Hovercraft. Live. Unknown.

This was on the flip side of the Mercury Rev show posted below. Whoever sent it to me didn't record where or when it came from. Judging by the accented voices you can hear at the beginning, this was recorded somewhere in the UK, which probably dates it to 1999 as that was the only year they toured in England (outside of one London show in '97).

There's some tape hiss, but it's quickly drowned out by Hovercraft's ear-scouring levels of demented noise (There may be a good way to remove ambient tape artifacts, but whenever I've tried it, it just leaves the rest of the audio sounding clippy. Besides, as Cat and Girl have said, tape hiss is the only authentic sound).

Hovercraft preferred to improvise live, lurching and swaying between mid-century, abstract industrial training-film music and reverberating, psychedelically mechanistic interstellar overdrive. It could be the soundtrack for a very destructive ballet about a belligerently drunk, hyper-jointed, giant robot stumbling down a dark alley.

Hovercraft

Mercury Rev. Astoria Theater, London. 11/2/93.

A volcanic upwelling of psychedelic magma. A slow motion film of Neil Young crashing the Death Star face first into the unicorn sequence from Fantasia. A circus of jelly-bodied squid wobbling around the ring on unicycles, cards fluttering in the spokes.

It's the David Baker years, when a slippery black-light liquid ran thick in their veins. Back then, they could even out-flame the Lips.

1. Very Sleepy Rivers
2. Syringe Mouth
3. Something for Joey
4. Chasing a Bee
5. Meth of a Rockette's Kick
6. Boys Peel Out

Astoria

Update 10/7/10: VoltronsHead made a video for Meth of a Rockette's Kick, which you can now sample below.

Les Rallizes Dénudés. Tachikawa. December 17, 1976.

Despite LRD's explosive aural and visual assault on their audiences, Takashi Mizutani was never a flashy singer, usually sounding instead like a lost spirit on the verge of revelation, wandering in an existential forest of his own making. This must have been a happier night, as White Waking is positively poppish, and even the trademark, brain-scouring levels of white noise are uplifting. There's still plenty of menace, like the way the bass stalks Mizutani throughout Flames of Ice, but even there the crackling guitar lead eventually outstrips it, swelling with light and enveloping the once dark forest.

I've written before about the nihilism of LRD's music, but my point is that it's a benevolent indifference. They would never do anything so gauche as to rock you like a hurricane. Similies are for chickenshits. They are a hurricane, but not metaphorically, either. The kind that sees you leaving with a mic stand blown through your cranium (OK, that may not be benevolent. But you buys your ticket, you takes your chances). Thy're as close as you can get to safely watching elemental catastrophe as performance art.

Like the vast majority of the Rallizes' output, this is of bootleg quality (although they may be the only band for whom that works in their favor), but whoever recorded it must have been sitting in the auditorium's sweet spot. The separation is great, and you can tell the instruments apart for once. It's almost like listening to them in widescreen. The guitar comes through really well, and you can actually hear the notes Mizutani's picking out (I particularly like the spirited run towards the end of Angel). And whoever was playing bass for them that night really knew how to lay that shit down, which is a whole new dimension for them.

The vertiginous, see-sawing Heat Wave—powered by a surprisingly confident, stomping bass line and some great rock drumming—finds Mizutani leading them all to fantastic new heights, thundering along like a herd of naked biker hippies, straight into the sun. It's one of his all-time best moments—the sort of thing that raises the hair on the back of your neck and makes your heart catch in your throat. You know without a doubt that this was one of those songs that took over a crowd, instantly transforming them into a solid, beastly, interconnected mass of head-banging, transcendent abandon. It'll make your soul explode.

Dream finishes things off by melting back into a tense, worrisome, brittle space. A dream askew with shadows and twigs. The forest closes back in, and the white light streamers slither and shake back into the darkness. It's an inversion of where they started with White Waking and the perfect end to the night.

Tachikawa

The Housemartins. Glastonbury 1986.

