I’d say that’s in my proverbial wheelhouse and maybe even my literal wheelhouse. I really liked both the Coco Hames and your jazz album last month. And, yeah, Cornelius!
I recently got back to work on my favorite songs spotify playlist and remembered and added an old fave by Spectre Folk called The Blackest Medicine. While adding that song I discovered, lo and behold, they have a brand new album called Vol. 4 so I’ve added that to our mix this month.
Here’s a spot-on little capsule review from The Quietus…
Pete Nolan is not content with drumming in the most badass art-rock band of our times. (No that isn’t Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s Magik Markers, you philistine.) In addition Nolan fronts the marvellous Spectre Folk, for which he is backed by such cool customers as Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth and smiley Pavement bassist Mark Ibold. You’re nobody in this psych business unless you have the audacity to begin your fourth album with a raggedy 11-minute choogler called ‘Begin The Mothership’ and that’s exactly what Nolan et al. do here. These astro-sozzled jams feel looser than Justin Bieber’s belt buckle and as spontaneous as when I inserted the word CHAMFRON into this sentence for little reason whatsoever. You can imagine that Nolan gave his players only the teensiest indication of each song’s chords, structure or intentions, and within a minute or so the performers were fully off on one, fleshing out their leader’s sketches into big snazzy frescoes of Mars moons and communal utopias. A cross between Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and one or two of the 90s stars of independent lo-fi, Nolan’s somnolent voice floats in and out of view like… well, quite like a spectre I suppose.
I don’t see your Aussie sludg-y doom-y offering in the playlist, Kirian!
I’ve got a good one for 4AD fans… Ojala by Lost Horizons.
Lost Horizons is Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins and drummer Richie Thomas of Dif Juz and The Jesus and Mary Chain plus numerous guest vocalists including Marissa Nadler, Tim Smith (formerly of Midlake), Sharon van Etten, and Ghostpoet. It’s a beautiful, sprawling album… sort of a spiritual successor to This Mortal Coil.
Track 2, The Places We’ve Been, is my favorite for sure…
I’m gonna add The Hardy Tree - Through Passages of Time, which is (brilliant) illustrator Frances Castle’s musical project on her gorgeously packaged Clay Pipe Music label.
It uses musical psycho-geography and occasional ambient interludes as a requiem for an old, lost London…or something or other like that. I just like it a lot.
(Can’t wait to hear that Lost Horizons!)
@Kirian - sadly no, still not added. Maybe it’s a regional thing.
Not at all! You got there first. And it is a really good one! Doesn’t matter who puts it up.
I’ll go ahead and put up an excellent drony album from last year by one of my favorite ambient artistes, Andrew Chalk. Elodie is his part-time project with Finno-Belgian musician Timo Van Luijk, along with other musicians (this time including clarinetists and pianists and such, along with Stephen O’Malley from Sunn 0))) and scores of other doom metal and ambient projects) They end up with a very delicate and gauzy sound that I found really lovely, and ordered several other of their records immediately.
I really like that one, Charmtrap. Engrossing sounds for working and sleeping.
Concrete Desert is cool too, albeit rather challenging!
We’re fast approaching the end of the month, so I’ll just throw in the new Belle & Sebastian EP called How to Solve Our Human Problems (Part 2). Add a little melody and tunefulness to this stark, desolate brew!
Putting up one of my favorites from last year: Brutalism by Idles. It got a fair amount of attention, but not nearly enough, in my opinion. Clever lyrics and angry punk-rock delivery (plus a song reference to Mary Berry!), who says no?
Happy almost-Spring! (Never mind the incoming snowstorm!)
In a repeat move from last year, I’ve added a selection of 18 songs from my favorites of 2017. I tried to avoid the stuff that y’all introduced me to, instead choosing tracks that might be slightly lesser known to you bitches. Hope you like something!
I’m adding this month an album that I missed from one of the progenitors of the slowcore movement of the early-to-mid 90’s, Idaho. I was a decent-sized fan of the band. They were from LA, and came up to SF quite often and I saw them probably half-a-dozen times in their heyday and liked them a lot. They never quite reached the creative heights of Red House Painters or Low or Codeine, maybe, but they could be counted on to deliver the goods more often than not. They came out with a couple of great albums (Alas & Three Sheets To The Wind), and a couple of pretty good ones (Hearts of Palm & Levitate).
Somewhere along the line I lost track of their activities. This album, The Lone Gunman, was recorded and released on their own label in 2005 and I guess I had no earthly idea it existed. It’s a fairly big departure from the early sound…less guitar, lots more strings and keyboards and piano and sound effects accompanying Jeff Martin’s sleepy vocals. Occasionally there are fragments of music that feel lazy or half-finished, but they always manage to coalesce into something magnificent.
Overall, a real gem. I’m just sorry it took me 12 years to find it.
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