The Nields - This Town is Wrong

 #The Nields #Katryna & Nerissa Nields #folk rock #contemporary folk #alternative rock #indie rock #Americana #1990s

The first incarnation of what would later become the Nields came together in 1987 in McLean, Virginia, when Nerissa Nields met David Jones, and started a band with Nerissa's sister Katryna. In 1991, Katryna had graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut, and Nerissa had graduated from Yale University. Nerissa married David, who was now known as David Nields, having taken her surname. By now, the threesome was performing together as the Nields, with Katryna as the lead singer, Nerissa playing rhythm guitar and singing harmony, and David Nields on lead guitar. In 1992, the three of them moved to Connecticut, where David had accepted a job at the Loomis Chaffee School, and the band recorded its first album, the self-released 66 Hoxsey Street, named for a house in Williamstown where they had lived. The band began to tour New England in earnest, earning a reputation in the regional folk music scene. In 1993, they released a live album titled Live at the Iron Horse Music Hall, recorded at the popular folk club in Northampton, Massachusetts.
In 1994 the band grew from a three-piece folk group to a five-piece rock band. The new members were Dave Chalfant (bass), whom Katryna had met in college, and Dave Hower (drums), a friend of Chalfant's. Chalfant also produced the band's album released that year, Bob on the Ceiling. This album featured a mix of the acoustic material that the Nields had previously specialized in and a more rock-oriented sound that would become their trademark. With their new sound, the Nields received critical acclaim, and quit their day jobs to become full-time musicians. Their 1995 EP Abigail, named for Katryna and Nerissa's sister, was self-released, followed by Gotta Get Over Greta in 1996 on the independent Razor & Tie record label. The album was re-released in 1997 with three bonus tracks on Guardian, a division of Elektra Records.
Unfortunately, the group suffered a number of setbacks the next year. Guardian folded, leaving them without a record label, and their tour van was growing increasingly unreliable. The band self-released an album called Mousse (the nickname for Dave Chalfant's sister Andromache) and held a special fundraising concert entitled "Jam for the Van." As a result, the Nields were able to purchase a new van, and were also able to secure a new label, Zoë, a division of Rounder Records. Over the next three years, the Nields released two more records (Play and If You Lived Here You'd Be Home Now), and in 1999 Katryna Nields and Dave Chalfant got married.
Although the band enjoyed a moderate degree of success, they ceased touring as a five-piece in 2001. Their final recording with David Nields was a two-disc album titled Live From Northampton. Like their 1993 album, it was recorded at the Iron Horse Music Hall, and was self-released by the band. In 2002, David and Nerissa Nields were divorced.
In 1998, Katryna and Nerissa were invited to play Lilith Fair as a duo. The performances were successful, and the two sisters performed several more shows together in areas where the full band had not previously been able to tour. By 2001, shows by the full band were increasingly rare, as Katryna and Nerissa toured mostly by themselves. In mid-2001, Katryna took some time off to have a baby, Amelia. Afterwards, she and Nerissa recorded their first album as a duo, titled Love and China, followed by an EP of children's songs, Songs for Amelia. In 2004, they released their second full album, This Town is Wrong. In 2005, Nerissa's young adult novel, Plastic Angel, was published by Scholastic Books. This Town Is Wrong was intended as a soundtrack to the novel, which came packaged with a CD containing the songs "This Town Is Wrong" and "Glow-In-The-Dark Plastic Angel" from the album.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nields

BraAgas - Vargtimmen

 #BraAgas #Balkan folk #medieval #Scandinavian folk #world music #Sephardic folk #traditional #ethno #period instruments #Czech Republic #live music video

BraAgas is an all female quartet created in 2007 after the split-up of the band Psalteria. The first two albums were hard to define genre-wise. “The first album called No.1 was a mix of everything – medieval and folk songs as well,” says Katka Göttlich. The four members of BraAgas have been playing for a long time. In addition to the previously mentioned Psalteria, the musicians played in other bands. “Our experiences from other bands have merged here – for me and Karla it was the Psalteria band, for Beta it was Gothart. Michaela had been sometimes the guest in different groups (e.g. Krless) before BraAgas originated,” says Göttlich. The four musicians play mostly ethnic instruments and historical replicas. Many guests helped them at the studio and there were also some electronic elements. Thanks to the electronics, a new modern sound was developed for Tapas, which was produced by David Göttlich and Petr Koláček. Tapas includes songs from various parts of Europe, including Spanish, Balkan, Nordic and Italian sources, originally dating back to anywhere within a thousand years time span, interpreted in a very modern way.  Current members include: Katerina Göttlichova on lead vocal, cittern, guitar, bagpipes, shawms; Alzbeta Josefy on vocal, davul, darbuka, duf, riq; Karla Braunova on vocal, flutes, recorders, clarinet, shawms, chalumeaux, and bagpipes; and Michala Hrbkova on vocal, fiddle, cittern.  From: https://worldmusiccentral.org/2017/01/09/artist-profiles-braagas/

Danko Jones - King Of Magazines

 #Danko Jones #hard rock #garage rock #garage punk #blues rock #blues punk #Canadian #animated music video #Dave Cooper

We just got word of a new Dave Cooper animated video for Canadian rock band Danko Jones. Nick Cross, an award-winning animator, teamed up with Cooper to make this drum-pounding latex-headed bounce fest sing, oddly perverse and frantic like a Clampett cartoon. We’ve got an interview with Cooper on the project:

How long have you known Danko Jones?

