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Has a Shadow, The Flesh

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Has A Shadow are from Guadalajara, Mexico, and they have just been signed to Fuzz Club records. As the name of their new label suggests, there’s an element of fuzz to their sound, but also some droning guitars, and insistent drums. If you like the roar of the big machine, you will like them. You will definitely want to investigate their back catalog.

On the subject of the back catalog, their genre notes are “lo-fi psychedelica” which, okay, fine, maybe, I guess, but y’all – they’re goths. This is straight up Sisters-of-Mercy-in-the-1990s-style gothic rock and it’s excellent. Sky is Hell Black is particularly good.

Meanwhile, hot off the presses, there’s The Flesh:

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A Good Read A Good Listen and A Good Drink: Carter McNeil, Ghost King

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Ghost King is one of the bands I was sorry to miss at SXSW, not least because I arrived at the venue not two minutes after they got finished.

SO CLOSE. AND YET SO FAR.

However, in much happier news, their new record – Bones – has been turned loose upon the world, and we can listen to it any time we want.

It’s an oddly-shaped little gem. The best way I can think of to describe it is “occasionally syrupy surf pop with an undercurrent of fuzzy menace.”

Ghost in Love is one of the poppier tunes:

While the two-part title track reflects the, uh, syrupy fuzzy menace:

And with that I will turn the floor over to Carter McNeil (vocals/guitar; center, in stripes, below), who joins us today to talk about a favorite book, record and drink.

GK PRESS COLORS

A GOOD READ
The Hobbit. Elves are pretty cool.

A GOOD LISTEN

12 Bar Bruise By King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

I like to put it on and jump around in my room.

A GOOD DRINK

Red wine. It just feels really good . . .

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Stephen Charouhas, Cetacean

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Cetacean are from Los Angeles, CA, and their sound is an unusual fusion of black metal, prog rock and experimental jazz. In practice, this means that sometimes the first three minutes of a song will be experimental (but jazzy) ambient noise, the kind of thing that is good to put on low for background noise at cocktail parties, and then WHAMMO the ogre roar explodes out of the deep, the drums pick up speed and the guitars take a turn for the doomy.

It can be kind of startling, I guess, but not in a bad way. In fact I specifically liked it because of the change in tempos and general vibe that happen within and between songs.

Here is Breach | Submerge, their most recent release, so that you can listen for yourself:

And with that, I turn the floor over to Stephen Charouhas, multi-instrumentalist currently playing bass, who joins us today to talk about a good read, a good listen, and a good drink.

Cetacean; Stephen Charouhas is on the far right in black. Photo by Erin Stone

Cetacean; Stephen Charouhas is on the far right in black. Photo by Erin Stone

A GOOD READ: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Now widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, McCarthy’s story takes place in the late 1800’s and follows a drifter, simply named “the kid”, as he roams the southwest of the United States and finds himself joining a band of mercenaries as they head south into the bordering Mexican territory on a bloodthirsty hunt for Indian scalps. Gorgeously written, despite its graphic gore and stark depiction of the unforgiving capacities of land and man alike, the book is bleak, harrowing, visceral and, to me, absolutely essential.

A GOOD LISTEN: Henryk Gorecki: String Quartet No. 3 (…Songs Are Sung) by Kronos Quartet

This 2007 album, paying tribute to the music of Gorecki, is dark, brooding, menacing, and captivating. The execution and expression in each movement makes the music sound as though it’s breathing with every emotion from angst and panic, to exhaustion and resignation, to acceptance and relief. Gorecki was a follower of such composers as Stockhausen and Penderecki. His music exemplifies that same strangely dissonant and beautifully abstract feel, and the Kronos Quartet capture and recreate it perfectly.

I. Adagio-Molto Andante-Cantabile

A GOOD DRINK: Bourbon, neat

Quite simply, a liquor that has enough character to enjoy on its own, in just the way it ought to be enjoyed. I prefer to have mine warm, held in my hand, so as to unlock the aromas that lay in the liquor- from smoky oak to sweet vanilla. Those who don’t enjoy the initial bite of the drink may want to dilute a couple of fingers with an ice cube.

