Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Godspeed You!Black Emperor Live at L'Olympic, 14.05.2003, Nantes, France


Maybe a detailed review will follow. Maybe not. Anyway, there isn't much to say about the live act of Godspeed You!Black Emperor. Hopefully you saw them live back in the day...
This is, though, a very special recording, featuring two unreleased songs (Gamelan & Albanian) and a beautifuly executed „Moya“.
The quality is very good. Here's 1. And 2...
(Here's a clean and combined version of Gamelan)

Setlist:
Disc 1
01. Moheim
02. Albanian
03. Dead Metheny
04. Gamelan (1st Part)

Disc 2
01. Gamelan (2nd Part)
02. World Police
03. Tazer Floyd (Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls)
04. Moya
05. The Dead Flag Blues

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Carissa's Wierd - Songs About Leaving



Carissa's Wierd is a now disbanded (unfortunately) group from Seattle. They released five great albums. “Songs about leaving” is in my opinion the creative peak of the band, an incredible album based on (mainly) acoustic guitars and strings.

The album creates a very moody atmosphere, and the fragile voice of Jenn Ghetto, although quiet, sounds so powerful and bitter-sweet. Just listen to it at night, with the company of the drug of your choice (nicotine and alcohol that is....), light some candles and float... And bring back the memories. Because this album does that so very well. At least it still does it for me, as it never left my playlist for the most part of 2007. And it always comes back on a rainy afternoon and a cold night.

This album should get you depressed (if you aren't already). If it doesn't, it failed. Let it connect, let it do its thing and crawl to the black, heartbroken paths of your mind...
Get depressed
Highlights: Farewell to All These Rotten Teeth, Sofisticated Fuck Princess Please Leave Me Alone



And here's a video...



Carissa's Wierd - Sympathy Bush (live)



Saturday, June 14, 2008

Colour Haze - All





Bass.



Imagine a bass-tone, without a body or instument causing it, floating above you.

It spins around you with a very distinct sense of direction and tells you:

"Get dressed. Leave that pen, take it out of your hand. Get ready. You done, yet?

Now come with me. Come. Now."

Silent Moon Turns Lights If Stars All Fall One Remains.

Enter Stefan. He shows you the steps with his guitar right now. Some fills from the drums start coming your way as well, so you get the rhythm. Now that you have familiarized yourself with the pieces, the direction and the steps, you can start dancing. Floating the right direction. Get warm, because , if you ever heard anything be these fellas, you know that this is just the beginning of a long dance that will take you up, down and all around town and further.

And no, this starting song Silent is anything but what it called like and won't surprise you.

Actually, it is the kind of rising intricate colour haze rock jazz whatever jam that you have come to love and adore, but it is not a great step away from what you know and expect, which in its case is a great thing as it is the perfect way to get you onto this bus and rolling.



Track 2. "Moon" it says. Imagine a military parade stomping its way furiously up to the capitol showing off their power and prowess left and right. Concentrate on the image. Look at theit faces, the strain and collective sense of power they get from their syncopated motions.

Now imagine they're all hippies, long hair and everything.

A very determined hippie march advancing on your mind, with high pitched voices sending out their message in a very urgent and lucid way. These hippies know what they want and where they're going. And this song does as well and surprises as CH manage to really keep their tempo in check here, refrain from the great variations we know and just roll through it with discipline and a power that matches outside, resulting in an ending that will have you banging to the ground waiting for that final beat that just won't come. In a live setting this song is a force of nature.



The next song is actually a popsong with weird spacy muffled backgrounds and actual clear singing, a welcome stop from all this madness going on and a chance to go have a leak, roll another one, turn on some candles or whatever it is you want to use this intermission as best. It's a great song, in a way that the pit stops often are very refreshing and nice parts of a journey, but not really the prime deal.



