Jarema - Live

This week's first review might have been on a tribute release to a band whose influence is almost a raison d'etre for a lot of the music reviewed here but we'll go off on a total tangent now with this 'live at the rehearsals space' digital download album from Belgian musician Andre Jarema, since Live is one of those recordings that I occasionally drop into the blog that have little if, as with this set, any direct relationship to the original focus of this site but which I've come across or been directed to and want to share some thoughts on. I'll note again, if I was starting this blog now... it'd certainly have a different name and angle.

This isn't Andre's first album – since moving to London some seven years back he's been honing his skills to the point where he was ready to pull together a band formed of session musicians who could him help realise his ambitions, has put together his own label to self-release 2009's There Was A Night Before There Was A Day and has been gigging around this year, selling the debut CD on what he describes as a "pay what you want basis".

Is this release a bit of consolidation and a survey of where Jarema, as a band, and Andre as its driving force have reach so far? Quite possibly, since I understand that of the ten tracks included here, only three are new songs with the remainder already having been aired in their original form as part of There Was A Night..., but then that seems a perfectly sensible way of reaching out to a wider audience and, not so much pausing to draw breath but evaluating and refining what has been established and achieved.

These are quite blunt and raw sounding songs – that's a lot of the point of this recording. "Live and raw music," notes Andre. "No editing, no dubbing. Just the band, live." That approach has a real effect to it, think something a bit like James, or Oasis particularly in acoustic mode, but played by The Levellers in an indie rock sometimes glancing over at pub rock manner. Think that, because sometimes you can hear that in the music – listen to 'Birth Sex Death' and particularly the powerful 'Half A Prisoner' for example (though that's almost pure Levellers, loose the James and Oasis analogy there). But there's also a mainland continental drift to some of what they're doing and they're playing with a nice sense of room, of space between the instruments, in their music – it might be raw but it has a breeze in it as well; 'Sleazy Song', which has a well developed and easy sense of groove to it, demonstrates that.

So, here's a collection of really engaging and entertaining songs that have a passion in their playing and a nicely off-kilter lyrical content that complements their defiantly lo-fi realisations. Jarema have some gigs coming up in November / December in Camden Town and a DVD launch that captures the visuals of the band cutting this album details of which are on their website - if I were up in town then I'd certainly go as I really enjoyed this album.

Jarema Official Website

A Tribute Album – In Search Of Hawkwind

There's been a few tribute albums focused on Hawkwind over the years. Some have pushed at the boundaries of the band's work, taking established tracks on new trips and some have remained more faithful to the original tracks. This nine track compilation is generally of the latter persuasion – at least as it starts out. Having said that, there doesn't appear to be any specific plan involved – these are tracks that were recorded over a number of years (principally 2005 – 2008) so they aren't part of a particular agenda in terms of how to interpret, or reinterpret, the music of Hawkwind. Instead it's probably more correct to suggest that here is a selection of bands demonstrating the influence that Hawkwind have had on them over the years.

Let's take them band by band. Kinski are a four-piece avant-rock band from Seattle who originally released their contribution, a very early '70s rendition of 'Master of the Universe' as a joint 7" with Bardo Pond's cover of 'Lord of Light' (also included here). It's very much a Nik Turner style of delivery with a heavy and steady fuzz-ridden soundtrack, really gritty and lo-fi and authentically early Hawkwind. It's one of the tracks here that doesn't want to be anything other than an honest and dependable cover and is all the stronger for it. Also working their tracks very much in that way are project instigators Mugstar, who have a new album, Lime, released on 6^th November that I'll be covering here shortly. Mugstar's 'Born to Go' burns straight out of Space Ritual Hawkwind, all racing guitars and furious drums taking no prisoners and always, always, driving onwards – absolutely capturing the essence of this key Hawk song. Their version of 'Paradox' that ends the compilation is, to my listening, a bit less successful. I've always seen 'Paradox', and much of the rest of Hall of the Mountain Grill, as being a turning point where the full-on heavy rock of Space Ritual and of DoReMi became, perhaps because of the improving musicianship and partly because of the additional of their more accomplished playing of Simon House, just that bit more rounded and sophisticated. What Mugstar have done, and it could be that it's been done for the entirely logical reason of being in keeping with the tone of much of the rest of the compilation, is play this one as though it had been cut by Hawkwind maybe eighteen months or so earlier than they actually brought it in. So I'm missing hearing the more plaintive violins and keyboards of Hawkwind's version here, where Mugstar are simply playing it full-on and dense. It's fine, in and of itself, but it sounds like a retrogressive version rather than an elaboration. But then, 'Paradox' is one of my favourite mid-70s Hawk tracks and I was always going to be hard to please on that score. Interestingly, both Mugstar tracks were recorded at Dave Anderson's Foel Studios.