Dave: I’ve been a fan of their music for quite a while. They’re sort of an institution in Canada. Very big in Europe too; just haven’t cracked the US market yet. Anyway, I sent them a fan email a couple of years ago, saying that i wanted to send them all my books. JC, the bassist, got back to me to thank me for all the swag and said that they really loved my work. So I wrote in passing, almost as a joke, “You should get me to do a video for you guys, even though i’ve never done one in my life.” He seemed receptive. The rest is a pretty long story, but basically they offered me the third single off their new album and i wrote up a treatment for a live action video. Big, beautiful models, custom made latex outfits, tons of pretty extras, a custom built rocket car, sets, locations, props, camera men, a producer, etc. etc. Needless to say, the budget was a little steep. so the label put the kibosh on that. I was bummed, but then a few months later, I decided to re-pitch the same treatment but fully animated by one of my favorite animators, Nick Cross - for a third of the budget. In the end, the label, the distributor, and the band themselves all pitched in and got us the budget. Suddenly I was faced with a 6-week turnaround time! Unheard of. So i started making the storyboard sketches. Each day i’d bring the days work over to my animator friend, Nick, and go over them with him, describing how I wanted things to go. He’d get cracking and I’d come over again the next day. After the first week, my part was done and Nick was in for a very long, hard 5 weeks. All this during a time when Nick was putting together his very first TV pilot for Canada’s Teletoon! He was a wreck. Man, animators are hard workers. Make’s me feel like a total slacker!

From: https://hifructose.com/2008/12/19/new-dave-cooper-animated-video-interview/

The Yardbirds - Turn Into Earth

 #The Yardbirds #Eric Clapton #Jeff Beck #Jimmy Page #blues rock #psychedelic rock #British R&B #British blues revival #1960s

The Yardbirds put out their strongest album ever in 1966 as well as their only album of all original material. It originally had an eponymous title but has come to be known as Roger the Engineer because of the sketch (drawn by guitarist Chris Dreja) on the album’s cover of Roger Cameron, the album’s engineer at Advision Studios in London. The album was co-produced by bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who left the band shortly after and was replaced by Jimmy Page, who filled in on bass until Dreja mastered the instrument and Page returned to his primary instrument, the electric guitar. But the central influence that shaped the sound of this album was the innovation and experimentation of lead guitarist Jeff Beck. His heavy blues and guitar distortion is considered by many to be the earliest precursor to heavy metal. Beck joined the Yardbirds in May 1965 after founding guitarist Eric Clapton decided to leave the band. With Beck, the group began to expand their heavy blues base into different sects of rock and roll including unexplored areas of psychedelia, middle-aged chants, and Indian-influenced music. Primarily a singles-oriented band, each 7-inch release by The Yardbirds added new dimensions to the band’s sound or expanded on the ideas of the previous single. With Beck’s first full album with the group and the band’s first attempt at an album of all-original material, the band brought this experimentation to a new level, while still holding on to the core of blues roots.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2011/10/1966-the-yardbirds/

Lola Colt - Vacant Hearts

 #Lola Colt #hard rock #art rock #alternative rock #post-punk #indie rock #garage rock

Lola Colt are a London-based six-piece spinning hypnotic heartache and art-rocking film noir. Comprised of Gun Overbye, Matt Loft, Margin Scott, James Hurst, Kitty Austen and Sinah Blohberger, they’ve been throwing psych-tinged shapes for the last five years, picking up their fair share of plaudits along the way. Frontwoman Gun adds a spiritual dimension to proceedings, with fierce vocals sitting halfway between The Kills’ Alison Mosshart and Wildbirds and Peacedrums’ Mariam Wallentin.

We first started making music because:
Its creation is somehow therapeutic, and we were young and had issues to deal with.

Our music is:
A way for us to understand the world, take it in, filter it down through our past experiences, dreams, feelings and regurgitate it back out into the world as some new beast, better understood.

From: https://www.prsformusic.com/m-magazine/new-music/30-seconds-interview-lola-colt

The diversification and therefore the evolution of modern music can almost be described as fractal in nature. These are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop, driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of chaos, and just like the best music which itself is built on repetition and structure. The exponential growth magnifies each change or nuance without breaking totally from the original blueprint. This has resulted in a plethora of musical genres that all allow fresh ideas to blossom without the heavy shadow of plagiarism coming into play. Lola Colt are a six piece ensemble from London who seem to be an amalgam of many sub-genre’s and appeared at the Bodega club in Nottingham on Friday, the 27th of February, touring to promote their debut album, Away From the Water. Cinematic is the all-encompassing description that seems to suit them best, which is enforced by them taking their name from a 1967 Spaghetti Western film directed by Siro Marcellini.
The versatility which this music allows was highlighted by the stage dynamic of Lola Colt, which included frequent instrument interchanges between members almost akin to a gothic version of Arcade Fire, which resulted in a vibrant and aesthetically diverse performance. Lyrically, though the cinematic tends to veer towards the elements (sky, science, elements), but Lola Colt, similarly with probably the best band to come out of Nottingham, the Tindersticks, dealt in the darker side of love and human relationships. During the track “Vacant Heart”, the vision that the blood was already dripping from the walls akin to the scene in the film Angel Heart, formed as Gun Overbye the Danish female vocalist pierced the night with “You tore it all / Thoughts still seeping in my head dripping in my bed,” which was as sexual as it was overtly mysterious. The beauty and originality that Lola Colt possess created a vivid visual canvas, but left enough space for one’s own imagination to take flight. The possibilities for them are endless and just the same as the fractal: very exciting.

From: https://www.qromag.com/lola-colt/  

Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

 #Chris Isaak #rock & roll #rockabilly #Americana #roots rock #singer-songwriter #1980s #1990s

Chris Isaak fashioned himself as a throwback to the early days of rock & roll, devising a fusion between Elvis Presley's rockabilly croon and Roy Orbison's moody, melancholy balladeering. Unlike his roots rock peers of the 1980s, Isaak didn't care for the earthier elements of rock & roll. He offered a stylized, picturesque spin on the spare, echoey sound of pre-Beatles rock, creating an atmosphere that was equally sweet and sensuous. Certainly, "Wicked Game," the sultry single that became a career-defining hit in 1989, captured his seductive side, a trait that would re-surface on the subsequent "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing," a darkly lit rockabilly tune from 1995 that was later included in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. Those two songs crystallize the shadowy sexiness lurking within Isaak's music, but much of his body of work found him exploring the lighter side of the first wave of rock & roll with a knowing yet loving playfulness. This sense of understated showmanship helped Isaak ease into side careers as an actor and television host, plus it was central to the live shows that kept him on the road in between a steady stream of records.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/chris-isaak-mn0000775323/biography

