RECENT LISTENING #40
Swiftumz, the C*nts, Princess Diana of Wales, Derek Monypeny, Agitation Free, Galactic Zoo Dossier #9, RIP Donald Miller (1958-2024)
SWIFTUMZ Don’t Trip LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN) I was there circa 2011 for the ‘Twitter microcelebrity’ years of Swiftumz (aka singer/songwriter/hometaper Chris McVicker), and maybe you were too. That was the year his debut LP Don’t Trip came out on the Holy Mountain label, though if I remember right his humorous Twitter persona came first. Still took me another 6 or 7 years to actually buy a copy, and only after it popped up in a Chicago cheap bin; now I’m playing it as I write in 2024, and could swear to you this is the first time I’ve ever actually listened to it. Time sure flies, and it wouldn’t be the first time a new arrival got buried or accidentally filed before making it to the turntable. I think that’s what happened to Don’t Trip, or else I’m sure I’d remember how uniquely and softly its blown-out feathery-like-early-Shoes bedroom-garage psych-pop boogie-woogie wends its way. I also know a few of my colleagues on the internet (like, at least three!) have sung this record’s praises, and now, a good 13 years later, I understand why. So much better than Wavves, for example (though my only reference point for Wavves is one long-ago listen their extremely unremarkable 2008 s/t debut album).
THE C*NTS Eat My Nuts CD (DISTURBING RECORDS) And what of Chicago’s own the C*nts? Been hearing about them forever, probably more before I lived in Chicago than after, and never really because of their music, mostly just their band name (now with obligatory censoring asterisk). They’re also one of those 1980s hardcore-adjacent bands with two brothers among the members, you know, like Meat Puppets, Red Cross, Spike in Vain, Sun City Girls (I know there’s more). Something about having brothers in hardcore bands really seems to bring out the weirdness, huh? (Thinking also of Grong Grong in Australia, sheez . . . and even the Clean in NZ are essentially in this category.) Regardless, I don’t hear about The C*nts too much here in Chicago; my guess is they’re all genuine unassuming workaday family men who are now growing old semi-gracefully in a few bungalows somewhere on the Southwest side, just doing their little rock’n’roll hobby on the side, with the naughty jokes and whatnot. The first C*nts release came out in 1978 so they were actually pre-USHC, playing what was essentially 1960s garage rock barely updated for the 70s/80s, sounding a bit like a kinder and gentler predate of the Cheater Slicks (another weirdo brother band, hmmm), but I don’t really know those records, or think they’re that great. Really the only record of theirs I know is this CD-only release Eat My Nuts (those naughty jokes again) from the random year of 2004, and the only reason I’ve heard it is because they (“Disturbing Records”) mailed a review copy to Blastitude HQ at the time. I still listen to it every few years because it totally rips with sneering Farfisa-punk energy, somehow heavier than their early stuff, which is very garage-y, but also quite light and clean-toned. 20 years later in the 2000s, they are not only heavier, but also better recorded, somehow more energetic, and I think better writers too. My fave song is “Strong.”
PRINCESS DIANA OF WALES s/t (A COLOURFUL STORM) Grouper-ish . . . but different. Similar floating, haunted, and reverb-bathed femme vox, but the backgrounds here come across as more electronic and clean, less lo-fi. That said, track two “Still Beach” is essentially a guitar track, complete with loose wah-inflected leads, but tracks five and six “Exhaust” and “Fragments of Blue” are full-on glitch-electronic trip-hop avant-pop. Either way, this 23-minute debut EP is the kind of record that changes shape a little each time you listen. The label copy makes it clear how “curiously cloaked” the artist Princess Diana of Wales is (though it seems to be a solo project by someone named Laila Sakini, my source being the Bandcamp URL where the album is hosted), but I assume they’re from Australia, and I’d put the music in a home-recorded avant-synth-pop category similar to their labelmates and countrymates Troth, one of my low-key favorite bands of the last few years, though PDoW leans a little more sinister and strange. By the way, I thought I was finally covering some new and current music, but see this album was released 3 years ago already . . . November 29th, 2021 according to Bandcamp, and wouldn’t you know I’m writing this sentence on November 29th, 2024, so exactly three years ago. (Thank you for reading my “Princess of Diana of Wales Turns 3 Today” thinkpiece.)
