super groovy delicious bite: May 2015

Sunday, May 31, 2015

a river ain't too much to love

Smog came to face the truth by diving into the murk with the spellbinding spoken sharpness of this hacked away plateau. Bill Callahan had experimented with lo-fi recording techniques and dissonance as well as more sophisticated instrumentation over more than a decade (Sewn to the Sky in 1990, Forgotten Foundation in 1992, Julius Caesar in 1993, Wild Love in 1995, The Doctor Came at Dawn in 1996, Red Apple Falls in 1997, Knock Knock in 1999, Dongs of Sevotion in 2000, Rain on Lens in 2001, Accumulation:None in 2002, and Supper in 2003) before producing his final album under the name Smog: 'A River Ain't Too Much to Love' at Pedernales Studio in Spicewood, Texas in 2004. The sessions featured Bill Callahan on vocals, guitar, and various instruments; Connie Lovatt on vocals and bass guitar; Jim White on drums; Thor Harris on hammer dulcimer, airdrums, and zills; Travis Weller on fiddle; and Joanna Newsom on piano.

Callahan would reveal: "I tend to want to have a unifying theme to a bunch of songs I’m working on. I noticed that, unconsciously, rivers or water had sprung up in three or four of the numbers. Then it became conscious and I thought maybe I should let the river get in there as much as possible. It kind of naturally inserted itself in so many places and I was very happy about that ... Family is all there is. And thinking of nature as the mother you want to protect more and more as she gets older is pretty easy. So these lyrics address environment of nature, geography and family. But also (and this is something common to many Drag City artists) the cast of A River Ain’t Too Much To Love recalls a certain kind of community–with the specific players and the live setting in which it was recorded...It was very collaborative, since we’d been on the road for a week before recording, playing these unrecorded songs. Things still changed in the studio, but I like to think those changes were made only because we’d arrived at a point that might’ve been missed if we didn’t know the songs so well. The ineffable support the other players supplied was like that of a family. Raising spirits, arguing points."

www.dragcity.com/bill-callahan

"Say Valley Maker"

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc62sh_say-valley-maker-unofficial-music-v_creation

Say Valley Maker (Unofficial Music Video) by keepcrimelegal

"Rock Bottom Riser"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J-WpgOzW9A

"I Feel Like the Mother of the World"

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1775e_smog-i-feel-like-the-mother-of-the_music

Smog-I feel like the mother of the world by night-tide

"In the Pines"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C361J6xLMg

"Let Me See the Colts"

smog, let me see the colts from Mark Aaron Sharon on Vimeo.

'A River Ain't Too Much to Love'

full album:

https://myspace.com/smog47/music/album/a-river-ain-t-too-much-to-love-20056718

http://www.last.fm/music/Smog/A+River+Ain't+Too+Much+to+Love

All songs written by Bill Callahan except where noted.

"Palimpsest" – 2:52

"Say Valley Maker" – 5:10

"The Well" – 7:00

"Rock Bottom Riser" – 5:44

"I Feel Like the Mother of the World" – 3:09

"In the Pines" (Traditional) – 5:12

"Drinking at the Dam" – 4:07

"Running the Loping" – 6:55

"I'm New Here" – 3:59

"Let Me See the Colts" – 6:39

Saturday, May 30, 2015

submarine bells

The Chills would effloresce with the heavenly pop of this elsatic expansion. The legendary New Zealand band had begun in 1980 with bandleader Martin Phillipps and his sister Rachel with Jane Dodd, Peter Gutteridge, Alan Haig. There would be numerous lineup changes with Frazer Batts, Terry Moore, and Martyn Bull coming into the fold. When Bull became ill, the group went on hiatus and almost changed their name. A a compilation of early singles 'Kaleidoscope World' and their first album 'Brave Words' made them local superstars and architects of the Dunedin sound. Peter Allison, Martin Kean, and Caroline Easther would all come and go before they graduated from New Zealand's Flying Nun Records to Warner Brothers subsidiary Slash Records for 'Submarine Bells'. The album was recorded at Jacobs Studios in Surrey with producer Gary Smith and engineer Paul Apted. The sessions featured Martin Phillipps on vocals and guitar; Justin Harwood on bass and background vocals; James Stephenson on drums and percussion; Andy Todd on keyboards and background vocals; and Donna Savage on background vocals.

