Camberwell Now - All`s Well

This Heat ended their musical experiments with their album Repeat. Well, actually, the John Peel sessions and other live bootlegs surfaced the music world years later. But after ending This Heat, drummer Charles Hayward and bassist Trefor Goronwy joined their former sound technician Stephen Rickard who brought with him a "tape switchboard" that made sure the stage they were playing sounded exactly like the recording studio. The lineup? drums, bass, keys and... umm.. a sound engineer? sounds pretty interesting huh? it sure is.


bitchin` nice.

This Heat - Made Available: The John Peel Sessions 1977

just imagine seeing this band live by this era.
this is the closest we are going to get.
recorded in 1977, released in 1980.

que boys.

Tindersticks - Curtains

British purveyors of the most exquisite drunken miserabilism. Check out Isabella Rossellini in the last song.

"Curtains finds Tindersticks exploring the same dark, string-drenched territory as their first two albums, and while it shares a surface similarity with its predecessors, there are subtle differences that make it a rewarding listen. The tone of Curtains is slightly brighter than that of the second album, with the songs unfolding into lush, affecting laments that recall Scott Walker at his finest. Though the sound is seductive, what is most impressive about Curtains is the songwriting. The Tindersticks have become more assured writers, letting the songs gradually develop into intimate epics. Stuart Staples' lyrics are similarly textured and subtle, with alternating layers of pathos and humor. Curtains, in many ways, functions as the culmination of what the Tindersticks set out to accomplish with their first two albums, and the results are appropriately stunning." - Stephen T. Erlewine

Get it

Disco Inferno - In Debt

For my good friend Andres. Compilation of early DI works.

In Debt

Nucleus - Elastic Rock

Nucleus's first, another excellent offering.

"When Carr brought together keyboardist/oboist Karl Jenkins, saxophonist/flautist Brian Smith, guitarist Chris Spedding, bassist Jeff Clyne and drummer John Marshall, established musicians all, to record Nucleus' first record, Elastic Rock , one doubts that he could have envisioned the impact the album would have, not only on the British scene, but on the international stage as well. A few short months after recording their first record they won the top award at the Montreux Jazz Festival and found themselves playing at the Village Gate in New York, to an audience who was wondering exactly what it was they were hearing. And if it weren't for a manager's greediness, Elastic Rock would have seen Stateside release, and the broader history of fusion might have been coloured a different way. But sadly that didn't happen and Nucleus, after an initial flurry of activity on the North American scene, ultimately returned to England where they maintained a successful career there and on the European continent, for the next ten years or so.

From the opening burst of Jenkins' "1916," with its anthemic horn-line supported by Marshall's flurry of activity, it is clear that something new is happening. The album as a whole, while incorporating certain elements of rock rhythms, is a more relaxed affair than what was to come later. If a comparison must be made, then Miles' In a Silent Way is a precedent, although Carr claims not to have heard it at the time of recording, which just continues to reinforce the reality that advances in music come from many sources and usually at the same time. Like In a Silent Way , Carr chose to build side-long continuous suites of music, although there is less reliance on hypnotic groove and more on composed melodies, mostly from the pen of Jenkins, who would write the majority of Nucleus' first two records. And while there are some similarities between the trancelike groove of "Torrid Zone" and "Shhh/Peaceful," there are differences as well. While "Shhh/Peaceful" would rest on a certain ambience for nearly an entire side, "Torrid Zone" would lead into "Stonescape," a more conventional ballad, albeit played with a certain elasticity in time by Marshall. Segueing into "Earth Mother," Jenkins delivers an oboe solo over a group improvisation that, as rocky as it gets, is still relatively subdued compared with their next album, We'll Talk About It Later , which was recorded eight months later in September '70." - John Kelman

Git

Nucleus - Belladonna

For Sean-E Dawg. Nucleus was a cornerstone of British Jazz Rock, who are largely unsung nowadays, but in the early 70's they released a slew of beautiful, atmospheric Fusion, in the best tradition of Miles' "In A Silent Way" and Bitches Brew", and also Weather Report's first two albums, masterpieces of the genre. The group was led by Trumpet player and Miles biographer Ian Carr, and an impressive number of Brit Jazz luminaries played in it, including some that went to play in Soft Machine's later incarnations. Their post 70's work is forgettable, but at the peak of their powers this group was bringing the hot shit. In this one Allan Holdsworth plays guitar, never on wank mode, providing texture, colour, direction and fury when necessary, but never forgetting this is a groupmind thang.

Personnel:

Bass [Guitar] - Roy Babbington
Drums - Clive Thacker
Engineer - Roger Wake
Guitar - Allan Holdsworth
Percussion - Trevor Tomkins
Piano [Electric] - Dave MacRae, Gordon Beck
Saxophone [Tenor, Soprano], Flute [Alto, Bamboo] - Brian Smith
Trumpet, Flugelhorn - Ian Carr

Get It

Allan Holdsworth @ Inter Metro 2/19/2009

First of all I want to invite my fellow chasm filler. bloggers to post any material featuring this artist. Ozstriker I'm talking to you!