Magoo (if someone can e-mail me a direct link I'll up date it here) provide a very clever version of 'Space Is Deep' that retains both the elegant thoughtfulness of the song's first half and the unashamed freak-out of its second while still adding a real freshness to it, one of the very best covers here. The messy cacophony of Bardo Pond's 'Lord of Light' I'm less convinced by since they've taken the song's pace down a couple of notches which, though it gives the vocals a chance to deliver Dave Brock's lyrics in a more deliberate manner than on the original, really eschews the power and energy of Hawkwind's versions in favour of a reworking that plods a bit and doesn't really capture the zest and sheer get-up-and-go that it should really own.

Captured for a John Peel session in 2002, are Mudhoney giving 'Urban Guerilla' the real street-fighting attack that this song deserves and, honestly, didn't get on Hawkwind's 'Silver Machine' follow-up single. I remember when I was writing Sonic Assassins interviewing Nik Turner and hearing Nik being less than effusive about their original, suggesting that though the reason for its low chart positioning, in comparison to 'Silver Machine', was clearly the withdrawing of the record early into its release, he felt it might not have done as well as 'Silver Machine' in any case – and then later getting the general feeling that Dave Brock tacitly agreed with this view. Mudhoney, however, really do this song justice and then some – colliding '60s sensibilities, '70s politics and '90s grunge to totally capture the essence of the words and music.

Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno provide a typically, and totally, off-the-wall blast through Brainstorm, very Turner-esque in its freaked-out and freaky anarchy so that you can say it's of the original and completely outside of the original at the same time. Absolutely manic, absolutely mad. On the other hand, almost totally removed from the original is Moon Duo's version of 'Hurry on Sundown' which is sparse enough to be described as minimalist in its synths and drum machine experimentalism – in fact it's the one track that conjures up an imagine of being completely outside of the early-mid '70s Hawkwind that the other bands here invoke; instead this could be a Brock/Bainbridge side-project in texture and atmosphere. It's good – it's just different that everything that surrounds it here.

Which just leaves us with White Hills who conjure up such a fuzz-laden, feedback driven, cover of 'Be Yourself' that it could almost be a live Hawkwind cut culled, in texture and sound quality, from one of those low-grade Flicknife Friends & Relations compilations. That's not a complaint though; it's simply trying to invoke the way that White Hills have absolute nailed Hawkwind at their most expressive and wild free-form improvisation – so much so that I can see a lot of listeners considering this the best, most authentic, thing on this really very good album.

Trip Lava - Octatroid

The evil King Meldagar once ruled the village. He was viewed as a tyrant by his people, and was soon ousted. The exiled king was determined to get his revenge on the villagers. He found a new home underneath a mountain, where he set up a shop to build his army of destructive robots. His first evil robot (Gurgblah) is sent out to the village to wreak havoc on the people who overthrew him.

That's the premise of this solo recording by Joel Lee who, on his Myspace page tells that his music sounds like "Acoustic drums, electric guitar, bass and loops/drones improvising in a circular pattern... sometimes it has a mind of its own, and I go with the moment. The finished tracks are then spliced together with sound effect segues and other strange things." I think he's aptly described what Trip Lava is all about... I'm more curious as to who his target audience is, if indeed he has one, because what he's come up with is an incredibly eclectic mix of sounds to be sure but one that's sure to leave a fair number of his listeners wondering, "What the heck is this?"

