:Episode One Hundred Seventy-Seven: 2.28.2020

* Not on Spotify:
Nothing this week. Sometimes, they really do have it all.

Description

This week's show starts with Parisian band Oiseaux-Tempête (which means, literally, "Birds-Storm" in French, but which I suspect translates to either "storm birds" or "storm of birds"... in either case, cool name, frères!) whose Swans-ian dark, orchestral rock provides the soundtrack to a Tunisian film currently making the festival circuit. Following this is UK avant-rock supergroup Sex Swing (featuring members of Space Program favorite Mugstar, and underrated avant-metal group Part Chimp) with the new, evocatively titled single "Valentine's Day at the Gym." Then we get the Melvins-circa-Bullhead, lo-fi weirdo-drone-metal of Philadelphia's Queen Elephantine, the psychedelic punk of the UK's The Soft Walls, and the instrumental, early-Hawkwind-esque, radio-friendly space rock of the also-from-the-UK Japanese Television. Then, wrapping up the rock set are mysterious Swedes OCH (between them and GOAT... are these Swedish bands who disguise their members' individual identities reflecting their nation's collectivist politics?) whose new album of Cluster/Harmonia-inspired instrumental Krautrock I've been listening to non-stop the past week.

Opening the middle set is WaqWaq Kingdom, a pair of Japanese electronic music producers based out of Germany, whose new album is... overall, a little too techno for my taste (I have an aversion to the genre due to the fact that in the late 90s, the mainstream music press was obsessed with the idea that rock was dead, and would soon be swept away by shitty, rock-sampling, European club music, a la The Prodigy) but which closes with the incredible, ten minute long neo-Kosmische/4th World epic heard here. After this is the cinematic avant-jazz of the UK's Pulled By Magnets, an avant-garde keyboard composition by Jon Gibson (who just had a retrospective of his mid-70s work issued by Superior Viaduct - highly recommended if you're a fan of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, et al.), and some contemporary Middle Eastern post-rock by Beirut's Kinematik. Coming after is underground 90s-era Ukranian duo Svitlana Nianio & Oleksandr Yurchenko, whose sound is reminiscent of a somewhat earthier, Desert Shore-era Nico. Ending the set is Alabaster DePlume with a short, haunting sampling of his new album of spiritual jazz released on Chicago label International Anthem.

The final set begins with a track from John Carpenter collaborator Daniel Davies (who is also Carpenter's godson, as well as the actual son of Kinks' co-founder Dave Davies), which is somehow more John Carpenter-y than his mentor's more recent work (or rather, it's more reminiscent of Carpenter's early, most iconic material, e.g. the soundtracks to Halloween and Escape From New York). Following this is avant-electronic supergroup (two supergroups in one episode... what, am I some sort of musical MCU here?) Wrangler - who include among their ranks retro-synth obsessive Benge and a former member of Cabaret Voltaire - with a bit of burbly, mumbly, electronic/spoken word drone. Up next is the dubby Norwegian producer Carmen Villain, followed by 90s-era 4AD act His Name Is Alive (a.k.a. Warren Defever), with a lovely instrumental from one of the two albums of archival demo material he just released. Closing things out are the freak-folk infulenced Isabella, with an excerpt from her strangely lovely recent song-suite, Magnetica, and Danish duo Loke Rahbek & Frederik Valentin with an electro-acoustic, instrumental avant-pop gem.