Hell's Donkeys, I've really let things slip. It's been a while since I posted here OR over at Illcon, but, well, I've been busy having a thing called a 'life'. Yeah, you may have heard of 'em.
Aaaanyhoo, nuthin' special here, just wanted to update the list of reviews that I've done over at The Sleeping Shaman. I'm sure no-one cares but me, but it helps me keep track of what I've been doing. There are some li'l gems in here - Ultraphallus, locrian, Rat King and Drug Honkey all spring to mind - and a coupla real stinkers. Btw, sorry to report, but I think the new Earth album is one of 'em. Boooooooorrrrrrrring, one-dimensional and stagnant. Yeah, I'm controversial.
So, let's get crackin'...in the order in which they were published....
NOW THEN, I've ALSO done an interview with DrugHonkey (and MorgueSupplier) mainman Paul Gillis, which can be read here, and a live review for Scott Kelly, Steve Brodsky, Bob Wayne and Juffage at Jospeh's Well in Leeds back in december, which can be read here.
In the interests of self-promotion, I'm also linking to the first live review I ever attempted - for Ulver in London back in october 2009 - here, and finally, you can read some more of my reviews in Bad Acid Magazine if you buy it, and check out a few online at their podcast/thing here. Also on there is my interview with the fantastic Justin Wright of the equally fantastic Expo '70, mainman of the truly cosmic (or should that be kosmiche?) Sonic Meditations label and all around good egg. Read it here!
It's been an odd year for me, in a lot of ways. I left one relationship, moved house, began another relationship, and lost two jobs over the course of 2010. Not ideal, in many ways, but then I am, somewhat perversely, happier than I was this time last year. My last relationship just didn't sit right with me, and my living situation left much to be desired - my current partner is just about perfect, and I live somewhere that I actually like spending time in, so you can see how THAT side of things has picked up.
I've been through the employment mill this year, and have only actually worked for around two months. The rest of that time has been spent trying to FIND work. Ordinarily that would worry me senseless, BUT I happen to know that there is a new job waiting for me, one that I start on January 10th and hope to be in for a long time to come.
Everything impacts upon everything else, and so now that my love-life and housing issues are well in hand, and my job issues are about to be solved, I find myself in a pretty good place. Sure, I'm not very musically or artistically fulfilled at present, but once things settle down elsewhere, I can attend to those needs.
I have a good feeling about 2011, which is a fucking relief for me.
Now, what has been floating MY boat this past year?
Weeeeeeeeeeeell, musically, it's a tough call. Sure I've heard some great records, but I feel like I'm still assessing them, like they haven't really sunk in enough for me to give concrete judgements, if you catch my drift. I've had to listen HARD to a swathe of releases in order to review'em, but I can't say as I managed to APPRECIATE 'em in the way that I would do under 'normal' circumstances.
I mean, I've greatly enjoyed records by Swans, The Body, Black Sun, Slough Feg, Rings Of Saturn and a bunch of others, but I just don't feel qualified to say which of them would be my 'Top Ten' or whathaveyou. I'm still listening and trying to catch up.
One thing that HAS been floating my boat this year is Jonathan Hickman's run on, of all things, FANTASTIC FOUR.
Yeah. I KNOW.
Suuuuure, I enjoyed John Byrne's run on it, back in the day, and yes I can dig Kirby's art (not so much Stan's writing though) on the early issues, but in the scheme of things comic-related, if you'd asked me a year or so ago what I thought of the Fantastic Four I'd probably have told you that I couldn't give a rats ass about 'em.
Boy how things have changed.
I jumped onboard during Millar and Hitch's run from #554-569 simply down to being a great admirer of Hitch's art and, at the time, a great admirer of Millar's writing. I stuck it out at the end of their brief but thoroughly enjoyable run as I was also a great admirer of Jonanthan Hickman's writing, and wondered how he would handle such a mainstream, flagship, title.
As it transpired he handles it better than I could possibly have imagined. His writing has taken the book from being something that I would never previously have even considered buying on a regular basis, to my single most awaited comic book every month.
I seriously cannot enthuse about this book and Hickman's writing enough. Sure, Dale Eaglesham and Steve Epting's art is good too, but it's Hickman I stay around for. Clearly in it for the long haul, he's spent the first part of his run setting up plot points that won't even fully bloom for a good few months, maybe even YEARS - something for which he has received criticism - which shows exactly how far ahead his mind is working.
The culmination of the current storyline will apparently result in the death of one of the team. Now, this is something that I'm sure ALL comic book readers are heartily sick of, the old 'kill-'em-off-for-a-while-then-bring-'em-back-again-to-boost-sales' routine...Superman, Robin, Flash, most recently Batman and Captain America...but with Hickman, well, I think it could be a lot more interestingly done than previously. He has the skills, and DOESN'T possess the motivation - the book is selling well, no further publicity is really needed - so I am more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt....of course....this is where I was 12 months ago with Blackest Night, and look how badly THAT turgid cocktease ended.
