Jon Anderson - Solid Space

 #Jon Anderson #Yes #progressive rock #progressive folk rock #symphonic prog #1970s

“I’d been thinking about Olias Of Sunhillow for a long while before I actually wrote it,” says Anderson today, speaking from his current home in San Luis Obispo, California. “When [sleeve artist] Roger Dean started creating artwork for Yes, I saw the ship he’d drawn sailing around the planet for Fragile [in 1971], and thought it was a very interesting concept.” Anderson then spent “a period of a year” composing a story about a magician/hero who rescues his people from their dying planet in a galleon-style Noah’s Ark-cum-spaceship.
In the meantime, though, his day job meant he was still busy conquering his own planet. Yes’ imperial phase began with Fragile and continued, unbroken, until 1974’s Relayer. Each of the five albums they released during this period, including the live Yessongs, went Top 10 in Britain and Top 20 in the US, with Tales From Topographic Oceans reaching No.1 at home. These figures make sense of the commercial and musical landscape in which Jon Anderson created his brain-boggling concept album. Yes were a huge hit group, so if Yes wanted time off to each make a solo album – even the drummer – their label, Atlantic Records, indulged them.
After the Yes tour, Anderson returned to the seven-bedroom country house he shared with his first wife Jenny and their children, in the Chiltern Hills, some 25 miles from London – and stayed there. “Seer Green, Buckinghamshire, was in the country, so I didn’t have to bother with the city any more,” he says. “I was surrounded by trees, birds and bees, and started living a hermit‑like existence.” Anderson went into the garage and began creating. Roger Dean’s artwork for Fragile was one inspiration; another came from the painter and mystic Vera Stanley Alder’s books, The Finding Of The Third Eye and The Initiation Of The World. Both had been published in the 1930s, but had found a new readership among the spiritually inclined pop generation – even Elvis was a fan.
“Vera Stanley Alder talked about the connection we have with the third eye,” Anderson explains, referring to the ‘invisible’ inner eye through which some believe humans can access a higher state of consciousness. Anderson, a devotee of meditation since the early 70s, regarded the third eye as “a beacon – like a radio satellite connection – to all that is divine”. Meanwhile, in The Initiation Of The World, Alder posited the theory that there had once been four “nature tribes” on the planet. “There was Negro, Asian, Oriental and Nordic,” says Anderson. “And that’s where the four tribes in Olias Of Sunhillow came from. But my four tribes were not physical tribes, but music consciousness tribes.” Anderson’s tribes – Nagranium, Asatranius, Oractaniom and Nordranious – existed, he said, “through music, rhythms and tempos”. Their planet, Sunhillow, was on the verge of collapse after a volcanic disaster. The titular hero builds a ship, the Moorglade Mover, to transport his people to a new planet. He’s helped in his endeavours by fellow magicians Ranyart, the ship’s navigator, and Qoquac, the four tribes’ appointed spokesperson.
Anderson now describes the time he spent making Olias Of Sunhillow as “going to music school”. Yes’ studio technician and live engineer Mike Dunne worked the desk, while Anderson took care of vocals, percussion, guitar, harp, Moog, sitar, flute and a Turkish lute-style instrument known as a saz. “What I learned was that you can play instruments and it works, even if you don’t play them incredibly well,” Anderson says. “You don’t have to be that good, but you can merge a guitar with a harp or a sitar or a flute and create new sounds.”
Anderson’s greatest instrument, though, was his voice, something none of his bandmates could match. Above all, Olias Of Sunhillow is a vehicle for some extraordinary vocals and lyrics. When confronted by their singer’s abstract words, Anderson’s bandmates often wondered what astral plane he was living on. But in the garage at Seer Green, he could sing what he liked, unchallenged. So much so that Anderson even created a new language for one track, Sound Out The Galleon. The lyrics, ‘Do ga riytan, sha too Raytan, gan matta sha pa, mutto matto mutto’ have always fascinated long-time Anderson watchers – especially the permanently stoned ones. “Those words were a solo for my voice,” he explains. “I couldn’t play a solo on an instrument so I used my voice instead.”
From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-jon-anderson-s-debut-solo-album-olias-of-sunhillow

The Shangri-Las - Remember (Walkin' In The Sand)

