This C & D session was originally published in Arthur No. 13 (Nov. 2004)…

C & D
Two confirmed schmucks grapple with the big issues—and an unexpected female visitor.

PICK A WINNER dvd
(Load)
C: You’re not going to believe this.
D: Try me.
C: [delicately loading DVD] Like an hour’s worth of charmingly bonkers/whimsical low-tech animation to go with homemade psych-crunge by the usual Fort Thunder-plus suspects… [Reading the sleeve text] “Dual formatted, double dipped and extra-whipped. Technicolor-laced acid flakes are on the table. Dig in! 18 trips of sound & sights are poured into K-Holes of dubious dimension from tonz of Load bands and video tribes with this new DVD/CD powered pellet.” Amen to all of that.
D: [looking at screen] Whoa.
C: Lightning Bolt, Black Elf Speaks, Wolf Eyes, Neon Hunk, Pink & Brown…
D: [eyes pinwheeling] I don’t believe it. I mean, I do believe it. I am believing it very hard.
C: Party video of the year. People are gonna be getting mandala’d all winter long to this thing, man. Plus there’s a CD in here too.
D: Do you have any mushrooms?
C: No.
D: I’ll take a spray paint can and a plastic bag at this point…

TOM WAITS
Real Gone
(Anti/Epitaph)
D: He really knows his Cuban rhythm, after all these years. You have to dance like David Byrne to this music.
C: Ribot sounds so good. This is the best one since Bone Machine, and you will notice that there was no Mr. Marc Ribot on guitar on the others in between.
D: I feel too close to Tom Waits to talk much more about this.
C: Really?
D: Yes, his armpits are kind of moist. He’s about as cool as you can get for a humid individual.
C: The most important music is for making out, cleaning and cooking. This music is for—
D: Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it late at night.
C: —I want to walk at night to this music. This is quintessential Californian music – in the redwoods and towns like Bakersfield
D: And Capt. Beefheart…
C: If he wasn’t a musician, would he be this level of cool?
D: [musing] He could be a gas station attendant.
C: ….

THE CRAMPS
How to Make a Monster
(Vengeance)
D: This was recorded in the ‘60s.
C: Sort of. Except it was recorded in 1977. It’s the Cramps, my friend!
D: Hmm. 1977? Wow. Possibly better than the Sex Pistols. Tribal psychobilly, proto-blues!
C: Two solid CDs full of early Cramps for the diehard fans. Live stuff, demos, more stuff from the early ‘80s. It’s a clearing out of the Cramps garage, after all these years.
D: And that garage floor is covered in the goo goo muck! Forget Songs for Bad People, C. This is Songs for Worse People. And I am definitely a worse kind of person.

THE HIDDEN HAND
Mother Teacher Destroyer
(Southern Lord)
D: Whoa…. This is so heavy, I think I may be experiencing some pulmonary problems shortly. Ack…
C: New album from Arthur No. IX cover star Wino, legendary godfather of doom metal, stoner rock, whatever you wanna call it. He’s always been a bit beyond those niche-holes.
D: [listening to “Black Ribbon”] Black Sabbath is back AGAIN, my friend! This is music to endure a tragedy to…
C: It is a pretty amazing record. The kind of doomish, expansive rock record that… well, it elicits dripping monosyllabia from the listeners. Or at least from us, I guess.
D: We are on a doomed flight into the sun on a heroic mission to save humanity, and this is the music we will hear right before we explode!
C: The closing track is entitled “The Deprogramming of Tom Delay”!
D: Excellent! A profound title and some heavy helicopterage and sub-buzzsaw guitar for my least favorite congressman! Wino strikes ONCE AGAIN with his iron-falcon guitar of justice!

BLUES EXPLOSION
Damage
(Sanctuary)
E: [Entering with a six-pack of Optimator] Hey fellas, what’s the commotion?
D: E! You grace us with your female presence once again.
E: [ignoring] What is this?
C: [looking at sleeve] It’s the new Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, except they’ve shortened their name to deal with the shortened attention span of today’s audience.
E: Well for once, it doesn’t suck.
C: [listening to “Crunchy”] Alert the media! Jon Spencer is singing.
E: I always thought Jon Spencer took a special pleasure in subverting his own genius.
C: Look, there’s even a bridge here!
E: I don’t think irony goes well in blues, this hipster irony value. I think he does it because he’s embarrassed about going all the way like Jack White does, all-out all the time.
D: [out of nowhere] BUH-LOOZE EXPUHLOSION!
C: Er. I think he does what he has to onstage because he doesn’t know how else to be in public.
E: He is his own worst enemy. [listening to “Hot Gossip,” a duet with Chuck D] This is pure cheese.
C: I think it’s pretty good. Mista Chuck gets my vote! I wouldn’t demand my money back.
E: Orange kicked ass, they’ll never top it, and that’s the problem.

FELA KUTI MIXED BY CHIEF XCEL
The Underground Spiritual Game
(Quannum)
C: This is a whole bunch of old Fela songs mixed together in one long jam by XCel from Blackalicious.
D: [Dancing] I didn’t know what this was, but I could tell it was cool.
E: It’s hard to talk about stuff that’s so good.
C: You guys are just putdown artists. Just listen to this. It’s like a K-Tel Afrobeat record, and I mean that in the best possible way.
E: K-Tel XCel. Words are redundant when faced with something this good. It’s like Tolstoy said, all the happy families are happy in the same way, the unhappy families are all unhappy in different, interesting ways.
D: [Stops dancing for a minute to ponder] If Tolstoy had lived in Africa…
E: I’m just saying, if you want to stimulate discussion, it’s better to give us something sweaty and imperfect.
C: But we already had the Cramps.

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA
Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light
(Tommy Boy)
C: New album by the legendary Mr. Bambaataa, who seems to be on a Detroit trip. He’s obviously working on a computer from some kind of bank of sound samples.
E: If a kid was break-dancing to it this at some subway station, I would definitely check it out, but that’s the only context I’d listen to this.
C: This song “2137” has a distinct 227 feel.
E: [looking at sleeve] There’s a song on here actually called “Electric Salsa.” [makes negative face] Not very enticing.

TIM HECKER
Mirages
(Alien8)
C: This reminds me of the in-between songs on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.
D: It sounds like what an electric shaver would hear if it had ears.
C: Pink noise, where no one frequency is dominant. Instant cancellation.
D: It seems like the circuits are burning.
E: It’s contemplative music. Not music for airports, but music for landing strips in the desert. It’s Mogwai without the guitars…
C: He’s obviously interested in melody, it’s got that dislocated-yet-sensual warm/cool feel of certain films: The Man Who Fell to Earth, Demonlover… It’s a few degrees warmer than, say, Godspeed You Black Emperor. This is the opposite of death metal: life metal. He uses tones that the avant garde wouldn’t touch.
E: [drifting] It’s very womblike….
D: Exactly, and everyone should be able to like this, because that’s where we all come from!
C: It’s really inspiring and makes me want to buy multiple copies to give to all the young people I know. Imagine being 13 years old and getting this as a gift…

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN
New Roman Times
(Vanguard)
C: New concept album from Camper Van Beethoven. There’s always been a Zappa quality to Camper, I think they’ve achieved that here.
E: Yeah, that and, um, “Riverdance.” This is truly ridiculous, this song.
D: At my high school they would have called this Camper Gaytoven.
C: I dunno, I like it. The thing holds together. Listen to this Cubanic waltz klezmasm! And the lyrics…
E: Did he just say “Half-baked and high on Scientology”?
C: And come on, [singing] “Yeah, might makes right/Might Makes right/They say that God is on our side/and made us mighty”…
E: [disdainfully] I’m not convinced. Tesla, I think they sound like this, right? Next!

THE FUTUREHEADS
The Futureheads
(Sire)
E: Cool and refreshing, let’s dance. If I played this at the office, everyone would like me more…
C: Wonderful concise songs, totally XTC, Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, the Jam…
D: Don’t forget Haircut 100!
C: Harmonies bring a lot to a group. Good new New Wave. Newer Wave.
E: [gets up and takes CD] See you guys later, I’ll be going door to door and replacing copies of Hot Hot Heat and the Faint records with this, in order to make the world a better place. [exits]
D: [wistfully] New ripples from old waves, making the ladies smile on the subways of London and helping people dance at the office parties. [exits]
C: They are the Hans to Ferdinand’s Franz.
D: …

THE VERVE
This Is Music: The Singles 92-98
(Capitol/EMI)
C: Here’s the career retrospective, bang on time for the holiday gift-givers. [in generic announcer voice:] “From the spaced-out rock with dark-ocean riffs through to the comedown ballads, ladies and gentlemen, we give you, direct from Wigan…the Verve.” [listening to previously unreleased song “This Could Be My Moment”] Sounds like [Verve singer] Richard Ashcroft fronting the Black Crowes.
D: We must initiate the [Black Crowes guitarist] Rich Robinson-Richard Ashcroft connection!
C: It’d be good to have a different kind of Anglo-American collaboration – something better than Bush/Blair.
D: I have to admit I never really got into these guys.
C: Having seen—experienced—them, I am forever converted. The Verve were a heartening phenomenon… an unafraid frontman inviting you from the stagelip … they were travelers from the psychedelic wilderness at the bonfire, singing their own stoned soul hymnals.

