Saint Abdullah & Eomac - Good Morning Machete/Old Enough to Log In

Saint Abdullah and Eomac is a long distance, ongoing collaboration between Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani, New York based Iranian-Canadian brothers who make up Saint Abdullah and Eomac, aka Ian McDonnell, a producer from Wicklow, Ireland, who released the excellent ‘Cracks’ LP on Planet Mu a couple of years back. They hope to finally meet this summer, but that hasn’t stopped them already releasing an album ‘Patience of a Traitor’ on Nicholas Jaar’s ‘Other People’ label last year.
Initially starting work together in 2019, they were mutual fans of each other’s work and found that their own productions, Saint Abdullah using outboard analogue gear and Eomac in the box, complemented each other with a sense of rawness and heavy use of samples and extreme contrasts.  With a title that hints at not getting too caught up in the information war, the EP also sounds like a rule of thumb for a collaboration, based on building tracks by passing music back and forth and working intuitively.
The five tracks here run at different speeds, from the beat-less opener, title track ‘A Vow Not To Read’ to the hip hop pace of ‘Wali’ with samples that draw from Shia Mourners, to the spaced out crunchy slow-mo of ‘Mother I Couldn’t Sleep’ with Aquiles Navarro on trumpet. While ‘Toes In The Hummus’ has a rhythm like marbles being shook, all the EP is underpinned with thick chords, giving it a sense of cohesion, even with the chaos bubbling above.  From: https://planet.mu/releases/a-vow-not-to-read/

L'Ham De Foc - Un Nom

L'Ham de Foc is a Spanish group that has made two beautiful albums. Their music is enchanting and intense. The Spanish sound is mixed with all kinds of influences from other traditional music forms. This creates the group's own timeless sound. The third CD is on it’s way and since the band is not really known here in the Netherlands (but does perform regularly in Germany), an introduction is in order. Who are L'Ham de Foc? Can you introduce yourself to the readers?

The core of the group is formed by singer Mara Aranda and by Efrén López, who plays the various string instruments. We are also the two who make the compositions and lead the band. There are six other musicians besides us. The complete band is as follows: Mara Aranda: vocals, didgeridoo, tanpura Efrén López: zanfona (hurdygurdy), oud, saz, laouto de Creta, langeleik, santur and other string instruments Diego López: percussion (davul, bendir, riq, panderetas, kanjira...) Eduard Navarro: traditional wind instruments (gralla, dolçaina, Xirimia, gaita , gadja...) and string instruments (llaüt, moraharpa...) Constantino López: cittern, oud, saz, mandola. Hristos Barbas: ney, kaval, renaissance flutes Osvaldo Jorge: percussion (tabla, riq, ghatam, darbuka, redoblant...) Juan Manuel Rubio: medieval harp, zanfona, saz, santur. We are based in Valencia, but since it is difficult to find musicians who play the instruments we want, they come from all over Spain and even Greece.

When did you start making music?

As L'Ham we have been playing together for eight years now, but everyone played in other bands before that, with different styles. Some in purely traditional bands, others in more experimental groups. Mara and I (Efrén) met in another band from Valencia, which no longer exists. We discovered that we could inspire each other by composing music that we both love. That is how we started our first sessions at home with simple recording equipment.

Where and from whom did you learn to play traditional music?

Mara studied traditional Valencian singing, and still does, with the best singer ever from Valencia, Apa. Mara and I live together and travel regularly to Greece and Turkey to learn to play the instruments that come from there, such as the saz, laud and oud. Eduard Navarro (one of the musicians in the group) has been teaching the Dolçaina (traditional wind instrument) for more than twenty years. A while ago he went on a field trip and recorded old people who still knew melodies from the old days in small villages. Another musician, Osvaldo Jorge, had a scholarship to study percussion from the North and South of India in Delhi.

Is it true that most of your music is not really traditional, because you wrote it yourself?

We don't like to take traditional melodies and play them our way. We prefer to create our own songs, using the aesthetics and tradition in an open way. All the instruments we use are traditional, we don't use keyboards, bass guitars or drums. However, we try to create a clear and powerful sound of our own. For this we use instruments that have their limits compared to modern instruments, but for us they have a personality.

How would you describe your sound; Spanish, Pan-European, a fusion of Southern European and Oriental music?

The word fusion is often used to give a name to forms of traditional music, whether it comes from Lapland, Turkey, Iran or Galicia, that is mixed with pop or another Anglo-Saxon style. We prefer to use instruments that are sometimes half forgotten, or undervalued, but that can be very inspiring in the process of creating melodies. Perhaps the constant element in our music is a certain form of aesthetics, the drone. You can find this in the medieval music that we find very beautiful, but also in Afghan music, our own traditional music and Scandinavian music, to name a few examples. In addition, we emphasize the lyrics and try to give a poetic twist to what we do.

Your two records seem to be conceptual works. What are your ideas behind these records?

As we actually said in the previous answer, it is mainly about a certain sound that is convincing, the use of instruments that sound really magical and that we ourselves do not even understand a hundred percent because they are not used in other music. When you listen to "modern" music, 90% of the sound is based on guitars, bass and drums. We therefore believe that rock music is the most conservative form of music you can play today. The first album, U, was a very powerful album, the second, Cançó de Dona i Home, was much more ethereal.

