Picks from May 8th

We start off this week with a new Ba Da Bing release, coming out June 9^th, Our Love Will Destroy The World’s “Carnivorous Rainbows.” It’s a vinyl only, limited to 500 copies, record by New Zealand’s Campbell Kneale, who is known for his work as Birchville Cat Motel and Black Boned Angel. He’s one of those damn noisenicks who manages to extract pure bliss from skree. This may be the most unflinchingly intense record we’ve ever released. There are four tracks, each one a complete environment of sonic majesty. Carnivorous Rainbows will have an antagonistic relationship with your record needle – it practically attacks the poor thing with the layers majesty that spew forth. Campbell has been noting this album as a sort of rebirth for him creatively, and there’s no arguing that it sounds like some damn thing is coming to lifehere. We’re so, so excited about this album and the number of relationships it will ruin! BEN

Listen to “Hades Iron Horizon” off Carnivorous Rainbows from Our Love Will Destroy The World

Steve Treatment “All Dressed For Tomorrow” – I’ve never heard of this guy, but as I was looking over records to get for our site, I chanced upon it and immediately ordered some copies in. Steve Treatment was part of the late ‘70s punk scene, when the scene started getting into messy, broken pop. Why he never released anything on Rough Trade is probably because of beefs I’ll never know about, or more likely presumptions on my part that everyone from the same general area and time knew each other. I’m a particularly damaged music fan, in that if something sounds home recorded and demo-ish, I’m more likely to immediately take an interest than if it has pristine production. Then, obviously, there has to be something like decent music present, and Treatment passes the test. He gets a lot of comparisons to Marc Bolan, but I hear a greater presence of The Swell Maps, who play with him on some tracks here – that scattershot guitar and trebly inexpensive production style of the time. I hear a song like this and I wonder how something so up my alley eluded my ears for so long. I think this is an immediate thing here. Hear a bit, and you’ll either be excited or turned off, while continued listening will solidify your stance. At least I can attest to the former.Here’s a nice writeup of the single he released that’s a part of this compilation. BEN

Listen to that song above and then this one for an idea of how the songs on here vary.

Death & The Maiden S/T – Last year, Ba Da Bing released this compilation of current Dunedin bands viaFishrider Records, who is without a doubt the Flying Nun of today for finding all the gems of the scene. For a compilation chronicling a scene, it’s amazingly coherent and consistently of quality. Death & The Maiden is the latest full-length from a band who was on that comp (I also highly suggest the Sarah Records pop goodness of Trick Mammoth, whose record we in stock), and they are somewhat outliers. Things get a bitgothy here, to that dark and atmospheric place that mid-period Cure records wandered. Lots of synth blips and washes, drum machines and light female vocals, all evoking an early-80s underground vibe. I like the mood they create – especially since they never let it get too dire. Dips into the sadness pool are rather refreshing, I find. BEN

Here’s “Flowers For The Blind” to give you an idea of Death & The Maiden.

Carla Bozulich “Boy” - Bozulich has a long career, but honestly, I only care about the past six years or so. She was in a group called Geraldine Fibbers in the mid-nineties, whom I never got nor understood why people went crazy over. They sounded like standard alt-country-indie rock to me. Then, she came out with her group Evangelista and – holy shit – I instantly regretted not giving GFs a go live to see if that’s where it all came together. Her music of recent has been super intense, rivaled only by Scott Walker and The Swans for pummeling intensity and drama. Evangelista went to serious extremes, which is why Bozulich’s solo album makes so much sense. It marries those extremes with more a sense of songform and melody….um,sometimes..while singing in her incantation-style that’s positively menacing. I find her one of the most powerful musicians around today who really deserves more her due than she appears to get. BEN

I mean, this song is called “Gonna Stop Killing”