PATTY WATERS
You Thrill Me: A Musical Odyssey 1962-1979
(Water/Runt)
C: A collection of rarities from a very feted female who recorded deeply deeply soulful stuff for ESP back in the ‘60s. Foreword by Batoh from Ghost, an essay by Arthur’s own Bull Tonguer Byron Coley, and a short textpiece by Waters herself. What more can you say? It’s beautiful overcast music from a deeply soulful white woman working in that folk-soul-jazz-art idiom that’s so hard to master.
D: It’s devotional music to her man.
C: As Mr. Coley says here, “Rarely has longing-as-pain-as-art been created in such a massive way.”
D: [examining CD booklet picture of Waters completely naked, seated in a bohemian living room chair, her head tilted, gazing out a sunburst window] I do like the naked ladies.
C: I say, good for her for being naked. You can’t get any more naked than her music anyway. The Jax Beer commercial at the top must be noted.
D: [dreamily] I can almost imagine her, naked down by the water, singing, accompanying the piano playing from the other side of the lake…
C: …
D: Hey, where’d the Optimators go?

HANDSOME BOY MODELING SCHOOL
White People
(Elektra)
C: I’m going to play us only one song off this album, which is “I’ve Been Thinking,” sung by Chan Marshall of Cat Power.
D: How is the rest of the record?
C: I have no idea. I pretty much just keep coming back to this one song, which I think may possibly be the best thing she’s ever done. Easily the sexiest.
D: [listening] Reminds me of Sade or Lauryn Hill in a way that I am deeply appreciating in this moment, even without an Optimator. [clears throat] Can I see the sleeve?
C: What, are you gonna check for more boobs?
D: I am not saying that is not be true.
C: Well we don’t have the sleeve here, so you’re gonna have to keep making do with that Richard Avedon shot of her in The New Yorker. [Listening to Marshall sing “slip, slide/slippity slide”] Total babymaking music. These guys are geniuses to be able to convince her to sing like this, to finally coax the coy flirt out of her that we all knew she had. She should do her next record with them, in my humble armchair A & R opinion.
D: [speaking into tape recorder] I hereby prescribe this track once a day to every human on the planet. That, plus two Optimators. No negative side effects, I assure you. Ladies, take two and call me in the evening.

MARISSA NADLER
Ballads of Living and Dying
(Eclipse)
C: Debut album of winsome ghost-folk on the increasingly estimable Eclipse label. Music for tending a candle to.
D: Reminds me of Cowboy Junkies.
C: I think it’s a lot closer to Mazzy Star, with that kinda noir psychedelia sound. Not quite as depressive/sedate, though. Which makes her Hopeful Sandoval. [laughs]
D: …
C: I hear some Joan Baez in there too. Some of it’s incantatory, like some Spanish-Jewish-Irish hangover folk remedy. This is hangover music, for when the agave and cactus nectar don’t work.
D: I usually just grunt and throw up.
C: I bet someone in this band makes their own stained glass windows.
D: This is good music for hanging linen in the country… [face lights up] especially if you’re a naked woman!
C: [sighs] It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, D?

ENTRANCE
Wandering Stranger
(Fat Possum)
D: When I was in college there was a coffeehouse where you could hear music like this. I desperately want this to explode into something interesting.
C: But this isn’t Led Zeppelin, it’s solo lonesome blues, it’s supposed to be contemplative. Stop pounding the Optimators and have some whiskey for once, it’ll all make sense then. You gotta get in the spirit.
D: [listening to “Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor”] I gotta admit his voice is getting better. I thought he could only hit four notes.
C: And you’d be bored by R.L. Burnside if that’s your criteria. He’s doing lots *within those notes. And the guitar work is cool, subtle. The songs don’t explode, but there is some build and tension and then the guitar arches up and over and it’s just devastating. You just gotta have some patience bro. It’s not always gonna be a beer commercial. I can’t wait to see where this guy goes next.

WILLY MASON
Where the Humans Eat
(Team Love)
C: Same thing as Entrance, in a way, with some swamp country. But kinda dull.
D: I can imagine No Depression magazine people and Ryan Adams fans listening to this.
C: I keep thinking it’s gonna turn into a Richard Hawley thing, but his voice just isn’t that rich. Obviously the kid’s got talent, you can hear it in the songwriting. But the whole thing is just…studiofied. Well, it’s his first record, maybe he’ll get better later.
D: Can we watch that video again?

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Abattoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus
(Anti)
C: Meanwhile, this guy keeps getting better. He’s opened like this before, on Henry’s Dream, but this is better because it’s got the gospel women singing. This is going to be unbelievable live. “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” is almost Spiritualized with a real preacher.
D: “Woke up with a frappucino in my hand”? He’s not concerned so much with southern gothic anymore. But this is good, really good. It’s obvious on first listen.
C: You have to go with his metaphor like Julian Cope is always telling us—he’s working in this weird idiom of over-the-top, almost maniacal surrealism sometimes, then there’s all this humor. He’s heading in Dylan’s direction, I think, by way of…Flannery O’Connor or something. This is his most American-sounding record: blues, gospel, roadhouse rock n roll, lolling funk. And what a beautiful closer vocal on “Carry Me.” Damn! He should be playing the Gospel tent at JazzFest.

BROTHER JT
Off Blue
(Birdman)
D: [singing along] “Everybody was/somebody’s baby once/Little lumps of clay/waiting to be shaped into…”
C: Gentle living room sofa psych-folk lucid lullabies from Brother JT, one of underground America’s gentlest and most open-hearted souls. Wonderful stuff, as always—and album title of the year.

NAGISA NI TE
The Same as a Flower
(Jagjaguwar)
Download: http://www.scjag.com/mp3/jag/bramble.mp3 (mp3, “Bramble”)
C: Continuing down the quiet-time path…
D: The cover picture perfectly describes what you’re going to hear.
C: A Japanese man and a woman and a flower and the sky, yep. Like the more stately Japanese folk melodies that you might hear on a Ghost record. Some songs stretch it out, there’s even one where something explosive happens, D. The mellotron enters at minute eight, it’s just mind-staggering…

GROWING
The Soul of the Rainbow & the Harmony of Light
(Kranky)
D: Warm buzz… Womb music… Drones of the gods by Eno descendants…
C: These guys are doing something profound, sublime.
D: All is right in the universe…

Above: artist’s representation of longtime Arthur music reviewers C and D by Pete Toms. C and D have been absent without leave since August, 2008, when they were last spotted driving a cloudy ‘95 Ford Aspire around Atwater Village, wearing rainbow capes [unconfirmed].

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE “MEN”?
PLEASE POST ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR CURRENT WHEREABOUTS IN COMMENTS…

Longtime Arthur music reviewers C and D, as depicted by Pete Toms

This C & D session was originally published in Arthur No. 31 (September 2008)…

C & D
Two confirmed schmucks grapple with the big issues.

