The Dream Syndicate were arguably the quintessential Paisley-Underground band. You could say that all they did was fuse acid-rock with the decadent rock of Lou Reed, but that wouldn't do them justice. The Days Of Wine And Roses contained at least 5 masterpieces and the common ground between them was how the guitars of Steve Wynn and Karl Precoda combined to present fatalist tones and fitful atmospheres.
"Tell Me When It's Over" is a timeless ballad of rare elegance, somewhere between acid-rock and dream-pop (clearly Mazzy Star have listened a lot to this). A truly poetical guitar-part exalts the raga-rock litany "Halloween". The interplay between the 2 guitars in "When You Smile" is once again chilling; one guitar indulging in a drugged dirge, while the other hisses in unsettling distortions. The anemic ballad "Too Little Too Late" (modelled after the Velvet Underground's "New Age") is, again, elevated by the acid guitars. The anthemic rocker "Days Of Wine And Roses" is infused with a monolithic jam that reminds of the Chocolate Watchband's supersonic boogie "Let's Talk About Girls".
The rest of the album is not so good, but still exhibits a vast knowledge of the history of rock music. The problem is that it doesn't always transcends it's roots. Yet the punk blues "Definitely Clean" (somewhere between the Gun Club and Lou Reed), the 60's garage "That's What You Always Say" (nodding to the Blues Magoos) and the orgiastic blues-shuffle "Then She Remembers" (a la Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground) complement the album nicely.
In general, the method is to take the fatalist tone of, say, Bob Dylan or Neil Young, the decadent spirit of Lou Reed, and infuse it with the frenetic rock'n'roll of 60's garage, acid-rock, the post-acid guitars of Television, and voila, you get a record that covers the transition from the hippy culture of the 60's, to the urban neurosis of the 70's, through the industrial angst of the 80's. Get it here.
Tram's slowcore recalls the disquieting folk of Nick Drake, the more conventional moments of Low, and the more haunting moments of Ladybug Transistor. This form of chamber indie-pop, highlighted by classy jazzy playing and subtle string arrangements, has the quality of a bittersweet contemplation on one's life, as in the shimmering drama "Are You Satisfied", the haunting flare of "Yes But For How Long", the sparse reminiscence "This Sacred Day", the Tim Buckley cover "Once I Was", the fragile threshold of "Giving Up", the nocturnal anemia of "Underneath The Ceiling", and so on. Get it here.
This second Black Dice album initializes with the disconnected mass of "Cloud Pleaser", and already you know this is not gonna be a regular listening experience. The 6-minute mini-fantasia "Treetops" confirms this, displaying an evolving fabric of electronic gurgling, rambling rhythms, guitar strumming, random noises, and naive vocal ditties presented in an elliptical manner. The 9-minute "Creature" further raises the stakes, exhibiting an ectoplasmic avant-delirium made out of a vibrant hum, vocal outbursts, bleeps, random rhythms, whose harmonic and rhythmic density keeps being tweaked, keeps forming different configurations of the elements at bay, eventually resulting in a shrill Industrial rhythm.
The centerpiece is the 15-minute "Skeleton", the apotheosis of their biological music, a specter of ghostly noises, a fragmented living tissue that dissolves in other living tissues which in turn unite and form other living tissues, an algorithm that calculates three-dimensional synthetic possibilities. This mind-blowing track represents a peak, it's as simple as that. The 7-minute "Night Flight" is more two-dimensional, but still represents an orgy of chaotic sounds intent on disrupting the harmonic continuum. Get it here (includes pics of the CD).
Pindrop begins with "Fear", which is tense and neurasthenic Electronic Post-Punk, whose closest relative is probably that first monumental album of Suicide (without the rockabilly). But "Troops Out" is surprisingly upbeat and poppy (could be an Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark outtake), while "Carnal" is theatric and pounding. "Watching You Dance" returns to the spirit of the first track, albeit in a calmer setting, that of the nocturnal threat looming around taut senses. Taut senses that overshoot in the paroxysm of "Hunt", the paranoid rampage of "From The Heart" and the unhealthy disquiet of "Locust", as well as another exercise at building intensity in "16 Hours". Finally, a relative release is found in "Carmen" (that sounds like The Fall would sounds if they played Synth Pop). However, "A Certain Way To Go" revisits the lunacy in a calmer, almost ethereal, but still threatening scenery, while the icy-cold somber calmness of "Prelude" fragments into agonizing outbursts, presenting the icing on the cake of this masterpiece. Get it here.
Nico's sophomore effort was a dive into the void, a descent to a bottomless ocean, a hypnotic state which awakens the mind through life, reincarnation and beyond: "Lawns Of Dawns" introduces the hypnosis, the mesmerized mind reciting an incantation amidst a cacophonous maze of mirrors. "No One Is There" recalls 18th century romanticism, in what is basically a funereal chamber piece with the strings clashing with each other.
"Ari's Song" is a feverish psalm, "Facing The Wind" an obsessive liturgy and a psychotic cabaret piece, while "Julius Caesar" travels even further down the past (the chorus of some ancient tragedy, the ecstasy of a dervish). Eventually, the last two songs reach a terrifying apex. "Frozen Warnings" sets the icy sunset, through which the Valkyries' catastrophic call of "Evening Of Light" heralds Armageddon. Get it here.
Glenn Branca's The Ascension is played by an ensemble of 4 guitars, bass, and drums. It starts conventionally with "Lesson No. 2", which is elastic punk-funk, with the 4 guitars giving it a "symphonic" sound, but the track ends with crashing monotones, which speed up, slow down, speed up again etc. The 13-minute "The Spectacular Commodity" starts with Stravinsky-an ebullience, a sort of Rock in Opposition meets No Wave meets Chamber Music hybrid, but the continuation is quite anthemic. A series of movements follows, forming what is essentially a highly fluid mini-symphony, though a bit of pomp isn't avoided. "Structure" is an interlude which returns to cold, geometrical, glacial repetitions, layered in such a way so that they sound enormous.
The 8-minute "Light Field" is a perverse military-march of sorts, with the ensemble's typical huge sound. The movements are more subtle, with guitar lines that hide behind other guitar lines, until they align and "move" the track forwards, which itself represents a plexus in constant motion blur. Ambiance comes to the fore in the 13-minute "The Ascension", with reverberation creating a resonating sound, much more cosmic and religious than any of the previous tracks, with vibrant streams that represent an antenna that picks up spiritual forces; by 6:00 minutes, with the introduction of percussion, the track does indeed constitute a hymn of catastrophic intensity, until it freezes (7:30), re-starts, re-freezes, and then the track resumes on a slightly different harmonic scale, still representing a tortuous flow of cosmic forces, until they unite to form a spectral supernova and the track ends. Get it here.
The influence of Cabaret Voltaire and This Heat hangs heavily over this release by 23 Skidoo. But arguably, there's enough of their own personality to justify it's cult-status.
Check "Kundalini", with funk bass, industrial noise breaks, ethnic overtones and distorted vox. Or the more conventional funk-jazz "Vegas El Bandito". The anthemic "IY" sounds pretty conventional too, but is carried by orgiastic percussion.
Much more important was "Mary's Operation", an ambient piece with disorienting symphonic textures and dissonant jazzy brass. This is clearly illbient 15 years before it became a movement. Ditto for "New Testament", which also adds a threatening industrial clang to the recipe, and then finishes with a deformed ritualistic tribal chant. Also "Porno Base", where slow-motion bass engages in "dialogue" with vocal-samples. Then "Quiet Pillage" ends the album accordingly with a mutant exotica. Get it here.
