Southern Avenue - Don't Give Up

If Southern Avenue were a superhero group, like the Avengers, my origin story would be the wildest one. I’ve been playing guitar for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Tel Aviv, listening to my dad’s blues records like Chess, Verve, Alligator, Stax, ZZ Top and all I ever wanted to do was play like the guys on those albums. When I was 8, my dad found me a guitar teacher turned into mentor, a Black American musician out of Birmingham, AL who had played with Tina Turner and James Brown. He became my mentor for 10 years. Every week, he taught me how to play the blues, how to play jazz, and most importantly, how to respect the music and where it came from. He was a sign of what was ahead, even if I couldn’t see it then
Fast forward to 2012. I was touring Europe with my own band, and my lead singer at the time was my "high school sweetheart". I heard about a competition that could get us to Memphis - the home of the blues! We won the first leg of the contest, flew to Memphis, and made it to the semi-finals. From there, I managed to book a full U.S. tour. For two years, we hit the road together. Me, my girlfriend, and the band. Along the way, early on, I met a guy who treated me like family. He became our “manager” and helped us book gigs. Everything felt like it was moving forward. We all shared a house together and just had a great time. Felt like I am living the dream.
Then one night, she told me the truth. They had been sleeping together. They were in love. I was crushed. I was now alone. I went outside, laid down on the front lawn, looked up at the sky, and asked God, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Please… show me this is leading somewhere. Imagine being forced to play shows every night with your ex and your ex-best friend, knowing what happened. It was like out of a movie. I had nowhere to go. I was living in our van, bouncing between Walmart parking lots around Memphis. I felt like I was buried. I needed to be bring myself back to life. So I did the only thing I knew how to do… I worked. I wrote Don’t Give Up for myself and used it as a mantra.
Then I asked someone who’s the best singer in Memphis that also writes? They said, “Tierinii Jackson.” I saw a video of her and instantly felt like I was looking at a queen. Not just someone who could save my career, but someone who could be the creative partner I had always dreamed of working with. When she told me her sister TK played drums, I said, Bring her in! Then I saw TK play. She was 19 and already playing with more fire and soul than most drummers twice her age. I knew this was something rare.
The few months we toured together - still under my name - were healing. Every day felt lighter. I started to feel joy again. I remember dropping them off at home after tour and heading back to sleep in my van at Walmart. But I wasn’t broken anymore. I felt alive. I felt like God had answered my prayer. That’s why I didn’t give up. That’s why I had to go through all that pain. Little did I know that in just a few years the Jackson sisters will become my entire universe.
Southern Avenue was born when the three of us realized we had something real. We trusted each other. We shared values. We made each other better. It starts with Long Is the Road, which is my story. Then Upside brings in Tierinii’s voice, telling me to leave the pain behind and keep looking up. Found a Friend In You is about how we met and found real, honest friendship. So Much Love captures how we felt during that time - full of hope, healing, and joy. If I hadn’t been cheated on, lied to, and left with nothing, Southern Avenue wouldn’t exist. Our paths never would’ve crossed. God works in mysterious ways. But we trust those ways. We stick together. This album is special because it’s the truth. These songs are our real stories. And I thank you for tuning in. -Ori Naftaly.  From: https://www.southernavenuemusic.com/post/the-story-behind-long-is-the-road

My Little White Rabbit - Secret

In this winter season where the sky is dark and the mood is gloomy, some psychedelic and colorful tunes are much needed… And so as soon as I saw the news of Wucan announcing a gig at Hamburg’s intimate venue Logo, I was beyond excited. This show was quite special for certain reasons. Firstly, the show was officially the last concert of 2019 for me, which will have a special place in my heart. Secondly, not only the headliners Wucan were announced but they brought two other amazing acts, My Little White Rabbit and Motorowl. So this gig was a perfect opportunity to get heavy and colorful!
My Little White Rabbit is not a foreign name to me as I already experienced their magical performance last year for the first time– surprisingly also around autumn/winter, when they opened for Lucifer. These Hamburg-based rockers make an interesting mix of psychedelia, blues rock and 60s pop. Their newest release “Bullets & Poor Hearts” was released this year and so it was time to celebrate and get lost in the beautiful tunes!
There was a bit of everything that MLWR offered for the chill Hamburg audience; the ‘rock’ sound with songs like “Neckbreaking Ride” and “Bullets” but also the ‘soft and mellow’ approach as in during “Poor Hearts”. As a matter of fact, this nice harmony of both aspects of their live show was what made them different than the other two acts of the night. This is indeed their interpretation of this style and there were many perfect moments – from the keyboards to the frontwoman Rike’s vocals – for everyone to just lose themselves to the music and enjoy the organic and sincere tunes. Overall, MLWR was the perfect opener for this night. Personally, I could also feel and see that the band gets better with each performance and it will surely be a delight to watch them live in the future and listen to the tunes they will deliver!  From: https://tempelores.com/?p=31878

Type O Negative - The Dream Is Dead

In 1996, metal was in an interesting and not very promising position. Metallica by this point were in the beginning stages of their much maligned Load (1996)/ReLoad (1997) era, which saw them become more rock and less thrash. Grunge had been the vogue form of rock for the last couple of years that ended with Kurt Cobain’s exiting of the mortal coil in 1994. R&B and hip-hop were slowly becoming the next musical zeitgeist. Alt-rock also rose to prominence with the rise of successful young punk adjacent bands like Green Day, Blink-182 and The Offspring. If you wanted the heavy stuff, you still had to tape trade and follow zines. Black metal was well into a second wave, the golden age of death metal would see a last great album in the form of None So Vile (1996) before the genre would hibernate for roughly a decade and nu metal was quickly rising to the forefront with bands like Korn and Rage Against the Machine leading the charge. Yet, there was still a strong fanbase for a genre that began earlier in the decade that still held a sizable following: gothic metal.
The earliest traces of the gothic metal sound could be linked back to the forefathers of doom: namely Candlemass, Trouble, and Saint Vitus. Doom would continue to evolve into the early part of the 90’s with albums such as Paradise Lost’s seminal Gothic (1991) being seen as the true launch point for bands like Theatre of Tragedy, The Gathering, Katatonia, and countless others, but while most of those European bands focused on more of a theatrical and grandiose form of gothic doom, a band right across the pond, in the Big Apple, would begin to infect the subgenre with their Halloween-esque image and melting pot of influences. That band was Type O Negative. To understand the unique position that this band was in at the time, you must dig into the past just a little bit. While we know the Drab Four for their popular MTV hits, their origins are much more sinister and heart wrenching as you’d expect.
No matter how you spin the story, the Type O Negative saga begins and ends with Petrus Thomas Ratajczyk, who would come to be known the world over as Peter Steele. The Red Hook, Brooklyn native began small with childhood band Fallout, which included his friend from youth: Josh Silver. The group recorded a two track single before breaking up soon after. A few years would pass by in which time Steele would form Carnivore. Compared to most other crossover thrash bands at the time, Carnivore’s self-titled (1985) debut eschewed politics and teenage beer runs in favor of barbaric lyrics involving “fighting, feasting, fucking…” in nearly every track. The S/T was and remains a controversial piece of underground metal and the ante was upped even more on 1987’s Retaliation, which saw such family friendly titles as Race War, Jesus Hitler, and S.M.D (Suck My Dick). By this time, Steele had begun to see that playing apocalyptic NY crossover wasn’t satiating his musical appetite. The artistic direction that Steele sought was then kamikazed by an event that is still semi shrouded in mystery but would alter his life and the lives of untold millions.
Shortly after Carnivore’s disbandment, Peter Steele would experience one of the worst things anyone can be acquainted with: his significant other cheated on him. Filled with self-hate and an unquenchable rage, he said, “October 15, 1989, I slashed my wrists. All I can say is that I fell in love with the wrong person.” This extreme response would lead to Steele contacting his old Fallout bandmate Silver, to form a new band called Repulsion with guitarist Kenny Hickey and drummer Sal Abruscato with Steele himself again handling bass and vocal duties and Silver on the ebony and ivory. The group hastily recorded a demo entitled None More Negative that would eventually attract the attention of Carnivore’s former label: Roadrunner. At the time, the band wished to re-record all the material from the demo to which Roadrunner responded with a resounding no. During this time as well, the band had to change their name due to it already being taken by the Flint, Michigan grindcore band. They would change the name to Subzero shortly after with the band members also getting matching tattoos with a circle and minus sign. Frustration would strike again when the group discovered that Subzero had also been taken by a local band. Steele, understandably frustrated, tried to think of something that would link the tattoos with the band’s image as doom mongers gone hardcore. Lo and behold the prophetic Red Cross radio advert asking for type o negative blood donations that day. Thus, Type O Negative were born.  From: https://www.heaviestofart.com/post/type-o-negative-october-rust-retrospective  

Mellow Candle - Sheep Season

Mellow Candle were a band that started in 1963 in Dublin, Ireland. In their time they managed to press two singles and release Swaddling Songs, which is still highly regarded among fans and collectors of psychedelic folk. Album was released by Deram in 1972. Swaddling Songs is an extremely well crafted progressive folk rock album with beautiful female vocal duets.

