Sunday, March 26, 2006  11:58 pm 

wonder-ful music

That’s where we at, I know in the past we have said we were doing ‘Noisy fucked up music you’re not supposed to dance to but you can’t help it momma, momma, what’s happening’, ‘all that’s left of what the hipsters try to hijack’ (left as in left-hand) and ‘the music they play at Fraggle Rock Disco’.

It’s also wonder-ful music, in case you hadn’t realised. Wonder-ful as in full of wonders, both from a functionalist (we are analytical geeks) and gestalt perspective.

Tee hee I love to get meta.

They love to get metal.

I know we posted a Wizardzz tune a week ago or so, but that was just an advance, a teaser, it was taken from Load’s mp3 page and I hadn’t listened to the whole album yet, now I have done and I can say…

‘Holy Cow Batman’

I mean, this is a bit like when my parents took me to this small RPG games-fest organised by a shop in town, I was the shy-est kid in the block and had lots of rule-books and modules but had never played once cos I didn’t have friends! Ohh poor thing. So anyway, I had to meet all these real people (yukka!) and eventually face a dragon, I gave him this chat Bilbo style about mutual interest da da da and then got close and stabbed him in the face! The rest of the team was amazed by my deceitfulness and patted my on the back in a good way, and this boosted my self steem. Of course the dragon was unscathed and burned us all to cinders with his fiery breath.

How is this a bit like the Wizardzz album?

Well, the Wizardzz album is called ‘Hidden City of Taurmond’, go figure.

Wizardzz- Chasing our Shadows

It’s also great in a “Emerson Lake and Palmer and John Carpenter go Load Records way (woo-hay!)’ (Ashley said) and will hopefully boost the self steem of lots of nerds out there as it is the definitive soundtrack to adventures in fantasy RPGs such as Runequest, Stormbringer, MERP or, surely, D&D. Pogo for five minutes, then throw for a critical! YAY!

Later this week we’ll bring you the soundtrack to Vampire, the Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk if you decided to have some aliens in it and that super-creepy fucked up Kult game I guess might have been baned by now (it hasn’t).

I’m not so hot on lots of that freaky ‘acid’ folk scene, too much whimshy and woah he’s wearing sandals, far out, and god, how can Devendra Banhart say he’s not a hippie, and people, please, have you tried reading his lyrics? hahaha. Then there’s the more experimentalist side of the movement, spear-headed by the Paw tracks chaps, who have listened to their fair share of improv etc., and are pushing things forward, or at least they try, let a thousand flowers bloom, most of them will be mutant abominations (in a bad way, we usually heart u mutants), for all its pretensions, novelty music, but when they strike gold, boy, does it shine.

Think of the Animal Collective stuff, or that wonderful Terrestrial Tones (’the Sailor’, posted by ace Banana Nutrament is one of 20JFGs tunes of the year), or White Magic and the new Espers album (any music that could soundtrack Wicker Man is good by us), or the album by Bird Show, ‘Lightning Ghost’ which we are briefly reviewing today…

Bird Show- On the Beach

Ok, now this is kind of stupidly beautiful, I just want you to do one thing, just look above this line slowly, one more, yeah, you can direct your eyesight, woah, how cool (if only you could make it burn!), keep up and up as waves and waves of letters with no meaning banish below in an accumulation of symbolic patterns, keep looking up, hey, stop, what does it say…

Wonder-ful music, which wraps everything up nicely.

Sorry if you actually followed our stupid instructions, but you’re not supposed to trust us, this is the internet kids!

Anyhow…

Each tone and each change in its position, front and back, each re-configuration of tones and notes and drones is a kiss in the cheek and the fore-head and a spell and a charm, how pretty is this song? It’s a bit like Brian Eno’s etheric currents took shape and started prancing up and down the sands of Mars on top of a hip druggy VU bunny, aye, the rest of the album is similarly beautiful, and you should buy it from those folks at Kranky.

labels >> xxjfg