 #The Shangri-Las #girl group #rock & roll #Brill Building pop #pop rock #1960s

The wild and crazy life of The Shangri-Las
While girl-group pop might stand out in that sentence like a sore cock at an orgy, there are many incarnations of the genre that disavow the commercial teeny-bopper fodder that often springs to mind when we hear that phrase. Of all the female four-pieces that sat outside of the usual status quo and spawned a revolution by doing so, the main protagonists in punks prelude were the 1960s phenoms, The Shangri-Las.
When Mary and Betty Weiss teamed up with Marge and Mary Ann Ganser, they might have dominated the commercial radio waves, but they did so on their own terms, signified in part by the fact that Marge Ganser retained her less than poppy-sounding name. This strident individualism was a central tenet that would help them on their way to stardom. One of the second key ingredients was that they had natural talent, and as Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys once said: “There is just something special about siblings harmonising.” The Shangri-Las had that in abundance, but they also worked hard at it, as Mary Weiss explains: “We rehearsed constantly until the harmonies were perfected. I think our voices blended so well because we were two sets of sisters. In a brief period of time, we had a manager, and we started doing small gigs.” Soon enough they were thrust from small shows into the headlights, a time when their youngest member, Mary, was just 15-years-old. As fate would have it, one of their first recordings was produced by George Morton, who would later produce the New York Dolls records that the singing sisters had helped inspire in the first place.
The Shangri-Las then became such an instant sensation that they were still in school when taking to the stage with the likes of James Brown and the Rolling Stones. Another act that the Shangri-Las rubbed shoulders with was the shirtless inventor of punk himself: Iggy Pop. The future incendiary frontman of the rollicking Stooges recalled: “My cover band had a professional engagement the summer that we graduated high school at a teen club called The Ponytail in northern Michigan. They served Cokes. And a lot of big acts came through. I got to play drums behind the Shangri-Las, the Crystals, the Four Tops. Learned a lot.” He then comically adds, regarding the beehive hairdo’s that group’s spiritual leader sported: “Mary, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, had a really beautiful head of hair…and I just remember being very happy in the back you know playing ‘ts, ts, ts,’ while she was going, ‘remember, walking in the sand.'”
With iconoclastic lunatics like the young Iggy Pop tapping the drums behind them, their music had to be befittingly dark. They traversed subject matters that no typical girl group would go near, tackling motorcycle beheadings, heart failure of the spiritual bent and all the darkest pages of a teen’s diary. However, it was darkness tempered with the light touch of pop sensibilities. In short, punk followed a similar principle of finding fun in darkness, being brattish and proud, and swimming against the current of expectations. Mary Weiss will tell you herself: “The Shangri-Las were punk before punk existed. People thought we were tough.”  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-life-of-the-shangri-las/

Grant Lee Buffalo - Seconds

 #Grant Lee Buffalo #Grant Lee Phillips #alternative rock #folk rock #Americana #psychedelic folk rock #1990s

The first three Grant Lee Buffalo albums were insular affairs. Together, singer/guitarist Grant Lee Phillips, drummer/percussionist Joey Peters and bassist/keyboardist/producer Paul Kimble fashioned a self-sufficient musical workshop as impervious to pop fashion as a sharecropper is to the vicissitudes of life in the big city.
On Fuzzy (1993) and Mighty Joe Moon (1994), the trio rummaged through the antique art-junk of America’s attic, dressing up their garage-folk with vintage instruments and rediscovering the ancient wisdom of The Band, the Byrds, Big Star and R.E.M. along the way. It all worked to wondrous effect. But by Copperopolis (1996) — a gorgeous but unrelentingly somber song cycle — GLB sounded as if those attic walls, once valued for their windowless integrity, were beginning to close in on them. Kimble was dismissed from the band shortly thereafter.
On Jubilee, Phillips and Peters treat Kimble’s absence as a license to cut loose. The maelstrom of crunchy guitars and brisk tempos that comprise “APB”, “Change Your Tune” and “My, My, My” indicate a newfound will to rock out with raucous abandon. (Previously, rock was something GLB’s music implied more than manifested.) Even those tunes emitting the dusky pastoralism of early GLB — “SuperSloMotion”, “8 Mile Road”, “The Shallow End” — show a bit more tooth. Producer Paul Fox sometimes equates tooth with splashy, pumped-up choruses (“APB”, Truly, Truly”), and after three critically acclaimed but commercially ignored albums, the band seems bent on casting a wider net. But Fox deserves credit for bathing the band in prismatic light, thereby revealing a heretofore obscured aspect of the band. (Indeed, Fox’s production is luminous precisely where Kimble’s was tenebrous.) And, for their part, Grant Lee Buffalo never sound compromised, even when enlisting the services of such outside guests as Michael Stipe, Robyn Hitchcock and the Wallflowers’ Rami Jaffee. No, they just sound like they’re finally okay with windows — open windows — in their attic walls.  From: https://www.nodepression.com/album-reviews/grant-lee-buffalo-jubilee/

Stick In The Wheel - Roving Blade

 #Stick In The Wheel #folk #British folk #contemporary folk #folktronica #world music #indie folk