What can we expect from the upcoming third album?

The second CD had many quiet passages, but we also felt like we played a lot with compositions of rhythms that we had never used before, such as 11/16, 9/8 and 5/8 bars. However, these pieces were never made on purpose, they emerged in a natural process. Each CD reflects what you are doing at that moment. It is difficult to define your own work, but people who have already heard the new CD say that it is more rhythmic again. The harmonious feeling of Cançó de Dona i Home has disappeared and has made room for a more rhythmic sound. The Turkish saz plays an important role on the new record. We have six different saz instruments, six different big ones, and in several songs this instrument forms the basis. Another aspect is that we use more open structures without thinking about the length of the songs. So there are pieces with long instrumental passages, which may not be so easy to listen to at first hearing.

There is always a lot of time between your records. Is it a long process for you until a record is ready? Can you tell us something about the creative process?

If we would just play traditional songs we could probably make a CD every year. A new record demands a lot from us, too much to just release something. In addition to L'Ham de Foc we have other projects running in parallel that give us new ideas that later find their way into the music of the band. We are not a band that works traditionally and therefore where everyone participates in the creative process. Mara and I compose the music at home and when we have something important to say we record a new CD, without thinking about how we can present that music in a live situation. Only when we have to perform the songs live do we start thinking about the musicians we need for that. Every CD is a project and sometimes the band will look different when we have new repertoire to play live.

What is your view on traditional music? Should it remain pure or are experiments necessary to keep it alive?

We believe that both are necessary. We have worked with other groups that are purely traditional, but also with musicians who do not shy away from experimenting. Tradition is not something static and fixed. It has never been that way. As an example, you can take an instrument like the accordion. This is recognized in Bulgaria, Colombia, France and Egypt as a traditional instrument. But if these traditions had been closed to this instrument at the time of its invention, the possibilities that the instrument offers would have been lost. There are more examples like this.

Is traditional music on the rise in Spain?

Yes, in Spain you see more and more groups, festivals, workshops and instrument builders. We cannot say much about the market for this music. We ourselves listen to mostly purist music that never penetrates the music business.

Translated from: https://www.folkforum.nl/archief/profiel/5119-interview-lham-de-foc

Large Plants - This Lock Will Hold

One of my favorite debuts of last year was The Carrier from Large Plants. The band, essentially the solo output for Jack Sharp of Wolf People, carries on the band’s decidedly English brand of psychedelia. Recorded in the same country barn that birthed The Carrier, Sharp follows up with an extension of the sessions, moving away from the more muscular psychedelia of its predecessor for an album wrapped in mists, mystery, and damp melancholy. The Thorn couldn’t come at a better time, rising from the bogs in the bottom-half of November, embracing the barren chill as it begins to seep in to your bones. Reflecting the biker psych bravado of its cover, The Carrier was rife with riffs, though still doused in Sharp’s prog-dipped poison. If the first album was a tale of a modern marauder with his steel horse rumbling a lysergic pulse through the bloodstream, The Thorn is its Arthurian reflection in the oil slicked puddles below.
The prog thread rises quickly and holds tight to this one. Sharp’s leads curl like wood smoke through the thatch, burning with an acridness that permeates the senses. Sharp has spent years carving out the kind of mossen psych niche, but here there are a few touch points that seem notable. The album balances ferocity and fantasy in the way that obscurities like Day of Phoenix or Twink’s heady solo stint Think Pink once perfected. The Thorn winds deep into the heart of loner prog, phantom hooves pounding behind each song as the album wends on its quest through overcast odes and solos that glow like firelight embers. Leaving only ash and agony in its wake, the album is a dark cloud, but also a bright spot in the 2023 calendar. The more listens that wind around the listener, the more it feels as if The Carrier doesn’t exist without The Thorn. The albums are indispensable companions, born of the same solitude and reflecting two sides of Sharp’s psyche. This is the kind album that stave off list culture quick draw. Sometimes one of the year’s best creeps out as the hour draws to a close.  From: https://www.ravensingstheblues.com/large-plants-2/ 