Ya Ho Wa 13 "Savage Sons of Yahowa"  - It must have been nice having a Spiritual Father with a extremely large bank account. When Papa Yod wanted music at the Father House he sent the boys out, $30K filling their loin cloths, and they returned with some magical gear. They put that gear to good use. The Family churned out many records before Yod crashed his hang glider on a Hawaiian beach and died. As a group,Ya Ho Wa 13 was usually fronted by Father Yod, standing behind a kettle drum, banging unrhythmically and chanting some sort of heavenly chant only he and maybe the newest born baby of the Family could understand, BUT this time around Yod is absent and the group consisted of Djin, Elecron, Octavius, Rhythm, and Sunflower (all surname Aquarian) and played gutteral Rock 'n Roll with the occasional heavenly-influenced improv jam. Aside from their names, no schtick needed. Standout track being "Making a Dollar" which could go head-to-head with any rocker from the time. Look closely and you'll see Yod was actually there the whole time, steering from behind the wheel of his Roll's Royce, guiding the Aquarian boys down the enlightened path. Close your third eye, its time for a nap. -MIKE

Here's a track called "Making A Dollar"

Now, head on back to the Grapefruit Store!

Picks from May 1st

Peter Walker "Second Poem to Karmela or Gypsies are Important" - A nearly forgotten masterpiece by legendary 60's multi-instrumentalist, Peter Walker. This is a beautiful reissue by Light In The Attic, they are doing God's work, aren't they? Don't be fooled by the slightly hippy-dippy title. "Of Mice And Men" was originally titled "Something that Happened" until Steinbeck's wife stepped in. Second Poem puts me in the same place as Tim Buckley's "Lorca" or the late, great Sandy Bull's "E Pluribus Unum". Slightly druggy, psychedelic folk with eastern instrumentation. Expansive modal bread and jam. It sure was a beautiful thing when all the clean-shaven, collegiate, spectacled students of guitar chewed up and reconfigured American folk blues mythology, then grew their beards and ordered sitars, sarods and tablas from the Sears catalog and went even deeper into song. Walker's career is unfairly overshadowed by folks like Fahey and Bull, it seems, but that's changing with the reissues from Tompkins Square and Light In the Attic. Get some. 

-SIMON

Listen to Peter Walker's "Gypsy Song" HERE!

Dan Melchior Und Das Menace "Hunger" - Dan Melchior is one of the great humorist/satirist lyricists of our time, in my opinion. More lucid than Mark E. Smith, more English than Mark Twain. He's lived in America now for a decade and a half, from New York to North Carolina, observing, writing and recording. He has so many records that I feel like I'll never catch up, I'll never know just how ridiculous we all are, or how loved. Hunger is a great starting place for anyone interested in digging into Melchior's vast catalog. It's a collection of unreleased songs from his archives, cherry-picked by the Castle Face label. Start in medias res and work in both directions. There's garage rock, singer-songwriter, ambient noise, and an appreciation and distillation of various genres in his songwriting. His songs are infectious and yield more rewards as his worldview comes into focus through both repeated listening and collecting more records from this oracle of the comfortably underground. -SIMON

Listen to Dan Melchior's "It's the New Dark Ages" from his O Clouds Unfold LP HERE!

Mississippi Fred McDowell "I Do Not Play No Rock-n-Roll" - You know that Vic Chesnutt lyric from his song, Parade? "Remember that time you took me to see Harold and Maude because I didn't know the meaning of the word 'catharsis'?" Everyone should have this record and play it all the time, for the same reason. What doesn't kill you sometimes gives you the passport to the kind of empathy necessary to heal the whole goddamn world. Mississippi Fred McDowell is one of the best things to happen to the 20th century and this record is just one of his mighty testaments. "61 Highway" is a Fred McDowell song. You think "Highway 61 Revisited" just sprang unpollinated from Zeus' swollen head? Not likely, friends. "You Gotta Move" is on here too, the Rolling Stones knew who to steal from, just as any self-preserving artist does. Fred means it when he says he doesn't play rock-n-roll, but rock-n-roll cannot be played without asking him permission first. -SIMON

Listen to Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move" HERE!

Lou Reed, John Cale, and Nico "Le Bataclan Paris Jan. 29th 1972" - This bootleg has kicked around a long time in various forms. The scene is a dream deferred, as close to a Velvet Underground reunion as we ever got during the height of their collective powers. One concert in a small club in Paris with pugnacious Reed, overshadowed Cale, and the coldest, darkest heavyweight champion of the world, Nico. This version of the legendary concert sounds amazing. My only wish is that the cover art were more in line with the aesthetics of the band. Kind of a hideous, graphic art nightmare, but hey, it's the vinyl that matters. Lou's pissy banter at the microphone would be worth the price of admission on this alone but the show yields much greater rewards, from all your favorite VU songs to solo material by all three songwriters. The killer here is Nico's set, she unequivocally steals the show and tears the place down with songs from The Marble Index and Desertshore, making Wild Child look like the spoiled brat that it is. I know it's a bit expensive but um, it really is that great. -SIMON

Listen to the trio's version of "Femme Fatale" HERE!