Arrowhead - Coven of the Snake

 #Arrowhead #stoner rock #alternative rock #post-grunge #hard rock #doom metal #Australian #music video

Australian stoner rockers Arrowhead offer a unique blend of fuzz rock, with '70s infused grooves and thick doses of down-tuned doom to take you on a psychedelic trip. Playing around Australia since 2008, Arrowhead stand out amongst the crowd with songs full of infectious grooves, catchy riffs, hard hitting drums, thunderous bass lines, and brutally raw and passionate vocal delivery.  From: https://arrowheadrock.bandcamp.com/album/coven-of-the-snake

Rising from the underground of Sydney’s stoner rock scene, the Arrowhead brotherhood fire an explosive, all killer/no filler triptych of volume, attitude and down-tuned grooves. Hitting you harder than a Frank Frazetta-airbrushed panel van travelling at 100mph, Arrowhead is very much a band defined by the riffs that raised them. Fronted by guitar player, vocalist and chief songwriter Brett Pearl, Brett was brought up on a staple diet of classic rock with Hendrix, Zeppelin, Floyd and Sabbath rarely leaving the turntable. Joined by fellow purveyor of low-end grind is bass player/Viking Arron Fletcher, guitarist Raff Iacurto and living backbone of the band, Matt Cramp on drums. With each member feeding into the Arrowhead-approved vision of hard rock reverie via Hollywood monsters and science fiction cinema, having paid their dues as a band since late 2009, following on from 2010’s Atomsmasher EP, their self-titled debut and 2016’s Desert Cult Ritual, the latest addition to the quartet’s quiver is new album, Coven of the Snake. An album that is equal parts venom and mysticism, and 100% blood-bound to steal your soul in the name of rock and roll.  From: https://maximumvolumemusic.com/band-of-the-day-arrowhead/

Varttina - Karuliinan Kangaspuut

 #Varttina #Scandinavian folk #worldbeat #Finnish folk #world fusion #traditional #folk rock #contemporary folk #Finland

They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground, in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/ 

Frente! - Sit on My Hands

 #Frente! #indie rock #alternative rock #pop rock #folk-pop #Australian #1990s

Frente! were an Australian folk-pop and indie pop group which originally formed in 1989. The original line-up consisted of Simon Austin on guitar and backing vocals, Angie Hart on lead vocals, Tim O'Connor on bass guitar, and Mark Picton on drums. The Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane felt that the group's "quirky, irreverent, acoustic-based sound was at odds with the usual guitar-heavy, grunge trends of the day. The band's presentation had a tweeness about it that could have been off-putting if not for its genuine freshness and honesty”. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frente!

Frente!'s second album really seemed to be a difficult second album. The music aboard Shape is fine. By 'difficult' I'm referring more to difficulties the band appeared to have had with line up changes and perhaps with the 'difficult' dynamic that must have been the at times fractious Hart-Austin relationship. Foundation members Tim O'Connor and Mark Picton had departed by Shape and it seemed previously that nobody gave proper kudos to their songwriting finesse; previous releases had shone brightly with their stellar contributions. Thus one imagines Shape could have been a struggle without them. The strain upon Hart and Austin, having dissolved their personal relationship just as Frente! got 'famous' but then having to press on with the band's newly found success, well, it must have been hard, too. From within this context it's no surprise that second album Shape was also their last.
Plenty of lilt, plenty of charm, and no shortage of Hart's sweet vocal sounds. For me there was always an intriguing contradiction in her vocal tones: sweet, young and innocent girl tones that emanated a rather sarcastic, world weary experience via the words and themes. I was slow to grab a copy of Shape, by the time I did Frente! had already flamed out. It took a friend and mutual Frente! fan to chide me "it's good, get it!" So I did. I think back and perhaps it was "Sit on my Hands" at track one that had made me baulk, seemed a little too different to my past Frente! experience (reality check: it's not).
Maybe I could make a successful argument that the lack of O'Connor's and Picton's quirky and zippy contributions shifted the Frente! sound back a few gears into a more predictable rhythm. Hart appears to have taken over the principal songwriting (with Austin also prominent) on almost every song. New members, bassist McDonald and drummer Barden, are really not involved much at that level. And an almost exclusively acoustic band like Frente! really stands on its songwriting.
The album Shape was recorded in Spain for whatever reason. Escape perhaps? The angst and tensions surrounding this band at that time may well have contributed to the pith of the songs presented here. Hart's turn of melody entwines with Austin's acoustic fingerpicking to constitute the bulk of the songs. Where Frente! departs from this we get a whole new bunch of tones starting to emerge, even if they may sound unusually underconfident in taking these bold strides. That the mixdown took place 'everywhere' suggests to me the prodding and pushing of a record company, possibly even overtaking the band on certain production issues. It seems either to provide 'variety' or to disrupt continuity, depending on your own particular take.
Overall, Shape was an interesting album taking Frente! into new territory. But without the band being able to find their own way I can possibly see how it may have gone pearshaped. The middle order of songs feature some classic Angie Hart, while a few other songs here - "Sit on my Hands", "Horrible", "What's Come Over Me", for example - see them starting to crank up amps and possibly evolving into a different sort of band. It's a shame then that this was the last Frente! album. A good one to go out on.
From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/frente/shape/

Tobacco - Streaker

 #Tobacco #Thomas Fec #electronica #alternative hip-hop #experimental rock #lo-fi #indietronica #ex-Black Moth Super Rainbow #music video

