REVIEWS 3

Reviews on this page include: Spokane "Close Quarters", Kinski "Be Gentle with the Warm Turtle", Graham "Never, and Maybe Not Even Then", Musci/Venosta/Mariani "Losing the Orthodox Path", Tim Buckley "The Dream Belongs To Me Rare And Unreleased Recordings 1968 / 1973", Linus Pauling Quartet "Ashes in the Bong of God", Tom Carter "Monument", l'altra "music of a sinking occasion", Bert Jansch "Crimson Moon", Appendix Out The Night is Advancing, Volcano the Bear "The One Burned Ma", Diledadafish "Historical Flush", Dunlavy "John Merkel is a Miracle", Dunlavy "The Alison Effect", Hopewell "The Curved Glass", Green Pajamas "In A Glass Darkly", The Third Eye Foundation "I Poo Poo On Your Juju", Stone Breath "Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis", Skye Klad "Skye Klad", Nad Navillus Show Your Face, Current 93/Nurse With Wound "Bright Yellow Moon", Summer Hymns "A Celebratory Arm Gesture", Bablicon "A Flat Inside a Fog, the Cat that Was a Dog", The Ladybug Transistor "Argyle Heir", Wolf Eyes "Wolf Eyes", The Russian Futurists "The Method Of Modern Love", Magic Carpathians "Ethnocore 2: Nytu", Mice Parade "Mokoondi", Hall of Fame "First Came Love, Then Came the Tree", Kable "Tardy All The Time", Abunai! "Round Wound", Tower Recordings Furniture Music for Evening Shuttles, Catapilla "Changes".

Spokane Close Quarters (acuarela, P.O. Box 18136, 28080 Madrid, Spain) Following his debut full length as Spokane; former frontman for Drunk releases this 5-song exploration of the beauty of despair, with gorgeous full organic instrumentation of: cello, violin, pedal steel guitar, glockenspiels, drums, and bass. This is a distillation of his Drunk efforts, stark and lush, with inner glowing melodic rewards and an oddly effective cover of a Bauhaus song. Courtney Bowles backing vocals serve to season and sweeten the proceedings in much the same way Jennifer Warnes did Leonard Cohen many long years ago.

Kinski Be Gentle with the Warm Turtle (Pacifico, http://www.pacificorecs.com/) Weird how things get fractured; a shot fired at the wall ricochetes and strikes the sundial in the front yard, which somehow upsets time and space forever. Somewhere the music The Velvet Underground made over 30 years ago is still helping to give birth to minor miracles like this fine batch of goodness. Capable of great subtlety, walking in a quiet twilight, noting the changing light on a distant mountainside, until the placid surface of the view expodes, and erupts into a volcano hurling fury into the sky. This Seattle 4-piece made a delicious variation on the space rock theme, stretching the idea of what guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards can do. Six instrumentals and one fine vocal (Newport), make a flawless aid to flying on the ground. Wearing their influences on their sleeves with titles like Daydream Intonation and Montgomery, both of which deliver their repective signature sounds but reinterpreted in a Kinski way; the first like a big cool Sonic Youth unfurling of momentum and fluid electricity, stomping out a wailing anthemic roar like an endless highway of motorcycle riders blazing through an inferno, while the latter gently extrapolates itself and floats upwards like a graceful tracery of smoke caught by the light. Not worlds away from some of the same lovely introspective soundscapes favored by Roy of Montgomery himself. Those two and the influence of others is present, but this is so energized and fresh that it somehow sounds most distictly like itself, and maybe now.

Graham Never, and Maybe Not Even Then (Dreamy) Graham Darnell is an English songwriter who makes some very moving and witty modern pop music with a simple synthetic core and a lot of heart. His generous vocals fill the songs to the rafters with a suffused soulful glow. Sad and dreamy (indeed!) with sounds like graceful ghosts of summers long since past, overflowing with lushly cool melodicism, and a longing that borders on an ache that fuels the amazing As the Time Keeps Ticking By. Songs of old dreams and revisions, leafing through the memories. Sunlight sparkles on the beach, a plane flies through your ears and a ballad is strummed like a teenaged prayer to some sort of imagined merciful God in the form of Skywriter. This is bravely emotional and tenderhearted, as comforting as compassion can be. Songs that turn on a phrase, to another level of heartache or sweetness. This is a treasure, that will linger like the remembered sound of laughter in an empty room.

