Boredoms - 'Vision Creation Newsun' (Birdman)

My god, it's been ten years since this beast from the East was unleashed! This was the Boredoms' big reinvention, or for those listening more carefully, the next logical step in their progression. Super Roots 7 (or was it 8?) started off with the formula - long, extended pieces built around polyrhytmic insanity, with the usual shrill electronics, pulsing organs and disembodied voices layered in slow crescending waves. Vision Creation Newsun expands it to a whole double album-length, and the result is astounding. I remember getting this CD back in college and totally losing my shit over it. It was also one of the first "big" albums that I heard in its entirety via NAPSTER before it was released domestically though I don't know if that is somehow significant. Maybe I can say that this was a record that changed the way I heard music, arriving at a time when the ways we listen to music were changing. Ugh, I'm starting to sound like one of those shitty Sirius/XM sattelite radio commercials! So on to Vision Creation Newsun: If you wanna talk about a perfect melting between the electronic and organic, this is it. The untitled tracks flow together into one cohesive whole, though there are certainly highlights. The opener is a statement of purpose, with it's sweeping filter banks defining the Boredom's new temple. Track 3 builds up a repeating, ascending riff like something out of Can or Neu! but filtered through Marginal Consort. Throughout everything, the 'anything goes' mentality is scaled back a bit and the emphasis is on duration instead of the short-attention span pyrotechnics that the Boredoms practiced in the early 90s. And oh, what a result. There's thick waves of organ, reverb-affected guitars, bells and percussion galore, and lots of voices that slip away into a distant sea. Best of all are these weird parts that go into power-rock sections - jamming on one long riff over a steady 4/4, or the recurring two-note monotony that makes up track 6's main theme. This organic onigiri is also wrapped in a great deal of digital processing, but somehow the choppy skipping feels more akin to a tremelo effect, the disjointed ebb and flow of accelerated consciousness. Talk about music for a new millenium, that simultaneously looks ahead and back! Energy courses through everything - even the ocacsional acoustic instrumentation that pops up, or the smooth groove singing on track 7 -- it's still raging with a spastic fury. What's different from Pop Tatari is they've learned how to channel this energy into some cosmic third eye consciousness without compromising their uber-modern exuberance. This pumps me up as much as the greatest hardcore records, and somehow stirs my soul in the same way as the greatest works of Riley, LaMonte, etc. After this, the Boredoms never were quite as special for me - the bang-on-everything percussion attitude was taken a bit further and the results, while occasionally very impressive, somehow lack the magic of this.

Black Sun Ensemble (Camera Obscura)

Guitar Jesus comes to life in this debut release, reissued in the 90s with some bonus tracks and resequencing from the original mid-80s private press. Black Sun Ensemble occupy a unique, sun-drenched southwestern band of instrumental psychedelia. They're confident enough in Guitar Jesus's licks that there's little need for effects, studio fuckery or vocals. What this really is about is the guitar playing, and some of the songs are fairly improvised over a rhythm section that locks into similar chord progressions and patterns on every song. The end result is a patchwork of blistering electric guitar solos, glistening hollow-body/12-string blankets, and tunes that all kinda sound the same. The liner notes subtitle each track with descriptions like 'Wacko guitar solo', 'Improvisation in C scale', 'Blues in B Minor' etc. but somehow it all melts into a unified whole. I bought this when it came out after reading a review that praised it as first-rate psychedelia, but at the time I thought all psychedelia had to be insanely exaggerated mind-bends or maximallist pop like Mercury Rev or something -- I found this kinda downbeat, not disappointing per se, but not what I expected either. But I still liked it because I was also going through my Fahey/Americana-guitar phase, and I realised that this was a record to bridge the two schools. Guitar Jesus knows he's the star and he's mixed so far up that everything else sounds like an afterthought. If there's one criticism it is that the Black Sun Ensemble defined their sound too much, because the weird strum-pattern is so similar from track to track that it feels almost limiting. I know they made later records and I think still exist to this day (though Guitar Jesus is the only one remaining) so maybe they branched out since this was recorded (which was 1985). Much of the 'success' of this CD, to these ears, is owed to the early 80's DIY recording quality. You're really in the room with these guys, yet it still somehow captures the 'Dove of the Desert' feel (to borrow a phrase from track 5). There's something 'inside' about this psychedelia and it's a great mood-setter in the midst of a long winter. Liner notes by Byron Coley!

Azusa Plane - 'Tycho Magnetic Anomaly and the Full Consciousness of Hidden Harmony' (Camera Obscura)

There was a time in the mid-to-late 90s that the city of Philadelphia rose up from a beer and sports-fueled haze and began embracing cosmic sounds, rooted no doubt in the city's antecedents (Rundgren?) and some of the under-recognised pre-current that was happening there. Or maybe not - maybe this is just some shithead narrative grafted onto Philly by some desperate music critics at the time - anyone remember the awful term 'Psychedelphia'? But there appeared to be a definite momentum, at least to me, an outsider; and of these bands, many of whom have been forgotten, the Azusa Plane were an example of the most 'pure' and commited to the ur-drone, shredding any vestigal rock and roll in favor of Terry Riley's harmonic sunpulse. I know they put out a few records in their day but this one, their first (I believe), is the only one that ever really grabbed me. Here's an hour of guitar-based psychedelic music: slow unfolding drones, delicate tension, and subtle pulses. Of the four tracks, it's the last one that distinguishes itself the most (through steady repetition and a nice warm fuzz). Liner notes give you silly Germanic cosmicspeak for each track but I don't get much from that. This beat the rush of drone that came from the American underground - beat it by about a decade, but is it distinguishable? Back in '99 music like this sounded really exciting, like it had some vision and attitude and some higher calling. (At least to me - I was a young 'un!) But now I think about Satie and LaMonte and the VU and Heldon and Ash Ra and the Azusa Plane, and I try to find a place for all of this alongside, I dunno, a zillion tapes by Emeralds-related projects? Sometimes I just can't feel, like Lou Reed after his parentally-imposed anti-homo shock treatment; when I listen to this I try to sink into it, but I can't lose myself. Distractions, distractions. The one thought that I keep returning to is how similar these guitar bleats are to the sound of Lilys' Eccsame the Photon Band, as if 'High Writer at Home' is about to come bursting out of these tracks. Same city and maybe the same personnel or studio or equipment - is this the sound of Philly I hear, an aural cheese steak (or replace with vegetarian stereotype)? I think the main guy behind this band died under sad and mysterious circumstances. Or was he the entire band? This sounds suspiciously like a dense, one-man project. Nice art though (and kudos for thanking Corpus Hermeticum for inspiring it, though the use of System 7 "Chicago" font for that inner panel kinda wrecks the medieval theme.