This Saturday, psych afficionados of all creeds should converge onto the Metro Gallery for a fantastic double album release party featuring 2 acid-drenched locals: Sri Aurobindo and the Violet Hour.

Sri Aurobindo – Return Into Earth (Unsigned)

From the earliest creators of psychedelic music, the manipulation of consciousness has been the foremost inspiration in their songcraft.  The 13th Floor Elevators, on their landmark debut Psychedelic Sounds, describe their motivations simply yet profoundly: “It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs…”

With this epic-length instrumental release, Sri Aurobindo give their most convincing vehicle for fulfilling this journey, and come up with successes on a number of fronts.  Now, clocking in at over 32 minutes long, its length alone may have some people running the other direction.  And while I readily admit this is not something that I’m going to put into the CD player on a regular basis, I think this release has a special and unique place in any collection.

For any single track of this length, its primary concern is taking the listener on an engaging journey (presumably the “quest for pure sanity”).  As such, it’s clear that the Sris took meticulous care to carve out a picturesque sonic sojourn, from the wisps of ethereal, airy jazz flute to deep, warm earthy drones.  The primal shamanistic beats and melodies sweep you away in that classic, consciousness-expanding tradition of psychedelia.  Each of three large, crescendoing sections feels like a distinct, raw trip tapping into some immense wellspring of inspiration from the natural world.  Sections successively bring more visceral sounds and instrumentation (ie: heavier guitars, less haze), building upon the foundations of the last.  When the big, burned out electric guitars finally emerge 2/3 of the way through the track, you are more than ready for their stream-of-consciousness revelations, hopping from motif to motif and getting closer to the horizontalization of the hierarchy of thought espoused by the Elevators.

There are some really great moments on this release.  Sri Aurobindo have embraced more varied instrumentation, and display great maturity in songwriting by channeling all manner of spiritual and elemental forces in pursuit of that holy grail of psychedelia: “pure sanity.”  Since they cannot walk the journey, only show you the way, how close they get to achieving this is largely determined by you.

The Violet Hour – The Violet Hour (Creative Capitalism)

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MP3: The Violet Hour – XXXVI

The Violet Hour’s (Andriana Pateris and Beth Varden) long-delayed debut CD is a strong musical manifesto: silky smooth vocal harmonies (weighty with mid-range) mixing with reverb-heavy, meditative guitar and measured drums into a hypnotizing brew.  ”Peripheral Vision” is as smokily moody as its lyrics sung on “two hearts on fire.”  ”Southern Cross” is remarkable for the twinkling luster of its arpeggiated opening (a likely homage to its astronomical namesake) and a stark contrast amidst a sea of more worn and foggy sounds.  The track’s lyrics intwertwine themes both spiritual and celestial.

The strongest track to my mind is the closer (“XXXVI”) which picks up the pace along with a few earlier tracks, but ultimately their net effect is a sort of bas relief to the rest of the album, rather than a lasting, lifting one.  As a result, I think the record suffers under the unyielding weight of downcast moods, mostly downtempo pacing and similar keys, while simultaneously gaining a beautiful sense of consistency and cohesion.  The soaring vocal harmonies and the distinct mood created are the most compelling aspects of this album, and point to very bright things in the future.  I can’t think of a better pairing of sounds for Saturday’s show.

Aural States sat down with Medeski Martin & Wood while they were in town for the 2009 Traffic Jam Festival to discuss their new three-record series, Radiolarians.

AS: I’m curious about the new approach to writing and recording music that you used for Radiolarians. This year, rather than recording a studio album and then touring in support of the album, you wrote the tunes on the road the previous year and then recorded and released a new live album every 4 months.

Chris Wood: I mean, we never ever really did it like that, really. I mean, you know, we loosely did it like that, but we never had, sort of, like the latest tunes that were hits. I guess we trained our audience early on by just playing whatever we want, when we want. *laughs* They sort of get what they get. But I think for this process, part of the incentive to set it up this way where we write new music, tour, record, three times is that it is a way for us to write a whole bunch of new music together.  And we didn’t have the constraints of a tradional record deal since we were doing it ourselves. We put out a lot more material, and we’ve always wanted to do that becuase it’s so long in a traditional record deal between each record.  It’s like a year and a half sometimes, and by the time the record comes out you’re already sick of the music.