Musci/Venosta/Mariani Losing the Orthodox Path (Les Disques Victo, C.P. 460 Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada, G6P 6T3) Roberto Musci and Giovanni Venosta have been making amazing cross cultural mixes for years. Combine aboriginal tiawanese chants with a loop from a Britten cello sonota, rain stick, reversed medieval music, treated guitar, Andres Segovia's spoken ruminations and you have the opening track Blue. Elsewhere there's more of an outsider jazz ethos with heaps of unpredictability; La Morra could be Volcano the Bear "tuning up". With it's beautiful male vocals singing some European folk song while bowed double bass and reeds are sampled and treated with electronics and a Spinet plays in "lute mode", Contra'l Rai: I is a transportational wonder.

Tim Buckley The Dream Belongs To Me Rare And Unreleased Recordings 1968 / 1973 (Manifesto, http://www.manifesto.com/) Six tracks from 1968, and eight from 1973. The first six are working sessions for songs that would later surface on the essential albums Happy Sad, Blue Afternoon, and Starsailor. The musicians include guitarist Lee Underwood, vibraphonist David Friedman, percussionist Carter C.C. Collins, and acoustic bassist John Miller, all playing a mellow folk-jazz kind of a sound. It's a total delight to listen to Tim figuring these incredible songs out, finding their details as he sings them, feeling his way through Song To The Siren, Sing A Song For You, Happy Time, BuzzinÕ Fly. Asbury Park (Version 1) and Danang would later merge into the song suite Love Song From Room 109 At The Islander (On Pacific Ocean Highway) from Happy Sad. The next sessions were recorded in early 1973, four of the tracks would later appear on the Sefronia album which would appear later in the same year. The versions here lack the overproduction that mars the later studio tracks, and helps to reveal how vital Tim's connection to his muse still was when these songs were first created. The two previously unheard songs include the surreal sexual romance of the mesmerizing folk tale-like The Dream Belongs To Me. Falling Timber is weirder, abstract funk with a sorta nasty Blacksploitation vibe. ItÕs all worthy and full of fascinating additions to the late Mr. Buckley's all too brief public record.

Linus Pauling Quartet Ashes in the Bong of God (Fleece, P.O. Box 70012, Houston, TX 77270) This so utterly kicks ass it's hard to describe. This sextet of Texan stoned mutants makes a beautiful flowing fluid sound that coils like a rattlesnake, undulating in the desert sunlight. The music feels like ancient ritual mapping of the night sky, unfolded in chunky metallic shards, kraut-like drumming, sci-fi synthetics all improv swerving gliding howling and flying through the ten chapters of stoned organic musical playfulness and sheer upkicking of feet, howling at the Moon or Sun in ridiculous primal fun. At first the stoner narrative by (one of the three guitarists) Carter was sort or irritating, then it became spookily effective adding a sort of bent but accurate folkish historical timecapsule portrait of a reverently goofy aspect of thriving subcultural mutation and human inventiveness in the face of blinding grey boredom. Sort of idiotic, but truly rocking too and obviously musically smart as a whip. Psychedelia, punk, boogie, jazz, krautrock, noise and the joy of musically bashing out some wide territories, are the idiot glee overflowing in mad abundance here. The US edition of this comes with the over eight minute Airplane that's a beautiful sort of floaty droney psychedelic (atypically) pop song. The German double LP version ends with a roaring wailing, and mesmerizing album side cover of Kraftwerk's Hall of Mirrors.

Tom Carter Monument (Wholly Other, P.O. Box 1481, Austin, TX 78767-1481 http://home.flash.net/~whother/) Tom Carter of Charalmabides alone with his lap steel guitar, delivers a short track Monument 1 (Memorial) is just over two minutes, and Monument 2 is forty seven minutes long. The first track is barely there, emerging from silence with fragile metallic scrapings that seem to hang like tentative questions in the air. The second track is where Tom lets his wings unfurl. Bringing to mind a subtle blend of Loren Mazzacane Connors and Roy Montgomery; Tom improvises a vast inner space, a darkened cavern, that he illuminates with sound. In a weird way this is much more like sculpture than music; the first a small transparent glass globe filled with nearly microscopic details. The second made of spun copper foil, is about two and a half miles long and just over a mile wide; it's filled with just enough helium to keep it hovering about four feet from the ground, as the wind catches it and it's slowly propelled across a wide expanse of plains, catching the light of the setting sun pulsing and rippling across it's thin skin, while inside it's like a huge bell singing and refracting sound and light within itself.

