Meat Puppets - Armed And Stupid

Usually slotted as part of punk music’s “post-punk” development during the 1980s, the Meat Puppets have surfed atop the rise and fall of that movement, riding beyond it into the “grunge” rock boom of the 1990s. Given such a history, it’s not surprising that critics have spent a decade arguing over the correct term for the band’s music, taking their cues from the mutations occurring from one Meat Puppets album to the next. “With each of their five albums,” Simon Reynolds wrote in Melody Maker, “the Meat Puppets have not so much made a giant leap forward as a perplexing step sideways; each time hitting on a totally new, totally original sound that any other band would have milked for 10 albums.” While Kurt Loder called them a “thrash band” in Rolling Stone in 1984, other critics later commented on their distance from the conventions of hardcore punk. One of the effects of such a resistance to tidy categorization has been the Meat Puppets’ reputation for forward-looking music—for anticipating and spearheading changes in musical style.
As teenagers, Cris and Curt Kirkwood and Derrick Bostrom, who would later create the Meat Puppets in the late 1970s, had grown up in the open spaces surrounding their hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. Brothers Cris and Curt arrived in Phoenix from Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1965, when Cris, the younger sibling, was about five years old. The Kirkwood family’s income came from racehorses that they owned. Bored with how little the city had to offer, the two brothers found recreation in using drugs amid Phoenix’s desert landscape. “Punk rock began as an urban phenomenon,” Ivan Kreilkamp wrote in Details, “a musical response to miles of concrete and industrial noise. The Meat Puppets were the first group to adapt punk to the twisted landscapes and open spaces of the American Southwest.” Curt Kirkwood told Kreilkamp, “There’s no trees, there’s no real society. It’s easy to get into drugs there because there’s nothing to do.” Their hallucinogenic experiences would eventually be credited with shaping the distinctive sound of their music. Kreilkamp, for example, speculated that “The Puppets’ music is rooted in the experience of three kids, heads throbbing with LSD-induced visions, riding motorcycles on a canal bed in the Saguaro desert.”
After a brief effort at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1977, Curt returned home. Having had some musical training, including classical study, he and his younger brother started playing house parties with area bands. They also played in local cover bands, with Curt on guitar and Cris on bass. After one of the more successful local bands, Eye, broke up in 1979, the Kirkwood brothers decided it was time to do something on their own. At that point, Derrick Bostrom came on board to play drums. Bostrom had a practice space in which the Meat Puppets could shape their sound, already heavily influenced by an odd jumble that included the Grateful Dead, the Sex Pistols, Johnny Cash, and Iggy Pop. The group had no particular venue in mind, simply a desire to see what kind of music they could make. “I came to hardcore through experimental music,” Curt told David Fricke in a Melody Maker interview. “I started getting into Edgar Varese, when he was composing things that sounded like raindrops. I didn’t give a shit about composing anything. But I thought if I hooked up a couple of fuzzboxes to my guitar and turned it up real loud, and played faster than anybody could think, what was going to come out was going to be heavily impassioned.” Curt quickly emerged as the band’s major force, lending a compelling character on vocals and guitar, as well as his odd skill as a songwriter; Kreilkamp referred to him as the trio’s “chief visionary.” Jas Obrecht, writing for Guitar Player in 1994, described Curt as the “master of the enigmatic lyric and monotone delivery.”
While critics have often suggested the dual influences of drugs and the desert landscape on Curt’s style, the musician himself also attributes it to a specific childhood experience: “I had encephalitis when I was nine,” Curt told Reynolds, “my head swelled up, I was in a coma for a long time. After that I started to daydream an awful lot, I was able to pick and choose what I wanted from my imagination.” Reynolds dubbed the three “modern visionaries who liberate the flux of experience from the grids with which we attempt to structure and manage time and reality.”  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/meat-puppets

