Doors..."Strange Days"

i know, but listen.



for years i conscientiously abstained from listening to the doors, as my tolerance for the hagiography and hero-worship around morrison was skeletal and bare. ugh, especially those ubiquitous posters where his arms are outstretched and he's wearing that repugnant glare like a party mask. i've heard "roadhouse blues" enough to congeal six consecutive lifespans, etc. however, i watched "apocalypse now" over a year ago, and something about hearing "the end" while marlon brando is hacked apart with extreme prejudice...something just sent up the flagpole for me, and since then i've been listening to the doors after years of utter refusal. primarily, i've been listening to this album - aside from "horse latitudes," which is unintentionally hilarious, this is nearly perfect, entirely of its own. aside from "love me two times" and "people are strange" these songs have been nowhere near radio frequencies for the better part of four decades; absolute shame. i'm enamored of the guitar tone on these songs, especially "unhappy girl" and "moonlight drive." the arrangements are delirious, and no matter how overplayed "people are strange" may be, that carnivalesque, brechtian piano romp towards the end of the song will always act as a great sound of conveyance, transportive in a sense that is delirious and rightly strange. i care a great deal for the majority of their debut album and their third, "waiting for the sun." after that it's somewhat sporadic and prone to mediocrity, but "strange days" is the perect embodiment of what the doors' music was intended to be, fortunately avoiding the pratfalls and pretenses that such ambitions might bring. quite good, evocative - to be listened to exclusively during the late hours of the night.



download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2xi4bmjedyn

Albert Ayler..."HIlversum Sessions"

speech is insufficient:



working with the quartet that was responsible for ayler's previous album, "vibrations," this session was recorded live in europe and presents an elongation on the themes of the prior work. it's debatable whether it reaches the disorienting, paramount heights of "vibrations," but i find its variations to be enlivening and sometimes favor it even more. ayler himself was a mercurial figure, and the wordless melisma and vocalizations of his playing leave me hollowed and immobilized. his playing definitively embodies the term "free jazz" in a much more appropriate way than either coltrane or coleman (at least to me), as there is nothing short of pure celerity and motion in his phrasing, an unbounded cry from the depths of the human body. though his renown is comparatively pale and bare alongside coltrane, there has been something of a renascent interest in his music (notably, there was a documentary a few years ago called "my name is albert ayler," though it is frustratingly rare to come across). i recently discovered that he's buried about 45 minutes from where i'm living now, so i intend on visiting his grave in the near future.



download "hilversum session" by albert ayler

http://rapidshare.com/files/217521741/Albert_Ayler_-_The_Hilversum_Session.rar

(this link is an advertisement for the wonderful "albert ayler depot" blog, which sponsors nothing but ayler's music...mercifully, they even have the holy ghost boxset):

http://albertayler.blogspot.com/

Robert Pollard and Doug Gillard..."Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Dept."

why the phrase "electric newspaper boy" resonates so deeply with me, why it makes me feel ineffaceably alive...i don't know, but here you go...



i'm attending the guided by voices reunion show in columbus, ohio, so i'm expectantly devouring the countless, massive amounts of music conducted under pollard's genius (yes, i believe him to be possessed of it in his own unmistakable way). i've been listening to guided by voices and robert pollard for nearly 6 or 7 years now, and though i may not listen to them as unflaggingly as i have in the past couple of years, i always return reverently before his drunken altar. pollard's solo career (until the recent dissolution of gbv) has remained mostly obscure to anyone but inveterate, dedicated fans. quite a shame considering "not in my airforce" and "waved out" are both studded with a gluttony of gems. then there's "speak kindly of your volunteer fire department," a record that provides me with a surfeit of warmth and happiness. collaborating with late-era gbv guitarist doug gillard, "speak kindly..." finds pollard at his most deliriously pop-oriented. it should be a cardinal sin to listen to songs this deliciously well-written. "pop zeus" is a rather obvious tune to praise (disgustingly perfect as it is), but tracks like "and i don't (so now i do)," "frequent weaver who burns," "slick as snails," "tight globes," and "larger massachusetts" are equally as enticing. lyrically, pollard is at his best here, and vocally he has rarely sounded as powerful and assured. even something as seemingly disposable as "soul train college policeman" is endeared due to its performance (and the strange sincerity with which "post-christmas cupcake handgrenade" is sung). in its entirety, this is a great record, on an equal footing with pollard's earlier solo effort "waved out." despite the preponderance of memorable tunes, the closing song ("and my unit moves") remains my unwavering favorite for reasons i could never possibly express.

download bob pollard and doug gillard's lovely little album:

http://megaupload.com/?d=G296J5IN

Guided by Voices..."Mag Earwhig!"

bob pollard & co. at its finest...



i'm definitely a populist in terms of "bee thousand," as it remains one of my favorite musical documents, but people tend to gravitate around the "era" encapsulating "propeller," "bee thousand," "alien lanes" and "under the bushes under the stars." guided by voices are typically derided (pollard in particular) as being unable to maintain a kind of quality control, but i'm nearing asceticism in my devotion and belief in the near majority of their catalogue. i love the earlier, ramshackle and lo-fidelity efforts as much as anyone (especially overlooked marvels such as "same place the fly got smashed," "sunfish holy breakfast" and "vampire on titus"), but the summary dismissal of the latter half of gbv's existence is inexcusable to me. the hip opinion is to chastize and inveigh against the band for its reliance on the hiss and murky distractions of limited recording devices, the lo-fi aesthetic, etc., but people overlook that what qualifies as "lo-fi" wasn't a luxury or affectation as it is currently. a band like guided by voices was driven and populated by people in their mid-30s who couldn't afford session time and preferred to do it themselves, rather nobly. their songs and ineluctable charm are not dependent on methods of production - a good song remains a good song. after disbanding gbv's "classic" line-up (a misnomer, horribly, since something like 50 people at any point played with the band) pollard recruited more conscientious and "professional" players. however outrageous people may have found this, the results are beyond this kind of record store banter bullshit.



