Earth - '2' (SubPop)

I'm no stoner and thus I never got hip to the whole wave of bands like Sleep, Sunn O, Corrupted, etc. Not that I dislike the style - these pages will show I'm no stranger to minimal epics, heavy guitars, and glacially-paced records. I guess it's the rock edges that always got me - I'd rather trance out to a Terry Riley or Phill Niblock monolith than feel the residue of heavy metal, or whatever I imagined is there. But like most genres I have one or two entries on the shelves, and this Earth 2 CD is one I very much treasure, because it out-stoners all the stoner rock I've ever heard, and isn't really rock. It's just guitar and bass, often imperceptible from each other, in three very long tracks, with not much changing. It's the record I think Earth's reputation rests upon, or should rest upon, as it's an almost unparalleled statement especially given the time (1993) and label (SubPop, post-Nirvana)! The value in here is not just the sheer immobility of it, because there's actually quite a lot of motion and genuine riffs that return, too - but in the overall atmosphere. Put on Earth 2 and you'll spend the next 70 minutes trapped inside a spherical chamber over which you have no control of your senses. It works quietly as ambient music and it works very loud too, because there's a lot of magic happening in these guitars. 'Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine' feels unending cause it is, but there's a small universe of swirling, buzzing atmospherics on top. And the final cut, 'Like gold and faceted', is over a half-hour with some crashing percussion in the background here and there (but not too much) and it's essentially an endless slow roar. It's exactly like the time I saw Tony Conrad play live, except a meathead version. Meathead minimalism is great, though! Who cares if they have the history of 20th century composition under their belts (and maybe they do)? If Carducci taught me anything it's that intellect has no bearing on great music. These guys are still around but they reinvented themselves as a post-rock band with British folk leanings, and what I heard I really liked; but this is something special, something so simple it's actually quite difficult. 

The Dead C - 'DR503C' (Flying Nun)

We're a bit overrun with early Dead C here, and this CD overlaps significanty with the Ba Da Bing reissues we already addressed on the Vinyl Underbite blog. But that's okay, because there's some differences here, though I must admit my head hurts too much (from too many adjacent versions of 'Max Harris') to determine precisely what is the overlap and what is unique here. I'll take a different sequence as reason enough to keep this CD, even though the sound quality doesn't compare to the 180g love that Ba Da Bing gave us. 'Crazy I Know' and 'Speed Kills' start things off, perhaps a decision by Flying Nun to want this CD to at least tangentially resemble other releases on the label, at least for those lazy reviewers who only look at the first few tracks. 'Polio' and 'Max Harris', in all of their lo-fi glory, are the length game here and some parts of The Sun Stabbed are here, though the version of the title track is live (and unique to the CD, for sure).  I've already gushed my unequivocal love for this material when I listened to them on vinyl last week, so I have little to repeat here. I will say that 'Bad Politics' wasn't as enjoyable the fourth time through (cause I listened to the vinyl copies multiple times) but 'Fire' more than makes up for it. I don't know if Ba Da Bing is finished with their reissue programme or if they're gonna delve into the Siltbreeze years -- a vinyl edition of Harsh 70s Reality is a MAJOR hole in my life -- but if they do, they should try to scoop up whatever is left.

Consonant - 'Love and Affliction' (Fenway)

Promo copy with no cover, hence this photo of the back. One of the justifications for these blogs is to rediscover all of the music I've accumulated in my life and revisit/reevaluate old memories. The previous post on Consonant clearly shows that my feelings from ten years age are still strong; just like then, the dulcet tones of 'What a Body Could Do' are now lodged in my day-to-day consciousness, and the song's melodic beauty and romantic longing ring more true than ever. I loved that Consonant album, almost irrationally, except it's really actually fantastic and worthy of the love, so there's nothing irrational here. So how to deal with Love and Affliction, the followup which I never really listened to in 2003? I mean, I did listen to it, several times, but it just never grabbed me like the first album. Or more accurately, I thought it was fine, but it just made me want to listen to 'Post-Pathetic' again instead of these new songs. Revisiting it with fresh ears, I feel pretty much the same. This isn't a radically different record than its predecessor - the lineup is the same, the songs are written again in collaboration with Holly Anderson, and the production is almost identical. There are maybe a few darker tinges to the rocky cliffs of guitar chords - opener 'Little Murders', named perhaps after one of my favourite films in history, is stark in it's raucous crashing, a theme returned to in 'Cauldron'. There are still pop hooks and vocal harmonies layers with the fuzz, with 'Mysteries of the Holiday Camp' holding a particularly brittle beauty. 'Cry' brings in the slightest country tendencies, but it's familiar, confident indie guitar rock otherwise. I think this was it for Consonant; Conley's been busy with Mission of Burma again, whose newer output hasn't interested me much either, but I admit I haven't given it a fair listen. Love and Affliction will stay on this CD shelf forever, because I can't find a bad thing to say about it; it's just never going to have the familiar, sentimental resonance of the first album.