C: Our work continues.
D: Or at least our drinking does. Ahahaha.
C: [frowns George Will-style] Let the record show that whatever we say from this point forward about any of these records that the Arthur staff have so carefully assembled will invariably be colored by what we’ve just been listening to: Born to Be with You by Dion, 1975, produced by Phil Spector, downloaded off the Heat Warps blog. We are basking in its rather substantial afterglow.
D: A stone gem beaut of an album…which, by the way, has never been released in America! What is wrong with you people?
C: Have some pity on a country in decline. And you full well know it’s (apparently) Mr. Spector himself that kept the record from ever being released here. But keeping to the point: the readers should know that not only did we just listen to it, we just listened to it three times in a row. We are smitten by this version of “(He’s Got) The Whole World In His Hands,” which just sorta echoes all over creation in a melancholy way…
D: [muses] It is strange to feel so instantly nostalgic for a record you’ve never heard. And yet I have been having that distinct feeling for the last hour and 25 minutes as we have been watching the sun go down over the Manhattan skyline while listening to the wonderful, stirring, heartfelt, heretofore unheard-by-these-ears work of the incomporable team of Mr. Dion and Mr. Spector. I guess it’s what they call that old deja voodoo, eh?
C: Ha, yes I suppose they do…

FELA! A New Musical
at 37 Arts in New York City
Book by Jim Lewis & Bill T. Jones
D: So you went to a musical?
C: Yes, I did.
D: How did you like it? Did you laugh? Did you CRY?
C: From the first minute when the actor playing Fela sauntered by, two rows in front of me, on the way to the stage in his pink jumpsuit, led by his dancer/singer/wives, as Antibalas played the opening to “Everybody Scatter,” I was weeping openly.
D: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is said that dancing by yourself in your living room to Fela Kuti music is the only known cure for depression.
C: If it is that good, imagine what it must be like if you dance with others to it in public! The collective righteous joy is unbelievable. This thing broke me out of my post-David Foster Wallace suicide negative power zone.
D: So it was a full-on simulation?
C: Well… It’s not simply a tribute/costume concert, it’s an extremely brilliant musical-fueled biography of the man himself. The piece is two hours, 40 minutes and is set inside Fela’s club in Lagos, the Shrine. It’s 1976, I think, and he is onstage performing, and preparing to leave Nigeria. He’s had it with the ongoing corruption and idiocy in Nigeria. The government has arrested him, the military has stormed his commune, beaten and raped his wives and thrown his mother out of a second story window, leading to her eventual death. So he’s in and out of songs and monologues, reviewing his life to that point, smoking his big marijuana joints, laughing and crying and leading this band and this dance troupe, putting on this two-tier Afrobeat performance of… It’s spellbinding, just awesome, and I gotta say… As somebody who’s watched every second of available Fela Kuti footage out there, I thought I’d understood, as best I was gonna be able to understand in 2008, the man and the music. Well, I was totally wrong.
D: Wouldn’t be the first time!
C: Quiet. It’s one thing to see the pictures, to see the video, but to actually BE there, with the whole force of the music and the costumes and the VIBE in your face, at full volume, done with such love and care and attention to detail, with so much thought put into it… I don’t really understand how they did it, especially the guy who plays Fela, this brilliant actor named Sahr Ngaujah. Who inhabits him, completely, scarily. It’s enough to make you weep.
D: Which you did.
C: I should report that there is one major inaccuracy: the size of Fela’s rolled joints of Igbo, here it’s like a cigar but really they were more like torches.
D: Like a baby’s arm?
C: More like a bodybuilder’s.
D: That’s something they can fix when it goes to Broadway.
C: All the shit Fela talked about, it’s still true. More true. Bankers, government officials, colonial-minded lackeys, cowards, fools. Vampire Weekend? If only. It’s been a Vampire Millennium. And I can’t think of an artist alive today with the balls, and the trickster humor, and the anger, and the appetite for pleasure, and the gift for performance, and the raw charisma, the undeniable conviction, that he had. Did you know how musicians and other artists are not allowed to express views of the world in America? And if they break the rule, it’s cause for alarm and outrage and Drudge-shaming and record-banning and harassment and slandering and worse from the well-funded right-wing authoritarians. Don’t be political at the Oscars! Now is not the time! Nor at the Emmys. Oprah shouldn’t endorse! And so on. Because apparently they sometimes confuse the message from the government and break the entertainment moment that the viewer was anticipating, and indeed had every right to expect, given their school training and subsequent mediated experiences. The timing of Fela! is impeccable. He couldn’t believe the public would fall for this shit that the people in power were pulling.
D: But we do.
C: Over and over again.

HACIENDA
Loud Is the Night
Alive/Natural Sound Bomp

D: Well, another oldie but goodie. Or oldie but moldie as they used to say.
C: Actually, this is new.
D: You say that every issue.
C: Well, it happens to be true sometimes.
D: Let me see this. [grabs cd sleeve] Aha! I should have known by these golden tones—it’s another Dan Auerbach production.
C: He of the Black Keys.
D: Yes, I know. The bearded bandana-wearing one.
C: I’m talking to them, you idiot.
D: Who?
C: The readers.
D: What readers? [laughter]
C: Yeah well… So, Hacienda are from that hot gateway to the great southwest, San Antonio, Tejas. Three brothers with a last name of Villanueva plus a cousin with the last name Schwebel.
D: [Repeating lyrics of “Useless and Tired”] “Never want to work in the day/no reason for it any way/any troubles I sleep em away.” I resemble that remark, as they used to say.
C: Who is this “they” that you keep referring to?
D: [Repeats lyric and melody] What is that? “When you’re awake you’re out of your head”?
C: Ah! Nice nod to Los Beatles.
D: [sips beer] This is very sweet, warm music, but there’s something else. Like that moment during summer when you realize autumn is around the corner.
C: Beauty tinged with mortality. But not death-haunted! It’s like when you forgot to eat your ice cream cone fast enough and now it’s melting and you make a move. The good times were right there, but time kept on slipping…
D: …into the few-chah!

GANG GANG DANCE
Saint Dymphna
The Social Registry

D: I believe this is a concept album but I am unsure what the concept is.
C: Internet says: “Saint Dymphna is traditionally held to be the daughter of a pagan Irish chief and his Christian wife in the 7th century.”
D: So she is the saint of miscegenation! Cross-fertilization! Pairing of native and invasive species!
C: But Dymphna ends up being beheaded by her would-be incest-minded widow pagan father.
D: Oh.
C: “Her feast day is May 15 and she is the patron saint of those who suffer from mental illnesses and nervous system disorders, epileptics, mental health professionals, happy families, incest victims, and runaways.” Well, there you go. The fact that St. Dymphna’s is also a the name of a bar on St. Marks Place is simply a bonus. Would that we were there, indulging in libations.
D: What I hear is a post-Animal Collective/Black Dice loop daze with zero interest in melody.
C: A rather reductionist assertion, sir. She’s singing but I can’t understand a word she’s saying. And admittedly I can’t find the rhythm either. And yet I must admit that I kind of dig it.
D: Perhaps it is your infamous fondness for weird Greek mystic chicks?
C: Silence in the lower ranks! Once I saw this Gang Gang Dance perform at the Hollywood Bowl. It was like Euripedes interpreted by New York Eye And Ear Control. Firmly in the recombinant tradition of Adrian Sherwood, Jon Hassell, Bill Laswell…
D: “Inner Pace” is like advanced Casio atomic dub, but I can’t find something to grab onto. My fingers itch. There’s no groove, no bassline to lay back in. They do everything I don’t want a group to do!
C: Perhaps we should discuss your unrealistic expectations.
D: Okay, “House Jam”—this is the jam.
C: Kate Bush’s goat-song!
D: The whole album should sound like this. The rest is just clippings and trimmings. Not that I have anything against trimmings and clippings.
D: Yet I take it you prefer more jams.

KASAI ALL-STARS
in the 7th moon, the chief turned into a swimming fish and ate the head of his enemy by magic
Crammed Discs US / Amazon

C: This is third in the “congrotronics” series of albums by various contemporary African artists who utilize..um…
D: ‘tronics.
C: It says “Kasai Allstars draw their songs from festive and ritual music played in the bush before being banned by the Europeans, who considered the highly erotic dances and the pagan trance ceremonies as “satanic.” Based in Kinshasa, DR Congo—
D: That’s like the Compton of Africa!
C: “—the Kasai Allstars collective revolves around 25 musicians originating from five different ethnic groups, each with their own language and musical tradition.”
D: And judging from the title, I believe this is a concept album.
C: Great title. It’s like a caption to a comic book panel.This sounds like the music Jack Kirby’s “Forever People” would’ve made, up in their electronic trees: gamelan thmb piano chantdown on babylontronix with classic eternal North African guitar circles. This is what I thought psy-trance would sound like from the way everybody went on and on about it. What they really meant was advertising agency music.
D: They’re on some serious ritual witchdoctor shit. Like a tribal Funkadelic.
C: Trans-ethnic, five traditions…. I wonder who’s going to protest here regarding non-native species invasion?
D: While they argue about that, the real predators circle.
C: I want to know more. they’re so elaborately done up, it’s beautiful.
D: Other bands draw their record covers. these guys draw themselves! African glam!
C: Is the stuff traditional or new fashion or—remember that book that Alia was talking about, Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa (Hans Silvester, Thames & Hudson)….? You know with some bands, the more I know about them, the less I want to know. But these guys? Gimmie.
D: “Mbua-A-Matumba” is the jam to beat.
C: You could play this right next to Panda Bear.
D: Those guys should collaborate.
C: Can you imagine AFRIKA COLLECTIVE???