Mellow Candle began at Dublin’s Holy Child Convent school in 1963 with three very young girls – Clodagh Simonds, Alison Bools (later O’Donnell) and Maria White. They were singing some cover songs and were influenced by another Irish schoolgirl trio called Maxi, Dick & Twink. Before adopting the name “Mellow Candle” they were called “The Gatecrashers.” 

Who were some major influences?

Clodagh: Before meeting David – Omar Khayaam, Phil Spector, Dylan, the Beatles, T Rex, Paul Simon – that would have all been schooldays. Later, Dave brought a whole raft of other influences…..the most enduring of which – for me, anyway – were probably The Incredible String Band and Joni Mitchell.

Alison: Helen Shapiro, The Incredible String Band.

Did you play many gigs? What were some of the venues you played? Who were some of the artists you appeared with?

Clodagh: We didn’t actually play out all that much. Our manager, Ted Carroll, tried in vain to get us to firm up our live experience and our fanbase in Ireland before heading off to London, but here weren’t many venues in Ireland at the time which would have been available to us – Ireland then was still dominated by showbands and dance halls. Our very first gig was at Liberty Hall, Donal Lunny booked us to open for the Chieftains on St. Patrick's Day. They weren’t big stars then – they were all still working at their day jobs – and had a small but intense, mostly middle-aged or elderly, following. Who hated us – I remember clearly some old biddy literally trying to hit me with her handbag when we came off. We had a residency for a while at Slattery’s on Capel Street, again thanks to Donal. We played the Wexford Festival, and got noticed there by John Peel – we played the first Ballyvaughan festival in Clare, and we played the National Stadium a couple of times, opening for the likes of Thin Lizzy and Steeleye Span. We opened for Donovan at the RDS once. But any other gigs were pretty small and local, civic parks, tennis clubs, and so on – and I think in retrospect Ted was right, we were fairly wet behind the ears when we arrived in Kilburn in 1971. We hardly played at all in England, just a handful of gigs – I think we played at some kind of festival where Genesis were headlining, and somewhere along the line we shared a billing with Lindisfarne – but were rather harshly criticized by agents Ted had invited along. And he had his hands very full with Thin Lizzy, the other band which he managed – so the whole Let’s Move To London thing went a bit squiffy really.

Alison: We didn’t play as many gigs as we would have liked due to the fact that it was difficult to place a band that was both folky and rocky. Some of the Dublin venues we played were Liberty Hall, The Mansion House, The National Stadium, The RDS, Slatterys and The Marquee in London. We appeared with Alan Price & Georgie Fame, Donovan, Arthur Brown, Genesis, Thin Lizzy, Steeleye Span, to name a few.

What was the writing and arranging process within the band? Did anyone else in the band write?

Clodagh: In the schoolgirl version of the band, I was doing all the writing and we’d work out the harmonies together. But when Mellow Candle Mk II started, Dave was a big influence, he was older than us, and very much more experienced – he was a big fan of Yes and Zappa, amongst others – and Pat the bass player was a huge Jethro Tull fan – so we’d work out quite complex arrangements together for the backing, and also for the vocals. Alison began writing then, and Willy did some lyrics, so there were four of us writing – we co-wrote Sheep Season, which I think in retrospect was one of our best songs.

Alison: Clodagh Simonds, Dave Williams and occasionally William Murray all wrote within the band so the songs were quite varied with four of us in the writing process.

Swaddling Songs was released by Deram (Decca’s imprint) with David Hitchcock taking care of production. The album was recorded in a very short space of time in December of 1971. Alison recalls: “The sessions were full on and lengthy but thoroughly consuming and enjoyable. I was delighted with the finished product. I felt it was extremely creative.” What can you say about single “Feeling High” / “Tea with the Sun” (1968), released by SNB Records? Did it garner much airplay or chart in any markets?

Clodagh: Being completely clueless about the music industry, I had decided (at the ripe old age of 14) that the way to go was to send a demo tape to a Radio Luxembourg DJ. So I borrowed a reel to reel tape recorder and one afternoon, myself, Alison and Maria recorded about six or seven songs, and I sent it off to Colin Nicol. Several weeks later, he got back to me and said that he could get us a contract with SNB, which was a subsidiary of CBS. A certain amount of negotiation took place between him, and the parents – he came over to Ireland in order to convince them he wasn’t a child molester or a conman – and off we went. It was an amazing experience recording it – seeing London, being taken to Carnaby Street! Walking into the studio and hearing a big grownup orchestra play my funny little songs was a pretty unforgettable experience too. But the highlight, for me, was bumping into Marc Bolan coming out of a lift at Trident Studios. I was utterly gobsmacked – I was a huge T Rex fan. The single got very little airplay, and only on Radio Luxembourg as far as I know – but that didn’t stop the three of us staying up practically all night, for weeks, waiting to see if it would be played.

Alison: We were very young girls when we recorded Feeling High/Tea with the Sun for SNB. It was a surreal experience to go to London and record with an orchestra and Cliff Richard’s backing singers, who were also on ‘Alfie’ by Cilla Black, arranged and recorded with Burt Bacharach. I watched a clip of that on YouTube a while back and was blown away by how good they all were. The single got a bit of airplay to begin with. I got very excited when it played in the early hours of the morning on Radio Luxembourg. I didn’t get much sleep hoping it would come on the radio just after it was released. It was difficult to get me out of bed in the mornings and I always had to run up hills to get to the train for school. I often missed it and spent the time waiting for the next one calming down my aching lungs.

What can you tell us about cover artwork?

Clodagh: It was a take-off of W Heath Robinson – I remember going to see it when it was still being completed, we all liked it a lot. I was never too sure about the goofy sleeve notes though, I think Willy wrote them.

Alison: Unusual black and white cover by David Anstey, who worked mainly for Decca Records.

Would you share your insight on the albums’ tracks?

Alison: I think the songs should speak for themselves. “Boulders on My Grave” has some Irish style lilting in it although we didn’t know what lilting was back then. There’s a whole competition for it in the Fleadh Cheoil in Ireland. “Reverend Sisters” is widely recognised as a reference to our convent school upbringing and I mentioned something about “Messenger Birds” earlier. A lot of my work has religious references, i.e. Heaven Heath, something I am still doing in recent songwriting. It’s difficult to get away from the Catholic influence.

To what do you attribute the album continuing to be held in such high esteem among music collectors?

Alison: Swaddling Songs is a niche cult classic and held in high regard amongst musicians and listeners as well as collectors. It has been an influence on a number of musicians working in the late 80s, 90s and onwards. It is completely original and has cross-genre appeal in a rather offside way.

How did you see the acid psych folk scene back in the late ’60s, early ’70s? What were some other bands, that you would like to mention? Any band, that perhaps didn’t make a record, but were extremely good?