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing – what Joel's put together is 13 tracks that aurally describe the events of a fantasy story that he's documented in the accompanying liner notes so there's clearly a lot of thought and planning that has gone into creating something completely packed with unearthly sound effects, off-kilter jazz sounds, insistent drumming and a vivid mayhem that at times is actually a real riot to listen to - it's even got a manic sense of beat that's quite infectious at times, such as on 'March To Battle' where the heroic robot warrior Octatroid marches off to deal with the villainous Gurgblah.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure what to make of it – it's an incredibly busy, even frenetic, work. I imagine Joel having an absolute blast pulling all of this together – and it's certainly the most unusual album that I've ever been sent to review. If you like the idea of Can performing at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop then I think you'd have a great deal of fun with the total madness captured in its cacophony of rhythms and sounds; but I suspect you'd have to be a devotee of off-the-wall discordant anarchy to really appreciate this one. If you are, then its $5.00 for a CD or a download at CD Baby.

Trip Lava Myspace Page

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/TripLava1

Serpentina Satelite – Mecanica Celeste

I wrote up the previous release from Peruvian space rockers Serpentina Satelite, Nothing To Say, a couple of years back in the pages of R2/Rock N Reel magazine and very much liked hearing "high-octane riffs, a splattering of the obligatory Radiophonic Workshop electronics and some portentous intoned mantras" in a "frenetically busy work that never lets up on the acceleration pedal... instantaneous, rough around the edges space rock that could never sound the same way twice." They released that CD on Germany's Trip In Time label, a follow up to an independently released EP, Long Play; now they've moved on to Rocket Recordings for what I'd described as a massive leap forward in Mecanica Celeste.

They're still the masters of the extended, improvisational, movements for, with the exception of the two-minute 'Imaginez Quel Bonheur Ce Sera De Voir Nos Chers, Disparus Ressuscites' which itself probably takes longer to figure out how to say than it runs for on the album, everything here is five, eight, ten, eleven minute tracks that take their starting points and their inspirations from traditional religious music and expand that through their own traditional mind-dissolving riffs. Certainly the opening track, 'Fobos', has a lot of the more free-form element of Hawkwind to it, and the title track itself could well be Hawkwind circa Electric Tepee if you compare it to something like Alan Davey's 'LSD' number, but the use of religious themes (such as the intoning on what we'll now for simplicity's sake simply call 'the two minute track') breaks the heavier rhythms in a quite fascinating manner and really adds both something ancient and something mythic and mystical to this record.

'Ai Apaec' to my ears seems to echo the image that I have of the band working away in Lima's cloudy heights hammering out their particular brand of psychedelic grooves, all fuzz and swirls with some fabulous Dave Brock-style guitar sounds. 'Sendero' has an oppressive militaristic drumming with the guitars marching in unison with the beat, really powerful and driving stuff that purposefully builds into a massive crescendo of pounding sounds and yet it breaks down into High Church 'hallelujahs' that really echo through old stone walls and vast Cathedral spaces adding a beautiful resonance to what has been delivered before.

Amazon, I notice, are listing a vinyl version of this album and have it for download – I don't see them listing a CD – so I'll link here to these releases but this is another great album for those looking for a fix of Hawkwind-style improvisational space rock. Apparently the October edition of Rock Sound has an interview with the band and a track on their covermount – one to watch out for.

Serpentina Satelite Myspace Page
Rocket Recordings Website

Quarkspace Archives: Quarkspace & Matt Howarth – Node In Peril

There's plenty of new space rock that's been landing here over the last few weeks and which I'll be writing up over the next few days, including the new album from Serpentina Satelite, some modern progressive rock from Jack Jeffery and some sci-fi concept material from Trip Lava as well as other Myspace pages, MP3s and digital downloads that I've been e-mailed over the last two or three months. But I'm also going to be taking a regular step back in time and trawling through the archives of US band Quarkspace who've been very patiently waiting for some write-ups since their Paul Williams kindly sent me a whole bunch of their albums an embarrassing number of months back. So with apologies to Paul and his collaborators for the delay, let's kick off this series of 'Quarkspace Archive' reviews with Node In Peril, a concept album and accompanying comic book from 2004 released on their Eternity's Jest Records.