A little companion piece to yesterday’s demos. Here’s the Housemartins opening the main stage on the last day of the 1986 Glastonbury Festival. That year also came with The Cure, Psychedelic Furs, The Pogues, Madness, The Brilliant Corners, Nightingales, The June Brides, Robyn Hitchcock, The Go-Betweens, and Half Man Half Biscuit, among others. If only time travel were possible.

Glastonbury

Dolly Mixture. Peel Session. August 7, 1979.

1. A Dream Come True
2. Ernie Ball
3. He’s So Frisky
4. New Look Baby
5. The Locomotion
6. Theme From Dolly Mixture

Germs of Youth records has put out a limited vinyl reissue of Dolly Mixture's Demonstration Tapes, hand stamped and signed by the band. They're only making 300, so hurry.

Peel Session

Pink Floyd. A Sucerful of Outtakes.

The Syd Barrett estate is putting together a visual history of Syd’s artwork as well as a treasure trove of unpublished photos from his youth and early years in Pink Floyd. The vast majority of these images have never been seen before. If enough people are interested, it will all be published as a large format, cloth-bound, slip-cased, limited edition collector’s book. Right now, though, not enough people have signed up to make it worthwhile for the book to be published. If you think you might like a copy, head over to the Barrett Book website and register your email address. You are not ordering or promising to buy a copy by registering, you’re just letting them know you might want to.

To put you in the mood, here’s a collection of early Floyd recordings, including the extended version of Interstellar Overdrive and Syd’s last songs as part of the band, Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream.

1. Lucy Leave
2. I’m a Kingbee
3. Interstellar Overdrive
4. Astronomy Domine
5. Experiment
6. Flaming
7. The Gnome
8. Matilda Mother
9. The Scarecrow
10. Vegetable Man
11. Pow R Toc H
12. Scream Thy Last Scream
13. Jugband Blues
14. Silas Lane

Tracks 1 and 2—First Pink Floyd studio session
Track 3—Studio session, 10/31/66
Track 4—Live in London, 5/12/67
Tracks 5 and 14—Studio outtakes, 1967
Tracks 6 through 9—BBC session, 9/30/67
Tracks 10 through 13—BBC session, 12/19/67

Promo video about the book


A video for one of my all-time favorite Syd songs, Bike, that the band shot for Belgian TV


A Saucerful of Outtakes

Vaselines & Beat Happening. Live in London. 06/16/88.

Even with Kurt Cobain’s imprimatur (Nirvana covered three of their songs), the Vaselines remained primarily a cult phenomenon. Which is too bad because, they were the perfect noise-pop band, and recorded possibly the best records by any group from their decade. Short, catchy, cute and psycho, the Vaselines were classic indie-pop tweeness leavened with punk’s raw edge. They had a naïve, nearly desperate enthusiasm for their songs—all played with pure, guileless abandon and wads of humor. Like a Hello Kitty cut out of ragged sheet metal. Or being shot at with volleys of sweet tarts. If your favorite Velvet Underground songs were the Moe Tucker ones…that fragile sweetness backed up by a band that could explode into vicious feedback at any moment, then you need the Vaselines. You can sing along with them even on the first spin, and you’ll never get the songs out of your head again.

Their friends in Beat Happening had nearly sub-levels of technical skill, were completely ambivalent about tuning, melody and key, and sang casually obsessive songs about teenage love and lust (We tip over apple carts / With the pounding of our hearts, runs a typical lyric). Calvin sounded like an indie-geek version of Barry White and Heather’s voice was achingly sweet in a way that made you think of cardigan sweaters and kittens (without also making you want to throw up). Somehow or another, they ended up playing a lot of hardcore shows with bands like Black Flag or Fugazi, and during their sets handed out candy to the bewildered audiences. They elevated naiveté to an art form.

They also wrote some of the most indelible and influential music of the last twenty years—from twee, acapella laments of unrequited love, thumping, two-chord rockers (also about crushing on a guy or gal who is currently going out with someone who isn’t you), sweet catchy pop about the timelessness of an Indian Summer, and aggressively noisy musical scribbles (again, with lyrics that were probably scrawled on a torn scrap of paper and pushed through the holes of your girlfriend’s locker).