Omar Khorshid & His Group: Live In Australia 1981 (Sublime Frequencies) -

Khorshid is an Egyptian guitarist whose suaveness pervades both his look (check out that photo on the cover) and his performance. I usually avoid live albums on vinyl because the performance rarely justifies the format, but this album is one of those rarities. The recording is “hot” in engineer terms, really up front and with a treble crispness that gives the playing a tenouous level of instability. I have to come at this via my Western ears, but it is clear why Sun City Girl Alan Bishop released this. There is an unmistakable influence here, with scales running up and down the guitar in melodic beauty.  -BEN

Check out Omar Khorshid's  “Al Rabieh (Farid Al Atrache)”

  

Bill Fay: Who Is The Sender & Life Is People (Dead Oceans)I feel like many latter day Bill Fay fans arrived at him much like I did. After fully digesting Scott Walkers 1-4 LPs, I asked, “Where to now?” Thankfully, I soon discovered Fay’s initial two releases from the early seventies. Heartfelt vocals, ornate symphonics, abstract yet personal lyrics….yes yes yes. Here are two Fay records after decades of silence, and the touches of bombast heard in his early material has given way to delicate grace. These songs carry step out of your speakers like a cat coming out from under the couch to see if the coast is clear. His voice, roughened by age, has such a soft quality, they sound like a collection of comforting bedtime stories. This is what you always wanted your favorite musicians of the past to ideally morph into as they age – honest, nuanced and keenly aware of what made their earlier recordings so wonderful. -BEN

Check out Bill Fay’s “Order Of The Day”

Six Organs of Admittance: The Hexadic System (Drag City)

When I was a kid, I’d pore through role-playing rule books. They were dense texts filled with statistical info, and I felt smart just reading through them. More than that, though, they promised a complete line of thought; they created a world, stuck to the rules and boundaries, and then left it up to you to create what actually would happen within it. This is what Ben Chansy has along with his new album, Hexadic. The record, which recalls the grinding unrepentant rock of the hardest hitting SST and Touch & Go records, was written by a pack of cards. He’s created those cards, as well as a beautifully printed rule book on how to make your own Hexadic compositions. There is nothing less here in this bundle then a whole universe of complete thought, a Moneyball applied to adventurous guitar play. And indeed, things sometimes sound otherwordly, while never losing grip on the logic that binds it all together. This is a book and system I’d choose to be on a desert island with, because the possibilities it offers could occupy a lifetime. –BEN

Check out Six Organs of Admittance’s “Wax Chance”

Hearts & Flowers "Of Horses, Kids And Forgotten Women" - Primarily overshadowed by a monster country-rock album from the same year, "Of Horses, Kids and Forgotten Women" has every bit of punch and barnyard singalong as said monster, but tickles your jawbone in a way that your sweetheart never could. Hearts & Flowers disbanded after this, their second effort, and disappeared in to those dreaded Los Angeles hills, with burritos and hotels in their eyes. -MIKE

Check out the track "Second-Hand Sundown Queen" HERE!

Sapat "A Posthuman Guide To The Advent Calendar Origins Of The Peep Show" - This record finds us traveling down the long and dusty highway and leaves us desperately crawling towards the next exit. Filled with faded memories of glossy-eyed glares towards your favorite slacker-rock album's inner label and watching it spin, spin, spiiiiiin on your college dorm's turntable. Check your speakers. Are you hearing this right? You probably aren't. -MIKE

Check out the track "Rock Face" HERE!


