Orange County Music Blog

James Carney

​
We may be a day or so behind on this one, but in a quest to find some ever-elusive liner note credits for Black Key's Thickfreakness album, we stumbled onto something a hundred times better. Up until now, things were staying pretty quiet on the whole "rap-rock" front, at least for the summer. Turns out BlakRoc, a musical collaboration between the Keys and some of hip hop's living legends has been brewing since June. The record comes out Nov. 27. Needless to say, we dropped the liner note search to look into this...and was not disappointed whatsoever.

Yes, you read that right. There's an Elvis John Deere tractor.

Beginning last Friday, a recently restored tractor used by Elvis at Graceland and at his ranch is on display at the King's car museum across the street from Graceland.

Why is this important, you ask? Two reasons. 1. Elvis is the king of rock 'n' roll. and 2. It's a slow news day.

But seriously folks, if you've never been to Graceland and you're planning a summer vaca, let me add Memphis to your list of potential choices. Elvis' former home is second only to the Hearst Castle as far as American abodes are concerned and the rest of the town is pretty killer too. There's the Sun Records studio tour, the Stax Museum and drinking on the street on Beale.

Click here to read all the info. I know you're dying to learn more about this valuable tidbit of information.

The recently reunited New Kids on the Block are coming to Irvine. The question is, are you ready?

The group plays July 10 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater and tickets go on sale Saturday, which means interested parties should probably start lining up asap.

Now, I could go on and take all sorts of cheap shots at NKOTB. But I won't. I'd like to think I'm above that, even though I'm sure I could come up with a good one.

But I sure as hell would like to know who in 2009 is going to this and how in the fuck the New Kids on the Block are popular enough to headline a venue the size of the VWA.

Well, kinda...

For those who can stay up late, MTV has announced a novel concept called AMTV. The show, which airs from 3-9 a.m. Monday through Thursday, does nothing but air music videos for six hours. Call me crazy, but this might be the start of something new. I mean, I could even see this expanding into hours when people are actually awake.

I'm not sure if AMTV is going for something particular because two nights ago I saw Billy Idol's "White Wedding" followed by some Kelly Clarkson song. Some maybe it's the shuffle method. Whatever. At least it's not another reality show.

In related news, does anyone remember when MTV2 was supposed to be where videos were shown? The first (and only) time I ever watched that channel, I got a killer back-to-back of Public Enemy and Weezer. Two weeks later it was "The Real World San Jose" or something like that.

And no, I'm not linking to MTV's site. They don't need the help.

Guapo
Elixirs
(Neurot)
Release date: March 10, 2008

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

Guapo's Elixirs has been slept on for too long, for which I apologize. This is one of the most satisfying prog-rock releases to cross my desk in a long time. A lot of progressive rock exists only to flaunt the players' flamboyant technical abilities. It's music made strictly to impress other musicians . Sometimes this approach results in awesome music, provided the instrumentalists have soul and/or songwriting chops (see Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, et al.).

But there's another species of prog rock that's more about creating otherworldly moods and textures. That's the type of prog group Guapo are. Although their chops are tight, that's not their raison d'être. Consisting of Daniel O'Sullivan (Rhodes, piano, bass, guitars, harmonium, synths, electronics, autoharp and voice), David J. Smith (drums, percussion), Kavus Torabi (guitar) and James Sedwards (bass), Guapo operate in the same rarefied, quasi-ritualistic manner as artists like Popol Vuh, Third Ear Band, Moondog and Talk Talk ca. Laughing Stock.

Elixirs abounds with gorgeous melodies suffused in elegant tonalities, but nothing sounds obvious or played out. Rather, mystery imbues nearly every passage over the disc's six tracks (stretched over 58 minutes, all of them justified). “Twisted Stems: The Selenotrope” creepily evokes some of Goblin's soundtrack work for horror maestro Dario Argento or middle-period Swans when Jarboe sang with them. “King Lindorm” starts with a portentous metallic percussion and keyboard textures that recall bits of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma and a certain strain of gamelan or Tibetan Buddhist music. The piece transitions into some eerie Rhodes motifs (reminiscent of Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge) buttressed by an attractively lugubrious bass line and plangent guitar accents, before shifting into more of those Goblin-esque blood-chilling vibraphone lines and Red menace guitar riffs (i.e., Frippian). The track continues to subtly morph throughout its 15+ minutes, building in intensity and density, becoming ripe to score a suspenseful art-house thriller.

