CLXXIX. Paavoharju | Yhä Hämärää

PAAVOHARJU

Yhä Hämärää

©Fonal. Suomen Tasavalta, 2005.

‟My notion of "Christian music" was built from my experiences in church sermons and Christian summer camp and it's agonising acoustic sing-alongs about some deep philosophical insight about a cloth made out of rags. Thankfully Paavoharju doesn't take cues from that most of the time, but more from traditional finnish hymns, without the soul crushingly boring sermons.

Yhä hämärää is like listening to a cassette you found lying inside a table drawer inside a lone abandoned wooden house somewhere in the Finnish Carelian countryside on a cold autumn day. A soundtrack to some old loner's melancholic memories. From touching lo-fi post-rock - "Valo tihkuu kaiken läpi" being a prime example and top pick - to folk acoustics with glitch electro sprinkled on top. What comes to comparisons, Xinlisupreme comes closest with their more calmer tunes. (Indeed, some surfing on Paavoharju reveals them as a confessed influence.)

The album doesn't have any real flaws, some tracks maybe being a bit too vague to make them memorable. But as a whole, it's definitely an experience, the album also not suffering from "let's cram stuff in this CD to it's full capacity" syndrome, which is always a plus in my book. And it sure beats those annoying sing-alongs. Something even a confessed atheist can enjoy.‟

Cthulhu

CLXXI. Current 93 | Black Ships Ate The Sky

CURRENT 93

Black Ships Ate The Sky

©Durtro Jnana. UK, 2006.

‟Ya puedes tenerte por un bragado y poderoso matador de discos. Si se abre el chiquero y lo que sale es un pedazo morlaco de la ganadería Current 93, encomiéndate a Pedro Romero y a Joselito el Gallo, porque es muy probable que te den los tres avisos, el bicho se te escape vivo, encampanado y desafiante, y no hayas podido pegarle más que un par de mantazos, huyendo. Ni picadores ni banderilleros te servirán de nada. Como no entables una cierta complicidad con el bicho, a base de mimetizarte con él en lo que dure la faena de la escucha, vas apañado.

Si su voluminoso ¡¡"grandes éxitos"?? ("Judas as Black Moth") hacía a nuestro hombre más asequible que nunca, enfantizando sus momentos más "pastorales", aquí volvemos a las andadas. Perdida en la noche de los tiempos la fascinación por Aleister Crowley (¿o no?), Tibet es un predicador terrible que nos acongoja con la inminencia del Apocalipsis. Si tendía, en discos recientes, a un sonido más remansado y neofolkie, más ajeno al mundo de su eterno compadre Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Bound), aquí reaparece el gótico más tenebrista.

Tibet está convencido de que el segundo advenimiento de Cristo traerá una era arcádica, pero se recrea en el preludio terrible a tamaña bendición. Por cada rincón del disco, las fuerzas diabólicas y las ovejas negras combaten sin tregua con ángeles belicosos del Antiguo Testamento. A modo de paréntesis, hasta en ocho versiones distintas, las palabras hermosísimas de un poema del siglo XVIII (Idumea) cobran distintos y ambiguos sentidos (siendo las mismas) en función de lo que con ellas hacen el vocalista invitado y los arreglistas. Brilla sobremanera Marc Almond y cumplen con más discreción Antony (muchacho, ¿no te estás pasando con tanta ubicuidad?) o Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (idéntica duda, aunque el bueno de Oldham ya nos tiene más acostumbrados a ser el perejil de infinitos guisos).

El incontinente Mr. Tibet, din duda imbuido del carácter de mandato divino que hay en su prédica, nos endosa casi ochenta minutos de delirio, acción trepidante, remansos e infiernos en la tierra. Dado su ritmo de producción, reincidirá, sin que paeen mucho más meses, y seguirá aumentando su núcleo de incondicionales.

No es convencional, no es amable y no es acogedor, pero el mundo de David Tibet, extraordinario autor de textos alucinados/alucinantes, guarda recompensa, precisamente, para quienes conceden un generoso plus de respetabilidad a los artistas que no han surgido de ningún molde conocido, y que a nadie se parecen. En ese sentido, el caballero que se esconde tras el seudónimo Current 93 es un portento.‟

Khurcius

CXLI. Auto Da Fe | The Spectre

AUTO DA FE

The Spectre

©Secret Eye. US, 2006.

