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andrewcsmith on 07/09/2010 at 08:45AM
Psychedelic revisitations
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In celebration of this Sunday’s courtyard concert at ISSUE Project Room, we’ve got a playlist packed with a preview of the weekend’s imminent psychedelic and freak folk grab bag. Each of these artists has tons of music up on the FMA, so be sure to check them out in full—this is just a small selection. Bobb Trimble’s two early-1980s LPs, Iron Curtain Innocence and Harvest of Dreams, were for decades sought after by collectors, who would pay hundreds of dollars for original copies. More than retro recollections of psychedelia a decade late, this opening track on Harvest of Dreams, called “Premonitions: The Fantasy,” couples seemingly easy going folk grooves with skewed melodic turns and slightly out-of-phase vocals mixed a little too low to hear well enough. The strain involved in listening, and the slight veiling of the high falsetto behind effects and other instruments makes it feel like an exercise in vulnerability. |
Jason Sigal, on WFMU’s Talk’s Cheap, has more to say about this and Bobb’s early career, including a wonderful half-hour interview with the band in which Bobb and the rest of the Flying Spiders alternately reminisce about the ‘80s and plan for the next decade. In the late ‘00s, Bobb got together with some of the members of The Prefab Messiahs in a band that is now called The Flying Spiders. Gary War, another musician extending psychedelia to its furthest reaches, is on guitar, with Nick Branigan on drums, Kris Thompson on bass, and Karina DaCosta on vocals.
Check out the rest of this mix to get an idea of the many other artists on the bill. Samara Lubelski is playing with Peter Nolan (of Spectre Folk) and Helen Rush of Metal Mountains, while Loren Connors, an undeniable ISSUE Project Room mainstay, is performing with his band Haunted House after a 10-year hiatus. In addition to one of his studio albums, I’ve also added to the mix a live performance from “Blue Octave Notebooks,” a response to a Kafka text performed at ISSUE in May of 2009.
andrewcsmith on 03/01/2010 at 10:45AM
Crossed out your eyes
When Pete Nolan sings as Spectre Folk, his voice goes through a clipped, disarming delay that turns all held notes into phased-out noises, and makes all consonants trail off and blend into the next word. His songs seem to have verses and choruses, or at least that's the assumption, until they spin off into other phrases that don't quite fit into the same boxes. Instead of moving along through verse, chorus, verse, these songs just seem to stay put, throwing verse after verse off a bridge to nowhere.
Last week, I put up Steve Gunn's set (from the same night) and claimed it was Pete Nolan's Spectre Folk. Now that our files are all in order and correctly labeled, both of their sets are available on the FMA for download. Steve Gunn's latest work, Boerum Palace, is available as of last November from Three Lobed Recordings. In addition, the revised version of last week's post is up (all the good things about the music intact).
All of Spectre Folk's tracks here on the FMA are from the recent LP Compass, blanket, lantern, mojo. The LP is put out by Arbitrary Signs (003), and is available for $12 at petenolan@hotmail.com or for complete download at www.othermusic.com. The attached music is from Spectre Folk's January 29, 2010, performance at ISSUE Project Room, and if it doesn't convince you to get the LP, then who knows what will.
A video for "Sat Around" is available here, and the Arbitrary Signs release notice (with a couple pre-reviews) is here.