"mag earwhig!" is beset with only 3 flaws - all of them forgivable, all of them occuring within the first 5 songs. those faults are - noticeably - "can't hear the revolution," "i am a tree" and the increasingly putrid "bulldog skin." aside from that, however, this record is phenomenal, at times reaching far beyond "under the bushes under the stars." "jane of the waking universe," "little lines," "sad if i lost it," "i am produced," "portable men's society," "not behind the fighter jet," "choking tara" and the chokingly-dense, apocalyptic "the finest joke is upon us" - my favorite on the album - alight in a kind of starburst grove, registering a level of intensity rarely reached on previous releases. the two successive albums - "do the collapse" and "isolation drills" - are far more uneven and tenuous, though still retaining a stunning amount of great songs (the former nowhere near as unlistenable as is often claimed). they regained their balance on their triumvirate of final releases, "universal truths and cycles," "earthquake glue" and "half-smiles of the decomposed," all of which permit the band to bow out gracefully (leaving - in my mind - a nearly unblemished discography).

download "mag earwhig!" by guided by voices:

http://www.mediafire.com/?byz90150wbz

Tim Buckley..."Lorca"

mournfully, this is the only track from "lorca" available on youtube, and therefore the only piece i can offer up for purposes of preview:



opinion tends to vacillate and unsteadily stammer back and forth with tim buckley's work, as there are some (myself among them) who think the majority of his discography is an unprecedented success, while others think his improvisational and experimental aspirations were beyond his means and only mildly successful; still others think all of his work is utter shit, saving their allegiance for the well-known covers of perhaps buckley's greatest song, "song to the siren" -- famously rendered by this mortal coil and innumerable others. a swarm of people also neglect tim in favor of his son, jeff, which i am stymied to even contemplate (understatedly, i am definitely NOT a fan). "lorca" preceded "starsailor" - his most ambitious and beautiful album - and divines some of the territory and depths he would later mine. initially my response to "lorca" was one of reluctance and modest admiration, due mostly to the confounding title track that commences the record, but i've evolved to it, i suppose, and it strikes me as one of his best efforts. the first side of the record is the more difficult of the two, with the latter half evoking the stylings of his previous release "blue afternoon" and some of the work on "happy sad." the focal point here is obviously buckley's voice, his characteristic hysterics and lunacy, his unfettered paroxysmal wailing. though living happily in the shadow of "starsailor" (or "goodbye and hello" for some people who wouldn't let him live down past glories), "lorca" is as good as the source of its namesake (frederico garcia lorca). ideal for late night solitude, as is most of his work.

download tim buckley's "lorca":

http://rapidshare.com/files/185148235/Lorca.zip

(i was feckless and took this link from singer-saints, a fantastic blog you should check out)

The Chills..."Kaleidoscope World" (Original Lp Version)

the chills were one of the most exciting bands to come out of the "dunedin" scene in new zealand in the 80s. along with the tall dwarfs, the clean, toy love, sneaky feelings, the stones, the verlaines, the scrotum poles, the great unwashed and a seemingly illimitable line of other fantastic groups, the defining sound of these new zealand bands came to surreptitiously influence the successive generations of american acts like pavement and guided by voices, despite the fact that these early progenitors remained in relative obscurity. the spectral traces of bands like the chills still has a resounding influence on a lot of current bands, though the sound has been somewhat desalinated by obnoxiously self-aware and "quirky" indie groups who simply can't write a song as hauntingly honest and affecting as "pink frost" or "we bleed love" (the tall dwarfs). even though these bands are seen, retrospectively, as representing a codified, ubiquitous sound, each group was alarmingly disparate, performing and writing "pop" music with their own singular perspective. the chills bear as little resemblance to the tall dwarfs as the verlaines do to to the clean.


"kaleidoscope world" was the first record i heard by the chills, finding an unscarred vinyl copy for 3 dollars. it isn't really an album proper, but it displays a coherence and progression that lends itself to the idea that it is meant to be one; in actuality, it's a compilation of early e.p.s the band recorded in its infancy, before recording its actual debut "brave words." the cd version of "kaleidoscope world" adds roughly 10 songs, which - though augmenting the length - disrupt the small little world of the original lp version, making the added tracks feel like swollen appendices. most other blogs i've been able to find that feature this album are proliferating the cd version, so i thought it'd be nice to publicize its original form (especially since i favor it over the other permutation). though this stuff isn't exactly technically innovative, it has a wonderful warmth and resonance, achieving its own form of marvelous perfection.

download the chills "kaleidoscope world" (lp version)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ezytngnntwh

Krzysztof Penderecki..."A Portrait"

while notably bereft of his larger works such as the "de natura sonoris no.2" and "threnody for the victims of hiroshima," this collection offers a further glimpse into penderecki's inimitable oeuvre. with ligeti, varese, satie and bartok - penderecki is among the higher echelons of composers with whom i share a tremendous amount of time. though i'm preferential to the "matrix 5" collection, along with penderecki's collaboration with don cherry (which approaches a new form of music entirely -- free jazz and avant-garde classical music...wow), this is a more than adequate way to negotiate the interminable hours ahead.

download penderecki "a portrait"

http://depositfiles.com/en/files/98bilp2pl