Clodagh: I was completely unaware of that scene before David came along. Nobody thought of it as “psych folk” back then – there were just some acts which were a bit more folksy, and some which were a bit more prog rock, and some that were neither quite one nor the other (like us!). I resonated more strongly with the folksy ones, like the String Band, Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Syd Barrett, Laura Nyro. It was a huge honour to be asked to play and sing with Thin Lizzy – that was my first ever session. Phil was a bit of a God in Ireland in those days. Willy was into some pretty cool alternative music – he’d been with the Canterbury set – Kevin Ayers, Mike Oldfield – for whom I did my next lot of sessions, but that wouldn’t have been folk, really. And yes, there is one person who really stands out who seems to have been totally forgotten, and knocked me out – Michael Hurley, whose album Armchair Boogie, Ted Carroll introduced us to – to this day his song “The Werewolf” is the only song I can play on guitar. And it remains one of those “I Wish I’d Written That…” songs, for me. He was something else, he was his own man – completely outside of fashion. And brilliant.

Alison: Sometimes there were music jams that had they developed into a proper band, they might have made some great records. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, a lot of musicians hung out and improvised together, including the trad music players. It was an extremely fertile and creative time with far too many excellent groups to mention. We had the same manager, Ted Carroll, as Thin Lizzy whom we admired for many reasons, not least because Phil Lynott was exceptionally cool. There were quite a few superb Irish bands around at the time and we had a lot of respect for each other. Then when we got to England, we found there was a great music scene going on there. We never got to the U.S. which was a pity.

Would you discuss some of your most memorable moments in Mellow Candle and what made them so?

Clodagh: The whole MC journey was so vivid, and there were so many rites of passage. The exhilaration of going to London and making the first single – the sense that your dreams could actually come true. The rather forlorn period where I thought I was going to go solo – the realization that I just had to accept whatever landed on my plate, adjust, and keep moving. The exhilaration of returning to Ireland and David forming MC Mk II – the enormous excitement of working with electric instruments, roadies, PA systems and so on. The wobbly feeling when the first bass player, Pat, left, and the gnawing suspicion that “being in a band together” might not be all that simple after all. The sense of camaraderie when we first arrived in London, with a new bass player, Frank – and shared a house. The anxiety that followed the news that Ted Carroll wasn’t going to be managing us any more. The disbelief and massive anxiety that came with the revelation that all our money (such as it was) had been handed over by our new manager to a con man who claimed to have been organizing a tour of Holland – this, at a time when things were already looking challenging for us, to say the least. The return of the wobbly feeling when Frank said he was leaving because we weren’t doing enough drugs. The even more wobbly feeling when Steve, the new bass player, started saying he wasn’t too happy, and then Willy joining in the chorus. And then the horrible sense of inevitability when the band broke up and we went our separate ways. Many moments of joy and exhilaration, and just as many of anxiety…. it wasn’t an easy ride, to be honest, but it was full of important learning curves!

Alison: Because I was young, the entire period of the existence of Mellow Candle was memorable. Going to London for the first time, rehearsing whole days cut off from the rest of the world, living with the other members of the band (I remember that house and garden in Mill Hill so well – No. 1, Sunnyfield), traveling and hanging out with other musicians, the album and so much more. To this day I have a good relationship with our decent, music loving manager Ted Carroll.

Would you mind answering question about psychoactive substances? Did in your opinion psychoactive or hallucinogenic drugs played a large role in the songwriting, recording or performance processes?

Clodagh: The reason Pat, the first bass player, left was because he felt we were smoking too much dope. The reason Frank left was because he felt we weren’t dropping enough acid. So I suppose drugs played a part in that sense…. but we could see people around us getting really fucked up, and none of us really wanted to go there…. we were relatively tame, fun-loving hippies.

Alison: Mind altering substances and spiritual influences played an auxiliary part but hard work was our driving force and creative fulfillment our main focus.

From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2016/03/mellow-candle-interview-with-clodag.html

Glass Skies - Light Rays

Glass Skies are a psychedelic rock band who write tunes about the good times and feeling good. Since beginning in late 2012, Glass Skies have played local shows with: Pond, The Datsuns, Brant Bjork, Everclear, The Delta Riggs, Kingswood and Deep Sea Arcade. Now they've been announced as the support act for Regurgitator's Adelaide show... sweet. The band also have a fascination with documentaries, and which musicians they think would make great narrators. “As much as we’d like David Attenborough to live forever, we are going to need new blood.”

1. John McCrea (Cake)
A documentary on how the human race is destroying the environment. John’s lyrics are usually about his ill feelings towards the human race, so this could be the next logical step. He could be the next Attenborough as he has an interestingly calming, yet serious voice. If our band blew up this would be one of the first passion projects off the rank.

2. Max Cavalera (Soulfly/ Sepultura)
A documentary about fire ants using his brutal singing style. Fire ants defeating another colony would be a great start as it involves his favourite topics: uprising and war. He could continue to release his rage through film well into his old age without ever having to tour.

3. Snoop Dogg
A documentary based on Yellowstone National Park. Narration on the trippy sky, the animal’s use of camouflage and their mating rituals. Constantly comparing all things to getting high, the hood, 'being gangsta' and his love of the ladies.

4. Marilyn Manson
A documentary on gun culture in America. He is a really smart, funny and insightful guy who has already done a lot of research on the topic. It’s a no-brainer.

5. Ghostface Killah (Wu-Tang)
A gangster-based children’s documentary series about the animal kingdom similar to ‘Totally Wild’ or ‘The Most Extreme’. Constantly getting blazed and interacting with the animals, telling the female zookeepers how ‘fly’ they are and then finishing with a segment at the end of each show where he raps about all the animals he has met.

From: https://scenestr.com.au/music/5-musicians-we-d-like-to-see-narrate-documentaries-with-glass-skies

Emily Steinwall - Welcome to the Garden

Welcome to the Garden is a gorgeous meeting of jazz, pop, and rock music that came seemingly out of nowhere (March) to sweep me off my feet. I guarantee that you’ll be shaking within the ten minutes it takes for the title track to introduce you to the album. It presents love as an all-encompassing primordial force whose harbingers are these layered, echoing vocals and creeping guitars. It should be jarring then that the remainder of Welcome to the Garden drops that menace in favor of bringing love back to the earth of here and now but it isn’t. Emily Steinwall may leave the horror on the opener, but she never loses the awe once she gets personal. The project morphs over its 40> minute runtime from a cosmic power to a lone lover whispering words of comfort and it is absolutely breathtaking to witness. The passion in Steinwall’s voice soars instead of rumbling, while the dance that the piano, synthesizers, and strings do becomes almost joyful as they all gradually come closer together and start working in unison. Welcome to the Garden starts imposing, but it grows more tender with each song, shedding the barriers and abstractions to wind up as accommodating as it needs to be. With her debut, Steinwall has created a bonafide odyssey, one that I will take part in wholeheartedly as many times as I am asked.  From: https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/electricmess/album/427343-welcome-to-the-garden/

Deep Purple - Maybe I'm a Leo

Though not without its moments, 1971’s Fireball described something of a non-descript holding pattern for Deep Purple. Not a bad album as such it was, artistically at least, a curious underachiever compared to In Rock. What they needed was something with as much impact and which delivered them new standards to ensure their upwards path. With not a lot of spare change in the pocket as far as new material went, the recording session was a fraught affair. Yet out of such adversity, Purple dug deep into their reserves producing their strongest and most consistent set.
Released in 1972, Machine Head become the benchmark against which everything that followed would be judged against. In the canon of heavy rock this is an album replete with classic tracks. Concise in nature, killer punches are only ever a minute away no matter which song you play. Vocalist Ian Gillan excels himself on “Highway Star,” and “Never Before”, the latter an excellent single, released ahead of the album covering both pop, rock and some righteously funky turn-arounds. Blackmore dominates the album turning in some of his most understated and reflective playing on “When A Blind Man Cries” (the b-side to the single and not included on the original album) and of course, “Smoke On The Water.”
Its devastating simplicity is the foundation stone of the whole record and one of rock’s most archetypal riffs. Not only heavy as hell, it was insanely catchy and the long-haired denim-wearing world grasped it to their bosom without a moment’s hesitation. Detailing the burning of the casino near Lake Geneva (which caused yer actual smoke on the water), the lyrical content perhaps presaged the internal fires that would consume the group.  From: https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/3r3n/