Allan Holdworth will be giving a class next Wednesday February 18th at 2:30 pm and will be playing live at the Inter Metro's theatre Thursday February 19th at 8:00pm.

"Allan Holdsworth (born August 6, 1946) is a British guitarist and composer. He has played many different styles of music over a period of four decades, but is now best known for his work within the jazz fusion genre.
Holdsworth's first recording was with the band Igginbottom on their lone release, Igginbottom's Wrench, in 1969 (which was later reissued under the group name of "Allan Holdsworth & Friends"). In the early 1970s, he joined Tempest, upon which the albums Tempest (1973) and Living in Fear (1974) were released during his brief time spent with the band.
Following this, Holdsworth worked with various popular jazz fusion groups and artists, including Gong, Soft Machine, The New Tony Williams Lifetime, Jean-Luc Ponty and, later in the decade, the progressive rock band UK."

Small Faces - Small Faces (1966)

This one's for Fishscale.

"Small Faces were an influential British mod/psychedelic band of the 1960s, led by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane with Kenney Jones and Ian Maclagan (who replaced original organist Jimmy Winston). The Small Faces were all genuine East End mods and they ranked second to The Who as Britain’s premier Mod band."

"The best English band never to make it big in America."

Shake

This Heat - Deceit

I discovered this like two days ago and i still can`t tell you how mind blowing this album is. The shit is amazing. The following is taken directly from wikipedia:

"This Heat were active in the ascendancy of British progressive rock and punk rock, but stood apart from those scenes due to a radically inventive approach that touched on numerous different styles and genres, but was always confrontational and politically charged. Their commercial success was limited, but This Heat are widely considered a missing link between progressive rock (especially krautrock) and such later experimental genres as post punk, post rock and noise rock."

I guess Slint was pretty influenced by these dudes as well.

Killing Joke - s/t

A life-changing album for me and a freakin' masterpiece of dark, menacing, aggro post-punk with metallic overtones.

PS: Please tells us of any dead links so we can remedy the situation.

PSS: Fuck Megaupload.

Wardance

Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

FIIIIYAAAHHHH! Arthur was one fucking madman, and this, his first effort, proves it beyond a doubt. Sublimely excessive psychedelic soul produced by Pete Townshend. And of course who can forget that famous single: FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! On the Dementor Hall of Fame fo' sure.

Come and buy

King Crimson - Islands

A sadly overlooked KC that's one of my personal faves. In this one Boz Burrell plays bass (taught by Fripp) and sings, and with Pete Sinfield's lyrics at their most baroque. Free jazzers Keith Tippett, Harry Miller and Mark Charig all contribute. A little gem.

The Letter

Bark Psychosis - Hex

"Of all the bands branded with the nebulous "post-rock" tag, England's Bark Psychosis achieved the rarest balance between group musicality and post-production programming. Recorded with a large ensemble of musicians but pieced together with a computer and a sampler, HEX is a seamless tapestry--a miraculous album that never forfeits its supernatural aura to the sterility of digital design. Graham Sutton and Daniel Gish elaborate on such timeless models as A.R. Kane's 69, The Blue Nile's A WALK ACROSS THE ROOFTOPS, and Talk Talk's LAUGHING STOCK, filling HEX's wide-screen canvas with emotional song-craft and technological refinement.

HEX favors the elegant and understated, presenting an extraordinarily filmic backdrop against which piano, guitar, and vocal phrases, wisps of instrumentation, and Mark Simnett's percussive cascades fall like December snow. The secret tensions that underscore Bark Psychosis' shimmering quiescence first manifest themselves in John Ling's sinuous, dub-modulated basslines, occasionally erupting in such rapturous displays of bittersweet beauty as "A Street Scene" and "Eyes & Smiles." Other breathtaking flourishes include ribbon-fine feedback, quenching showers of vibes, and Del Crabtree's electrifying, Miles-style trumpet. Alas, even Bark Psychosis couldn't top HEX. The group disbanded, with Sutton finding fame in the drum-and-bass arena as Boymerang."

The group for whom the term "post-rock" was coined (in a review by Simon Reynolds in 1994), the term is still entirely appropriate for describing this masterpiece.