DEREK MONYPENY Born (Free) CS (PERSONAL ARCHIVES) I really don’t mean to publish a review for every Derek Monypeny release I listen to, like I already have here and here, and if this was another string-heavy shahi-baaja-forward type of release by him I’d probably consider it covered, but Born (Free) instead goes somewhere quite new, a krautworthy cosmic electronics kind of place. You may be skeptical, because there are many pretenders to that particular throne, but this album is just plain good. I’ve now learned that Moneypeny’s starting point was “What if Popol Vuh made a record for Siltbreeze?,” and I’m happy to say it worked out pretty well for him (and us). Listened to over half of it without knowing who or what it was, and considered it an electronic/synth album with secondary electric guitar overdubs. Now that I’m reading the credits, I see the only instruments Monypeny is credited with are “electric guitar” and “electric oud.” So, the cosmic electro-washes on track one “Blit”? All guitar. The grinding machine dysfunction improv and washing water-cycle backdrop of track seven “Kurq”? All guitar, and so on. The strings and point of attack thereof are often effected to the point of complete disguise, and when the more traditional electric lead guitar and oud playing do happen, it’s always in service to a greater overall (cosmic electronic) vision.
AGITATION FREE 2nd CD (SPALAX MUSIC) Reviewing (the 1990s CD reissue of) Agitation Free’s second album here because I was listening to it recently, and the name of this column is “Recent Listening.” Also because I’ve been slowly compiling a list of bands/songs from the 1970s that “do an R2-D2,” that is, feature a synthesizer solo that sounds much like the wordless electronic dialogue of the famed android character from the film Star Wars (1977, d. George Lucas). And indeed, electronicist/keyboardist Michael Hoenig of Agitation Free pulls a superb R2-D2 from his synthesizer on this album, towards the end of track two “Dialogue and Random.” As for Agitation Free themselves, they’re a bit of a puzzle. An extended all-instrumental simultaneous take on both the British space rock of Pink Floyd and the Southern jazz rock of the Allman Brothers (one of their most definitive songs is called “Laila, Pt. 1 & 2”)? Of course that should be awesome. And sure, it is. But on repeat listens, it also seems just a little too nice. A little too background. A little too faceless. The guitar player solos well, the grooves are rock-solid, the themes and melodies are delivered correctly, but there isn’t really any movement or excitation. The quality of solos, themes, and melodies is quite high, but the level of interaction between those three elements is very low. They each seem to occupy a separate space, kept from each other by transparent glass walls. It’s the same for the instrumentalists, who play their parts perfectly except that they don’t really respond to each other, or evolve their own parts in a way that evolves the entire unit, which leaves the pieces feeling static. In a high-level interactive combo, the drummer can be like a bellows that controls a fire. A good drummer can make this metaphorical but nonetheless vivid fire burn harder and brighter, so flames lick out into the air and throw sparks, just as they can do the opposite and reduce it down to glowing and cooling embers. I still like Agitation Free, but I’m not really feeling the fire.
VARIOUS ARTISTS Sons* Of Gutbucket Sampler (*And Daughters): Unearthed Expansive Sounds 1968-Present (free with Galactic Zoo Dossier #9) CD (DRAG CITY) Yep, been listening to this various artists CD that was released in 2012 with the ninth issue of Steve Krakow’s hand-drawn labor-of-love psych/pop/punk/kitsch/comix zine Galactic Zoo Dossier. Also just finished reading Steve’s superfast superfun memoir A Mind Blown is a Mind Shown, and the guy just knows so much about music, and has such expansive and ecumenical tastes, and you really get a nice dose of it on this comp where a good 95% of the tracks are completely obscure, with an extremely high rate of ‘not otherwise on Discogs’ bands. It’s all good, not necessarily great, but funky, poppy, soulful, psych-splashed, bold, kitschy, always of cultural and historical interest, and always fun. Admittedly a lot of it goes down as background music, but there are a few tracks on here that I’m obsessed with: “We Like the Rain” by the Goblins (charming grey beat-group whisper-pop from “a Dutch group that existed from 1964-1967” — maybe Steve found it on this 1990s bootleg comp, but knowing him he probably found it on the original 45!), “Dirty Hippie Orgy #1” by the Schoolgirl Band (apparently from an actual 1970s porno soundtrack, but when mercifully removed from such visuals, its extended soloing over a slinky trance-groove makes for an excellent instrumental track), “Sinner Man” by Chuck and Sandy Owston (slightly eerie lo-fi private-press religious folk music; “Chuck is still crafting dark pagan Celt-folk in the wilds of Pittsburgh…”), “Neck Tattoo” by the Joy Poppers (I know Steve has long championed this perennial bedroom-pop Chicago person/group, and in fact I think the only times I’ve heard of or from them has been in the pages of GZD; either way this is an ethereal and tantalizingly brief s/t-Big Star-referent psych-pop miniature), “New England Days” by Roscoe (this is actually the track that made me seek out this issue/comp in the first place, when Steve put it on a totallyradio.com guest mix back in 2021, Roscoe being a Chicago group from 1974 that plays extended progressive and mostly instrumental jazz-folk fusion via crazy interplay with killer keyboards by one June Shellene, a real Chicagoan who has worked “as Pianist/Musical Director, Performer or Writer for The Second City, Northlight Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, and the Organic Theatre...to name a few” and now lives in the Pacific Northwest where she leads the June Shellene Trio), and “Ballad of the Seasons” by the Mission Sisters (“a not-so-rare bit of divine pastoral acid folk from an unexpected ‘Seasons’ semi-concept Christian LP” sez Steve — sure is rare to me!)