Thomas Fec, better known by his stage name Tobacco, is an American electronic musician. He is the frontman of the psychedelic rock band Black Moth Super Rainbow, in addition to working as a solo artist. As of late 2018, he has teamed up with rapper Aesop Rock to become the music duo Malibu Ken, releasing their self-titled debut album in January 2019. Little is known about Tobacco, as he, along with the rest of Black Moth Super Rainbow, is very private and rarely does interviews. It is known that Tobacco grew up in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Hampton High School in 1998 along with bandmate Seth Ciotti. In a 2009 interview with Skyscraper Magazine, Tobacco said that his name derived from "a character that freaked me out as a kid, the Tobacco Man," referring to the character from the film Redneck Zombies. In a 2016 interview with Song Exploder podcast, Tobacco discloses that he doesn't know "any instruments," but that he became enamored with a four-track recorder that his parents gave him while he was in high school. Tobacco released his first solo album, Fucked Up Friends, in 2008. It was recorded using entirely analog equipment. Rolling Stone said of the album, "one of the year's best stoner-rock records - only it's powered by synths, hip-hop beats and vocoders instead of guitars."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_(musician)

On the surface, there’s nothing especially secretive about Tom Fec. He’s easy to find online, particularly in photos, playing both in his solo project Tobacco as well as the band Black Moth Super Rainbow. He lives in Pittsburgh, a working-class Rust Belt city once anchored by steel and brick. And yet a definite mythology has developed around Fec over the years. Critics write that he’s mysterious and reclusive, because his bands often play with masks on, and because he doesn’t generally talk about his personal life in interviews. That sense of mystique is due, at least in part, to the way his music sounds. His songs have an ominous air, his vocoded voice sounding like a badly mic’d cult leader, or a B-movie horror villain. On his upcoming album, Sweatbox Dynasty, he recorded every instrument onto a cassette before mixing it into the track, giving it a warble and fuzz. The result sounds like a record that’s been left out on a 100-degree day. Despite the fact that his music has garnered critical accolades, Fec shies away from the spotlight. He doesn’t want to headline your festival or talk about his influences. He doesn’t want to be part of any scene, or to be pigeonholed as a “psych rock” artist. He just wants to make his bizarre music in peace and play shows for the people who like it. These desires sometimes conflict with the realities of being a musician in the 21st century, who needs to be known to make a living.  From: https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/tobacco-interview?utm_source=footer 

The Black Crowes - Blackberry

 #The Black Crowes #blues rock #hard rock #southern rock #roots rock #jam band #1990s #music video

At the time of their 1990 debut, the kind of rock & roll the Black Crowes specialized in was sorely out of style. Only Guns N' Roses came close to approximating a vintage Stones-style raunch, but they were too angry and jagged to pull it off completely. The Black Crowes, on the other hand, replicated that Stones-y swagger and Faces boogie perfectly. Vocalist Chris Robinson appropriated the sound and style of vintage Rod Stewart, while brother Rich Robinson fused Keith Richards' lean guitar attack with Ron Wood's messy rhythmic sense. At their best, the Black Crowes echoed classic rock without slavishly imitating their influences, and the band's nostalgic sound helped foster a long, popular career.  From: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/bands/The-Black-Crowes/511/

Black Crowes! Scourge of our nation's natural resources! Weed smokin', booze guzzlin' rock and rollers with longass hippy hair, tight Southern trousers and a sound stolen from early '70s bloozy rockers like Free and Exile-era Rolling Stones. Same guitar tones as the Stones, Chris Robinson shrieking like a siouxsie and/or a banshee, sounding not like girly-mouthed Rod Stewart as so many critics claim, but like Paul Rodgers in his pre-Bad Company mad chested eyes closed sweat yelling finest. Their first album smashed like a retro monster onto a world poised and ready for something they could relate to (of course, I hated it at the time because I was punk, real and hardcore, and would never sell out - frig you, Ronald Reagan!). But after that, pfft. Nobody wanted to hear their slowed-down, soul-tinged shig. Nobody but ME, that is! Sure, they picked a style that had already proven to be successful way back in the early '70s, but how many other billions of interchangeable bar bands had done the same thing throughout the previous two decades? What separated the Black Crowes from that pack was, quite frankly, riffs so unceasingly pleasing in their simple catchiness that they beat the shit out of most of the stuff, or rather, the stuff out of most of the shit, that the Stones themselves had been churning out since 1980!  From: http://www.markprindle.com/blackcrowes.htm

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Pride Of Man

 #Quicksilver Messenger Service #psychedelic rock #acid rock #folk rock #blues rock #psychedelic folk #San Francisco sound #1960s

Quicksilver Messenger Service was one of the most acclaimed San Francisco psychedelic rock groups from the 1960s. At its best, the band’s bluesy flights of fancy were propelled by the interplay between guitarists John Cipollina and Gary Duncan. Their origins lie in the folk and rock and roll scenes in San Francisco during the early 1960s, two musical circles that rarely mixed. Cipollina recalled in Guitar Player, “The folk scene was going strong in San Francisco in the early ‘60s, and rock and roll and electric guitars were pretty much identified with greasy hair, beer, and teenage trauma.” Folk singer and guitarist David Freiberg, intent on forming a band with New York folk singer Dino Valenti and singer Jim Murray, began playing with rock guitarist John Cipollina. Drummers came and went, and Freiberg switched to bass guitar. After Valenti was arrested for possession of marijuana in 1965, he was replaced by two members of the San Francisco rock group The Brogues, drummer Greg Elmore and guitarist Gary Duncan. Freiberg explained the origin of the band’s name in Rock Names: “Originally there were four Virgos in the band, and one Gemini. Of the four Virgos, there were only two birthdays: John and I were born on August 24, and Gary and Greg were born on September 4. The ruling planet for Virgo in astrology is Mercury, and it is for Gemini also. So in searching for a name, we said, ‘Well, let’s see - mercury’s the same as quicksilver, right? Mercury’s the messenger god? Quicksilver Messenger Service.’”  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/quicksilver-messenger-service

Maria McKee - I Forgive You

 #Maria McKee #alternative rock #alt-country #folk rock #roots rock #singer-songwriter #1990s #ex-Lone Justice 