A GOOD BONUS: Try pairing all three recommendations (Book, Album, and Drink) into one sitting simultaneously. It may not be the most comfortable night of your life, but you’ll probably never forget it.

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Three Songs From: Wintersleep

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One of the ways I find new music is to go to the Soundcloud pages of labels of bands I like and see who else they have on their roster.

And thus I have stumbled over Wintersleep, who, like The Dirty Nil (scrappy little band of my heart, Frozen North division), are Canadian and signed to Dine Alone Records.

I am extremely late to the party – Wintersleep have been a band since 2001 and have won a Juno award! – but, you know, better late than not at all.

Their next record, The Great Detachment, will be out March 4, and they’re stopping through SXSW later in the month. Here’s a three song sampler, featuring Amerika, Santa Fe and Territory.

All three songs are solid; I’m particularly partial to Amerika because . . . because I feel like it’s been a really long time since I’ve heard song like this, a little bit anthemic, a little bit of sledgehammer running through the bottom. All I can tell you is I think I’ve listened to it five times in a row and I’m still a little bit confused by the lyrics, but I also mostly don’t care. I’m vibrating on their frequency and I like it.

I’m also especially fond of Territory, which is a little bit lighter, tonally, than Amerika, and is mostly a reminder to assert one’s authentic self: You’re not a factory. You’re not supposed to be, you’ve been told, the territory of anyone.

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The Longest Day in History, David C Clements

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DavidCClementslngday

After a several years of fits and starts and bits and pieces, David C. Clements has at long last released his first official full length record. It’s called The Longest Day In History and it’s mostly new material – I say mostly because some of the previous fits and stars (Oh Child and Hurricane) are included.

The short version: it’s lovely, and if you’re into folk and singer-songwriters you need to jump over to his bandcamp and snag it right now.

The long(er) version is: these songs make me homesick for the pit, for people jammed in to a small space but still clapping and singing and stomp-swaying, caught up in the rush of music and lights, to happy to do anything but dance. And for the same crowd, quiet and hushed during the slower songs, letting familiar chords expand and swell and break their hearts all over again, the way they like best.

Here are the two songs he has up as teasers:

I’m Still Alive, and it’s for the come-down, when you’ve survived the hell and the high water and have got your happy ending: you’re starting over.

This is My Dear Mother which I think I posted before but whatever y’all are getting it again, because I like it:

Other highlights which you are just going to have buy the record to hear: Hurricane, which in this incarnation is seven minutes long and magnificent; Oh Child, which I have posted before and still love, and once almost made me cry on the train on the way to work; and No Shadow, which is about love and survival and holding on to love in order to survive.

He’s from Northern Ireland and as I far as I know, has never played in America, and he’s appearing at SXSW this year. This is your chance, folks. Don’t miss it. Come stand next to me in the front row, I promise it will be a good time.

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Twilight Fauna and Jennifer Christensen

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Good morning, NTSIB. We’re doing something a little different with A Good Read today. The two people joining us today – Twilight Fauna, aka Paul Ravenswood, and Jennifer Christensen (solo, Disemballerina) – are not in the same band. Instead they are equal halves of a two-song split.

Both are established black metal artists: Twilight Fauna is a one-person atmospheric metal band from Appalachia, and Jennifer Christensen is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from the Pacific Northwest whose sound is more traditionally classical. For the purposes of this split, they decided to chuck genre limitations and match their works based on emotional content.

The result: Sickness unto Death, by Christensen, and Crossing the Threshold by Twilight Fauna.

Sickness unto Death is a spare, sweet, delicate and melancholy, but also menacing. If the Tell Tale Heart had come with a soundtrack, it would probably have sounded something like this song. Crossing the Threshold, in stark contrast, is the slow death throes of the big machine and makes ample use of grinding fuzz to set the mood.

And with that, I turn the floor over to Jennifer and Paul, who join us today to share a favorite book, record and drink:

Twilight_Fauna_Photo_1Jennifer_Christensen_photo_1

A Good Read

Paul: An Uncomfortable Life by Nicholas Trandahl. An Uncomfortable Life hits home for me on a lot of levels. The exploration of the individual within nature and with fellow humans has been a constant theme in my own life. The searching for one’s place, a sense of belonging, and the struggle to live an authentic life even when that places you in conflict with others makes this a powerful read for me. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at length with Nicholas Trandahl about this book and have found this struggle to be a common theme in both of our lives.

