Fleetwood Mac - Station Man

 #Fleetwood Mac #Mick Fleetwood #John McVie #Christine McVie #blues rock #heavy blues rock #psychedelic blues rock #blues-based pop rock #1970s

Peter Green is gone and he took his blues with him. Which means now Fleetwood Mac have to figure out what their new signature sound will be without him there. It'll take another five years, six albums, and the removal of half the original band for them to find that sound; but for now we have this: Kiln House. For the most part, this is the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac doing damage control. They can't play the blues anymore so what can they do? Well, they can play rock music I guess. Jeremy Spencer has returned to the spotlight after having been accidentally pushed to the side on Then Play On, and for the most part his stuff hems more towards classic rockabilly. He gets a Sun Records sound on "This Is the Rock", pays tribute to Buddy Holly on "Buddy's Song" (a track he credited to Holly's mother), and impersonates the classic vocal doo-wop groups with "Blood on the Floor" and the closing "Mission Bell". They're OK, but they don't really point the way forward. For that, you have to look to Danny Kirwan whose songs are more built around contemporary roots rock than classic 50s rockabilly. "Jewel-Eyed Judy" is the closest song that approaches the bluesy sound of classic Fleetwood Mac but it's not as much of a showcase of guitar pyrotechnics the same way the Green material of old is. It's far more subtle in its attack, which makes for a track that maybe doesn't hit as hard as the best of Green, but certainly makes for intriguing listening. On the same level is "Earl Gray", an instrumental which feels like the natural progressive evolution from the second half of "Oh Well". But if any Kirwan track points toward the future for Fleetwood Mac, it's "Station Man". And that primarily has to do with the uncredited arrival of Christine McVie on vocal and piano work. The woman who will later write "Say You Love Me" and "Don't Stop" isn't an official member of the band yet, but the moment you hear her distinctive voice breaking through the boys' club on the harmonies, it's an immediate attention-grabber that shows the way towards where this band will eventually end up.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/fleetwood-mac/kiln-house/

Gaupa - Kartan

 #Gaupa #doom metal #psychedelic rock #stoner metal #progressive rock #folk metal #Swedish

Gaupa has already been described as "Bjork fronting a rock band" and although we can see where that description is coming from there is far more to Gaupa than an unusual and unique voice placed in front of a rock'n'roll backdrop. First thing one notices about Gaupa (the band) are the levels of musicianship on display here; solid, tight percussion combined with deep growling bass lines are the backbone around which Gaupa's two guitarists lay down diverse washes of delightful  and dynamic six-string colouring, the pair not so much going head to head as complimenting each other with a mixture of eastern motifs, shimmering arpeggios, crunching heavy powerchords and scorching psychedelic lead work. However it is the vocal acrobatics of  Emma Näslund that many will leave this EP remembering long after the last note of "Gaupa" fades into silence. Näslund  has a unique tone and delivery and it is easy to see why those comparisons with Iceland's elfish chanteuse have been made as both singers have that same distinctive vocal elasticity in their armoury, however where Bjork's voice sometimes wanders into shrillness there is a smoother more fluid timbre to Näslund's vocals that is, for us, far more pleasing and easier on the ear.  From: http://stonerking1.blogspot.com/2018/07/gaupa-gaupa-review.html

An amalgam of psychedelic rock, stoner metal, and doom metal with female lead vocals. It's a style that many bands have played in the 2010's, especially following the success of Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony. Gaupa pursue generally the same style as those bands, though with their own nice little nuances. There is a nice balance between calm, drifting psychedelic sections, and abrasive, rocking doom and stoner metal pounding. A nice, thick bass line carries fluid, desert-ish guitar leads, which sounds very atmospheric. What truly gives the band their identity is the vocal style of Emma Näslund. If you go on the group's bandcamp page, you'll see that they are all comparing her style to that of Björk and they are absolutely right. "Psychedelic/Stoner/Doom Rock with Bjork on vocals" all I can say is hell yeah. The singing is awesome. She does ethereal chants, crazy shouts, enunciates words playfully and gently, she sounds awesome. She really adds that quirk to the music that helps the band stand out, especially on the playful rocker track 'The Drunk Autopussy Wants to Fight You (perhaps one of the best song titles ever).  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/ep/gaupa/gaupa/

 

Mediaeval Baebes - 10th Anniversary Live

 Part 1

Part 2

 #Mediaeval Baebes #medieval music #choral music #traditional #crossover #a capella #vocal ensemble #ex-Miranda Sex Garden #live music video