NATACHA ATLAS & THE MAZEEKA ENSEMBLE
Ana Hina
World Village/Harmonia Mundi/Amazon

C: Talk about erotic. I believe you Europeans would probably outlaw this too.
D: [ignoring the jibe] At last: printed lyrics!
C: Ha, like you’re gonna sing along.
D: [ignores]
C: Just relax! You always need to know what you’re listening to, what kind of music it’s called, how it’s regarded, what you can expect to hear.
D: Yes, yes, yes… I am cursed with the need to know more.
C: Well, I feel the need to sit on a rug. Recline on the pillows. Have some red grapes.
Pass the pipe.
D: I am the pipe-passer.
C: I suspect this is a concept album.
D: [reading from sleeve] “…East and west musical collision for the Natacha Atlas acoustic project.”
C: Calling St. Dymphna!
D: They do a take on Nina Simone’s “Black is the Color,” which it says here is based on a Scottish folk song!
C: “Hayati Inta Reprise (Hayatak Ana)” sounds more like Stevie Wonder “Higher Ground.” This is Arabic gypsy cabaret music. And “El Asil” is Egyptian swing. I wish an interzone nightclub existed where I could hear this all the time…

EL GUINCHO
Alegranza
XL Recordings/Beggars

C: Is “El Guincho” Panda Bear in Spanish?
D: They say he comes from the Canary Islands.
C: I say he comes from… Chants and loops gradually getting guitars layered… Steel drums. South American soccer hooligans. M.I.A. and Diplo are the gateway for el guincho. But.. [listening to “Antillas”] Wait, is the CD stuck?
D: I don’t hear enough melody. The hooks are too simple.
C: We should mention that we are listening to this on stereo when perhaps it is best appreciated on los headphones… “Cuando Maravilla Fui” brings on the bhangra. This may be Le Jam.
D: El Jammo.
C: Thee Big Jam.
D: One jam, large please. With some dub on the side.
C: “Buenos Matrimonios Ahi Fuere” is awesome. Eternal schoolyard kid chants.
D: You can’t lose when you sample schoolkids, everybody knows that.
C: The Canary Islands, eh? I look to the South for hope these days. USA and Europe are descending into dumbness on a mass scale. They’ve completely crushed the left and the indigenous. Only in the South is there anything like successful uprising. Venezuela, Brazil, Chiapas, Bolivia…!
D: Forget the Third Way! Bring on the Fourth World.

MEGAPUSS
Surfing
Vapor/Amazon

C: This is a side project recording by Devendra Banhart and the guy from Priestbird—
D: The new Pink Floyd! But nobody realized it…
C:—who drums in his band. That guy can write songs, but I don’t know about his bands’ names. Tarantula A.D.? Priestbird? Megapuss?
D: There is a time and place, and yes name, for everything. And right now I am saying to you this album, which features at least 12 novelty hits by Dr. Demento Banhart and Sir Priestbird, is the exact reason why I for one am going to enjoy the Forthcoming Depression. Surfing is not my idea of a good time. I am not an advocate of voluntary physical endangerment. I am, however, happy to watch from the safety of my beach chair.
C: With a Jimmy Buffett tape on no doubt. I just want to say that if it’s going to be about goofballing and bad clothes, can we switch back from Jimmy Buffett and Les Claypool and the truly unctious Infected Mushroom to, oh, how ’bout Frank Zappa and the Fugs? Thank you. This is good stuff: some more of those great upbeat afrobeat/reggae/tropicalia party jams that Devendra’s been pumping out in the last few years that sound so deep in the pocket live, I think this is the first time he’s caught that on record. And some true goofery. And hey hang on, there’s some spooky stuff on here at the end.
D: A dark undertow?
C: Watch out for riptides while Surfing.
D: And jellyfish. And tar spots on your back.
C: Some serious haunted canyons vibes on this record, I’m serious. Loooook out, lovers…
D: Tell me there is not a band that is called Infected Mushroom. That can’t be true.

LITTLE JOY
(no title)
Rough Trade/Amazon

D: [listening to “The Next Time Around”] It’s the Strokes’ beach party album!
C: Ha! Actually this is a new band called Little Joy, named after Joe McGraw’s spot in Echo Park. It’s the Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti, also on guitar here, and Rodrigo Amarante, a beardo from Brazil who’s been playing with Devendra lately, on vocals and the guitar, and guitarist/composer/arranger/Devendra associate/man-of-hair Noah Georgeson, producing.
D: And introducing the mysterious Binki Shapiro, right here on the lady reggae vocals.
C: Gotta admit I didn’t see this one coming from down the coast.
D: It sailed right in when we were watching the surfers.
C: Rodrigo has such a great voice. But on a track like this one [“Keep Me In Mind”], it must be recognized that the similarity to Mr. Casablanca is uncanny, but Rodrigo has a bit more color, more tenderness. What a great pop song. I’d listen to this on a bistro on a beach. Heck I’d go to a beach to listen to this. I would apply super-SPF 300 cream to listen to this. Every song is good! And there are actual ballads.
D: Samba. Bossa nova. And what do they call it?
C: MPB! Música Popular Brasileira.
D: But the question remains, who is this “Binki Shapiro”? That’s suspicious nametaking there, that one. Reminds me of all those pseudonyms on the old Desert Sessions records…
C: [listening to “Play the Part”] Perhaps I am going overboard here, but this—and “Evaporar”—is reminding me of modern Jobim, my amigo. But I am not an expert.
D: [lost in space] And Jobim and Jim Beam are secret brothers…
C: [listening to “Don’t Watch Me Dancing”] The Doors…! Wow. 11 songs, 30 minutes. I think we can issue a joint statement, or a communique as we said in the old days, stipulating this as darkhorse album-of-the-year contender. First class work, gentlemen.
D: And that includes you, Binki Shapiro!

MERCURY REV
Snowflake Midnight
YepRoc

C: You know when you make a wrong turn and then instead of correcting it, you make another wrong turn which is even worse because this time you don’t even realize a mistake has been made and you go 90 miles in the complete wrong direction?
D: Oh come on, it’s not that awful… [reads from promotional notes] Did you know that on this record Mercury Rev experimented “with laser harps, ad hoc computer programs and random note generators?”
C: What? To mathematically determine that this was the worst possible music they were capable of? To quote Greil Marcus, What is this shit? Former members of this band have grounds for a class action suit based on dereliction of aesthetic duty. And I volunteer to be their expert witness!
D: Whew! Beware the wrath of the betrayed longtime fan!

DESOLATION WILDERNESS
White Light Strobing
K Records

C: Ah, bliss. Pure balm from these young dudes out of Olympia.
D: Is this what they called “shoegaze” in the olden times?
C: I suppose. But it’s more like that one little moment in time—’88-‘90???—when there were all these modest late-afternoon psychedelic folk-rock guitars-and-organ-and-reverbed vocals bands floating and swooshing around… the Rain Parade, the Cocteau Twins, Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, ultra vivid scene, then Mazzy Star, Pale Saints… Ah, “college rock.” More recently, I would say BEACHWOOD SPARKS.
D: That’s right. I am getting a very benevolent salvia essence inmpression from this.
C: “Come Over In Your Silver Car” is song title of the month. “Turquoise and Gold,” “Horizon Star”…these are like Brightblack Morning Light song titles.
D: White Light Strobing, eh? [Listening to “Forget Everything”]: I feel like I’m watching Stan Brakhage, even though my eyes are closed…

GROUPER
I’m Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Type/Amazon

C: Speaking of sleeping… Here’s the new album by the lady who calls herself Grouper, which she recorded in her sleep. She’s upstairs from Beach House, mixed by Belong into into-the-red, into-the-fog reverb absinthia. Which means it sounds like home demos for a new My Bloody Valentine album. You know what I’m saying.
D: Not really, but um… Where’s a fog machine when we need it???
C: Funny you should mention that. Ladies and gentlemen…

C: [Pushes button on remote control; fog shoots out from behind chair.] The Antari Alpha F-80Z!
D: Exxxxxxxxcellent! So, um, what year is this fog?