l'altra music of a sinking occasion (Aesthetic, P.O. Box 577286, Chicago, IL 60657 http://www.aesthetics-usa.com/) This Chicago quartet (Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Costa, Ken Dyber and Eben English) make a beautifully understated kind of modern music. The title track that opens things is a moodily effective cross between Rachels-like "classical" elements and busy drum and bass rhythms, but from there on it's a voyage to the quiet end of the spectrum. Spoken intoned vocals with a kinship to Hood's bleak beauty, a mix of male and female voices and a love of a slower pace will recall Low, though L'Altra is more prone to flocks of cellos swooping through the scenery than Low might be or vibraphone, guitar, coronet, and that rhythm section is more jazzy and ambitious. The vibe, though precise and spare, isn't always obscured by clouds, this is about bliss as much as it is about sorrow. Though this sounds like a part of the Chicago scene, it's a distinctively rewarding branch of the tree. Guests include; Marc Hellner, Rob Mazurek, Fred Lo-Holm, Robert Cruz and Mike Lust.

Bert Jansch Crimson Moon (Castle Music) Neil Young said "Bert did for acoustic guitar what Jimi Hendrix did for electric guitar."; which is to say; he set it free by his virtuosity. Fluid graceful and warm while dazzlingly inventive as he makes his strings sing. His voice was old when he was young (like all great folkies), and it's still a lovely leathery expressive British instrument. Probably my favorite English folk artist, capable of great range; from the bleak haunted beauty of Nick Drake's turf, to the storytelling and humor of Richard Thompson's better work, or just that amazing guitar playing. Here his guitar is augmented by guests Johnny Marr (Smiths, Electronic), Bernard Butler (ex-Suede) on guitars, Makoto Sakamoto on percussion, bluesman Johnny Hodge (doing a gorgeous guitar duet on the instrumental Down-under and playing harmonica on Bert's rendition of Singing The Blues) and two Jansch children are also present; son Adam plays bass on a couple, and daughter Loren sings the folk oldie My Donald. This was produced and engineered by Bert, and from the look of things I'll bet it was recorded at a home studio, at one point a phone starts to ring during the end of one song. Great sound no matter where it was recorded, and a flawless collection of eight Jansch originals, and four well chosen covers. The "rock guys" are understated, and only add to the album, rather than getting in the way, and heck, they may help the old fellow sell a few records. The initial pressing of this comes with a bonus CD of ten of Bert's songs from his 40 years of incredible music.

Appendix Out The Night is Advancing (Drag City) Glasgow, Scotland's Ali Roberts delivers his most satisfying album yet; Ali writes the songs and sings them with help from; Tom Crossley and Gareth Eggle who play a variety of things. Taking Will Oldham's off-key insularity and reflecting an entirely different sort of folk roots as he explains the world from the view behind his eyes. One of my most repeatedly listened to albums of this year. There are traces of Incredible String Band's esoteric musicality, but there's more often a feeling of older folk roots showing. Ancient British folk sounds melt into spacious droning psychedelia. Pushing further and further into the mystic, mythic and primal for his muse's amusement. Transcending his previous inward gaze with one that encompasses a wider horizon, the arcs of lifetimes and seasons now inform his songs with life and lingering resonance. Exquisitely produced by Sean O'Hagan and Rian Murphy, who both contribute musically as well, along with half a dozen voices and other musicians, weaving a fine tapestry of sound to wrap these songs in. A collection of moments that feel like little glimpses of eternity.

Volcano the Bear The One Burned Ma (Misra) So Martian and utterly beyond classification, though I'll still dredge up The Virgin Prunes with less drooling, as a solid reference point of conjecture, but from there it's an elbow in the eye of any conventions. This British quartet's Chamber music echoes an uneasy see-saw in the sky while a swarm of trumpets rises in the east, a bag full of milk bottles is tormented with a stick and old Fahey bones are licked clean by mechanical mice. Hashish castles with thick spiced walls, fumbled cartoon cigarette case with exaggerated faces peering out through living eyes lost in 2D realities of folded fiction. Owlhoot lunacy, art ritual jibbering, folk music, Joe Meek animations, violins that scurry about like a nest of disturbed ants. Stockhausen-like shifting sound suites, small furry creatures grooving to the wild end of improvisation while still maintaining a thick sense of mood that balances the madly experimental aspects. Shattered deconstructions of the song-form, and old primal hokus pokus; the layers of monk-like free vocal howling that comprise the acapella Before I Was After'd probably don't sound much different from the first music humans ever made together.