Quarkspace have been around since the mid-1980s and they're a band I first came across through a free-to-download album, Drop, which I'll write about later in this sequence of reviews, but they're well-known to space rock enthusiasts for both their prolific output and their appearances at the Strange Daze festivals. As for influences, they'll cite "the American and English psychedelic scenes of the late 60s – The Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane combined with the more keyboard-orientated Soft Machine and Pink Floyd... [and] sometimes channelling more modern influences [such as] Stereolab or The Orb."

What we have with Node In Peril is a collaboration with comic book writer /artist Matt Howarth, someone with a long history of exploring the three-way relationship between rock music, science fiction and sequential art. He was the creator of Savage Henry, a comic series about a guitarist from an alternate reality, worked with Daevid Allen on a comic strip for a Planet Gong newspaper that was distributed on Gong's first US tour, produced comic strip format music reviews for Heavy Metal and in the comics industry mainstream worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Justice League Of America.

One of the things that strikes me on reading the little comic book that is packaged with the digipac gatefold CD – apparently it was Howarth who approached the band about this project, inviting the idea of having Quarkspace compose music to complement his artwork – is how the story matches with the idea of 'SciFi Strange' that the SF author Jason Sandford has been talking about and compiling an on-line anthology dedicated to this week (find out more about this and great some great short story downloads here). It's certainly a heady mixture of weirdness and Hard SF with its evocation of organic technology and 'underspace' parasites that mixes far future imagery with time travel and ecological politics – what I'm not so clear is to what extent the accompanying music is indeed to reflect the storyline and visuals of this sixteen page comic.

Certainly the opening track, 'Underspace', succinctly scores the surreal aura of the strip's opening frames – a vivid and trippy composition that floats in weightlessness and sets up the tone of this instrumental work as being otherworldly and ethereal in nature. And that's what's done so well across the 8 tracks here – it's the sort of space music that pulls you to listen to it via headphones, lying down in a darkened room – from which the senses can be absorbed into the suite of sounds with their dominance of synths and keyboards.

Paul notes how the majority of the album was developed from work that had been put into building Spacefolds 7 and 8, a part of their regular Spacefolds releases, but a couple were specifically written in response to art that Matt Howarth had sent over: 'Signal To Noise Ratio Error' and 'The Misinformed Eco-Terrorist'. The latter is the shortest piece here and actually one of the most engaging with some lovely and sprightly synth lines over some more strident bass and drum patterns, and the former a more improvisational piece based around a programmed rhythm and is quite Hawkwind-ish in its own way.

When you get a package that is actually two disparate types of media being brought together it's almost beholding to ask how the individual creative works inform each other and gel together. In this case I'd assume from Paul's sleevenotes that the comic book and the music combine most effectively together is at least in part a case of serendipity since it's not hard to visualise the music being composed with the vibe and feeling of the story (if not specifically its narrative) in mind and the two most definitely come together. In essence I'd guess this is down to Howarth choosing well the band with which to create this package, on the basis of much of the music being created independently as Quarkspace 'work in progress' rather than written for the graphics. If that's the case then the collaboration was well thought-out indeed since this is certainly a case of two pieces of creativity sparking off each other in a very satisfying way.

Quarkspace Website

Matt Howarth Website

Void Generator – Phantom Hell And Soar Angelic

This is the absolutely HUGE sound of Italian space/stoner rock pounding out of the opening salvo, 'Message From The Galactic Federation', a 15 minute slab of intense and driving, yet at the same time melodic, no-nonsense freak-out that's the gateway to this exciting collision of Hawkwind and Porcupine Tree influences.