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A few big names released albums while I’ve been away the last couple months so here’s a brief recap:

Modest Mouse – No One’s First, and You’re Next

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MP3: Modest Mouse – The Whale Song

Any time a band as huge as Modest Mouse drops a new album there’s usually plenty of fanfare and press to go around, but this EP came out to relatively little attention.  But I suppose it’s easy to be dwarfed by new singles by Radiohead and Jay-Z and Kanye West, and the news of the Beatles remasters to be released on the 40th anniversary of their break-up. No One’s First and You’re Next is definitely worth checking out if you were a fan of the last two productions.  Although the EP is made up of songs that didn’t fit on those albums thematically, the sound is consistent and it’s generally easy to see which songs came from which session.

There’s nothing bad on here, in fact the quality of songwriting is very high, with none of the self-indulgent repetition that afflicted this band’s outtakes and studio sessions in their early years. It’s not cohesive from one song to the next, but you shouldn’t expect it to be since it wasn’t recorded with a theme in mind. This eclecticism goes a long way to making the record feel more lightweight than the slightly overwrought Modest Mouse that appeared on the last two albums. It’ll be fun to see whether they can grow without heavy guitars in the same way The Flaming Lips did in their second decade.

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The DC scenes great revitalizing youth in True Womanhood show us some of their old and new material. Check out our interview with Melissa and Thomas earlier in the year.

Sounds like their impending EP release, recorded at Death By Audio in Brooklyn with A Place to Bury Stranger’s sound engineer, will be chock full of new treats.

Editor’s Note: This CD comes packaged with some great custom 3-D poster art!

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MP3: The Degenerettes – Truck Drivin’ Girlfriend

Lou Reed sang in 1969 that “no kinds of love are better than others” and I’m not inclined to agree–as Dante demonstrated in Purgatorio, there are plenty of variations on love gone awry–although I think what Lou really meant to say, more precisely, was that no acts of consensual fucking are better than others.

The Degenerettes (Baltimore’s all-girl, self-proclaimed “queer art rock power trio”) don’t sing about fucking.  Not in the kitschy way that Elastica managed to make sound cool…there’s no songs about groupies or doing it in the backseat of a Camaro. Nor do they slosh around in the hyperbolic, gory detail that Babes in Toyland kind of scared you with, no “Swamp Pussy” or “Spanking Machine” here. The nastiest they get is the occasional jokey metaphor like “I want me an all-terrain girlfriend, mountains of desire, valleys of sin.”  Given the cesspool of mindless sexuality on display on TV 24/7, that would have the Degenerettes splashing their feet somewhere in the shallow end. They don’t treat homosexual love with the kind of coquettish coyness that Kevin Barnes sometimes fantasizes about, and that’s certainly for the best because the last thing the world needs is another person writing songs like Kevin Barnes.

All of which describes what the Degenerettes don’t do, because in some ways it’s more interesting to write about than what they do do.   Read the rest…

Photo credit: Defekto

Being that the philosophy backing experimental music largely emphasizes meaning to the individual rather than to the culture with which the musician belongs, I find it unnatural to be the least bit persuasive when speaking of Jared Paolini. To me, his half of a lost:ghosts:records split cassette with Bear & Pieces, entitled “The Fog Desert,” is something of an aesthetic wonderland, its very fabric shimmering with heavenly charm. The track’s liveliness becomes more persistent throughout its 19-minute duration.  In a way, Paolini evolves “The Fog Desert” idiosyncratically while still keeping it cohesive, a pool of unreal reverberations and entrancing resonance.

Others that I’ve played the tape for suggest that his round edges and soft tones are designed to bring the listener into something of a divine coma, and I couldn’t disagree more. Jared Paolini, though I haven’t read his word on the subject, probably does not make sound for any specific purpose. Rather, I’d posit that he has a simple and genuine enthusiasm for these exact frequencies, the sort of appreciation that won’t let you nod off; it’ll hold you captive. Many without an eye for experimentation and ambiance are at a loss when it comes to music that demands an above average amount of effort on the behalf of the listener; and I won’t lie to you, “The Fog Desert” is no exception. Sure, this one might take a little elbow grease to decipher, but is art really worth discounting for that reason alone? I don’t think so, and I hope not.

