Take A Trip
A whirlwind guide through the undefined world of American:
psychedelic, trip-rock, stoner, grunge, drone, shoegaze...
investigated by Alan Freeman
There's a lot of it about these days. Whatever you call it.
And in so many forms. From the totally crazed through to the ambient, and
almost everywhere in between. Instrumental, or largely instrumental jam rock,
free-form, cross-culture, new Americana. Some of it is Krautrock inspired, some
of it rooted in the avant-garde, most of it seems to be improvised. The current
USA explorers don't seem to conceptualise so much as their 1970s mentors, they
just do it, and so the proliferation of prolific bands is quite staggering, and
something you could never keep up on without the web. Of course, some such
bands like Escapade, SubArachnoid Space, Melting Euphoria, et al., have been
well-covered in Audion. So, here's a whirlwind tour of some of the most
exciting other such stuff I've found over the past decade or so...
The Bardo Pond connection...
To me, Bardo Pond were deemed of little interest when I
first encountered them based on some second-hand records and CD's bought into
the Ultima Thule shop back in the early-mid 1990s. Basically a modern twist on
the old Velvet Underground sound I thought, and the Velvet Underground were never
amongst my favourites of the 1960s. At best, the Bardo Pond I'd heard was
somewhere between Windy & Carl and Stereolab, okay but not my scene. So it
was a surprise to learn that Bardo Pond had indeed made some excellent records,
and of a couple of related projects that were pretty awesome and "out
there"...
 |
| The 5 piece Hash Jar Tempo |
Even with knowing that I didn't quite expect what WELL OILED
(Drunken Fish Records DFR-24) had to offer. Recorded in March 1995 and released
two years later, it was an apt time to issue such music on the cusp of
Krautrock interest due to Julian Cope's "Krautrocksampler" book and
our own "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" - it was now official, such
music is classic, not self indulgent waffle. It was about time the world woke
up to that! This was, I guess, the start of the opening floodgates, and what an
album, what it lacked in track titles (none at all) it made up for with musical
imagination and invention. Although an obvious dedication to the genre it
wasn't at all derivative really, that was due to the odd man out here I guess:
Roy Montgomery, a musician I've only recently checked-out (his 1995 album
TEMPLE IV is rather good, all multi-guitar stuff with echo and reverb, with
hints of Manuel Göttsching and Popol Vuh's Daniel Fichelscher). Five of the
seven tracks are over 10 minutes, the 6th is 18 minutes, and there is a small
breather/interlude in there and a wind-down coda. So, transport yourself back
to 1969, but with the post-rock attitude of the 1990s, dual guitars, solid bass
and excellent drums, all on the edge of fried - but cosmic too.
The sequel UNDER GLASS (Drunken Fish Records DFR 44) from
1999 also included Isobel Sollenberger from Bardo Pond! And this one had track
titles, although Prälaudium Und Fuge. D-Moll or Hymenoptera In Amber Crybaby
for instance, hardly made sense with such charged wigged-out on the edge music.
A great sequel, if a bit schizophrenic. A third one never happened.
Bardo Pond now (keeping the chronology) started to mix such free-rocking
trips into their own repertoire. Yet I've still not come across an entirely
successful album. Well, that is excepting two co-releases. First is the split:
SubArachnoid Space "Tigris" / Bardo Pond "Euphrates"
(Camera Obscura CAM054LP) from 2002, sporting one side-long track by each band.
Of course we know SubArachnoid Space well, but Bardo Pond's side is the better
of the two, a strangely twisted opus that reminds me both of early Ash Ra
Tempel and the trippy improv stuff that Throbbing Gristle also excelled at. The
other one is a collaboration: Bardo Pond + Tom Carter - 4/23/03 (Three Lobed
TLR 012) issued in 2004. Tom Carter is one of those prolific modern musicians
that seems to work in a variety of fields, from pop through to pure
avant-garde. We first encountered him in collaboration with Starving Weirdos
(more about them later) but he's best-known for Charalambides (they're featured
here too). So, give him the freedom to be as psychedelic as he wants against a
backdrop of grooving Bardo Pond, and you have one of the best neo-Krautrock
type classics around!
Alumbrados I thought would be an alumni of brothers, but a
Google search reveals: Alumbrados was the name assumed by some false mystics
who appeared in Spain in the sixteenth century and claimed to have direct
intercourse with God. A strange name for a band then! But Alumbrados are a
strange band! They made four albums, of which I have the second: A GENERATION
OF VIPERS (Important Records 102) where they are a quartet of musicians all
involved in Bardo Pond! The key difference here is John Gibbons playing a
Cümbüş, that's a Turkish oud-like stringed instrument (invented by one
Zeynelabidin Cümbüş in the early 20th century) which he plays in a totally
decadent John Fahey or Sandy Bull like manner, adding a unique Middle-Eastern
flavour to a psychedelic jam-rock that is most unusual. An odd one, it took a
good few listens to really appreciate, but I'll have to check-out the others!
Alasehir is also an odd name for a band (and who knows how
to pronounce it?) - either an ancient word meaning "Philadelphia" or
"brotherly love" or a town the Aegean region of Turkey! Curious indeed!
Formed as the trio of Michael Gibbons and John Gibbons together with much
travelled drummer Michael Zanghi (otherwise Alumbrados above minus one). Their
debut SHARING THE SACRED (Important Records imprec101) also sees the Gibbons
adding sitar and tambura to their instrumentation, which in some places makes
this sound like a perfect hybrid of Ash Ra Tempel, Agitation Free and Popol
Vuh, as if musicians from those bands had got together in a jam session. Quite
when that dates from we don't know, but it wasn't released until 2006, and
already then Alasehir had become the Gibbons plus Jason Kourkounis on drums -
that's
three-fifths of Bardo Pond! My notes for THE PHILOSOPHY OF
LIVING FIRE (Siltbreeze SB86) say: kind of Ash Ra Tempel meets spacey Hillage
in an early Djam Karet mode type of thing from Bardo Pond people, which
certainly wraps up how excellent that is in a few words! THE STONE SENTINELS
(Archive 33) from 2007 adds one Aaron Igler (the above mentioned "minus
one" of Alumbrados) on keyboards and electronics. This is darker stuff,
deep-space drives with sizzling dual guitars and drum driven treks, with
electronics that tend to underpin and enhance more than the usual space
twitters we hear in such music. Both low-fi and sharp as a bell, this contrast
makes it sound both 1968 & 2022!! Seemingly their last outing: TORMENT OF
THE METALS (Important Records IMPREC249) finds them back down to a basic trio,
and in a far more freeform Guru Guru meets Hawkwind mode, but with the added
post-rock power that steers close to Godspeed You Black Emperor on occasions,
particularly with some real big soundwall dirges!
from Audion #57, page 8 (autumn 2012)
from Audion #57, page 8 (autumn 2012)
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