Elixirs is a towering achievement, as is Guapo's last album, the Zeuhl-esque Black Oni.

The Lions
Jungle Struttin'
(Ubiquity)
Release date: February 19, 2008

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

The Lions include seven LA musicians who have seemingly immersed themselves in the ganja-smoke-saturated aura of Jamaica's finest sonic export and devised a sound based on it. Which is to say, undivided attention must be paid to their just-released album, Jungle Struttin'.

Composed of members from such crucial units as Breakestra, Orgone, Madlib's Sound Directions, Connie Price & the Keystones and Rhythm Roots All-Stars, the Lions use reggae and dub as their default mode, evoking resinated, mid-'70s Kingston more than late-'00s Los Angeles, a very neat trick. From that base/bass, the Lions roam into subtle extrapolations of Afrobeat, funk and the wonderful aural intoxicant you hear on those Ethiopiques compilations.

Caucasian dudes exploring a myriad global musics typically comes off sounding diluted and uninspired, but the Lions possess an intangible, sympathetic affinity that enables them to assimilate these styles without degrading nor merely Xeroxing them. And the cover of the James Brown-penned “Think (About It)” by Lyn Collins is cleverly reimagined as a sensuously churning skank with spirited vocals by Noelle Scaggs. Jah-breakingly good stuff.

The Lions in the studio

White Rainbow
Prism of Eternal Now
(Kranky)
Release date: October 1, 2007

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring blogtastic feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

White Rainbow is manifested in Portland, Oregon by one Adam Forkner, who previously expanded minds in Yume Bitsu and Surface of Eceyon; he's also sat in on recordings with Devendra Banhart, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Dirty Projectors. All of these facts should have your Pavlovian Psychodelik meter frantically ding-dinging right about now.

As the glorious title Prism of Eternal Now hints, Forkner aims to transport you to a dimension where clocks are rendered useless and you become blissfully ensnared in a translucent web of shimmering guitars, synths and treated vocals. Your mind trip to this exalted state is further enhanced by chimes, gongs, octave generators, shakers, tablas, water jugs and computers equipped with the philosopher's stone instead of silicon.

Prism of Eternal Now is for folks who have pretty much purged the need to “rock” from their systems (or who simply want a respite from it for a while) and who wish to vibrate on a higher frequency, but without the hokey New Age accouterments. “For Terry” is a pitch-perfect homage to the innovative minimalist composer Terry Riley (especially his timeless A Rainbow in Curved Air), which gives you an idea of the lofty brain-massaging and meditative grandeur for which Forkner is striving. “Mystic Prism” soars into a sun-dazzled, secular holy zone previously only inhabited by Popol Vuh. “Warm Clicked Fruit” recalls the intimate glitch-and-miasma electronica of ambient artists like Loscil and Shuttle358. “Guitar” is a profound exploration into that instrument's capacity to evoke the aum/hum of the universal generator that keeps this world spinning. That it seems to be whirling off its axis toward the end could be Forkner's subtle commentary on global events—or maybe it's just me over-analyzing a wonderful instrumental track.

Prism of Eternal Now concludes with “Awakening,” a diaphanous sighing of angels tinted with the slightest premonition of unease. It's like a tremulous cry of hope against a backdrop of imminent catastrophe, a glimmer of peace before it all gets grimmer.

Satanique Samba Trio
Sangrou
(Amplitude Art)

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring blogtastic feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

On their MySpace page, Satanique Samba Trio write that their music sounds like “a jar full of wrong.” Sounds right to me.

SST hail from Brazil, but don't expect any “Girl From Ipanema” mellowness or Mutantes-like psychedelic whimsy from this quintet (even their name is wrong). Instead, SST wrench out angular, knotty grotesqueries that allude to avant-garde jazz and progressive rock without exhibiting obvious trademarks of either genre. You know how some faces are so ugly you can't take your eyes off 'em? An ugliness that's so over-the-top it becomes a fucked-up kind of beauty? Same principle applies to SST's music. Sangrou is kind of like The Elephant Man of albums—and I think David Lynch would appreciate these guys, too.