London’s Stick in the Wheel live up to their name: For the past few years they’ve been jabbing at the spokes of the English folk scene in their attempt to upend the system. With their 2015 full-length debut, From Here, they conceived of English folk music as something rooted in the past but not in the pastoral; the songs were urban instead of rural, social realist, often abrasive, and defiantly outside the folk mainstream. On traditional tunes dating back centuries as well as originals about the London riots and contemporary land-rights laws, Nicola Kearey sings in a voice that has more in common with Joe Strummer than with Shirley Collins. Co-founder Ian Carter eschews the jazzy improvisations that have defined UK folk guitar since the days of Davey Graham and Bert Jansch. Instead, he plays intricate looped rhythms that sound like he’s mimicking the beats he once created with the XL Recordings-signed electronic group Various Production. They followed up From Here with a 7” single based on 17th-century ballads, a split with the Irish band Lynched, and a collection of mostly a cappella performances recorded in the living rooms and kitchens of some of the country’s biggest folk artists. With their second album, Follow Them True, Stick in the Wheel continue their attack. About half of the album refines the acoustic folk sound of their debut, with lyrics emphasizing the pride of craftsmen and laborers as well as the desperation driving the poor. As Stick in the Wheel dig through the vast catalog of British folk music, they gravitate toward tales from the fringes of society: the destitute, the hopeless, the wronged, and the forgotten.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stick-in-the-wheel-follow-them-true/

Vartra - Sena

 #Vartra #world music #Balkan folk #Slavic folk #ethnic fusion #dark folk #tribal drum #shamanic #music video

Vartra is a collective of musicians, dancers and craftsmen based in Belgrade, Serbia, gathered around a common goal of bringing magic and mystery to the stage through a unique blend of their skills, interests and experiences. Our music is influenced by various genres, from traditional Balkan music characterized by the merging of Slavic and oriental cultures, through a variety of traditional music styles of indigenous cultures across the world, to a more harsh, industrial and dark atmospheric sound, common for genres such as doom metal. Most of our lyrics stem from old folk incantations and mantras from the Balkan area, that are sung in Serbian and Vlach languages. Our performances are enriched by utilizing handmade drums and rattles crafted by main instrumentalist and vocalist Siniša Gavrić. These instruments are made from animal skins and foraged materials from the rivers and mountains of Serbia.

The album Basma is inspired by the remnants of the South Slavic healing practices and folklore in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The lyrics in the majority of our songs are based on folklore from these areas, leaning predominantly on fragments of the spells used for healing purposes. These spells, named basma in the said areas, are the most archaic aspect of folk medicine and their power to heal illnesses, remove curses or cast away evil spirits lies in suggestive rhythmic repetition.This album was composed and recorded in the home studio of Siniša Gavrić and Ivana Stošić.

From: https://vartra.bandcamp.com/album/basma

Initially formed by Siniša Gavrić and sisters Ivana and Aleksandra Stošić, the band has extended into more of a community, brought together by an interest in world fusion music, Slavic paganism, shamanistic drumming and spirituality in general. Beside band members, integral part of the Vartra tribe are dance performers and friends dedicated to crafting costumes, accessories and stage requisites for live shows. The first debut album “Luna Nouà” was recorded at home based studio in Belgrade in 2018 and officially released on CD Baby online store in January, 2020. The band performed on multimedia arts festival Dev9t (Serbia), Exit festival (Serbia), Javorwood festival (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Elysium festival (Serbia), Lovestock festival (Croatia) and Nishville Jazz Festival (Serbia). The second album “Basma” was released in 2022 by a German publisher CPL music. “Luna nouà” was heavily focused on Vlach incantations (Eastern Serbia) while “Basma” focuses on the lyrical heritage from Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro. Their live shows are a cathartic experience, evocative of healing ceremonies and often combined with dance. Dark in a way that draws darkness out away from the spectator, Vartra’s primordial sound speaks directly to our internal rhythms and the lost ancestral wisdom that exists within all of us.  From: https://vartramusic.com/about-vartra/

Tera Melos - Bite

 #Tera Melos #math rock #experimental #post-rock #progressive rock #electronic #music video

Melding the aggression of punk with the technical intricacies of prog rock, Tera Melos use jerky shifts in time signatures and disjointed guitar noodling bearing a close resemblance to Don Caballero and Hella. Like their counterparts in complicated rock, finger-tapped guitar parts are the centerpiece, complemented by angular bass riffs and splintered spazz-jazz drumming, but contrasting dynamics are a bigger focus of the band's songs, with ambient electronics and sparse vocal lines occasionally incorporated into the interludes to offset some of the more convoluted and noisier sections. Following stints in hardcore projects No Regard, Hoods, and Stabbed in the Throat, guitarist Nick Reinhart, drummer Jeff Worms, and bassist Nate Latona started Tera Melos in 2004. Months after forming, they started playing shows, making an immediate impact on the Sacramento live circuit with chaotic live performances that demonstrated their ability to play while doing cartwheels, guitar stands, and amp flips. Their first album, Tera Melos, was self-released in 2005. Heavy touring followed and, exhausted by life on the road, Worms left the band to settle down shortly after recording the Drugs to the Dear Youth EP. Vince Rogers came in as a replacement drummer, touring continued, and the band found solace in the roster of Sargent House, home of similar-minded artists These Arms Are Snakes and Maps & Atlases. Drugs to the Dear Youth was re-released on CD that year, and a five-song split with By the End of Tonight followed, alongside extensive U.S. touring with Heavy Heavy Low Low and the Fall of Troy.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tera-melos-mn0000241366/biography

