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

HARRY PARTCH..."THE WORLD OF HARRY PARTCH"

harry partch is one of my most beloved composers, and his levity and humor are only superseded by his spirit of invention and originality. partch's music shares several percussive affinities with traditional gamelan music, also using microtonal scales that have scant presence in traditional western music. though bartok, penderecki, varese, lamonte young and terry riley have explored similar realms through the use of quatertones or intonations, employing what is often referred to as "avant-garde" tuning to extend sound intervals through octaves, no one raised it to the heights of partch. he not only patented a 43 tone scale but wrote music almost expressly for his own created instruments - everything from marimbas that were meant to emulate a bass and xylophones forged from disused hubcaps and bottles. though some of it is expectedly atonal and dissonant (as is much if not all avant-garde music), there is a great deal of partch's compositions that are diffuse and dream-like, some of it bordering on absolute joy.

personally, there's so much partch music out there - and the majority of it is all so damned good - that any starting place seems ideal if you haven't heard much. "the world of harry partch" adequately conveys his musical personality, and is much more tersely assembled than some of the the more comprehensive, unassailably-massive boxsets and collections out there.


download "the world of harry partch"

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

DONOVAN..."HURDY GURDY MAN"

"hurdy gurdy man" is one of donovan's strangest releases and possibly my favorite, as it takes the formula of "sunshine superman" and develops songs that employ a textural drone (in "peregrine," "river song" and "tangier"), as well as featuring his obligatory paisley pop whimsy in songs like "jennifer juniper." the album also displayed mangled folk songs with a palpably dark influence as in the title track and "get thy bearings," which utilizes a rambling saxophone (that literally effervesces out of nowhere). sadly, none of those tracks are found on youtube, so the two singles from this album shall have to suffice for the time being. anyway, definitely worth hearing as it expands the dimensions and dynamic of donovan's music. after a string of four terrific albums in "sunshine superman," "mellow yellow," "gift from a flower to a garden," and "hurdy gurdy man," he would begin to scale back his productions and gravitate towards a sparer sound.




i'm having trouble uploading this to mediafire, so here's a link from "psych spaniolos" blog

http://rapidshare.com/files/99056338/Donovan_-_The_Hurdy_Gurdy_Man.rar.html

DONOVAN..."SUNSHINE SUPERMAN"

and yet another donovan album (because i'm verging on proselytism). "sunshine superman" was donovan's first album to escape the foul cloud of accusations that he was a talentless, desalinated dylan imitator. it is pronouncedly more psychedelic than either the beatles or dylan, more inflected with the spell of eastern ragas and ascending sitars than harrison's compositions for "revolver." obviously the title track is the most well-known of nearly all donovan's wonderful songs, and i can't dispute nor mitigate its perfection; fortunately he's written songs that actually surpass "sunshine superman," and several of them appear on this album.



"season of the witch," much like most of donovan's songs, is irremediably strange and possessed of a rather pliant meaning - as to what it or anything else here or elsewhere means, i have no idea; "season of the witch" has a terrifically bare atmosphere that seems to swell from the its interior, bursting like a collapsed star.

here's my favorite song from the album:



download "sunshine superman"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0e1stv