Ygolonac - Strange Aeons

Apologies for the unexplained absence for the preceding fortnight, gentle ones, but rest assured that posting will resume with gusto upon the arrival of the new year.  In the meantime, share with me this horrid lump of coal that I found in my inbox.  Another mad one man metal band in the mode of Brown Jenkins or Aarni, this Ygolonac seems fixated on the fictional grimoires of the Mythos, from what can be deciphered from the song titles and the band name.  Ygolonac is the lord of the perverse and sadistic, the only Old One outside of insidious Nyarlathotep capable of taking human form, and notorious for the ravenous mouths screaming for blood from his palms and groin, traditionally cast in the role of curating the library of suppressed tomes which tend to drive mundane minds into madness.  Ramsey Campbell's brutal and bitterly funny "Cold Print" is perhaps the finest Lovecraftian story produced in the seventies, and while the retro vibe of this nasty debut is probably meant to transcend time and space, I can sense a little disco cokestache under all the noise, maybe just slowed down 800x.

Down at the Bookstore

Fishing with John

This is the soundtrack to the cult television show "Fishing with John," starring John Lurie.  Taking the loose framework of a PBS nature show and twisting it into a hilarious beatnik riff on culture shock, cryptozoology, manliness, booze, frenetic dancing, and the nature of sport, the six extant episodes stand as one of the weirdest TV experiments ever.  With guests like Tom Waits, Willem Defoe, Dennis Hopper, and Jim Jarmusch, and wild expressionist music by Lurie's many amorphous jazz combos, it's settling nicely right now with the mixture of whiskey and cough syrup fueling your helpless narrator's feverish battle with Mother Nature herself, also nicely reflecting the over-arching theme of the show.  Perhaps tomorrow will find me more lucid, or perhaps floating face down in an icy bog somewhere.

Ahhhhhh.....

Colour Haze - Tempel

Sweet Merciful Crap!  What a week.  Posting may be sporadic until the first of the month, wee ones, as your old Uncle Abdul is doing double duty outside the Swamp - burning the brazier at both ends.  All that will fit inside my enfeebled ears tonight is this soothing mystical album from Germany's premier desert rock band, Colour Haze.  Inspired by the power trios of yore and the powerful unnameable forces of the space-time continuum, the cosmic yawn filtered through flange and fuzz, they coax the listener into an out-of-body voyage through the four elements of matter and the various states of consciousness. 

Ozean

Hawkwind - The Chronicle of the Black Sword

Finally, a quiet night in the Swamp with which to gather my thoughts.  At the end of another week of madness I must alter my state of mind with the aid of The Chronicle of the Black Sword.  Few people have love for mid-80's Hawkwind, but I am one of those few - at least for this album.  A concept album grounded squarely in Michael Moorcock's Elric cycle, the tone matches that of its source material - brooding, expansive, iconoclastic, and unrelentingly grim. Moorcock's albino swordsman was a loner anti-hero, an alien among his own people;  by 1985 Dave Brock was the only original member, a relic from another era.  

Still, the album sounds fairly in line with the times - as heavy as contemporary records by the crop of aging first-wave metal bands inspired by Hawkwind back in the day, and mercifully mostly free of cheesy eighties production.  Granted, there's a bubbly synth here or there, or the occasional too-long guitar noodle, but it's not like the group were ever particularly known for their restraint and focus.  Brock's vocals sound a bit strained and haggard, too, but this adds a weight and world-weariness to the proceedings, fitting with its downbeat lyrics and bleak worldview. 

Interestingly, the band performed the album in it's entirety on the tour, with an elaborate stage production and Moorcock himself narrating.  I haven't watched the recently released DVD, but there's some wild and hilarious videos out there for perusal.  They're a million light years from 1969, but the interval has only made them weirder.

I heard a murmuring in the night

Demon Fuzz - Afreaka!

Demon Fuzz is another one of those bands whose freaky, forward-looking sounds were far enough ahead of their time that they achieved little success and remain obscure outside of crate-digging DJs continually in search of more esoteric and obscure grooves.  While ostensibly being a funk band, Demon Fuzz combines jazzy, menacing dissonance with prog and psych tendencies and a soulful backbone that keeps even the strangest moments grounded.  The opening instrumental, "Past Present and Future," opens with a muted guitar figure that could've been lifted from a Fugazi record twenty years in the future, shortly followed by the sly insinuation of horns and a martial rhythm that unfolds into full-on brass band swagger and then dissolves into a Fun House-era Stooges freakout.  The vocals don't arrive until track two, the spidery "Disillusioned," but aptly named crooner Smokey Adams expresses righteous anger over a bed of organ, harmonica, and buzzing trumpet.  There's a few more killer originals and covers of the mandatory "I Put a Spell on You" and a song from the British Invasion combo Electric Flag, rounded out with another expressionistic instrumental capper.  Truly freaky.