Aretha Franklin - Soul Serenade

Yes, the saxophone is absolutely gorgeous, provided by King Curtis, one of the players responsible for the original 1964 recording. And the pensive piano playing by Spooner Oldham ushers in a degree of wistfulness to the song that is utterly ethereal. But without a doubt, the true magnetism of ‘Soul Serenade’ lies in the inimitable voice of Aretha Franklin. The way she forcefully coos and wails comfortably in each pocket of the instrumental, slowly building to a stunning, reverberating crescendo with each subsequent cadence. By the track’s waning moments, it is, in fact, the audience who has been mesmerically serenaded. Without a shred of hyperbole, it’s truly one of the most groundbreaking recordings of the 20th century - and it’s not even the most acclaimed song on the album.
It’s difficult to fathom that 1967’s I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, perhaps Franklin’s crowning artistic achievement, was actually her 11th studio album, and even more difficult to fathom that the album largely consists of covers. The suspension of belief mainly lies in the fact that there is no single instance in the annals of rock history where an artist has taken on the herculean task of interpreting others’ work with such masterful grace and gusto. Even Otis Redding’s 1965 ‘Respect’ (an artist much renowned for his otherworldly singing prowess) was largely escorted to the sidelines with Franklin’s ubiquitous 1967 version. Further gems like ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ signaled the eternal crowning of a musical goddess, one that could inject profound meaning into each and every crevice of her deafening yet infectiously melodic vocal utterings.
I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You is commonly listed as one of the greatest all-time artistic achievements by any publication with an ounce of credibility. But Franklin didn’t always dabble in the secular arts. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, but spending the majority of her formative years in Detroit, Michigan, she developed the brunt of her singing chops while singing choir in the church. After signing to Columbia records, she tasted her first chart success with 1961’s ‘Won’t Be Long’. Usually, there is a maturation process with soul singers, but Franklin exhibited an almost uncanny control over her sprawling voice, thoroughly penetrating the innards of chords all the while dripping with an untamed, ferocious confidence. Her throaty howl, combined with a mezzo-soprano touch that she first utilized in the church, was purely arresting and lent itself well to her secular leanings. During these early years of her career, while exhibiting a particularly lively performance in Chicago, she was dubbed “The Queen of Soul”, a well-earned moniker that would stick with her for her entire career.
A fortuitous move to Atlantic saw the records that would ultimately come to define her legendary career, such as Aretha Now and Lady Soul, the latter of which featured the Grammy-winning ‘Chain of Fools’ – a Franklin staple for years to come. After a slight string of slumps in the late 70’s as she struggled to acclimate herself to changing musical tastes, Franklin rebounded with 1985’s ‘Freeway Of Love’, bringing about a platinum plaque for the album Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Franklin once again captured massive success in later life with 1998’s A Rose Is Still A Rose (her 37th album), which went on to reach certified Gold status.
Perhaps the scope of Franklin’s true brilliance and iconic reach cannot be truly measured in album sales but the exponentially growing heartfelt condolences from the likes of Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, Adele, Liam Gallagher, and Elton John. It seems incomprehensible that one woman could have had such a profound effect on such a varied class of innovators in their own right. But to put things in perspective, all one must do is take a look at the cover of I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You. Franklin is at once demure and tenacious, with eyes seemingly posed to quite literally set the world on fire, equipped with an elegant dynamism the world had yet to fully encounter. As she so eloquently put it on ‘Soul Serenade’, Franklin is now free to fly away and sing to the world about her soul serenade.  From: https://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4151972-in-memoriam--aretha-franklins-soul-serenade

Jellyfish - Live Germany 1993

 Jellyfish - Live Germany 1993 - Part 1

 

Jellyfish - Live Germany 1993 - Part 2

 