Mary's Danish - Yellow Creep Around

In the song “Axl Rose Is Love,” Gretchen Seager of the Los Angeles rock band Mary’s Danish goes after Guns N’ Roses’ singer the way Thelma and Louise take on a sexist trucker. Incensed by the hotheaded Rose’s use of racial and sexual invectives in his song “One in a Million,” Seager takes aim at the rocker on the new Mary’s Danish album, “Circa”. So Seager’s easy to peg, right? She hates Axl Rose and loves “Thelma & Louise.” Wrong. “I’m a fan of Guns N’ Roses,” Seager says. “I just don’t agree with their politics. The song is my way of making a social comment. I mean, Rose is criticized for being racist and misogynistic, but the bottom line is there are a million people who love him and Andrew Dice Clay, so there has to be some truth in what they’re doing. And that in itself says a lot about our society. . . But I love Guns N’ Roses’ music.” And being well-versed in feminist literature, Seager found the conclusion of “Thelma & Louise” to be “totally contrary to the feminist statement,” even though most of her own songs are about taking control and taking responsibility for one’s own life--just as that movie’s heroines do.
Those are just a couple of the many complexities and contradictions that make Mary’s Danish perhaps the most intriguing and promising band to emerge from the L.A. alternative-rock scene since Jane’s Addiction. Those contradictions have at times nearly torn the band apart. But to Seager, 25, they are the sextet’s strengths. “You should just look at our record collections,” said the blunt, bright blonde, sitting in a Melrose Avenue restaurant with the band’s other singer-lyricist, Julie Ritter, 24, and Louis Gutierrez, 28, one of the band’s two guitarists. “There are a few common threads, but for the most part the influences are so different. When you see Mary’s Danish you’re seeing a bunch of people who really don’t have that much in common musically. “One guy in an interview criticized us, saying that the diversity hurts us. He said, ‘You have these two Exene-style singers, a funk bassist and drummer, one psychedelic guitarist and another who plays more blues-based. Where’s the continuity?’ I said, ‘That is the continuity.’ We’re not going to shy away from any styles or ideas.”
Seager and Ritter were bored French majors at UC Berkeley when they decided to transfer to UCLA early in 1987 so they could start a band in the city where they had grown up. After choosing the name Mary’s Danish (“for no particular reason,” according to Ritter), the pair hooked up with David King, a guitarist who was working as a clerk at Tower Records, and bassist Chris Wagner. With a succession of other players, the quartet recorded the demos that were eventually released in 1989 as the album “There Goes the Wondertruck,” which was hurried out by the independent Chameleon Records to capitalize on the airplay that the spunky single “Don’t Crash the Car Tonight” was receiving on KROQ.
Just before the release of “Wondertruck,” guitarist Gutierrez and drummer James Bradley Jr. joined. The pair brought a background of music-biz experience to Mary’s Danish, whose other members were relative newcomers to professional music making. Gutierrez had been a member of Los Angeles’ Three O’Clock, which released several heralded albums of fragile psychedelic pop, and Bradley had played with the likes of Anita Baker and Chuck Mangione. The members of Mary’s Danish don’t have a lot in common outside of music, either, and the different backgrounds and interests helped make the two years between album releases a tumultuous time. Though Mary’s Danish was rapidly gaining recognition and musical stature--aided by tours opening first for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then Jane’s Addiction--the group nearly broke up on several occasions. Seager actually did leave at one point, having tired of the touring grind and fallen out with King. “We fought like cats and dogs,” Seager said of both the musical and personal disputes. “It seemed more trouble than it was worth. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in a rock band. There was no money, and we had all been putting in a lot of time and energy beating our heads against the wall. . . . Ultimately I had to give that up in order to discover that being in the band was something I really wanted.” Her frustration was compounded by several other personal crises suffered by band members and by legal entanglements over the group’s recording contract that delayed the release of “Circa,” which was recorded more than a year ago. (In the interim, a partly live EP, “Experience,” was released last year.) Finally released by the new Morgan Creek label, the album reflects many of the hard-learned lessons of all that turmoil.
