Puta Volcano - Black Box

Puta Volcano started quite a few years ago. Would you like to talk a bit about your background?

Anna Papathanasiou: Our common background involves 3 LPs and 1 EP. At the very beginning Alex Pi the guitarist who also happens to be my brother asked me if I could join him in the studio because he was bored to death to just play the guitar on his own. And so it all began. From then on we grew bigger from every aspect of the term and are walking together up until this day as a family, or even better as a married couple of four.

What does the name “Puta Volcano” refer to in the context of the band name?

Nothing in particular at first. A friend of ours recommended the name one night that we were drinking wine in the countryside and we liked the sound of it. If we were to come up with a subtext though that would be the volcano in Chile with that exact same name. Well, it is in a way a cavity in the body of earth producing massive explosive amounts of steaming energy and that is something we kind of relate with when we write or play our music, so there you have it.

I first heard about your band when I heard Harmony Of Spheres released by IOTA5 Records. What’s the story behind it?

The album’s story is our imaginary wandering in a bunch of solar systems visiting uncharted territories and hearing to the tunes of the celestial bodies as they moved past by our studio spacecraft. IOTA5 on the other hand is a very earthling and dear member of the band managing us towards a decent representation out there and we love that person.

But your first album is from 2011, Represent Victory Below Eye?

Yes that is true. It was our first “official” recording as Puta Volcano. Steve S. the drummer was in the band for almost a couple of weeks by the time we hit the studio and the producer was the memorable Chris Tsangarides. It was our first step into some grown up recording procedures and attitude and it will always hold a special place in our hearts and minds.

And in 2015 you released The Sun via Front Yard?

Yes also correct. It was an interesting collaboration.

Can you share some further details how your latest album AMMA was recorded?

With hips of creative anxiety, different opinions about almost every single aspect of it that ended up converging when we all stepped foot in the recording studio. Johny Tercu was in charge of the production and we handed it over to him after the preproduction to take it a step further. In this case we were his instruments. Have to say though we were all slightly more mature than some while ago when we recorded Harmony of Spheres. Time cannot pass by super gently for any of us.

Is there a concept behind it?

Yes, and a rough connection with Harmony of Spheres makes sense in our minds. It is the return from our wandering trip to our place, only this time it seems unfamiliar like something has glitched. And to be honest the recent events with the pandemic caught up with us. We are describing a dystopian reality that has made us shut our mouths and watch history being recorded as we speak.

The cover artwork is really interesting.

Oh thank you, glad you like it. It actually is a sculpture I did back in 2018 in New York as part of a performative piece I did there as a resident artist. It is a universal mother wrapped in a space blanket, something like a solid monument to all the caretakers giving life and making it blossom.

How pleased were you with the sound of the album?

It is different. Personally I consider it a new point of view to an already existing sound. Like writing a text with a different quality of ink.

What are some bands/musicians that have a big influence on you?

A great bunch. Nirvana, Tool, and a lot more. But in general we all come from different musical backgrounds which creates tension, diversity and spark at the least. We are happy and lucky to be so different with one another.

Do you often play live?

Well that hurts right now, I bet all of the musicians around the world. We were about to hit the road in mid April but Corona had other plans. Normally we would have a lot of gigs within 2020. That is our favourite part of being in a band playing live with a living audience sweating under the stage.

Do you think your music reflects the current situation in Greece?

Yes and no. In a microscale it reflects each one of the 4 of us, so we are part of the Greek reality more or less which makes us receptive to anything that has being going on here for the past tough years, but other than that we like to practice some sort of escapism through our chords and lyrics. We share our feelings between what we go through and what we visualize in our daydreaming.

