Curia - Curia

Curia could be one of those bands coined with that horrible definition of "supergroup".
Curia´s line-up consists of an all-star quartet of portugal best players in the fields of improvised and free music, including of Manuel Mota, David Maranha (also Osso Exótico and Organ Eye), Margarida Garcia and Afonso Simões (half of the free-rock group Fish & Sheep). Furthermore there´s Helena Espvall ( from the band Espers ) making a punctual apparition as a guest .

There´s not one linear definition of what this music might be : only a sense of urge and dialogue that transcends the mundane ground. Having not found a proper definition to describe this music one should focus on what really matters, and that is sound. It´s a music of ghosts, of evocation, constantly habited with a swirling and often perverse sense of crescendo, going from some really abrasive sonic explorations to atmospheric passages of pure psychedelia. The words "form" and "regularity" have new meanings in Curia´s lexical, still one can´t deny there´s a kind cohesion , a clearly noticeable guideline that runs trough all the music.

What could easily turn into a battles of egos is instead a statement of freedom, mutual respect and creativity.
Here as the cliché goes the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. No. Here the whole it´s something dazzling and new.


Personnel: Manuel Mota (electric guitar); David Maranha (Hammond); Margarida Garcia (bowed electric guitar); Afonso Simões (drums); Helena Espvall (cello)



- Curia - Curia (Fire Museum , 2007)

- buy the record at Fire Museum Records

-Curia myspace

Nisennenmondai - Tori Neji

Props to Smalltown Supersound for introducing this all-girl trio to non-Japanese audiences. Nisennenmondai (that translates to "Year 2000 Bug", apparently) crank out raucous post-punk instrumentals, anchored in a vicious rhythm section dynamic and punishingly overdriven recordings, using song titles like 'Sonic Youth', 'This Heat' and 'Pop Group' to help signpost their influences. This album compiles the band's two EPs Tori and Neji as a single long-player, here repackaged in new artwork by Kim Hiorthoy. You can hear a clear divide in the respective tones of the two EPs: Neji is characterized by a more comprehensively terrorizing aesthetic, with pieces like 'Ikkkyokume' laid down in a coarse, off-the-cuff fashion in keeping with all the best garage rock, whilst still exhibiting an impressive level of musicianship all round - the drumming is incredibly energetic, climbing to a state of euphoric frenzy in parallel with delayed guitar stabs, all of which eventually lapses into a single ocean of sound, fizzing and spluttering its way towards an inevitably feedback-soaked crescendo. Tori is a less saturated sounding affair, instead relying on a more naturalistic production and the trio's own ability to wring noise out of their instruments, something brilliantly demonstrated on the Melt Banana-like scream-along 'Kyaaaaaaa'. Ace.

- boomkat

Nisennenmondai - Tori Neji (SmallTown Supersound, 2008)
Nisennenmondai Website
SmallTown Supersound Records
Nisennenmondai Myspace

Mammal - Lonesome Drifter

"Mammal is not about extremity of sound any longer; he's about extremity of mood. Desolation is the key Beauvais has chosen, and he never strays from it. From the opening drum machine kick of "Repulsion,” echoing as it does into a flat void, the listener is made aware that the place being entered is a troubled one. When the raunchy, stillborn Tony Iommi guitar chord comes crashing down, not long after the maimed rhythm hobbles out onto the deserted back-lot, ruined factory yard or wherever it is that this psycho-drama of an album takes place, the effect is crippling, and there's really no return. Beauvais plays up the heavy-metal riffage, teasing it out but never delivering it. The riff is intense, wrecked inertia, moving briefly into distorted blast or into cone-razing rumble – forward seems like an unknown direction. "The Drift" uses the same skeleton crew of riff and rhythm, the kick-kick snare-snare snare pattern the tune rests on is so stark that it's mocking itself, staring at its own shriveled reflection in the mirror, pointing and laughing in derision, in great sweeping bass-billowing howls."