Chimera - Come Into The Garden

It all started around 1963 when two Beatles groupies, Lisa Bankoff (piano) and Francesca Garnett (vocals) decided to start writing their own songs. After having a tape refused by EMI in 1965, they went to Rome where both their mothers were living. There they recorded a tape of their own songs but it remained a cassette until they came back to the UK in 1967.
It was in Rome, in May 1968, that they had the opportunity to approach Nick Mason while the Pink Floyd were taking part in a festival. Back in the UK, Nick Mason offered to become their manager with David Gilmour as producer. With Nick Mason as manager the two girls signed off a contract with Blue Morgan and assembled a band including Ian Milne on keyboards and two unknown musicians.
The band didn't last long so they had to hire the instrumentalists through Melody Maker. After some changes in the lineup, when they were recording the album, the label closed down. Nick Mason tried a deal with Atlantic, but the band rapidly disbanded.
Lisa Bankoff wrote: The project fell to pieces mainly because I had a car accident shortly after the recordings were finished and couldn't walk for a couple of years. Our producer was called Mal Luker. Almost all of those musicians appear in the album lineup: Mal Luker (The Smoke) who is currently a successful producer in films industry (OST of Pirates of Caribbean), the bassist Nick South (Alexis Korner), the guitarist Bob Weston, the drummer Roy Temro and the appearance of Nick Mason and Rick Wright. Atlantic declined its interest, then later Bob Weston joined the Fleetwood Mac.
There was a brief reunion in 1975 but nothing more happened until 1980 when ten surviving tracks were discovered in the Morgan's archives during a project for reissues. The tape was remastered from a cassette copy, but it remained in the archives only to be rediscovered in 2001, year of the final release of their album. A couple of tracks feature Nick Mason and Rick Wright. The album was released 32 years after being recorded. All their music, except those 10 tracks seemed lost forever, but 9 more tracks have been resumed somewhere and included in a later edition of the album. It's not official, but it looks like one of the reasons why the tracks remained unreleased was that Nick Mason owned the rights and didn't allow the material to be published. This is what a Lisa's friend says. Francesca and Lisa wrote a book about their life in London during the late '60s / early '70s called Making It! Famous Names and Silly Girls. A copy is in the Australian National Library (Lisa moved to Perth).
The music of Chimera is influenced by the British psychedelia of late 60s with folky elements mainly in the high-pitch voices and the use of acoustic guitars. With a bit more luck, they could have been predecessors to bands like Fairport Convention.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5780  

Mien - Earth Moon

It’s a modern-day origin story, a group of musicians that have never all lived in the same city and have rarely been in the same place at the same time. Yet Mien (pronounced ‘mean’, a word defined as ‘essence’) release their second album, Miien, on April 18, extending both their vowels and their textural psychedelic repertoire.
Their lead singer, Alex Maas, is well-known to Austinites. He’s fronted the Black Angels since they began in 2004. Alex and drummer Robb Kidd (who plays in Golden Dawn Arkestra and on Alex’s solo endeavors) are both based in Austin, yet John Mark Lapham (The Earlies, The Late Cord, The Revival Hour) lives in Abilene, TX, and Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone, The Datsons) calls Montreal home. Yet for today at least, they have all gathered for an Austin show and Studio 1A session. But how – and why – did Mien get started. Was Alex really in the market for another psychedelic band?
“I ran into Rishi at least 20 years ago,” Alex recalls, “during South by Southwest, right around the same time Black Angels started. I was at a Brian Jonestown Massacre show on Sixth Street. I remember a fight almost broke out. Then Rishi busts out his sitar. I hadn’t seen a sitar, especially with rock and roll. It just worked perfectly, so that’s how we first met.”
John Mark picks up the story. “I was in a band called The Earlies in England, and I think Rishi’s old band, the High Dials, opened for the Earlies one time. And we became friends. We kept in touch over emails. And I had this idea for a cover song that I’d been thinking about. I had it in my notebook, and then one day on some social media, Rishi posted that same song. It was by the band The Association from the 60s. I’d never heard anyone else mention or play this song. So I sent him a message, ‘I can’t believe you like this song. We’ve got to do a cover of it.’ And Rishi said, ‘We could get Alex from the Black Angels to do the vocal.’ It was just random. We weren’t really thinking we’re going to start a band. Let’s just record this song. We never even recorded the song, of  course, but we started recording our own. So that’s how it all got started.”
The outcome of their first experiment, a song called “Black Habit”, gave them all the enthusiasm to go further. “When I heard ‘Black Habit’,” Alex recalls,  I was like, ‘that’s a sound.’” It was. Veteran psychedelia mixes with Lapham’s swirling, Eno-esque electronics. It gives them a unique sound, and from the outset, Mien made clear they were interested in reaching beyond psych’s borders. 
“It became a blueprint for how we work,” John Mark recalls. ”Not only the methods, but also just the sonic direction we were going to go. We weren’t initially thinking about being a band. We’d record a song. And then when that song, ‘Black Habit’, started coming together, we thought we should do more. It just kept going until we finally said, ‘okay, I think that’s an album’s worth of material’.” The album was assembled piecemeal, sharing files, each of them working from their own locations. Each of them were busy with other projects so there was not much time to support the album. But they were happy with the results and more than willing to do it again.
“We were like, okay, now we’re a band,” John Mark recalls. “We’re going to record another album. But Covid hit, so we would have Zoom meetings like everyone else. And we were all so scattered and our heads were in so many different places. So we started setting goals, like, okay, we’re all going to do a little piece of music. It could just be 20 seconds, but we’re going to do something and it has to be done within a few days or a week or whatever, and we all had to present it to each other as like a show and tell type thing, just to to kind of motivate people. We had to fight through the Covid haze a bit, but we finally got there.”
All of them were writing, contributing ideas. “I might have a melody and some vocal lines that may or may not make sense to anybody else,” Alex says. “For me, it’s easier to find melodies and ask, ‘Hey, what do you hear when I sing this?’ It takes a certain trust for me to be able to do that, to hand it off. Like, ‘here’s some literal gibberish. But the melodies there, what can you do with that?’”
“That’s what I love about working with Alex” John Mark continues. “He’ll record vocal sketches that are not actual words, but he’ll do his melodies and his whole cadence and everything, and it sparks off so many lyric ideas for me. It’s really fun to be able to go through and start writing around that, filling in those spaces. Like the first time, everyone brings things to the table.”
Two years ago at SXSW, after months of working on these demos, they arranged to actually all get together for an actual recording session. “We had this concentrated time,” John Mark says. “Rishi was going to be here anyway with his band Elephant Stone. We had, I don’t know, 2 or 3 days in the studio to re-record a lot of stuff. A lot of times we’ll build songs with samples or loops. Sometimes we’ll keep that stuff and other times we’ll come back in and replay them with a live feel to it. That was one of the only times I’ve ever done that, where we were in the studio recording together.” Alex laughs. “It was crazy and mental.”
Essentially, the band had re-learn what they had recorded. And in the process of actually playing live, new ideas began to emerge.  And now, given their geographic distances and busy schedules, they are planning what was previously unthinkable. The Austin show is a kickoff. But suddenly, Mien seems like more than an internet recording project.
“We did one European tour to support the first record,” Alex remembers, and not much after that. And we just did 2 or 3 weeks in Canada. It was right after we had Luca on my son, literally a month after. My wife was really thrilled about that. We went over there and that was kind of it. We all had so many projects. And then Covid happened and at some point our hands were kind of tied in terms of what we could do. When you have something like this, a project where there’s four people living in different places, it’s just weird. To get everybody to commit to 2 or 3 weeks of touring, it’s almost impossible. Very tricky.”
Yet they seemed to have pulled it off. Their website has numerous European dates listed for April. “We just got a support tour,” Alex says. “I can’t say it is, for now. What it involves is everybody just being calm and clearing their schedules for everything, and just prioritizing it all.”  From: https://kutx.org/sessions-interviews/studio1a/from-an-internet-recording-project-to-an-actual-band-the-evolution-of-mien/