From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2020/04/puta-volcano-interview.html

Cream - We're Going Wrong - Live

I saw Cream in fall of 1968, October, Olympia Stadium in Detroit (the old Red Wings arena). The stage was set up in the middle of the arena, me and my friends were lucky to have seats in the first row of the ‘regular hockey seats’ (there were chairs set on the floor as well), and we happened to be close to the center of the arena so we were close to them, and by luck a little in front of them (there was seating behind them as well IIRC) - perfect seats IMO.
Clapton was all in white - white pants, white shirt, white mod jacket. Clean-shaven, perfectly coifed long-ish straight hair hanging over and semi-hiding his face. There was no ‘show’ put on - they weren’t showmen except for Ginger Baker (RIP), who looked just like Sesame Street’s “Animal”, who I figured was modeled on him … tho Ginger also looked like he was 100 years old, altho he was 28. Jack Bruce (RIP) was all business but went all-out, workman-style. He quickly looked a mess up there, but he wasn’t there for his looks. Powerful voice, and much more of a bass-playing virtuoso than we knew or were expecting. And the band was all business … serious British Blues from start to finish. Massively loud, especially Clapton … but we were used to that, and after all that’s what we were there for … we loved it.
The performance was magnificent … three guys sounding every bit as good as their records (except the opening to “White Room”, which they did as a voice-harmony). Clapton was absolutely virtuosic (spoiling me from ever appreciating, for example, Jimmy Page in the two times I saw Led Zep), as we got used to him being - tho his voice was noticably weaker than Bruce’s, and he seemed to use it in the upper ranges as if that’s where he wanted to be, tho he’s not a tenor. Bruce never went into falsetto on “White Room”, which he did on the record I believe … and he sounded better in his regular voice here.
They played their classic Cream songs (from what I remember) including “Sunshine of Your Love” (which Clapton introduced, saying only, “And now … our Hit”), “White Room,” “I’m So Glad,” “Politician,” the great “Deserted Cities of the Heart” (my favorite Cream song), “Spoonful”, “Crossroads”, Baker’s “Toad” & “I Feel Free”. It was powerful, wonderful … Clapton was Clapton, Bruce was so impressive, and Baker was Ginger.
We’d seen, just weeks before, the magnificent “Jeff Beck Group” (Beck, Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, the great Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, Micky Waller on drums), and in a smaller venue … so the bar had set been extremely high for us. This concert was every bit as good … and in a live performance there’s a huge built-in advantage in having an additional instrument up there, which Jeff Beck had in Nicky Hopkins (RIP), as well in having a smaller venue (for sound quality).

From: https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-to-see-the-band-Cream-play-live

Jaala - Hard Hold

When she was recording her band’s debut album, Cosima Jaala leapt around the studio, whiskey-drunk and mostly naked, with a wildness that surprised even her. “It was a magical summoning of power,” she explains when we meet in the shady yard of her Melbourne share-house,“It was something that I didn’t really have at the time.” The resulting record, Hard Hold, has been described as jazzy, but Jaala rejects most of those comparisons. “If a chord isn’t major or minor, people just say it’s jazz,” she says. Rodeo-riding the dynamic instrumentation is her soulful, elastic voice, which Jaala attributes to the cigarettes she smokes throughout our talk. Producer and engineer Paul Bender, who also plays bass with Australian neo-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote, was the one who first urged her not to be shy with her singing. Now she holds little back, ripping out anguished screams one second and dropping to a rattling husk the next.
Jaala was raised in Queensland, in a working-class beach town southeast of Brisbane with plenty of insidious ugliness: underage sex, hard drugs, gambling. “I started binge-drinking young because it was the kind of thing you did,” she says. “There was no real scope of the outside world. It was this reality that I figured out from a young age I didn’t want to be in.” I’d rather give my two good playing hands than stay in that hot climate and marry one of those men, she vows over a couple sideways chords on “Salt Shaker.”
As a young teen, Jaala escaped the humdrum grit of Queensland with her close friend, Maddie. “We started creating our own personal myths; we went through the existential phase of ‘Oh, everyone’s just moving the furniture around. Let’s get out of here and be us’,” she tells me. “We would go to the bookshop and find literature that spoke of the outside world.” The book Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, which tells of the “iron and fuzz” required to steer one’s own destiny, was the catalyst that eventually encouraged her to skip town.
First she moved to Brisbane, where she haunted the pokey indie venue Ric’s Bar and observed the power held by cocky guys in rock bands. At 19, she moved to the creative hub of Melbourne and formed bands of her own—groups that teetered the line between punk and performance art, and had names like Velcro Lobster and Mangelwurzel—before focusing on her eponymous project in late 2014, and filling out its lineup with drummer Maria Moles, bassist Loretta Wilde, and guitarist Nicolas Lam. The result was a fleshed-out sound that channeled the vibes of classic indie misfits—particularly the buoyancy of X-Ray Spex and the temperamental rhythms of Throwing Muses.
Hard Hold documents a breakup, something Jaala says she felt better about when she heard Vulnicura, Björk’s 2015 album, which gorgeously chronicles the dissolution of a relationship. “I don’t think he’s too happy about these songs,” she says of her ex, “but he does the same thing with his band so it’s a pretty even playing field.” For Jaala, the record is like reaching out to her troubled teenage self. “When you had a hard time growing up, you want to send messages back: it’s going to be okay.” The ultimate gift, she reckons, would be to touch a nerve with those teens the way songwriters like Martha Wainwright and Jeff Buckley did with her. “They were so openly emotional and female, and so is this,” she says. “My album should just be called Songs From My Cunt.”
Near the end of our chat, Jaala fidgets with her blonde mop of hair and exhales a cloud of white smoke with gusto. She’s got the sort of presence that seems like it could get you both into a lot of trouble. “Last year was the most wasted year of my life,” she says, as if to confirm. “But it’s turned out to be the most fruitful, which is fucking hilarious.” This unruliness is evident across her project: in press photos, she’s lying in a bath with a rubber ducky; in videos, she’s sat on a toilet with tampons inserted up both nostrils. “Music innately is childish and playful,” she says. “When you’re older, you’re taught to shut that side of you off. But there are spirits that can hang around and compel you to do things.” She thinks for a moment. “If I was living a hundred years ago, I would have been institutionalised or murdered.”  From: https://www.thefader.com/2016/03/02/jaala-hard-hold-interview-gen-f

The Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing

"It's Your Thing" is a funk single by The Isley Brothers. Released in 1969, the anthem was an artistic response to Motown chief Berry Gordy's demanding hold on his artists after the Isleys left the label in late 1968. After scoring one popular hit with the label, with the song "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)", the Isleys felt typecast in the role as a second-tier act while well-established Detroit acts like The Temptations, The Miracles, and the Four Tops got more promotion from the label Motown.
The brothers' decision to leave Motown came after a successful British tour, where they had a bigger fan base than in the United States. A re-release of "This Old Heart" had reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. Similar success came with two more singles from their Motown catalog that were hits well after their Motown departure. Berry Gordy allowed the brothers to leave the label, and the Isleys reactivated their own label, T-Neck Records, which they had originally started a few years prior to their Motown signing.
Recorded in two takes and featuring the first appearance of 16-year-old Ernie on bass and Skip Pitts on guitar. The song was released as a single on February 16, 1969, and quickly rose to the top of both the Billboard pop and R&B singles charts, peaking at No. 2 on the former nd marking their first No. 1 hit in the latter. Upon the song's release and ascent to success, Gordy threatened to sue the group for releasing it in an attempt to bring them back to Motown, but he eventually cancelled his threat.
The song has been credited for being one of the first fully-fledged funk songs at the time that such artists as James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone brought their own funk anthems to the scene. Brown used the musical background from the song for the songs "It's My Thing (You Can't Tell Me Who to Sock It to)", an answer song by Marva Whitney, and Brown's own 1974 single, "My Thang".  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Your_Thing

In this song, Ronald Isley is letting a girl know that she is free to spread her love around, as long as he gets some of it too. “It’s Your Thing” was a popular saying at the time and wonderfully ambiguous, so it could have a sexual connotation or simply be about personal independence.

In an interview on The Isley Brothers: Summer Breeze Greatest Hits Live DVD, Ronald Isley says he wrote this song while dropping his daughter off at school one day. He didn’t want to forget the lyrics so he hummed it in his head and rushed straight to his mother’s house to write it out. He sang it for his eldest brother O'Kelly, who thought it to be a hit, so they set up studio time to record it.

How did Ernie end up playing bass on this song?

