter tracks are also great though - 'Dvorak' is celebratory and when looking at the strange, primitive artwork ('The destruction of Takoma Park, Maryland') while listening to it, it feels spooky. This is no longer necessarily my favourite album of his - I would probably take the wistful longing of Days Have Gone By, or just decline to pick one - but it's a formidable entry into American music. The title seems to acknowledge this, and while it's easy to inject a whole lot of context into your work by titling it 'America' (I'm looking at you, Baudrillard), it's fitting for the self-made man he was. I'm always drawn to the way mid-century American artists dealt with space, to me one of the fundamental issues of American culture - and the long format improvicompositions here breathe in and exhale, like a William Carlos Williams poem. The title track itself (left off the original issue!) is perhaps the most impressionistic part of the album, with a resonant high-register introduction before the resounding, aggressive strides of the main theme kick in. It's easy to think of this as the whole 200-year history compressed into a 7 minute instrumental guitar piece and I'll succumb to that analysis. Though it's lacking any musique concrete experimentation or weirder elements, this is Fahey's magnum opus for sure, and it's been recently reissued in full on vinyl so I'll probably make the conversion soon - which is the first time it's ever all been together, even if only two minutes are missing here.

Arnold Dreyblatt - 'The Sound of One String' (Table of the Elements)

It's not every day that a composer releases an Incesticide, to refer to that Nirvana collection yet again. The Sound of One String serves two purposes - it can function as an introduction to Dreyblatt's work, presented chronologically - while also collecting rarities for the fans. There's some familiar pieces here - 'Nodal Excitation' appears twice, in different forms, including an early solo performance from 1979. And there's a live version of 'Propellers in Love' which is a bit brighter than the studio version. Live recordings of Dreyblatt are great because you can really get a sense of the room, depending on the recording - on the more spare moments, like the aforementioned solo 'Nodal Excitation', you get a bit of room noise and while it's maybe not the most accurate way to reproduce the very specific frequencies, it's a wonderful document of 'being there' that only brilliant sound recordings can convey. By the time this version of 'Propellers' ends, the whole disc has been an ecstatic bit of buzzing beauty. And 'Damping Influence', a more subdued piece, works well to bring down the energy, with it's toy piano cutting through like a bizarre gamelan. And things start to pick themselves up again here, building up towards the steady electric-guitar drone of 'End Correction' and then 'Music for Small String Orchestra', a stunning experiment with traditional instrumentation. It's still just-intonated, of course, and changes slowly from overtone to overtone, and feels like an epic drone composition - like a more austere Lou Harrison, perhaps. The whole disc (and it's a packed 79 minutes) ends with 'Dirge Relations', which looks ahead to the sound and lineup of Animal Magnetism. This does that slow 'walking' thing that is all over Animal Magnetism, suggestion a modular music that is nonetheless cohesive. I admit I haven't kept up with what Dreyblatt has been doing for the past 20 years or so, which is a shame because I love his music this much. Such an reinvention of acoustic instruments doesn't feel dated at all, even though some of these tracks are 34 years old; for this listener, at least, it's a direction for further exploration.

The Dead C (Language Recordings)

So, guys, what have you been up to since leaving Siltbreeze? It seems quite a lot, and this felt like it was coming out of nowhere in 2000, though it's already twelve years old (time passing is scary!). This is the most experimental turn the Dead C have ever taken, completely forsaking the human voice in favour of ring modulator galore. This is entirely free improv, or at least it seems that way, and a fuck of a lot of it (disc 1 is 62 minutes and disc 2 is 68). In the first hour+, we start with a Tusk-like intro, 'Accelerate', though really this disc is gonna slow us down down down, as track two, 'Dec' indicates. The freedom is everywhere, and it masterfully builds on the decade and a half of rapport built up between the three of them. 'Pussyfooting' bring in a wonderfully ringing guitar, being played I guess with a mallet or some other percussive technique. The sound of the chords - the true spirit of rock and roll, right? - is warm and reverberating when it finally crashes in. It's a long journey through 'Speederbot', 33 minutes, and disc 2 is a welcome change of pace. It takes absolutely ages to listen to this and its hard to pay attention, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Though this isn't ambient music - nor is it deep-listening music - it works in some strange hybrid between-ground. There's slightly spazzy, falling apart chaotic rock dotting disc 2 ('Realisation con Slider' and 'Tuba is Funny (slight return)', a redux of the Tusk hit, I guess). 'One Night' comes midway through it all as a shockingly up-close alien aesthetic, a true gem that cheats from the ringing room sound of the rest of this disc (and their career in general). 'Fake Electronics' is another highlight, a placid, beautiful glow that fades into the distance, almost causing me to nod off until 'Tuba' jolts me awake. Listening to these discs takes all day and my mind drifts as much as the ringmod, but by the time I got to the other side I was glad for the journey. Even if I miss the 'classic' Dead C a bit, there's plenty to celebrate here.