Void Generator were formed in Rome back in 1996, musicians who'd played together in various local situations who wanted to explore and build on what had been done previously in taking bits of psychedelia, bits of progressive and doing something innovative and experimental with it. And that's really what they did for quite a while, eventually pulling together a self-released eponymous four track CD in 2004 and getting some attention from on-line reviewers with my old mate Scott Heller writing about them for Aural Innovations that October and describing their work as "impressive stuff" while hearing the track 'Sidereal Connection' as being a "very heavy Monster Magnet – Kyuss piece of psych rock with a wall of sound approach but also some cool windy and drony synths thrown in." That release got them some exposure on compilations and a quick follow-up in a ten-track second album, We Have Found The Space.

It's taken a little time since for them to come up with their next offering, and a few changes in their roster as well, but the sounds that Scott Heller was enthusing about back in 2004 are still standing them in good stead here because though the first track is without doubt a pulse-racing noise fest that really gets the blood circulating, I'd like to try and compare it to Hawkwind because that feels right though I'd be lost to try and direct that comment to a specific era (it isn't Charisma Hawkwind in any way, shape or form, if it was Space Ritual then it's definitely an updated and reimagined one... the best I could do is say that it's 21^st Century 'We Do It'... or something like that), then I'd have to go and compare its following 13 minute opus, 'The Morning' to the current tone of Porcupine Tree. I loved it's pensive mood swing, the way it immediately channelled something very different from the tone of what they'd already established on this record, that it seemed to add something sophisticated and intelligent to something else that was barbarian and primal.

That same sense of subdued, perhaps restrained or coiled atmosphere exists on 'The Eternaut', like the moments before the storm, waiting for it to arrive and knowing that when its hits its going to do so with an irresistible force, which it inevitably does, led by Gianmarco Iantaffi's grinding guitar and heavy metal vocal deliveries and possessing a real energy and power to it that subsides in the eye's storm, with some atmospheric synth chimes running free-spirited around Sonia Caporossi's ruminating bass lines, but is always ready to remerge. Remerge it does, both in this track and what puts all other hidden and unlisted tracks to shame, a 23-minute fourth appearance of the band on what purports to be a three track CD. No idea what this final session is called but it ranges from experimentalism to Pink Floyd soundscapes and again powers into oblivion until it plays out with a sparse coda of distortion.

Really good stuff, released by Phonosphera Records, this will make a lot of fans here I think.

Void Generator Myspace Page

Phonosphera Myspace Page

Phonosphera Website

Spirits Burning – Behold The Action Man (Preview)

When I was young, I guess really up until I was fourteen or fifteen, we used to take our family holidays exclusively within the West Country – indeed, Weston-Super-Mare is about the furthest I can remember us venturing. I suppose that this being the early-mid '70s then the package holiday was only then really starting to come into its own, but it passed us by completely. A lot of these weeks were spent in Torquay, which geographically slightly misses the location of my opening point, but for some reason this generally included a visit to the Somerset town of Taunton, generally on the Saturday of our return home. One of my maternal grandparents had relatives who lived in what seemed to be a fairly big house in the town principally occupied, it seemed, by a not totally tame, house-trained or domesticated rabbit that had the run of the house. The point of mentioning this is that somewhat out of the town centre there was a newsagent type of shop that never seemed to be open on the Saturday afternoons that we walked passed it on our way to the home of these seemingly eccentric relatives but through its darkened, or on reflection almost sepia, windows could be spotted, on a shelf behind the counter, a selection of imported from the US Bantam books that reprinted what seemed to my early teenage years rather dangerous and exotic pulp magazine reprints: Doc Savage, The Shadow, and most intriguingly of all, The Avenger.

Now, Doc Savage and The Shadow I knew about from reprints released over here. Corgi Books issued three Doc Savage novels including the original Man of Bronze story whilst New English Library reprinted four Shadow adventures including one that I still own to this day, The Living Shadow. But to my knowledge neither Corgi or NEL had a go at The Avenger, even though this was the era of lurid paperbacks of US pulp fiction – highly erotic and glamorous covers on editions of Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars and Venus stories, editions of other ERB novels be them Tarzan books or At The Earth's Core type yarns, The Spider and something called Raven with Chris Achellios covers. But never The Avenger – in fact the only other exposure to this character that I can remember in the 70s was seeing a copy of the Jack Kirby version of the character in DC's Justice Inc comic book on one of those rotating wire-rack magazine point-of-sale displays in a newsagents in the fishing village of Looe (more family visiting – my maternal great-grandfather was a sea captain) that seemed to be there every time we visited and never sold.