Mammal - Lonesome Drifter ( Animal Disguise, 2007)
Animal Disguise Records

Kikuri - Pulverized Purple

"Last year on the 24th edition, on May 21st 2007, two legendary musicians on their own, in need of no introductions, the dudes' in their fifties for god's saké, Keiji Haino and Masami Akita, shared the stage on the FIMAV closing show, for the first time outside Japan, as KIKURI. Having to drive two hours from Montréal to attend such a colossal event is to understate a negligibility. In my humble opinion I thought the show was punk as fuck, and not only because there was a drumkit, Merzbow brought some noise-triggering contraption that plays like a guitar and that Mr. Haino broke a string in the first seconds he plucked his electric guitar." (CephaloChromoscope)
The set begins, sounding like a munched up lo-fi mess, only for what just about sounds like a human voice ti emerge from the clamour, suddenly brining far more of a high fidelity sheen to proceedings. It's an incredibly effective introduction, marrying Merzbow's extreme noise with a dissonant choral composition. Over the course of ensuing tracks Haino provides live instrumentation as a means of duetting with Akita's ferocious arsenal of machines, with a ramshackle shamisen-style blues, a midset drums vs. noise face off and perhaps best of all, a half-hour electric guitar meltdown that has to be heard to be believed. Absolutely incendiary.

Kikuri - Pulverized Purple (2008, Victo)
Victo Records
Victoriaville Festival

La Otracina - The risk of gravitation

La Otracina are Adam Kriney (drums and vocals;also member of the great Owl Xounds) , Philippe Ortanez (new member on guitar) and Evan Sobel (bass).
This new mini-album explores some clues left by their milestone record “Tonal Ellipse Of The One” (perhaps one of the greatest psychedelic records of this century) and opens new routes.

Let´s head to “Raze The Sky”, the second track, starting with a nebula of noise . Soon enough a stoner-rock styled riff takes the lead, accompanied by the syncopate drumming of Kriney. La Otracina cosmic, sci-fi universe is announced by Kriney shouting “a wicked blazed from the center of space/ rock of fire and of ice and of pain/ caressing gravitation magnetic time/ slayer of omniverse of life and of mind//Rase the sky/Rase the sky”.The pace and the mood are set. The trip can now begin.

La Otracina vocabulary has clear connections to the well-known Hawkwind, Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath, as well to some obscure krautrock bands of the 70s (Lucifer's Friend comes to mind) or some Japanese psychedelic bands (inevitably the great acid mother temple can be quoted as a reference). Furthermore there are certainly similarities to some contemporary bands like the Psychic Paramount, Wooden Shjips or Birds of Maya. Nevertheless they stand as a unique identity, with a original vision.

Take “Crystal wizards of the cosmic weird” for an example. This song is a perfect description of La Otracina approach to music : it starts like a perfect classic 70s rock song – addictive riff and a cool “all right” included – and then evolutes to what is like a centrifuge of years and years of rock : echoes of Canterbury rock that turn into what looks like early Earth going a into mad psychedelic jam before it finally returns to the riff of the beginning - totally upside-down this time.

What’s most interesting about La Otracina is how they deal with a tradition but still don’t belong nor fit into any specific genre or movement, and unlike many of their peers of this “so called” XXI revival of XX´s century sub-genres of rock like psychedelic rock, prog- rock or krautrock, they don’t center their sound in one specific era or genre. Instead they pay homage to the whole story of XX century bastard and inventive rock turning it into a cosmic mosaic.

So look for no revivalism here. La Otracina are only three open minded guys, who dig and know to much about music and are too much occupied making some really amazing art.


(note :exceptionally, due to a request by the band, O Bom Garfo will not post the whole record)

- track 2 - Raze the sky
- track 4 - Crystal wizards of the cosmic weird

- buy the record at colour sounds recordings
- La Otracina myspace
- La Otracina playing "raze the sky" live

Everyone - Desperate Times

Collage, as a technique, has always been one of the privileged ways of expression by Pop Artists since the beginning of the movement in the mid 50s.
Collage itself is the perfect statement of what pop art and pop culture really are: the appropriation of an object, an element, an idea, taking it from it´s natural context and then adding layers and layers of new meanings and symbolism - creating a new and original object.
Following this thought, Fred Thomas, crucial name in the U.S underground, can be described as a Pop artist.

Desperate Times, project of Thomas under the name of Everyone, edited by Kenedik Records, recalls other U.S pop maverick, Panda Bear (member of the Animal Collective) and his 2007 landmark record Person Pitch.
Like Panda Bear´s pop masterpiece Fred Thomas Desperate Times is like a psychedelic parade of years and years of pop music.

The first track starts with some really beautiful blazing drones from where emerges a cracked, noisy dub theme – like lo-fi version of King Tubby's tunes – that soon enough is melt into a dazed daydream of voices, samples of old movies and fuzzed guitars soaked in echo and reverb.
The second track is a similar swirling cacophony, with spirals of folky tunes crashing against each other and then dissolving into a what sounds like My Bloody Valentine assaulting the mind of Brian Wilson.