Diledadafish Historical Flush (Yucca Tree, http://yuccatree.org/) Switzerland's Diledadafish ("Three elements built the name : dile dada and fish. Dile is half of dilettante (amateurish) - and part of the idea. Dada is an often quoted thing - Dadaism as a form - for us dada is a point of departure, not an empty quotation and also a childlike [not childish] way of working. And fish is fish.") make a series of seductive, weird and experimental sounds over the course of the 19 tracks presented. This is an anthology of fave tracks form recordings issued betweem 1985 and 1995. The stuff here reminds me of Musci & Venosta, Ranaldo and the Loaf, Tape Beatles, Coil, Crawling With Tarts, Nurse With Wound, and The Residents (the only non-original is a cover of the eyeballed one's Walter Westinghouse that ends this excursion). Fashioning little dramas out of clownily distorted vocals in no known human language, or just sounds and music, blips, chimes, arrhythmic percussive elements, occassional samples, "tribal" mutation, thudding, electronic kitchen-sink collages. Has an accumulated feel, like stages of developmental time passing, slices from specific rings of the tree. Great graphics too, including a snazzy back cover by Steven Roden (aka In Be Tween Noise).

Dunlavy John Merkel is a Miracle (Fleece) Scott Grimm (of defunct Houston noisy psychedelic band Mike Gunn) on guitar, Elizabeth Swift plays bass, and Paul Gregory drums. There are some brief verbal skits (by Kyle Silfer and Mark Baumgartner), that serve to divide the beautiful slabs of instrumental interaction these three like to sprawl out into. Chili Dog features long distorted rambling spoken narrative, but still manages to be mesmerizing and a bit grand. Herkimer again has some spoken stuff, but itÕs seldom and mixed so low as to be subliminal, the synth sounds like strings and the guitar sketches out some vast space, like a long swooping glide through a deep canyon. Massively slowed and creepy spoken bits mix with sung song passages in the oozing eerie Luminescent, with itÕs volcanic heavy fluidity. Heavy lives up to it's name with some chunky thunking and blistering guitar torment until it lapses into a sensory deprivation tank or a womb with a view, until the end fade.

Dunlavy The Alison Effect (Camera Obscura) Five tracks in just about three quarters on an hour from this home recording project built aroundthe work of Scott Grimm (late of Houston psych legends Mike Gunn), playing guitars, keyboards, bass and drums. Here Scott is joined by another ex-Mike Gunner in the form of John Cramer on vocals, guitars, keyboards and drums. Opening with eighteen minutes of vast swaying stoned raga; Woe Be To Croton, with ringing layers of acoustic strum framing wordless rising vocals that sound like disembodied spirits, until the heavy artillery is unleashed and scorched guitars emerge alongside the acoustics and proceed to scratch furiously at the gates of Heaven. Rob Walks In is somewhere between Abunai! and Tokyo monoliths High Rise, with elements that alternate between free floating jazziness and wailing electrical thunderstorms. Sassy is tight as a tick, springing out of the gate like something set free, this cavorts and capers, rolling around in delight. Wielding guitars like a samurai whipping his blade through surf-like currents of psychic liquidity, while again the wordless chorus of voices fill the center and continue to levitate everything around them. The vocal/guitar effect is similar to what Quicksilver Messenger Service accomplished with Calvary, only twice as fast and in half the time. Lacerating is brief but potent, subtle dense and angular instrumental. The over twelve minute Better Than Sleep with it's monotone intense vocal, narrates a story about the Nuclear annihilation of Austin that came to Scott in a dream after a particularly horrifying Mike Gunn gig in that city, leaving our visit on a majestic, eerie ending note; while we are left dazed, elevated and eager for more.

Hopewell The Curved Glass (Priapus) The third outting for this upstate New York quartet, of drummer Dalia Garih (she also sings on; Christmas Now), bassist Jason Merritt, and the Russo brothers Jason and Justin who both recently spent two and a half years as part of the touring Mercury Rev band. The music they make is certainly reminiscent of Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. Rev's Grasshopper guests on slide guitar and looped signals, and they also favor the warm keyboard end of the spectrum with; mellotrons, Rhodes and emulators rubbing up against snakey electric guitar, bass and excellent subtle and/or stomping drumming. The male vocals by the brothers are of the meek, frail and high variety, not too far from Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips. I don't thing Hopewell are out to save the world in the same way The Flaming Lips are, but that's fine; too many characters in superhero costumes only makes things more confusing anyway. A blend of drones, slow floaty melodies, noise, harmonious heavenward soaring, woozy majesty and more than a little grace. This is a finely crafted, highly effective modern psychedelic artifact.