As hard as Seager is on Axl Rose on the album, she and Ritter are even harder on themselves. In “7 Deadly Sins,” Seager berates herself for sticking with a bad relationship.  In the album-closing “Cover Your Face,” Ritter is even more resigned to a self-imposed fate. “I meant for ‘Cover Your Face’ to be heavier than ‘Sister Morphine,’ ” Seager said, referring to the Rolling Stones song. “I wanted it to be the most depressing song ever.” That’s the kind of self-examination and self-torment that have characterized the most dynamic rock to come out of Los Angeles since the late ‘60s, from the Doors through X and the Blasters through, yes, Guns N’ Roses and Jane’s Addiction. “I don’t know if we think of ourselves as part of L.A. history,” Seager said. “But it’s hard to escape that.” Added Ritter: “I think you can’t help but be influenced by your environment and what came before you. I grew up seeing X a lot, and that had something to do with me wanting to be in a band. There’s a legacy that goes on.”
Perhaps what distinguishes Mary’s Danish from those other bands--besides the musical diversity--is the fact that all the lyrics are written by women. “These songs are really about emotional violence and being put through--or putting yourself through--hell,” Seager said. “I don’t know if they’re supposed to be from a woman’s point of view, but just ‘cause we’re girls means we write from that perspective. But anybody can relate to emotional abuse.” “I’ve been through so much in the 4 1/2 years since the band started, and it’s all chronicled in the record,” said Ritter, wearing a myriad of earrings on both lobes to go along with a nose ring and a new tattoo on her upper back. “I wonder if I was working as a bank teller if it would be the same thing. It seems to me I’ve gone through an extraordinary amount of problems, but then it’s my job to write about that . . . questioning relationships and your own sanity and confidence.” But for all that, it’s the attack on Axl Rose that is getting the most attention for the band now, including a recent spot on “MTV News.” That’s a mixed blessing. “As far as I’m concerned, the song shouldn’t be the focus of our album,” Seager said. “But I’m ready to stand behind my viewpoint and the reasons I wrote the song. The main message I’m trying to say is, ‘Yes, everybody has freedom of speech and the right to say what they want, but what does it ultimately say about that person when they say things (like Rose said)?’ Axl Rose, whether he likes it or not, is influencing millions.” “There are more dramatic songs lyrically by both of us on the record,” Ritter said. “It’s funny how you can pour out all this poetry, and it’s this song that gets the attention. Pop culture loves pop culture.”
Will the attention be enough to get the band the national recognition that has come to the Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, especially considering how hard the band is to pigeonhole? “They certainly don’t sound like a Top 40 band,” said Craig Marks, editor of the College Media Journal, which tracks sales and airplay of alternative bands. “But often whether a band makes it has more to do with what label they’re on and the label’s patience. Morgan Creek is a new label that’s very involved and has made the band a high priority. The single, ‘Julie’s Blanket,’ is pretty catchy, and even though the rest of the album is very different, it only takes one song to break through.”
Also helping to set up the band to move beyond recognition within the fragmented L.A. scene is its new manager, Peter Asher, who has guided the careers of, among others, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and 10,000 Maniacs. Now, having survived its time of turmoil, Mary’s Danish is chomping at the bit to get moving again. Tour plans are pending while bassist Wagner recovers from surgery to repair a damaged hip, but a national trek is penciled in for September and October, with a Los Angeles show likely to come sooner. “With this record I feel like we’re still playing catch-up, like we were with the first album, because we’ve been playing the songs live for a year now,” Ritter said. “I can’t wait till the next record, when we’ll finally be on track. . . . A lot of different writing combinations are happening between people. I’m curious to see what direction the band evolves in.” Gutierrez is also eager to move forward. “The record is so old and we’ve been sitting on it for so long that it’s almost like it’s part of another era,” he said. “We’ve gone through so many changes since then, a lot of complications and a lot of problems, not knowing if we were gonna be together, not knowing if we were going to have enough money to feed ourselves.” The three musicians sat silently for a moment. Finally, Ritter spoke. “You know, Gretchen has always said that if it ever stops being fun, it’s over. Well, she was wrong, because it has stopped being fun at certain times, but so far you’ve always had the feeling that it will come back. There’s always been a sense of hope. This is what I’ve always wanted to do--what we’ve all wanted to do--and I’m just so grateful.”  From: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-04-ca-375-story.html