Mediaeval Baebes have been called classic music's Spice Girls and early music Pussy Cat Dolls for their sexy contemporary approach to medieval music. Katherine Blake founded the group in 1996 after she left the goth music group Miranda Sex Garden. Katherine explains, "One of the inspirations for forming the Baebes was my participation in (another) Mediaeval ensemble called Synfonie, performing mostly Hildegard plainsong. The group also introduced me to a song called Salva Nos which I performed in a cabaret in Berlin. That song was the first we ever sang together and also the name of the first album we made." After returning to England she called her girl friends together and taught them the song then outlined her vision for an all female choral group. Her timing couldn't have been better. The music scene which had been dominated by male groups was about to be kicked over by a new breed of gutsy female vocalists starting with the Spice Girls. Even before the Spice Girls’ first album was released, the Mediaeval Baebes were working up enough songs for their first concert, which was held in a cemetery. Soon they made a demo tape and sent it off with high hopes but low expectations. Within days they were signed by Virgin Records sight unseen. The executives must have died and gone to heaven when they saw the Baebes for the first time and realized what a sizzling effect these young, sexy women in flowing white gowns produced on their audience as they wove an enchanting tapestry of heavenly music.
In the years that followed they have produced six albums, a live performance DVD, a songbook, a book of erotic art called Songs of the Flesh, and have toured all of Great Britain, Europe, and North America. In the USA they toured with Lilith Fair where they developed quite a reputation for pranks. Rachael Van Asch, the band's only blond, recalls those days, "like when our drummer boys Hans and Trevor dressed up in our spare long white dresses with full make-up and came onstage with us on Lilith Fair to perform the closing number with Sarah Maclaughlin." The band swelled to thirteen women at one time and now has settled on just seven voices, Katherine Blake (music director), Audrey Evans, Emily Ovenden, Marie Findley, Maple Bee, Cylindra, and Rebecca Dutton. The Baebes are all talented individuals, so the band makes time for everyone to develop personal projects.
Rachael, who left the band in 2004 to get married and have a baby, grew up in rock music. Her mother was a member of New Zealand band Ragnarock. For eight years Rachel Van Asch performed and served as costume designer for the Baebes. Rachael has also produced fashion clothes based on her costume designs under the labels Sacred Clothing and Van Asch. Now she is in the process of moving to Sweden where she will be opening a clothing store.
Audrey Evans has been with the band since the beginning but when she isn't performing she teaches in a nursery school. In November of 2005 she also gave birth to a son, Lewis, who is the love of her life.
Emily Ovenden is the daughter of famous English Ruralist artists Graham & Annie Ovenden but her talents are manifested in music and writing. She has written and published one book, Vulpes Vulpes, and has just finished her second novel, The Ice Room. Currently she is working on songs for an upcoming Celtic album.
Maple Bee, the dark haired mezzo soprano, joined the band in 2003. She spent her childhood on board a yacht, traveling the world and living in the Middle East. She has made two techno solo albums and just released a new dance album, Huski.
Mediaeval Baebes celebrated an important anniversary in May this year. Maple Bee tells, "the Baebes had their 10th anniversary party which involved lots of singing loudly in a pub called the Boogaloo on Highgate Hill, followed by lots of strange baebeish antics and fake champagne." In June, she says, they performed at "an amazing show in Cornwall inside a real life stalactite-ridden cave called Carnglaze Caverns - then on to the sunrise festival near Glastonbury.”
From: https://stores.renstore.com/art-and-music/mediaeval-baebes

Tardigrade Inferno - The Worst of Me

 #Tardigrade Inferno #avant-garde metal #alternative metal #dark cabaret #Russian #music video

Tardigrade Inferno is a young band, but already established in its niche. The team itself positions itself as a "metal big top" and focuses not only on music and funny lyrics, but also on appearance. While the band is on its first Russian tour, we got in touch with the musicians to get a little more information about their plans for the near future, new albums and personal philosophy.

Let's talk about personal branding. Do you have a personal brand, do you feel responsible for being a public figure? How do you position yourself to the public?

Yes, there is something similar. There is an image of some kind of leading circus or a teller of scary stories to children, and there is just us as people, and we maneuver somewhere in the middle so that there is both theatricality and sincerity. That is, on the one hand, we have an image with a certain amount of mystery that we protect, on the other hand, we are open to communication with fans.

Do you have some kind of self-censorship, so to speak?

No. That is, we discuss what and how to post and what to write, but this is more editing than self-censorship. We do not have some terrible undercover secrets that we hush up, there are no taboo topics that we really want to say something about but we are afraid that they will not understand us. There were no places in the songs that we would cut so as not to fall under someone's knife.

