ETERNAL TAPESTRY & SUN ARAW "Night Gallery" LP/CD (Thrill Jockey)

  Sun Araw's Cameron Stallones joins psych juggernauts Eternal Tapestry, for the rawest collaborations we've seen in some time.This is not a split record, nor is it two bands playing one another's music.This is the result of two very like minded, vastly different musical entities, sharing their own personal ideas to create something completely free of boundaries.Six well seasoned musicians holed up in a studio, playing a loosely written piece of music, with no real end in sight.Their vision is focused, yet loose and varied.If you are familiar with Sun Araw's heavily sedated dub-psych wizardry, and E-Tap's hazy instrumental washouts, then you already have  a bit of insight to what this might be like.Now multiply that by 100, and drop a few hits of alien LSD and a handful of downers to the mix, and you've got Night Gallery, which is somewhat of a tribute to the 70's t.v. show, made by Rod Sterling of Twilight Zone fame.It's one massive piece of heavy psych music, spread out over four different movements, and clocks in at just under thirty nine minutes.Sounds about right, given that both parties' have a reputation for accessibly long attention spans.Swagger over awe.
  Night Gallery's moods shift from delay-drenched guitar meditations, to cavernous saxophone and organ wailing, to thunderous riffing and pummeling percussive freak outs on the spot.It's supernatural repetitions carry a continuous flow of glittery waves of golden energies, and collide and break into a wide range of good vibrations.It's terribly easy to listen to, and manages to sound a bit different with each spin.This music is perfect for all kinds of levitation practices and cult rituals alike, or just getting lost in the pure and simple magic of mind altering sounds.Wow.

PEAKING LIGHTS - "936" LP/CD (Not Not Fun)

  Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes are Peaking Lights.The husband and wife duo have been feeding our eyes and ears with their ever-evolving concoction of minimal psych and dub, for quite a while now.With more than a few handfuls of releases on various US labels in the past few years, they return with a stunning new full length, and have found a new home in L.A. based label -Not Not Fun.An all too perfect fit, in our opinion.

 936 in unlike anything you've heard from PL in the past.Without venturing too far from the reggae-soaked psych jams we love them for, the couple have conjured up a somewhat tame and accessible approach, and their music feels more calculated and focused than ever.Those of us who were taken in by the grainy, minimalist charm of the Imaginary Falcons LP, as well as other early releases, shouldn't let the term "polished" scare you away from this gem.For the lack of a better word, that is exactly what it is.Everything has been somewhat revamped, and the results are epic.Coyes' collection of rewired/circuit bent electronics are the very foundation of Peaking Lights' rhythmic sorcery, holding together the layers of swirling melodies with steady, minimal beats, and rather hypnotic percussive looping.Drum loops have a tendency to either hide just below your music, serving as more of a dull and boring metronome, quietly keeping time, rather than an actual percussive instrument.Coyes' collection of pedals and other manipulative gadgets allow for some serious knob tweaking, which gives these clicks and thumps some character, without drowning out their charming simplicity.The machine drums have been pushed into the foreground a bit, instead of hiding below a sea of tape hiss, feedback and fuzz.

  Dunis' subtle and woozy vocals have been cleaned up and shined a bit, as well.Her voice is as clear and full as we've ever heard it, and her placement remains sparse and minimal, leaving plenty of room for Coyes' keys and guitar tones to dance around freely.The vocals are mostly clean and untreated, but for a bit of delay.Her words are coherent, hazy lullabies about life and love, dreams and dreamers, and the sun, moon, earth and beyond.Peaking Lights have surely reinvented certain elements of their craft, but they haven't changed their sound all that much, as if they had a particular "sound" to begin with.The fuzzy, future-tropicalia and dubbed out psych-pop that was spread throughout Imaginary Falcons and Space Primitive has all but disappeared.936 is chock-full of deep, dubbed-out bass lines, coupled with soulful, low-end organ pulses.Sharp, delayed guitar jabs bounce off in the distance, and create a heady, reggae vibe ala- Lee Scratch Perry.They pull this off quite well, and cleverly incorporate these elements into their sound collage, without sounding cheap or generic.Fans of this group are going to lose their shit over this one, and virgin ears will soon be playing this on repeat for days on end.Fans of Young Marble Giants, Pocahaunted, NOTV, Gang Gang Dance, and Pearl Harbor will hook on this.936 is overflowing with creativity and good vibes, and it just seems to be getting better with each listen.Amazing cover art and insert to boot.

