listening

New Woebot album hit the doormat today. Chunks!

First impression, this is digging into guitar tradition again, but much earlier than Moanad's New Wave, late 70s/early 80s purview. It might even be Woebot's Groundhogs album. With some Grand Funk Railroad, Mountain and Bluesbreakers thrown in. Passing vision of cover art in which Matt, in mudstained bellbottoms and tight denim jacket, lounges in a farmyard. Three of him in fact, cloned to make a power trio. There's hours of sample-spotting here. But whatever the sources, there's a crispness of organization which transmutes it all into something new (shedding that Gutbucket feel on the way).



The physical edition of Blackest Ever Black's mix The Scold's Bridle. Great mix obviously, but the design - don't know how deliberate this is on their part, but it's very evocative for me of the 7" single's last days – the early to mid-90s before the internet came along & killed the market. Clear plastic sleeve, coloured paper insert folded, grimy photocopied insert. Makes me think of Trumans Water, early Drag City. In particular it reminds me of a Merzbow split 7" with some Midlands noise freak. Where did I put that?

Incomplete list of recent listening:

Æthenor's En Form for Blå - awesome gloomy improvisations that bring to mind doom and 70s Miles, with Steve Noble on drums, Daniel O'Sullivan on Rhodes, Stephen O'Malley on restrained lightning-fork-from-clouds guitar, Kristoffer Rygg from Ulver too

new Mamuthones - giallo fever

Yoko Ono/Ono Plastic Band, Between My Head and the Sky

Vangelis, Beauborg. One of Chris Cunningham's favourite records I recently found out. An excellent counterpart/point to the current synth fetish.

Isolée - all of it

Phil Manzanera - K-Scope

Incredible String Band - the unloved 70s stuff

Broadcast - for sad and obvious reasons

and Trish Keenan's Mindbending Motorway Mix

Natalie Beridze

that massive Nirvana boxset, With the Lights Out

Jad Fair - Best of TRIPLE cd. There's about 150 tracks on this and they couldn't be bothered to load the track info up to the iTunes Gracenote database. Bastards.

Bangs & Works Vol 1, (still)... try walking round the Westfield listening to that. You walk out looking for your flying saucer.

new Arnold Dreyblatt on Important - Turntable History - and lots of his previous stuff on Tzadik, Table of the Elements and elsewhere

plus pretty much everything by Plastikman