Green Pajamas In A Glass Darkly (Hidden Agenda/ Parasol, 905 South Lynn St., Urbana, IL 61801 http://www.parasol.com ) Five songs in twenty two minutes from this Seattle quintet of modern pop magicians. Here the songs are based on the writings of Victorian dark fiction author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (born: 1814), a legendary nocturnal recluse, working from dusk till dawn, spinning yarns of ghosts, obsession and vampirism (a best-selling author in his day). One of his most famous collections of stories was entitled In A Glass Darkly, which was published a year before the author's death in 1873. The Green Pajamas clan make a lovely tribute to Le Fanu and his work with this short collection. This is really a short movie with five distinct chapters, it's in black and white; stark and gothic, with stormy skies roiling and threatening menace while spiderwebs of sound are spun from "antique" instruments and imaginations, here mostly that of Jeff Kelly (with one written and sung by female G.P. Laura Weller, and another she co-wrote with Jeff). A chilling favorite is Madam CrowlÕs Ghost with young Emily Grace McMullen (daughter of Phil and Heather) sounding like innocence singing within the jaws of a dragon, as she counters and duets with dark Mr. Kelly himself in this mysterious tale of an encounter with the afterlife. Green Tea with vocals by Laura is another encounter with the supernatural or the line between life and death. With it's Gypsy sway and harpsichord -like keyboards Carmilla is a fine showcase for Jeff's solo vocal on this song by Laura, she returns the favor by singing the ambitious Laura Silver Bell that closes the album like a lost Syd Straw folk rock classic.

The Third Eye Foundation I Poo Poo On Your Juju (Merge) Supposed to be the final chapter in the Third Eye Foundation story, a sort of grand farewell to this stage of Matt Elliott's musical musical output (He's putting his energy into being a new father for awhile). An album of remixes of other artists and some originals all remixed till they belong to Matt. Opening with a haunting reinterpretation of French composer Yann Tiersen's La Dispute, with elegiac piano, ghost chorus and supernaturally beautiful female vocal looping, sounding like something from another time or another world. There's lots of gorgeously gloomy atmosphere here. Grey Bristol fog envelopes everything in a somnolent haze that feels lightheaded and sort of disconnectedly "floaty". Are we still standing? I'm not sure my feet reach all the way to the ground anymore. There are reconstructions of stuff by: Tarwater, Urchin, Remote Viewer, Blonde Redhead as well as Faultline, longtime sparring partner Chris Morris and he even mixes up "himself" on a cover of Jonathan Richman's When I Dance, which closes this superb album with almost eight minutes of Jan Woelhe's cool vocals and sheer dreamy majesty. One of the best J.R. covers I've heard since John Cale did Pablo Picasso.

Stone Breath Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis (Hand/Eye, c/o Dark Holler, P.O. Box 131, Glenville, PA 17329-0131) Timothy Renner, Olvardil Prydwyn, Sarada and ancient muses mix magick and Christian mystic folk roots into timeless patterns of acoustic strums and ringing rhythms. Folk music in moonlit meadows that smell sweet of dew, night, and the spark of wildness. Wonderful organic folky plucking, silvery strumming, flutes singing, and tribal drumming. Played on banjo, sitar, ramyaj, dumbek, guitars, dulcimer, chimes, oud, harmonium, drone, butterflyheart (?), catfish guitar, and reed organ. Captivating, with deep roots in the sainted avenues traveled by artists as diverse as: C.O.B., Current 93, Incredible String Band, Ghost, and Pearls Before Swine. This feels like long leaves of grass tossed by the wind, sacred prehistorical ceremonies, twilight, shadow and shade. An effective antidote to the world, is to create your own world. Here these three give us some glimpses of another place just under the surface of what we collectively call "the World". Older and invulnerable, passed from hand to hand through time.

Skye Klad Skye Klad (Mutant Music c/o Dave Onnen 400 N 1st St Suite 510 Mpls, MN 55401 http://www.mutantmusic.com/ http://www.skyeklad.com/) Minneapolis rock gods Skye Klad have made a debut album to be very proud of. Guitarists Jason Kesselring, and Erik Wivinus, singer Adam Backstom, bassist Moon Wells and drummer Matt Zaun make a potent variant of the space rock theme. They all play great enthused experimental acid garage drone rock with a delicious witchy undercurrent. Ranging from the searing psychedelic pop of the Minds Eye, to their gorgeously subtle cover of the Transient Waves/Piano Magic/Low song Sleep At The Bottom. Ionosphere is an over 8 minute extraterrestrial Spaceman (3) walk, with cool theremin-like keyboards and far away lofty vocal harmonic layerings. Amber is grimly reminiscent of Michael Gira's monolithic walls of well disciplined acoustics. Adam's singing is mysterious, with a moody almost goth-like feel, he brings to mind vamps like Jeffery Lee Pierce, Ian Curtis and Ian Astbury, while looking more like Billy Corgan