Richard Davies - 'There's Never Been a Crowd Like This' (Flydaddy)

Danger: we're entering another obsessive idiosyncratic favourite of mine. There's Never Been a Crowd Like This took me years to warm up to, as I remember borrowing it from a good friend my freshman year of University and not liking it at all. I checked it out because it was on Flydaddy, of course. Flydaddy ends up being an odd label in the history of it all (for me). It's a mid-sized indie that I suspect was a bit overfunded at times and certainly overreached (they were somehow involved in the V2 partnership with Virgin, and this is the Japanese edition of the CD, which means they were making separate editions for Japan). They also came about in that weird time where compact discs were still commercially feasible. We didn't have downloads yet and 1996 was that interesting turning point, post-grunge, where independent labels frequently flirted with bigger distribution partnerships and often blurred the lines of what 'independent' means. Flydaddy would be just another forgotten indie label, sinking into the blur along with Grass and Frontier and Alias, except they released a few cornerstones of my musical taste: Olivia Tremor Control, Number One Cup, and the Moles/Richard Davies. Even in 2012 I listen to these records repeatedly, more times than I would normally admit. Though as I was saying before, I came late to Davies. It wasn't until I had already moved out of the US that I discovered his greatness in retrospect. And a huge portion of that would be 'Transcontinental', the opening jam here. To say this is Richard Davies' finest accomplishment is not enough - nor is it a definitive answer, because 'Cars for Kings Cross' and 'Instinct' give it a run for its money. But I digress. 'Transcontinental' is much more than a great song - it's a world of mystery, a self-reflexive circuitous pop anti-classic, rooted in autobiography and infused with Wallace Stevens-like levels of obtuse affect. I've listened to it hundreds of times, and continually try to unravel it, even though there's nothing to unravel. Start here. Move through the album, which can be easily dismissed as a pedestrian 90's indie guitar-pop album, all the songs sounding somewhat similar (which was surely my dismissal of it back in '97). This is power pop, though not so powerful; Davies isn't interested in being brash and confident with his melodies. He doesn't always show his hand, and has a strong sense of the whole over the details. But the details are rich! There's a few confident, strident 4/4 stompers, except without any aggression behind them, making it an orchestral-pop horizon pretty similar to the best Cardinal songs ('Topple Into My Fantasy', 'Sign Up Maybe for Being'). And then some fragmentary, open sketches, like 'Hard River', which become more beautiful with each listen. And then we have 'Chips Rafferty', apparently a paen to an obscure Australian character actor, but not. It's something else, and I want to explain it, but where can we go? Davies falls into the category of songwriter who perfectly balances the line between accessible and difficult; he dangles me just enough of a line to hang onto something, which makes me want to draw my own portraits. Pure modernism, perhaps, or maybe songwriters like he (and Dan Bejar, and early Pavement too) appeal the most to people who want to create their own worlds. Thus, I connect with the beauty of subtlety; the expression is more gestural. The romance is between the words, but structurally dependent on them, being bordered by language. As I mentioned, this is the Japanese edition which has a slew of bonus tracks, which is why I spent years looking for it on eBay. There are demo versions of 'Transcontinental', 'Topple into my Fantasy' and 'Chips Rafferty' ('Topple' being striking for it's starkness and space -- I think the emergence of song from demo to studio recording is always interesting but more fascinating here). And then four live songs from the Richard Davies band, or maybe the Moles - 'Bury Me Happy' and two songs from Instinct, including the aforementioned 'Cars For Kings Cross' which still burns bright in the live version. 'If You Believe in Christmas Trees', one of the best Cardinal songs, ends it all, in a fairly aggressive version that makes me wish I had seen this band. I look back here and I haven't actually said much about what is so great about There's Never Been A Crowd Like This, but I guess that's for you to discover.

Black Swan Network - 'The Late Music volume 1' (Camera Obscura)

For those of us who loved the turn of the Millenium because the Olivia Tremor Control serenaded us through some of the highest and lowest points, the Black Swan Network recordings exist as a weird afterthought. Appreciated at the time, yes, but a bit forgotten. I remember the "split" with OTC being the high point, but since the membership is essentially identical it's just a choice in styles. And listening to The Late Music volume 1, Camera Obscura's 61-minute release of OTC sound experiments, I'm left feeling both enamored by the sound collage construction and a bit surprised at how amateurish it sounds. You can hear the residue of cheap delay/reverb boxes and layers of 4-track narcolepsy. Clarinets, strings and horns poke little jabs into the soundsoup but rarely get the chance to scream. Track 4 is a cello improvisation saturated with tape manipulations and other electronic effects, and it stands out as the high point - a bit of LAFMS-styled fuckery. Ten years ago (which is probably the last time I listened to this) I was struck by how intense and focused it was - two qualities I don't hear at all now. A quick assessment would be that it sounds like all of the parts of the Olivias records that aren't the pop songs but that isn't completely true because there's an economy to those interludes that isn't as constraining when they have an hour to mix it up. Despite the low-budget feel, the layered tape hiss and pause button edits are a beautiful aesthetic that stuck with me for all of this time. The more raging, thick sections aren't what I like; it's more the hints, the distant echoing bells and smoggy cloud formations that paint the best images. Late night music? Maybe that's the intention, or maybe 'late' means 'dead' as in 'the late Marlon Brando' but I stuck this on first thing in the morning and found it still had some ability to transport me.