:Episode One Hundred Sixty-Two: 11.1.2019
| Artist | Title | Album |
|---|---|---|
| Acid Rooster | Moon Loop | Acid Rooster |
| No Me Coman | Won't Forgive Nor Forget | The Tide |
| CHICKN | Die to Make a Living (Reprise) | Bel Esprit |
| White Lightning | Prelude to Opus IV | V/A: Brown Acid: The Ninth Trip |
| Stonewall | Outer Spaced | V/A: Brown Acid: The Ninth Trip |
| Peacepipe | The Sun Won't Shine Forever | V/A: Brown Acid: The Ninth Trip |
| G.A.M.S. | Yanari (feat. Mick Harris) | G.A.M.S. |
| Om Buschman | Hey Tata Gorem | V/A: Tropical Drums of Deutschland |
| Zatua | Harimau | Sin Existencia |
| Sunik Kim | The Truth | Zero Chime |
| Scattered Purgatory | Uttering Among the Southern Lanes | Lost Ethnography of the Miscanthus Ocean |
| Paper Dollhouse | Art of Magic: Folklore Tapes Live In London | Art of Magic |
| Seahawks & Woo | Omotion | Celestial Railroads |
| Dallas Acid | Zavana | The Spiral Arm |
| Fenella | Gilded Griffin / Transfiguration Into One | Fehérlófia |
Listen on Spotify
* Not on Spotify:
Nothing this week. Sometimes, they really do have it all.
Description
Among the highlights of this week's show:
Some instrumental, lightly prog- and Kraut-tinged rock from Germany's Acid Rooster (not to be confused with Atomic Rooster, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown spin-off act). I've made it known that I am not a huge fan of vocals (so many rock vocalists just can't sing, and only make things worse by either - if they're male - doing the mumbly, tongue-swallowing "Hunger Dunger Dang" thing, or - if they're female - sing-talking in a breathy monotone) but the problem I have with a lot of instrumental rock bands is that, to compensate for the lack of emotion lent by a frontperson, they give their music this heart-tugging earnestness that makes it sound like the soundtrack to a rom-com. But I want my rock to make me think of people fleeing a zombie apocalypse, or two kaiju battling, or [insert action movie trope here], not two insufferable twits discovering that love is the answer to all life's problems, and thankfully Acid Rooster's sound leans much more toward the former of those two options.
Also from the opening, rock and/or roll-oriented block, three tracks from the latest installment of the Brown Acid series, dedicated to psychedelic (or at least psych-influenced) obscurities of the post-Nuggets era (i.e. the 70s). The fact that the ninth(!) album in this series is quite possibly the best (nary a dud to be found - a rarity for almost any compilation) is a testament both to the crate-diggers responsible (mostly the respective owners of Permanent Records and RidingEasy) and to fact that there's sooooooo much music out there. I hate to harp on this again, but, to everyone my age (old-ish) that complains about how there's no good music anymore: if these guys can dredge up nine albums of forgotten gems from a half-century ago, you can find a band you like that you didn't listen to prior to graduating college (or high school, depending on how early your taste ossified - I'm consistently mortified by the number of people I know who essentially gave up on expanding their pop-cultural horizons when they were seventeen).
A longform, kosmische and musique concrète-informed piece by the London-based experimental synth-pop duo Paper Dollhouse (if you caught Stereolab on their recent North American tour, for which their opening act was Bitchin Bajas, and thought "I like both these bands, but I'd really like one that splits the difference between them" then you're in luck!) that was commissioned by the London Museum of Witchcraft and Magic for an exhibition called The Art of Magic. It honestly doesn't strike me as particularly witchy or magical, but it's a nice solid slab of electronic-oriented drone, something I generally can't complain about.