This adorable tape finds them both playing together in London, with some hilarious between song asides.

Live in London

Pigbros. Peel Sessions.

8/21/85
1. Cheap Life
2. Hedonist Hat
3. Lick Bones
4. War Food

5/6/86
5. Bad Attitude
6. In Doubt
7. Immensity Home
8. What Counts

Peel Sessions

My Bloody Valentine. Loom. Vancouver. 7/1/92.

Amazing facts about My Bloody Valentine:

• Since its release in 1991, Loveless has been played on a continuous loop through underwater speakers, inspiring certain erotic feelings in cetaceans, and is single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of the Humpback Whale population
• Before being mastered, the original tracks were beamed into space, bounced off the rings of Saturn, and then filtered through a device that mimics the sound of dragonflies on absinthe.
• Loveless sounds the same in every known alternate universe.
• Early copies of the album came with packets of Dramamine to counteract wooziness.
• Not that I would know, but under certain influences you can actually listen to the album just by looking at the cover.
• The band was named after an unsuccessful Bing Crosby Christmas special.
• At least one track was created by dropping magnetic recording tape through the Aurora Borealis.
• Vinyl copies of Loveless actually contain minute trace amounts of love, Pixie Stix, and Kevin Shields’ pocket lint.

Loom

The Birthday Party. Peel Sessions.

The only hits the Birthday Party ever landed were to their audience’s guts. “Dangerously unhinged” barely begins to describe their mutant hybrid of punk, goth, funk, improvisational jazz and psychotic-sleaze-blues.

The band seemed locked in a death-battle with melody, thrashing and throttling the life out of it, often sounding like each member was playing a different song to the others. Meanwhile, Nick Cave strutted and preened like a demonic carnival barker daring you to buy a ticket to the most depraved freak-show around.

Their bared-teeth wit and gleeful nihilism sound like nothing else ever attempted. “Wherefore art thou, babyface?”, Cave screeches, summoning the haints and voodoo-dollies that haunt the roots of rock and outlaw country—spavined vinyl gods out for a final, delirious spin.

Peel

R.E.M. So Much Younger Then.

R.E.M. are right at the top of my list of Bands Who Have Wronged Me¹. Once arguably the greatest band on the planet, they have long since passed the point where my girlfriend now insists they died in a tragic plane crash shortly after the release of Automatic for the People. Sadly, the record company—not wanting to let go of a good thing—hired a bunch of look-a-likes and let them release a shitty faux-grunge/glam record (which, had he heard it, might have inspired Kurt Cobain to point the gun in the other direction). When it was clear that Monster was destined to pave landfills all across America, they dug around in the vaults and managed to drop the last of the original band's great songs (Electrolite, Leave) into an otherwise flat and annoying record. R.E.M. Version 2 trundled on, hiding their surrogate status by acting like such monumentally entitled assholes that no one would want to talk to them.

Fuck.

I remember before Monster came out that R.E.M. were talking about how they were going to put away the mandolins and string sections and just make a rock record like they would have done back in the beginning. Needless to say, Monster was not that record. This should have been that record. I remember being so excited, because I'd picked up this bootleg a couple of years before and knew how shit hot they were before they even had a record deal. So Much Younger Then captures them onstage sometime in 1981, probably at Tyrone's, absolutely destroying with a whole set of songs that never made it onto any of their official albums. I still can't fathom why they never put these out. Sure, Chronic Town and Murmur turned out to be masterpieces of new southern gothic, but these songs could have easily caused just as much of a stir had they been their first release.

So Much Younger Then exemplifies so much of what used to make R.E.M. special—fantastic tunes, a wicked sense of humor, and the ability to play like a band on fire. Just listen to them burn through these songs like they were already superstars. As great as they went on to be, they may never have topped this night.