While I’m a fan of Nicholas’ writing in general, I identify with this book especially. You know how at times you’ll find a perfect piece of music or a book at what feels like the moment you need it most? An Uncomfortable Life came into my life shortly after I experienced some major losses. This book spoke to me not only about losing people, but of finding my own place in the world. While that is an ongoing struggle to which I still haven’t found an answer, An Uncomfortable Life helped me to start asking the right questions. For that I will be forever grateful.

Jennifer: I’m currently reading the biography of the modernist abstract artist Lee Krasner by Gail Levin (2011). I just picked this book up from the library today and I’m already engrossed. Reading about this period of time and the artists, musicians and authors that thrived during this era in our collective creative history is something I often find invigorating and significant to the writing or composing that I do. Especially when I’m stuck wondering where a composition is headed, I like to reference artists from the past I’ve found to be energizing—like Krasner!

A Good Listen

Paul: Earthborn by Evergreen Refuge. Earthborn consists of a single 45 minute, all acoustic track. It’s basically the soundtrack to a journey through the forest. Every time I listen it transports me to somewhere else. As you listen, even in the most congested city, you’ll find your mind wandering to wild places. Your eyes will naturally begin to search out the greens of nature or the blue of open skies. In my own life I am drawn to wild places, I spend a lot of time hiking in the isolation of the mountains. On this release, Evergreen Refuge manages to capture the spirit of those places and transforms it into 45 minutes of beautiful sound. Each listen takes me back to places I’ve been or places I’ve yet to travel.

Something else that strikes me about this album is that it’s entirely instrumental. There is great beauty is being able to carve out an experience, to say so much, without needing words. Evergreen Refuge is able to paint pictures, entire forestscapes without bringing vocals into the mix. The only words you’ll find in Earthborn are your own. Those of your own experiences, your own hopes, dreams, and the journeys you’ve yet to take. Digital download/CD here. Highly recommend getting the cassette here.

Jennifer: Them Are Us Too – Remain (2015). While on tour with Disemballerina, I recently stumbled upon this album in California and I have been obsessed with it ever since. The dreamy tracks on Remain are perfect for basically any situation I can imagine; driving, bathing or walking anywhere. I find their creativity, innovation and the sheer beauty of this work to be highly inspiring and influential, as does everyone I’ve recommended this album to ever since.

Them Are Us Too - Eudaemonia (Official Video)

A Good Drink

Paul: I’m a big craft beer guy. When I travel I’m always on the look out for small microbreweries. Especially in the last 10 years or so, it seems every small town has a least one locally owned small brewery usually where you’ll find local people having a good time. So in general, as far as a good drink I would consider that anywhere that you can share a good beer with friends and soak up the local culture. Where I live, that place is Johnson City Brewing Company. I’m a dark beer drinker, my favorite is their Raspberry Mocha Stout which is a rich, slightly sweet beer that is perfect for cold winter days.

Jennifer: Fresh pressed apple cider. I grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey and fresh pressed fresh apple cider is both a local treasure (at nearby Delicious Orchards) but also my favorite thing in the world to drink. This is especially true in the fall but really all the time. I have wonderful memories of pressing the apples myself and tasting the juice with my mother and the taste (along with often the accompanying apple cider cinnamon donut!) brings me back to a very happy and innocent time in my life which remains intact inside it’s crisp flavor. Definitely a somewhat unacceptable substitute but I even brought dehydrated apple cider with me this summer on the month long stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail I did through the Sierra.

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: David Majury, Slomatics

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

The Slomatics first formed in Belfast in late 2004, and since then have released several records. Recently they re-issued their first two albums, Kalceanna (2007) and Flooding the Weir (2005).

I’ve listened to both of them; my reaction was this is like being run over by a cement mixer and I mean that in the best possible way.

