DENT - 'Stimmung' (Magnetic)

I have already confessed my love for Camper Van Beethoven earlier in these annals, but we have yet to investigate the weird side projects that I also love. Don't worry, we'll have our dalliance with Monks of Doom eventually, and just a warning - Meridian is gonna get the Golden Cinderblock Award. But what about the lesser-known offshoots? Sadly, I don't have any Hieronymous Firebrain records apart from some old dubbed tapes, but shit, what I wouldn't give to hear 'Waning Crescent Love Spit' right now! (Thanks, Bandcamp, for making this possible). DENT is J. Segel and V. Krummenacher, and a cadre of friends, all under silly pseudonyms like 'Stands-Naked-In-Moonlight' and 'MC Salmon'. DENT is where these guys let loose and make weird, improvisatory music with an experimental edge, except it's not that wild -- there's an organic, instrumental quality to almost everything here. The vocals are largely extemporized and when the porny guitar leads (a tendency evident in later Monks of Doom records, for sure) take over, it's undercut by the babbling vocals and music-box overdubs ('April Fools' and the opening track 'Make Me 1 w/everything' are great examples of this). Stimmung, which has nothing to do with the Stockhausen work, as far as I can tell, was a strange record for me to listen to when I was 16. I enjoyed the songforms most of all - the subtle pop hooks, the almost-too-far excursions into dance and hip-hop forms, and most of all the mystique. My deep love of all things Camper Van Beethoven certainly helped, and the spirit of irreverence remains throughout this even if the ha-ha is absent. The epic jam here is 'Manchester Mystery House', a long techno-influenced maximalist overture, but my pick is 'Some Grey Clouds', an eerie, discordant experiment that lets the space take over - a sea of isolated vocal snippets and tentative string plucks, with a tidal ebb and flow beneath. Sure, Stimmung is tossed-off, but after listening to it now for the first time in a decade, I'm enjoying it far more than I would have ever imagined. There's a tension between the more lyrical, Krummenacher-driven tunes ('Paris? New Mexico' is a wonderful psych-folk jam, reminding me a bit of CVB's 'Form Another Stone' from II & III) and the (I assume) Segel-drievn freakouts. There's an untitled bonus track, because everyone putting out their own CDs in the mid-90s was obsessed with this possibility, and it's the most straight-ahead folksong imaginable (even against 'Won't You', which has a Holy Modal Rounders-style warp to it), a rant about then-California governor Pete Wilson. Dated as it may be now, it's a voice of countercultural protest that needed to go somewhere, though I understand why they left it off the track listing. At just over an hour, Stimmung slightly wears out its welcome, but it's interesting to wonder why these musicians feel so free here and not as free on their other Magnetic-label projects. It's not like the goof quotient is shocking or uncommercial; but then something makes this out of step with indie music of 1995, indeed. 

Aksak Maboul - 'Un Peu de L'Âme Des Bandits' (Crammed Discs)

Source: Received from Recommended mail oder on July 8, 2006 for £9.

Belgium! Land of rich wonderful beer, vertical archery, and waffles sold on the street. Aksak Maboul's second album is their maximalist one: there's traditional folky jams, weird prog-ambient beatdowns and some Broadway passages too. Frith and Cutler are all over it and occasionally steer it into Henry Cow territory ('Geistige Nacht') but that's not a bad thing at all. Everything imaginable is stuck into a blender here but it' stays on the Appolonian tip. This is essentially the last anyone ever heard of Aksak Maboul (apart from the Crammed 'Made to Measure' comp which'll be reviewed on Dislocated Underbite in about 2 years); soon after this (which was 1980, if yer wondering) they turned into the Honeymoon Killers (who made some great jams of their own). This (and their first record) are just enough to build a legacy on, if you ask me. There's some weird shit: 'Inoculating Rabies' which sounds more like the other (NYC) Honeymoon Killers except with a bass clarinet and bassoon way too forward in the mix; the improv parts of the second half (labeled as 'Cinema') are like Curlew covering Dead Machines. I think Aksak were originally started as an offshoot of Univers Zero, though I could be wrong - but this disc goes far beyond any UZ I've ever heard - like balancing the most aggressively strident art-rock-prog compositions on the same spoon as 'outsider' music. More Catherine Jauniaux would have made a great album even better, though I guess I can always turn to Fluvial for that. CD version tacks a Honeymoon Killers track on the end which is cool but breaks up the purity of the album like these f'ing CDs always do.

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind !!) (Static Caravan/Resonant)

Source: Purchased used, from Paul's CD's for $12, on 16 Aug 2002.

Two hours of Acid Mothers Temple is a lot but they brought along the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. again, so
you know it's going to be the freaky-deakyest jams this side of Nagoya. Lots of fast stereo panning suggests that they've discovered the HyperDraw feature; when they really get cooking with the boogie-psyche, the panning's enough to make your brain melt (which is exactly the idea). The middle of each disc features solo vocal pieces by Suzuki Chisen, and they're an awesome center to each half: the second time, some fucked up guitar feedback sings along like the ghost of disc 1 and it's wonderful and insane. These discs are put together well, as there's a lot of attention paid to sequencing. Each track is made up of several shorter movements but the discs work as a unified whole. We get lots of rock, usually riff-heavy and effects-laden as you'd expect, but also some smaller, more exploratory pieces. Whenever Cotton Casino gets on the mic it's like the record has been taken over by syphilitic lizards (at a laser show). 'The Incipient Light of the Echoes' opens the second CD by going the classic minimalist composers route, and it's nice (if viewed as a tribute to Riley, Reich and/or Glass) to calm down a bit before the next rollercoaster ride. Also, while staring at the awesome cover art, the xylophony stuff is a nice mood setter. Of course it woulda looked better as an LP but then we wouldn't get the CD bonus tracks (one of which is disc 1 track 1, so the LP must have a totally different "feel").