Nad Navillus Show Your Face (Jagjaguwar) This is mainly the work of Chicago singer/ songwriter, guitarist Dan Sullivan, with some pals guesting on a few choice instruments. Dan is probably best known as the guitarist for Songs:Ohia, and there's a connection to the spare emotional folk insularity of that band; but, this may be an even more accessible and expessive avenue of expression for Mr. Sullivan. His guitar work is really lovely, and it's the propellant to these proceedings; sparkling and shimmering somewhere between John Fahey and Jim O'Rourke at their most sedately folkish. The quieter last moments of Gastr Del Sol are recalled. Also the bare nerve-ending folk of Nick Drake and many of those he's influenced; such as, Archer Prewitt, John Cunningham, and Mark Hollis. Like a sad valentine, a welcome rainy day and tenderness amidst the tumult.

Current 93/Nurse With Wound Bright Yellow Moon (World Serpent) The first co-release by these two band/entities, though the principal players (David Tibet, Steven Stapleton and Michael Cashmore) have often worked together previously. The words were written by David Tibet while he was in a London hospital last August for extensive surgery and the culmination of his near-death brush with severe illness. He had visions, he saw angels and helicopters sweeping through the hallways. This thick hallucinatory ambient collage of drones, samples, acoustic guitar, noise, sounds, with David speaking his lyrics like the poetry recitation that this often is. Fever dreamy haze and lucidity with woozy poetic details. With plenty of bumps in the night and mass spectral emanations, this is a great and grueling headphone adventure.

Summer Hymns A Celebratory Arm Gesture (Misra, P.O. Box 20297, Tompkins Square Station, NY, NY 10009 http://www.misrarecords.com/) Yet another Athens, Georgia wonderment crawls up out of the clay into the light of day. All part of the miraculous vision of singer/guitarist Zachary Gresham who sings with a voice somewhere between a young Neil Young, Mercury Rev, and an uncertain Brian Wilson. But Summer Hymns is a septet, with folks that have played or currently play with: Of Montreal, Elf Power and Masters Of The Hemisphere. This is a musically rewarding adventure because of all of the participants. Closure Eyes is like Robert Wyatt doing a lullaby and turning The Band into a very psychedelic folk-lounge act; Elvis should have lived long enough to sing this one. One More Teardrop is a sort of hallucinatory Spanish folk-pop that ends up in Albert Ayler wildness. One of the best things Neil Young's done in awhile comes out of the voice and soul of young Zach with Trolling On The Lake. One of the most memorable and tender moments is the Buffalo Springfield meets Flaming Lips ballad I Could Give The World Away. This is one of the most effective "feel-good" records I've heard in many a moon. This glows with some generous inner good-will and real affection, as well as a harboring and cultivating a madly inventive imagination with genuine compassionate humanity.

Bablicon A flat Inside A Fog, The Cat That Was A Dog (Pickled Egg UK/Misra US) Drummer and bandleader Jeremy Barnes is also a member of Neutral Milk Hotel, but fans of that band will certainly be puzzled by what he and his cohorts here do as a trio (with guests Alien Orch., Bablicon Orch., and violinist Kristina Kingston on a couple tracks). As Bablicon they all have Bablicon art-names: Jeremy is Marta Tennae, Dave McDonnell, the horn player and arranger calls himself The Diminisher, and bassist Griffin Rodriguez is Blue Hawaii. They all play other instruments as well, and all play some piano and electronics. There is no guitar present. On their previous albums the technique was to improvise within song sketches. Here the compositions were well worked out ahead of time, and the results are the most musical moment yet by these genre-defying fellows. There's a jazz basis, and a lot of quite listenable anarchy going on throughout the 16 tracks spilled out before us here (this was co-released as a double LP by Pickled Egg and Misra). More of a "classical" sound (there are moments that could have come from a Rachels album) and much of this would make ideal soundtrack material; assuming the film was about a serio-comic roving band of ghosts that float instead of walking and steal a spaceship, flying to a planet composed entirely of living 2D cartoons. Mutating from style to style within the same piece, but somehow encorporating the shifts with a seamless dexterity that always comes back to something akin to jazz; they can be concise and precise or splatter all over the room. There are elements of prog, Archie Shepp, Frank Zappa's most "gremlin-jazz" moments, a little Moondog, a taste of Igor Stravinky, Soft Machine, Krautrock, Toru Takemitsu, Eric Dolphy, and the instrumentally Magic Banded side of Don Van Vleit all mixed in with found sounds, chaos and grace.