The last time Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning spoke to each other was in the spring of 1994. They hooked up in Los Angeles to record a song for a tribute album to Harry Nilsson, the American singer-songwriter who’d once run wild with John Lennon and had died of a massive heart attack earlier that year. Having cut the track in an afternoon, the two high-school friends went their separate ways. Or, to be more accurate, Manning split for a career as a jobbing musician, while Sturmer effectively vanished. Both of them prodigiously gifted musicians and songwriters, Sturmer and Manning seemed to spark best off each other. In 1989 they formed a band to realise their shared vision of a single group capable of sounding like all the music they’d discovered on FM radio while growing up in suburban California in the 1970s; a heady mix of The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Cheap Trick, ELO, 10cc, Fleetwood Mac, Wings and much more besides. They called their band Jellyfish, accurately conveying the sense of something imbued with grace, yet amorphous, alien-looking and fleeting.
Over their two albums together they pulled off a musical conjuring act. All at once Jellyfish sounded like a haphazard jumble of ideas rushing together, as well as something entirely coherent. Into their wondrous pop-rock songs they corralled labyrinthine harmonies, soaring string arrangements and melodies as evocative as a Californian sunrise. The best of these sounded like smash hits from the two previous decades that had somehow escaped the collective memory. Their tragedy was that the band surfaced at the point when the music business swam into the darker, gloomier waters of grunge, and Jellyfish were doomed to drift out of time and place. The final song Sturmer and Manning put down together that day in 1994 was fitting, since it was a cover of Nilsson’s surreal ode to psychic trauma, Think About Your Troubles. For all the glories of Jellyfish, it was a band riven by frustration and pain. It broke it’s two leaders in two and sent one of them fleeing into a self-imposed exile from which he has never returned.
Roger Manning first met Andy Sturmer at the end of the 1970s at high school in Pleasanton, a genteel neighbour of San Francisco. The freshman Manning was a happy-go-lucky teen whose uncle had drummed in various psych-rock bands and who had learnt to play piano on a second-hand instrument donated by his grandparents. A year older than Manning, the more diffident Sturmer excelled as both a singer and a drummer, and was a member of the school’s crack jazz band to which Manning aspired. “I’ve never seen anyone of his age with that expertise and command of his instrument,” Manning says of Sturmer. “Andy was one of the first kids in our town who took it seriously and had a goal. He was my hero.” After graduating from high school, Manning left his home town for LA, enrolling at USC to study musical composition and running headlong into the city’s febrile mid-80s music scene. LA was alive to the sounds of post-punk, the Byrds-obsessed Paisley Underground movement and, most prominent of all, glam-metal, which was exploding from the Sunset Strip. But Manning was captivated by an LA band that stood apart: flamboyantly attired pop-rockers Redd Kross.
He began auditioning for bands, setting aside his initial intention to become a film composer. Answering a newspaper ad from a teenage guitarist looking for like-minded musicians and who listed his influences as “Bowie, XTC and the Blue Nile”, Manning made contact with Jason Falkner. Handsome and self-assured, Falkner carried himself like a rock star-in-waiting. The pair would meet at Falkner’s parents’ house and, with Manning sat at the Falkner family’s grand piano, play each other the songs they had begun writing. “Right away I could tell that Roger was an amazing musician,” says Falkner. “He was also really square-looking at the time; he had short hair and wore a Lacoste polo shirt.”
“I was like a writer in one of those old movies – cranking out ideas for hundreds of songs and then screwing them up and tossing them in the trash,” recalls Manning. “The first one I got that I thought was as good as Elvis Costello or Andy Partridge of XTC, or any of my other heroes, was Bye Bye Bye, which Andy later wrote the lyrics for and we recorded for the second Jellyfish album.” Manning had stayed in touch with Sturmer, and knew that his friend was teaching himself to write songs as well. Sturmer had decided that being the best drummer in the world wasn’t his top priority any more, and was also learning guitar. He’d hooked up with Beatnik Beatch, a San Francisco band with a manager and a record deal. Initially their drummer, Sturmer was soon sharing vocals and songwriting. When Beatnik Beatch’s keyboard player quit, Sturmer recommended Manning. His brief flirtation with Falkner having come to nothing, Manning embarked on a regular 12-hour round trip between LA and San Francisco to play with Beatnik Beatch. At the same time, he and Sturmer began writing songs together. Lavish compositions, they were poles apart from the earth-bound songs of Beatnik Beatch, and hastened the demise of that band. In 1989 Sturmer and Manning struck out on their own, holing up in San Francisco and assembling a catalogue of songs and working up their blueprint for Jellyfish. One of them would bring a scrap of an idea to the other, and together they would magic it into being as a fully formed song.
Back then the songs poured out of them, swooning, aching tunes such as The Man I Used To Be, That Is Why, and a solo Sturmer composition, I Wanna Stay Home, which echoed Paul McCartney at his widest-eyed. The peak of this intoxicating period arrived with The King Is Half-Undressed, a euphoric mini-symphony that ranged across the vivid musical landscape first painted by Lennon, McCartney and Brian Wilson. Manning describes it now as being “the definitive Jellyfish song and all that we strived for as songwriters”, his pride in the band’s work apparent in the quickening flow there is to his words whenever he talks about it. Scouting for other musicians to help them demo the songs, Manning got back in touch with Jason Falkner, who was persuaded by the promise of a major-label deal. Manning – now sporting a head full of dreadlocks – warned him prophetically that he might find Sturmer tough to get along with. “He saw us as similarly strong personalities and feared that might be a problem. And boy was he right,” says Falkner. “I immediately had trouble with Andy. He’s just a difficult guy. There were days when he wouldn’t even look at me. Roger and he didn’t really have an easier relationship. Roger came up to me a couple of times, almost in tears, and said: “Screw this, it’s too hard.”’
According to Manning, it was the group goal of creating the perfect record that saw Jellyfish through the fractious making of their debut album. Most other American rock bands of the time were either crotch-fixated or navel gazing, but Jellyfish’s perspective seemed positively celestial. Recorded at Schnee Studios in north Hollywood and released into the long, hot summer of 1990, Bellybutton was a seamlessly constructed statement of intent: 10 vibrant songs stuffed full of wit and invention, and further elevated by the assured touch of veteran producer Albhy Galuten, who had recorded the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever. “It was a really exciting time making that record, but also bittersweet,” says Falkner. “The songs were the sweet bit. We were all very young. I was just twenty and Roger and Andy weren’t that much older, but the music is very sophisticated. It was hard because Andy and I weren’t talking.” Sharing bass playing with Falkner on Bellybutton was Steve McDonald from Redd Kross. He had been courted by Manning over pizza one afternoon. Manning enthused to McDonald that the album was meant to sound “somewhere between Queen and the Patridge Family”.