Writing music that is equally catchy and technical is a hard bridge to cross and it is rare to find a band that rides that balance as fluently as Sacramento trio Tera Melos do on their fourth official album "X'ed Out". Tera Melos continue to showcase their expert playing, but for the first time, they let melodies lead the way. Drugs to the Dear Youth was relentless, but this smart new "attack when necessary" approach gives a wider range of dynamics, and opens up a song like "No Phase" so that the sweet, ambient vocals of guest singer/keyboardist Aurielle Zeitler can shine through without the interference of killer guitar scales and drum fills. Elsewhere, the tightly wound musicianship of guitarist/vocalist Nick Reinhart, bassist Nathan Latona, and new drummer John Clardy is dazzling to the point that it's hard to believe this is the sound of a mere trio. Restraint is exercised when it serves a song best, like on the bittersweet titular ballad, but when it's time to rock out, the band goes completely bonkers, and, in this sense, "Tropic Lame" sounds like a conventional alt-rock tune written by J Mascis and bashed out by a more mathematically muscular band like Thingy. Much like the criminally underrated aforementioned fellow SoCal group, Tera Melos are likely too clever and otherworldly with their music to ever make the cross from cult status to mega-stardom, which is upsetting, since X'ed Out deserves to be more than a secret pleasure. For one, they jump styles and slip into indie pop too effortlessly to be restricted to the shelves of post-rock fans. For another, it's hard to find fault with the pristine, angelic vocals (musicians of this caliber too often have a weak link in the vocal department, but Reinhart is a triple threat: guitarist, songwriter, and great singer to boot). Lastly, there isn't a soft spot on the album. X'ed Out is more fleshed-out, listenable, and revelatory than one could ever expect. At a time when fellow fingertapper Marnie Stern is toning down on the acrobatics in favor of hooks, Tera Melos show that you don't have to sacrifice one for the other.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/xed-out-mw0002488233

The Creepshow - The Devil's Son

 #The Creepshow #psychobilly #horror punk #hard rock #punk revival #indie rock #music video

Formed in the dirty back alleys and dive bars of Toronto, Ontario in 2005, The Creepshow has redefined the saying "No Rest For The Wicked". Since their inception, the band has brought their genre-defying blend of country-tinged, psycho punk rock n' roll to over 25 countries worldwide with plans to conquer many more as soon as possible. Fronted by the vivacious Kenda (guitar/vox) and backed by the swarthy Sean "Sick Boy" McNab (stand-up bass/vox), The Reverend McGinty (sermons/organ/vox) and the righteous Sandro (skins), The Creepshow is an explosion of live energy that is a tasty treat for the ears and eyes alike... Whatever you do though, don't write The Creepshow off as just another psychobilly band. While their lyrics draw inspiration from b-movies and early horror films, they're also full of personal insight and personal stories dealing with everything from addiction to mental health to tales of love gone horribly wrong. The Creepshow's passion for touring is borderline obsessive-compulsive. They have an incredibly personal dedication to their fans and their live show that is nothing short of astounding. Watching their set is a full frontal assault on all your senses and you definitely have to stay on your toes when you're at one of their shows. You never know when they might rush into the crowd for a scream-along with fans or launch their band mates across the stage from the neck of the stand up bass.  From: https://www.sailorsgraverecords.com/artist.php?id=thecreepshow

The Creepshow is a band from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. The band formed in 2005 when the four original members got together with the purpose of starting a psychobilly band. The Creepshow writes the majority of their songs about horror films. The band has its roots in the 905 music scene with most members having been in various garage bands before The Creepshow. McNab was the singer/guitarist for local legends Outspan and Jersey. McGinty was the songwriter and trombonist for 905 ska band two-face and played trombone in Outspan as well. Matt "Pomade" Gee splits his time between The Creepshow and punk band Rehab for Quitters for which he also plays drums. The Creepshow is known for their fast-paced songs filled with lots of backup vocals from McNab and McGinty and sing-alongs that the whole crowd can participate in. The band is also known for their live shows.  From: https://www.theaudiodb.com/artist/132835