Durand Jones & The Indications - Smile

Playing tough soul music that deals with good times, heartbreak, and the realities of life in the 21st century, Durand Jones & the Indications are a potent deep soul revival band based in Bloomington, Indiana. Formed by college students with a taste for vintage R&B and a desire to have some fun, the band found themselves jumping to professional status when their self-titled debut album (2016), recorded on a shoestring using mostly amateur gear, became an underground success as their emulation of classic East Coast and Midwest soul styles won over fans and critics. A storming live show and a reissue of their first album by a larger label helped boost Durand Jones & the Indications' profile, leading to two more full-lengths, American Love Call (2019) and Private Space (2021), the latter of which drew more from '70s inspirations.
Durand Jones grew up in a small town in Louisiana, and first performed in public as a member of the youth choir at his church, where the congregation was impressed with his strong vocal abilities. Jones' grandmother, who persuaded him to join the choir, also urged him to take up the saxophone, and in 2012, after receiving a BA from Southern Louisiana University, he left home to attend the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington as a graduate student. While performing with a campus saxophone ensemble, Jones stuck up a friendship with fellow students Aaron Frazer and Blake Rhein, who shared his love of vintage soul and R&B. Jones was a reluctant lead singer, but Frazer (who played drums and sang) and Rhein (who played guitar) felt he had potential as a frontman. Bassist Kyle Houpt and keyboardist Justin Hubler, bandmates of Frazer and Rhein in the blues-fueled rock band Charlie Patton's War, rounded out the lineup, and Durand Jones & the Indications began playing parties off campus.
As their popularity grew, the group began penning original material, and they started recording in Frazer's basement, using a four-track recording rig and a karaoke microphone for lead vocals. Some of their early recordings made their way to Terry Cole, who ran a small soul-oriented label called Colemine Records, and in 2015 Cole issued their debut single "Smile." In 2016, Colemine issued the Durand Jones & the Indications album, which they recorded at home for just $452.11, which included the cost of the beer they drank. Word of mouth and the support of indie record stores helped the album find an audience, and the band hit the road, winning new fans with their powerful live act. The independent Dead Oceans label struck a deal with Colemine to release an expanded edition of the debut album in 2018, fortified with the inclusion of several live tracks. Dead Oceans and Colemine joined forces for the March 2019 release of American Love Call, the second Durand Jones & the Indications album and the first cut in a proper studio, featuring new keyboardist Steve Okonski, who replaced Hubler.
Between albums, the band offered a pair of ballads with indicative titles, the slow-grooving "Cruisin to the Park" and the reassuring "Power to the People," and welcomed bassist Mike Montgomery following the departure of Houpt. Frazer, who previously cut a gospel single under the name the Flying Stars of Brooklyn NY, released a solo album, Introducing..., in January 2021. Jones' activity outside the group had included some saxophone work and a collaboration with Stone Foundation; he also co-wrote and fronted the Bamboos' "If Not Now (Then When)," which appeared on the album Hard Up in May 2021. Two months later, Durand Jones & the Indications returned with Private Space, on which the band delved into smooth soul and disco. The original demo mix of "Power to the People" was released as a limited 45-rpm single for Record Store Day in 2022, with an unlimited pressing following in 2023.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/durand-jones-the-indications-mn0003515392#biography