MI AMI: 20JFG GUEST PODCAST

  Mi Ami‘s deliriously lo-fi mix for us got lost briefly in the flooded series of tubes that connect 20JFG to the outside world. Thankfully its battered form has been secured from the depths of Sendspace.
This is like being stuck in the middle of sensory deprivation bubble in the throbbing heart of Detroit Techno circa ’89. As you near the sides the waves of distorted bass overwhelm you. You retreat attempting to find the event horizon for the vertiginous noise, sometimes straying into silence occasionally tuning to an alternate plane altogether and forever falling into bass.
  If Ableton was used for this, its emotionally damaged shell will be walking the corridors of anonymous nightclubs approaching strangers and blithely offering them quantisation services. This isn’t perfectly bland mixing – it’s welding. Tracks crashed together, fused with audio fed straight from  
  YouTube – I’m pretty sure you can hear the volume being turned up on a Mac towards the start. EQs dial in and out, not to accentuate the drop or build tension but with unfathomable almost organic logic. Like a restless animal, hi-frequencies are isolated, tossed around, dropped and fed back into the mix before the whole thing jumps through a portal to another mix entirely, glimpsing its own future (or past it’s hard to tell) before slamming back into the original timeline. For a moment. Then silence. In a mix.
 This is glorious.This could also have been a complete mess if the selections hadn’t supported this approach but thankfully each track seems part of a narcotic fever dream we drift in and out of, flicking channels within some schizophrenic PKD opera. Which I guess is like most music we love: the selection of the component parts support the unconventional ideas at their core. Well, most of the time.

Mi Ami – Deep In The Cut (4am Mix) with Diva Dompe and M. Geddes Gengras

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Play

(Via- 20JFG Blog)

SEX WORKER - "Waving Goodbye" LP (NNF)

  Those of you who actually read this shifty blog, might remember our write up on Sex Worker's pulsating wash out of a debut full length, called "Labor of Love", a few months back.A record that totally blew us, and many others away time and time again.Daniel Martin-McCormick is Sex Worker.He was a core member of the painfully overlooked and oddly, mega-influential D.C. band - Black Eyes.If you don't already own them, go buy all of their releases.Seminal shit, indeed.He spends most of his time singing and playing guitar in Mi Ami these days, who are also quite good, and not too far from Sex Worker's space-dub collage.
 With Labor of Love, McCormick did some heavily blatant flirting with classic psychedelic, dub, and drone music.The three songs that make up that record were blown out, drawn out, and pretty damn freaked out, too.Relying on more subtle, and extremely minimal analog tones, and stretched out low-end looping to carry his squeaky, affected wails and croons along for the  slow ride.A total anthem-ridden punk/dub record lies beneath the rubble of echoes and dense,noisy fog.Pick it up NOW.

