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Thursday, July 10, 2008, 12:27am

On Tuesday night at the Black Cat, Boris (pictured above), Torche and Clouds played one of the loudest shows I've been to all year, to one of the most raucous crowds I've been a part of all year. All three of these bands are very heavy rock bands - many fans would call them "metal" but for their own reasons, I believe Boris and Torche tend to eschew that label. But this was almost as "metal" a show as any I've seen so far this year, right down to the mosh pit that exploded during Torche's set, and the wild stage dive by Boris' drummer at the end of their set.

Clouds (above) were first, replacing Wolves in the Throne Room who (very sadly, for me at least) dropped off the tour after being pencilled in as the openers. I'm not familiar with their material at all, but they put on an entertaining set of what seemed to be fairly straightforward sludgy metal. Their new album is on Hydra Head, and if this show was anything to go off of, it seems like their music is just a tad poppier than the norm for that label. Solid opener, but I wasn't inspired to pick up their album right off the bat.

I saw Torche (above) a couple months ago at Rock & Roll Hotel, where I thought they stole the show from headliners The Sword. These guys play a very catchy brand of metal, with melodic hooks galore embedded in their jackhammering guitar riffs. They're also not afraid to bring the noise, eschewing the poppy stuff in some songs in favor of pure cathartic brutality. But for the most part, they're a crowd-pleasing band, and that was in full effect last night, as throughout their set a fairly large (by Black Cat standards at least) mosh pit roiled violently in front of the stage, at times threatening to push those of us in the front row practically up onto the stage itself.

The Torche dudes were loving it, playing to the moshers with huge grins on their faces, and seemingly upping the energy of their performance as compared to the one I saw in May. As before, they put on a hugely enjoyable show, even if the music is a little too straightforward for my tastes on record. Also as before, they closed their set with a monstrous, extended version of the title track from their most recent album, Meanderthal, that absolutely brought the house down. Good times.

Boris took the stage after a 45-minute set change, obscured by fog pumping out from the drum riser, playing the opening strains of their newest album, Smile. Their setlist was actually just Smile in its entirety, played in order, except with "Pink" and "Floor Shaker" inserted into the middle of the set. As such, their set exhibited by far the most dynamic range of any of the three bands performing, ranging from hard-driving stoner metal to meandering, pretty soundscapes to breathtakingly exciting extended jams (the final, set-ending song).

I'm not a huge fan of Boris' studio output - as I just mentioned, I generally find stoner metal and stuff like this (I realize Boris is not really easy to pigeonhole in any one genre) a little too simplistic - but like Torche, these guys really shine in a live setting. Something about how they bounce between peaceful melody and merciless pummelling is just really fantastic to witness live. Wata is a beast of a guitarist, but you'd never know it from watching her, as she just stands there, expressionless, barely moving, while cranking out some killer riffs. But Takeshi made up for her stoicism with his manic stage presence, flailing around wildly on his headless double-necked guitar (as in the above photo). Atsuo, if anything, was even crazier, but ensconced behind his drum kit as he was, that never really became obvious until the end of the set. And all the while, guest guitarist Michio Kurihara ("guest" even though he's been on Boris' last couple tours) stood quietly in the corner, barely lit, often completely obscured in fog:

The highlight was the end of the set, which was "You Were Holding an Umbrella" followed by its 16-minute closing section, a spectacular jam that built from a near-ambient beginning into a series of noisy, cathartic crescendoes. Almost post-rock-like, except a couple of the noisy parts tended to come more out of nowhere, giving the piece a much less linear feel than your average post-rock epic.

Towards the end, with guitars wailing and feedback screaming, drummer Atsuo started dismantling his kit, chucking cymbals against the giant gong hanging behind him and generally going apeshit. After he had thrown everything around, he jumped up on his bass drum, arms raised, face upturned, reveling in the glorious noise, and then hopped down onto the stage and dove into the crowd. From what I could tell he crowdsurfed half way back into the heart of the club before climbing back on stage, striking another pose, and exiting backstage with the rest of the band still hammering away. The wall of sound subsided shortly thereafter, leaving the crowd to cheer lustily in the hopes of an encore that did not come.