Listening to Desperate Times is the equivalent of entering a wormhole where the History of XX century Pop Music is spread through space, floating around, shinning eternally.

Strong recommendation.

- Everyone - Desperate Times ( Kenedik Records, 2008)

- Buy the record at Kenedik Records

- Fred Thomas Myspace

Up-tight - Early Years

Here Scott Slimm's Archive label re-issues their first cd plus 2 live tracks in his typical gatefold/digpack whatsoever deluxe limited editions.This was truly a great debut of one of japan's best heavy psych-rock acts in true Tokyo Flashback style.Up-Tight are a noxious trio from Tokyo, all acolytes of the legendary Japanese psych group Les Rallizes Denudes.Best known for their collab disc with Kawabata Makoto.With their sound with crushing, Sabbath-styled dynamics, earsplitting acid leads and beautiful Velvet Underground-inspired ballads. If song structures are mostly kept loose, allowing for lots of noisy improvisation, generarlly the disc is anchored by heavy riffs. Just when you thought you'd got to grips with Tokyo's paradigm destroying psych scene,this one hits like a sucker punch.

It's almost 6 am and i can't sleep...

Up-Tight - Early Years (archive, 2007)
Up-Tight Website
Archive Cd Label

Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Mahasiko Okura, Masafumi Ezaki, Taku Unami - Atami

Released by Taku Unami´s label Hibari, “atami” finds three great European musicians (Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Ruth Barberan; Ferran Fages) with strong roots on electroacoustic improvisation meeting with three Japanese musicians (Masahiko Okura;Masafumi Ezaki; Taku Unami), connected with the Onkyo movement, which is the same to say it’s an really organic mix between two worlds.
Each of the players has an atypical exploration of their instruments, focusing a lot more on the texture and shape of sound.
It’s a dialogue about silence: a suggestion of space, of the possibilities of a blank page. Tiny sculptures of sound being stolen from silence: you can feel each movement of the players, each intention with rather odd detail. All the action occurs in a kind of micro-cosmos, with each molecule being amplified to a new level, creating new forms that weren’t prominent at a first look.

Great stuff. Check out.


Personnel: Alfred Costa Monteiro( accordion) ; Ruth Barberan ( trumpet); Ferran Fages ( feedback mixing board + pickups); Masahiko Okura ( alto sax, bass tube); Masafumi Ezaki (trumpet); Taku Unami (lapsteel, laptop)


- Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Mahasiko Okura, Masafumi Ezaki, Taku Unami - Atami (Hibari, 2003)


- buy the record at Hibari Music

John Butcher - The Geometry of Sentiment

Butcher here.

Exploring not only the “geometry of sentiment” but also the geometry of time, space and echo.
Once again he presents us with some marvelous solo improvisations, extending the limits of breathing and embouchure to an almost inhuman state.
Using circular breathing he sculpts phases that seem to be corals.
His sense of timing is sublime, as each note has such emotion and tension and hypnotic quality attached it’s simply not possible not to be overwhelmed by the man´s effort – whether you like it or not.

Take a look. You won’t regret.


-John Butcher - The Geometry of Sentiment (Emanem, 2007)

- buy the record at Emanem
- John Butcher website
- John Butcher live at Serralves Museum

Annie Gosfield - Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires

Influenced by Harry Partch, Sun Ra and San Francisco’s Musee Mecanique’s collection of old nickelodeons and player pianos, Annie Gosfield presents us with a new view of microtonal music.

The sounds of a percussion factory, a destroyed piano and an abandoned guitar are twisted into sophisticated compositions incorporating tuned and detuned instruments, traditional and non-traditional techniques, composition and improvisation.

Also included is an exciting premiere composition for saxophone quartet performed here by the world-renown group Rova, and one of the best solo sampler pieces you’re ever likely to hear.

Personnel:
Christine Bard: Drums And Percussion
Annie Gosfield: Sampling Keyboards
Roger Kleier: Electric Guitar
Ted Mook: Cello
Jim Pugliese: Percussion

Rova Saxophone Quartet
Bruce Ackley: Soprano Saxophone
Steve Adams: Alto Saxophone
Larry Ochs: Tenor Saxophone
Jon Raskin: Baritone Saxophone
(hdtracks.com)

Site / Buy
Download