MATT BALDWIN
Paths of Ignition
American Dust

C: About five minutes into the lead-off track “Weissensee,” which is a Neu chestnut Rother/Dinger cover, it’s like Randy Holden crashing into an ashram where Sandy Bull was having a hip jam session.
D: That’s some serious stormbrewing guitar! Matt Baldwin! Who is this lightning bringer.
C: I think it’s the first record from the dude. He’s Bay Area and he’s over six feet tall.
D: Clearly this is a keeper. In fact [D runs to CD player]—I’m confiscating this CD for personal use.
C: It figures. Ah well. We should tell the people out that that there’s four more songs, including one entitled “Eulogy and Dark,” [in Jim Sjveda voice] which I am guessing is some sort of homage to Funkadelic’s classic “Eulogy and Light” off Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow. Talk about a song recorded at the edge of sonic legibility—a prayer over backwards tape. 38 years on and people are still responding to that album… You know why people are still responding to records from 38 tears ago? Cuz the music was so much better then. The vibe was COMPLETE. Look on the CD tray for “Free Your Mind”—they reprint the Best Selling Soul LP’s from Billboard Magazine for week ending December 12, 1970…
D: [reading chart] “1. Third Album by Jackson 5 2. Sly & the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits 3. Curtis by Curtis Mayfield 4. To Be Continued by Isaac Hayes 5. Abraxas by Santana 6. Sex Machine by James Brown 7. Temptations Greatest Hits Volume 2 8. Still Waters Run Deep by Four Tops 9. Chapter Two by Roberta Flack 10. Everything Is Everything by Diana Ross 11. Free Your Mind by Funkadelic 12. Indianola-Mississippi by BB King 13. Spirit in the Dark by Aretha Franklin 14. We Got to Live Together by Buddy Miles 15. The Last Poets 16. Pocketful of Miracles by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles 17. New Ways But Love Stays by the Supremes 18. In Session by Chairmen of the Board 19. Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Stevie Wonder 20. The Isaac Hayes Movement 21. Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time) by Delfonics 22. I Am My Brother’s Keeper by Jimmy & David Ruffin 23. Booker T & the MG’s Greatest Hits 24. Workin Together by Ike & Tina Turner 25. Burning by Esther Phillips 26. I (Who Have Nothing) by Tom Jones 29. Shirley Bassey is Really “Something” 31. Led Zeppelin III 37. Grand Funk Live 39. Cosmo’s Factory by Creedence Clearwater Revival.” Whew.
C: Well, there it is. All civilizations have high points, some so high that they reverberate for the rest of the civilization’s life, however long that may be. It’s shadow of the colossi, dude.

JONAS REINHARDT
(no title)
Kranky/Brainwashed

D: Electromental …pardon me, electonic instrumentals… [coughing]
C: Sorry about the fog.
D: It’s okay. I’ll survive. Is this the new Klaus Schulze???? Or early Tangerine Dream
C: It’s like he’s got the same drum machine and keyboard. Serious vintage gear. Recorded at “The Equinox.”
D: Probably an Antari in there somewhere!
C: Have you seen the Z-800II? Wireless! Anyways.
D: I believe this music was made without laser harps.
C: These are basically covers. Throbbing electro-orbs float by with John Carpenter at the helm.
D: “How to Adjust People” is my pick to click. And you can take that to the bank, baby!
C: In my ideal town, there would be a geodesic juke joint at the edge of town where they play this music four nights a year—on each equinox.
D: Is it possible that it was easier to program soul into analog equipment than it is into digital? That digital is not really for humans, it’s for machines. Can we reverse digitalism? That is the question.
C: Here’s to vintage solid-state equipment!
D: The old ways were the wise ways!
C: I think the fog may be getting me high.
D: Waiter, I’ll have two quarts of fog juice, see vouz play!

RAGLANI
Of Sirens Born
Kranky/Brainwashed

C: Here comes another super-quality analog guy. He’s a little bit further out there, but you can still see him. Employed on this record: “Sine/square wave generator, analog modular synth, melodica…”
D: [“Jubilee”] It’s going like flute-style Jajouka! This is some kind of new shiznits. I’m confiscating this one as well.

APSE
Spirit
ATP

C: Impending doom music for fans of Godspeed and Silver Mt. Zion, Mogwai, Radiohead, Sigur Ros… I think it’s a concept album, but…
D: “In the 7th moon, the chief turned into a swimming fish and ate the head of his enemy by magic…”
C: “It’s not dark yet / but it’s getting there…” This is very good as far as it goes, and maybe I’m being totally unfair, but it might be past time for the wordless dread. Maybe now we need something more explicit about what’s going down. Does that make me old?
D: [thoughtfully] No. But it might make you a little bit wiser…

ZACH HILL
Astrological Straits
Ipecac Recordings/Amazon

C: Moving from A to Z. Zach Hill is the powerhythmic drum half of hard art chargers Hella, who have been known to rock the show.
D: I shook hands with someone once who’d shaken hands with Zach Hill. There was a residual charge.
C: Considering his serrated cymbal work Zach must have hands like a camel’s backside!
D: But sensitive. Apparently Zach met Jimmy Page at a show once and told him, “I should play drums for you.”
C: C’mon, imagine how many drummers must say that to Pagey.
D: The thing is, Zach Hill is actually the man for the job! He’d take Pagey to a whole new power grid!!
C: Yes indeed, Zach’s got a rad attack, as proved by this here double album. This jam ["Keep Calm And Carry On"] is like Zeppelin, Zappa, and Zorn rolled into one.
D: The guy is a total thrash jazz assassin. [cranks the volume] Check this out out, it’s called “Necromancer”… a thirty-three minute epic beginning with Marnie Stern reciting an original fable in the Brothers Grimm/ Henry Darger mode, followed by Zach on drums and Marco Benevento on piano playing a deranged duet like Dave Lombardo versus Duke Ellington.
C: I’ve got blisters on my earlobes!

EAGLES OF DEATH METAL
Heart On
Downtown/Amazon

C: Moving from the gnarly to the nasty… This is the third album by Eagle of Death Metal, who are led by handlebar mustachioed Jesse “The Devil” Hughes on guitar and vocals, with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age on drums and whatnot. Basically it’s a caped male Peaches doing “Brown Sugar” variations, and it’s a hoot.
D: Eagles of Death Metal—they have always rocked your mustache pretty hard.
C: Not many Americans know this but Eagles of Death Metal played possibly the coolest gig of all time: a women’s-only show in London at a place that’s usually a strip bar.
D: I think that’s what you call an “everybody wins” situation.
C: [Listening to “Anything ‘Cept the Truth”] Not sure about this one. There’s not supposed to be bridges on Eagles of Death Metal songs! Then again “Now I’m a Fool” is something they’ve never done before—an acoustic guitar, mid-tempo, melodic toe-tapper song-of-yearning—and it totally feels right. It’s PRETTY.
D: Old eagles can learn new tricks.

Originally published in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007)

DAN DEACON & JIMMY JOE ROCHE
Ultimate Reality dvd
(Carpark)
C: State-of-the-art psychedelic film with music composed by electro-dance party joker Dan Deacon and visuals by Jimmy Joe Roche, two guys from Baltimore’s Wham City operation. It’s constructed from clips from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career—Conan the Barbarian, Terminator, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Predator, Junior—collaged and layered and doubled together into something altogether overwhelming at 35 minutes in length.
D: This is Arnold’s mind on drugs. Arnoldelic, baby!
C: Absolutely gorgeous, seriously funny, weirdly poignant and possibly seizure-inducing. This is a landmark work. It’s the first time someone has taken the stuff those Fort Thunder and PaperRad dudes were (or are) doing—bright color-saturated, warped psychedelia incorporating pop iconography—and thrust it forward into a new realm of…of…beauty, really. Watching this right now is for me like seeing “Wonder Showzen” for the first time, or Chris Morris’s “Blue Jam”: a breakthrough on many levels, by somebody pretty much out of nowhere.
D: [reading from Arthur Magazine office rolodex] Or Baltimore…
C: [mischievously] Hand me that. Let’s make a phone call. [Dials on red phone…] Hello? [In Howard Cosell voice] Yes, this is Arthur magazine. We are seated here drinking kratom-powered smoothies having just watched “Ultimate Reality,” and we had a few questions for the filmmakers. [turns speaker phone on] So, Jimmy, what exactly is Wham City and you guys must know the Fort Thunder guys, right?
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: Wham City—the space—was a dingy, insane warehouse, then another one. Me and Dan and Dina and Adam and some other kids lived together at SUNY Purchase, all graduated in 2004, and we had this sort of unfigured-out energy. We knew we wanted something, we had a vision undulating out of control, and those guys wanted to move to Baltimore, because it’s cheap as hell. It seemed like it was a potential void where someone could come in and do art, totally fresh.

