Nailing Smoke to the Wall - 2006 in review, part 1

KM up first

The practice of looking back on a previous year's cultural output seems to be almost a necessary ritual among those who pay attention to such things, but 2006 highlighted a whole range of developments that make such attempts harder and harder to countenance and conceptualize. In music especially, most of my serious-listening friends and acquaintances seem to agree that this past year was one real damn doozy, and even kind of dizzying in some regards. The sheer abundance of music (available via microlabels, self-releases, downloads in addition to the usual channels) made it nearly impossible for any individual to keep up with new developments in any but the smallest corner of the world of sound. Plus, I mean, the whole concept of time as a linear count-up and count-down thing is starting to get pretty fuzzy in our all-mediated-all-the-time world; but I don't want to get all head-stretch here so I'll leave that topic for another column (he said threateningly).

Of course, we at Deep Water Acres are not deterred by a bit of mere theoretical impossibility (heck, six impossible things before breakfast is our daily regimen...); and really, the tradition of year-end wrap-ups isn't necessarily a bad one - if nothing else, it does remind us that we still have years (thinking cosmologically here, rather than that made-up days/months business). So we convened a council of rogues from amongst the DW regulars, got them talking about what they saw as musically conspicuous and noteworthy from the preceding cycle around the sun, and sort of ended up with our own takes on that whole "top 10" list thing. I'm gonna go first, since I'm already typing, and then pass the baton along to Mats, Tony, and Lee.

As any aggro can tell you, there is certainly no shortage of heaviness in the current underground scene (and society in general too I guess). You gots yer doom metal, stoner rock, power electronics, dark noise - you name it, extremity is way in. Which makes it all the more pleasing to hear some longtime favorites finding new ways to hone and refine their impact; when the going gets heavy, the truly heavy get sophisticated. For example, the latest by the awesome Comets on Fire, Avatar (Sub Pop), takes their music to places only hinted at before, and w/o giving up a bit of their native freak-rock firepower. This disc seems to show the group working through recognizable classic rock tropes with almost blinding authority, particularly pitched ca. 1970, West Coast Fillmore acid rock smoke and Brit heavy late-psych-into-prog bluster (think Andromeda, T2) duking it out over whose stash to smoke and occasionally self-immolating into CoF's trademark solar flares of noise.

Bardo Pond's Ticket Crystals (ATP), on the other hand, doesn't so much broaden the band's stylistic touchstones - Beatles cover to the contrary - as hone them to a razor's edge, such that their trademark heaviness now sails into your eggshell mind like a cosmic wrecking ball with a diamond blade. Actually, the studio-craft of the late Beatles becomes a surprisingly apropos reference point, as this is probably the richest sounding album I heard all year, every bit of psychedelic goo, drone extension, and crushing noise rendered with crystalline clarity, then lovingly and extensively fucked with, giving the beloved Bardo sound a production detailing one would never have imagined from their initial releases over a decade ago (yep, that long... geez...). While this disc probably marks the effective close of recorded Bardo phase 3, their mind-numbing performance at Terrastock 6 and a recent flurry of side projects show the next stage already in motion, and I'm guessing it's going even further out.

Probably the only thing "in"-er on the underground than the above-mentioned heaviness is the many permutations of hyphenated folk. Various attempts to hype this as a "movement" haven't quite killed it yet, but the always-present aura of self-consciousness does seem to be heightening and the threat of self-parody hovers just over the horizon. That said, there were certainly a woven basketful of fine releases in the style this year, including both well-known items like Espers II and Vetiver's To Find Me Gone, and more obscure gems like the Jakob Olaussen LP (on the fine de Stijl label) and Wooden Wand and the Sky High Band finally getting it together on their Second Attention album. Standing head and shoulders above them all is the shadowed moody majesty of United Bible Studies' The Shore That Fears the Sea (Deserted Village), which we've commented on previously and which most of my colleagues review below so I'll direct you to them for further testifying.