Derek And The Dominos - Bell Bottom Blues

Derek and The Dominos formed after working on George Harrison’s album All Things Must Pass. After that, they played a lot of different small clubs all over Europe. They made the album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. It’s there where Clapton met Duane Allman and a little later invited him to join them. Duane ended up turning Eric down because he believed in the Allman Brothers and he built them from the ground up. Eric was one of his guitar guys so it had to be a hard choice for him.
Clapton first heard about Allman when listening to Wilson Pickett’s version of Hey Jude for the first time and heard his guitar playing at the end of the song. He called up either Ahmet Ertegun or Tom Dowd and asked who was that guitar player? Eric has said that he has never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record. In 1970, Eric Clapton was experiencing emotional anguish over George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd.  He recounts writing the song for Boyd after she asked him to get her a pair of bell-bottom jeans while he visited the US.
Clapton repackaged this album and the first thing he did was to ask his attorneys…what is Bobby Whitlock going to get out of this? Bobby played keyboards and wrote a lot of the songs with Eric. The attorneys told Eric he would get nothing because he sold all of his rights. He was down at one time and had to sell everything. Eric and his attorneys went to the publishing company and bought back all of Bobby’s rights and handed it over to him without Whitlock even knowing.
Bobby Whitlock: Well, unbeknownst to me, Eric and Michael took their attorneys in to the respective Warner/Chappel and Universal and all the other companies and bought back my rights to my income and restored them and gave them back to me. Out of the blue. So all of my royalties have come back. And now it’s even more so, because it hasn’t been a month-and-a-half ago that I wrote him to explain how ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ came about, and I sent it to Eric and to Michael. Someone had come online and says something about, ‘Is this true that ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ was written about a pair of trousers?’ And I said, Yeah, well, it was that and this girl in France that Eric was seeing for a little while while we were there. I’d forgotten about Pattie [Boyd – subject of ‘Layla’] asking him about those pants.
Bobby Whitlock: “Eric met this girl, she was like a Persian princess or something, and she wore bell bottoms. She was all hung up on him – he gave her a slide that Duane (Allman) had given him and he wrapped it in leather and she wore it around her neck. She didn’t speak a word of English and they had to date through an interpreter. That relationship did not last but a week. He started the song over there, then when we got back to England, we finished it up in his TV room in Hurtwood Edge.”  From: https://powerpop.blog/2024/02/04/derek-and-the-dominos-bell-bottom-blues/

Jewel - Morning Song

It's a Sunday afternoon at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia. Employees are rushing around setting up for this evening's show.  This is the first Philadelphia headlining performance for 21-year-old Alaskan folk singer Jewel Kilcher – or just plain Jewel, as her friends, family and fans call her. Through the closed doors of the theatre waft the sounds Jewel's band practicing. In the bar area are a group of local rock journalists.  That's a scary sight at any time, made particularly daunting by the fact that they are catching an artist on the cusp of the wave of her career.
Jewel walks into the bar smiling, looking comfortable in a pair of jeans and a white top.  Looking much more blonde than you would expect from someone from the tundra state (due to Swiss descent,) she smiles and greets the throngs of press. Obviously, even at her young age, she's getting used to all the attention. As you talk to her, Jewel radiates a true happiness and trust of human nature – the type that could get annoying if not for the obvious strength and passion Jewel puts in these beliefs.
Born to musical parents – Jewel's dad was a well-known local pub singer and mom a music teacher – she took up music early. Playing with her dad and band as a young child, Jewel grew up on stage. As a teenager, Jewel decided to move to the mainland, ending up in San Diego.  There she waitressed, wrote poetry and songs, surfed, played local coffeehouses and lived in the back of her '79 V.W. Van.
Word got out about Jewel and soon she was working on Pieces Of You, her debut album, produced by legendary boardsman Ben Keith (Neil Young, Patsy Cline.) Released in late 1994, the album began a steady, long climb into the public consciousness. Despite critical acclaim, it sold slowly at first.   But her record label, Atlantic, stuck with it – much longer than most labels will go with an untested artist. Jewel steadily seeped into the news, playing Dorothy in a rock & roll version of The Wizard of Oz with Roger Daltrey, Debra Winger and Jackson Browne.  She had a rumored relationship with tough guy actor Sean Penn.  Then she made an appearance on VH-1 in concert with Melissa Etheridge, Joan Osborne and Sophie B. Hawkins. A year and a half after the album was released, the label re-issued Jewel's first single, "Who Will Save Your Soul?" and it has become a smash.
It still surprises Jewel. She never thought about music as making her famous. She was just looking for something to eat. Now she's in the midst of a mind-boggling tour.  It's been tough, but she can't help but smile. "I've just done forty (shows) in thirty days – had five days off the entire year. So, it's getting grinding. It won't always be this hard. But, I love doing it.  It beats waitressing. It's a kick. I thought I was going to steal toilet paper the rest of my life. I had no idea I would show up in Philadelphia and have a sell-out show... I'm not too cool to be excited, I guess. I'm a really excitable person, I'm not really a jaded rock & roll musician. This is all a kick for me. I'm really happy to have the opportunity."  From: http://www.popentertainment.com/jewel.htm

Affinity - I Am And So Are You

Like many bands riding on the crest of the jazz-rock wave in the early '70s, Affinity released one album and were just getting their footing when they decided to split up, despite the album being well received by the critics. They were fronted by Linda Hoyle, a powerful vocalist who sounds like a cross between Carole King and Julie Driscoll. The other band members were Mo Foster (bass), Mike Jupp (electric and 12-string guitars), Lynton Naiff (keyboards) and Grant Serpell (drums and percussion). Basically, their music is an eclectic mixture of a blues-rock with jazz, pop and folk influences as well as some rudiments of early '70s psychedelia. Their sound is very brassy and the Hammond organ omnipresent, the overall product sounding very progressive for its day.
Issued in 1970, their only official (self-titled) album shows much variety as well as plenty of soloing. As the excellent sound, musicianship and production will attest, it is a superb achievement for the times. Their material has since been reissued on different cd's, some featuring studio demos and full-band rehearsals. One of them is made up entirely of live instrumentals, recorded at a time when vocalist Linda Hoyle was temporarily hospitalized for a vocal chord operation, leaving the rest of the band on their own.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1100

Vartra - Live Nisville Jazz Festival 2021

Recently I came across Vartra, a Serbian band that explores world fusion, dark folk, and extremely ethereal music that to me is ideal music to write for a film score. Founded in 2017 by Siniša Gavrić and sisters Ivana and Aleksandra Stošić, Vartra takes musical inspiration from Slavic and Vlachian folk themes and Native American drumming. It’s different, it’s out there, it’s downright magical quite often, and I’m pleased to have them over for a chat.

Zdravo, from the other side of the world! So nice to have you on the blog. Can you tell the readers a bit more about Vartra, the meaning of the band’s name, how the project came together and what the first years of the band has been like?

Zdravo! Thank you for inviting us. As you mentioned in the introduction, we are heavily inspired by the southern Slavic relics present in the oral tradition of the Balkan region. Even though the Slavic influence is most notable in our lyrics and style of vocals, our musical inspiration is drawn from a far broader pool. We are combining different indigenous musical practices from various regions (such as shamanic drumming, didgeridoo, middle-eastern instruments etc.) as well as the influences of musical subcultures we all grew up with (80’s and 90’s ambient, metal, post punk, gothic etc.). The name Vartra comes from the Sanskrit word for protection, defense, warding off – chosen to complement the ritual healing and protection spells from the Balkan region that inspired our early works. The band was founded through a friendly artistic collaboration of Siniša Gavrić and the sisters Ivana and Aleksandra Stošić. In the first year of existence, the founding trio was mostly focused on composing and recording the music that is now our first album “Luna Noua”. During this time, we also produced and recorded a few music videos for the songs with the help of the performers from Ivana’s dance studio “Twisted Dolls”. As the album slowly came together, there was a need to share this music with the world and other musicians were recruited to the band to bring the instrumental variety of this music to life on stage. The current lineup includes Stevan Momčilović (didgeridoo, rattles), Andrej Bunjac (djembe, other percussion), Ana Katić (violin, backing vocals), Julius Velker (drums, sound engineer).