Here is my advice: lie down somewhere comfortable, rest your listening device on your stomach, put your headphones on, and turn it up. It might feel like meditating with a jackhammer, but it’s good for what ails you, I promise.

This is Viking Sea, from Kalceanna:

And, so y’all can see how they’ve grown over the years, here’s The Carpenter, from Estron (2014):

And with that, I turn the floor over to Slomatics guitarist David Majury, who joins us today to talk about a favorite book, record and drink.

Slomatics, live.

Slomatics, live.

A GOOD READ:

Krautrocksampler by Julian Cope.

I’m not a particular fan of Julian Cope’s music, nor was I a fan of Krautrock when I first read this book. I do enjoy music biographies though and will read pretty much anything related, and this book was recommended to me in the mid nineties by a friend. I’ve chosen this book as its one I frequently re-read, often picking it up to read just a chapter, and I cant think of many other books where that’s the case.

I love this book because of how it’s written – Cope doesn’t go for the stuffy, over-earnest approach that makes so many biographies seem like dull lists of facts/events; instead he writes like its a wild ride full of excitement and amazement at this weird music. He makes words up (Ur-punk??), uses grammar as he sees fit and occasionally loses it completely, all with his innate sense of what he deems cool underpinning every opinion. His stories of the formative years of such obscure heroes as Ash Ra Tempel are written as if he were there and it’s impossible not to be transported to early 70s Germany when reading this.

The book also gives me a sense of nostalgia, as I read it pre Internet, when it was nearly impossible to actually hear any of the bands involved. At the time I was permanently skint, and £20 for an import of an album I’d never actually heard was big money in the mid 90s. It reminds me of a time when music wasn’t all immediate, when bands could still hold an air of mystery.

As much as I like the immediacy of YouTube, I remember how it felt like a real quest to hear obscure music, how it took months of searching in ’89 to finally get a badly recorded tape of the Misfits ‘Legacy of Brutality’ and how important that made it feel. I’d agonise over whether of not to mail order Yeti by Amon Duul II, half fascinated by the description of its eastern-sabbath riffs, half panicked by the words ‘folk rock’. That the music described in the book has never disappointed me, and pretty much all of it is now there in my collection, listened too all the time, is testament to this book.

A GOOD LISTEN:

Part Chimp, Thriller.

When people find out I play in a band they always ask what sort of music it is, which is a natural enough question. The difficulty is describing the band without sounding like an arsehole. I’m not claiming that we’re some genre defying band, but to go on about being a fuzz-doom sci fi metal band with a sniff of shoe gaze and Hawkwind thrown in is just too much, so I stick with ‘heavy rock’.

This is usually followed by ‘You mean like Bon Jovi/Iron Maiden’ etc. It makes me realise that although very little of what I listen to is metal, a lot of it is heavy.

This album fits the bill perfectly, it’s unbelievably heavy in a way that no metal band could come close to, but it has absolutely nothing to do with that scene. The guitar tones are just massive, insanely fuzzy and bordering on being totally out of control. The songs are rammed with hooks and melody, yet avoid any conventional structure. Part Chimp are still the loudest band I’ve ever seen live and somehow they’ve managed to make records that sound every bit as loud, which is quite an achievement. It’s completely beyond me why this record wasn’t huge. An absolute classic.

Part Chimp - Dirty Sun

A GOOD DRINK:

Pint of Smithwicks Ale

In the Hipster Age of corksniffing craft beer freaks, this is probably a very uncool beer to drink. I don’t know if you can get it outside of Ireland. It’s kind of seen as an auld lads pint, and for people who can’t handle Guinness. I’m both of those things now, so I’m very comfortable with that.

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Two Songs from: Jimmy & The Revolvers

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Jimmy & The Revolvers are from Liverpool, England, and they play rock n’ roll.

The two songs below are their most recent releases.

On the first one, Morning Paper, they manage to make the phrase I read the morning paper into, variously, a roar of defiance, a howl of pain, and a harbinger of impending doom. Also there are some killer horns. Drink & The Devil Blues, is, in stark contrast, a pub singalong so vivid I can almost taste the snakebite and black.

They are both quite good. I’m posting them in a block as that is how I listened to them, several times, on repeat.