The Ladybug Transistor Argyle Heir (Merge) With a talent pool that includes 4 contributing songwriters, this Brooklyn sextet continue to make their own contibution to this time warp with the late 1960Õs that seems to be pouring out of everywhere. Their take on this is an interesting bridge they seem to straddle between the "neat-60's" of Burt Bacharach and the more psychedelic end of the spectrum. It's got elements of circus music while Phil Spector clicks a castanet and Creedence Clearwater Revival skate by. Spanish guitars ring in the desert of some mythical vision of California (on Nico Norte), and elsewhere this has a few more country elements than previously, but this is hardly going to be mistaken for Nashville product, thereÕs far too much sunshine and frolicking flutes for that. Folk rock with artful 60's inventiveness, lovely vocals, and scrupulously crafted musicianship and production.

Wolf Eyes Wolf Eyes (Bulb, 323 Somerville Ave., Somerville, MA 02143) This is two Michigan-based guys with primitive drone and scribble machinery doing the static tin-can mumble. Tapes, guitars, programming, keyboards, and that sound that's a bit like bad TV reception from the hotel room next door is the lead vocals! Comparisons to NYC's duo Suicide are inevitable, but where Suicide's vocalist Alan Vega was all speedball orgasmic and pushing and pumping as fast as he could, these dogs are goin' nowhere in a big hurry. Building a replica of their neighborhood out of popsicle sticks so they won't have to go outside anymore, occasionally baying at the bare lightbulb in the living room mistaking it for the moon.

The Russian Futurists The Method Of Modern Love (Upper Class) What would happen if Stephin Merritt dropped acid and cheered up? Toss a little Flaming Lips and Brian Wilson into the mix and it's not too far from the place that Canadian singing songwriter Matthew Adam Hart inhabits so well. Lonely and lovely, toy soundcastles that glimmer like gold leaf in the air though antiquated synthesizers, and layer upon layer of soft male vocalizations. The Science of the Seasons, C'mon, and A Song for Sports, are all very nearly sublime, and thereÕs lots more as good here.

Magic Carpathians Ethnocore 2: Nytu (Drunken Fish, P.O. Box 460640, San Francisco, CA 94146) Encorporating field recordings Marek Styczynski and Anna Nacher made while they trekked through India and Nepal during November and December of 1999, and featuring guest musicians Wadada and Marek Miczyk of Sons of Arqa on sitar and violin, augmenting the other members (Tomasz Radziuk, Jan Kubek, Ramunas Jaras) of Magic Carpathians and their remarkable assortment of exotic musical instruments, to pluck, strum, blow, whack or bow. This is the most "world beat" sounding of the Magic Carpathians or Atman releases, but it's no diluted nu-agey wallpaper, this stew is a potent hallucinatory one. Steaming swirls of folk, outsider jazz, experimental sounds and vocalizations mark this as the work of some truly adventurous spirits. Tapping into some ancient roots and spirits for inspiration, and transporting the listener to some deeply forested worlds within worlds.

Mice Parade Mokoondi (Bubblecore, P.O. Box 909, Port Chester, NY 10573 http://www.bubblecore.com/) Adam Pierce is Mice Parade, he also plays drums in the Swirlies, Dylan Group, and Philistines Jr, and runs Bubblecore Records. Here he's joined by guests from Tower Recordings, Dylan Group, and Alles Wie Gross. As you might guess from a drummer the accent here is on grooves, but there's stumming on a Chinese harp called a Cheng and plenty of keyboards, Rhodes piano, classical guitar, vibes, violin, marimba, dulcimer and sax to keep it all fluttering around in happy circles of energized delight. Based in part on rhythms and melodies from African rainforest pygmies, and going for a tranced out jazz-folk sound, this is a lovely excursion into the warm organic chill of Mice Parade's dub informed shuffling all improvised musical muse.