A more extreme reworking of folk comes from Glasgow group Scatter, whose second CD The Mountain Announces (Blank Tapes) finds them a 10-strong improvising folk/free-jazz/art punk orchestra, and probably contains at least something that's unlike anything you've heard before. A thick stew stirring together elements of UK folk, high-energy free jazz, the Fall, various Eastern European musical traditions, and god knows what else really, thickened by the tribal free thunder of drummer Alex Neilson and liberally spiced with the untamed precision of Hannah Tuulikki's vocals. Their trad-very-arr version of "She Moved Through the Fair" was probably my favorite single recording of the year, melding the whirlwind spiritual pulse of some classic Coltrane or Ayler exorcism with the earthy roots of folksong, finding the source from which both grow as part of the same transcendental expression, rising and falling across 10 extraordinary minutes of incantatory elemental power. Also of note is the Bells for Augustin Lesage CD (Secret Eye) by Alex Neilson in his Directing Hand guise, which finds pretty much the entire group (not to mention Isobel Campbell and Charalambides' Christina Carter) exploring the more free/out side of their sound to significant effect. Some of Scatter also play with Volcano the Bear's Daniel Padden as the One Ensemble; and as the group Nalle, whose CD By Chance Upon Waking (Pickled Egg) deservedly made it onto some lists of year-end bests. All pretty unreservedly great.

Nielson is also a regular contributor to Phil Todd's Ashtray Navigations, and shows up on the fine Four More Raga Moods (Ikuisuus). Todd often has great collaborators, here also featuring members of both Nalle and Seamstress, prolific drone-folk trickster Ben Reynolds, and even Pete Nolan (Majik Markers, GHQ, etc.). Phil's been at this for many moons now, and has evolved an approach - as heard across a remarkable continuing barrage of recordings on both his own Memoirs of an Aesthete and some dozen other labels - not a million miles from that of similarly-minded UK drone-noise stalwarts Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu) and Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Astral Social Club), though perhaps a bit scrappier and more varied, combining elements of free improvisation, lo-fi psychedelia, noise and found sounds, the raw power (though rarely the form) of rock, and the tonalities of various drone and ethnic musics. Pure underground sound, basically. Four More... demonstrates Todd's explorations of the long-form collage, various lo-fi recordings sliced and layered via digital manipulation for a surrealistically flowing whole (in that respect not unlike Mike Tamburo's Ghosts of Marumbey, which we reviewed recently and probably should be on this list as well). Alternately, those who dig the full-bore overbleeding drone sound should head directly for the perfectly-titled Dirt Mummies and Bloody Amps LP (Freenoise) - a mostly-Todd affair with a bit of help from live regulars Melanie Delaney of Sculptress and Phil Legard, the man behind the amazing Xenis Emputae Traveling Band - which does that kind of thing about as well as it can be. Never less than interesting, sometimes bracing, occasionally exasperating, and often just completely enveloping.

Given the examples above, one might start to think that some of the finest sounds this year came from the UK, a view that gets further support from O True Believers (Important) by acoustic guitarist James Blackshaw, a young prodigy with a breathtaking mastery of fingerpicking technique and extended instrumental form. Previous releases have made him something of an English analogue to Jack Rose or Steffen Basho-Junghans, though perhaps with less direct grounding in folk forebears (Fahey etc.). While this means his work is less raw and earthy, it simultaneously opens it out to reflect the open possibilities of flowing stringplucked drone from the world over (though emphasizing solo guitar pieces more than previous releases such as Sunshrine, his open-tuned 12-string is still occasionally abetted by harmonium, tamboura and the like), while retaining an essential melodic Englishness and a wide-eyed fascination with nature. Believers is a misty early-morning stroll through sun-spangled parkland, the world quivering in anticipation of the day's busyness, everything glowing as if from within.

Another UK-based guitarist with an approach and technique equally impressive in concept and radically different in execution is Peter Wright, who had a pretty big year release-wise with several of his earlier limited discs coming out as a deluxe 3CD set via Last Visible Dog. And while that's all essential stuff, even better was to be found on his latest full-length CD on Digitalis, titled Red Lion. Wright primarily plays 12-string guitar through a whole range of effects, such that the original presence of the strings becomes abstracted, often to the point of indefinition, resulting in shifting washes of lo-fidelity ambience that float suspended, rolling like fog on city streets late at night passing in and out of hazy street lamps. Winding throughout are also voices and snippets of found sounds and location recordings, further increasing the sense of a nocturnal spectral voyage. On the one hand this is fairly "out," but both the idea of solo guitar music and the overall shape of the tones evokes some kind of urban folk music, the ghost of the tradition emanating from the bones of the city.