Phillipps would express at the time: “The belief in the band at an industry level and at a media level has been incredible. It’s not like it happens to every band and everyone thinks that they’re the most amazing group. The indication was that the Chills were something very special with commercial potential as opposed to very interesting but hopelessly unmarketable. People really thought there was something going to happen with us.”

'Submarine Bells' became a smash success at home, going to number one on the New Zealand album chart and winning Album of the Year at the New Zealand Music Awards.

http://www.softbomb.com/

"Heavenly Pop Hit" was their only chart entry in the UK, going to number ninety-seven. Likewise, in the US, it was their only song to chart, making it to number seventeen on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. In New Zealand it soared to number two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvYihKlgzOg

Each evening the sun sets in five billion places,
Seen by ten billion eyes set in five billion faces,
Then they close in a daze and wait for the dawing,
But the daylight and sunrise
Are brighter in our eyes,
Where night cannot devour golden solar power

Once we were damned now I guess we are angels
For we passed though the dark and avoided the dangers
Then I awoke with a start to startling changes
All the tension is ended,
The sentence suspended,
And darkness now sparkles and gleams.

And it all seems larger than life to me
I find it rather hard rather hard to believe.

So I stand as the sound goes straight through my body,
I'm so bloated up, happy, and I throw things around me.
And I'm growing in stages, and have been for ages,
Just singing and floating and free.

Dum de dum dum
Its a heavenly pop hit
If anyone wants it.
Dum de dum dum
Its a heavenly pop hit,
Its something that we're humming as
We swoop low on trees, or we sweep under carpets,
We can dive into suns though its not recommended,
We can hover, silent, and listen, closely...

It all seems, (all seems)
Larger than life to me,
I find it, (find it)
Hard to believe,

So where was our home,
Well, our home was in tears,
For it's fruit has gone bad,
They'd been that way for years
Yet their lives are elsatic,
They should be fantastic,
They should be expanding.

Dum de dum dum
Dum de dum dum
It's a heavenly pop hit,
If anyone wants it.

Dum de dum dum
Dum de dum dum
It's a heavenly pop hit,
For anybody,
For those that still want it.

"The Oncoming Day"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4HZB_OPrn0

"Sweet Times"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nDv2cCrK9o

"Submarine Bells"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaGz92Js7mo

'Submarine Bells'
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgMe2ONH0V-50jD7ZEpqJ2lrH7mKMgxHp

All songs written by Martin Phillips.

Heavenly Pop Hit 3:27
Tied Up In Chain 3:15
The Oncoming Day 3:06
Part Past Part Fiction 2:55
Singing In My Sleep 2:39
I SOAR 3:04
Dead Web 2:15
Familiarity Breeds Contempt 3:20
Don't Be - Memory 4:45
Effloresce And Deliquesce 2:45
Sweet Times 0:40
Submarine Bells 3:41

Friday, May 29, 2015

neu! '75

Neu! brought their divergent musical streams together to craft this ambient motorik proto-punk amalgam. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger started the project after a brief stint with Kraftwerk in 1971. They recorded two experimental albums ('Neu' and 'Neu 2' ) before taking a brief hiatus. During the recording of the second album, they ran out of money and used remixed versions of singles from the album to flesh out side two. Michael Rother left Düsseldorf to form Harmonia with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius in Forst/Weserbergland; while Klaus Dinger started his own label Dingerland which soon went bankrupt.