Singer and songwriter Maria McKee enjoys the odd claim to fame of having "broken through" to music celebrity twice - first as lead singer for the rockabilly band Lone Justice, then almost ten years later, as a solo artist. The first breakthrough, in the mid-1980s, occurred virtually overnight and earned Lone Justice what People music critic Craig Tomashoff called "a few minutes of fame"; in fact, they were the rage of Los Angeles clubs and airwaves during the summer of 1985. McKee's vocals, in particular, were hailed as the driving force behind the band. When Lone Justice fizzled, McKee attempted to shift gears into solo work; but her first solo album fell short of expectations, and by most accounts, McKee did not return to the path promised by her early work with Lone Justice until 1993, with the release of her second solo set.
McKee's career singing rockabilly and country music was actually not incongruent with her Los Angeles childhood. Born in Hollywood in 1965, McKee developed an early and unusual passion for 1930s Americana, artifacts of an era when country and western still reigned in rural America. This musical direction was influenced by McKee's parents, Jack, a carpenter, and Elizabeth, a painter, both of whom also shared the ownership of a neighborhood bar; by the 1970s they had adopted Baptist doctrine and would not allow rock and roll in their home. In 1985, McKee revealed to Rolling Stone interviewer Steve Pond, "My friends used to think I was weird because I was really into the Little Rascals and the 1930s, and my favorite movie stars were people like Joan Blondell." She further explained that she even kept her record player in her closet, maintaining, "I wanted the record to sound like it was old and far away, like a scratchy radio or something. I was really into escaping into this era, this time of life I knew nothing about."
McKee was also influenced by her half brother, Bryan MacLean, who played guitar with a popular 1960s psychedelic rock band called Love; McKee recalled going to L.A.'s famous Whisky A Go-Go to watch him play - though she was not yet six years old. By 1980 McKee, who would eventually drop out of Beverly Hills High, was devoting her time and talents to performing with local bands, including her brother's. Singing at a rockabilly concert held in the parking lot of a drive-in theater, McKee so impressed a young guitarist in the audience that he called her the next day. Ryan Hedgecock told People writer Todd Gold that he "was desperate to put a band together." That phone call would eventually blossom into Lone Justice.
McKee recounted to Rolling Stone' s Pond how simply the connection began: "Ryan came over to my house with his guitar and we just sat around listening to rockabilly records." The listening gradually evolved into writing and playing together, and that collaboration led to engagements as a country duo at local clubs. McKee and Hedgecock began rather modestly, playing standards, but moved to their own music by 1983, when the duo grew into a band. They found experienced collaborators in bassist Marvin Etzioni and drummer Don Heffington, who had played with country veteran Emmylou Harris. With this line-up, Lone Justice took L.A.'s rockabilly scene by storm. McKee early on demonstrated considerable character and definition in her compositions, which, as Pond described them, "evoked a world of dust-bowl immigrants, migrant workers and skid-row habitues."
Pond also captured the band's reception in those first years: "Almost from the start, local critics raved about the group's sparkling mixture of galloping two-beat country music and Rolling Stones-style rawness - and particularly about McKee, who's got striking, down-home good looks, a commanding stage presence, and, above all, a startling voice that captures simultaneously the sweetness of Dolly Parton and the grit of Janis Joplin."
Within a year, the band had added guitarist Tony Gilkyson and had secured a record contract with Geffen, a major rock label. Then, music critic Jon Pareles noted in Mademoiselle, "came the hard part - making an album whose songs were as strong as McKee's stage presence." But veteran producer Jimmy Iovine seemed equal to the challenge. The eponymous album consolidated the band's local prominence and set a national reputation in motion; in the fall of 1985, Lone Justice hit the road. As Gold noted, praise for the album was "almost unanimous." Writing for Rolling Stone in 1987, Jimmy Guterman recalled that the "debut album revealed an astonishingly mature new band and a blockbuster talent in irrepressible singer and primary songwriter Maria McKee."
Although the band had little trouble living up to the high expectations set for their first album, they ultimately were not able to carry their momentum through to a second. Shelter, released in 1987, met with mixed reviews; the band's lineup and musical format had been changed, and critics and listeners were less sanguine this time around. The band disintegrated soon thereafter. McKee detailed her part in the breakup to Chris Morris of Billboard six years later, stating, "I claim full responsibility for the lack of focus. I was 21 years old, and I had a record company that would give me money to do anything that I wanted. I was just confused, very confused." At the time, however, Geffen had no intention of dismissing their still-promising songbird, and they prepared a solo album, Maria McKee, for release in 1989.
When the performance of the solo debut repeated the disappointment of Shelter, McKee decided that it was time for a hiatus from the music industry. She moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1989, providing herself with a different atmosphere for her music. While there, she landed a single on the British charts, "Show Me Heaven," from the soundtrack to the film Days of Thunder. Ultimately, however, she felt the experienced hindered rather than helped her, as she later told Morris: "I was flirting with all different kinds of music. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I had written all these weird songs, everything from cabaret music to Kate Bush music." When she returned to Los Angeles to start work on a new album, she decided to put aside the experiments for her tried-and-true country sound.
Back with Geffen, she brought in producer George Drakoulias, who had scored recent successes with the Black Crowes and the Jayhawks. She also brought back Lone Justice mates Etzioni and Heffington. She told Morris, "I moved away, I got homesick, I missed my friends. I missed the music I grew up with, I missed that original celebration that Lone Justice had." And You Gotta Sin to Get Saved did, in fact, recreate much of the excitement that Lone Justice had incited ten years before.
Acclaim for You Gotta Sin was essentially universal. People's Tomashoff, for one, declared McKee "among the best vocalists and songwriters in the business." Thom Jurek of Detroit's weekly Metro Times echoed the enamored accolades of the first Lone Justice reviews; he saved his greatest enthusiasm for the song "My Girlhood Among the Outlaws," exclaiming, "[McKee's] country wail breaks out of itself, burns down the past and becomes a vehicle for transformation and change. Her confession registers not merely as atonement, but as a promise to rise from the ashes with her soul intact." Of the album itself, Jurek pointed out that McKee seemed finally to have reclaimed the potential of her first musical venture: "It reveals a singer exploring her talent (and its limits) in the music that inspired her in the first place. It also exposes a songwriter who has crawled back from the dark edge of an abyss to balance the ecstasies and excesses of language and sound by listening intently to the voice of her muse."  From: https://musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001016/Maria-McKee.html