Fort Thunder was totally an inspiration. We wanted to take what they’d done in Providence and see if we could apply it here. We’d all seen Lightning Bolt back in the day, six years ago, we were all geeking out on them, and my friend DJ Dogdick, who books shows on Baltimore’s westside used to live with Brian Chippendale. We’re all fleas on different dogs. So yeah, we knew we wanted to do it DIY and we knew we wanted to create an environment for our own art to thrive in rather than look for someone to put it on where art was already happening. Wham City is just us trying to navigate this whole thing and be able to do what we want. You know, $5 shows and fine art galleries and so on…
D: So, for Ultimate Reality, why Arnold Schwarzenegger? Who, by the way is our governor here in California.
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: I grew up on Schwarzenegger, he was always there every year with a new blockbuster. He’s sort of this figure of our time, presiding over this phantasmagoric interweaving of narratives that all bleed together for me. I’ve always thought that the day he becomes president, aliens will invade and reality will fold in on itself. But yeah, when I was a kid I would have dreams sometimes where I would dream new spaces for the films that had drilled themselves into my mind, like Total Recall or Terminator 2. So Ultimate Reality is kind of that—these huge narratives becoming fan fiction in my mind. When you look at them all together, it just seems so bizarre. And I thought we could use this shared iconography that’s everywhere, to make new mandalas. But you know Dan Deacon is definitely a whole part of this, it has part of its lineage in working with him…
D: How did you guys get permission to use all the clips?
C: I don’t think they need permission, it falls under fair use.
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: We also believe that it falls under fair use. Suing young broke artists would be a low pointless thing to do. Also we’re hoping because of the level that we’ve reinvented the material, all parties will see it for what it is: a new piece of art. We’re not rehashing plots, everything’s been manipulated to a large degree. It’s been a real labor of love. We’ve been cutting this thing for over a year and a half. And I think that if anything we’re turning new people on to some of these films, we’re certainly not taking money out of any pockets, in fact I believe the opposite is true.
D: I for one feel a need to put Junior after seeing a pregnant Arnold in Ultimate Reality. Not sure how I missed that one…
C: So this is all done digitally, right? But it has the feel of some of the classic American art filmmakers—Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, James Whitney, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage. How did you do it?
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: Well, that’s my secret, that’s my mojo. It’s not rocket science, I’m sure anybody who knows about this stuff could figure it out. I’m definitely interested in Bruce Connor, Bruce Bailey and of course Brakhage—his layering technique, the lushness of his colors. And Kenneth Anger and Alejandro Jodorowsky, the color palette of those films, and that film “Daisies.” People who were doing making something psychedelic, in a social context: using found footage, or collage, and using narrative to their own advantage.
D: There’s a lot of symmetry.
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: Yeah, mirrored footage. There’s an aspect to that symmetry and layering that gives an inward dimension to the narrative—a vortex, or road or platform where you can begin to see inside it. That’s what the best psychedelic art does. It’s what mandalas are. On a conceptual level, I feel like there is a cultural need or desire on the underground art scene warehouse/DIY/travelin’ band scene… It’s everywhere. You’re seeing a lot of symmetry in art, and I think the reason is that we’re all over the place right now, and the symmetry harkens back to a totem-like urban tribe relationship. Trying to center or have more of a mantric, mirroring effect that Tibetan and Himalayan art have. And there was a lot of that idea in the psychedelic art of the 60s and 70s, that new mandalas were being built. I mean, a piece that Dan and I both love, conceptually and aesthetically, is Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. [muffled] What? Hey I gotta go. You should talk to Dan too. [Gives C and D the phone number for Dan Deacon, hangs up.]

A few minutes later…

C: So how did Ultimate Reality come about? I assume the music was made first…
DAN DEACON [on speaker phone]: Well, we were doing crazy dance shows at Wham City but there was also this very long drawn-out song that we were doing that was just focusing on repetition. We were rehearsing it one day and Jimmy was into it, said do you mind if I make a video for it. This was before [Deacon’s 2007 album] Spiderman of the Rings. Seemed cool. He showed it to me in progress. I wanted to do something that was getting more psychedelic like Terry Riley instead of just party music or whatever.
C: And you guys have done it live.
DAN DEACON: Yeah at galleries and museums to far. We project it and there’s live drumming by Kevin O’Meara and Jeremy Hyman and I do some stuff. A lot of it is sequenced, but we’re figuring out ways to make it more live, like having someone on glockenspiel. We’re gonna tour it in January.
D: Sincere full gratitude from the Westsiiiide, for making possibly the greatest thing ever!
C [hangs up, inserts fresh DVD]: Not so fast. This may be the greatest thing ever…

AC/DC
Plug Me In triple-dvd
(Columbia)
C: I present to you seven hours of AC/DC live footage from the very beginning to the very end, or at least 2003.
D [ecstatic]: AC/DC! The midget barbarians—the hobbits of rock—who tower over us all.
C: It’s true, those guys are about four and a half feet tall.
D: But not an inch was wasted! Just like their music. Only enough, never too much. They are the perfect mechanics of rock. And this DVD has Bon Scott-era AC/DC! Listen to that super-tribal rock thump, from back when true showmen still roamed the planet. [pauses] I am approaching ecstasy.
C: Television lip-synchs on Australian and British television, professional European concert footage, open-reel black-and-white performance footage from high school auditoriums. [pauses, looks at screen] Wow, Bon Scott is duckwalking with a bagpipe, on live television.
D: Surrounded by adoring females of varying pubescence! They are the Ur-rockers of them all. Bon Scott was a goofball cock of the walk, with sailor tattoos. A shirtless lewd winker in sneakers and tight pants. You can see why he had to die. He was just too much.
C: Where is Angus at, really, when he’s playing—it is like he has no brain –his whole being is a representation of pure sound. Is he the most visually expressive guitarist ever? He’s certainly the most relentlessly acrobatic with all those kneewalks on pinewood. This is the closest you’ll ever see to a white fella being possessed.
D: White man being rode by the rock gods!
C: This DVD has you doing some of your best air guitaring in years.
D: Angus should make a rock ‘n’ roll fitness video.
C: I heard he sucks on the oxygen machine between songs now.
D: Waiter, I’ll breathe some of what he’s having.
C: [pauses] Okay. Now for something that should put things in perspective…

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES dvd
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal
(Zeitgeist)
D: [Viewing silent 10-minute pan across silent, neverending factory, full of silent workers] What is this? It’s not going well with my beer.
C: It’s a full-length documentary film about how photographer Edward Burtynsky works. He makes really beautiful photographs of some of the most depressing stuff ever: mile-deep mine holes near Salt Lake City, giant quarries in Vermont and Italy, rivers of iridescent rust leading to tailing ponds of iron oxide in Canada, a pile of 40 million tires outside Modesto that eventually was struck by lightning and burned for an entire year. Horror shots of a wounded planet. This film emphasizes his recent work shooting all of these nightmare scenes inside China.
D: Well one thing’s for sure: China is really doing its part to end the world.
C: These factory scenes are totally horrific. Humans made into uniformed silent robots who work in lifeless factories, then go back to their gender-segregated dorms.
D: I guess it is possible after all to have a society no rebels or class clowns.
C: Slacking is punishable by death in China. Or worse: being sentenced to live in an “e-waste town,” where everybody hand-scavenges recyclable material from dead computers shipped from all over the world.
D: Amidst the fumes of a thousand burning circuit boards.
C: Beneath skies that are never, ever blue anymore because of all the coal mining and burning going on, all those smokestacks without scrubbers. China will bury us all—not through bombs but through reckless industrialization. They took our example, but the scale they’re working on…
D: Horror film of the year. Excuse me while I kratom myself into oblivion. Please stop this film, I want to go back to the way I was!
C: We gotta keep this DVD handy to remind ourselves that we’re living on the slave labor of others, all the time.
D: [sputters] Slaves?!?
C: What’s the difference, really? I know it’s not USA-style slavery, cuz there’s no racism, or at least none that I can see, but it sure looks like forced labor to me. The smart urban bureaucrat party wizards of China’s government are using force, economics and superior technology to make the poor rural folks move en masse to nightmare factory towns as part of this new capitalist-communist industrial hybrid model they’re using to grow the economy. Humans are becoming standardized.
D: This is like an infomercial for Hell. I’m glad I’m not in their shoes. I mean…
C: Actually, shoes are key. Burtynsky claims that it was Nike’s move of manufacturing to China that really started the whole cascading trend of moving American manufacturing and assembly offshore. The factory they show here makes a billion shoes in a year.
D: This is not a vision of the future that I can embrace.
C: It’s worse than the future. It’s the present.
D: I think I need another beer. Or six.
C: On the extra features, Burtynsky talks about how China has 40 percent of the world’s coal, but it’s coal with higher sulfur content than US coal, so it has nastier acid rain. And China can burn the known coal at its current rate can for 250 years! And they will, because it’s the best source of energy they have. The air itself in China stings the eyes.
D: It’s like those old Sepultura albums. [in metal voice] BIOCIDE!
C: This is what Punk House and Tim Dundon and Fort Thunder and Wham City are diametrically opposed to. It’s a planet of slums and slave labor dorms and coalfields versus punk houses and endless rainforests. Which future do we want?
D: [eyes twinkling] Green magic action hippies come forth!