“I was blown away, because they actually achieved what he said they were setting out to do,” McDonald says now. “I didn’t know of anyone that could do that – and I’d been trying for many years.” McDonald nonetheless had a shock when he caught the video for the album’s lead-off single, The King Is Half-Undressed. It unveiled Jellyfish resplendent in their newly acquired thrift-store costumes: billowing flares, brightly coloured shirts, platform boots and garish top hats that brought to mind four different interpretations of Willy Wonka. It was precisely the boho-psychedelic look that Redd Kross had been rocking for years. “I felt a little duped by that,” McDonald admits. “But they were so good it didn’t matter. Plus I was stoked having more freaks out there to identify with.”
By that point Bellybutton had appeared to gushing critical acclaim, and MTV was also quick to bestow its patronage on the band. With Manning’s younger brother Chris on bass, Jellyfish set off on a year-long tour that saw them opening for the likes of kindred retro-spirits the Black Crowes and World Party. Their show was striking for the fact that Sturmer stood stage front-and-centre, singing and drumming, and notable for the band replicating the multi-layered sound of Bellybutton. They built up a cult following, especially among their fellow musicians, but the record itself never found a wider audience, and months of close proximity to each other exacerbated existing tensions. Chris Manning quit at the end of the tour for a quieter life as a producer. Falkner, increasingly frustrated at having his own songs ignored by Sturmer and Manning, was next to jump ship. “I had to get out,” Falkner says. “I was diagnosed with having an ulcer on my twenty-first birthday. The doctor asked me: “What’s the problem, kid? Is there something or someone…” I said: “Let me stop you right there. There is indeed someone.”’
Stripped back down to a duo, Sturmer and Manning collaborated with Ringo Starr on his 1992 album Time Takes Time. They were also invited to write with Brian Wilson, although Manning recalls their single, unproductive session with him as “utterly surreal”. When their thoughts turned to the second Jellyfish album they were determined to make it their masterpiece. Even at a distance of 21 years, Spilt Milk is an overwhelming record, one that almost but never quite buckles under the weight of its makers’ epic ambition. Inspired by the grandiose feel of Steely Dan’s brace of mid-period jazz-rock classics – 1977’s Aja and 1980’s Gaucho – Sturmer and Manning assembled it in painstaking detail and using vintage analogue equipment. The new songs were written in their adopted city of LA between October 1991 and March 1992, Manning trooping to work with Sturmer at his house from 11am to 7pm, six days a week. More months were spent in the studio constructing this vast musical edifice, rendered by massed choirs and with strings, brass, flute, banjo, wind chimes, harpsichord and more. Spilt Milk ran a gamut from driving pop-rockers such as The Ghost At Number One to tremulous ballads to a baroque circus show tune Brighter Day.
The ruin of the album was that it appeared just when grunge was peaking in the US and when no one was waiting for a modern-day Pet Sounds. Charting in the US at No.164 on the Billboard Hot 200 in February 1993, Sturmer and Manning’s labour of love sank without trace. They dutifully toured it with another line-up of backing musicians, but their own relationship had started to unravel. The last thread holding them together snapped when they began work on a proposed third Jellyfish record at the beginning of 1994. “We had personal issues, but it doesn’t serve us or the public for me to share them,” says Manning. “If I’d known back then about therapy and the option of people getting counseling, I’d have suggested that Andy and I enroll in it.” It was also clear that their individual musical paths were diverging. Sturmer’s new songs echoed classic singer-songwriters such as Van Morrison and James Taylor. “I remember going round to his house and him playing me a song on acoustic guitar that was finished from beginning to end,” recalls Manning. “It was a classic country ballad. I left in tears because I had zero interest in recording it.”
In the immediate aftermath of Jellyfish’s demise, Manning formed the short-lived Imperial Drag, whose solitary album (self-titled), of 1996, sounded like a heavier version of his old band. Since then he’s released a couple of decent solo albums, is currently working on a third and also records and tours as a member of Beck’s backing group. Sturmer got married and retreated to the shadows. For several years he acted as Svengali to Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi. More recently he’s carved out a lucrative career at Disney’s TV network, writing songs for children’s shows such as Ben 10 and Teen Titans. He’s been otherwise elusive. That it wasn’t possible to track him down for this piece is hardly surprising, since he hasn’t given an interview in 20 years. Even those who have worked with him, such as fellow songwriter Mike Viola with whom he collaborated in LEO, a one-off homage to ELO, confess that he left them with no contact details.
After Jellyfish, Jason Falkner went on to make his own solo records and undertake a run of steady session gigs. He last saw Sturmer in 2004. At the time, he was at Ocean Way Studios in LA and recording with Paul McCartney. “I was standing in the hallway when I heard a familiar voice talking to the girl on reception,” he says. “It took me five seconds to recognise that it was Andy. He said he’d had a premonition that he was going to see me that day. Then he told me he was sorry for never having given me a chance. I was floored. We exchanged phone numbers, but neither of us has ever used them.” Twice as long has elapsed since Roger Manning had any contact with his old partner. “It was a surprise to me that Andy chose the route he did,” he says. “I felt sure he’d make solo albums of his own material, like the ballad he played me. That was a brilliant song and the world should hear it.” Manning thinks it’s possible that he and Sturmer will get back in touch with each other at some point, but dismisses the notion they will ever again write songs together. Instead the 22 near-perfect examples of the form spread across Bellybutton and Spilt Milk will remain their lasting legacy. “I’ve met so many musicians and producers through the years who’ve continually referred back to those records,” says Steve McDonald. “Those guys were miles ahead of everybody else.” “To this day I’m shocked that we were even given a chance to compete amidst grunge, metal and all the R&B of the time,” concludes Manning. “We were the most punk-rock thing happening, especially when Spilt Milk came out. I’m proud of the fact we were able to make a very personal and unique statement at a time that was very conforming.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/jellyfish-their-tumultuous-story