Do you get compared to other popular bands with female vocals? Do these comparisons offend you?

Of course they compare. We can't remember anything bad. If it was, then it is most likely a matter of taste. The very fact of comparison is not offensive.

Due to the fact that you don’t have a frontman, but a frontwoman, so to speak, there were no such stories when people told you “here is a woman’s place in the kitchen, where you climbed onto the stage”, “a girl should be cute, how can you be in such kind of speaking." Have you come across any stereotypes?

It slips in personal conversations, but very rarely, only if the person is not involved in this. It's a matter of life choice when it comes to a woman's career as a metal vocalist. There are career women; they are condemned by those people for whom such a lifestyle is unacceptable. Our circle of contacts is such that such questions and claims do not arise. Such reasoning is probably characteristic of the people who do not come into contact with such types of art, so our contacts end at the stage of “what kind of freaks are these anyway?” Although recently in VK Sasha was asked to explain a hairstyle.

Are you generally offended by comparisons with Western colleagues?

Offended - never. We may be perplexed when they say about us “you just took a bandname and licked everything like a carbon paper”, but it’s strange to be offended by this, and indeed to react in any way. And when they just compare, there is no negative at all. Even within the band we don't fully agree on who our music is more like.

Is it possible to say that you are trying to convey the serious through a joke in your work?

Partly. The song must first of all work on an emotional level, and if the lyrics are just 100 percent humorous jokes, then it will not be as effective as adding tragic notes or some idea. That is, all this is not based on the desire to say something important, but on the desire to write a good song. And if there is nothing in the song except the surface layer, then it is felt. And it turns out that "to convey something serious" is not an end in itself, but a practical necessity. Of course, not all of our songs are about something other than the immediate plot of the text (at least consciously), but without a periodic feeling that there is something behind the song, it seems to me that listening to music gets boring.

Do you have any strange fans or stories associated with them? Your colleagues often tell stories about fans who stalk them, give strange gifts, and compulsively write comments and letters on social networks.

You know, we have quite a lot of "weird" fans in a good way, which is quite logical, since we ourselves are strange, like our music. Often people come to our concerts in cool strange costumes. We haven't accumulated any stories yet, but now we are skating our first tour, getting to know the fans. There are guys who go to our concerts in different cities. They give us gifts. We were presented with drawings, paintings, last year one artist presented a large painting of Dasha. We still have not found a place on the repbaza where to hang it, but we will definitely hang it, we really like it. Once, guys from Tula came to our concert, brought a gingerbread, but the guards took it away and ate it. In social networks, some fans quite often write to Dasha, but so far there has not been any obsessive persecution.

Isn't it scary to be a musician in Russia?

It's scary to be in Russia. Being a musician in Russia is just as scary as being a musician in another country. Show business will chew you up and spit you out if you don't try, like any other business.

Translated from: http://metalkings.org/interviews/257

Heavy Temple - A Desert through the Trees

 #Heavy Temple #heavy metal #stoner metal #occult rock #doom metal #psychedelic metal #music video

Heavy Temple have been fighting the good fight since 2012, but they’ve kept the world waiting until 2021 for their debut album. Fortunately, it was well worth the wait: Lupi Amoris is a finely streamlined record crammed with awesome riffs, soaring vocals and memorable songwriting. Singer, songwriter, bass player and all round head honcho High Priestess Nighthawk was kind enough to take some time out to answer our questions.

Sadly, stage names seem to be on the wane these days so kudos to you for keeping the flag flying. Where did High Priestess Nighthawk come from and how do you decide on names for new members?

There’s a Tom Waits album called Nighthawks At The Diner, and I guess it just stuck with me. Every member gets to choose their own name. Unless they really don’t want to, in which we try to come up with something that reflects their personality. I structured it around the religious nomenclature system because I always wanted Heavy Temple to feel like rock and roll church, where you go to worship the riff.

Heavy Temple have gone through a plethora of different line-ups. Could you give us a potted history of the ins and outs of the band? How did the current line-up come together?

It’s certainly been a revolving door. People’s lives and priorities change, and I wanted a band with that flexibility so we could always keep playing and touring. When we started almost ten years ago, we were a three piece. Bearadactyl was kind of on loan and Rattlesnake moved to the west coast. Saint Columbidae joined on drums, and we were a two piece for a while. Then I found Tempest, or perhaps I should say she found me, and honestly, she really saved the band. Good drummers are like mythical creatures, and they’re always all in multiple bands, so I got very lucky. Then we added Barghest, who ended his tenure to work for NASA (hopefully making Heavy Temple the first band to have a member in space). Thunderhorse stepped in almost immediately, and that brings us to 2019. We were able to do a lot of touring, despite not having been able to record Lupi Amoris, which was intended to be tracked with the previous line-up. Parting ways was not easy, and it was a very hard decision to make. I don’t expect anyone to understand it, but I think we just had different expectations and creative goals. I knew that Paisley and The Baron were great musicians, so it was a no-brainer to ask them to join. Every iteration of Heavy Temple has shaped what we are right now, and as objectively as I can say so, this line-up is probably the closest to what I envisioned when I started.   