Well, I was prepared in my mind to play drums. In rehearsal I had played drums, and then I switched off the drums and played the bass part. When we got to the session I was setting up the drum kit and the bass player came in, and I showed him what I had been playing. And when he started playing, he was more or less playing what he felt, but it wasn’t what I showed him. So just before we started the actual recording, Ronald came over to me and said in my ear, “You’re gonna play bass”, and my heart was immediately thumping. I was scared.They handed me the guy’s bass and put the headphones on me. I heard a voice saying, “Rolling” and counted it off. I held onto the bass for dear life and played it. And it turned out that it worked. Everything about that song, everything about that record worked. Everything. The tempo, the lyrics, the musical track. Ronald sang it on one take, the very first take. Of course, we didn’t know that it was going to be the Frankenstein monster hit 45 for the Isley Brothers’ career.
— Ernie Isley, Noozhawk, 2018

From: https://genius.com/The-isley-brothers-its-your-thing-lyrics

Magic Fig - Goodbye Suzy

Wondrous, majestic, and fantastical, Magic Fig’s debut rarely feels of these times, and it’s all the better for it. As so many struggle with their day to day existence, trying to make ends meet as the world crumbles around them, it’s not hype and “buzz” that we’re in search of, but a great escape, a place beyond the daily grind, beyond this realm altogether. The band’s self-titled album is an ever shifting kaleidoscope, the shapes all recognizable yet refracted in mirrored splendor. It’s a decidedly pop odyssey that wanders deep into the woods of late 60’s prog, Moog altered psych, and dream pop at its most visionary, a lysergic trip into an unknown cosmic past. As the isolation of the pandemic developed a need for collaboration and a communal approach in its wake, so came to be Magic Fig, stepping outside our reality, figuratively and somewhat literally as we decontextualize those involved from their best known work.
Featuring a selection of the Bay Area’s indie pop elite that includes members of The Umbrellas, Whitney’s Playland, Almond Joy, and Healing Potpourri, they’ve strayed beyond the jangle and crunch of power-pop, beyond any remnants of twee charm, instead embracing a tireless radiance and tasteful complexity. Magic Fig, comprised of Jon Chaney (keys), Matthew Ferrara (bass), Taylor Giffin (drums), Muzzy Moskowitz (guitars), and Inna Showalter (vocals), has one foot deep in the explorative and enigmatic world of Canterbury prog and the other in the pitch-bending dimension of psych. With nods to pioneers like Soft Machine, Caravan, and The United States of America, it’s clear that Magic Fig comes from a place of reverence, but the band are playing by their own rules. Having mastered the core elements of fuzzy pop hooks in their respective projects, they’re flexing different muscles, diving into the immersive abstract.
There’s an incredible balance to the record, the structures contort and drift into the choral abyss yet remain compact and breezy. It’s unabashed prog with a childlike glow, re-orchestrating our brains in under a half an hour, the band as concise as they are dazzling. The way Magic Fig weaves amorphous keys and dexterous rhythms with vocal melodies that feel more Broadcast or Stereolab than say Caravan, is rich with texture and immaculate detail. This isn’t progressive in an overtly flashy or indulgent way, the band are simply changing our mind’s chemistry, astounding with a graceful technicality (Taylor Giffin’s drumming alone will leave jaws glued to the floor). The songs evolve in plumes of serenity, a  never ending dream that remains eternally engaged, impossible to walk away from unchanged. Working together with producer Joel Robinow (of Once and Future Band, Howlin Rain), Magic Fig found their kindred spirit, an engineer whose own musical output could be considered their sonic and spiritual sibling. The recording is clear and precise, yet never overly polished, captured with a retro warmth that details each colossal drum fill, the natural waves of structural shifts, the celestial layering, and the unearthly hum of the manipulated Moog.
Magic Fig’s blend of prog and psych is sophisticated and developed, there’s a sense of patience even in the most dexterous of movements. From the hypnotic blossom of album opener “Goodbye Suzy” and its luminescent harmonies and the cavalcade of divergent drum patterns to the folk-leaning ease and natural aura of “Departure,” the band feel locked into the whole. They’re painting in unison with shimmering renaissance detail to create a singular masterpiece, a culmination of widespread ideas, each stunning texture given room to expand, balanced and with perfect synergy. Where songs like “PS1” lean toward lounge psych and “Distant Dream” opts for a laconic jazz induced art pop drift (reminiscent of Pearl & The Oysters), Magic Fig pair those moments with the pulsating paisley prog spirals of the appropriately named “Labyrinth” and the building disorientation of “Obliteration,” a song both gentle, soaring, and at times, rhythmically jagged.
Magic Fig is a record best experienced with an open mind. While the prog and psych inclinations create mountainous dynamics, being a fan of either genre isn’t inherently necessary on a record that’s far more accessible than one might imagine. Grandiose but delicate, Magic Fig are putting the pop into prog, and it’s safe to say they’ve stumbled onto something special, a slinking metamorphosis from magical dream state to vivid sonic exploration.  From: http://post-trash.com/news/2024/5/12/album-of-the-week-magic-fig-magic-fig

