Tod Dockstader - 'Water Music' / 'Two Moons' / 'Quatermass' (Starkland)

Though we've already done Quatermass on vinyl, this CD's a must-have for the other two pieces. 'Water Music' is about 18 minutes of tape manipulations, built up from recordings of kitchen sinks, splahses, and other such liquid sources. It's what you'd expect from a brilliant electro-acoustic composer working in 1963; a purity of tone, a frantic sense of layered motion, and a truly otherwordly angle. It's the earliest piece on this CD and in some ways my favourite, capturing that "early electronic" sound that is the sound of pure experimentation - a treasure to behold. It builds up slowly, with sparse plinks and plunks before laying down an evasive, electronic bottom.  By the end of its fourth part, it's pushed into deep brain cavities and rooted about, yet somehow retained its sense of natural beauty. But it closes on some spirited, rapid movement that redefines the idea of 'liquid'. And then 'Two Moons of Quatermass' is in the middle, clearly a companion to his more famous work and brief in about 9 minutes, split into two parts - like a 7" teaser to accompany the LP. Like the more famous work this is built from, this gets into dark, dissonant geography with a playful lilt. The big crashing gongs of Quatermass are only hinted at, but then thankfully this CD gets to the real thing a few minutes later, which in digital form, has a clarity that is pleasing but a brittle, sterile aftertaste. I'll take my battered 60's LP version over this any day, but that's not going to surprise anyone who actually knows me.

Consonant (Fenway)

This Consonant album was one of the biggest surprises of 2002 for me, surfacing as a new Clint Conley-penned album of rock songs which was magic to those of us who worship at the altar of Burma. Nineteen years is a long time to hide away, and expectations were understandably low. The band had a guy from Bedhead and a guy from Come, but how good could the songs be? I guess if you spend nineteen years writing stuff, you're going to have twelve good tunes for a CD. But nothing could quite prepare me for how good this actually was. Or IS - because it still sounds absolutely great, a perfect merger of classic rock, 80's and 90's American guitar indie and a bit of the Burma fire. It's all love songs, of course, or rather contemplations of love and loss structured somewhat around these weird acrostic poems by Holly Anderson. There's bitterness seeping out of tunes like 'Call it L---' and 'Who Touches You Now?', but it's the more lunar language that kills me - a hopeless 40something romantic who is struggling to put things into context. Anderson's poems are built around the names of flowers and Conley has certainly adapted them well into rock phrasing, managing to sing lines like 'Cured but curious we embrace post-pathetic happiness: neutered, fixed, companionable' without it sounding as strange as it probably just did to read it. The fuzzy guitars, drum fills and amped-up energy ('Buckets of Flowers, Porno Mags'; 'That Boston Life') are raging with confidence and mastery; for an aging punk, there's no element of embarrassment. Chris Brokaw's guitars find the right places - for those of us who grew up with music that itself grew up on Burma, it's all just perfect. There's oodles of 'Trem Two' style moodiness, but still a hint of 'That's How I Escaped my Certain Fate'. And Roger Miller turns up a few times too. The pop hooks are there - not singsong like the Beatles but subtle, mind-burrowing lyrical fragments that I had bouncing around in my head for much of 2002. I remember having the 'We couldn't ever make enough / time for lips and hips and arms' following around my consciousness for so long that I was starting to go nuts; of course, for a song about the ghost of a relationship (and the song I refer to is the closing tune 'What a Body Could Do'), it's practically supernatural. 'Post-Pathetic' is an absolutely brilliant song, with a bit of college 80s jangle, sharp sharp sharp words, and a self-deprecating sexuality that gets better with every listen. It's the influencer meeting his influencees, and I was pretty much obsessed with this CD when it came out - my digipak is dinged and dented from taking it to work every day. Of course, I haven't played it for a few years which is why it feels so good and familiar now - I actually am on the third consecutive listen. Rock music connects when it's music and lyrics meeting in perfect balance, and that's what's here. I love lines like 'Wasn't she full of wild want / for is he and her she?' but even more when the band is providing the perfect presentation of it. My love for Consonant is pretty strong, and I realise a bit idiosyncratic, but just wait, cause there's gonna be lots of these as we go along.

Brasil and the Gallowbrothers Band - 'Legionowo' (Monotype)

Polish atmospheric psychedelic indie-rock certainly is a field I could stand to learn more about, being that my education pretty much starts and ends with Brasil. This quartet of Warsaw artists certainly do a lot to set the vibe with the crimson and golden CD artwork. All moody comic-style drawings by Brasil's trumpeter, Tomek Mirt (who also has a solo disc we'll get to in the M's), this immediately conjures the dark, post-war Europe that Poland in general makes me think of. The golden dusk radiates throughout these six tracks, which are structured around a singer-songwriter who really speaks more than sings. The vocals are in English but really felt more than heard, with the sibilence of the human voice creating a great after-effect for the low-level white noise samples and effects-box hiss that coats everything. It's probably all the better with lyrics like "i pack my things / and leave capitalism", but I shouldn't pick on people who don't speak English as a first language. There are no drums here - it's rock because it has guitars, and the two most immediate comparisons are Labradford and Talk Talk. There's an obvious love of all the 90s post-shoegaze guitar calm, such as Bark Psychosis and Hood, but without any trace of rock, really. The unfolding, billowing soundscapes are lifted from the Laughing Stock playbook, and the trumpet is played in a purely Spaceheads way, never swampy but definitely wet. Instrumental 'The Town' brings in some synth beats and a more prevalent role for the (cheap) keyboards, but it's really on the last two tracks where Brasil paint their most unique canvas. 'Far From the Rest''s lyrics are a bit rambling, but it's all couched in a gallon of slimy soundpaint. At the end of this 11 minute+ track, a recording of someone from Pink Floyd talking is brought in, which is a pretty daring move but it's amazingly successful -- amazing, because I actually wasn't really listening so I couldn't even tell you which member it was or what they were talking about. And instead of going back to check for you, dear readers, I thought it might be better to just let it slide over me and become another instrument, which is what was intended. The dissonance is rare - every gesture is delicate, and only occasionally do the synths and electronics really create a buzz. I'm not sure how open these structures are, but when Brasil want to, they are capable of a pretty magical ambience. White noise is here much more than you'd think - unless it's my air-conditioning acting up again. The 90s had some great moments, though I suspect this came in the following decade. That this is named after an otherwise forgettable Warsawa suburb makes it all the more unusual that such beauty can be strived for, and in moments, really achieved.