Black Sabbath - Spiral Architect

 #Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s

With 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented attention to the album's production standards, arrangements, and even the cover artwork. As a result, bold new efforts like the timeless title track, "A National Acrobat," and "Killing Yourself to Live" positively glistened with a newfound level of finesse and maturity, while remaining largely faithful, aesthetically speaking, to the band's signature compositional style. In fact, their sheer songwriting excellence may even have helped to ease the transition for suspicious older fans left yearning for the rough-hewn, brute strength that had made recent triumphs like Master of Reality and Vol. 4 (really, all their previous albums) such undeniable forces of nature. But thanks to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath's nearly flawless execution, even a more adventurous experiment like the string-laden "Spiral Architect," with its tasteful background orchestration, managed to sound surprisingly natural, and in the dreamy instrumental "Fluff," Tony Iommi scored his first truly memorable solo piece. If anything, only the group's at times heavy-handed adoption of synthesizers met with inconsistent consequences, with erstwhile Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman bringing only good things to the memorable "Sabbra Cadabra", while the robotically dull "Who Are You" definitely suffered from synthesizer novelty overkill. All things considered, though, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was arguably Black Sabbath's fifth masterpiece in four years, and remains an essential item in any heavy metal collection.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/sabbath-bloody-sabbath-mw0000194838

Cover by Drew Struzan

BlackLab - Warm Death

 #BlackLab #doom metal #stoner metal #post-metal #shoegaze #sludge #psychedelic metal #witch metal #Japanese #music video

When you hear the phrase ‘dark witch doom’, it’s hard to shake off thoughts of Hammer Horror clichés and the kind of retro-flared, post-hippy rock that took Coven as a starting point and never really bothered to take it anywhere else - thankfully, BlackLab take that label and drag it right into the Stygian mire where it belongs. Originally formed in Osaka as a three-piece, they soon settled on the line-up of Yuko Morino and Chia Shiraishi as the ideal vessel to transport their sound, a colossally loud mix of Sabbathian doom, sludge and noisy punk-tinged insanity. Following on from the success of Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0, a re-recording of early demo tracks made for London’s New Heavy Sounds, they have quickly set about delivering the aptly-titled Abyss in time for a UK tour that, as with so much lately, will have to wait. Still, we have Abyss to vibe to in the meantime so The Sleeping Shaman decided to catch up with the devilish duo, find out where they’re coming from and where they’re yet to take us.

You’re often described as ‘Dark Witch Doom’ - how accurate do you feel that is? Does witchcraft or mysticism play any part in your sound?

Yuko: The person in charge of the shop that handled our self-produced CD used the expression. I liked that so much and then I describe myself so. I think it’s a phrase that expresses the character of the songs and sounds I make well. I like horror movies and mysteries stories, so they may have influenced my creations. When I write songs, I often get inspiration from those visuals. But those stories are not important - it’s just from visual stuff. Foreign media sometimes metamorphose us as Sadako. I welcome that, because she’s a superstar in Japanese horror movies. I believe in mysterious world. But unfortunately, I have no magic or mystery experience. I enjoy them daydreaming.

Chia: The term ‘Dark Witch Doom’ might convey the atmosphere of BlackLab’s sound. I like it. I’m not a witch, but I live on a spiritual basis. I might be a ‘star seed drummer’.

From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/interviews/blacklab-interview-with-yuko-chia/

Los Lobos - Reva's House

 #Los Lobos #chicano rock #roots rock #tex-mex #country rock #Americana #cowpunk #blues rock #folk rock #Mexican #1990s

Los Lobos has defined the East Los Angeles sonic landscape for nearly a half century. Following the musical trajectory of giants such as Ritchie Valens and Lalo Guerrero, who melded traditional Mexican music with other popular forms, Los Lobos has carried the torch of Chicano music into the present and has amassed a body of work that will be cherished, studied, and emulated for many years to come.
Formed in 1973 by guitarist/accordionist David Hidalgo and percussionist and lyricist Louie Perez, their joint eclectic musical interests led them to recruit two other students from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Guitarist Cesar Rosas and bassist Conrad Lozano joined and they decided to call themselves Los Lobos del Este. As young, music-loving Chicanos from the barrio, they were a product of their surroundings. African-American influences such as the blues, rock n roll, jazz, and doo–wop were a natural complement to the deep and soulful Mexican and Latin American sounds they had grown up with, such as the bolero, rancheras, music Norteña, son jarocho, son huasteco, and cumbias. Los Lobos utilized these multicultural influences to give birth to their unique sound. From back yard family parties, weddings, and Mexican restaurants, Los Lobos was quickly in demand amid the pre- and post- Chicano civil rights movement. In 1978, they recorded and released their first album Los Lobos del Este De Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East LA), which led them to more popularity and to connect them to the versatility and angst of the city’s punk rock music scene. Their association with the LA roots band, the Blasters, led to the addition of multi-instrumentalist Steve Berlin, who left the Blasters to join them, further expanding their sound.
The wildly successful soundtrack of La Bamba (1985) catapulted Los Lobos into international stardom, earning them industry recognition and a Grammy Award. Los Lobos responded to this success by releasing the traditionalist La Pistola y El Corazon (1988).  The band’s accomplishments do not overshadow their ongoing commitment to mentoring and elevating up-and-coming bands that have benefited from their trailblazing, such as Making Movies, Ozomatli, Chicano Batman, La Santa Cecilia, and Quetzal.
A “musician’s band,” Los Lobos’ lyricism and unique poetic prose, mostly manifested by lyricist Louie Perez, expresses the environment and consciousness of the barrio in relation to the world around it. Their delivery in English, Spanish, or Spanglish espouses the important ideas of humanity, pro-immigration, depression, love of self, community, and deep Mexican/Chicano culture and heritage. Each of their albums takes the sound of Chicano rock music into another stratosphere.  From: https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/los-lobos