The growing network of global interconnection was another signal development of the year, as otherwise isolated groups of voyagers spread across the face of the planet continued to establish contact and share ideas. One of the ongoing sites of such activity is Finland, and as the man behind the Fonal record label, Sami Sanpakkila is one of the hearts of that fertile and ever-evolving scene. His fourth full-length release under the name Es, Sateenkaarisuudelma (kraak), makes less use of synthetics than its predecessors, but maintains and even expands the stylistic possibilities of his engaging and subtle drone-based music. (Those with a pedantic fixation on facts might point out there that this LP actually came out at the end of '05; but I never saw a copy ‘til well into '06, so...) On the first two sides of this gorgeous double LP, streams of looping minimalist orchestration drawn from a palette of organ, piano, synth, guitar, rainstorm, saxophone, and voices waft and curl around one another, coalescing into surprisingly arresting and melodic minimalist tonal clusters, the subtle shifts forming a lovely rainy-day pastel-watercolor chamber-music lava lamp of an album. Side three features a live radio show including Jeffrey and Miriam of Black Forest/Black Sea, that essays the same approach in a more discrete form, while side four strips things back even further, unreleased solo demos that show the whole process in sketch form. Far from being mere extras, the second disc only adds to the appreciation of the first by demonstrating the aesthetic in alternate settings.

I'd be remiss in not mentioning two of the real engines of all things underground this year: Brad Rose, who publishes the Foxy Digitalis webzine, released dozens of CDs and CDRs on his Digitalis and Foxglove labels, and played on seemingly as many more releases, both solo as the North Sea and in a head-spinning array of collaborative projects under names such as Golden Oaks, Corsican Paintbrush, Ajilvsga, and Juniper Meadows; and Michael Donnelly, with the insanely prolific output of his MusicYourMindWillLoveYou label and his own many recordings with/as Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood, Terracid, 6Majik9, et al; and of course Brad and Michael record together too, as Ahket and Alligator Crystal Moth. While I have no idea how they do it all, I do know that I bought more CDs connected with these two this year than any other artists... Which brings me to another of those unique situations brought about by the current musical explosion. Since, say, Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper's or so, the album has generally been seen as a creative document analogous to a novel - a fully crafted and arranged "work" that presents the artist's ideas in aesthetic form; hence these year-end roundup things that try to parse out the most significant artifacts. That model seems to be fading these days, due in part to phenomena like downloading (mostly individual song-based), but also to the kind of mass of material we're seeing on the underground. With so many releases, the status of each one changes - less like novels, perhaps more like magazines or journals or letters - a selection of the recent and noteworthy, or a missive sent back from the outlands of some or other musical expedition. Which results in a whole different aesthetic that makes it a lot harder to place some kind of judgment on "best works", as they become more interesting in the aggregate than as separate pieces. That said, I can safely agree with Mats (below) about the greatness of Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood's Goodbye (released by Digitalis, natch), for all the same reasons; probably their most consistently damaging release overall, definitely a prime whirl of post-whatever tribal psychedelia.

The other greatest example of that style I heard this year was one of several releases by the prolific Italian lad Valerio Cosi, The Three Faces of Moongod, only available as a too-limited CDR on the French Ruralfaune label (and with that label's usual elaborate handmade packaging, spraypainted CD and twig and all). Cosi is a stylistic shapeshifter who seems equally comfortable playing free jazz, psychedelic noise, abstracted folk, or pure drone, and while it's clear that he's still figuring out what all he can build with these materials, he's already casting wider than most and at this point his possibilities seem almost unlimited. On Moongod, two shorter electronic drones bookend the huge centerpiece "Invocation", which pulsates with all the spiritual beauty of a classic free jazz percussive tranceout (think late 60s Sun Ra) reinterpreted through an underground aesthetic psychedelic (could be Limbus or BOTOS) to fairly devastating result: Flutes and winds twirl and loop atop eerie massed voices that grow and subside, stretching themselves across clattering rolling percussion as low-end sawed and blown drones gradually take over the mix. Unlike a lot of the half-baked mysticism that can show up these days, this moves as real honest-to-god(s) ritual music (in fact recommending such use in the insert), & as such it's quite disorientating and transcendent. While this disc is less eclectic than some of Valerio's other releases, and utilizes comparatively little of his excellent saxophone playing (adventurous listeners should also head directly to Immortal Attitudes [Foxglove] for more of all that), it's more than made up for in atmosphere and sheer otherness. I feel a little odd listing a release that's probably OOP by now; then again, if there's enough demand perhaps it'll be reissued, so have at it folks!