Mercy (variation 1)

Melvins - The Undisputed Renegade Spaghetti Garage Pin-Ups

Here's another fairly thorough all-covers bootleg, this time from the mighty Melvins. Flipper, Wipers, Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Wendy Carlos, Fleetwood Mac, Malfunkshun, Warlock Pinchers even...something for everybody, mangled and stomped on. Interestingly, though this album is two full-length discs, many of The Melvins' better known covers don't appear here, perhaps assuming that anybody who would bother with
something this weird already owns them. It's a bit difficult to sit through the entire two hours, but there's tons of mixtape fodder and surprisingly reverent treatment, representing the breadth and depth of their influences.
Jerkin' Krokus

James Blood Ulmer - Birthright

South Carolina's James Blood Ulmer has made a legacy out of his fusion of blues, jazz, soul, funk, and wild experimentation, but on occasion he releases a straight, palate-cleansing album of acoustic country blues, seemingly more out of need than choice. Birthright, the most graceful and haunting record of this type, is a concise little masterpiece. Freed of sidemen, Ulmer and his guitar meander down the dark dusty roads of the soul, backwards through time. He wrestles with the devil's influence in classic blues fashion, using his own experience with perdition as a warning to others. Not that all of these are grim morality tales, no sir: there's a few dance numbers, a song or two about girls, and covers of Howlin' Wolf and "Sittin' On Top of the World." Vital.
I Ain't Superstitious

Bob Ohiri & His Uhuru Sounds - Uhuru Aiye

Well, I need another breather from all the metal, so lets venture deep into Nigeria and visit with Bob Ohiri and his band. Primarily famous for playing guitar for the legendary Kind Sunny Adé, pioneer of the Jùjú genre, Ohiri breaks loose here and plays a forward-thinking brand of afrobeat colored with bop jazz and gritty funk. I don't have much of a clue as to what's gong on lyrically, as most of the songs are in Yoruba, but two of the English ones express a yearning for freedom and a cry for solidarity. Beyond that, the music is heavily percussive - there must be a dozen drummers and percussionists - and shot through with horn lines, quivering wah-wah, and layered background chants, producing a danceable but vaguely unsettling cacophony. Heady, sweaty stuff for a hot summer night.
Nigeria London Na Lagos

Far East Family Band - "The Cave" Down to Earth

Another heap of Japanese strangeness on the slab today, children! Far East Family Band, the OG spacerock band of the land of the rising sun, released this wild album in 1975, and it has become arguably the peak album of the genre. Heavier than Hawkwind, more hypnotic than Tangerine Dream, more soulful than, uh, Pink Floyd - all wrapped up in some esoteric philosophy and tons of flange. Koto and bamboo flute give it an exotic sheen, but the wild rock is a universal tongue.
Transmigration

Philosophy of the World

I'm a bit surprised that I haven't posted this already, as much as I've talked about it and compared other weird albums to it - so, here we go. The Shaggs were three New Hampshire sisters coerced into forming a "rock band" by their domineering and possibly unhinged father, who not only forbade them from taking lessons or listening to actual music but also financed and released this bizarre platter, sure they were going to be the next Beatles. The sounds contained within only barely resemble music in the conventional sense, with the guitar and bass playing completely different patterns as the drums wander in and out of sync at random. The sheer originality and naivete are charming, but there is an unsettling undercurrent beneath all the forced good cheer, as if the band were comprised of the children from Village of the Damned. The Shaggs had a bizarre career that I neither have the time nor inclination to dissect here, but this first album stands as a pinnacle of so-called "outsider music" and certainly stretched the boundaries of what could be done with guitar, bass, drums, and a little ambition - talent be damned.
Why do I feel?

Blind Willie Johnson

Ominous thunder and cold medication combine to cast an eerie pall over my evening, so I'll attempt to keep it brief. Blind Willie Johnson was a gospel street singer, possessor of a frightening rasp of a voice and razor-edged slide guitar, and the originator of songs as timeless as "Samson and Delilah" and "Nobody's Fault But Mine," who nonetheless led a short and brutal life. Legend has it that he started a riot on the steps of the New Orleans courthouse singing "If I Had My Way, I'd Tear This Building Down." His death is a particularly brutal story too: after his house caught fire while he was out busking, he was forced to sleep in the charred ashes of his bed during a monstrous thunderstorm. When he returned to the streets the next day he had full-blown pneumonia and died in a gutter. Of particular note to Swamp-o-philes are the delightfully Cthonian cautionary tale "God Moves on the Water" and the wordless wailing of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground." Chilling stuff.
Everybody wept when the war was on.