It seems that Fantastic Four #588 will be the last issue of Fantastic Four as we know it, and the next month will see the launch of a new title called, simply, FF.
Gimmick or NO gimmick, I'll be there.
So, it seems that next year holds some exciting things...well, for ME, at least...what with Fantastic Four/FF, and the forthcoming Green Lantern movie, amongst a plethora of other goodies.
For once in my life, I DO have a good feeling about the forthcoming year. It's a strange feeling, but I don't want it to go away. I'm looking forward.
The album that I am about to lay on you here is, in my humble opinion, the second finest record that I have ever heard. Now, I can hear you all out there wondering "The second? Well, I wonder what the FIRST is?". Simples. It is 'Nothingface' by Voivod.
Undisputably so.
However, I am NOT going to post that here for your delectation as, firstly, you MUST already have it, and secondly, it doesn't need the exposure quite so much as the following near-flawless gem.
The towering work of twisted genius of which I speak is 'Dante's Disneyland Inferno' by the Sun City Girls, "a giant roller coaster of a double album in 35 sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude in the eighteenth century with some hot Gypsies thrown in", to paraphrase a great man.
Being of a famously mercurial bent, SCG very rarely managed to maintain their genius to it's fullest extent over the course of an entire album, invariably becoming bogged-down in either ridiculous shenanigans or aimless musical wandering - granted, with a couple of glaringly obvious exceptions such as 'Torch of The Mystics' and, to a lesser extent, 'Kaliflower' - but with 1996's 'Dante's Disneyland Inferno' they managed to sustain their twisted, impish vision for a double CD set that clocks in at over 2 hours all in, and NEVER lets up once.
From the severely creepy Voudun atmos of opener 'Sexy Graveyard', to the borderline-retarded stream-of-consciousness atonal jazzbo piano fuck-up of closer, 'Bird Of Prey', this recording covers every base that one could possibly hope to have covered within the repertoire of the three trickster-gods-in-human-form that are Sun City Girls.
You want creepy weirdness? Howsabout 'A Bad Dream' with it's closing question of "...Heh heh heh heh, any o' you new age women ever eat dog?", 'Jack The Ripper', the odd wordplay of 'The Harley Of Horror', the cut-up, dreamlike and occasionally shuddering-inducing 'A Secret Revealed Unwittingly', or the decidedly strange tale of 'Jessup's Diary'.
You want soused-sounding nonsense-shanties? Howsabout the bands call-to-arms and general statement of intent 'Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds', the drunken organ of 'A Man is an Insect is a Flame' and 'Six Kids of Mine', the bouyant-sounding 'Ruby on the Ferris Wheel', or the drunken lament of 'The Ballad of Co-Dependency'?
You want oddball semi-spoken-word jazzbo rambling? Hell, they got it in SPADES - 'Flesh Balloons of Tibet', 'The Geography of the Swastika', 'Joan Of Arc', 'Holiday for Shakespeare', 'Dan And Ross'.....I could go on.
They do it all.....and THEN some.
The lions share of this masterpiece is driven by 'Satanic Director At Large', the sadly deceased Charles Gocher Jr, percussionist and.....uhhh.....whatEVER-the-fuck, for the Girls (aside from the obligatory interjection from your old Uncle Jim), and his jazz sensibilities and screwball lyrical jive run rampant herein.
I really could wax lyrical about this damn thing ALL FUCKING NIGHT AND DAY, but I won't. I'll let you discover it for yourself. So, go get it.
Is it difficult? HELL yes, it's difficult - the first disc is emblazoned with a swastika that got me some VERY dubious looks when spotted (it's ok, it's not THAT one, it's the 'nice one'), but y'know, that makes it aaaaaaall the better, if you ask me. You gotta WORK at it, to reveal the creamy goodness inside.
Sadly for you, 'Dante's Disneyland Inferno' is loooong out of print in any format aside from as an expensive triple-LP boxset, but, y'know, it MAY be expensive, but maaaaaaan is it WORTH it. Hunt it out, you won't be disappointed.
Die Kreuzen. I know people make a lot of noise about their 'Cows and Beer' 7", and their first, self-titled, LP, but personally I prefer their later, artier stuff. I think you can chalk that up to my only really getting into them because they were namechecked in a Voivod interview. I think it was either Blacky or Away that mentioned them as being an influence on Voivod's sound circa 'Dimension Hatross'. Anyway, as with several other bands before them - Foetus and The Young Gods spring immediately to mind - I decided that if it was good enough for Voivod, then it was good enough for ME, and immediately went hunting for anything I could find by them.
