reviews

This past April (21-23, to be precise), the fine city of Providence, RI, USA played host to the sixth Terrastock music festival (cleverly titled Terrastock 6), which gathered some 35 of the finest artists in the contemporary psychedelic rock / folk / avant / whatever scene for what surely rates as the underground musical event of the year. Luckily, several members of our Deep Water team were able to attend the festival, and with a little bit of editorial arm-twisting we managed to convince them to reflect on their T-stock experiences in a round-robin conversational fashion via the magic of email. So, without any further ado, your editor will get out of the way and turn the floor over to: Mats Gustafsson (MG), Lee Jackson (LJ), Nathaniel Rasmussen (NR), and Heraclitus Franklin (HF). Take it away lads!

HF: I think we definitely need to start by giving major kudos to the folks behind the festival, especially Phil McMullen (longtime visionary behind the Ptolemaic Terrascope publication and the Terrastock festivals) and Jeffrey Alexander (of the excellent group Black Forest/Black Sea, the Secret Eye label, and the AS220 club). It’s probably totally oversimplifying things to see it as Phil providing the inspiration and Jeffrey providing the organization, especially since they both chose the roster of artists that appeared over the weekend. In fact, I know that some folks wondered in advance if that might not lead to a somewhat schizoid fest—Phil and his mates over here, Jeffrey and his gang over there... But I think the scheduling of the groups helped mitigate against that, and one thing that really worked for me was the diversity of sounds on hand, as you could walk from a set of solo acoustic guitar instrumentals to a noise-rock maelstrom to catchy pop to avant experimentation without ever losing a sense of flow.

I’ve occasionally heard it mooted by unenlightened acquaintances—good citizens all, make no mistake—that the general soundtrack ‘round Deep Water Acres seems inordinately focused on things any “normal” person would find difficult to stomach, listening-pleasure-wise. Leaving aside for now the question of why anyone would want to try to digest most of what constitutes mainstream popular culture at the moment, such assertions still remain hard to credit.

In fact, I’ve really got a fair sweet tooth for the sounds of pure pop confection, especially within the tradition of song-creation traceable back to the first flowering of self-conscious rock music in the 1960s, and that, if you know where to look, flourishes to this day (though often safely out of the harsh public eye). Things like a focus on melody and arrangement, experimentation within structure, a sense of balance and proportion, a spirit of play… if I mention the Beatles as a kind of ur-text for what I’m talking about here you can probably get the picture, though of course that model has been remade variously since their time.

Well it’s springtime again; at least that’s what the calendar says. Here at Deep Water we’ve done our best to till the soul soil for another bountiful harvest, and sure enough a whole new pile of bones has come up through the crumbling earth.

First up is the tranquil improvised guitar space of Badgerlore, a psychedelic “supergroup” that started life as the duo of Ben Chasny and Rob Fisk, and has since swelled to include Tom Carter (that guy again!) of Charalambides and Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans. Fisk used to kick it with Deerhoof, but lately focuses energies on operating his excellent Free Porcupine Society label, releasing CDs with all original hand-drawn artwork he does himself, and he also kicks it with angular skronksters, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle. With Stories for Owls, Badgerlore employs multiple guitars, piano, mostly wordless vocals and electronics to arrive at some blissfully ragged improvised plateaus, landing somewhere between West and East. There’s definitely a hint of the driving, post Sonic Youth/Velvets atonal guitar clang thang, but these haunted hymns are played slower and lower, occasionally infused with a devotional acid folk quality. In fact, much of this album strikes me as almost religious, vocals approaching Buddhist chant, but smothered with delay and dark ominous drones humming beneath. The recordings of Peter Stapleton’s Metonymic label come to mind, but glimpsed through a West Coast sun kissed forest haze. This one’s for drifting and sifting.

In 1969, Miles Davis profoundly altered the genetic makeup of jazz with In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Impressionistic, enigmatic, and intoxicating: the former possessed a concentrated beauty that contrasted with the latter’s oceanic scope. Each introduced aberrant grooves, electric tonal colours, and post-production methods that were then unfamiliar, if not entirely alien, to the jazz idiom. Because of their extensive influence, these two recordings are widely recognized as the ones that crystallized the somewhat nebulous genre of jazz fusion.

Such a notion might satisfy at a superficial level, but to anyone with more than a passing interest it's readily clear that the most celebrated of the fusion groups (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, mid-period Weather Report) were musically at odds with what Miles was turning out during the 1970s. Certainly Davis had tilted the heads of his progeny toward new ways of thinking, yet beyond the basic electrification of jazz—which in any case had become pervasive after the relative commercial success of Bitches Brew—there were few sonic aspects in common. The work of fusion’s most conspicuous artists also seemed to imply that these “new directions in music” (to quote Miles himself) had lost their original sense of freedom and been reduced to the furious convolution and over-composition of jazz-rock or the tight, well-rinsed deliveries of jazz-funk.

Combining beach life with shopping precinct values, mapping strained spatial divisions between working class Australian pubs and upwardly mobile clubs for 20-somethings in polo shirts with upturned collars, Adelaide suburb Glenelg is not the place I would expect to find minimal techno dotting the record store shelves. Nevertheless, there I was on the day of Christmas Eve 2005, ploughing through second-hand CD racks on the search for the ultimate bargain. After an eternity of luckless drilling, Robert Hood’s 2002 album Point Blank glared balefully at me from the morass, its monochrome austerity the gateway for the entrained eye/ear.

Hood’s history is unimpeachable. Minister For Information for the primary ‘second wave of Detroit’ techno outfit Underground Resistance, Hood worked on their X-101, X-102 and X-103 series of concept 12” singles before internal dissension cracked the UR hull, Hood jumping ship with founder member Jeff Mills to work on the Waveform Transmissions series for Mills’ Axis label. Hood’s solo recordings for the Tresor label, alongside his own M-Plant imprint, are some of the bedrocks of minimal techno, alongside other ‘second wave of Detroit’ producers like Richie Hawtin/Plastikman.

Bones from the Garden is a column devoted to the documentation and exploration of mostly limited underground releases from the US and elsewhere. A lot of these are CD-Rs in an edition of 100 or less -- some by virtual unknowns, others by more established familiars. Since this is the first of what we hope to be a regular feature, some of the releases mentioned this time will be older and possibly out of print, but most were released during the last half of 2005 and should be findable. Contact information is included, and these can be purchased from the usual suspects (Eclipse, Boa Melody Bar, Time-Lag, Volcanic Tongue, etc).

When the Charalambides relocated to Austin at the end of the 90s, Tom and Christina Carter found themselves living next door to Eric and Vanessa Arn of the Primordial Undermind. As could be expected, crosspollination ensued. Tom joined the ‘Undermind for their Beings of Game P-U LP (Camera Obscura) -- a molten Krautrock fireball well worth the hunt if you ever wanted to hear Carter in rock mode a good decade after the Mike Gunn. And then there’s The Friday Group, which arose out of jam sessions between then ‘Underminder Brian Smith (Iron Kite, Ethereal Planes Indian), Shawn McMillen (Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast, Iron Kite), Tom Carter and Matt Martinez. Like these other ensembles, Friday Group is concerned with mapping oblique trajectories through familiar musical terrain. These guys have stripped away all the bullshit of whatever might be their starting point (folk, blues?) to devolve into a more damaged electro clatter space and ultimately reveal their own post-industrial path to aural divinity.