Moby Grape - Indifference

 #Moby Grape #psychedelic rock #acid rock #folk rock #country rock #blues rock #West coast sound #1960s

Mention the name Moby Grape to a roomful of rock critics, and you'll hear nothing but praise for the 1960s San Francisco rock band. But aside from fans and critics, few people today have ever heard of Moby Grape. Why? Bad advice, bad breaks and bad behavior are three short reasons. Now that a label is trying to right these wrongs by reissuing the group's first five records, old problems still stand in the way. The name Moby Grape comes from an absurdist punch line: What's big, purple and swims in the ocean? But the band that influenced groups ranging from Led Zeppelin to The Pretenders was no joke. Neither was its 1967 debut, according to Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke.
"It's one of the few rock 'n' roll albums of any era that you can say, 'That is a perfect debut album.' The songwriting on it is memorable - you take those songs with you wherever you go. The triple-guitar orchestration - it's not just power chords. Everyone is playing melodies and counter-melodies and rhythms. Very funky, also very country, very punk, very surf. And they were all singers."
When other San Francisco bands were stretching out with long, psychedelic jams, Moby Grape was producing catchy three-minute songs that were composed, played and sung by each member. Moby Grape's drummer, Don Stevenson, calls the songwriting process a "collective consciousness." That "collective consciousness" was a little surprising, since these five guys had little history and a lot of differences. Guitarist Peter Lewis and bassist Bob Mosley came from Southern California surf bands. Stevenson and guitarist Jerry Miller played in organ trios around Seattle. Canadian-born Skip Spence had just left another San Francisco band, Jefferson Airplane. Yet all five members produced remarkably cohesive vocal harmonies.
The members of Moby Grape worked hard to achieve their tight sound, and they first caught the attention of fellow musicians like Buffalo Springfield and Janis Joplin during marathon rehearsals that ran from night until morning. Record-company executives eventually started showing up, and Moby Grape found itself in the middle of a bidding war. It signed with Columbia, which pronounced the band San Francisco's Beatles and spared no expense on its first album. But the label's decision to release five singles at the same time alienated and confused disc jockeys. Rolling Stone's Fricke explains: "Columbia really went to town. And yet they went to town at precisely the wrong time. That was an era when hype was suspect." The musicians didn't handle the hype well, either. At their record release party, some members were busted for pot possession and for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Guitarist Miller says the diversity that made their musical blend so rich was also pulling them apart.
"What we had was five guys just going completely nuts just looking for the leader," Miller says. "We couldn't even lead ourselves." Moby Grape's members grew increasingly frustrated with their manager, whom they believed had botched their chance to be included in the now-famous Monterey Pop Festival film. By the time they reached New York to work on their second album, the band was cracking up - and so was guitarist Spence.
"Skippy bumped into some people that turned him on to some hard drugs, tell you the truth," Miller says. "And that's when things started to unravel, 'cause Skippy started to unravel." In a drug-fueled psychotic episode, Spence attacked Stevenson's hotel-room door with an ax and ended up in the criminal ward of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. Sadly, Spence lived much of the rest of his life in California mental institutions.  From: https://www.npr.org/2007/12/21/17498799/moby-grape-just-cant-catch-a-break

The Broken Penis Orchestra - Easy Listening for Difficult People

 #The Broken Penis Orchestra #plunderphonics #noise #experimental #sound art #electronic #sound collage #psychedelic noise

a1 Timothy Leary in his death bed
a2 The pope's pot, penis and pussy
a3 A struggle for supremacy over the axe makes a good man humble
a4 Fornication under the control of the king
a5 Easy listening for difficult people
a6 The whore of Babylon
a7 Ball buster

Lots of collage-weirdness, not for stress-sensitive people. Dick Flick, conductor in chief, displays a wild and twisted array of sound collages that pull your ears through your brain and back again, (not unlike early Negativland or Nurse With Wound).

Leem Lubany - Peace Train

 #Leem Lubany #actress/singer #Israeli #world music #Cat Stevens cover #movie soundtrack #Rock the Kasbah