Tracks²:
1. Body Count
2. A Different Girl
3. Action
4. Narrator (for the Jacques Cousteau Show)
5. She's Such a Pretty Girl
6. Baby I
7. Permanent Vacation
8. Wait
9. Scheherezade
10. Liza Sez
11. Mystery To Me
12. I Don't Want You Anymore
13. Little Girl
14. Dangerous Times


1. Also on the list, Belle & Sebastian, They Might Be Giants, Smashing Pumpkins, and Poi Dog Pondering. Currently "on notice"? Of Montreal. God, but that last album managed to suck and blow at the same time.

I'm not talking about a band who just isn't as good as it used to be (like The Cure, or The Breeders) that still insists on putting out albums that are sad shadows of their former selves. Bands Who Have Wronged Me have actively worked to destroy and deny all that once made me love them. I can forgive a band for running out of steam, for putting out a boring album, or just trying to cash in on past glory. But when a formerly great band decides to take a big steaming dump on their art, their legacy, and their potential, and then insist they're doing the greatest work of their career and that we should all be nicer to them...well, that just makes me enraged.

2. The back of the album lists one more song, A Girl Like You, but for whatever reason, it doesn't actually appear on the record. Supposedly there is a companion bootleg called Georgia Peaches—Ripe! that continues the show, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere.

So Much Younger Then

Les Rallizes Dénudés. Heavier Than a Death In the Family.

Haters might say they only know one song, but Jesus Fucking Christ, what a song. They certainly play it like it's the only one anyone will ever need to know. Mizutani discovered how to mainline a migraine and make it a mystical experience. For a band that primarily exists as legend, it's a relief (and a wonder) to discover that they might be the only group that live up to (and exceed) the rumors.

The guitar is a thunderhead of coruscating, liquid white light; loud like nature. Mizutani's cool, detached vocals are so drenched and buried in reverb, they sound like they're being reflected off a thousand smashed mirrorballs. The bass and drums keep everything locked down by playing sub-genius to the guitar's solarized brilliance. Like—if a bass made only one noise that signified itself, if it were its own symbol on a one to one scale and whacking it with your hand made it say its own name; or hitting a drum made it say "drum" in its own hammer-stupid simplicity (not even like having found the primal groove or universal beat; just a satisfyingly, idiot simple thump). It's the Louie Louie oversoul.

Heavy

V/A. Oz Days Live.

The second disk is really the only reason anybody ever looks for this album, as it houses both The Taj Mahal Travellers and Les Rallizes Denudes in what must have been one massive mind-fuck of an evening. But I’ve written about them elsewhere, so I’ll tell you about the real reason you need this: Dr. Acid Seven.

Side one is clogged with otherwise completely forgettable folk singers and Group Sounds bands that may have known how to dress like rock ’n’ rollers, but didn’t have the first clue how to play it. Dr. Acid Seven easily bests them all on Track 4, a thick slab of biker rock that singlehandedly makes the case for the importance of hard drugs in music. This guy makes the whole record worthwhile. Especially on Track 5’s sublimely good-natured drunken sing along. It’s a lanky, strutting song (with kazoo solo!) that happily ambles on down the road feelin’ great, while Dr. Acid Seven (who I imagine as a stilt-legged version of R. Crumb’s “keep on truckin’” guy) gets progressively wilder and sillier with his vocal acrobatics. It would be worth learning Japanese just to be able to properly sing along with this. Proving he can do “pretty” just as well as anybody else, he gets serious on track seven, going back to his futen days with a beautiful, delicate Japanese folk number. This is apparently his only legitimate appearance on record. Unlike the tidal wave of Les Rallizes Denudes releases, I haven’t been able to find any other bootlegs of him in action, which is a crying shame.

This doesn't sound anything like his set on the record, but it's still a pretty bad-ass clip of Acid Seven, Keiji Haino, Kenny Inoue, Masato Minami, Shime Takahashi, and Takashi Mizutani at Hibiya Yagai Ongakudo, Tokyo, May 1974.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Oz Disc 1
Oz Disc 2

Soft Boys. Two Halves for the Price of One (Only the Stones Remain & Lope at the Hive).