Also check out another nice review, by someone who's a much more enthusiastic and knowledgeable fan of Boris than I, here at last.fm.

Full set of my photos, as always, at Flickr.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008, 10:35am

HOLY SHIT

HENRY COW
40th ANNIVERSARY BOX SET Volumes 1 & 2
9 CDs and 1 DVD with 2 substantial books - in two solid Boxes. LIMITED EDITION.

Assembled over 15 years, this collection gives for the first time some idea of the breadth and depth of Henry Cow's work. Always very much a live band, performance was their metier, and a concert might range far - always driven by an intense dialogue between tightly knit compositions and radically open improvisation. The officially released LPs tell at best only half this story, and one purpose of this definitive collection is to set the work back into its broader context. These are all previously unreleased recordings, that include many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases, documentation of a number of one-off projects and events and - where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion - live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. Many of these recordings are high quality radio transcriptions taken directly from the original masters, others are less hi-fi, but justified we think by their historic and musical quality. And everything has been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering. It's all a million times better than the terrible bootlegs that are swimming around. Altogether, these 9 CDs embody some extraordinary, and occasionally prescient music. Taking this box together with the officially released albums, it is possible at last to get some impression of the extensive ground Henry Cow covered in it's 10 short years. Finally, there is the DVD: 80 minutes of the 1976 Cow (with Georgina Born and Dagmar Krause) performing many unreleased pieces as well as Living in the Heart of The Beast, Beautiful as the Moon &c. This is the only known video recording in existence - professionally made, multi camera - and has not been recovered since its original broadcast (just scour U-Tube, HC is conspicuous by its total absence). And last but not least, there is a great deal of written, photographic and textual documentation. Since this will probably be the last and definitive collection, it has to be thorough. For reasons of fairness and cost we have decided to split the set into two boxes - which can be bought separately or together. VOL 1 covers the period 1971 to the 1976 Hamburg radio show which documents John Greaves' last concert with the band, as well as the extraordinary Trondheim concert from the quartet tour that immediately followed. VOL 2 takes the story through to 1978 and includes more previously undocumented compositions as well as the Bremen radio recording. The Stockholm CD belongs to this second box, which also contains the DVD.

This came from ReR via ProgressiveEars. Supposedly out in September for 99 GBP. (I haven't been able to find the original, so this is unverified, but I believe it.) To recap: nine CDs and one DVD of live Henry Cow — none of this stuff has been released before, so you're not paying for 5 CDs of stuff you already have in order to get to the goodies.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 4:38pm

Okay, I just found a freakin' amazing 2008 release that I missed in my lists below. The Washington City Paper of all things alerted me to a new release by Virginia-based Wrnlrd, called Oneiromantical War. Wrnlrd apparently has six albums out and a recent interview at Pitchfork, but I'd never heard of them (him) until reading the review in the City Paper. I went and downloaded Oneiromantical War from eMusic and am now completely obsessed, to the point that I almost immediately went and ordered the band's three most recent albums preceding this one from their website. This stuff is atmospheric black metal, with vocals infrequent and almost completely buried in the mix underneath gritty buzzsaw guitars. The 20-minute "War" is an epic of fantastic proportions, all claustrophobic and evil and soul-crushing and shit.

So if you need your soul crushed, hop over to eMusic and check this mutha out.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 5:57pm

So we're almost halfway through 2008 and the message boards are abuzz over what could be the first great prog-related release of 2008, DFA's creatively titled 4th. I haven't heard it yet but I'm definitely excited to do so, especially after reading Mike McLatchey's review. I thought I'd quickly comment on some 2008 releases I've heard so far — noting that I've taken a step back this year in terms of purchasing and digesting new music, so I'm not hearing all that much brand-new stuff as compared to the past couple years. Also, these are not necessarily my favorite albums of 2008, just things that I have things to say about:

• Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull — I've got a review in the works; in the meantime, my review of their live show suffices. This is a great album.
• Magenta - Metamorphosis — I like it! I will face up to the usual Ground & Sky readership who will laugh at me for enjoying such proggarific nonsense, but I can't help it. Somehow these folks just push the right buttons for me.
• Meshuggah - Obzen — I have a hard time with this group; the music and vocals are always bone-crushingly heavy and complex, but somehow they come off as a little to sterile for me most of the time. That said, Obzen is probably my favorite of any of theirs that I've heard.
• Scorch Trio - Brolt! — Got a review coming up of this one. It's good.
• John Zorn - The Dreamers — Major disappointment. With that lineup (very similar to Electric Masada) I was hoping for something much more than this middle-of-the-road snoozer.
• Bar Kokhba - Lucifer — Another mild disappointment. Their 3CD live album in the 50th Birthday series is one of my favorite recordings ever, but they seem to have lost a lot of their edge on this album. Sigh.
• Los Dorados & Cuong Vu - Incendio — Energetic, melodic jazz with a pretty significant rock edge, a pretty inspired collaboration.
• Portishead - Third — So far I don't like it as much as Dummy despite lots of people saying they think this one is their best so far. Beth Gibbons' voice seems just a little too wispy to me this time around.

Things I'm excited about that just came out or are coming out in 2008 or early 2009 (in addition to the aforementioned new DFA record):

• Asva - What You Don't Know is Frontier
• Deus Ex Machina - Imparis (CD/DVD)
• One Shot - Dark Shot (CD/DVD)
• Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling
• Original Silence - The Second Original Silence
• The Thing - Now & Forever (box set)
• Richard Pinhas & Merzbow - Keio Line
• Univers Zero - Archives 1984/85/86 (working title)
• Within Temptation - Black Symphony (DVD)
• Despised Icon - Live in Montreal (DVD; not the real title)
• Fred Frith - To Sail, To Sail

What am I missing...?

Monday, June 23, 2008, 3:36pm

La Otracina is a psychedelic/space-rock group from Brooklyn that played a show a few blocks from my house last Friday night, at a church/community center known as "La Casa." It's a fitting name for the space as this turned out to be pretty much a glorified house show, with very much a living-room feel. (The band brought their own PA because there wasn't one onsite, and they brought their own lights as well, as the only house lights were plain incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling fan.)

While I am familiar with this band based solely on their recent release on Holy Mountain, Tonal Ellipse of the One, it appears that the band's lineup has changed considerably since that recording, with new members on both bass and guitar; and their style has changed noticeably as well. Tonal Ellipse of the One is all long, sprawling, improv-heavy space rock; what the band played at this show (and what is present on their tour CD-R, The Risk of Gravitation), is more straightforward stoner-rock. It still rocked and there was definitely plenty of heavy instrumental psychedelic bliss, but there were also some vocal-heavy tunes with more traditional song structures.

For a house show that got basically zero local publicity (none that I saw, and I live a couple blocks from the venue and read all the local listings religiously), the crowd was actually pretty decent. There were a few titters when Adam, the drummer, very earnestly introduced one song as "Crystal Wizards of the Cosmic Weird," but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Also, if I recall correctly, that song kicked ass, with a straightforward vocal intro leading into one of the wilder jams they did all evening. All in all, a pretty excellent show; I enjoy La Otracina's long-form spacey instrumental explorations more than their vocal tunes, but there was enough of the former to keep me happy.

Photography was challenging since, as mentioned, the band brought their own lights and the main light on the guitarist and bassist was your basic red-gelled flood. So, lots of black & white conversions for me. I managed to isolate the performers in some shots so you can't tell they're basically playing in a living room, but in others I didn't try, and I actually kind of like the look, what with the long shadows on the walls and ceiling. Depending on my lens choice, I was at ISO 1600-3200 and generally keeping shutter speeds above 1/100.

Full set (10 photos) at Flickr.