Gillian Welch - Caleb Meyer

David Rawlings told me Gillian Welch’s life story. She had grown tired of telling it herself. Welch is a singer and songwriter whose music is not easily classified—it is at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms—and Rawlings is her partner. Welch describes them as “a two-piece band called Gillian Welch.” I had asked her to talk about her past, and she demurred. Then she said, “Why don’t you tell it, Dave.” We were in Asheville, North Carolina; Welch and Rawlings were making a brief tour from Nashville, where they live.
Welch and Rawlings’s music is deceptively complex, despite its simple components: two voices, two guitars, and four hands. The broadest category into which it comfortably fits is country music. In the Country Music Hall of Fame, in Nashville, a video of Welch and Rawlings performing is shown with other videos that are intended to convey the breadth of modern country music. Welch and Rawlings are portrayed as defenders of a faith—old-time string musicians—practitioners of a lapsed form. They initially found a model for their enthusiasms in records made in the thirties and forties by musicians such as Bill and Earl Bolick, who performed as the Blue Sky Boys. Vocal duets unaccompanied by other musicians were eclipsed in the forties by the more forceful sound of bluegrass—the Blue Sky Boys broke up in 1951—leaving duets as one of the few forms of American music not yet completely covered with footprints. The music Welch and Rawlings play contains pronounced elements of old-time music, string-band music, bluegrass, and early country music, but Welch and Rawlings diverge from historical models by playing songs that are meticulously arranged and that include influences from rhythm and blues, rockabilly, rock and roll, gospel, folk, jazz, punk, and grunge. Furthermore, Welch prefers tempos that are languid. A typical Welch song has the tempo of a slow heartbeat.
Welch’s narratives tend to be accounts of resignation, misfortune, or torment. Her characters include itinerant laborers, solitary wanderers, misfits, poor people plagued at every turn by trouble, repentant figures, outlaws, criminals, soldiers, a moonshiner, a farm girl, a reckless beauty queen, a love-wrecked woman, a drug addict, and a child. Her imagination is sympathetic to outcasts who appeal for help to God despite knowing from experience that there isn’t likely to be any. Their theology is ardent and literal. They are given to picturing themselves meeting their families in Heaven, where mysteries too deep to comprehend will finally be explained. “Until we’ve all gone to Jesus / We can only wonder why,” she sings in “Annabelle,” a song about a sharecropper who hopes to give his daughter more than he had but who delivers her to the cemetery instead. A number of Welch’s songs are written from the point of view of male characters. “My Morphine,” the drowsy, intoxicated lament of a man whose addiction is souring, is the only song I am aware of about a narcotic which creates the sensation of having taken the narcotic. She is accomplished at compressing dramatic events into a few verses and a chorus. In “Caleb Meyer,” a man appears, transgresses, dies, and is revived as a spectre in the imagination of the woman who slit his throat in self-defense. Welch admires the troubadour songwriters Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Hank Williams, and she writes good car songs. The first song she made big money from was “455 Rocket,” which was a hit for Kathy Mattea in 1997, and is about a hot rod. More and more, Welch’s songs describe her actual life. “No One Knows My Name” is about her birth parents. “My mother was just a girl seventeen,” she sings, “and my dad was passing through, doing things a man will do.” Her mother was a college student in New York, and her father was a musician. By the time she was delivered, her adoption had been arranged.
Welch was born in New York in 1967. Ken and Mitzie Welch already had a daughter, Julie, who’d been born in 1961. She and Welch are close; she lives in California, is a graphic designer, and also teaches improvisational comedy. Julie’s birth had been difficult, and Mitzie wasn’t eager to go through another pregnancy. According to Welch, when they approached adoption agencies “the agencies said no dice because they were entertainers.” Ken Welch had been a performer since childhood, in Kansas City. He had begun piano lessons at four, but the teacher soon told his parents that she couldn’t do more with him until his hands were large enough to span an octave. “I couldn’t reach an octave on a piano, but I could on an accordion,” he says. By the time he was seven, he was tap dancing and playing the accordion throughout “Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, the remains of the old RKO circuit,” he says. Eventually, he attended Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, where he studied painting. He met Mitzie at an audition. They moved to New York separately. She sold handbags at a store on Broadway, and made twenty-five dollars on Sundays singing in the choir at Norman Vincent Peale’s church. She auditioned for Benny Goodman and got the job, but she had only a few weeks in which to learn Goodman’s repertoire. She ended up writing lyrics on the palms of her hands and on her fingernails.
As the comedy team “Ken and Mitzie Welch,” they appeared in clubs where Lenny Bruce also performed. Bob Newhart was once their opening act. They had their most public success on the “Tonight Show,” when Jack Paar was the host. They performed a slowed-down version of “I Got Rhythm.” Mitzie faced the audience and sang, and Ken stood with his back against hers, playing the accordion. By the time the Welches adopted Gillian, with the help of their doctor, Ken was writing music for television shows, and Mitzie was working in commercials and on Broadway.
When Welch was three, her parents moved to Los Angeles, to write music for “The Carol Burnett Show.” As a little girl, Welch came home from school one day weeping because she had been reprimanded in art class for making a black outline around snow in a painting. This led her parents to enroll her in a school called Westland. At Westland, the students gathered every week to sing folk songs and Carter Family songs, with Welch accompanying them on guitar. “On the tapes from the period, she sounds the same as she does now, except that her voice is higher,” Rawlings said.
Welch’s parents bought songbooks for her, and, sitting by herself in her room, playing guitar, she made her way through them. When she got to the end, she wrote songs of her own, “about ducks and things,” Rawlings said. “Like a kid who writes poems, and they go in a drawer.” Welch attended a high school called Crossroads, “where I get way into ceramics and art and stay hours after school building things and they let me,” she said.
Welch and Rawlings appear often on the Grand Ole Opry. They also perform in clubs in the United States and abroad, where their audiences tend to consist of between a thousand and two thousand people. They play very quietly. Welch sang so much by herself in her room that she never learned to sing above the sound of other musicians. Audiences at even the beeriest clubs attend them closely, as if they were at the theatre. Her voice resonates more in her head than in her chest. Its range is not wide—it is more an alto than a soprano—and it has a mournful, vernacular, almost factual quality, as if she were a witness to the scene she is describing. She conveys emotion through dynamics, not vibrato, and by a self-effacing absorption with the narrative. What ornamentation she employs comes mainly from bluegrass and brother-team singing—the pounce on certain syllables, the dying falls, the trills, the quick fades and returns, the small tear—though she manages, partly by the solemnity of her bearing, to give the impression of singing without artifice, which in itself is dramatic.  From: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/20/the-ghostly-ones