Owen Maercks: Teenage Sex Therapist (Feeding Tube)

The undiscovered album that launched a trio of sax careers. What more could we want? The story of this album is best read while Maercks sings "process and product" over and over in "I've Been Sleeping With Great Works Of Art." Undiscovered swagger trumps swagger, this time. -KATIE

Check out Owen Maercks’ “Sleeping With Great Works Of Art”

Lee Hazlewood: A House Safe For Tigers (Light In The Attic)

I used to have a lot of childhood dreams about tigers in my house, and this is the only thing that heals me. –KATIE

Check out Lee Hazlewood’s “A House Safe For Tigers”

The Garbage & The Flowers: Eyes Rind As If Beggars (Bo’Weavil Recordings)

What it would sound like if someone trapped you in a vat of JELL-O and wheeled you into a Velvet Underground concert where the Velvet Underground covered The Beatles and you're entranced but also wondering “Am I naked? JELL-O feels great.” -KATIE

Check out The Garbage & The Flowers’ “Rosicrucinn”

Head on back to the Grapefruit Store!

Picks from April 24th

The Stones: Three Blind Mice

The least known band of the quartet who were on the Dunedin Double comp (The Chills win most famous, The Verlaines most venerated and Sneaky Feelings most, uh, also-really-good), The Stones finally have their music available as part of the good work Flying Nun has been doing these past few years. There was something in the water down South, because here were all these bands making incredible music, loose and light, full of emotion, lovingly sloppy, all influencing each other. The Stones fit right in, sounding something like if The Clean decided to do some Feelies covers. Leader Wayne Elsey was killed in a train accident in the mid-eighties, otherwise I bet he'd be mentioned in the same breaths as Shayne Carter, Chris Knox (OK, I know, not from Dunedin), Graeme Downes, the Kilgour brothers and Robert Scott. This is a New Zeland essential. -BEN

Check Out The Stones' "See Red"!

Myriam Gendron: Not So Deep As A Well"

This has very, very thankfully been repressed. Gendron is from Montreal, did this album around Dorothy Parker's poetry, and has such an exceptional and startlingly captivating voice. It's just her guitar and voice, which is recorded super close, so you hear every nuance of the take. It's intimate, powerful, gorgeous music, and is right in line with the best folk music that exists to highlight someone's distinct talent, be it their voice (Fred Neil, Karen Dalton), their songwriting (Jackson C. Frank), or their prowess (Bert Jansch, John Renbourn). I had to get this on vinyl for myself, to let the crackle of the medium interact with Gendron's singing in that wonderful way it can. So so stunning. -BEN

Check out Myriam Gendron's "Threnody"!

Above Ground: Gone Aiwa

Everything you wanted from an early 80’s New Zealand garage art rock band featuring Bill Direen (Bilders/Vacuum) and Maryrose Crook (Max Block/Renderers). A noisy ramshackle poetic blunt object that somehow didn’t manage to stop Lou Reed from releasing Legendary Hearts the same year. Form your own band if you think you can do better. -SIMON

Check out the song "Black Doors".

The Bats: Daddy’s Highway

Reissue of the first album by The Bats which features at the helm arguably the greatest songwriter in The Clean. One can argue anything, of course, and Here Come The Cars and All Of It And Nothing are certainly fighting testaments from the other guys. Scott isn’t as gregarious as those brothers K but he breaks your heart and makes you feel good about it just like Brian Wilson does on Caroline, No. -SIMON

Check out the kick-off song, "Treason" HERE!

Jeff Cowell: Lucky Strikes and Liquid Gold

This came out of nowhere. Bless those Numero Group boys. A reissue of a 70’s private press singer-songwriter record from rural Michigan. Sounds like a close cousin of outsider Robert Valente’s “No Hype” LP or even some of the excellent Bobb Trimble stuff, but more aggravated and dispossessed somehow. I just finished a book of Richard Hugo poems and this feels like it wants to be the soundtrack to Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg, one of the best American poems of the 20th century. -SIMON

Check out the title track HERE!

David Kenneth Nance "Let's Argue" cassette - The beginning of Nance-Rock. The father of the Unread Records-cassette trinity. The ink on the page of the Actor's Diary. -MIKE

Hear "Leather in the Box" HERE!

Bingo Trappers "Sierra Nevada" LP - pairs best with an 8 ounce shandy in the morning. Okay! -MIKE

Hear a song from a different album around the same time.

Peter Jefferies "Electricity" 2xLP - write up to follow. Still attempting to wrap my head around the track, "Couldn't Write A Book". -MIKE

Hear the title track HERE!

Sonny Sharrock "Black Woman" - this opened the door and showed me the wild side of life. I now see in three colors, all black. -MIKE

Hear the keystone track right HERE!