Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Various Artists - Plantation Gold (Omni)

Posted: 17 May 2009 05:47 AM PDT

When Ween went country with 12 Golden Country Greats the concept was bizarre brilliant and frequently hilarious, shaking up the earnestness of country music with a mixture of stupidity and satire. Yet at the time they didn’t tell us that it had already been done, from inside Nashville no less, and much much better. Plantation Records was the label established in the mid 60’s by Shelby S Singleton and Omni have plundered the vaults of his and related labels to compile some of the most amazing, hilarious and skewed country music ever produced. The music is audacious, way over the top and totally mind boggling. It’s country music but it’s acid country, tripped out effects, bizarre lyrics, coming from a place that you have never expected country music to ever be. Whilst Ray ‘Wong’ Riley’s sitar country music is downright offensive or at the very least misguided, and possibly the best track here, we’ve got the terrifyingly camp cb operator on Rod Hart’s CB Savage, then there’s Neil Ray’s Big Fanny, which takes talking country to a whole new hilarious level. And the music is great too. Johnny Moore and Col Tex Herring’s Sold To The Highest Bidder features a live auction of a broken home from a hyperactive auctioneer in the place of verses. This is the thinking behind the music and it never gets tired. Words don’t do the music on this 2cd set justice, it’s all just too bizarre, not necessarily musically, as if you chose not to listen to lyrics you could almost believe this is regular country music, vaguely influenced by the pop and psychedelic rock of the time. But once you plug into the words it’s all over the shop. Many of the tunes come across as novelty or joke tunes, yet thanks to the musicianship you’d hesitate to label them as gimmicks. Few have appeared anywhere before, perhaps promotional 7 inches for the label and that’s a real crime. The first disc is all gold, every single one of the 28 tracks and whilst the second disc (30 tracks) is a little patchier it’s still one of the most obscure collections of musical genius you will ever come across.

Bob Baker Fish

Black Dice - Repo (Paw Tracks/ Mistletone)

Posted: 17 May 2009 05:53 AM PDT

Repo is Black Dice’s foray into melody and funk. Sure it’s a scattered confusing quite experimental hodge podge of clipped samples, obtuse guitar lines and unrestrained pedal abuse, yet it all fits together like some kind of junk yard rave and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make you want to dance. And laugh. Probably both at the same time. It’s the Brooklyn trios fifth studio album and it’s their best so far. Over the last 10 odd years they’ve become masters of the twiddling knobs and with Repo they’re increasingly moving away from the more straight jacketed dance like rhythms of their previous couple of albums and are instead highlighting some of those moments that seemed to be accidents: when everything coalesced and the music sounded like an actual song (Note: I’m using the term ’song’ very broadly). They still possess that raw haphazard charm where it feels like they are barely in control of their sounds, yet Repo is such a nuanced excursion in demented electronic music that they’re no longer fooling anyone. Their music is just like the cover of Repo, with possible normal guitar bass and drums kind’ve oozed over by a crazy wet bright mess. Even when they use a conventional instrumentation like guitars or drums there’s always so much discordant digitalia floating around that you can never quite gain equilibrium. it’s hard to know at times whether they’re experimental sound art masquerading as music or music that’s been disemboweled and had its ashes scattered around haphazardly and now they’re trying to join the dots. Ultimately though Black Dice aren’t about the tough theoretical questions. Their music is too playful, frustrating and joyfully weird to care.

Bob Baker Fish

Storsveit Nix Noltes - Royal Family Divorce (Fat Cat/ Inertia)

Posted: 17 May 2009 05:38 AM PDT

Let’s just put it straight out there. Icelandic Balkan music. And not surprisingly it’s like no Balkan music you have ever heard. Of course there’s those insane time signatures, the frenetic waltzes and jigs, the breakneck speed, celebratory horns, violins, yet also full kit percussion and these searing guitars and electronics driving everything into an enormous transcendent wall of sound with a noisy punk edge. At times it’s huge, like Godspeed meets Tony Gatlif, an aggressive euphoric 11 piece big band reinterpreting traditional Eastern European folk tunes with elements of their punk, rock and experimental former selves drifting up from their unconscious and starting to play out around the edges. Yet at other times it’s not, much gentler, restrained and composed with plenty of space even for silence. It’s definitely more guitar orientated than most Balkan music you’ll hear, even occasionally entering post rock territory. Yet it’s a fascinating hybrid of traditions, a little like Secret Chiefs 3 Balkan style, yet instead of one mad maestro this feels more democratic, like it’s more of a group effort, seeming to occasionally descend into a spot of group improvisation. It’s definitely a curiosity, not exactly the first genre of music you’d expect to hear on Fat Cat, yet thanks to the musicianship, inventiveness of the compositions and spirit of the ensemble it really feels like it’s offering a new perspective, perhaps a bit of roughage to some of the most joyful life affirming music you could ever hope to hear.

Bob Baker Fish

Oldman – Two Heads Bis Bis (Low Impedance Recordings)

Posted: 17 May 2009 02:42 AM PDT

Oldman

French producer / multi-instrumentalist Charles Eric Charrier is perhaps best known for his previous work alongside Rasim Biyikli as one half of the acclaimed electronic duo MAN, who recorded four albums for DSA and SubRosa whilst also collaborating with an impressive number of film directors, choreographers and musicians including Rob Mazurek. While Charrier’s backhistory might sit firmly in the electronic music domain however, this debut solo album as Oldman ‘Two Heads Bis Bis’ sees him relying on the traditional ‘rock’ suite of bass, guitar and drums to create six tracks that sit somewhere between ambience, lo-fi post-rock and free-form jamming. Expansive opening track ‘Broken Teeth’ provides an apt illustration of this overall aesthetic approach, layering slow, clattering drums and dry-sounding snares beneath distracted Michael Karoli-esque rippling guitar chords and the spectral sweep of sampled found sounds and ringing harmonics in an offering that frequently calls to mind a more narcotised Can as it gradually deccelerates down into spooky sampled voices. Indeed, while it doesn’t exactly ‘go anywhere’ or develop drastically over its vast running time, the focus here falls more upon building a sense of underlying background mood, a factor consistently present throughout this entire album. If the title track represents perhaps the one unwieldy moment here with its rapidly grating mix of distorted bass twangs and metronomic drums, it’s a brief miss-step that’s quickly redeemed by ‘Dust’s haunting exploration into tribal percussion, eerie vocal tones and plucked instrumentation, as well as ‘Sunny Afternoon African Charge’s descent through mesmerising sampled radio chatter and glistening metallic percussion tones, the sudden entrance of a rapidly rewound tape rousing proceedings out of their reverie. An intriguing debut album from Charrier as Oldman, ‘Two Heads Bis Bis’ simply grows more compelling with ensuing listens.