Finally, I'll end on a note of promise (one to grow on, as grandpa used to say), and another ltd release. One of my pleasant musical surprises this year was a fine slice of home-grown drone from Oklahoma: New Crusaders of the 11^th Commandment is the mysteriously titled second CD by the increasingly fine Anvil Salute, and the first on their own Maritime Fist Glee Club label, & it sure is mighty nice to hear. A deceptively simple collection of lovely instrumental folk with a full but also rustic sound, rhythmic drones strummed and sawed and plucked and percussed (w/very occasional voice and horns), a thicket of sound that subsumes individual instruments into a flow larger than any of its parts, intricately twining yet still free to stretch beyond. While the roots are deeply American - a take of Dock Boggs's "Sugar Baby" pays proper tribute but maybe doesn't come off as strong as some of their own pieces - the branches stretch far enough to incorporate everything from Eastern sounds to bits of jazz; dustbowl Sufis enacting plains devotionals to the four corners. In a time of rampant excess, this is music that captivates by subtlety and restraint and really gets somewhere as a result. I feel like these folks are just starting to figure out what all they can do, and if they keep searching I think they may come out with some pretty swell sounds in '07.

Over to you, Mats...

Mats Gustafsson takes the baton

At a time when I was starting to seriously question if Stockholm ever would get a live scene even remotely close to my own preferences, everything just seemed to happen at once. I can't even remember how many times I have struggled for certain bands and artists to get shows in the capital of Sweden but without any success whatsoever. In that sense 2006 was an amazing year for live music and made me believe in the concept of attending shows in my neck of the woods again. Volcano the Bear, James Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans and Avarus are just a few of the bands that brightened my live horizon this year.

Despite all this there's obviously not much that can compete with the line-up of the sixth Terrastock festival. To make the mental journey within minutes from the masterful burst of high energy mayhem of Lightning Bolt to the delicate folk-psych-old timey songs of Marissa Nadler, or to go from PG Six's slightly bent perspective on folks like Gram Parsons and Neil Young to the endless crescendos of Bardo Pond is nothing less than spectacular. Choosing favorite sets from a massive event like Terrastock 6 is like picking a favorite child, but if forced to choose I would have to say Charalambides, Jack Rose and Bardo Pond.

But 2006 was obviously not only a great year for live music, but also in every other format I can think of. Here you'll find a quick rundown of my top ten releases of 2006. This list will not look the same tomorrow and I guess that's point, right? Here we go:

10. Jazzfinger Autumn Engines (Rebis) Autumn Engines from Newcastle, UK's Jazzfinger is a stunningly diverse trek through the nether regions of twisted folk/drone/noise sculpture, emitting at various times hum and dronescapes, fractured string grinding, elongated sonic howls, tranced out ragas, shards of feedback, meandering overtones, primitive oscillations, ambient skree, and so much more. Along these dark passages we get the occasional sudden sound blast, but in most cases the proceedings are slow and the attention for dusted details and static ambience never fails to amaze

9. Geoff Mullen The Air in Pieces (Last Visible Dog) Sweeping fuzz drones, lonesome amp hum, muffled buzzing and meandering, slightly psychedelic guitar explorations of the most cavernous kind build up to a somewhat restrained wall of sound that arouse a kind of quivering physical reaction in me. It is painfully beautiful and repetitive in the same way as Charalambides' more minimal work but to place Mullen alongside Fushitsusha would probably be just as accurate. The Air in Pieces hovers slowly towards the horizon and the closer we get the more isolated and alienated you will tend to feel.

8. Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood Goodbye (Digitalis Industries) Shamanic resonance, slowly enveloping improvisations, dusted psychedelia, cracked folk structures and timeless dronescapes are all united in a form of subtle instrumental chaos, which manages to be extremely detailed as well as repetitive and epic. When I am listening to this disc I am reminded of what it was like to walk through the majestic forests with my parents as a kid, but it's just as likely that the endless view of the Australian outback is what's going to move right for your eyes.