The Byrds - I Come and Stand At Every Door

There's no intro, just a chiming chord and straight into the vocal: "I come and stand at every door, but no one hears my silent tread. I knock and yet remain unseen, for I am dead, for I am dead." It's the recognisable Byrds sound, that Rickenbacker whine, but the tempo is slow, deliberate, with Michael Clarke's drums – so alive and mobile elsewhere – dragging behind the beat, like a funeral march.
On vinyl, I Come and Stand at Every Door is placed at the end of the first side of the Byrds' third album, Fifth Dimension: following three fast, super intense, proto-psychedelic tunes (Mr Spaceman, I See You, What's Happening?!?!), it could almost be a drag – and then Roger McGuinn's patient, paper-thin voice sucks you right in.
Musically, it's one long, lilting drone, taken from a traditional folk melody called Great Selchie of Shule Skerry (recorded by Judy Collins on her second album). The lyrics are adapted from a poem by the celebrated Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet – spoken from the viewpoint of a seven-year-old child incinerated at Hiroshima: "I'm seven now as I was then/When children die they do not grow."
I Come and Stand at Every Door was recorded in May 1966. During the previous year, pop had begun to go deeper and darker. Bob Dylan's ascent to mass popularity kick-started the protest boom of late 1965: among the plaints both consequential and trivial were anti-nuclear rants like Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction and Tim Rose's Come Away Melinda.
The Byrds were more thoughtful. Thanks to their manager, Jim Dickson, and their own experiences, they had direct access to the hardcore beat/folk tradition. They had all grown up with the work of the blacklisted Pete Seeger, whose adaptations informed the Byrds' versions of The Bells of Rhymney and Turn Turn Turn, and whose translation of Hikmet's poem they used on this song.
The third verse takes you into the heart of the holocaust: "My hair was scorched by swirling flame/My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind/Death came and turned my bones to dust/And that was scattered by the wind." There is no solo, no break, just the relentless, measured, quiet voice: "I ask for nothing for myself/For I am dead, for I am dead."
No pop song had gone so far, nor pitched it so right. The documentary feel makes it of a piece with Peter Watkins's contemporaneous BBC film, The War Game (shot in 1965, scheduled for transmission in August 1966), which simply aimed to show the effect of a one megaton nuclear bomb hitting the town of Rochester. Banned by the BBC as "too horrifying", it was not shown until 1985.
Nuclear weapons haunted 60s pop culture. Throughout the 50s, there had been H-Bomb tests – weapons with the power of multiple Hiroshimas – and the world had nearly come to an all-out nuclear war during the Bay of Pigs face-off in October 1961. Throughout the late 50s and early 60s CND was a mass youth movement in the UK.
This ever-present threat – the Big Fear of the age – fostered a kind of mass existentialism. As Jeff Nuttall wrote in his brilliant survey of the 60s underground, Bomb Culture: "The people who had not yet reached puberty at the time of the bomb were incapable of conceiving of life with a future." The only certain thing in this world was what Nuttall called "the crackling certainty of Now".
People look back at the extraordinary explosion of music in the 60s with their own prejudices. They forget that it was rooted in a consciousness that felt the world could vaporise in an instant. In the same way, the onset of commercial youth culture – heralded by the creation of "the teenager" in late 1944/early 1945 – coincided with the end of the second world war and the terrible events in Japan.
I Come and Stand at Every Door reinforces this fundamental connection. But there is a resolution, some light at the end of the horror. As the song moves to its climax, a harmony voice comes in: "All that I ask is that for peace/You fight today, you fight today/So that the children of this world/May live and grow and laugh and play." The sense of catharsis is palpable.  
The Byrds put this masterpiece of tension and release into the US top 30 when its parent album Fifth Dimension entered the charts in September 1966. With nuclear weapons back in the news, this haunting, almost forgotten, song still strikes a chord.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/oct/12/jon-savage-byrds