 

Dust Mountain - Holy Equinox

Since the late ‘60s, Finland has had one of the most diverse, eclectic and genuinely exciting music scenes in Europe, and much of that has been brought to a more global audience through the work of Svart Records. The fact that Svart were given their own showcase at this year’s Roadburn Redux festival was testament to the quality of their roster, but if there was one band who stood out that weekend it was the hitherto unknown cosmic folk outfit Dust Mountain. Featuring members of Oranssi Pazuzu, Cats of Transnistria, Hexvessel, Death Hawks and Dark Buddha Rising, they brought a broad spectrum of talents together for a set that was earthy, gorgeous and sometimes unsettling. This month sees the release of their debut album Hymns For Wilderness and in celebration, David Bowes spoke to founders, siblings and prolific creators Henna and Toni Hietamäki to discuss the creation of this singular work of outsider folk rock.

E&D: How are things in Tampere?

Henna: Toni is in Tampere and I live in Helsinki. The rest of the band live in Tampere so I travel from Helsinki for band practice.

E&D: Was the runup to Roadburn Redux quite tough work then?

Henna: It was different, actually. We had our own camera team and lighting technician, sound technician. We rented our own space as we had the opportunity to decide where we would be filming it and who we are working with but also it was a big production to do ourselves. Still, I’m really happy to see how it came out.

E&D: Was that space quite comfortable for you, then? Were you already familiar with it?

Henna: I hadn’t played there before but I think Toni had, with Oranssi Pazuzu. It’s a really nice space, I really liked it. We didn’t use the stage itself, we just used the hall where the audience would be so the camera crew would have more room to move around.

E&D: Did Walter contact you himself for that or was it largely handled through Svart?

Toni: It was mainly part of the Svart Sessions so initially it was Tomi (Pulkki, Svart Records founder) who suggested it but it had to be approved by Walter and we were happy to be included in that.

Henna: We were happy that they had the trust in us to do something like that because we hadn’t released anything at that point. It was kind of a world premiere for the band so it’s nice that they took a leap of faith in the end.

E&D: Did you enjoy having your material out there in a live setting before any kind of official release or was it more nerve-wracking?

Toni: I think it was a nice thing to do because obviously there aren’t many shows happening right now. There will be some soon but at that point, live shows were pretty much impossible. That, at least, was very comforting to do and it all worked very well with our music. It was very pleasant for us though we did do a few very small shows in Helsinki and Tampere prior to that. It was our first for a wider audience though.

Henna: It was very nice for us to get the chance to show people what we had been working on in secret, give us a chance to play in a nice space, and practice for that too. It gave us something to focus on because it had been understandably quiet on that front.

E&D: How long have the two of you been working on this material?

Toni: It has been quite a long time, but I can’t even remember how long it has been since Henna and I came up with our first song ideas.

Henna: I was shocked as recently I was going through my phone, looking for old photos, and I realised that Toni and I first got together at our practice space five years ago. I remember that was when we made the first songs that are on the album. So yes, it has been a while – slow progress.

Toni: Yeah, we have not been in a hurry. We wanted to do it properly and to find the right people to play in the band so that it will feel like a real band. Eventually things came together very nicely but it took some time.

Henna: There have been long pauses in the middle but always when we decided to get active again and practice with the band, it’s been really nice. Things tend to fall in to place and the whole thing seems to work effortlessly.

E&D: The full band work together so well. How did you both come to decide on the line-up?

Henna: Well, the drummer and guitarist have been playing with Toni before in different bands.

Toni: We go way back with both of them. I have been playing with Jukka (Rämänen, drums) in Atomikylä, and he’s in Dark Buddha Rising so we have known each other for very many years. Pauliina (Lindell, guitars/vocals) and I played in Pauliina’s band Vuono, and also have known each other for many years, but we didn’t have a bass player so that was hard to find. We knew Riku (Pirttiniemi, bass)’s band Death Hawks and it was very close to what we wanted to do. Also, he’s a very talented musician, not just a bass player. We are really happy that he also joined the band when we asked.

Henna: I used to sing in the same choir with Pauliina when we were children. We’re from the same small town, we have a long history of singing harmonies together so it was very nice that Toni suggested that Pauliina could be a guitarist in the band, because she has a lovely voice also.

E&D: You’ve stated that the lyrics for the album come from a mixture of stories, folk tales and personal beliefs. How did you strike that balance?

Henna: I usually like to write things that don’t have just one meaning but are multi-dimensional and can be interpreted in different ways. The meanings also change when I’m singing in different places. I’m really interested in folklore and old traditions; pagan-rooted Finnish traditions that have been mostly forgotten. I’ve also been interviewing some shamans working in Finland and I’m really appreciative of their thoughts but there’s also this playfulness. The lyrics are not only traditional neofolk but there are also stories and fantasies that are metaphors and not so strict.

E&D: Does the video for ‘Holy Equinox’, which is such a beautifully surreal piece, tie in with the stories or rituals that you are discussing on the record?

Henna: The movements of the girls in the video are loosely and playfully based in different midsummer spells, interpreted by video makers Tekla Valy and Tereza Holubova and choreographer Lotta Nuppola ‒ who is our sister. I’m really interested in these old traditions that are related with seasonal changes, and phases of the sun; these festivals and traditions that are still a part of our culture, but their origins are often forgotten.

E&D: You come from Tampere, which is largely known as an industrial city. Looking at it from that viewpoint, do you think there has been a recent push back towards folk roots and nature?

Henna: I think it’s a rising trend that people are seeking ways to deal with climate change and the situation of the world, the direction we are going and I think people are getting more interested in those basic, important things in life.

Toni: Yeah, it might be a counter-reaction to the industrialisation and technology surrounding us but I think also that people have a natural draw towards the mystical. Traditional Christian religion is not very widely popular in Finland anymore and I think people are starting to get drawn into these older ways, or at least get more interested in old ways, and how the relationship is between man and nature.