  He returns now, with a new lp entitled "Waving Goodbye", which ironically was released the same day that
he set out on a trip leaving San Fransisco Bay to live in Brooklyn,NY.A literal wave goodbye.California will surely miss this dude, but he left them with quite the parting gift.Six brand new songs of damaged, haunting, and hair-raising, neon-street-dance gems.This record is such a wild turn from the last, and it just gets better each time i hear it.Things unfold a little more with each listen, kind of like how a Fellini film works you over several times, but this one is more Brazil/Over The Edge.His pulsating echoes and creepo synth dissonance haven't completely been replaced, but coupled with a more direct vocal passage and a painfully tuneful agony, that fills in the open spaces.The NNF site tags these six new songs as "street grime crooner ballads and sprawling forlorn trancefloor fantasias", and I can't think of a more accurate and bizarre definition.
Shards of dubbed out beat worship splinter through some rather piercing synth work out and bass rumbles.McCormick's voice still cracks like a whip, and slices through the deep rhythms so easily, but there is a sense of control and a more collected spirit within his shrieks.Tales of life and love and loss and things to come drip from his tongue, and he keeps it brutally honest, as always.Definitely more "songwriting techniques" are being used here than on his last record, but the content is all just as dark and anthem-filled, if not ten times more.
 Everyone will pull something different from this album, but all will find something fresh and inventive to listen to, even if you hate it.For fans of new and revamped genres, and peat listening.Quite an achievement.Keep your mind's eye out for a new split 7" with Psychic Reality, as part of NNF's Bored Fortress club.It rules.

L.A. VAMPIRES MEETS ZOLA JESUS - "Collab. 12" (NNF)

  If you are familiar with either of these two insanely talented ladies, or any of their other projects, then you will know that you are in for quite an amazing treat with this collaboration LP.Long time L.A. psych-chant-charmers Pocahaunted front-woman -Amanda Brown, provides the better portion of the music on this record, conjuring up her somewhat patent dub-soaked-psych washes, and more than a few layers of lo-fi bumps, claps, and hazy low-end dirge to keep you swaying along to.Grainy synth drones slowly build and swell up only to fizzle away, as new melodies are being introduced constantly throughout the song.Sometimes a solid and rather "funky" bass line will sneak it's way in, if only for a second, providing a bit of swagger beneath the surface.A fair amount of this is somewhat comparable to Brown's recent dub/lo-fi soul project,Vibes, only slower and darker.
  While Brown contributes her woozy, more psych/dub inspired embers, Nika Danilova aka: Zola Jesus tosses her goth inspired, desperate croon onto the fire and really sets this ablaze.Her deep and affected, soaring voice immediately finds it's way into Brown's chanted howl.Setting a tense and foreboding tone that flows through these songs.At times, their voices sync up in such perfect harmony it sends chills up your spine.They never seem to drown each other out or butt heads, and instead form a single, beautiful and powerful voice.Together they create vast, vibrant movements that spiral upward, taking some unexpected twists and turns, gently landing you back on your feet.An nearly perfect blend of bright, pastoral flashes and dark, cavernous hymns .Best collabo record of 2010.
"There is no light without darkness".

ERIC COPELAND - "DOO DOO RUN" 7" (PPM)

  After what seems like an eternity,Eric Copeland is back with another sample-fest of twisted psychedelia.It seems that with every release,he strays from the experimental sound collage of his main vehicle, -Black Dice, and pushes for a more accessible, song based approach.Such is the case with his newest single - Doo Doo Run.Two new songs,and some amazing cover art by Eric, as usual.The title track is definitely the weirder of the two.Doo Doo Run is staggering dub dirge,with whirring synths and incoherent slurs that are drowned in a fair amount of tempo tweaking.You can hear the ghost of a vintage dance hall sample trying to push it's way through the haze,but it never quite makes it out.His ability to bind these very styles into a somewhat cohesive product is impressive.
 
  The b-side takes Copeland's style in a fresh and easily palatable direction.An upbeat and extremely catchy weirdo-pop tune called Fun Dink Death.A bright and danceable drum machine provides the perfect backdrop for his distorted vocals, playful guitar samples,and homemade electronics.It's got some breezy acoustic guitar melodies floating in near the middle of the song,that accompany the laid back vibes perfectly.This is the highlight of the record indeed,and you will probably see remixes of this surface before too long.Another nice little treat from Mr.Copeland.Awesome.
MJO

SEX WORKER - "Labor of Love" LP/CD (NotNotFun)

   