Where did Siniša connect with the Stošić sisters?

After a decade of living in North America, Siniša returned to Serbia in 2016. He was friends with Ivana since 2010 and upon his return they started to live together as roommates. Being a frame-drum and rattle craftsman, Siniša incorporated handmade instruments into his music compositions and included Ivana in the singing/song writing process. Sometime in 2017, Ivana’s pole art troop decided to develop a performance describing a Vlach ritual from Eastern Serbia “Dubočke Kraljice”. The idea was to compose and use original music reminiscent of the Vlach rituals but with a strong rhythm suitable for dance. That was when Ivana’s sister Aleksandra joined them bringing her methodical approach to the table. In four months, the three of them worked to compose 60 minutes of music for the performance. The completion of this project marked the beginning of their creative teamwork and future collaboration. After the festival, they started composing new songs, eventually recruiting new members and kicking off a successful series of live shows in the years that followed.

When I first heard Luna Nouà, I was reminded a bit of Heilung from Germany although a bit less freaky, a bit more mystical, and even more accessible (to me at least). I think it’s deep and rich music that definitely paints a picture. If there were an art exhibit inspired by Vartra, what are some art pieces you would like to see in the exhibit?

That is quite a compliment. Heilung is amazing! As to the art exhibit, that is an interesting and tough question. We would definitely like to see photos depicting old traditions like for example the work of Evo Danchev (we really admire his work) or works of Damselfrau. Definitely photos depicting traditional festivals (example the carnival of Vevcani in North Macedonia, Busójárás in Hungary). If the more classical art work or concrete art pieces are in question, maybe Albrecht Durer’s The four horsemen, Viktor Vasnetsov’s Sirin and Alkonost. A few more could be Nymphs Dancing to Pan’s Fluteby Joseph Tomanek, Dancing Fairies by Johan August Malmström, and all such magical, pagan and simply natural (as in mountain landscapes) paintings would fit very well.

The cover work for the album is quite stunning. Who did the artwork and what was the inspiration behind that visual and the album itself?

Thank you. Our art performer Anđela Vujić designed the album cover. It features the beautiful Luna moth, that represents intuition. The first album has a lot of influences from the cultural heritage of the Vlach ethnic minority in Eastern Serbia. The song Flori is inspired by the Vlachian ritual singing on the morning of the holiday Cveti. The holiday Cveti traditionally celebrates the beginning of the spring. The song Primovara (Spring) depicts the dawn of the holiday Cveti before the ritual performance is about to take place. The lyrics of the song Luna Nuoă are part of the Vlach oral lore as well, as one of the incantations for health, sung to the new moon. Other songs include fragments of Vlach oral lore (Roša and Jo Čero), or of Serbian incantations (Mrza, Razija). Žal (Mojot Dom) is inspired by transcendental experiences and written by Ivana Stošić (Macedonian language).

Checking my blog stats, I don’t have ­­­­­­­many­ people who are from your neck of the woods. How would you describe Serbia to someone who isn’t familiar with the country?

It is a beautiful country. If you love hiking or just being in nature you should definitely check out some of our many mountains. There are many well preserved medieval monasteries and fortresses open for tourists. Due to the centuries long Ottoman Empire occupation of the Balkans, our cultural heritage is a mix of Slavic and Oriental, which you can hear in the music, see in traditional dresses and architecture, taste in the food. You can also visit the prehistoric sites on our territory reaching all the way back to the Neolith era. The 20th century left Serbia with a lot of traces from the socialism era (Yugoslavia) – just by walking through the streets of any city in Serbia you cannot miss these. Serbian people are generally recognized as friendly hosts, so welcome!

I read that the lyrics are inspired by Vlachian incantations and performed in (Wallachian) language, Serbian, and Macedonian. Most people won’t be familiar with these languages, though music often taps into something more primal that connects us. Ideally, what would you want your music to evoke in listeners around the world?

We believe that the perception is quite individual. What we would like to evoke are cathartic experiences as per individual needs and without the given context (meaning of the lyrics for example). One of newer to date yet unpublished songs, Jerovine, is sung in a crafted language for this very reason. On the other hand, we decided to base our songs on the incantations (spells) from this region, because they are an important relic of our culture and history and unfortunately close to be forgotten. This is our way of giving them a chance to survive.

What are some of the most peculiar places where you have fans?

Thanks to our social media – Twitter, Facebook, Bandcamp, Youtube and Siniša’s online drum shop on Etsy we have found fans all around the world spanning multiple continents. Besides the Balkans, we came in touch with fans from both North and South America, Russia, North African countries etc. In the current day and age, it is difficult to reach audiences without a serious marketing budget but we are happy that no one reached by our music was left indifferent by it and that the base of people enjoying our works grows steadily every day.

You describe your shows as a cathartic experience, almost a healing ceremony. Dark but in a way where the darkness is drawn away from the spectator. Can you tell us more about that and what the intention behind the music is like?

Repetitive drumming, chanting and dancing were the core elements in rituals since the beginning of civilization when it came to ceremonial/healing practices. Although one might perceive our music as “dark” listening it for the first time, we use the same approach by incorporating the primal, organic sound with the mantric drumming and through the repetitive, atmospheric sound and simplicity of harmony - we believe we part with the darkness. Similar to shamanic healing, where the shaman leads an individual to face and recognize their traumas and guides them to overcome and heal, each individual spectator can experience this process for themselves by surrendering themselves to the sound and atmosphere around.

How many instruments are there in the album? I ask because beyond some more common instruments, the band performs on handmade drums and rattles crafted by Siniša. Also, how long does it take to make those instruments and where did he learn how to do this?

A lot. Percussions make the majority of our sound. They range from handmade frame drums and rattles, sticks, darbuka, djembe, rainstick to bells, cymbals etc. As for the melodic instruments, we use flute, didgeridoo, violin, keyboard, saz, electric guitar and the most perfect instrument of them all – the human voice. Siniša learned how to make frame drums in 2006 while he was in North America, following the traditional drum making from First Nation Tribes such as the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh etc. The whole drum making process takes a couple days to complete. After coming back to his motherland, Siniša developed and perfected his own style in frame drum making that is recognized by many as stunning craftsmanship infused with great energy.

From: http://jdestradawriter.blogspot.com/2021/03/creative-connections-vartra.html

Dungen - Nattens Sista Strimma Ljus

This month Stephanie Nicole Smith interviews one of her favorite bands – Dungen. If you aren’t familiar with their catalog of work, perhaps you have been sleeping under a rock. Swedish bred Dungen are quite possibly the best living psych band. “Allas Sak” (2015) is their eighth full length album and possibly their best album, thus far. I asked bassist Mattias Gustavsson and guitarist Reine Fiske about their recording process, best & worst tours, favorite gear and other projects they are involved in at the moment. Read the interview below and be sure to follow Dungen on all things social!

What are some of the other projects you guys have worked on and are working on?

MG: I was writing in a band called The Works, back in the early 2000s, before I left to study in Vietnam in the middle of recording our debut album. I’ve written and produced three records as Life on Earth! A project that sort of evolved, or expanded into Our Solar System, which has released two LP’s the last couple of years. One of them just the other week, actually! I also plunged into a solo project last year, called Hi Tom Low Tom, and released a cassette earlier this year. I also write and sing and what not in a pop band called AOP.