Released after the band had broken up, Two Halves was exactly what it claimed. Individually titled and designed as a double A-Side, Only the Stones Remain collected their last studio sessions up against Lope at the Hive, a swaggering, gutsy set recorded live at the Hope & Anchor. A few of the songs later made it onto the 1976-1981 compilation, but the full album has never been reissued. Never one to hide their influences, The Soft Boys indulge in numerous cover songs here, with a faithful rendition of the The Bells of Rhymney on the studio side, and rollicking versions of Astronomy Domine, Outlaw Blues, and Mystery Train finishing out their live set.

Two Halves

Soft Boys on myspace

Museum of Robyn Hitchcock

Joseph Spence. The Complete Folkways Recordings.

Joseph Spence played the guitar and sang. Sort of. He rarely seemed to know the words to the traditional gospel and folk standards that made up his repertoire, so he growled and grunted with an infectious, gravelly dirt road of a voice. His vocals bob like a fisherman’s floater, dipping and popping in the surf; sometimes leading the guitar, sometimes just harmonizing with it. He sings like a man constantly swept up in joy—his lyrics more laughter than words.

He was the master of one of the most idiosyncratic and inventive guitar styles ever put to tape. Tuning his guitar to his own eccentric standards and picking out counterpoints and rhythmic shifts that wowed and baffled professional musicians, he earned comparisons to improvisational masters like Thelonious Monk. No one has ever been able to replicate or equal him, and whatever it was he was doing, he did it with immense heart.

The effect is delightful and ebullient. It’s simply insane how good he is. You can’t feel bad while listening to him.

Download

Joseph Spence on myspace

The Velvet Underground. The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes.

Amazing Fact: Lou Reed wrote and recorded the original dial tone you hear upon picking up a phone.

The blow-out of blow-outs, this bootleg comes to us from a fan plugging his tape recorder directly into Lou's guitar amp. Vocals and other instruments are there, but way in the background. The result is that you get nothing but Reed mainlining fuzz and feedback, which works to extraordinary effect on wild raves like I Can't Stand It, What Goes On, White Light/White Heat, and Sister Ray, but isn't quite so impressive on their quieter numbers (which are few and far between). If you're a fan of noise terrorists like Les Rallizes Denudes, you'll probably get a lot more out of this.

Disc 1
Disc 2

Boris. Smile. Live at Wolf Creek.

Back when I was in film school—a thousand years ago—the reigning theory was that Godzilla represented a nuclear-age version of divine punishment. Japan's shame for a "dishonorable" sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately for losing the war is paid for through Godzilla—who is both created by the bombs dropped on the island and periodically revisits that destruction upon them. Of course, Godzilla is also seen as a tragic hero by the Japanese, something that doesn't make sense if he is only there to punish them. It's likely that he doubles as a figure for Japan's post-war feelings of powerlessness—feelings that it cannot act out turned inwards towards themselves.

As a band that sounds like they may have been breast-fed by Black Sabbath, Boris have always walked with a dinosaur sized footprint, steadily redefining what it means to be heavy on countless records and eps. Veering from gravity-warping, sludge-tastic drone to their trademark garage-rock, psych-metal sound (all motorcycle chains and black exhaust), Boris have their monster heart set on tearing the knobs off the amplifiers and sonically pummeling you into gooey rapture. Captured live, they tear hell for leather through an album full of hook-laden, riff-shredding, head-banging, devil-horns-hands-in-the-air, rawk. Absolutely brutal takes on Buzz-In and Pink are larded with atmospheric drones and a gorgeous, fragile rendition of Rainbow.

But then...oh god...then they got to the final two tracks—a transcendent, near-thirty-minute exploration of [ ] preceded by You Were Holding an Umbrella—that positively crush everything that came before them. I don't know what Umbrella is actually about, but if Godzilla himself had composed a song to capture the interplay between his heartbreaking sorrow at having to destroy his homeland and his radiant pride in restoring its honor by being an agent of divine retribution and national seppuku, he couldn't have done a better job. This song could raze entire cities.

It's a double album, but the second disk was too big to fit into one download, so I had to split it up.

Disc 1
Disc 2.1
Disc 2.2

Boris' official website

Boris on myspace

Datblygu. The Peel Sessions 1987-1993.