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01. MP3: Zomes – Clear Shapes from Zomes (2008)
02. MP3: Daniel Higgs – Living In The Kingdom of Death from Ancestral Songs (2006)

Creative Alliance billed an interesting line-up Friday night: two veritable forces of nature, followed by one group desperate to tap into that same well of inspiration, but still standing on the outside.

Daniel Higgs and Asa Osborne come from the same musical lineage, both working together in Baltimore-grown journeyman-punk band Lungfish. I have always assumed Lungfish were the equivalent of musical monks, on a mission searching for some deep, dark, ancient secret of the universe through their music. Music that possessed a mystical aura and was complemented by appropriately cryptic lyrics, their live shows were filled with a phenomenal vitality. The quest for enlightenment seemed to be pushing Higgs near the raging and maddening edge. I like to think that it was because his frail mortal vessel was attempting to contain and process the otherworldly messages and thoughts he was experiencing. Likewise, Osborne’s steady and scorching, often repetitive guitars in Lungfish were nearly exploding with anthemic melodies. The feeling was that both men were communicating something primal and universal, but they were often incapable of fully controlling how it came out. As their solo careers have progressed, I would say they have figured out how to control and communicate the voice of their respective muses.

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I’ve already extolled the virtues of Lands & Peoples’ recent, self-titled EP. Seems Miguel is on board too, as they round out the three bands featured in this month’s episode of An Hour of Kindness.

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01. MP3: Richard Lainhart – Thonk from Buchlaworks
02. MP3: The Megadrives – Snow Rising Tai Chi from Press Start
03. MP3: Jerohme Spye – Yellow Sun from sunday one play

Last year, you may remember the Baltimore SDIY group hosted a festival housed at the Hexagon featuring the likes of noteNdo and a host of other chiptuners.  Looks like this year they’ve got an expanded event at larger space and with a wider variety of performers, presenting the Electronica Fest 2009 at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum.

The festival is a veritable who’s who of local instrument makers and tinkerers including Art Harrison (who you may recognize from DC’s vaudeville-punks the Cassettes), Karl Ekdahl (founding member of the Hexagon, operator of the True Vine Repair Shop) and Peter Blasser (whose fantastic RadioZither we demonstrated a while back).

Harrison’s company manufactures the early electronic instrument known as the theremin.  Some may affectionately recognize its eerie, wavering sound as the source of a sizable portion of observatory exhibit music and science fiction soundtracks.  Its reach extends as far as home-country hero Dmitri Shostakovich’s compositions to popular music to the avant-garde.

It is the only musical instrument played without physical contact, instead operating by principles of electric fields, where the player’s hands act as capacitance plates.  As the hands move closer to the antennas, the capacitance increases and the frequency is lowered, leading to a higher pitch when  subtracting the frequency of the hand-dependent oscillator from a fixed oscillator.  The other antenna controls volume, as a hand gets closer to it and decreases the voltage across the fixed oscillator circuit, decreasing the voltage across the amplifier.

Ekdahl recently finished work on the Ekdahl Moisturizer, an exposed spring reverberator.  Spring reverbs translate the vibrations of springs into reverb effects on the sound being passed through the springs.  Having exposed springs allows much easier manipulation of their sound, making it easier to achieve the crashing, thunderous effects that are typically made by shaking enclosed spring reverbs.  The Moisturizer also allows you to create sounds independent of a sound source.

Head on out to the fest and check out all of the cool exhibits and presentations, maybe even learn how to make your own theremin!  Don’t forget to get some fresh air and poke your head outside by the outdoor stage where performers include The Megadrives, The Duc D’Anelos Quartet, Jerohme Spye, Art Harrison and Amber Dunleavey, Tone Ghosting, and Richard Lainhart.

Jammin' in the Streets

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01. MP3: Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk w/ Skerik – I Cannot Make It (Sly Stone), Live @ Tipitina’s in New Orleans (2009.05.30) via Internet Archive

02. MP3: Medeski, Martin & Wood – Flat Tires from Radiolarians II (2009)

This Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Sonar will be hosting a brand new late summer festival called Traffic Jam. That’s right, Herby Nuggz, it’s like I’m speaking directly to you through my computer.

For a brand new festival held at a single venue in the heart of a major metropolitan area, the lineup is stellar. Moreover, the setting should seem positively intimate compared to other ultra-mega summer festivals. There will be an outdoor stage — the weather report looks clear so bring sunblock rather than umbrellas — as well as two indoor stages.

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