Dinger: "I studied architecture for three years and gave that up and jumped into a black hole, and, ja, let’s say this official way of life was gone at that time, so somehow I had to express myself, or together with Michael, but still myself — or himself. I also was very, I mean I believed in his originality from the beginning. It was very obvious. So, ja, what else, what more can you ask for? But, ja, self-consciousness, I think that is a very individual thing ... Neu! 75 happened in December 74, and, ja, in this year, early 74, I made my own label, and had produced another group, called Lilac Angels...I spent a lot of money on that and I didn’t get the response I wanted from the industry...Anyway, the deal didn’t happen and I was very angry, bankrupt for the first time in my life, lots of debts for my experience so far at that time, it was about 50,000 marks. And I made two more attempts to get this label going, and organised, and also borrowed money to finance two free concerts in 74, which happened in a place quite close to Düsseldorf. And also then nobody appeared from the industry, and, ja, I think at that time I already had a quite bad image — which didn’t get much better in the meantime over the years ... My then girlfriend, which you find one way or the other in many songs, “Lieber Hönig”, for instance, that is this one, or the one who sat with me in this rowing boat you can hear on the first album. This was a bit difficult relation, because she had to go to Norway with her parents, and during the whole Neu!, this whole time, these three years, we nearly never met, or so on, somehow strange to believe today, ne?, how this can happen, and in 74, in this year when all these things didn’t happen, also this relationship finished, and all these bad feelings and, ja, not so much perspective, I must say, at that time, the only chance was to, OK, there was one more record to make for Metronome, and we did that. But as you can hear... it’s maybe quite interesting to really write it down these “Hero” words..."

'Neu '75' was recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's studio between December 1974 and January 1975 with Konrad "Conny" Plank acting as producer and engineer. The sessions featured Michael Rother on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; and Klaus Dinger on drums for side 1, and guitar and vocals for side 2; with Thomas Dinger and Hans Lampe playing drums on side 2.

Rother relates: "With Klaus Dinger, it was possible for me to record music, it was a very successful combination. Klaus Dinger had the qualities I lacked, and I guess it was also the other way around, and so we managed to record the music we did. However, as a duo, with Klaus Dinger playing the drums and me playing guitar, in a live situation there was not enough depth in music, on our 2 instruments we could not create enough details, and so we tried several musicians and, looking back, it's quite clear that it couldn't work because our vision of music was different from, and that was also the idea behind the music, was different from what every other musician had in his mind, and so we more or less stopped looking for other musicians."

http://www.neu2010.com/

'Neu '75'
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0f1Tw3YXM

All songs written and composed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother.

Side one
00:00 "Isi" 5:06
05:06 "Seeland" ("Sea Land") 6:54
12:01 "Leb' Wohl" ("Farewell") 8:50

Side two
20:52 "Hero" 7:11
28:03 "E-Musik" ("Ernste Musik") 9:57
38:01 "After Eight" 4:44

Thursday, May 28, 2015

pod

The Breeders brought the essentials and burned the field completely with the scrabbled salty spawn of this glorious sparking hot wire supersister sideproject. Sisters Kim and Kelley Deal performed under the name during the early 80's in Dayton, Ohio. Feeling overshadowed by Black Francis in The Pixies, Kim revisited the moniker when she decided to record with Tanya Donelly from 4AD labelmates Throwing Muses (who was likewise eclipsed by her step-sister Krisin Hersh) after the bands had toured together. A demo tape recorded with violinist Carrie Bradley (from Ed's Redeeming Qualities), bassist Ray Halliday, and three different drummers (David Narcizo, Mickey Bones, and Carl Haarer) led to a deal with 4AD (the label for both The Pixies and Throwing Muses) for which label head Ivo Watts-Russell gave them a budget of $11,000 to record an album.

Watts-Russell explains: "If you’ve met Kim, you understand why a record where she got more of a focus than she did in the Pixies would be fun to do. She’s an eccentric woman, very individual. I wouldn’t say that anything she decided to do would have been okay, but pretty much anything she decided to do would have been okay."