From the BBC biography:

A highly influential post-punk band, Datblygu dabbled in everything from dub to rock.

Formed by schoolboys David R Edwards and T Wyn Davies in 1982, Datblygu were joined in 1985 by Patricia Morgan. By then four cassettes had been released by the group, Amheuon Corfforol (Body Doubts), Trosglwyddo'r Gwirionedd (Transferring The Truth), Fi Du (Me Black) and Caneuon Serch I Bobl Serchog (Love Songs For Lovers).

At worst the songs are a product of a mind incensed by circumstances. I make no apologies for them.

Datblygu's music was, as their name suggests, often experimental. In their time they played in such diverse styles as disco, country, nursery rhymes, rockabilly, crooning and just about anything else. The NME described them as "Kraftwerk with a hangover". Their debut EP Hwgr Grawth-Og was released in 1986 on Anhrefn. The following year they recorded the first of five John Peel sessions.

The band's attitude towards the artistic bourgeoisie and politicians in Wales liberated a whole generation of bands who certainly owe a debt to the pioneering work done by the band. They were, in their own words, "non conforming non-conformists".

Datblygu were one of the first bands to record modern music in their native Welsh tongue; a language they were forbidden to speak in their own schools. Both Gorky's Zygotic Munci and Super Furry Animals have cited them as a major influence.

This is just one CD, but even at a low bitrate it was too big for mediafire, so I went ahead and split a high quality copy into two parts.

Peel Sessions

Datblygu on myspace

Datblygu fan site (in Welsh)

The Grateful Dead & John Oswald. Grayfolded.

I feel like I need to make all sorts of excuses for posting something related to the Grateful Dead as they seem to be the one band permanently barred from hipster/music snob appreciation. I don't think you're even allowed to like them ironically. I never thought they were the greatest band on the planet, but they're not the worst, either. LiveDead is a magnificent album, American Beauty is a ramshackle gem, and other than those two I'm pretty "meh".

This, however, is a magic mushroom of a different color. John Oswald (a way early proponent of the mashup) took twenty years worth of live recordings of the Dead's signature song Dark Star, fed them into his computer, twisted, sliced, folded, and did all sorts of unnatural things to them, and spit out a two hour version that was simultaneously something created by the Dead, but unlike anything they had ever played. Guitar solos from the 60s float atop drums from the 80s. A Chorus of a hundred Garcias are layered into infinity. At other times his voice starts a line, only to stretch out a single note until it melts into the sonic tapestry. It's deep and spacey and, in places, transcendently beautiful. At various times I'm reminded of Hovercraft, Yume Bitsu, Emeralds, and any number of recent, underground, psychedelic tape releases. If you enjoy any combination of turning off your mind, relaxing, or floating downstream, it's worth a listen.

Transitive Axis
Mirror Ashes

Listen to Grayfolded online

John Oswald online

Yamamoto Seiichi & Acid Mothers Temple. Giant Psychedelia.

Yesterday, the end of two weeks of rain announced the first day of Fall: frisky breezes, cool sunlight, deepening shadows stretching away from our bodies like pulled taffy. All I wanted to do was lay in the grass with my girlfriend and feel the pink, pulsating glow of the sun through closed eyelids. It was this sort of weather—crackling with the energy of possibilities—that, back in high school, always had me throwing open my windows and blissing out to Wish You Were Here; the music and cold air raising goose pimples on my skin.

This album would be suitable for either activity. Hooking up with former Boredoms (and Rovo, and Omoide Hatoba) guitarist, Yamamoto Seiichi, the Acids leave (most) of their usual frenetic scribbling behind and aim instead for pure, gorgeous, stardust, hippie nirvana. And god damn do they hit it. Kawabata and Yamamoto meld the acid drenched DNA of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Dark Star, and their own Pink Lady Lemonade into spiraling, mutating, transcendent comet tails of sound, forever rising into the stratosphere, pushed upwards on gusts of nimble fretboard runs—the necks of their guitars veritable stairways to the heavens.


Disc 1
Disc 2