WITCHCRAFT
The Alchemist
(Candlelight)
C: Speak of the devils…
D: [recognizing singer’s voice] The mighty Witchcraft! Although to be honest he still reminds me of Mr. Bobby Liebling from Pentagram. It’s Swedish mimicry at its finest.
C: They are apparently proud enough of being Phil Anselmo’s favorite new band to put it in their press release announcing this album’s release. You know you can hang up your sneakers when the confirmed asshole from Pantera is into you.
D: Witchcraft will always have my undying loyalty by virtue of the greatness of the singer’s name alone: MAGNUS PELANDER.
C: Straight out of Jerry Cornelius.
D: [listening to “Samaritan Burden”] Whoa!
C: Now it goes all pretty as the narrator thru the woods with his damsel. This album just became worthwhile.
D: You don’t see too many damsels these days!
C: It’s hard rock with a catch in the voice, very naked. Emotional, even.
D: And now a guitar solo by Mr. Randy Trower. [laughter]
C: Let the record show that we just beheld a 90-second horn solo closing out “Remembered.”
D: Hard rock guys’ idea of what is good horn playing is always a little weird. Deep Purple, Wizzard. But then there’s Van der graaf Generator…
C: [listening to “The Alchemist Pt. 1/2/3”] Unrepentant medieval metal at a gallop. Horses, magicians, newborn babies—
D: The difficulty in surviving as an outsider—
C: The spurned individual, gathering strength and courage and then—
D: Fighting back, baby!
C: [taken aback] Did he just sing, “I can blo-oh-oh your minddddddd”?
D: I give this an armor-plated thumb’s up.
C: [brightly] Maybe it’s the kratom speaking—but to me this seems like a political album, given the present times, as the lights dim and we slip into a new Dark Age. Somebody needs to get this to the doomed, uniformed souls suffering inside China, under the white skies and fluorescent factory lights. And to the American suburban schoolkids getting dumbed down and standardized for their peonized future . [weirdly enthusiastic] Be strong! Return to the countryside! Embrace the analog! Eat real food! Wood not plastic! Handmade not manufactured! Plants not drugs! Community not corporation! Reforest the planet! [embarrassed] Okay, end of sermon. A good hit of kratom always makes me emotional, my heart lifts, I overflow with good feeling and goodwill towards everyone.
D: Eh, don’t apologize. [muses] The old ways are the wise ways…

MICHAEL HURLEY
Ancestral Swamp
(Gnomonsong/Revolver)
C: Snock! Talk about returning to the country, doing your own thing.
D: You know, I don’t know him. [listening] Leon Redbone comes to mind. But I’m not really an expert on singer-songwriters.
C: Hurley’s an original, born the same year as Dylan, been doing music for 40 years. Semi-nomad. Draws his own comics too. He was in Holy Modal Rounders when it was a Western coast affair. One of the most requested interview subjects for this magazine, but so far he has eluded their grasp. Splits the difference between whimsical, wizened and wisdom.
D: ???
C: I guess you need the celebrity testimonials. Okay. How ‘bout Brightblack Morning Light, Joanna Newsom, Josephine Foster, Joe Carducci. Listen to the words of Byron Coley recently on NPR: “To go to a Michael Hurley concert or listen to one of his records really is to enter another kind of universe where time moves a little more slowly, and narratives develop at their own pace. But they develop very fully. His songs are an unusual combination. The lyrics can be very funny. But few of them tell stories of triumph.”
D: These are after-dinner songs. I am just not sure what kind of dinner. [muses] Maybe barbecued catfish. Or four-bean chili. And pear juice.
C: [ignoring] Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic from Vetiver have a little record label and they’re putting our records—Jana Hunter was the first outta the gate, and Hurley is the next one, been in the works for a while.
D: Songs to sneak out of a poker match to.
C: Hurley is awesome, like a real-life Thomas Pynchon character. Long may he strum and pick, and may the graveyard be ever vacant.

KAREN DALTON
Cotton Eyed Joe (2CD+DVD)
(Delmore)
C: The late, lost, recovered and now-ascendant blues/folksinger Karen Dalton. From 1962 in a tiny Colorado coffeehouse called The Attic, live, on two disks. Amazing find! Happier times, before she’d been to New York…
D: And become an actual damsel in distress. Of the inner variety.
C: It seems like she was just too smart, and couldn’t do the pandering and self-promotion that’s usually necessary to make a living from your talent. Add in apparent stage and studio fright, and being a young mother, and living in New York City when you should be in a mountain shack, and you get despair and then, hard drugs. And we know where that goes.
D: [muses] Even intelligence can be a curse.

PHOSPHENE RIVER
Phosphene River
(facemop.com)
C: Music here is by respective bands and spoken words are by the respected Dan McGuire. It’s the guy who did two disks of Unknown Instructors with watt and all them. This is a bit wilder.
D: He is one of the only guys who speaks words with rhythm that I can bear to hear. I recognize this guy on the cover.
C: Nice stache on Mr. Crimewave, whose band Plastic Crimewave Sound does the music here for “Are You a Dragon?”
D: [considering] No, I am not.
C: [listening to “Red Hills,” with music by Residual Echoes] Such great lyrics! “One nice debauchery and back tomorrow with different I.D.s”
D: [Seven minutes into “Potter’s Field,” with music by White Hills] You can’t have enough fuzz. I think there should always be an unadulterated sonic breakout like this around this time, 6:30 in the evening. Reminds me of Burroughs reporting from a street corner back to headquarters. [considers] Or, Clock DV8 from England, 1981.
C: How on earth can you deduce that?
D: I am the detective of rock. The private investigator of rock.
C: “Private Investigator” is what my next t-shirt is gonna say.

BABYSHAMBLES
Shotter’s Nation
(astralwerks)
C: Speaking of one nice debauchery.
D: Is this Frank Sinatra?
C: Well you’re in the right pork pie hat haberdashery, but incredibly this is none other than Pete Doherty and his band Babyshambles.
D: Love this fingersnappin’ swing! Not as much of a shambles as the tabloids would have one believe.
C: Of course there’s some dirty rockers on here too.
D: Holy riff-stuffed Rimbaud! You know C, sometimes the unrepentant Anglophile in you takes things a bit far, but this is really putting some pep in my step.
C: Unrepentant is the only way to be.
D: Unless you should apologize.
C: And Doherty and company have nothing to be sorry for here.

SOULSAVERS
It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land
(Columbia)
D: [listening to gospel opener “Revival”] It starts already very anthemic.
C: Another collaboration, this time a British band, or deejay?, with an American singer of some renown.
D: [recognizing] Ah well that’s Mark Lanegan, the man too dark to listen to.
C: But this is gospel! If church were like this, I’d be there every Sunday.
D: [Listening to “Ghosts of You and Me”] I think this time he’s channeling Leonard Cohen than anybody. As Freddie Blassey would say, here he comes again. Top-rank. Hmm. What is gospel, really?
C: It’s the biggest thank you possible. It’s an expression of joy and devotion. which we could use some of.
D: There’s some Jason Pierce here, but not as good.
C: Yeah it’s all a bit too digital downtempo deathtrap disco for me—
D: Sopranos theme.
C: Alabama 3. But it’s Lanegan singing. What did Josh Homme say about Lanegan? “If he sings about toothpaste, I’ll brush.”
D: He doesn’t have to try to sound like this, he sounds like this every morning when he goes to shave.

EXTRA GOLDEN
Hera Ma Nono
(Thrill Jockey)
C: Another collaboration—
D: You think you’re so clever—
C: Kenyans and Americans, this time.
D: [listening] You listen to all this indie rock and bickering and wondering but listen to the Africans and everything brightens. They don’t make oppressive music. At least not these guys. It’s immediately optimistic.
C: The strange thing is it’s made with indie music guys from America.
D: [pleasantly surprised] Ha! It’s like King Sunny Ade high-life juju meets…Durutti Column?
C: Close enough. I can’t tell who plays what on most of these songs, which is amazing, really, and a testament to the collaboration’s strength. There’s a song called “Obama” because Obama’s office helped them with their visa problems. It’s not easy for folks from poor countries to come to America anymore, they’re all suspected terrorists.
D: [muses] It’s so strange that America, which was built on immigration, is now afraid of strangers.

