The Old Ones - Manfred

I've been sifting through the archives this week, spurred on by sickness and cabin fever,  eventually arriving at a pile of poorly tagged, low quality mp3's of The Old Ones. Downloaded years ago from the baffling 9 Productions website ( seemingly a relic from 1994 but sporadically updated with new information, despite being 90% perpetually "under construction"), The Old Ones are a classic example of a one-man project driven by sheer love and madness, content to languish in obscurity and bereft of shame or self-awareness.  Existing for years on the same fringes of doom populated by Aarni or Brown Jenkins, this anonymous Czech fellow continues to make music under this moniker - there is another album and multiple singles, and a sequel to this semi-full length is promised sometime this year.  This one is a bit of a mess - I corrected the incoherent tags as best I could, but the volume is wildly erratic, the guitars are tinny and muffled except for the occasional solo, the vocals are too loud, and the drum machine is laughable.  Still, crazy-eyed ambition and enthusiasm go a long way in bands like this, and The Old Ones have no shortage of either.  

I Remember

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.....

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

Salem Mass - Witch Burning

Greetings, toad people!  Returning from a rock n' roll sabbatical, I bring you this lump of red-hot occult proto-metal from Idaho's Salem Mass.  Released in 1971, this strange hybrid of the Manson Family vibe of Coven or Black Widow with the groovy psychedelic thud of Captain Beyond.  Soulful, over-the-top vocals and the trippy organ percolate over a surprisingly funky foundation of rubberlegged bass and cowbell-happy drums.  This is another in the long line of occult rock that gave birth to today's crop of mystic longhair bands dancing naked in a circle, praising the dark forces of the universe.  

You're just a dream.

The Slow Death

Abiding my love for obscure sub-genres and strange hybrids, let's all get dragged backwards through this haunting death-doom variation from Australia's The Slow Death. Beginning with sodden blankets of earthy guitar similar to Warning, and exchanging Patrick Walker's ghost-ridden anguished vocals for some spooky siren whisperings way up at the high end of the register, and some Skepticism-styled funeral growling on the low end, this self-titled LP is their only release. A widely varying pace and sinister internal logic, not to mention the occasional horror movie keyboard melody, give it the air of an ill omen. Interestingly, some of the members of this band are also in the wildly dissimilar Corpsickle and Murkrat.
Dark Days

Pentagram - Sub-Basement

Much like this imperfect but undervalued Pentagram album, I have spent many decades in the dank underground today, and I only just re-emerge under the deadline to slime out this gibberish upon my keyboard and hope that it reaches some vigilant ears somewhere out in the cosmos before I dissolve into an unrecognizable jelly and the tide goes too far out.
Sub-Intro

Menace Ruine - The Die is Cast

While their debut LP Cult of Ruins would put them squarely in the psychedelic black metal camp occupied by Nachtmystium and Oranssi Pazuzu, this follow-up dialed the tempos down and upped the humming feedback and weird found noises to a degree where Quebec's Menace Ruine begins to explore the wicked droning heaviness of early Earth or something like Thorr's Hammer, while still keeping a cloven hoof in black metal territory as well. This album was widely panned but as I sit awaiting the approaching thunderstorm, with the wind lashing about outside, it sounds just perfect.
The Bosom of the Earth

Let the Right One In

Well, let's have a bite of this excellent, expansive soundtrack to one of my favorite newer movies, composed by scholarly Swede Johan Söderqvist. Anyone who has seen the film will no doubt remember the haunting dirge-like drones punctuated by slashes of noise and splatters of dissonance every time violence erupts onscreen. Evoking the icy chill and desolation of the movie and also the weight of sadness and inevitability, this wonderful, horrible soundtrack is for nocturnal use only.
Then We Are Together

A Forest of Stars - The Corpse of Rebirth

After another strange weekend lost in the wilds exploring the outer edges of human consciousness and endurance, I once again return to the Swamp and to my beloved little ones. I bring with me this strange album of psychedelic black metal - not of the cosmic Orannsi Pazuzu variety (which I dearly love as well), but of the extremely British tea-and-crumpets-spiked-with-datura flavor. Over several lengthy songs - only one is under ten minutes - the group seems to flirt and tease at the edges of the genre, only occasionally careening into pure blastbeat-and-wailing territory before wildly veering off on a tangent of one sort or another, many involving violins and and other non-kvlt flourishes. Still, there's plenty of darkness and sinister subtext here for those willing to brave a bit of foppery to flay open the raw and wild things that lay at the core of this music.
Frozen in thought whilst seeking oblivion.