RF: The first band I was in was Landberk between 1991-1998. That’s when I started to actually work on trying to write songs, but it was always in collaboration with others. My older musical relationship with Stefan Dimle (of Mellotronen shop/label) led to us forming a one-off thing called Morte Macabre based on our love for soundtracks, mostly from 70’s horror films. Then we started Paatos, which I did one album with, then I got involved in Dungen and Gustav Ejstes a lot - that sort of took over. I have maybe written 5 songs on my own up to now. A current project called The Amazing, which is Christoffer Gunnrup doing the songs, is pretty much like working with Gustav. We get to be involved in the arrangements a bit, but most of it is already written. Anna Järvinen and her producer Mattias Glavå wanted to incorporate Dungen as backing band for her and since 2007 we all have been playing on and off with her, recording and touring her albums, now three in total. Lately, I have been involved with Elephant9 in Norway and I’ve also recorded with one of my absolute favorite bands of all time, the Norwegian band Motorspsycho out of my mom’s hometown of Trondheim. They deserve more praise I think. They have been going since 1989 and made about 20 albums by now.

Where did you spend your “coming of age” years?

MG: My coming of age was a ride! I moved away from home when I was 16 and got heavily depressed for years. I just couldn’t find my place anywhere. Totally lost! I was reading, painting and playing music non-stop as a sort of refuge. I started figuring things out, how to rudimentary understand people basically, in my mid-20’s. In a way, I feel like I am still coming of age.

RF: I was a kid playing guitar a lot, listening to my mom’s mix-tapes with a lot of 60´s music, playing along. My uncle and their cousins in Norway were very influential getting into music that, perhaps, was a little more demanding. I was an early Peter Gabriel-era Genesis-fan, as well as early Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd. Listening to that when everyone was into hardcore or punk has the typical “nerd” written all over it, but I found something in that complex and epic music. That deepened with the coming of the early 90’s when I sort of left my brief Mudhoney/No Means No/Nirvana period. I listen more to late 80’s, early 90’s music now than I did then, actually. School was o.k., music was always the escape in a way. Music became my muse, my sort-of language.

Where do you live and work now?

MG: I live in Stockholm and play music most of my time.

RF: I live just outside of Sodermalm in Stockholm with my amazing girlfriend and her 14 year old daughter and a rabbit named Oshi. I have always had a day job, but I just decided to quit in order to have more time for music. I’m also pretty fed-up of course. This year is quite busy, so I simply had to make a leap in this direction. We barely can make a living out of the music anyway, so I will work extra hours later this year I think - hope. Sometimes, I think the job has saved me from going out of my mind in a way, it demands certain routine in everyday life that you usually miss out on when you’re your “own boss”.

How long have you been in Dungen?  How did the name of the band come about? What does it mean?

MG: I started playing with Dungen sometime between 2001 and 2004. In the beginning it was just the odd gigs here and there as a substitute bass player. They were my friends! But since 2005 it’s been full time.

RF: I’ve been involved with Dungen since 2001. Gustav had the name already. It’s a place in Västergötland where he grew up on the other side of the small hill, or mountain, of Billingen, just out of Skövde. The name means “The Grove”, a small gathering of trees.

How would you describe your current band’s sound?

MG: Dungen sort of… rocks? Maybe the sound now is about some vague feeling of authenticity. Raw basic recording live in the studio as much as possible. Our live shows are a lot about the interplay between us, I think, and to create something ecstatic and ethereal. A release of some kind.

RF: That is for others to decide, I think. We usually get lumped into the psych bag, which is both right and wrong, in a way, it easily puts a stamp on the music. Gustav and the Dungen thing has always been very song-based with possibilities for improv and the odd craziness. Gustav has a strong sense for the structure of songs and he is a master in recording, producing, and creating a certain soundscape with his records.

What bands do you draw inspiration from?

MG: I like Can a lot. And early Kraftwerk, Amon Düül II and the whole german Kraut thing. I am really into the idea of sustained intensity by minimal means. Lately, I have been listening more and more to Ralph Lundsten.

RF: There are so many, The Beatles, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Tame Impala, and Kevin blew me away when I first heard it. I wanted to join the band sort-of. There was just an immediate click. He sent their first EP to Gustav to eventually work on the mix in 2008, or so, but Gustav thought the sound was already there. Now we are playing with them in New York this June. Amazing! I’ve always been very affected by Radiohead. Their guitars have a serene and very unique weave that is always breathtaking. I’m sort of a record collector and I’ve been into the Scandinavian psych/folk/prog scene of the late 60’s and 70’s since 1990, or so. I guess me and Gustav are the ones mostly affected by those players and the records they made. I’m also into a lot of the garage and beat/psych scene from the 60’s to come out of the U.S. New unearthed stuff still keeps popping up in these reissue times. The U.K around 1971 was just amazing. There were so many bands that made these amazing albums. I’m fascinated by the sound on those records too, some of them sound like they were recorded in cardboard boxes with tons of reverb; stuff like Egg, Arzachel, Julian’s Treatment, East of Eden, Van Der Graaf Generator, Comus, Trees, C.O.B., Blossom Toes, I could go on forever. Brazilian music, Aphex Twin, Fleet Foxes…

Who were your main early influences on your sound?

MG: I don’t know if I even have a particular sound! The bass playing on Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’ was an early influence. Also, Bella Linnarsson in Mecki Mark Men, and Jojje Wadenius on the Pugh albums.

RF: Kenny Håkansson, Hank Marvin, I guess, and Terje Rypdal. Jimi Hendrix, of course.

From: https://originalfuzz.com/blogs/magazine/114991556-five-minutes-with-mattias-gustavsson-and-reine-fiske-of-dungen?srsltid=AfmBOorYmmpalBcOjVYg82ZdPKzL6-lLJ_1_mrQMYG-xuSNAH1bH5Qa1

Laboratorium Piesni - Hé Oyáte

Laboratorium Pieśni (Song Laboratory) (world/ethno/spiritual/mystic folk music) is a female group of singers from Poland, created in 2013. Using traditional, polyphonic singing they perform songs from all over the world, mainly: Ukraine, Balkans, Belarus, Georgia, Scandinavia, Poland and many other places. They sing a capella as well as with shaman drums and other ethnic instruments (shruti box, kalimba, flute, gong, zaphir and koshi chimes, singing bowls, rattles etc.), creating a new space in a traditional song, adding voice improvisations, inspired by sounds of nature, often intuitive, wild and feminine. The traditional songs are often brought from their source – different regions of Poland, Europe and world, by the members of the group - having their unique history and evolving in the course of work. Finally, they are performed in a new form – traditional or enriched.  From: https://medicinefestival.com/labatorium-piesni/

Future Clouds & Radar - Dr. No

A relatively unknown but intermittently astounding indie pop album that answers the question: What happens when you give a power pop refugee with unbounded musical creativity access to a studio and the latest technology, but no editor? You get a sprawling double-album that ranges from glorious baroque pop music to silly self-indulgent experimentation, peppered with a handful of insanely catchy earworms.
Robert Harrison is the co-founder, singer, and guitarist for Cotton Mather, a crunchy power pop outfit active in the late 90s and early 00s (and recently returned after a long hiatus). During that band's time off, he recorded a ton of material with various musicians under the moniker of Future Clouds & Radar. Musically, think edgy, post-Beatles psychedelia-tinged pop like XTC side project Dukes of Stratosphear, Jellyfish, Beagle Hat, and the Pillbugs. Shades of Guided by Voices and the Kinks crop up as well.
As noted, given the seeming lack of limitations, it's a bit of a gleeful, kid-in-a-candy-shop mess; it could have been pared down into a fantastic single LP. As it stands, it's more in White Album (or Wowee Zowee) territory, but if you work your way through it you're going to find plenty that grabs you. Personal favorites include they joyously tuneful "Build Havana" (sounding like singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston with a bubbly electronic beat); the mid-tempo psychedelic pop of "Hurricane Judy"; the orchestral Beatlesque flourishes of "You Will Be Loved"; the galloping riff-rocker "Holy Janet Comes In Waves"; the relatively straightforward sunshine pop balladry of "Our Time"; and the skewed, Fountains of Wayne on acid "Altitude." But the two dozen or so songs here kinda beg for you to jump around and program your own faves.  From: https://www.jitterywhiteguymusic.com/2020/08/future-clouds-radar-st-2007.html

