Clandestine Blaze / Deathspell Omega

Long ago when Deathspell Omega were still kvlt and trve they did a series of splits with famous black metal acts in the underground. Songs that were on those splits are re-released / re-mastered on their Manifestations comps. Songs from this split were not included for some reason. Actually the songs on this split appear on this split only from what I gather. It's an interesting split but not something that I would consider essential for either band but I'm glad it happened because it's probably how Mikko Aspa and DsO met and then formed the neo-DsO which everybody on the internet knows and loves or hates.

The DsO tracks on this split are just as good as was every other material that they released during their early years. It's straight up black metal with a heavy Darkthrone vibe but it's composed good and has excellent riffs so it's all great for me because I love stuff like that. Production wise it sounds much more like Inquisitors of Satan that came out a year later after this split.

Clandestine Blaze is a band that I never really liked. Harmony Of Struggle is really great but pretty much everything else that I heard I didn't like at all. It feels so dull and monotonous that I rarely venture past his last release. I do like Deliverers Of Faith but that's it really when it comes to his earlier stuff. His tracks on the split are in vein of what I said already: dull and monotonous with quasi-death metal vocals. Not my thing so I keep this split just for the DsO tracks.

Get.

Iskra - Bureval

Iskra is a band from Canada that used to do straight forward crust punk. I've shared their previous efforts a few years ago and I still love them to this day. There were some elements of black metal in their music but overall it was crust. Then in 2009 they went on and made this album where they embraced their black metal influence fully.

Track length wise this is very short for black metal with songs mostly ranging around 3 minutes but it's fast, riff packed and intense. They really gave it all they had on this album it definitely feels like it which is why I like this album so much. When it came out I would frequently listen to this while riding the bus to and from college but after maybe a year or so I kind of moved on to other bands and albums. Now I've revisited it and it still sounds just as awesome as I remember it. It has a unique sound and I think it's really underrated as a whole. Guess it didn't catch on. Iskra really haven't been that active after this album so it seems out their foray into black metal kinda was their downfall.

Get it.

Sun Ra - Horizon

Sun Ra's venture into Egypt is well known among fans and more casual listeners. The most known release from that venture was the collaboration with Salah Ragab who was a prominent jazz figure in Egypt. There are other recordings of concerts from that tour that did not feature Salah Ragab and Horizon is one of those recordings.

I'll be frank this isn't an easy listen, most of this recording is either free jazz or really disjointed but if you like that sort of thing I think you'll like it because the band is absolutely on fire here. The album starts with a short introduction and then moves to a lengthy free jazz soloing and exposition featuring Sun Ra solos and also a saxophone solo. After about 20 minutes of free form playing the band shifts into a more friendlier sound and goes on to play some of its famous compositions like Space is The Place. After some jamming and overall excellent melodic grooves the band switches back into the final and more bombastic free jazz form with ridiculously fierce sax solos accompanied by brooding brass sections ominously playing in the back. After those diddly dads the album ends with the band talking to the audience in a very characteristic Sun Ra manner ("we'll wait for you in another woooooooooooooorlllddddd") and then they blast into my second most liked Sun Ra track which is The Satellites are Spinning that goes on for 11 minutes accompanied by claps from the audience and loose sax soloing.

Basically what you get here is a fully packaged Sun Ra live performance. There's a bit of everything from their career up to that point (1971) but there's definitely an emphasis on more free forms rather than on more structured jazz. I myself really enjoy this recording but I'm not sure if it's for everyone though!

Get it.

Nagisa Ni Te - Feel

Nagisa Ni Te or 渚にて is a folk/rock duo from Japan but surprisingly not from the Tokyo area. They come from Osaka and their name means "on the beach" which is fairly fitting actually. They've been putting out albums since 1995 and this one was released back in 2001. Aside from this album I also heard their debut but I find this one more interesting. First one is more experimental but I enjoy the more melancholic vibe that Feel has

The core of Nagisa Ni Te is the duo of Shibayama and Takeda. They both provide vocals which fits really good with the music that's in the maximum laid back style. The songs are mainly focused on slow acoustic instrumentation but there's enough diversity and experimentation that keeps this hour long album not particularly boring. Some songs tend to draw out though. While essentially being a duo there are lots of songs where more instruments come in. Most of these "session" musicians come from Maher Shalal Hash Baz band which makes sense since both bands are kinda related even in sound. While Maher has a more naive sound to it and feels more simple Nagisa on the other hand has much more tight instrumentation and sounds overall more apt in its songs. Despite that they give me a similar vibe.

Anyway, great album. Check it out.

Get it.

Jackie McLean on Mars

An interesting documentary about Jackie McLean made in 1980. It's a classic documentary setup mainly featuring McLean himself talking about his life, career and personal view on things with various footage on show. Also features some of his lectures that he gave in college.