   Sex Worker is Daniel Martin-McCormick.He is also the current front man,guitarist and main visionary behind San Fransisco's dub/percussion attack- Mi Ami,and ex-guitar treatment/vocalist for seminal D.C. band Black Eyes.With his first full-length for this vehicle,McCormick strays from his conventional guitar scratch and rhythmic howls of his other projects,for a more ambient,drone-based art form.His voice is the main element here,soaked in reverb and tape delays to carry his squeaks and squeals as they dance on your brain.The record begins with a tuneful glitch that sounds like some kind of looped synth or midi sample,but it's not long before his unmistakable voice soars high above anything resembling a melody.Things often tend to get violent on this album,when the many layers of vocal chants and possible radar blips collide with low bass rumbles,treated drums machines,synthesizer sines and guitar wobble.This had been described as "future dub",and that description is not too far off base.These are protest songs with ghostly agendas.Lefty anthems with well hidden choruses.The vibes speak for themselves.Sex Worker provides a door to McCormick's mind,a window to his soul,and perhaps a reflective pool to show us how we all connected through music.This is Trance for forward thinkers and punks alike.Finally!This is Labor of Love.

SUN ARAW - "On Patrol" LP/CD (NotnotFun)

When I first heard this dude a few years back,i was pretty skeptical of what i might find in this stuff,considering his semi-clever/goofy moniker and album titles.But alas,you cannot judge a book...yea.After a handful of releases on various indie tape labels etc,Sun Araw(Cameron Stallones)has totally perfected his craft.The songs on "On Patrol" are solid as ever,and more cohesive and dare i say "accessible" than previous efforts.And there are alot of them.He is a long time collaborator and ex-member of LA's Pocahaunted,and current guitar man for Long Beach psych outfit -Magic Lantern.Both are worth looking into for sure.Pocahaunted's new LP "Make It Real" is amazing.A great new direction for them.

Right off the bat On Patrol floats us into heady dub and psych territories that you might expect from him.Noodling reverb-soaked guitars,thick dubbed out bass lines,echoed voices and spacey synth washes...it's all here.But something is different.What is this awesome clarity?Production value?These are not-so-familiar terms with Sun Araw,being known (and adored) for his cavernous recording style and low low fidelity sound.But this new found clarity works wonders for these songs,and still retains a nice lo-fi,bass heavy feel,it's just more up front and present here.Utilizing a ton of instruments that includes,but is not limited to guitar,bass,congas,bells,woodwind,analog synth,drum machines,samples and voice effects,this album is layered nicely and has a very full sound.Something that I think as missing from earlier recordings.Mostly instrumental,with only a few vocal parts throughout the record,the bouncy dub jams make this a pleasant and interesting listen.I find new things in this with every play.Killer artwork to boot.WEED.

MI AMI - STEAL YOUR FACE -12" (Thrill Jockey)

Mi Ami - Steal Your Face 12"

I always thought Mi Ami knew exactly what they were doing from their very inception.As a huge Black Eyes fan,I was stoked-yet-skeptical on them from the start.That "Some Boys" single still runs through my mind on occasion.That has all changed since the "Watersports" album.My mind is made up with this one..Mi Ami is a different kind of threat altogether.A pleasurable one to say the least.And on Steal Your Face,they have finally grown into themselves.This is confident and dangerous music,there is no telling where it's headed and i like it that way.

Abrasive and blown out from the first note,these six songs show the band going for a more raw and untreated punk approach.Or so it seems at first.There's plenty of Daniel's signature squeaky howls and drugged-out chants in the mix,and his scratchy,fuzzed out riffs are churned out at you non-stop,and quickly morphed into delay-soaked pulses that float atop the rhythms to no end.There are some nice and lazy dubbed-out moments here,with some gentle percussion to drift away on,but for the most part the drums remain solid,pummeling,and right where they need to be at all times.Thick bass lines are the glue to hold this all together,they are worked in nicely and crawl right beneath the awesome treble attack of the rhythm section.Another solid release from start to finish.Brilliant.