Sangrou's 16 tracks skitter by in 35 minutes, but a lot of sonic info is crammed into its brief run time. The prevalent modes are clattering, disjointed and spastic. Imagine John Zorn's more jittery, scatterbrained compositions played by French eccentric Albert Marcoeur, or the Mothers of Invention if they were sozzled on rum. A recurring tension between highbrow jazz and lowbrow circus music lends the disc an oddly compelling friction.

According to the press bio, two SST members reputedly are ex-gangsters while the other three are music-school graduates; their live shows often feature transvestite dancers. Now this crazy album is starting to make sense. . . . Prolonged exposure to Sangrou makes me want to smash bottles, slap asses and cuss in Portuguese.

Below is a short video of a track not on Sangrou, which nonetheless gives you an inkling of SST's off-kilter genius.

Various Artists
Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Volume One
(Waxing Deep)
Release date: June 5, 2007

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring blogtastic feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

Just when you think there can't possibly be any more scenes that need unearthing, along comes this shocker. Who knew that Cuba, in all its Castro-ated iron-fistedness, was a hotbed of funkadelic inventiveness?

Turns out these Commies could get down—and maybe Fidel cut some slack for his country's músicos, the old softy. Si, Para Usted documents a thriving community of musicians who merged their country's renowned rhythmic verve with the piquant progressive-rock, psychedelic and funk elements that were infiltrating bands worldwide during the '70s. Such was the exploratory/creative power of the times (and the potent drugs) that these influences penetrated the Communist cultural gatekeepers and seeped into Cuba's stream of (altered) consciousness.

It's safe to say that most of Si, Para Usted's lineup (compiled by Dan Zacks, who hosts the podcast Waxing Deep Radio) will be unfamiliar to most listeners; the only names I recognize are Irakere and Jorge Reyes. Nonetheless, nearly every track's a keeper and many are as sublime as the best specimens any band in the “free” world had to offer.

A feverish Afro-Caribbean sensuality permeates the rhythms of many of the cuts here, and intense heat waves of rococo guitar, brass, woodwind and keyboard also predominate. Many selections made me think of Santana jamming with Fela Kuti's Africa 70 and Os Mutantes in an equatorial opium den. The 17 songs on Si, Para Usted coruscate, radiate and oscillate beyond the Buena Vista Social Club's templates while still acknowledging their importance. Si, Para Usted is a helluva rumba in the jungle.

Blues Control
Blues Control
(Holy Mountain)
Release date: May 29, 2007

Curb Your Cynicism is a recurring blogtastic feature in which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

Any band with “Blues” in its name in 2007 should be viewed with suspicion. Chances are they'll be overly ironic or excruciatingly purist. Either way, they're probably not gonna be worth your time. That being said, Queens, New York's Blues Control obliterate my little pet theory with their debut album on the estimable Holy Mountain Records.

Consisting of keyboardist Lea Cho and guitarist/sound manipulator Russ Waterhouse, Blues Control are to their hoary namesake genre what Jamie Lidell is to soul music: a brilliant mutational aberration. Disc opener “Blues Control” sounds like a Blue Cheer song run through a newfangled digital signal processing unit set to GROTESQUE. Right away, we know this isn't going to be your typical exercise in heavy-rock worship. “Boiled Peanuts” is surprisingly pretty, albeit in a strangely distant and warped way. A spluttering motor forms the beat, the guitar sounds like a duck squawking in glorious agony, and a two-chord piano motif mesmerizes like Bill Evans in a Sufi trance. These somewhat unpromising elements coalesce into one of the album's best tracks. It's neither fish nor fowl, for which I, being vegan, give thanks. “Migration” evokes the dewy melodic splendor and transformative drone power of German immortals Popol Vuh. “The Blue Sheep” could be a bent-brained remix of David Bowie's “Art Decade.” “No Sweat” starts off heart-rendingly gorgeous and slightly reminiscent of Brian Eno's “Here Come the Warm Jets” until a gut-wrenching, seesawing, downtuned guitar riff barges in and takes things to Butthole Surfers' bad-trip basement of bloated hallucinations. The reverbed percussion solo at the end is a perfectly unexpected kiss-off.

Blues Control know rock and blues history, and they condemn themselves to fuck with these genres till they're barely recognizable. With sly, sinister intent, they refurbish them into bizarre new forms. In a way, Blues Control perform the same task—but with heavier atmospheric pressure and rock crunch—that the Residents have been doing for over three decades: making the familiar seem utterly alien. You can't say that the familiar didn't have it coming. . . .