They also discuss Sun Ra during one of the lectures. One dude says uncomfortably "it's kinda far out" after McLean asks them if they did listen to some of Sun Ra records. I thought that was hilarious and it's also really cool to hear that McLean admired Sun Ra.

Anyway, I talked about McLean before so here are some links: 4, 5 and 6 and Jacknife so check these out if you're interested in how he sounds on record. Both albums are really great.

John Coltrane - The Village Vanguard Tapes

[If you haven't heard anything from Coltrane prior to this you can still enjoy it but I'd recommend starting with his more (or most?) famous works. In short, check out these albums in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.]

Arguably all jazz albums are "live" albums but studios still are a bit different from a proper live setting. The Village Vanguard tapes/recordings have a long and detailed background behind them and for a good reason too. I'm not going to elaborate all the minute details because you can find it all in the booklet provided with the songs so if you're interested just read it from there.

Personally I think Coltrane and his group were at their absolute prime here (1961) and whenever I want to hear some live Coltrane concerts I usually drift back to these recordings. This was a period for Coltrane where he was done with conventional jazz for the most part and was starting to shape into his more infamous free jazz form. So I'd say this was the time where you get still great conventional jazz but in a much more relaxed (rules-wise) and creative form. Probably the best thing with these recordings is that the tracks themselves are long as fuck. Considering how Coltrane always had millions of ideas at the same time this live setting gives him breathing room to play them all out compared to a studio album which would certainly limit this kind of creativity. A lot of the songs were augmented with additional players of which Eric Dolphy is the most known these days. This engagement, from what I've read, sparked a lot of hate that came from jazz classicists (purists or whatever) calling this anti-jazz but as time went on they were rightfully proven wrong. Coltrane and a lot of the free jazz crew got a lot of flak like that simply because they had different ideas of what jazz is and could be. Nowadays calling Coltrane an anti-jazz musician is absurd but people then were less receptive to more dissonant music I assume because a lot of them lived or were born during the heyday of swing and Dixie jazz.

While I enjoy all the tracks that are on these recordings I still have some issues with it. My main problem is that sometimes the recordings get unbalanced so you have parts that are dominant on the left or right speaker while the other side is either really low or silent. This can potentially ruin the experience but luckily it does not happen often and it doesn't last that long (still it made me snap out of the music when it did happen).

My other issue might come off a little controversial or pretentious but hear me out (or just skip to the links). I'm a fan of Dolphy and I enjoy his works (Out To Lunch and Out There being my favorites) but unfortunately on these recordings I didn't particularly like his solos or him being added at all. This is just a personal preference because he plays his parts with exceptional technicality but whenever he jumps into a solo it feels so tacked on and unnecessary for me. Coltrane plays his solo parts for a very long time and Dolphy, usually coming in after Coltrane, sounds comparatively weaker and out of place for me. It might be because he's using the bass clarinet for the most part and its sound I do not find fitting in the classic Coltrane quartet.

In summary this is a great live setting and a great live recording that bore us a lot of excellent material. I have two "versions" of this but not the complete version which is this one.

What I do have are the master takes which you can get here.

And I also have something called "The Other Village Vanguard Tapes" that were originally released in 1976. It's a two CD set that features different versions of the tracks from the master takes in a even more longer fashion and also some extra tracks that weren't featured (one being a traditional song called Greensleeves).

Here's the CD1 and CD2

I recommend getting both!

Ono Ryoko - Undine

Hi. Err, I'll just act like I wasn't gone forever and keep on posting.

If there's one thing I hate in music it's albums that I can't decide if I like them or not. Undine is a prime example of this totally serious and important struggle that I keep having in my important and totally serious life. On paper this album should be everything that I like in music. A female saxophonist from Japan that plays in all kinds of bands and also does solo free jazz in her spare time oh and she also plays with Tatsuya Yoshida in Sax Ruins (which sounds as exactly as it's called). What's not to like? But every time I start this album I can't help but to wonder why I haven't trashed (recycle-binned?) it already. The problem is that the album starts with such weak a boring sax doodles coupled with extremely uninteresting electronic drumming that it makes me skip the whole album altogether. Eventually after those few tracks the album goes on in a more traditional sense with multiple sax improv tracks but it's nothing really groundbreaking or original (at least from my layman knowledge perspective). Then a comes along a track called Birds which is a vocal/sax duo rendition of a famous Charlie Parker tune and after that the album keeps getting better and better with much more imagination. But the best track comes near the end titled Tarkus. It's a cover song of a famous prog track (if you haven't heard it you definitely should) but boy does it go wild and furious. It's also played by a full band which makes it so much more interesting than the rest of this album. So yeah, the only real reason why I keep this album is probably because of that cover song, it's just that great.