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?

Eight Hands for Kali - Mount Meru

I had a dream last night that Sunn O))) released a documentary film about soup entitled, of course, Soupp O))). What does this mean? Hopefully nothing, aside from the fact that it's a bad idea to eat leftover enchiladas before bed, but it did remind me that I haven't posted anything by Eight Hands for Kali in over a year. Featuring Topo from El Natas and Tas from Electric Wizard, this Buddhist War Doom band creates smoky, sinister snake-charming metal as hypnotic and resinous as opium. Although this album is a scant half hour, criminally short for this kind of music, it nonetheless packs a serious wallop and may leave you drooling and soiling your drawers.
Apocalypse Love Hypnotized

Nightmare!

Here's a moody little slice of cinematic horror jazz from Creed Taylor and his orchestra, simultaneously oozing hepcat cool and slithery menace. The third of three collaborations with film composer Kenny Hopkins, these albums are not connected to specific films but based on short horror stories and classic monster archetypes. Anticipating much strange fringe music of the next fifty years, the mix of creaky sound effects with abstract tone poems and lounge rhythm, along with occasional muffled voices, creates a delightfully eerie atmosphere that must've been a riot at cocktail parties and secretive black masses alike.
Red Eyed Rats

J.A. Caesar and Shiburu - Poison Body Circle

I return, wee ones, and I've got a batshit crazy pile of weirdness for you under my tentacle! Japanese film and live theater composer Julius Arnest Caesar's score to the wild Shin Toku Maru (Poison Body Circle) is a hybrid of traditional styles and wild, thunderous psych rock, swerving wildly between woodwind passages and spoken word to cacophonous noise. Poison Body Circle is the story of an motherless boy who returns to his cruel father and stepmother wearing his death mother's grave clothes and makeup and exacts brutal revenge. Think Psycho: The Musical as performed by Flower Travellin' Band.
Wara-ningyou no Noroi

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.

Arena

We have what I believe is a Swamp exclusive tonight, my little ones: the sole recording by defunct two-man cosmic psych unit Arena. Theirs is a difficult sound to summarize, with parts of it variously reminding me of Chrome or Krautrock or Hawkwind with the occasional Nick Blinko or robot vocal creeping up low in the mix. Of course there are also hints of Goblin and John Carpenter soundtracks - in fact several of these tracks appeared on the soundtrack to the low-budget horror flick Wanderlost. Most of the proggish tendencies are sublimated to open up space for the yawning atmospheric void and groovy rhythms. All in all it's a shame this project ended so quickly, but at least we have this relic from beyond space and time.
Bastards of the Omniverse

Rapture

Disappointed?

Don't Be!

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

Ennio Morricone - Exorcist II: The Heretic

I make no claims that this movie is any good,but the Morricone soundtrack is of course a complex and frightening listen. While the film itself was vastly inferior to it predecessor and underrated sequel, Morricone's main theme "Pazuzu" is as terrifying as "Tubular Bells" from the original, and infinitely more alien and disorienting. Other facets of his work, such as his groovy psych/prog experiments and his percussion choruses crop up here in between calm, dirge-like string passages and eerie gospel. I promise, a dark room and a pair of headphones will give you ten times the chills "The Heretic" could ever provide.
Great Bird of the Sky

Nikki Sudden and Rowland S. Howard - Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc

Here's another album of unlikely collaborators - Nikki Sudden, front man of the wildly underrated post-punks Swell Maps, and Rowland S. Howard, guitar player of The Birthday Party. Come to think of it, can you call a band post punk when they started in the early 70's? Proto-post-punk, does that work?
Nonetheless, no post-punk this; instead we have dirge-like acoustic jangling stabbed through with sinister two-note electrical stings from Howard, with each man trading off vocals. Not many lovey-dovey duets here, sadly. The atmosphere of dread is palpable, with much pregnant weight lurking between the sustained notes, and steadily-rising maddening percussion and ambient racket on certain tracks. Chilling.
Hello Wolf (Little Baby)

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