Cerberus Shoal - 'Homb' (Temporary Residence Limited)

Oh, how do we even begin the Cerberus Shoal story? Like so many others, these guys began as a post-hardcore/emo sort of thing, with their early records drawing comparison to Still Life and bands like that. Now, I'm not really an expert in such matters and when it comes to the Shoal, my entry point is here on Homb, which is 1998. And even still, this sounds remarkably post-rock influenced, and somewhat, well, pedestrian compared to the total melted Americana mindfuck I saw around, hmmmm, let's say '99 or 2000. So I picked up Homb which is basically what was available at the time, and had pretty much the same core members, and found something a lot closer to the Tortoise/Slint sound (which is no shock for 1998). Now, I don't mean to come down too hard on Homb (and I say this as someone who likes Tortoise and Slint) -- the strong rhythmic underpinnings on this disc are what ties it to the post-rock tradition, and it's these strong rhythms that were phased out later, or maybe they just became more fluid. Good times are everywhere on these long jammy tunes. 'Omphalos' is like Slint's 'Washer' overlaid with pitch pipes, drones, and a nice oceanic drift. But it has a hell of a drum sound that anchors it, even when it slows down a bit and tries to open up. It's the opening track, really, 'Harvest', that is the most atmospheric, but I fear it's meant just as an introduction. Reeds and breaths are all over Homb, at times veering into Windham Hill territory (nothing wrong with that either!), and there's a ton of instruments listed in the liner notes, mostly Art Ensemble kinda shit I think, but it's too hard for me to actually read the cursive so I don't really know. The last 2/3 of the album is a 3-part suite called 'Myrrh' which is a pretty huge construction, I guess. The first part, 'waft', is where we hear lots of wooden blocks and whistles and things like that, with more deep breathy new agey wooden flutes and whatnot. Vocals eventually come in, and they're slow, deeply intoned, and nothing like you'd expect from ex-emo kids. The intervals are minor and uneven, and it has a bit of overall wow and flutter that gives it a nice instability. The production, by the way, is really, really good here - clearly the product of Maine's finest recording studios, and call me a spoilsport, but I wish it was a bit more lo-fi! It slowly melts into part two, 'loop', the loop of which seems to be a 3-note bassline which drives the tune, but not without some variation. Over this, reverb-laden flutes (or flute-like things), guttural moans, and arpeggiated guitars noodle around. It's not really spacey or exploratory (by which I mean it's nothing like Hawkwind) but seems more concerned with keeping the atmosphere burning bright. Sometimes the band kicks it up a notch, but then they pull back soon after. There is also heavy use of flanger in this track. It pounds along for ten minutes, eventually climaxing in a mess of horns, and then we're left with decaying breezes. I'm not sure where I've actually been taken to, though. And then 'Myrrh (reprise)' which is the epic instrumental piece at the end, which I just sat through and enjoyed, but I don't know if I have the ability to write much about it. There's a thick, big band sound and tons of instruments, lots of rock gestures (loud chord changes, roto toms and all that) though I wouldn't call it that. I'm tired by the end of it, and this is just the intro into a Cerberus Shoal mini-gauntlet - only 3 discs, but they feel long. Time hasn't been as kind to Homb as it should have; I think my own biases against production techniques are interfering with my appreciation of the musical construction. I think I like my weird coastal soundscapes to be lo-fi and scrappy, or maybe I just had a prejudice against people who can actually play the drums.

Bloggs - 'Music for Multiples' (Fresnl)

Somewhere in the murky depths of early 00s West Coast experimentalism, this kickass Bloggs CD got lost in the shuffle. Google barely returns anything about it, but then again, the guy had the misfortunate to be named Bloggs just before a similar word hit our wavelengths. But let's talk about his wavelength - it's a studious one, clearly driven by sound constructions without much faffin' about. The liner notes list the equipment used on each of these ten tracks, partially reminding me of Aube (in the way Bloggs builds sounds from non-traditional sound-making items, like plastic wrap, PVC pipe, or an aluminum pot lid) and partially like a prog record that studiously lists all the gear. I'm pretty sure this is one of the guys from rhBand, another totally awesome bunch of modern minimalists that you never hear anything about anymore. The horizontal construction of the pieces is similar to rhBand's ur-drone, but the more eclectic nature of the source material makes this kinda, well, fun. Another reviewer compared 'Steppe (Process)' to Phil Niblock and I think that's an apt comparison; being built around wind instruments, there's a great deal of extended breaths to create a piece that feels far more epic than it's 8'41" running time would suggest. 'Obscured by Circles' is a pulsing bit of harmonium drone that accompanies 'Steppe' and the 'Untitled Piece for Bowls' as the three long minimal efforts which, if turned up loud enough, can completely bury you. The shorter pieces are built around more unusual sounds - some tape pieces, some 'real' instruments, and some noisy bits which still feel focused and calm. I think Music for Multiples actually strikes a fantastic, if not perfect balance between transparent sound experimentalism and artful, powerful construction. I don't think Bloggs ever made another album (and this one is hella-obscure - I grabbed it out of a mega-discount bin at some shitty mall record store that I was killing time in, I think paying 20 US cents for it) which is a shame, because this is the type of record that (if it had come maybe 10-20 years earlier) would be spoken about in hushed, reverent tones now instead of being mostly forgotten.