I read the two-part Justice Inc series that DC published in the 1980s as a spin-off of their radically reworked version of The Shadow – which I rather liked, though preferred Howard Chaykin's four-part miniseries - and then mostly forgot about the character, though I'd occasionally think about the contents of that now, I assume, long-gone Taunton shop either when I'd be in the town or driving past it on the M5. I don't believe I ever entered its doors but it seemed to smell of exotic mysteries and the opportunity to rifle its contents would have been heaven to me in 1974. But lately I've been reading a few of those Bantam reprints courtesy of my friend Roger Neville-Neil who most kindly sent some across from America. Roger is, as most blog readers will know, the chap who contributed lyrics to the Hawkwind songs 'Needle Gun', 'The War I Survived' and 'Heads' and has already influenced this blog by sending me albums by the terrific US band The UpsideDown – but he's also a guy with a quite encyclopaedic knowledge of pulp and noir fiction and characters and a real love of The Shadow, The Saint and all those other great operatives. They seem much less outlandish now... rather formulaic works really (hardly surprising when you consider how quickly and regularly these stories were bashed out), but they still have a certain thrill and a cracking pace to them which make them enjoyable diversions if not living up to the rather thrillingly forbidden image that I'd cultivated of them all those years past.

But, Roger, great guy and I was so pleased to get the chance from him to read those stories at last. Aside from those lyrics for Hawkwind, inspired of course by Robert Calvert who Roger knew and still carries a great admiration for, Roger has contributed lyrics for Farflung and Spirits Burning, along with his long-running sequence of Chandler/noir-esque gig reviews for Aural Innovations styled as the 'Action Man' stories and is a very talented photographer who has snapped many bands both live and in the studio – some of his work appears, with his very kind permission, in my Hawkwind book. Now he's one of the pivotal creators in the latest Spirits Burning album, Behold The Action Man, which is due from Voiceprint Records in the next few months (Don believes it will appear in August) and of which I received an advance CDR copy this weekend from SB's main protagonist, Don Falcone.

I'm a big fan of Spirits Burning, having reviewed this space rock collective's work for R2 and for Record Collector, and having interviewed Don a few years back for Colossus magazine, and Don's again assembled an impressive line-up of collaborators to realise this album. From Hawkwind, SB regular Bridget Wishart along with Alan Davey and Paul Hayles, Nik Turner collaborator Paul Fox, Dr Brown's Kev Ellis, Jefferson Starship's Trey Sabatelli, Daevid Allen, the ever-welcome viper violinist Cyndee Lee Rule, and Don Xaliman from Melodic Energy Commission – amongst others. I do think that the prolific outpouring of the Spirits Burning concept is both one of its strengths – there's a significant regular outpouring from this ensemble and a diversity of writing credits that gives it a wide-ranging outlook and sound – but also something of a downside as well. And that's sort of how I feel about Behold The Action Man on initial listening – there's a lot of it, sixteen tracks in all and it's just something of the 'less could be more' feeling about it. I'm nine tracks in and listening to a really motivating, strum-along rocker called 'The Train', for the second time this month a track that I'm immediately going 'Black Rebel Motorcycle Club' about, one where Don has written lyrics and the music, and its bloody fabulous. On the other hand, I've got to track nine liking what's come before without really sitting up and being thrilled.

I've enjoyed 'Stand And Deliver', lyrics by Bridget and Roger and vocals from Kev Ellis, one that could work really well if ever there's an on-stage coming together of Spirits Burning instead of their across-the-ether modus operandi. I liked 'Straffed By A UFO', which sounds like a Dave Brock solo album track but with a Calvert vocal (provided by Don) and I was engaged with the instrumental 'Crank Up The Vibes', which actually doesn't do what it says on the tin but is more of a mid-album downward change of pace, ready for the tracks to pick up the heat again with 'The Train'.