7. Loren Connors Night Through Singles and Collected Works (Family Vineyard) I've never been a fan of placing retrospectives like this on end of the year lists but when something is this stellar, there's simply no other way out. Night Through opens, continues and ends on a highly meditative note, perhaps working as healing for all the lost souls that haven't yet made a deal with the city. That being said, Loren's music has always struck me as very urban, despite its transporting qualities. There is something raw and fiery in his blues-inspired guitar sketches that prefers the polluted air of deserted city streets over fresh scent of a mountain meadow. A little more than three and half hours of improvised guitar compositions manage to express the inexpressible, touch the untouchable and evoke feelings so deeply rooted that they're hard to describe in words. Connors doesn't need any words for this though, his instrument sings and tells his story that desperately needs to be heard.

6. Maryrose Crook Ghost of Our Vegas Lives (3 Beads of Sweat / Tinsel Ears) When Maryrose's singing, "living was something I always knew I could fake. You do it enough, it's a hard habit to break" I instantly knew that I would play this disc just as much as the Renderers unknown classic A Dream of the Sea, and that folks, that's high praise. Anxiety, beauty, love, death, pondering, self-awareness, dreams and nightmares have rarely come in such a perfect shape. I love this, and if you don't understand what it is that makes this a masterpiece please hold it to yourself because I've got more important things to do than to give you your hearing back and to repair that hole in your soul.

5. Adam Bugaj Wave of Tears (Deep Water) Chopped underwater ceremonies and melodic fragments are placed against a tapestry of tape-hiss and polyrhythmic psychedelia. Imagine a rousing but still downcast sound carousel reminiscent of Wilson/Parks as much as Dreamies and you're in the right sketchy ballpark. Wave of Tears is chock full of the kind of sonic wisdom, intricate collage-like pop structures and sparkling electronica that is all too rare these days.

4. Antique Brothers Bears in the Woods, Volume One (House of Alchemy) The sound, constructed from guitars, drums, flute, tambourine, tapes, moog, chord organ and voices, is not always easily described since the moss-clad folk melodies at hand are more like a chaplet of different tones and colors than actual songs. Antique Brothers continuously get lost in a beautiful maze of acoustic improvisation, corrosive drones, ragas and string-clad melancholia. Debut album of the year!

3. Charalambides A Vintage Burden (Kranky) Dark guitar minimalism is placed right next to brain-melting guitar explosions and it's all tied together by carefully crafted, psych-influenced folkscapes and Christina Carter's vocals. Her haunting voice hangs in the air like volcanic dust that finds its way into everything, including your soul and mind. It could be tempting to describe A Vintage Burden as some sort of conclusion of the band's entire career but speaking of experience I am positive that they're going to continue to surprise, to challenge and to seduce. This is fringe music for every place, for every mood and for everyone.

2. United Bible Studies The Shore That Fears the Sea (Deserted Village/Truenote) I have for a long time been a dedicated follower of the Irish Deserted Village label but it has often seemed like they were on their way to something even grander. Looking back at 2006 I know exactly what that was; United Bible Studies' eminently titled The Shore That Fears the Sea album. It's a wonderfully soft-spoken and masterfully crafted folk album of the timeless and ceremonial kind, ornamented with cautiously created traces of all kinds of experientialism. This is a wonderful album deeply rooted in the fertile lands of British folk and madrigal music, packed with soul, organic drones, dreamy spiritualism and mystical beauty.

1. Volcano the Bear Classic Erasmus Fusion (Beta-lactam Ring Records) Classic Erasmus Fusion delivers just about everything these multi-faceted cats have done before, but despite covering a wide range of sonic territories and despite spreading out its weird tentacles over two CDs I'd still say that this is the most focused and downright accessible VTB release to this day. Listening to these discs is like walking through an old-fashioned carnival with impressions everywhere, that separately is something very diverse but still somehow makes sense being placed right next to each other. The continually confusing myriad of instrumentation and polyrhythmic structures of the opening title track is placed right next to the warm, slow-moving folk number "Did You Ever Feel Like Jesus?" And from there it goes on in all possible directions of the compass, ranging from downcast, horn-laced folk to cryptic walls of noise but rarely without a certain amount of trance ingredients as well. For every track that is revealed, some new aspects of the music immediately arise. I can't really elucidate what's going on with these fellows but I am as hooked to these sounds, that stand above all definitions of music as I know them, as a trout to the skilled angler's fishing-tackle. Or in other words, this is my favorite album of 2006.

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