Lights/Camera/Action! Even in the introduction you can tell that this will be a jammer, as it sets a tone, but doesn't seem to rush at all and the beats and grooves seem to rush about all around the place in a very relaxed and promising way. And there it is:clear signs of jazz, with the frilly guitar and intricate percussion parts taking turns on the stage , making more space for the organ to fill the void with even more colours that will keep you relaxed and leave you in a mild state of trance.

Fortunately at this point we get a break with two short songs under the 3-minute mark, with the first (If) being a straight rocker with all the force you'd expect -reminding us of better times of the great qotsa (who have gone AWOL since 2003, if anyone sees them tell them to put some stuff out, can't be too hard)- and the second (stars) being the quintessential eastern blues jam, that sets a very unusual and welcome 16-beat vibe underlined with acoustic guitars. Think Kyuss' Space Cadet played by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

All in all, all All comes down to is All.
Forgive the pun, but All truly is The Centerpiece of this album, as was probably left to be expected by the title. The one thing you will need for this song is time and patience.
Colour Haze have always been at their very best when they've been tripping us out over half hour stretches of psychotic lapses that they put together and present as songs. You come to get so accustomed to these half hour stretches that the world hardly ever seems to have existed without these organically fitting flowing perfect pieces of grooves nestled on into another.
All. All suprises ad is wort a whole review in itself.
Let me quote something to get myself started:

"An Indian classical piece starts with a movement called an “Alap” The Alap is the slowly unfolding exploration of a musical scale in free meter by a solo instrument with a drone in the background , slowly growing in intensity. It doesn’t really grab your attention on the surface, but once your are sucked in, you are gone. Playing an alap may be technically easy, but it requires a tremendous amount of concentration and a trance state of consciousness to really pull it off. "

0-6.50: The song launches ito an alap, with an actually uplifting melody. Uplifting I said, yes. And although I know that this is practically the same as saying "shallow and worthless" in certain peoples' minds - like mine-, do not fret: this "uplifting" will suck you in. Stefan slowly introduces his vocals here – attractive, wistful, longing and delicate.

I'm a man of certain pride
Set my home in the skies so high
And every time I wanna jump up it turns me down
On a wheel, under a spell I'm bound

6.50-9.03
Remember, it is Colour Haze. All has the longest silent stretch of sheer beauty in these fist 7 minutes CH have ever made, but these masters of their school would not let you get sucked in for naught. They turn it up here, the fuzz enters, the chorus is turned up and only a great deal of tranquilizers could prevent a living being from uttely grooving along to that after listening to the Alap before, as Phil's bass and the seemigly standing notes by Stefan dig in deep and dirty.
I am free
Oh, I'm so Free

9-end
The psychedelic groove-out of the song. It all happens here. Diversions of the groove, coupled with Jimi Hendrix making a cameo-appearance before the song goes quiet for a while and then erupts into spontaneous jams coming from every part of this band.
Imagine te skies opening and the organ coming to aid the hand of god that points at the stage where these guys perform thi song live. It is that good, and seems to cover the ground other songs explore in 25minutes in just under 15.


Fall will take you on the flipside of this journey, in no less impressive manner. Where there was the transcension into light earlier, the plunge into darkness was bound to follow.
Uh, like a feather, high and I fall.
Way louder and more forceful than All, this song crashes you back onto the cold ugly ground by virtue of the big blues et al.

One is one last rocker that will grab you with its hypnotically chanted repeated mantra and finish off with even more eastern explorations to set the stag for the final song of this album, Remains, which is a meditation on single guitar with another eastern 16-beat drone and supposedly was written over the death of the oldest of Stefan's beloved cats, the one that has always gotten to hear the new songs first while keeping the man company on the -yes, eastern- carpet when he was experimenting with new sounds.
All sees Colour Haze advancing on their sound, but still delivering on their strong suits. This band is growing and doesn't seem to be content with their winning formula of strong psych tunes, which is great to see in one of the best band the genre has to show for.
The varied song-lengths and contrasts make for a very tight listen and the eastern influences and broader use of musical styles and elements make All a very satisfactory unit as an album and a sure grower for mental travelers.