A complete change of vibe is 'Every Space Opera' which has a bit of a torch song feel to it, accentuated by Catherine Foreman's sultry vocals and Bridge's EWI playing which the liners note as producing Clarinet, Bassoon and French Horn; a lovely piece all told. On the other hand, Roger's private-eye ruminations on 'Obelisk of Fondue' are lost to Daevid Allen's wilfully eccentric reading of the lyrics on the album's only real misfire and I just thought that any point to this one was completely lost in translation. Then again, 'Astral Flight Gassed' has a delightfully '60s/Gerry Anderson opening sequence feel to its music even if the lyrics become a tad 'arch' at times and the play-out 'Underworld Messiah' is a moody, atmospheric, triumph.

To take it as a whole then, as always some very good stuff but it's a little bit muddled, as though there is an interesting concept trying to come through but one that's been sidetracked out of cohesiveness in a way, lost sight of perhaps, so that we are not really 'Beholding the Action Man' but seeing glimpses of him through a haze of other ideas. It's a good record, but it could have been more focused. Look out for it this summer though – there's a lot of very decent material here.

As a curious co-incidence, as I was thinking through this preview/review yesterday I was also watching the Audrey Hepburn / William Holden film Paris When It Sizzles. The Avenger was, of course, the code name for Richard Benson... the same character name as played by William Holden in Paris...

Linkages – June 2010

The latest issue of online science fiction magazine Clarkesworld has an interesting feature by Jason Heller entitled 'Moonage Daydream – The Rock Album as Science Fiction'. Round-up the usual suspects to some degree, but some interesting additions and observations and a juxtaposition of the roles of the embryonic rock 'n' roll of the 1950s against the role of science fiction in the '50s. Hawkwind are mentioned courtesy of Space Ritual, where the author of the piece has heard Mike Moorcock delivering 'The Black Corridor' when it's actually Bob Calvert reading Moorcock's words on the album. Good stuff though with some unexpected entries and a whole host of YouTube links – read it here.

Today I was delighted to receive in the mail a free Omenopus 4 track EP, 'Portents', which as I understand it is a sampler for their debut album proper and which I'm happily listening to whilst typing up these links. How can you obtain your copy of this impressive mission statement I hear you ask! Well, I believe one way is to wait until the Sonic Rock Solstice festival later this month and blag a copy off of Bridget Wishart who'll be playing there as part of acoustic campfire duo Chumley Warner Brothers, or alternatively invest 99p in paying for P&P and order it direct from the new Omenopus website – ordering details here.

I reviewed the new album by Zuu here a few weeks back and now there's a chance to win a copy of the album on the Exploding in Sound website. Actually, I couldn't see when the end date for this was and I'd been notified about the link a few days back (sorry, Mary!) but I saw the band tweeted the link this morning so I assume the competition is still open to entrants and it's definitely a release worth having in your space rock collection. I believe the competition is to promote their debut music video that has been put together for their 'Water' track which I've embedded here:

"Water" (the Ken Andrews Remix) from Zuu on Vimeo.

Talking about Exploding in Sound, Dan Goldin sent me a press release concerning a planned HUM tribute album, the comments of which I'll reproduce here:

The time has come to pay tribute to one of the 90's most influential yet criminally overlooked bands, HUM. Pop Up Records, an independent label operating from deep within the space rock scene is searching for bands that are heavily influenced by the iconic HUM to round out the line-up for an official tribute album set for release in 2011. Hailing from Champaign-Urbana, IL, HUM released several albums throughout the 90's, both independently and with the major label RCA. Their break out hit "Stars" catapulted the band into the limelight for a brief period, but the band has always remained an underground phenomenon. Their music combines the shimmering layered guitars of space rock with elements of grunge and post-punk for a timeless sound that was unique and refreshing.