DRAGONS OF ZYNTH
Coronation Thieves
(Gigantic)
D: [In Star Wars stormtrooper voice] “Are these the dragons we’re looking for?”
C: [laughs] Let Dan McGuire know!
D: Here there be Dragons…
C: Or at least in Cleveland, apparently. So TV on the Radio is the obvious reference point given the low/falsetto harmonizing and Dave Sitek’s production, but these guys definitely have their own route to the promised land.
D: [listening to “Who Rize Above”] The D.O.Z., bringing the headphones metal in a VERY heavy way, ifyoucatchmydrift.
C: Pretty weird, beautiful stuff from some sensitive males: vulnerable as well as strong. No whining, though. [listening to “Anna Mae”] Reminds me of what I though A.R. Kane would sound like way back when.
D: [agreeing] Simon Reynolds has a lot to answer for. But what about Tricky, ’80s George Clinton, Prince, Massive Attack, Basehead…
C: “Basehead not Radiohead” is my new t-shirt slogan.

WOODEN SHJIPS
Wooden Shjips
(Holy Mountain)
D: Wooden… Wooden…I’m trying to pronounce the second word here.
C: The “J” is silent. It is an homage to a typo.
D: It all boils down to Ron Asheton. VERY highly refined psychedelia.
C: [blissfully] At last, the Les Rallizes Denudes/Spacemen 3 honorable tribute band of our dreams.
D: Just in time!

BRAD LANER
Neighbor Singing
(Hometapes)
C: An appropriate label name for this record—homebrewed, self-constructed bedhair daydreampop by a neighbor, who—
D: [listening to “Find Out] Is eight miles high from the sound of it. Excellent!

TENDER FOREVER
Wider
(K Records)
D: The Beach…Girls?
C: It’s one woman, Melanie Valera. From France.
D: She’s got a lot of those melodic singalong hooks certain people appreciate.
C: And her lyrics are very charming. She could write for Broadway.
D: She lives in a forest of all ideas. She’s like a one-woman Bjork.
C: [thoughtful] She’s someone you have the best Saturday ever with.
D: Some people just have lighter, brighter lives.

EXPO ’70
Animism
(killshaman)
D: Full-on Bobby Beausoleil Orkustra stuff here! Lucifer is rising right now.
C: Another one-man operation. It’s one bearded guy from Portland on vintage guitars, tape machines and amplifiers, which he shows to us on the album sleeve.
D: Serious non-ironic mood music. [bravely] The new doom!
C: I see this as the soundtrack for waiting for the sky to turn blue and then realizing IT’S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
D: And indeed there is a song here entitled “Missing Sun”…
C: [bitterly] Hidden by clouds of putrid coal smoke and burning circuit boards, no doubt.
D: What is ‘animism’ anyway?
C: Um. It’s… Uh… Well. [fetches a Webster’s, pages through, reads aloud] “1. the doctrine that all life is produced by a spiritual force separate from matter 2. the belief that all natural phenomena have souls independent of their physical being 3. a belief in the existence of spirits, demons, etc.”
D: [muses] I believe I am an animist.

YELLOW SWANS
At All Ends
(Load)
D: [looking at sleeve] The YELLOW Swans.
C: Well the ominous dronescape is a happening sound in 2007.
D: It conjures up excursions into darker bunkers, places with not too much light. But it is also music for inner journeys, definitely.
C: I don’t think this is driving music.
D: It’s music for when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and then there’s a stranger on the horizon who steps from the dark into the light and you ask him, Can you help me? And he says, I can’t even help myself. And it’s the beginning of a strange night.
C: …
D: Or he says, That’s what I wanted to ask you. And then there’s other people coming out of the wood.
C: The animists, no doubt.
D: [40 seconds into “Our Oases”] Did you just turn up the music?
C: No it did that itself. Nice. [reading sleeve] Mastered by “Drucifer.”
D: Drucifer’s rising!

HEADDRESS
Turqoise
(totemsongs.org)
C: …
D: …
C: Endtimes rural blues by two fellas. Gorgeous. And haunted.
D: By the ghost of Karen Dalton, no doubt.
C: [listening to “Moon of Shedding Ponies] Is that a coyote howling?
D: Coyotes are the wolves of 2008.

Whatever. We’ll go find some hash, okay guys? In the meantime, here’s some live Paisley…

NEIL HAMBURGER
Sings Country Winners
LP/CD available direct from Drag City

Three Piece Chicken Dinner
The Recycle Bin
Please Ask That Clown To Stop Crying
Jug Town
How Can I Be Patriotic (When They’ve Taken Away My Right To Cry)
At Least I Was Paid
Thinkin’ It Over
Garden Party II
Zipper Lips Rides Again
The Hula Maiden

C: American funnyman Neil Hamburger finds the money to indulge his deepest country-and-western crooner wishes. Let’s watch…

D: Well one thing’s for sure: there’s another man in black in town. And he isn’t too happy.
C: [thinking] More like the man in light black. He’s taking no prisoners–cuz he can’t catch anyone!
D: [spills his GnR Dr. Pepper]

D: Not too bad. I would say it’s pretty good, in addition to being the usual pretty bad.
C: Well done, Hamburger! [smugly] To coin a phrase.

Arthur’s review columnists C&D weigh in on Wolves in the Throne Room’s 2007 album, Two Hunters. From Arthur 26/September 2007.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM
Two Hunters
(Southern Lord)
D: [looks admiringly at black album cover with a single wolf’s skull on it in gold.] This is the best cover tonight! This is what awaits. [maniacally] As Brother Theodore, said: “Friends flee. Lovers leave. Worms wait.”
C: I might be headed back into the metal direction again. It makes the most sense when you loathe what’s around you and want to block it all out. And this is huge, majestic. Like Mogwai with a power drummer—
D [interrupting]: I think the drummer may have had some interaction with Sacred Snow.
C: —and a black metal wraith on vocals. This song is now in its ninth minute.
D: This is the one! This is heavy work in the dark metal machine. When he sings, no human entity can be identified.
C: This could be the end of the wolf bands.
D: They’ve killed them all and are roasting them on the barbecue. Where are they from? Sweden?
C: What does it say on the sleeve?
D: I can’t make out a single word. [Third track, with angelic female vocalist, starts] This has the stamp of truly obsessed.
C [reading “Artist Statement” from band’s website] “Our project is based in the forests of Olympia, Washington—
D: The land of the mighty Thrones!
C: “Our music is a reflection of the land in which we dwell; it draws its power from the long, dark winters, the perpetual mist… Our philosophies are anti-modern, romantic and anti-human, a musical expression of an emerging eco-black metal consciousness that has taken root here in the Pacific Northwest.”
D [dazzled]: “Eco black-metal”?

C: “We are unique in that we express a deeply underground ideology on a larger stage. Our Black Metal is highly local and personal—not beholden to the expectations and demands of any scene. Our music is rooted in the traditions of Black Metal, but we subvert the aesthetic and ideology to remain true to our personal manifestation. To us, Black Metal might be understood as the Death card in the Tarot or the number 13, which represents not an end to life, but the shedding of an old and outmoded way of being: death and rebirth, transformation and enlightenment. Our music is perhaps what happens after the initial, necessary, hateful burst; after the psychic explosion that is Black Metal wipes away that which came before: the sick and twisted “truths” of our modern condition. For in Black Metal, we see great truth, transcendence and power. Black Metal is the cleansing fire that frees us from the bondage of rationality, science, morality, religion, leaving us free to choose our own path.”
E: Well, there you go.
C: [musing] Does Daniel Higgs know these guys?
D: This band should curate the next Wagner Ring Cycle. They need it, the young edge, some new blood. And they have extreme people doing extreme Rings all the time, like Schlingzief is going to do the new one. He’s the biggest cultural star of Germany. He made Freakstar 3000.
C: Is he the Matthew Barney of Germany?
D: In a way, maybe. He’s a total anarchist.
C: “Thank you Cremaster, may I have another?”
D: You know that’s where all the old Nazis come out of hiding, at the annual Ring Cycle. It’s the biggest cultural event in Germany on this old-scale, old-school level. That’s where you see all of them together. [shivers] Everybody knows about it but it’s not talked about.
C: What can I say but: Send in the Wolves!