Hall of Fame First Came Love, Then Came the Tree (Amish) Like hearing primitive early Velvet Underground rehearse through a wall. Heat mirage hallucinations swimming like shimmering globules of liquid quicksilver. A droning howl throbs far away, and a tender dawning folk song rings in The Ballad of the River People. While Fatter Leaner or Paper Thin could be a blend of NZ bands Kiwi Animal and The Renderers covering Young Marble Giants songs. For a whole different set of folks there's the folk devotional Lucifer, that's really a pretty song. Vermillion's relentless electronic organic pulse is trance-inducing and so krautrock-like, you expect Damo Suzuki to start weaving in a chant. Elsewhere it's a toy orchestra playing circus music for the dead, or a delicate puzzle of ice crystals. A box of rocks being shaken by the ghost of Gene Krupa, a bedframe being played like a harp or a harp being played like a bedframe.

Kable Tardy All The Time (Fleece) This one-woman band is Kay Bonya of Houston, Texas playing a multitude of instruments and sounds, while she sings these eerily woozy songs that alternate between stoney floating reveries and compulsively weird Residential mutations. Plucked and strummed on old banjo, guitar organics as well as tipsy staggering electronic primitive chug-folk constructions. Deeply otherworldly psychedelic folk music, that has a tendancy to drift into an inner zone of slightly menacing twists and turns. A dark funhouse ride through the inner recesses of Kay's mind and musicality. The closest sonic kin is probably T.F.U.L. 282, both merging the folk-instrumental with the experimentalism of the psychedelicised. Kay also did the wild artwork that covers this fine Fleece release. This came out in 1997, so we are obviously overdue another installment of Kable.

Abunai! Round Wound (Camera Obscura) Take years ('97 to '00) worth of jam sessions and mix a few of your favorite moments into one seamless flow of instrumental improvisatory guitar, bass, keyboards and drums exploration and experimentation. Lots of sonic layering and intermixing is liberally applied, some track are composed of over 20 layered sections playing at the same time. Obviously a project like this takes on a secondary life in the mixing, to their credit there's no manipulation of the source recordings, so it's still quite raw, pulsing and radiating energy and wild willful organic electric mojo. Sections could easily be outtakes from early Pink Floyd, while others exude the thickly heady earmarks of any number of prime Krautrock spacemen. Or Roy Montgomery with a band, Neil Young's feedback castles in the sky, Acid Mothers Temple's shambolic thrash and scree, Sonic Youth's more subtle moments, or Flying Saucer Attack's droning majesty. This is without a doubt one of the alltime classic space rock albums, but being Abunai! this is deeper than any simplified appelation. These Bostonians cover a lot of territory over the course of the 21 tracks this solid slab of psychedelic jam is sliced into, and it's all highly psychoactive. It's packaged in a guitar string case with cover art penciled by Abunai!'s Dan Parmenter, and inked by Stone Breath's Tim Renner, and it suits the material well in an underground comix sort of way.

Tower Recordings Furniture Music for Evening Shuttles (Siltbreeze) Quiet rooms wallpaper patterns emerge in a rainbow of cobwebbed greys, blacks and whites. The dust falls and gathers like dry snowdrifts in the wax paper windows. Ghosts trace transparent words in the air, the television bleeds voices from another dimension. Flickering silent black & white movies ooze and jitter across the wall and staircase, the white triangle of light from the projector is filled with smoke patterns and dust like the slow circling ages of stars and galaxies played out in an afternoon. Folk music is seen through a microscope, dissected and reassembled. Banjo wrapped in gauze drive a slow neon fingerling of light through an abandoned lot in an urban area strewn with weeds and wreckage, feeling itÕs way around the harrowingly detailed landscape with it's small shy voice. Harry Partch instruments hover in mid air talking to each other while sci-fi soundtracks emote their alien eloquence.

Catapilla Changes (Akarma/Comet www.akarmarecords.com) An English band from the early '70s, this being their 2nd and final album released in 1972. They've got a spooky jazzy sound and some great ingredients in their mix. Sax player Robert Calvert (Who also did great work with folks like Hawkwind, Brian Eno, Vivian Stanshall, Amon Duul, Michael Moorcock, Arthur Brown, Adrian Shaw, and Pink Fairies, among many others), gets to wail here. Guitarist Graham Wilson is also a significant player, with a sort of Robin Trower/Hendrixy thing going on, if not the fluidity of either. The secret ingredient may be vocalist Anna Meek who may have looked a bit like Claire Danes but sounded more like a psychedelic witch. A wide range that veers between a Judy Henske whiskey growl on the lower end of the spectrum, while maintaining an eerie upper register that swoops and howls a bit like Mimi Goese used to do in Hugo Largo. Anna has a hand in co-writing 3 of the 4 tracks here with the composing core of Wilson and Calvert. Mysterious and atmospheric with a nearly-prog sound that never loses it's sensuality, all housed in a cool gatefold die-cut reproduction of the original cover art.

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