Hey Elbow - Martin

Swedish experimental pop trio, Hey Elbow just released their debut album, Every Other, and it’s been running through the Grimy Goods speakers non-stop. With a unique marriage of ethereal sounds and distortion, Hey Elbow’s eccentric blend of music makes for quite an exquisite debut. The group took its curious name from an aerobics warm-up exercise they were introduced to during a live concert by The Knife. But that’s not all that curious about them. The trio comprised of Julia Ringdahl (vocals/guitar), Ellen Petersson (horns/electronics) and Liam Amner (drums) has no clear cut leader or front-person among the group. Instead, the improvisational influences of their jazz background foster a more collaborative, free-flowing approach to cultivating their unique sound that could intrigue any passing listener.
The poignant vocal swells and galloping beat of “Martin” followed by the fiery, punk number “Rael” got my gears grinding and was a real eye opener at the top of the album, both served up against a backdrop of brass and electronic drone. “Ruth” felt like a call to arms of sorts with its multi-layered call and response vocals and deep primal beat, faintly reminiscent of the stylings of tUnE-yArdDs, before catapulting into a swift and unexpected tidal wave release of energy and breath at the end of the song. The slow choral chant, blurry synths and brassy wails of “Naksno” offered up another striking moment – the kind of song I could envision myself swinging and swaying to live with a serene smile and stomach-full of vodka. Hey Elbow thoroughly impresses with their masterfully constructed, but never confined, rich and ethereal sonic creation. Every Other is music to dream to, music to wander off to, music to lose yourself in and escape the real world, if even for a half an hour.  From: https://www.grimygoods.com/2015/04/28/hot-band-alert-swedish-experimental-pop-trio-hey-elbow/

Gary Wright - Dream Weaver - Midnight Special 1976

If you’re of a certain age, the Sunday night of September 9th, 1956 is seared indelibly upon your memory, because it’s the night Elvis Presley first appeared on CBS Television’s The Ed Sullivan Show before 60 million viewers, changing your young life forever. If you’re of a younger age, the Sunday night of February 9, 1964 is the one you’ll never forget, because it’s the night The Beatles first appeared on CBS Television’s The Ed Sullivan Show before 63 million viewers, changing your young life forever.
But if you’re my age—which is to say you were born at the tail end of the Baby Boom—the Saturday morning (and by that I mean 1 AM) of April 9, 1976 is the moment that changed everything forever, because it’s the night Gary Wright appeared on CBS Television’s The Midnight Special. And just as was the case with Elvis and The Beatles, I wasn’t the only kid who would never be the same.
I would guesstimate that there were sixty-three other kids across the country who watched in awe as Wright, the American keyboardist who made his name in the English band Spooky Tooth, played his smash single “Dream Weaver” before cavorting across the stage with his portable keyboard as he “rocked out” to his other smash single “Love Is Alive.” And I would venture that all sixty-four of us wanted keyboards we could wear around our necks. Gary didn’t play a keytar that life-altering night but he was a keytar pioneer, and had he been playing one I dare say we’d all have gone out of our little minds.
I knew a visionary when I saw one. I may not have known that Wright had befriended and absorbed the Eastern religion of former Beatle George Harrison after playing keyboards on Harrison’s 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass, but you didn’t have to be a holy man to realize Gary was a sublimely spiritual being, one who had pierced the veil of Maya through means of pure keyboard karma. I too wanted to hop aboard the Dream Weaver train. I too wanted my very own astral plane. That wasn’t Gary Wright on stage that night—it was an avatar of Krishna. He wasn’t playing music—he was preaching an escape from samsara rebirth to the masses.
Like Krishna, Wright was a charioteer, and his chariot, of course, was 1975’s The Dream Weaver. One night Krishna appeared to Wright in a dream, wearing pretty much the same white suit with celestial necklace Wright wore on The Midnight Special, to say, “You will spread bliss by producing a very special album, an album that will transport its faithful adepts to the supreme abode of the all-pervading.” He added, “It would be really cool if you used only that holiest of holy instruments, the keyboard. Although I guess real drummers would be okay. And I wouldn’t object if you were to bring in Ronnie Montrose to play guitar on track five. It’s a real rocker.”
And who argues with the eighth avatar of Vishnu? Nobody who doesn’t want to answer to Hanuman, the shape-shifting monkey god and commander of his very own monkey army, and who served informally as Vishnu’s consigliere! Gary immediately set to work, in his native New Jersey of all places, on the songs that would make up the third, and most bliss-inducing, of his solo albums.
When I say The Dream Weaver was produced using mostly keyboards, I’m not implying that Gary was a one-man keyboards band. No, Wright’s band included two additional keyboardists, David Foster and Bobby Lyle. Three keyboardists! The album’s lousy with ‘em! And while all the keyboards leave the LP with this Space Age meets New Age aura, it doesn’t have an iota of Wendy Carlos in it. Wright’s a rocker at heart and a pop songwriter by trade and the results are what Robert Christgau, writing about another one of Wright’s solo LPs, once (dismissively for the most part) dubbed “cosmic-commercial.” Like his mentor George O’Hara (Google him!) Wright had one foot firmly planted in the spiritual world and the other in the material world, and maya or no maya, a gold record is a gold record.  From: https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/graded-on-a-curve-gary-wright-the-dream-weaver/

Birdeatsbaby - Deathbed Confession

Having walked the high wire between punk and prog for nine years, Birdeatsbaby have foregrounded their progressive leanings while retaining a punk ethos on fourth album Tanta Furia. “In the beginning it was a punk cabaret kind of thing,” explains singer and pianist Mishkin Fitzgerald. “Quite theatrical and not very heavy, but as the band has progressed it’s got bigger, better, heavier, darker. I now feel we’re close to creating that perfect sound that I’ve been looking for the whole time. It’s definitely progressive but it’s also classical, punk rock, goth and I like it that way,” she says, citing Muse and Queen as key influences.
The Brighton four-piece, completed by Hana Maria on violin and vocals, Garry Mitchell on bass and guitar and Forbes Coleman on drums and vocals, also showcase multi-layered string arrangements in their music, adding to their unique sound. “We’ve got two violins, cello and double bass. I’m a sucker for strings so having Hana, this virtuoso violinist, in the band is incredible.”
A gospel choir (The Dulcet Tones) appear on two tracks on the new album, including the politically charged Mary, which Fitzgerald describes as “basically the ‘Hail Mary’, but with all the words changed”. In the accompanying video she stars as an authoritarian preacher. “It’s about feminism and religion,” she explains. “The Church has abused its power over the years to oppress women so we’re taking the prayer back. I was brought up very much in the Church. I would sing hymns and play organ and piano there so a lot of my early writing influences came from hymns. Then, much to the disappointment of my parents, I went to study music in Brighton but secretly I was just forming a band.”
Third album The Bullet Within was Kickstarter funded in 2013 to the tune of £11,000 by fans (who are affectionately dubbed ‘The Flock’ by the band) who continue to bankroll ventures on a subscription basis. Fitzgerald reveals just what that means to a fledgeling outfit attempting to fly the nest. “Now we’re using Patreon. We’ve got a really strong group of superfans helping us with our touring and production costs and every expense that comes from being a DIY band. We have all the control, all the freedom. If we want to put out a metal album next time, we can. We’ve recently covered Tool’s Sober, which we’re going to put out – one of my favourite songs of all time. We don’t have to answer to anyone and that’s just beautiful.”
The devotion of The Flock has already paid for European and US tours, as well as a Mishkin Fitzgerald solo show in Mexico City, where the fans were plentiful. “I’ve never seen so many people know about our music,” the singer muses. “It was just weird in a really cool way. We’re going to do another American tour next year and go down to Mexico. It’s why we named our album Tanta Furia as well, a little nod to our Mexican fans.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/introducing-prog-punkers-birdeatsbaby