E&D: Two interesting, and telling, artists mentioned in relation to your music are Pentangle and Fairport Convention. How much influence have those artists had on you?

Toni: I really enjoyed the soft sound of that music and how that is instrumented. I think those bands were very innovative and we’re not trying to reproduce that same thing but to take something from that era and use it in this moment, in our own way

Henna: I double that – wonderful bands and a very great inspiration.

E&D: To me, it feels like you’ve taken that sound to a darker place. Is that the modernity seeping in?

Toni: It might be. Of course, Pentangle has some dark songs also but maybe we are drawn to the more gothic side of that.

Henna: Yes, you need some danger beside the beauty.

Toni: Also, there are quite celebratory moments in there so it’s not like it’s mournful. I think it’s more celebratory.

E&D: You’ve been working on this material so long, but how did it actually come together? Was there a concentrated recording period or has it been done in bits and pieces over the years?

Toni: I think it’s mostly that we are just very slow. When we work together on music, Henna and I, I feel it comes very naturally. We have a good chemistry and come up with things very effortlessly, and it’s quite fast, but then to arrange band practice and studio time, it’s a bit complicated because all of us are playing in many bands, and there are time schedules and other practical things like that. When we get together, though, it’s very effortless and the record was done in that way. We went to a fine recording place in Tonehaven with Tom Brooke, a small studio space in the woods.

Henna: It used to be a barn, it’s very nice.

Toni: Then we just captured all the songs that we normally played live and then did some overdubbing on that. We tried to preserve the natural flow of these things in the recording.

Henna: The overdubbing and the mixing process was quite long. Overall, from when we started and went to record the basic tracks to when we were finished, it was maybe half a year? That’s not long! I don’t know what’s normal.

Toni: It depends on who you are comparing it to. If it’s Guns ‘n Roses, then it’s not long.

E&D: Is this the first project that the two of you have worked on together?

Toni: Actually, yes.

Henna: We’ve been asked to play together for family events but that’s about it. We’ve just been together for fun, not seriously, before this.

Toni: I think it was just a matter of the timing being not good for this. I’ve wanted to do music with Henna but we’ve always been doing our own stuff separately. I don’t know why it happened now.

Henna: I’m really glad that it happened just now because I think that now, we are old enough to work together as siblings.

Toni: Yes, where we can not argue like sisters!

Henna: We are now professionals!

E&D: Toni, you said that the two of you have a good chemistry together. Is that because you are similar or is more of a contrast?

Henna: Personally, I like everything that Toni does. I might have some suggestions if I want to take a melody somewhere else in some part but I appreciate his talents. Like he said, it’s usually quite effortless for the two of us. I think we have the same taste and both want to push things. We are both ambitious, though I think Toni is maybe more musically ambitious than I am.

Toni: Nooo…

Henna: I mean, neither of us want to make generic musical structures. We want to try to make creative choices.

Toni: I think we have similar tastes in aesthetics. We do like some different things but I think that is only a good thing in terms of complementing each other. I think we also have quite clear roles when we write songs. I mostly write some guitar lines and chord progressions and then Henna comes up with the vocal melodies. Both of us come up with what makes us feel good and then we try to make it work together. It’s pretty much that simple.

E&D: Were you both involved with the mixing and recording of the album? It has this wonderfully warm, very rich quality to it.

Toni: Niko (Lehdontie), who is also the guitarist in my other band Oranssi Pazuzu, did the mixing. He’s a really good guy for that kind of natural sound with cosmic overtones. He has a taste for that kind of stuff and is really good with effects, things like that. We worked really closely with him but he did all the technical work himself.

Henna: I think the overall production is a lot of Toni’s handiwork. The layering of the organ brings a lot to the sound.

Toni: Yes, I did quite a lot of the stuff for the arrangements, like the mellotron and keyboard, that kind of stuff. Then we just handed the whole mess to the mixing guy.

E&D: So, what’s next on the agenda? Henna, you mentioned some live shows in Finland.

Henna: Yes, there’s still restrictions but it looks like we can do a couple of shows when the album comes out. It would be nice to play a lot of shows but it’s still in the process.

Toni: Of course, we are trying to do many shows when the album is released but it is impossible to say just now how many we can do with the situation in the world right now. We are also trying to write some more songs but it is hard to say when they will be finished, Maybe five years from now if you go with the previous timeline! Maybe earlier than that though.

Henna: I’m curious to see how the album is received, that will affect how many shows we can play and where.

Toni: I’m very happy about how the album turned out and I’m very excited to hear how people are receiving the music.