Pendulum Shemale

Guapo - Black Oni (2004)

"Guapo's music explores the outer-most regions of psychedelic composition. Flickers of Popol Vuh, This Heat, Magma, Third Ear Band, King Crimson and early 70’s Miles Davis are present as over-arching themes are morphed and mined through polyrhythmic asymmetrical structures. Dense orchestration and mercurial compositions have led them to associations with zeuhl."

bendy legs

Disco Inferno- DI Go Pop

"The cheeky title of D.I. Go Pop could not be more misleading. Just like the band's highly tongue-in-cheek name, this music is anything but pop, as Ian Crause, Paul Wilmott, and Rob Whatley created an album so audacious, its unique beauty still resounds strongly today. Utilizing MIDI samplers which were triggered by guitar, bass, and drums, the band was able to go beyond the limitations of a mere guitar rock group (Crause once said he had six samplers hooked up to his guitar, one per string). One would expect that the end result would wind up being nothing more than a chaotic, noisy, haphazard, cut-and-paste attempt at musical assemblage, and yeah, there is a fair bit of cacophony on this album, but like My Bloody Valentine's timeless classic Loveless, underneath the din is an album of such startling beauty, and even more surprising structure, that once you notice it, it seems like a huge revelation.

Just listen to that sample of dripping water in the opening seconds of "In Sharky Water"; at first, it sounds like the kind of white noise you'd find easy to ignore, but it doesn't take long before you notice that there's a mellifluousness and a rhythm to it; on this album, the band clearly has a John Cage-like knack for hearing music coming from what would be normally perceived as non-musical sources. You hear examples like that throughout the album, ranging from crashes, glass breaking, and whistling, to samples of camera shutters clicking and a frenetically-repeated sample of children singing on "Starbound: All Burnt Out and Nowhere to Go". Aside from "In Sharky Water", actual drums take a backseat on this album, as rhythms are provided by various samples, and most notably, the bass playing of Paul Wilmott. "New Clothes For the New World" alternates from crashing sounds and chiming samples, anchored by a smooth bassline that sounds swiped from the Happy Mondays catalogue, while the more sinister, intense "A Crash at Every Speed" is driven by a low, rumbling bass vamp. "Next Year" features a melodic, upper-register bassline that's very similar to Peter Hook's work with New Order.

Vocalist/guitarist Crause, an admitted misanthrope, often served up a very bleak, Morrissey-esque worldview in his lyrics on the band's early singles, and though you do hear bits and pieces of a similar sentiment on this album ("Chameleon skin/Is what you need to be in/When nothing's as it appears/Why should you be?"), his vocals are buried so deeply in the mix, it's impossible to tell just exactly what he's singing most of the time. The plaintive, melancholy "Even the Sea Sides Against Us", one of the more instantly accessible songs on the album, revisits the Joy Division/Echo & the Bunnymen sound of their earlier material, as Crause's lyrics sound as charmingly morose as ever ("We're waiting for a future to come and sweep us away").

The album comes to a gorgeous climax on the final two tracks. "A Whole Wide World Ahead" sounds like a Nick Drake song recorded outside in a raging thunderstorm, nothing but acoustic guitar, Crause's spoken lyrics (which are almost understandable... almost), and a swirling, siren-like harmony in the background, all underscored by various whooshes, rumblings, and crashes. "Footprints in Snow", on the other hand, sounds gloriously innocent and optimistic, as you hear little crunchy-sounding samples that actually do evoke images of someone running in the snow, with a gentle bassline provided by Wilmott, more chiming samples that sound like glockenspiel, and Crause's oddly affecting vocals. Then, just like that, after 33 fleeting minutes, it's all over, save for the bizarre insertion of a recording of the band being told to be quiet by their landlady.

D.I. Go Pop sounds even more interesting when heard in context with the band's five great EPs, released between 1992 and 1994. You hear Disco Inferno evolve from the straightforward post punk of "Summer's Last Sound", to the all-out post rock of D.I. Go Pop, as the band gets more and more daring. It's also fascinating to hear the band's two EPs that followed D.I. Go Pop, Second Language and It's a Kid's World. Hearing the absolutely gorgeous guitar work on "Second Language" (arguably the band's best song) echoing The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly, and "It's a Kid's World"'s brilliant combination of the drum track from Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" and samples of various children's TV show themes, you hear the band focus more on melody, while utilizing sampling technology, and still creating some stunning pieces of work. If there's any justice in this world, the band's pivotal EPs they recorded for Rough Trade will be compiled on one CD someday.

Still, it's the band's irreverent genius and the meticulous arrangements on D.I. Go Pop that stick in your mind the longest. As current artists like Manitoba and Four Tet have the technology to assemble albums much more easily these days, the painstaking lengths that Disco Inferno went to perfect their sound in those pre-folktronica days is only occasionally duplicated today. Disco Inferno has long since departed, and were sadly overlooked by most people (including yours truly) a decade ago, but now, with this new re-release, it's high time we all gave this most innovative band the recognition they so dearly deserve. And unlike that grouchy landlady, you'll be wanting to turn this music up, not down."

-Adrian Begrand

One of the most important records ever made. Cherish it. I'll throw in the EPs and "Technicolour", if you behave nicely ;-)

Snow Laughs