Not only is it a great track but it also shows how much Ono Ryoko is great at her playing. Seems like (for now) she works best in a band setting. From what I gather she's relatively new in the scene and is just getting more renown so there's lots of time for improvement on her solo stuff.

Check it out at least for that one song I keep talking about.

Get.

bôa ‎- Tall Snake EP

Serial Experiments Lain was the first anime show that I watched from a source that wasn't the TV and I was stunned that Japanese can draw something else than big eyes and explosions! It still had schoolgirls though! Aside from being an excellent show the opening is something that really stuck with me over the years. I still listen to it today and it is one of few select opening/closing songs from anime shows that I, every now and then, listen (Bonnie Pink's Last Kiss being close second, of all things). First and foremost the song is incredibly catchy but more importantly it's not hyperactive pop or a charade of edgy rock inspired pop. It's a well made, fittingly melancholic, song by a British band that didn't really catch on as time went on. Now that I think of it, I never really bothered with anything else they've made.

Tall Snake EP contains this song in its original form (uncut) and two other versions. One is a Cyberia remix which sounds pretty much like any late 90s electronic-pop garbage and an acoustic version which is great if not even better than the original. The EP also contains two other songs (I don't remember if they were featured in the anime, probably not) that are fun to listen but different from the main showcase.

Get the EP.

There's a video of the song here.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

 
I've read and watched a lot stuff that came from Japan over the years. Certainly not as much as diehard fans but I think I have (or I had) a relatively good grasp of the manga universe. The journey through it changed a lot of assumptions that I had about Japanese comics, their tropes and such. Truth be told though I rarely revisit comics. Sure I'll read a volume or two prior to reading a new one just to remember what the hell is going on or I'll breeze through a Maruo comic just to look at the art but I rarely come back to read something again wholly. Of course as with everything else there are exceptions to this rule.

The first exception to this rule is Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I'll assume the setting is familiar to most of you but in case you haven't watched the movie here's the jist of it: the world was blown up by colossal mythic robot-like dudes (Shinji wasn't around) and now the planet is a barren desert with pockets of human civilization. The twist is that the world is regenerating itself but it decided to kick the humans out of the equation so you have these vast "corruptions" throughout the desert of huge fungi and similar plant life filled with gigantic insects that thrive but are super-deadly to humans.

When I first saw the movie I was completely captivated by it. I absolutely adored the atmosphere of it, the soothing and somewhat Buddhist nature of the movie and the Greek mythos vibe which is deeply ingrained in me since most "fairy tales" that were read to me as a little kid were Greek myths. The Vangelis-like soundtrack also helped a lot to make me fall in love with the movie as well and I really liked how the world isn't really post-apocalyptic but more something like some story or legend from dawn of an era theme.

Naturally after finding out that there's a manga version of the story I immediately sought it out and it turns out that the manga version is pretty much an improvement over the movie in every way (except for the animation, voice acting and music due to obvious reasons). It is so much more fleshed out, there is so much more politicking and so much more mystery that it's always fun to come back to it again and again. The central character is still Nausicaa who has a much more apparent messianic figure but often times the story can go for pages without her even being mentioned. The setting offers much diversity in cultures, settings and characters (despite being a desert world!) and they all feel distinct to me. It plays on the themes of desert and antic worlds which is something that's often absent these days in stories that I come across. The gripes that I have with this manga is that the drawings can be often too cluttered, Miyazaki sure liked to draw a shitload of things into one frame. This can distract from the enjoyment because I sometimes don't exactly get what's going on from all the shit that's...going on. And yeah the story suffers from some common tropes but the overall felling and my personal affection to the setting makes me not bother about it very much.

So yeah. Big favorite. Check it out. You might like it. Or not.

Vol: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Katharsis - 666

This and past decade has seen a lot of shifts and new movements in black metal. If this is good or bad only time will tell but for now the future is kind of shrouded in mist (or not, if you don't listen to anything past 1995). It's essentially what happened to jazz when fusion came around, it split the musicians between the traditionalists and the progressives. Should black metal incorporate elements from other genres? I've no idea and I'm not really in a position to make any claims or predictions. What I can say is that I've always leaned towards the traditionalist side, despite all the weird avant garde shit that I listen.

666 is basically a love letter to the olden days. Before everything was finely polished and clean and before synths came into play. But it's not just a flimsy rip off of Transilvanian Hunger, there is a lot more here if you're willing to listen. There's attitude here and sheer anger that pours out of these songs. It's a ferocious and well composed black metal that does not follow the tradition of just stapling three good riffs and calling it a song. The songs have good structure, they're paced well and they're played well. What I'm trying to say is that these guys knew what they were doing when they were making this. A skill that will make them (relatively) famous later on with their next albums but this one I love the most so I've decided to start off 2014 with it.

Hail Satan!