I absolutely loved Lupi Amoris. It touches on a wide range of musical genres but is really hard to pin down. How would you describe it?

I always laugh a bit at this question because I have a hard time describing it myself. I suppose I’d just call it heavy rock and roll. I think that Heavy Temple has always had a wide array of influences, but if I had to pin it down I guess psychedelic doom. We like kraut and classic rock, psych, stoner and sludge, desert rock, black metal. I think we’re just an amalgamation of those genres we like

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the interplay between the riffs and the vocals – you don’t just follow the riff melody like Ozzy did and I found the dynamics very striking. Could you talk us through the process of how a Heavy Temple song comes together?

I still struggle when writing vocal melodies because I’m also playing the bass, so generally they are last to develop. The composition and arrangement are the easiest parts for me, but I do like to nurture them and let them take their own shape. As for the vocals themselves, I like to let the music breathe a little, so I just sing when I feel it’s appropriate. What I do like about Ozzy is that he kind of does the same thing. Sing on the verse and chorus, then let the band take the reins. I’m very excited about writing the next album as a band. I’ve been the primary songwriter so I think creating collectively will lead to some sonic exploration for all of us.

Clearly a lot of thought went into the lyrics and artwork for the album. Could you tell us about the broader themes underlying them?

At its core, Lupi Amoris is a collection of love songs. I met my partner at a festival in the woods, and they were the one to show me the Angela Carter story. A couple tracks on the album pre-date our relationship, but this album as a concept didn’t start to take shape until maybe three years ago. Sometimes you meet someone, and it changes the whole trajectory of your life, so I wanted to write about that using the Carter’s story as a skeleton. My confidence, independence and autonomy are of great value to me, and there was something about the narrative that just spoke to me.

From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/interviews/heavy-temple/

Baskery - With Every Heartbeat

 #Baskery #folk rock #Americana #contemporary folk #alt-country #banjo punk #music video #Robyn cover #Swedish

No matter where they go in the world, people tell the sisters that they’ve never heard or seen anything like it, that their sound is completely unique and that they perform with what seems to be an inexhaustible energy. That’s Baskery’s aim, to never stop surprising. The music is not to be confused with country or bluegrass just because the instrumentation involves a double bass, a six string banjo and acoustic guitar. They use their instruments in an unconventional way to create their very own genres: banjo punk, rock-hop and Nordicana.
The three sisters can’t recall when or why they started playing, the music’s always just been there. “Performing live has become the most natural thing to us”. That’s where the high energy level on stage hails from, a pure and reckless love for the art of performing music. In their late teens the sisters joined forces with their dad, who for decades was a one man band playing old blues and country tunes for a living. “Playing with dad was the best education we could have wished for. Performing in rowdy pubs and bars gave us the backbone that carries us through every imaginable situation one may come across in the music biz. It’s doesn’t get much more real than that.” This foundation of classic roots music and Americana settled in their hearts, but also awoke the urge of breaking the rules of traditional music. Baskery is a band built on what three people can do together and it’s all about turning the music on its head, blending the straightforwardness of punk with the subtlety of singer/songwriting.
Their first album, “Fall Among Thieves” (2008) was recorded in Stockholm, co-produced by Lasse Martén (Pink, Peter, Bjorn and John, Kelly Clarkson). “New Friends” (2011) the follow up, the band refer to as the “gypsy album” since it was mainly tracked on the road in various hotel rooms and band apartments, then mixed in Berlin by Blackpete (Depeche Mode, Joe Jackson, Peter Fox). As a contrast to the first two albums which took several months to make, the third one “Little Wild Life” was recorded during ten days in an old dance studio converted to a recording studio in former east Berlin, co-produced by Matt Wignall (Cold War Kids, J. Roddy Walston). All three albums received great acclaim in the press and were released in numerous countries. The releases in combination with relentless touring have given the band a reputation as one of the music scene’s most noticeable live acts.
From: https://ridefestival.com/artists/baskery/

Procol Harum - Simple Sister - Beat-Club 1971

 #Procol Harum #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #art rock #proto-prog #1960s #1970s #music video