Several bands have already been confirmed for the HUM tribute album including: Funeral For A Friend, The Esoteric, (Damn) This Desert Air, and Anakin. If you are interested in being part of the tribute, please have your representation/label send an e-mail to: HumTribute@PopUpRecords.com with your band's information and a few words on HUM's influence on your music.

The album will be presented by a team of like minded individuals including: Pop Up Records, ExplodingInSound.com, escapingtheordinary.net, DecoyMusic.com, Chancellor Design, and HOUSEWITHOUTWALLS Design. Having all been influenced by HUM themselves, the team is dedicated to the project, paying tribute, and all of the bands involved. Pop Up Records are no strangers to paying homage to the icons of the 90's, as the label released the exceptional The Nurse Who Loved Me: A Tribute to Failure in late 2008. The album featured a wide range of acts from Paramore to Exeter, showcasing the great range of Failure's influence on the different artists involved. The album primarily featured fairly unknown up-and-coming bands, introducing the world to the likes of ORION, (Damn) This Desert Air, Satellite Tragedy, and many more bands. The tribute paid its respects to Failure with the utmost brilliance, inadvertently forming a tight knit community amongst all those involved.

You can follow this one on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter and interested parties can contact Dan through Exploding in Sound or Larry Suglio at Pop Up Records.

Lab Partners – Moonlight Music

This is another album that I've been hanging on to for reviewing for a little while now, and for once it's not just pressures from other writing outlets that's delayed some commentary here but that it just took a little while to really get a feel for this record and to get under its skin since whilst on the surface there's a lot of melodic pop sensibility about the music here, there's actually a lot bubbling under the surface as well.

Firstly the historically perspective here is that this is the third album from Dayton, Ohio's Lab Partners who operate out on the shoegazer / indie band region of space rock (Wicked Branches and Daystar are its predecessors, as well as a couple of EPs – this band goes back as far as 1999 on their discography). They are, at least according to their Facebook page, Michael Smith (guitars, lead vocals, multimoog), Amy Smith (bass, keyboards), Mike Volk (guitar) and Kevin Vaughn (drums), though they've also got some additional musicians on this album. I can't comment on their earlier work, or make any comparison, since Moonlight Music was a nice 'out of the blue' surprise from their label, Pravda Music, but judging from what I'm hearing here, they're a band with a great sense of mood and melody who play some gritty riffs with more than little bit of delicate beauty going on around the edges. It's psychedelic, fuzz-laden and fills the speakers with big sounds even when its being introverted and quiet.

I saw an American review of this album that seemed to convey a sense of disappointment that there wasn't more "cranking up the volume and luxuriating in sonic distortion," which left me rather perplexed, since what I'm listening out for and hearing the most across its 14 tracks is its hazy sheen of day-dreamy reflection that makes the songs here quite compelling in their individual ways. 'Back's To The Wall' (I have an urge to 'sic' that but I'm not clear if it's a misprint on the digipac or not, honestly) is a genuine and heartfelt sounding example of that introspective thoughtfulness, particularly coming in straight after the powerfully anthemic and brash 'Strange'.

'All Is Beautiful' has a sparkly sense of life-affirming zest rippled through its sonic distortions and its almost child-like leads, 'Solar Storm' takes that in another, edgier, and more out-and-out rock direction. Play-out track, 'Open Your Eyes', is an acoustic melancholic rumination. 'We're all hanging by a thread, it's true.' In truth, these are all songs that seem to reach into the heart of what Lab Partner's music is all about, connecting with its listeners with an honesty that bleeds through the power side of their work and underpins the more gossamer parts.

I loved the contrast of their cover artwork (is there a nod to Hawkwind here with the three tepees, I wonder?), that sense of freeness and ancient tradition juxtaposed onto a star-lit moonspace is evocate and highly effective. Musically, they have a nod in the direction of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who they've previously toured with and so you'd also have to pick up something of the Jesus & Mary Chain in their work as well – the second track here, 'It's Funny' has touches of both of those bands going on – but they have a clear sense of their own worth and individuality as well and are very much worth investigating.

Pravda Records Website
Lab Partners Website

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