Saturday, November 19, 2011

FFFreakout: Podcast #29


Happy Jawbone Family Band “Book of Fire” Okay Midnight, You Win LP (Feeding Tube)
Ulaan Khol “From Overland They Came In Droves” La Catacomb CS/MP3* (Soft Abuse)
Plankton Wat “The Path Obscured” split w/ Super Minerals CS (Stunned)
Pigeons “Dead Echo” They Sweethearstammers LP/MP3* (Soft Abuse)
Ambrosia(@) “Yacht” Hysteria Siberiana CS* (Bomb Shop)
Grasshopper “I Sang A Sad Song Today” Miles In The Sky CS (House of Alchemy)
Decimus “Side A” (excerpt) Decimus 8 LP (Kelippah)
Lee Noble “Ghost of Structure” Horrorism LP (Bathetic)
Warm Climate “Cattle Criminy!” Automatic Ghosting CS (self-released)
Spirit Catepetl “Powwwowing” Lai Khur CS (Sacred Phrases)
Ricardo Donoso “The Deck of an Ancient Ship” Progress Chance LP/MP3* (Digitalis)
Pimmon “Yicco” The Oansome Orbit MP3 (Room40)
Quiet Evenings “Radiant Endless” Intrepid Trips LP (Hooker Vision)

Click here to listen to this show.

It has been a few months since we put together a straight-forward, non-feature-formatted show and, in that time, heaps of incredible music has been piling up all over the damn place: around the stereo in the basement, on top of the boombox by the kitchen sink, all over the bookshelves in the living room, and in various e-mail inboxes. So, with a nice long holiday break just around the corner, it felt like the right time to sift through all of this and offer up some of our current favorites for this week's show. My hope is that this will make for ideal listening when you're sitting there in your post-dinner, tryptophan-daze sipping your sixth glass of wine (or bourbon). At this point, I'm thinking Bailey's & Coffee as I look out this window at the first snowfall of the year.

As for highlights this week, I'd like to simply say that all the selections fit that category and leave it at that, but I won't cop out that easily since its been awhile. For starters, Soft Abuse just dropped two stellar new releases from Pigeons and Ulaan Khol. Fans of Pigeons' previous work may be somewhat surprised by the slightly more abrasive, avant-pop direction the duo takes on They Sweethearstammers; however, Wednesday Knudsen's consistently dreamy vocals still provide an element of smoothness and sensuality to this collection of songs. Ulaan Khol (a.k.a. Steven R. Smith) follows up his excellent Ceremony trilogy with another scorcher of a release. Though La Catacomb doesn't feature the full-blown lift-off that the final installment from that trilogy did, Smith continues to make his guitar speak in new and interesting ways that is both melodically and emotionally charged. Sacred Phrases most recent batch of tapes has also been getting heavy play around here. Included in this lot is more (to-be-expected) awesomeness from M. Geddes Gengras and Hobo Cubes, but I actually keep coming back to this (new-to-me) Spirit Catepetl release, which features some great zoned-out, late night transmissions. Lee Noble and Quiet Evenings both continue their winning ways on their (sort of) latest full-length offerings, delivering what I'd say is their strongest material to date. Noble's Horrorism has been glued to the turntable for weeks now and is making its case to be positioned at the top of my year-end list. That being said, these new records from Decimus are perhaps my favorite to have arrived in the past few months. Decimus is the solo guitar/electronics project of Pat Murano, an artist who also puts in time in such groups as No Neck Blues Band, Key of Shame, and Malkuth.With Decimus, Murano is working at this fascinating intersection between noise, industrial, drone, and electronic music and, like NNCK, he clearly understands the role of pacing and dynamics in all of these side-long pieces he offers up. There are five of these Decimus releases currently floating around and, reportedly, there are seven more in the works. Finally, I also spun a track from Ricardo Donoso's amazing new album, Progress Chance. We have plans to chat with Ricardo about his music and his label, Semata Productions, here on the show in the coming weeks, so definitely check back.

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