Bubblemath - Routine Maintenance

Received wisdom would have it that Bubblemath take aeons to release new music. Absolutely ages. The faithful left awaiting new crumbs of musical comfort from their Minnesotan heroes after the release of the band’s debut album, Such Fine Particles of the Universe, in 2001 had to wait a full sixteen years for the next transmission. But what a transmission it was; Edit Peptide was my favourite album of 2017, and remains so, its intricate prog-math sound still getting under my skin to force a break out of off-kilter and jerky movements, to the point where the uninformed might think I need an ambulance.
Bubblemath’s music hits all the right receptors in my noggin, and the news that a new album was due for release only five years after Edit Peptide brought whoops of joy in our house. Well, from me at least; my better half started twitching at the thought of having to listen to more of this convoluted madness: it’s safe to say, it’s not her thing. You have to invest yourself a bit into Bubblemath and let it all just happen to you. Go with the flow, allow it to work its magic without expectation. Give the alchemic musical interactions the space they need to do their peculiar synapse altering thing in peace. Once in, this stuff is bloody compelling.
There’s so much to take in from Turf Ascension‘s four lengthy tracks, three around the 10-minute mark, with opener Surface Tension running to almost 18-minutes. All of the band’s hallmarks are in place with the dextrous arrangements supporting the wide-eyed vocals of Jonathan G. Smith in a swirling stew of the largely unexpected. No wonder it takes them years to put this stuff together, the often dense passages exploding in all directions before resolving into memorable hooks and lead parts. It’s a stunning achievement, a fascinating and fully satisfying listening experience, hugely entertaining whilst keeping the brain agile.
From the off, with a keyboard rush into an enticing chord sequence as the pace increases, Surface Tension is engrossing. Jazzy piano asides move into thumping sections and soloing guitars, all the while Smith’s forceful voice dexterously delivers Kai Esbensen’s dense words (about a school becoming an access point to a secret underground complex that aims to ensure the survival of humanity as a catastrophic war unfolds above) with aplomb. Mood shifts and angularity combine to give a driving momentum, the whole band contributing fully to the symphonic math swirl. A chiming lyrical section emerges from the intense verses and Jonathan G. Smith’s keening guitar (with support from Blake Albinson) offers hope as the subterranean population await the moment when they can emerge and start again. It easily sustains its length and crams ingenuity into every pore.
Everything eases the intensity a little, its melancholic setting around electric piano driving clever lyrical focal points concerning the complexities of modern life, where misinformation and obfuscation make everything even more confusing. It’s all crisply delivered, with James Flagg’s beautifully understated drumming particularly worthy of praise. The scene of a decaying apple tree springing back to life each year is beautifully set as a metaphor for life in Decrypted, the pace picking up a couple of minutes in with a distinctly King Crimson vibe, which moves on in a mathy direction with slide-rule interplay between the instruments, repeating patterns evolving and reinventing. The frenetic forms ebb away and the low-key conclusion sees the tree fall back into slumber.
Refuse exudes power from the off, a jazz-fusion thread running through it. The lyric is again fascinating, utilising a similar style to Everything as power corrupts, militarisation increasing at every turn, driven by insinuated fear. The intensity ramps up into a frenetic instrumental call and response, Jay Burritt’s bass leading the way out as the pace increases, Esbensen’s keys joining the fray in a rampaging torrent of riffs. It’s quite something, the abrupt stop at the end suggesting a poor outcome for everyone.
Expertly mixed by Blake Albinson, Turf Ascension is exhilaratingly high-energy for most of its length, but it never gets wearing as the dexterity, both in the instrumentation and the delightfully delivered lyrics (Smith doing a fantastic job throughout), keeps the mind racing along with the music. The vocal lines and melodies are often unorthodox but they sit within the intricate musicianship like a particularly satisfying pearl in a beautiful oyster. Bubblemath are on a roll now and the thought of more new sounds from this most engagingly obtuse band before the end of the decade can no longer be ruled out as the deranged ramblings of a loon.  From: https://theprogressiveaspect.net/blog/2022/07/03/bubblemath-turf-ascension-draft/  