Yonin Bayashi - Isshoku Sokuhatsu

Fusing the sounds of the wildest prog with the burgeoning movement that would become known as heavy metal, Japan's young quartet Yonin Bayashi would carve out a strange niche for themselves on the fringes of the music world. By turns melancholy or thunderous, Isshoku Sokuhatsu is their first and strongest album and flows from my speakers like warm sake. Stare into the eyes of the hypno-sloth:
Ping-Pong Dama no Nageki

Java Java Indonesia Screaming Fuzz

Back just under the wire for a quick post. Here we have a surf/psych/weirdness comp from Indonesia, full of wild, wacky tiki rock for the space-age caveman in your life. Sorry for the kiss and run but it's time to hibernate after an extended psychedelic weekend. More gibberish tomorrow, gentle reader.
Tinggalkan Ku Sa Orang

Tapiman

I don't know a whole lot about these Spanish psych-thugs but I sure as hell know that this album is a flat-out scorcher. Hints of Blue Cheer power-trio blues, sweet harmonies that remind me of The Move, some tasteful piano boogie, and a few genuinely strange moments all come together into one tight, slightly ESL platter providing a soundtrack equally suitable for fucking, fighting, or spiritual exploration.
Gooseberry Park

Zulu

You can read my previous post on the Wrangler Brutes here. This is their LP, released shortly before their premature breakup. I haven't much time to expound on this one, but it's a sorely needed kick in the balls for your ears.
Things get fruity

Magic Lantern - At the Mountains of Madness

Remember way back when I was debating making a weekly feature of concept albums based upon At the Mountains of Madness? Well, it's probably a good thing I didn't, as I would have run out of material in a few months and my ability to consistently post anything has waxed and waned with the seasons to the point where I would have forgotten or given up before long anyway. So, in the spirit of keeping it loose-limbed and addle-brained, here's a wild one by psych rock ensemble Magic Lantern. I really know nothing about these guys other than the fact that they're from California, they sound sorta like Hawkwind, and they're probably hipsters but since they don't pretend to play heavy metal nobody gives a shit. This is two ten-plus minute songs that reverberate like the tiny army of UFOs buzzing around inside my skull, futilely attempting to escape back into their own parallel universe.
skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh, and presumably you're aware of this situation, but are prepared to wait strange aeons...

Varghkoghargasmal - Drowned in Lakes

Here's another strange one for you, a one-man black metal band from Germany that's equal parts madness and beauty. Varghkoghargasmal plays what is referred to as Wooden Metal, which would seem to be a mutation of atmospheric black metal similar to Swamp favorites Forgotten Land, but with a bent towards surf guitar, cheesy haunted house keyboards, and drums that sound as if they were laid down arbitrarily and without regard to which song they belong to, or what tempo they should be. It's pretty baffling, to be honest, but quite tasty for fans of unintentional gibbering brilliance created by the mad and retarded. Hints of Dead Milkmen, Men's Recovery Project, Sunn O))), Screaming Lord Sutch, the Mummies, Old Skull, and other sublime abortions.
Taste Of Orodrir

Trike

Woof, Swamplings! Holy Shit! Just freshly back from the bar, humoring a geographically proximate birthday boy, who wanted to go see a "party rock and roll" band. I lasted perhaps thirty minutes and three double shots into an indescribably awful "rap"/screamo hybrid abortion before slithering out the back door and into the comfort of my little happy place. I'm aware that this style of music exists, though my experience is limited to brief horrified fragments from Metal Inquisition videos. However, I was not aware the phenomena had encroached this far into Swamp territory, let alone performed by grown-ass men visibly older than myself. Horror!

As a psychic enema, let us peruse this nasty and inscrutable album by one-man band Bob Log III, late of the mighty Doo Rag. A sloppy cocktail of blues, garage-rock, titty obsession, noise, jumpsuits, vaccuum tubes, and cheap whiskey, Mr. Log III's second album comes on like the runt of a pack of giant squid left alone to figure out Hasil Adkins tunes on King Buzzo's down-tuned-to-oblivion guitar with only a stack of Barely Legals and yesterday's bacon and eggs as sustenance for all eternity, captured by Richard Nixon's Oval Office tape recorder and shot into space. Much more sensible than what the kids listen to these days, yes?
Clap Your Tits

Hooker 'N' Heat

Somewhat similar to the psychedelic albums produced by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and other blues men in the sixties, Hooker 'N' Heat is the collaboration between seasoned journeyman John Lee Hooker and upstart hippie blues nerds Canned Heat. Unlike many of those albums, this one is a natural fit, and sounds and feels like a natural collaboration than a capitulation for cash. Hooker's loose, improvised style was always a bit psychedelic in it's own right, and bolstered by sidemen content to follow the wanderings of his mind and guitar, the man sounds electrified. This album is a meandering, lazy, subtly sinister ride.
Meet Me in the Bottom

Wrong

Nothing but chaos on this end of the Swamp, tender saplings, which means I can only post during sporadic intervals. What this means for you, the reader, is several posts in a row refreshingly free of commentary (at least until we can gather our resources). Thusly, I leave you this album until normal gibberish is resumed. Wail amongst yourselves.
Hear the angels sing