Friday, June 20, 2008, 11:42pm

On Tuesday night, I went to the Velvet Lounge to see a pretty great quadruple bill of avant/experimental-minded groups: New York-based Zs, who have been one of my favorite avant-rock groups for a couple years now; DC's Caution Curves, El Paso's zeuhl-heads Corima; and DC's FFFFs.

FFFFs opened things up, at a typically (for Velvet Lounge) late hour of around 10pm. This is a solo act of a dude named Sean Peoples (pictured above); when I saw him last year opening for Zs, he played very calm, pretty ambient stuff - which is also what's found on the one recording I have of his, Tree Epic. This time around, though, things were very different; Sean crouched behind his laptop for his brief set and bombarded the audience with some thumping beats and a much more aggressive brand of electronic music. The ambient stuff is more up my alley, I have to say, but perhaps this more bombastic material was more in line with the bands to come.

Corima were one of the reasons I was excited about the show; any band that lists Magma and Koenjihyakkei as prime influences has my attention. Additionally, I was forwarded an email about them from one of the bands that they had played with earlier on their tour, in which the words "fucking amazing" appeared prominently. And, to be sure, these guys were all fucking amazing musicians. They are a very young trio - drums, keys, and bass - whose music is almost a straight-up homage to the aforementioned zeuhl bands. Seriously, it was like if Ruins or Koenjihyakkei wrote 20-minute-long songs. It was the most bombastic, over-the-top performance I've seen since... well, Dream Theater, but let's not go there.

If that description sounds exhausting, well, that's what it was. Corima definitely had some awesome, jaw-dropping moments - the lightning-fast, dissonant keyboard solos in particular tickled my aural pleasure centers, and drummer Sergio Sanchez did a pretty credible Yoshida/Vander act - but the compositions were so long and disjointed that they lost me within minutes. They played three pieces and by the end I was fried. Really, really enjoyed parts of the set, and I hope they tighten up their writing - this is a group with pretty huge potential. Did I mention the musicianship was pretty jaw-dropping?

Now, if Corima were wild and exhausting, at least I had all the right reference points to understand what they were trying to do. When The Caution Curves came on, it was immediately clear to me that this wasn't the case for this band. They are a duo, one member on drums and percussion, the other on laptop and reeds, and both are vocalists. But not vocalists in any traditional sense; rather, their voices were used in a kind of babbling, speaking-in-tongues style, or just to make random noises. The overall feeling was one of total discombobulation. There isn't much out there these days that makes me think, am I really listening to music or just noise? But this did, and that's not a bad thing. I'm not sure I enjoyed the set, but it was provocative to say the least.

And then it was finally time for the headliners. Zs lost a member recently and are down to a trio of guitar, sax and drums, with the drummer also triggering some electronics that are new since I last saw them. Ben, the guitarist, responded in the affirmative when I asked him if their material had changed substantially as a result, saying, "I think you'll like it."

The band ended up playing a single lengthy piece. Zs have always made some of the most bracingly ugly music I've ever heard, and that certainly hadn't changed. The saxophonist spent most of the composition blowing long, extremely high notes, and if there was melody there it was stretched out over such a long period of time that it was imperceptible to me. The piece was fairly slow-moving and deliberate, with thematic and rhythmic changes coming at unpredictable intervals, using generous amounts of repetition as a compositional element. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't something I'd be able to digest without having a recording of it and settling in with it for some time - it lacked the visceral thrill of some of the older, fast-paced, Discipline-era-King-Crimson-on-steroids (sorry, that's overly glib) stuff.

Photographically, it was a nightmare. The Velvet Lounge, while my favorite local venue in terms of the acts that they book, is one of my least favorite places to photograph. The lights are always static and generally dim (and most problematically, the front spotlights are blocked by big speakers mounted from the ceiling). Tonight was worse than it's ever been, with the lights turned lower than I've ever seen them. I probably should have gone back and asked the guy controlling the lights to turn them up a little, but, er, I didn't. In any case, my resulting settings looked like this: ISO HI 1.0 (6400), f/1.8, 1/40 to 1/80 second. Ouch. Definitely pushing the limits of my D300 there.