Cellar Darling - Rebels

Dark/Live/Mag Interview with Anna Murphy, Cellar Darling
- On Bats, Squirrels And The Love To Death

Marco: Anna, first of all thank you so much for taking the time for an interview with us.

Anna: Thank you for having me.

Marco: 2018 was a very busy year for you. You toured intensively, in the UK, Japan, South America, played at the WGT in Leipzig and other big festivals. And on top of that you were working on your highly anticipated second album. How are you and the band doing at the moment?

Anna: I for one am exhausted. The album took a lot of energy to write and record. But it was worth it - I'm happy with the result. As for the band, we're currently switching back and forth between rehearsing and working... we all have other jobs and passions which we are trying to balance with our commitment to Cellar Darling. I'm a producer and sound engineer at the Soundfarm Studios in Lucerne, currently working with a death metal band and writing music for my other projects.

Marco: Well, that sounds like little sleep. Which brings me to 'Insomnia'. It was the first released single of the new album, which brought you a lot of positive feedback. The fans are now even more excited about your second longplayer. What can you tell us about it?

Anna: We've just announced that our new album will be a concept album by the name of 'The Spell'. We've released two small parts of a long, intense story... the latest song being the title track and the 'center' of the story about a girl who falls in love with death. The album will be released on the 22nd of March.

Marco: Now you make me even more curious! Would you reveal more of what the story is about?

Anna: Okay, it tells the tale of a nameless girl who is birthed into a world that is in pain, damaged and debilitated by the human beings that inhabit it. We follow her as she searches for a meaning in life, when suddenly she meets and falls in love with death. A spell is cast and a painful, elaborate journey begins.

Marco: Let's talk about Jacob the bat. When I first listened to 'Insomnia' I was immediately caught by the depth, the captivating variety and your beautiful vocal lines. The work seems original, fresh, but also complex, which makes it even more exciting. In the video, the oppressive atmosphere and melancholy is emphasized by the magnificent artwork of Costin Chioreanu. What did Jacob do to you that in the end such a work was created?

Anna: First off, thank you. I'm glad that you can sense what atmosphere we wanted to create with the song as well as hear how much work was put into it. Jacob came to visit us while I was recording the demo vocals in the control room of my studio. It was exciting of course and at one point we were just running around the studio being chased by him, but my main concern was if he'd find the way back out. We left all the windows open over night and he was gone the next day... or at least he hasn't come to say 'hi' since. A few weeks later a squirrel came to visit us at Tommy Vetterli's New Sound studio where we recorded more songs and mixed the album. It was during the only song of the album that has something "lighthearted" about it, a spark of hope. Kind of cool, the bat being there during a dark song and having a squirrel there for the lighter one. The animal world seems to be on board with our music!