Laura Marling - Devil's Spoke

After three months of shuttered concert venues, hearing Laura Marling’s voice eddy around the Union Chapel in north London is like being dosed with a vitamin I had been leaving out of my diet. It’s almost like hearing live music for the first time; a different kind of beauty than you get on a daily walk or a drive to a castle, something vividly real but constantly evaporating into the air.
Aside from 25 production staff, there’s almost no one else in the venue for this concert, which is being streamed online as one of the first fully realised gigs since the arrival of coronavirus. Backed solely by her acoustic guitar, Marling plays one set for the UK in the evening and a later one for a US audience. She is recorded in crystal clarity and filmed on three cameras, two of them roving around and approaching her, capturing the changing weather across her face.
There have been plenty of free lo-fi performances by stars on Instagram during lockdown, or charity initiatives such as Together at Home, but Marling’s concert is the next step for a live music sector flailing for its previous levels of artistry and revenue: £900m losses are predicted for this year in the UK. The event is ticketed at £12 or $12 a stream, and while her manager won’t give me exact numbers, he says more than 6,000 have been sold. Michael Chandler, the chief executive of Union Chapel, says events such as this feel like “a glimmer of light” for a shuttered venue that, with two-metre social distancing, could only accommodate 84 of its usual 900 capacity.
“I loved it,” Marling says between her sets, relaxed and happy. “I love the weirdness of the intensity of playing live, and that was a totally uninterrupted version of it. I don’t have to take a break and say something awkward – banter doesn’t come naturally to me.”
Marling superfan Mitchell Stirling, who watched the livestream at home and has seen her 32 times before, concurs. “Laura’s never one for onstage banter, so you’re not missing out on that kind of thing,” he says. “It was a strange hinterland between being at an intimate concert and watching a DVD, but it was excellent.” Another fan, Hannah Gallagher, says it was “gorgeous, and the production values were incredible. She doesn’t need to pull out many tricks, and that translated well. Me and my boyfriend WhatsApp-called each other while livestreaming the concert on our laptops; he put his phone up next to him so he could turn to me as if he was standing next to me at a gig, which was really nice.”
The livestream’s director, Giorgio Testi, says it is “a dream come true, because you can capture the beauty of the venue and the artist without ruining the experience for people watching in a crowd. My job can become even more creative.” He aimed for “something extremely cinematic”, using ambitiously long, unbroken shots to help immerse everyone watching at home, and says this approach demands an artist of Marling’s calibre. “It brings back the importance of being a very good performer, because you can’t hide. Either you can do it, or you shouldn’t show up on stage.”
The chat-averse Marling doesn’t acknowledge his cameras’ presence, but says there is potential for other performers to play around with them. “The ability to think up a persona with that level of intricacy is actually really hard, and that doesn’t come naturally to me, either. My persona, I guess, is holding on to intensity for as long as I possibly can. For other people, it’s more theatrical, and that could be an amazing extra quality to this new normal.”
The hope is that this could become an entirely new ticketed format to match the success of livestreamed theatre and opera performances, with the strictures of coronavirus forcing people to embrace the idea. Audiences who live too far from a touring route could get to experience a performer at close quarters, and as Hannah says: “There was no one putting their phones up and blocking your view; there was guaranteed clarity. And you don’t have annoyances like toilet breaks.”  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/11/i-loved-the-weirdness-can-laura-marlings-crowdless-gig-rescue-live-music