BORBETOMAGUS Seven Reasons for Tears CD (AGARIC) A seven-track CD that is a 1993 reissue of a 1989 LP. But these tracks are not songs, they are reasons. They have no titles, and reasons don’t have titles either. The only title is for the entire album, which informs us that these seven untitled reasons are reasons for tears. Because the reasons do not have titles, these reasons are not made of words. Instead, they are made of sound, specifically sonic interplay between electric guitar, electric bass, and two saxophones. These are all musical instruments, but one might argue that, on this album, the musical instruments are not being used to create music, but to create reasons. Seven reasons for tears. It’s still music to me, because my definition of music is any and all organized sound. The sound on this album may not sound organized, the way the saxophones and guitars all bleat and wail and grind and chatter in and out of and over and through each other’s waveforms, but this sound is organized indeed, in that these four instrumentalists got together at the same time, in the same room, and played their instruments together with intent. However chaotic, this sound is organized, and therefore music. Music that is also reasons. Seven reasons for tears, and since there are no words for these reasons, we can supply our own as we listen. I’ll go: toxic pollution that poisons and kills living things. Technological instruments of warfare controlled by soldiers and robots to murder designated enemies, including women, children, and the elderly. A once-thriving ecosystem of living things left in smoking and blasted ruins by said technological warfare. Or, we could shift the reasons for tears from outer to inner, and go with an extremely unsettled and disoriented inner life. A period of psychological trauma. The painful loss of a loved one. These are all unpleasant things, because it’s fair to say that this is unpleasant music, and art doesn’t have to pleasant to be cathartic, cleansing, and ultimately healthy. Just like tears can be cathartic, cleansing, and ultimately healthy. RIP Donald Miller (electric guitar) and Adam Nodelman (electric bass). Long live Jim Sauter (saxophones) and Donald Dietrich (saxophones).
BORBETOMAGUS Experience the Magic of… CD (AGARIC) I’m not gonna lie to you, out of all the legends and classics I have on the shelf, Borbetomagus probably get the fewest spins. They do the ‘force of nature’ move that only a few others can or would pull off, and they do it so completely that it’s hard not to describe the music as something like a stormy weather system, or waves crashing on a coastline, or a malfunctioning electrical grid, and I just have to wonder, when or why am I going to put on a record like that? It’s like opening all my windows during a blizzard, or letting live power cables shower sparks into my bedroom. What’s the utility, the function? To scour my soul? To ‘blow out the cobwebs’, if you will? To confront the deepest recesses and limitations of my own emotional anger and impatience? Yep, all of that, and unpleasantly. In the wake of Donald Miller’s passing, I’ve been playing all my Borbetomagus CDs and it’s honestly too much. Turns out it’s difficult to have your soul scoured for 60 minutes straight, and I find myself reacting with a sort of disassociative clock-watching boredom. (Time remaining: 27 minutes?!) And yet, here approximately 13 minutes into track two “Grunion Run,” they hit a groove that makes me turn my head. Donald Miller, usually barely but clearly controlling his guitar-as-blast-furnace instrumental palette, here just releases all the valves at once and lets the whole thing blare, which somehow becomes its own killer groove, an unforgettable chorus hook. I snap to attention, suddenly in the calm center of the hurricane where the torrential rain has stopped. Inevitably the music works its way back out of this zone and I drift back into disassociation (time remaning: 9 minutes), now too disoriented to understand what the difference even was between Donald Miller’s playing at the 13-minute-mark and now. Although there are clues within the next record reviewed in this “RIP Donald Miller” subsection….
DONALD MILLER A Little Treatise on Morals 2LP (AUDIBLE HISS) Sorry to Dietrich and Sauter, but this Donald Miller solo LP is my favorite of all albums from the Borbetomagus universe. Also the most subtle, the quietest, the most complex, the most nuanced. Like I said a couple reviews ago, it’s hard to have your soul scoured for 60 minutes straight. When Miller plays guitar solo, there is still scouring happening, but it’s intermittent and never full-on, a more delicate (some might say insidious) strategy, more like talk therapy than primal scream. Either way, this double LP is not only right up there with comparable solo instrumental releases like Anthony Braxton’s For Alto or Baikida Carroll’s The Spoken Word, but unlike those releases I can play it over and over without wanting a break, flipping the four sides back to back to back, hearing deeper nuance and undiscovered microterritories each time, forgetting what instrument I’m even listening to.
RIP Donald Miller (1958-2024)