Marco: And so do we! The combination of heavy guitar riffs, rocky drums, hurdy-gurdy and your voice has already provided you with a recognition value in your still young band history. But it's hard to assign you to a certain genre. I think that's on purpose, too. And one notices with your songs that your ideas unfold fully because you set no limits to them. When and how did you realize for yourself that you wanted to create new and unique things? I once heard that you are a talented painter as well?

Anna: I've just never had an affinity for boundaries. I think some artists need those 'restraints' and clear formulas in order to function, but I'm the opposite. Genres, set song structures, formulas.. it bores me. The fuel for my creativity is chaotic, 'all over the place', scattered... which also makes the results more difficult to enjoy or understand at times. I also admire the other thing, finding something that works, repeating it and being successful with that. It takes an equal amount of skills as the chaos principle does that I'm messing around with. As for the painting, it's like with the various instruments I play. I love doing a lot of different things, but that also means I gradually and slowly progress with each of them - I don't do one thing perfectly or overly virtuosic, I half-ass my way through ten things and hope I'll be able to do a few of them as good as somehow possible, haha.

Marco: But you seem so calm and balanced. How do you deal with stress? How do you balance yourself and what are you busy with if you don't want to have anything to do with music - or doesn't that happen at all?

Anna: A lot of people say that and it's interesting, because I'm quite a mess to be honest. I would say my core is calm and balanced, yes. But I have bouts of anxiety, paranoia and depression that come and go as they please. So far they haven't gotten the better of me though and I guess that's why I'm perceived as calm - the outside world rarely sees the other side. What helps me the most is being outside, hiking in the mountains is the most cleansing experience for my mind. I try to meditate and read as much as possible to stay grounded. And I surround myself with few, but good people... Oh and wine. Red wine.

Marco: Oh wow, that's an intense mix of emotions you have to deal with. Thank you for this insight in your inner life. Let's get back to your future plans: For 2019 you have already announced a number of tour dates in spring. The focus so far is on the UK. Are there already plans for more countries in Europe, as headliner or support band? What are the next steps you want to take?

Anna: We're working on doing more shows this year, as many as somehow possible. Most of it is still 'in progress' though... I don't really think about the next steps, I just do my part and work towards something unknown in the end. What I can do is create, be present and spread our stories - the future will happen on its own accord anyways and it did so wonderfully last year where we got to see so many parts of the world.

From: https://www.facebook.com/cellardarlingofficial/posts/interview-with-anna-murphy-thank-you-darklivemag-/2152823064784080/

The Pentangle - Captured Live 1972

The Pentangle Captured Live DVD offers a Belgian TV special recorded by the same team that has recorded the Nursery Crime tracks for Genesis, the Plague Of The Lighthouse Keeper for VDGG, Atomic Rooster special, ELP's live presentation of their debut album and a few more. Although The pentangle by 72 was a little pasts its creative prime - the tracks presented here are from the Reflection album onward, we still get a pristine performance with impeccable musical execution and correct sound - although do not expect this to have the sound of 21st century recording quality. The group is set up in a mid-circle with the two guitarists facing each other at the extremes and the others are stuck in the middle but a few feet deeper. This live in studio recording does not offer, of course, the real concert feeling but does give you correct idea of what they were capable of.  Starting with the trad track Circle Be Unbroken, the quintet is clearly in phase and warming for other tracks such as the good Wedding Dress, and the quieter Reflection. Another trad track Willy O Winsburry is taken from Solomon's Seal and the set closes on a great People On The Highway

It is only unfortunate that no Pentangle´s real live DVD has appeared yet. The band had a fantastic live performance that made them famous long before they recorded their debut LP. Well, the closest you got is this release, a studio live recording of them playing on the belgium TV. On the plus side we have decent sound, good images and a fine performance. On the down side we have short playing time and a limited repertoire (they were promoting the Reflection LP and most songs are from it). If you´re a fan of the band (specially a fan of their first line up and jazzy/folk/blues phase) this is a must have. Even if this is not a ´real´ live concert (I mean in front of an audience), this is the closest you can get to see them playing live so far. And do they play good! I love Jaqui McShee´s voice (so close of Renaissance´s Annie Haslam). Maybe not their best performance together, but still a fine document of a time when five talented people formed one of England´s most remarkable prog folk bands of all time.

From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=9997