Dr. Octagon - 'Dr. Octagonecologyst' (Dreamworks/Bulk)

God, the 90s were great. I forgot I had this, and I probably haven't listened to it in a decade, but I remember every word. I must have listened to this a lot in my University years, because almost every one of Kool Keith's bizarre lyrics has stayed with me. Every once in awhile I give hip-hop a chance, but I've learned that whenever it gets talked about as being "experimental" or "psychedelic" it's rarely those things. This would certainly be psychedelic from a lyrical perspective, in a horror movie way, though the frequent bizarre sex jokes and animal nonsense make Dr. Octagonecologyst  a unique, unclassifiable beast. No, I think this works precisely because it's not experimental at all. It's grounded by stunning hip-hop backing tracks courtesy of Dan the Automator, and I think the reason none of Keith Thrornton's followups have been very good is because this magical pairing was something that could only happen once. There's no atmosphere quite like this, even if this wasn't rap music; the skits don't bug me, the porno samples are somehow appropriate, and there's a few tracks (particularly 'Technical Difficulties') that verge into truly unexplored territory and are actually awe-inspiring at points. I saw Keith live, sometime around the Dr. Dooom album or maybe Matthew, and it was one of the worst performances I've ever seen, disappointing me to the point where I probably haven't listened to this since. As floundering as his post-Octagon career has been (and there's an article on Grantland that gets into the recent years), it's all forgiven for the magic of 'Blue Flowers', 'Earth People' and 'halfsharkalligatorhalfman' (a title which has a beautiful logic in itself). I'm not really qualified to discuss hip-hop at all, and my tastes (as revealed on these pages) are so hideously tied to white people my age that I'm embarrassed at my own stereotype. But this stays with me, a relic of my life that I've spent enough time with to forever feel a kinship when I meet, to cite a recent example, someone who signs their iPhone emails with "Sent from my 7XL (not yet invented)."

Dadamah - 'This is Not a Dream' (Kranky)

Welcome to the D's, and welcome to the murky 4-track atmosphere of Port Chalmers, New Zealand.  This CD compiles the recorded lifespan of Dadamah, a project of Roy Montgomery and Peter Stapleton in the early 1990s.  Vocalist Kim Pieters wrote the liner notes but they're pretty damn hard to read, and as much as I've loved this CD for years I've never really forced myself through them all.  If you're looking for crystal-clear psychedelia this is the wrong place; Dadamah are lo-fi and have that classic kiwi downer vibe, much like Nocturnal Projections or Montgomery's first band, the Pin Group.  There's churning guitar chords, military drum-tapping (courtesy of Stapleton who rarely gets to shine, due in part to the mix, but knows his place) and dense organ chords over it all.  The band works themself into a Velvet Underground-jammyness on tracks like 'Brian's Children' and 'Limboswing' and it's all quite inspiring, or was to a teenage dronehead like myself.  'Scratch Sun' is repetitive and builds to a manic pulse, but it somehow stays grounded in space. Hey, punk and minimalism can co-exist, and we don't even need  to be aggressive.  There are "hooks", or at least song structures that get lodged in your brain.  Throughout, the deep male vocals of Montgomery and Pieters' earthy drawl complement each other perfectly on songs like 'Papa Doc', even if she is just wailing in the mist.  There's beautiful layers of chorus and reverb on the guitar - this is before he started making all of those beautiful, shimmery solo discs like Temple IV, but the shimmer is there, and it's fucking electrifying.  I've loved losing myself in the epic chord progression of 'High Tension House', Dadamah's masterpiece.  There's a gentle pitter-pattern behind it all and the swirl starts to come in.  This isn't noise, nor is it punk, but it's a fucking vision, painted with the broadest strokes possible.  

Butchy Fuego (Pickled Egg)

Whatever happened to this guy, anyway? Butchy Fuego is some weird visionary in Chicago who hung around with a lot of artrock/freejazz dudes, and made this beautifully designed solo record back in 2001 or so. And like most things on the vastly underrated Pickled Egg label, it failed to make much impact and thus, Butchy Fuego has disappeared into the pile of early 00s experimental CDs. A shame too, cause there's some astoundingly precise cuts here that run between spazzy neo-electro ('The Conquering of Planet Argotron') to Bügsküll-like collage mastery ('Music for Sarah's Film'). The opening would suggest that this is a very schooled bit of post-academy Henry Cow worship, but Butchy Fuego shifts gears constantly, with just enough cohesion to avoid feeling like a weird compilation. 'The Paleontologist' has some buried vocals, as the piece lumbers along in a sort of improv scuzz-rock, not unlike stuff like the Lowdown or Mouthus only a few years precognizant to them - the basement jam band returns in 'Menstrual Motorcycle', only significantly thrashier. 'Bumbleplight' actually sounds like Squarepusher at times, with a cut-up flitter-flutter that doesn't overdo the amp-buzz electronica, feeling again like a logical extension of the acoustic basis we hear earlier. 'Hot Balls' is my mixtape selection - it's an anthemic punch to the jugular that rips out of the speakers through it's lo-fi production, in a fairly calculated stance. But awesome nonetheless. I can imagine that Butchy Fuego is a fairly studio-based project, though the live instrumentation feels organic, not like samples. 'My Experience with Electronics' is maybe the centerpiece, both sequentially and musically. Despite the weak title, Butchy's throwing everything into the bag here and it gels nicely. The album comes to a polite close with 'Bunny', which is delicately sung like a Bedhead song, farting and wheezing until an accordion-driven 4-track indierock second part explodes. I shouldn't keep comparing elements of this CD to other artists, because Butchy Fuego certainly has eked out his own sound, one that should have found some fans. But fans of what? Eclectic, genre-bending art-rock, fractured songforms, complex compositions -- all things that sound great on paper but reveal themselves to be distinct and idiosyncratic when you actually hear them. But if any of those keywords tickle your fancy, then this is one to seek out, undeniably.