Procol Harum’s ‘Broken Barricades’ album starts, like ‘Home’ before it, with Robin Trower's guitar playing an unmistakable signature phrase. This angry eruption signals the start of the song that engineer John Punter called Pimple Blister, with its cruel, some would say misogynistic lyric. Like Whisky Train, this is an enormously popular song with live audiences, specially in the USA, and since it was written all Procol's guitarists – Trower, Ball, Grabham, Renwick and Whitehorn – have played it. The five-note opening rhythm, on a repeated note, even found its way unwittingly into Mick Grabham's final bars of Beyond the Pale.
On stage the song exists in two varieties, the mere three-verse one (a mere 3 minutes 17 seconds on the Beat Club recital of 27 November 1971), and the extended 'build-up' version, over a melodic bass-line midway. The longer version is far more dramatic – the same instinct for juxtaposing opposites resulted in the insertion of the quiet Bach Prelude into Repent Walpurgis, another thundering four-chord passacaglia. Strangely there are some fans who would prefer both songs in attenuated form. It's worth dilating on the origins of the central riff, which has borrowed the first five or six notes (and the sprightly rhythm) wholesale from the opening of The Capitols' 1966 Cool Jerk. But Procol do something more interesting than the Cool Jerk composers: they modulate the motif from C major up to E flat, then again to G minor and down again … it goes somewhere, rather than being just an R&B elaboration of the basic blues progression. The Cool Jerk riff starts out with bass, then adds 'some eighty-eights' (a particularly shoddy-sounding piano), then immediately the whole band, but Brooker's ensemble builds up minutely slowly, something added every time the refrain re-starts, constantly surprising the listener with melodic and rhythmic ideas, begging the question, 'how can this end'? Musically the arrangement (by Brooker, conducted by George Martin, who is not credited on the sleeve) may be one of the big anomalies in the Procol catalogue: most of their orchestral work draws on baroque or romantic European traditions, but here the layering also seems reminiscent of modern, minimalist composers like Reich and Glass. Other famous records use heavy repetition and progressive layering – for instance Hey Jude and I Want You (She's So Heavy) – but these cases have endings faded or cut, somehow leaving the effect unconsolidated in one's ear. We do hear such a throwaway technique on the Barricades album in the final minutes of the title track. But Simple Sister, like its antecedent Whaling Stories, offers remission from the build-up, finding a closure that offers emotional relief.
This unique build-up is finely structured. Bars 1 to 32 follow the Skip Softly chords, after which the guitar plays a more-or-less fixed melody over the Cool Jerk riff, heard for the first time. Bars 41 to 64 comprise another 'unit' of Skip Softly and Cool Jerk; then the guitar lets rip for an improvisation over the Skip Softly chords, running from bars 65 to 88 (at the end of which section we hear a cross-fade between two takes, using two different guitars). Bar 89 begins a Skip Softly sequence that delays its last chord, and the brief drum break at 97 begins the Cool Jerk section in earnest. Piano, bass and drums start it at 98; bar 106 adds one of the manic chattering sounds we now know to be Gary Brooker's piano, recorded while running the tape slow, and subsequently speeded up. Chris 'The Grouts' Michie describes this process in illuminating detail here: for a long time the source of this sound was a mystery, though Geoff Whitehorn's strummed guitar does a capable job of imitating it in live performance. One more piano note is added every eight bars until 146, by which time high 'chiming' notes are heard as well, and at 154 guitar and 'celli join the chattering fray, with some quiet brass. High melodic strings are added at 170, whooping brass at 178, and heavy Wagnerian brass at 186. Just when pop precedent primes us to expect a fade, the Skip Softly motif cuts in at 194, and one more verse is sung; 210 sees the speedy coda, (including a new chord!) and the long growling C minor sustain at 213 ends the song. Gary told the NME (5 June 1972) that this was 'Music from the 23rd century'.
The reversion, from the Cool Jerk section to the opening matter again, is done with a musical brutality entirely suited to the cruelty of the words. It’s a song of vitriol and abuse, continuing the Still There'll Be More vein of writing. Perhaps it was a deliberate irony, adapting the riff of a positive, life-enhancing dance tune to offset Keith Reid’s savage libretto. This piece portrays serial vindictiveness like Poor Mohammed does: but what disease merits such cruel treatment? Despite the problems of interpretation that it poses to the record-buyer, Gary told NME that the piece was 'Lyrically quite simple, but there's something very personal about it. A quick summary of a situation Keith ran into somewhere.'  From: https://www.procolharum.com/tn+sq/bb_tr_simpl.htm