From: https://echoesanddust.com/2021/10/dust-mountain-voices-from-the-wilderness/

Mother's Cake - One Of These Days

Advanced music and powerful dynamics, Austrian three-piece Mother’s Cake are set for big things. With elements of Rage Against the Machine and dollop of 90s melodic grunge they’re at a pivotal stage where bands either become big or become footnotes. Talking to Trebuchet after their clamorous European support slot with Limp Bizkit, they’re already playing to big crowds, but what do they make of it all? Where does it go from here?
Sprawled on couches and ramshackle chairs in a Brixton Academy dressing room amongst the press teams and management cautioned not to smoke, three tired musicians awaited the barrage of questions. Up close Yves Krismer (Guitar Vocals), Benedikt Trenkwalder (Bass) and Jan Haußels (Drums) are quite young looking and, having played for almost a decade in various groups and guises, have earned a maturity when it comes to how they make music. This is continental rock, confident in itself, sounding good, but with a hesitance. This is England. Is it really Ground Zero for wider careers? We often forget the access and range the English language affords. The language of record companies, international tours and musical history, is the lingua franca of ‘next level’. But is there a level 2 for this band, and if so, how are Mother’s Cake going to make their future for themselves? Does the answer lie in the past?
“We started in 2009. We just met and started to jam. We didn’t have lyrics until around 2013. We did sing before that but it was a fantasy, like Sigur Ros, but the crowd wanted more. It came to point where we had to have lyrics. I think we are now in stage where we are changing how we write songs. We don’t have an idea how we’ll do it, but we’re trying different things. The first record was jamming. We jammed a whole lot, it developed over almost two years. So the second record (Love the Filth) came from that. We worked it out at home and then pre-produced it and worked it out together in the rehearsal room. The third we’re working on is where we’re trying to work out what we’re doing. The other records had a selection that we liked and we put them on the record and hoped for the best With this record we want to make a record that fits a mood or fits a style (as a whole). When you are three people everyone has to do as much as they can. You don’t have a guy in the back who’s just plodding along or whatever, playing one note every half hour. On the other side, what makes us love playing in this band is that all of us have so much space to do different things and to play to the max. But now we are having fun reducing ourselves and minimising what we do, getting older and all that shit (laughs). But it’s fun trying to reduce.”
Great warbles of noise, huge strokes of sound painting sonic abstraction. All with a syncopated drum and bass (not the dance music) workout. The vivid colours of earlier work have been tempered with a force. The change is subtle, and suggest a move to becoming something else. Perhaps more psychedelic? “No, actually we’re getting harder. The first record was way more funky. We’re a modern hybrid band I guess. With Filth there is a concept there in some way but it’s really just about the concept of filth. It’s as simple as that (or not). Gojira is basically a big lump of filth but is also lovable, so… love the filth. It’s super basic for us. Love being dirty. Loving sounding dirty. Not everything is supposed to be perfect. Especially on stage. It’s the x factor!”
In 2010 Mother’s Cake won a national music competition called Local Heroes Austria. Propelled into a wider field of attention (not least for the competence of their individual members, who won commendations for their talents) they released their debut Creation’s Finest in 2012. Yans and Benedikt’s previous band Brainwashed was rumoured to have toured with bands like Le Tigre and Velvet Revolver and, no strangers to the peccadilloes of the road, they can recover the situation when things go south.  “People love it. We’ve had plenty of shows where we played it pretty perfect but people didn’t really move. But then we’ve had other shows where it was a bit weird and people preferred it. Take tonight for instance, when the bass monitor died. It added something to the show, everyone gets super focussed when something like that happens. If you commit to the filth then you can have a good time. One time the bass effects stopped working completely, so he just had a clean channel, but it was at a festival so we had to do it. So we played about one note and the drums fell off the riser! Everything went wrong but people really got behind us. “ Mother’s Cake’s performance before Limp Bizkit was strong. Despite the equipment issues they played a solid set, jumping on monitors, drawing our the drama of slower passages, and by the applause, winning a few new fans.
The album’s out in October (Love the Filth October 16th), we’ve got a tour going, perhaps, but we can’t speak about it too much at the moment. We’re also working on film project with Austrian TV called Artists in Residence and we’re making this Spinal Tap-influenced mockumentary. On one level we’re basically just playing as a band, but we have a character called Johnny who is this 80s rock guy stuck (hilariously) in the past. He’s actually a friend of ours from California so it doesn’t sound fake. He’s like super stuck in the 80s and trying to find the rock and roll in Austria. That’s coming out in September. People will be able to find it on YouTube. Also, we have a live record out called Off The Beaten Track which is basically Creation’s Finest but played very differently live. It’s also on YouTube. It’s about 45 minutes long and has a bunch of guest musicians on it. Normally live in between songs we continue the structures and take it somewhere else. Supporting, we weren’t able to do this. But on Off the Beaten Track you get to hear some of things that we do. For instance we had Ikey Owens (Isaiah Randolph “Ikey” Owens) playing with us, who played with the Mars Volta and also Jack White. He died unfortunately of a heart attack. But he’s on our first record.
Discussing the videos, movies, and tour footage they’ve released, it sounded like Mother’s Cake was interested in the visual aspect of performance. When they’re headlining I wondered whether they put on more of a show?  If the tour sells well we bring a lot! We always have a show in Innsbruck where we live, where we try and do something special. At one gig we had an elephant, sometimes we have a giant vagina and we all come out of the vagina. (Making the Gojira video) We came together on that idea but the one before also had a successful video (‘Soul Prison’). In that video we captured the idea in a day and luckily we found a room in a disused building that had all the different furniture. We started to put it all on the roof and paint it all white. It all happened in one day. Off the Beaten Track we also did together. Our thing is to get people thinking ‘What the fuck?!’  From: https://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/love-being-dirty-loving-sounding-dirty-interview-mothers-cake/