Needless to say, these are not my best photos ever, and the noise is distracting in some of them. That's what I get for liking all this obscure music, I suppose; it's not like I'm ever likely to get the chance to shoot Zs with a huge light show or anything. These are the challenges that come with the territory.

Full set at Flickr, of course.

Monday, June 16, 2008, 6:05pm

Nordic Jazz 08 was a classy affair held on the roof of the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, last Thursday and Friday. The House of Sweden is a beautifully modernist structure right on the Potomac River, between the Kennedy Center and the Georgetown waterfront; an idyllic location for a concert, as long as the volume levels are loud enough to drown out the planes flying overhead on landing patterns for National Airport further down the river. I was only able to attend Thursday evening, which featured two bands whose music could be considered "jazz" only in a fringe manner: Wildbirds and Peacedrums and Kristian Blak & Yggdrasil.

The former played first, treating the debatably attentive audience to a brief set of highly rhythmic, swooping, dramatic folk. The band consisted only of a vocalist and a drummer, with the vocalist doubling on kalimba, percussion and some interesting kind of stringed instrument played in the same manner that a pianist might pluck strings inside a grand piano (pictured below). I'd seen offhand comparisons to Björk, but I'm way out of my element here in terms of finding comparisons or a way to describe this stuff. Suffice to say that it was surprisingly captivating, and I'd recommend a visit to their Myspace page for a listen. (That's the ultimate reviewer cop-out right there.)

Second was Kristian Blak & Yggdrasil, with whom I am familiar through their album Yggdrasil. That album features the considerable vocal talents of Eivør Palsdóttír, but sadly she was not in attendance at this show (and in fact I have no idea if her collaboration with this band on that album was simply a one-shot deal). This was, then, with one notable exception a purely instrumental journey. What this band played — 1982's eight-movement, album-length piece Ravnating — could hardly be termed jazz; in fact, I'd imagine it has more in common with modern classical composition. Each movement had a unique feel, often led by a different instrument, but always evoking imagery of the oceans and the sky (the field recordings of bird calls towards the end obviously had something to do with this). Given the context of this show, I was pleasantly surprised to find some considerable edge to the composition in places, with a splintered guitar melody in the second or third movement providing some real teeth. For the most part, though, this piece ebbed and flowed peacefully, with long stretches of minimalist quietude punctuated by beautiful melodies elaborated on the lead instruments (sax, flute, guitar, occasionally Blak's piano). After this lengthy, subtle piece, which succeeded in losing the attention of a dismaying portion of the audience, Blak's band launched into some more accessible, folk-oriented songs that were enjoyable but somewhat less provocative. The one exception was an interpretation of what sounded like some sort of Native American tune, in which Blak sang with a surprisingly soulful lilt.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this show, purchased a copy of Ravnating, and wish I purchased a copy of Wildbirds and Peacedrums' latest recording. The setting was beautiful and the weather perfect, although my sense is that at least half the audience was there for the scene as much as the music; everyone was snappily dressed (cocktail dresses and button-down shirts all around; this is Georgetown after all) and a substantial portion of people were hanging out far from the stage, talking throughout the performances. Thankfully, they were separated enough from the more attentive, seated audience that they were not generally too distracting.

Photographically, not much about this was ideal. The stage was full of clutter, making it difficult (even with a long lens) to isolate performers in a simple, compelling image. The light was great for Wildbirds and Peacedrums, illuminated as they were in the warm tones of the setting sun. For Kristian Blak & Yggdrasil it was a completely different story; the sun was down and the stage was lit solely by a few white spotlights that provided splotchy lighting: brightest on the drummer, who was so far back that I couldn't get a clean shot of him anyway, dim on Blak and the reedist, and almost nonexistent on the bassist and guitarist. For a setting like this I certainly wouldn't expect fancy lighting, but this was very challenging indeed. I got some usable shots but nothing particularly compelling.

As always, a full selection of photos are contained in a photoset over at Flickr.