As it transpired, I couldn't find a DAMN thing. But, as luck would have it, I noticed in Raw Magazine - of ALL places - that they had an EP coming out soon, so I waited....
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, to be honest. Back in the time before the internet - this was 1989 - if you wanted to hear a band, you either had to buy a record, see 'em live, OR see if anyone you know had anything by them and ask for a tape. Since my friends at this point mostly listened to WASP and Slayer, if ANYTHING, and seeing them play was out of the question (or so i thought), I had to just buy their EP and hope it wasn't lousy.
It wasn't.
The title track, 'Gone Away', was a lot.....moodier than I was expecting, and the inclusion of 'Seasons Of Wither', an AEROSMITH cover of all things, surprised me, BUT, I liked it enough to want to flip it and check the B-Side. As you know, the B-side of the 'Gone Away' EP is five live tracks, most of which appear on the 'Century Days' LP. Now, THIS was more like it. Listening to 'Stomp' and 'Man in The Trees', I could TOTALLY hear Voivod in there. The weird chords were THERE. One of the other tracks on the B-Side is a live version of 'Number 3', from 'Century Days', and it just knocked me out.
It completely entranced me.
I think I listened to it around 10 times that first DAY, and fell hopelessly in love with Brian Egeness's oddly metallic, deeply expressive, guitar sound.
The clouds of delayed guitar that make up the guitar parts of 'Number 3' are just beautiful, to my ears. The combination of chiming chorus, delay and tasteful use of the whammy bar really IS music to my ears. It chokes me up to hear it, sometimes.
As you do when you hear something that just GRABS you, you want to share it, so here is a live version of the track.....
....just LISTEN to that and tell me you don't find it at once heartbreaking AND uplifting. It gets me right *there*, y'know?
Aaaaaaaanyway, before I get all Emo, I'll move on. So. I had discovered Die Kreuzen. After a week or two, I managed to score copies of 'Century Days' and 'October File', which I liked very much - particularly 'Century Days'. Of course, Voivod released 'Nothingface' a few months after 'Gone Away' came out, and I DEFINITELY noticed the Die Kreuzen influence THERE, which just about sealed the deal on Die Kreuzen for me.
Incidentally, 'Nothingface' is my favourite record FULL STOP, so anything operating in a similar ballpark gets MUCH love from me.
I see a lot of folks online badmouthing this whole period of Die Kreuzen, but the music they made from 'Century Days' to their final record, 'Cement', is the Die Kreuzen music that I listen to most often. Yeah, I can dig their earlier more 'hardcore' material, but it doesn't GET me in the same way as the later music does. I put that mostly down to the Voivod thing, and the progression of Brian Egeness' guitar playing. He just played a lot of stuff that really resonated with me - tracks like, 'Number 3', 'Man In The Trees', 'Stomp', 'Gone Away' and MOST of 'Cement' - in particular 'Big, Bad Days' - are my favourite tracks by Die Kreuzen. As I said earlier, his playing is just SO expressive and unique. NO-ONE else quite sounded like Brian Egeness, before OR since. Sure, Piggy and he touched base in a couple of areas, sound-wise, but really, their styles and approaches were completely dissimilar.
I was partially inspired to put this post together by a post over at one of my other gigs, Illogical Contraption, by IC buddy Aylmer about the FIRST Die Kreuzen LP. He kinda beat me to the punch, but, then again, I don't know if I'd want to subject the IC crowd to this kind of aimless rambling.
Before I love you and leave you, I just want to give you a couple of things - firstly, if none of what I wrote up there made any sense to you and you're wondering who the FUCK Die Kreuzen are, then I guess you'd better listen to THIS. It's a sampler containing material from Die Kreuzen's entire history and some interview snippets.
...aaaaand the SECOND thing i want to give you is the super-crappy video for my SECOND-FAVOURITE Die Kreuzen song, 'Big Bad Days'. Sure, the picture quality is lousy, but just LISTEN to the song, 'kay?
OH, and, I should ALSO advise you that there is an excellent Die Kreuzen site here, which is WELL worth browsing. Now, SCOOT.
One of my other gigs is as a reviewer and occasional interviewer over at The Sleeping Shaman, 'The Heavier Than Thou Webzine'. It's a wonderful site and a great resource for bands, run by the dynamic and awesome Shaman Lee - who is ALSO a fantastic photographer to boot! In the interests of cross-pollination and self-promotion, I have included links below so you can read my reviews. They're in alphabetical order, as you would expect from a comic nerd, and are up to date as of.....riiiiiiiight.......NOW.
Following on from the last post, I managed to get a decent quality vinyl rip of Calhoun Conquer's debut EP '...And Now You're Gone'. This EP contains 'Diane', their cover of the Husker Du classic, along with three other WEIRD METAL tunes.