When noted film director Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man, The Natural, Bugsy, Wag the Dog, and many more) first read the script for his new film, Rock the Kasbah, he realized he needed the help of a pop icon: Yusuf Islam—that is, the singer/songwriter formely known as Cat Stevens. In this comedy (dark at times, sweet at times), which opens this weekend, Bill Murray plays a down-and-way-out LA talent manager who has but one act left in his falling-apart stable, a neurotic bar singer (Zooey Deschanel). Yet somehow he finds a gig for her: USO shows in Afghanistan. And off they jet to the war zone, where soon Murray’s only meal ticket abandons him, and he’s stranded in Kabul with no passport, no money, and no way home. Hijinks—and violence—ensue, as Murray falls into the world of sleazy arms dealers, cynical American mercenaries (including a tough guy played by Bruce Willis), and competing tribal warlords. But this is no adventure flick. It’s a tale of cultural and spiritual bridge-building—with laughs—because Murray, stuck at one point in rural Afghanistan, stumbles into a cave and discovers an Afghan teenage girl (Leem Lubany) singing beautifully. And the song she’s covertly crooning is Cat Stevens’ “Trouble.”
From here on, Murray has a mission: to get this Muslim teen on the Afghan version of American Idol, which has never featured a female performer. The film is based, as they say, on a true story, and the real-life Afghan woman who appeared on this television show, Setara Hussainzada, confronted tremendous opposition from religious and cultural conservatives; she even received death threats and fled Afghanistan for exile in Germany. Levinson’s film tracks a tale of female empowerment in the Muslim world, while — get this!— being respectful of the society it portrays. Most of the laughs it generates are at the expense of Murray’s character, not cheap gags aimed at the natives. As Levinson put it, he was looking to craft “a humanistic, dramatic comedy that dealt with the Muslim world in Afghanistan.”
The script, penned by Mitch Glazer (Scrooged, Great Expectations) had been knocking about Hollywood for years without being made, even though marquis-name Murray was attached to the project. “It was too foreign some said,” Levinson explains in a blog post. “Too much about that part of the world, not enough action, not a war film, too much about people, and in whispers, too much about Muslims.” But Levinson, Glazer, and the rest of the film’s team were able to get the movie going on a basement budget (just $15 million) — with the actors pocketing lower-than-usual rates — but they needed the okay of Yusaf Islam. At least, to a certain extent. Several Cat Stevens songs play a critical role in the movie, so much so that Stevens is something of an unseen co-star. And the film’s climax—slight spoiler alert—makes effective use of his anthemic “Peace Train.” So when Levinson read Glazer’s script and saw that it included these tunes, he asked, “Do we have the rights?” Not yet, he was told.
Usually, it’s not a big deal for a director to obtain the rights to use music in a film. The music supervisor contacts the folks who control the rights to a song and negotiates a deal. But it was not so simple in this case. Yusuf wanted to meet Levinson and Glazer. So on a spring afternoon in New York City, hours before Yusuf was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he and Glazer met with the singer at his hotel. There was a bit of apprehension on the filmmakers’ part. If Yusuf said no, they weren’t sure what they would do. “We didn’t know what we could use instead, what would get us there,” Levinson says. The Cat Stevens songs were instrumental to the story. (After all, how many Muslim-Western mega pop stars are there?) Yusuf had been sent a copy of the script, and shortly after the introductions were done, Levinson and Glazer were relieved: He liked the story and was excited by the prospect of being involved in the project. “He wanted to make sure his music was being used appropriately,” Levinson says. “And he saw exactly what we were trying to do with the whole idea of an Afghan Muslim young woman so taken with his music that she becomes a pop star and remains a Muslim.” Islam gave them a green light. “It was a key element to get into place,” Levinson notes.  From: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/cat-stevens-rock-the-kasbah-bill-murray-barry-levinson/

Octopus - Beyond the Center

 #Octopus #stoner rock #blues rock #hard rock #heavy metal #psychedelic rock #1970s retro #music video

Led by powerhouse vocalist Masha Marjieh and guitarist J Frezzatto (ex-Electric Six) and including ex-Big Chief bassist Matt O’Brien, the band soaks hard riffs and otherworldly atmospheres in wah-wah guitars, out-of-phase tones, grimy organ and a general sense of the children having pillaged the psychedelic pantry a few times before hitting the studio. Heavier than your average 70s-worshipping gang of stoners, but more colorful than unrefined metallic sludge, Octopus' Supernatural Alliance will rattle your lobes and juice your ‘nads.  From: https://octopus888official.bandcamp.com/album/supernatural-alliance-2

Spring is in the air. Depending on where you reside, this may or may not be a big deal. For those not residing in a paradise climate, this signifies the coming of tolerable temps and more regular doses of some much-needed vitamin D. It’s also a signifier that we can soon roll the car windows down, crank the jams, and make our best Maxell “Blown Away Guy” impression. With that in mind, red-eyed headbangers everywhere should be champing at the bit to blast the debut record from Detroit’s Octopus out in the open (and springtime-y, flowery, sunshiney) air. Supernatural Alliance beams with an invigorating, revitalizing energy that the rock ‘n’ roll (and our seasonal affective disorder) has been missing lately. One look at that album cover should give you an idea of exactly what you’re in for: fantasy, sci-fi, ardor, majesty, and triumph.
Still, like their aqueous namesake, Octopus are a slippery group to tack down in spite of their mostly retro tendencies. Sometimes you get a Master of Reality-era Iommi stomp complete with undulating tom work (“Beyond The Center”), others a nearly Blue Öyster Cult haunt (“Sword and the Stone”). Then there’s moments like the overdriven title track where they mesh a full-commit stoner rock lead with a glossy, celestial synth foundation, leavening things to a smooth and almost floaty glide. By shifting the weight of the song to the full-throated powerhouse chorus, there’s a nifty dynamic balancing act taking place that never leaves the track feeling thin or uneven. This consistent shapeshifting becomes a varied and eclectic package,  the band to touch upon many throwback microcosms. Masha Marjieh’s commanding vocals bind everything together nicely. Her power and delivery suit the high intensity regimen the group doles out, and she handles herself well during the albums few dialed back moments. Album standout “All the Love” (which brings to mind “Planet Caravan” in all the best ways), slows things down at the perfect moment – disarming listeners before they surface again with a potent closing duo.
While a synthy foundation beds most of the record, they avoid entering corny waters that seemed to have doomed everyone in the 80s. Octopus masterfully modernize the keyboard-driven, shag-carpeted sound. A perfect world would have “Strike (While the Iron is Hot)” playing in the background of a dim and smoky pool hall where too-cool-for-school lyrics like “I see that the squeeze ain’t worth the juice” can be said un-ironically and the clapped-along gang vocal chorus can be belted out with reckless abandon – it’s basically modernized Joan Jett in terms of ‘tude and songwriting acumen – what more can you want? Little touches like the way Adam Cox’s piano key slides cozy up with ferocious organ roars put this track over the top, it’s an approachable, yet dense pop track.
Psych rock has largely been a west coast staple, but if the waves made here by Octopus are any indication, we might not be looking coastward for the next great offering of stellar metallic psychedelia. Supernatural Alliance is an eye-opening debut, delivering the goods like seasoned vets instead of stumbling on their first rodeo. It’s a pleasure to hear a band craft something this well-rounded with such confidence, much less as a first impression. There will be obvious parallels to be drawn to Vancouver’s Black Mountain (keyboard/synth heavy compositions, superbly tight songwriting, stylistic variety), which is about as great as a compliment as there can be for this particular style of stoner rock.
From: https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2018/03/22/octopus-supernatural-alliance/