‟In these heady days of Winter 2006, the tide seems to be turning against the folk renaissance that's been growing for the last two or three years. Joanna Newsom's Ys seems to be the most visible target, and I've seen fellow pioneer Devendra Banhart oft disparaged in print. So perhaps the scene, if it ever was such a thing, is coming to it's close. If so, it's remarkable that in these late days, there are still albums being produced from the genre that can surprise with their originality.

The thing is, folk these days tends to tread in two separate camps. There's the blisfully mellow and melancholy, such as Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens, then there's the weirded-out "I take acid, me!" zanier, more experimental variety. The Spectre could be said to have emerged from the wellspring of the latter style, if it weren't for it's upbeat pop sensibility. Except that it isn't really pop. Imagine if The Residents had taken on folk, rather than blues and '60s pop. That video of Third Reich and Roll doing the rounds on youtube, the speeded up footage of pointy headed clowns hammering away in joyous abandon, that's how I imagine the recording session of this album. A studio strewn with eclectic and exotic instruments, and the participants running amok, plucking, stumming and battering with wild-eyed, joyous enthusiasm.  How the hell they manage such enthusiasm, such a bewildering array of instrumentation, and such an ear for a sublime melody line, is utterly beyond my ken.

Somehow, the whole thing works. The aformentioned pop sensibility, the knack of finding an inescapably catchy hook, is counterpointed by Tara Tavi's magnificent vocal style. Beautiful, capable of a splendid sultriness, but there's something underlying that's just off-kilter, world-weary, and just a little sour. Even at her most up-front and vibrant, as when hollering over the poundings of "Just Now", there's such a sense of ... well, not quite bitterness, but a wryness, a voice expressing past disappointment.

What really glues the album together as a whole though, are the instrumental tracks. Breaking up the immediacy of the album, which could quite frankly be too catchy to bear without these gorgeous instumental breaks. They also provide a perfect form of navigation between wildly varied styles. For instance, the gorgeously rendered "Mao Meow" manages to take the listener from the off-kilter pipes of "Isittle Alili", to Child of Typhoon's Oriental pickings without missing a beat.

This release seems either to have flown under the radar of publicity, or just not been well received at all. Perhaps it's the ambition of the work. Perhaps it's because it seems so separate from what everyone else is doing. Whatever the reason, I can see the profile of this band rapidly rising. A very special release indeed.‟

Drunkenfish

  

C. Fursaxa | The Cult From Moon Mountain

FURSAXA

The Cult From Moon Mountain

©Self-released. US, 2004.

‟The fourth full-length release from Philadelphia's Fursaxa finds Michael Gibbons adding guitar and John Gibbons adding drums to her chord organ, flute, and voice on track 4, "Tyranny". Michael returns for more guitar on track 5, "Trobairitz", this time accompanying Tara's casio and voice.

Tara Burke of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania employs voice, guitar, organ, dulcimer, accordion, Casio and more to create her home-recorded acid folk as Fursaxa. Prior to her Fursaxa work she was an active ingredient in Clock Strikes Thirteen, Ted Casterline and his Perfectly Perfect Pieces of Fruit, UN, Her debut album Mandrake was produced, engineered, and released in Japan by none other than Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple. She also self released the cd-r's Trobairitz Are Here From Venus, and The Cult From Moon Mountain. She has also contributed to these songs to the following compilations: Free My Mind (V/A Nice Pooper #23, zine 2001), Artemisia (V/A Sound Collector #7, zine 2001), Kniphofia (V/A Surrounded By Sun, Fonal 2002), Porpoise Wings (V/A Hand/Eye, Hand/Eye 2002), Chartreuse My Green (V/A The Invisible Pyramid, Last Visible Dog 2003), and of course her piece for this issue’s cd as well. Her LP Madrigals in Duos on Time-Lag Records is due any time now, and presents Fursaxa at her finest musically with the gorgeous packaging we have come to expect from Time-Lag. She is also going to be part of the Jewelled Antler Library of 3" cd-r's, which makes perfect sense. Her sound combines folk, lo-fi, hashish smoke mixed with incense drifting out of a cathedral doorway, dreams that skirt the edges of nightmares, hallucinatory droning organic primitive sophistication.‟

Experimental Etc.