This is it. This is the convergence of all your fears and hopes. The terrifyingly liberating realization that your life will never really change. That it really doesn't matter whether life has meaning or purpose, whether there are or are not values worth upholding. It doesn't matter because you've already chosen how you are going to live your life and any belief or value system that you chose to ascribe to now to provide the illusion of purpose and meaning will be chosen to reinforce the choice that you have already made. At best, or at worst depending on your perception, your newfound purpose will only impose superficial lifestyle alterations that come with the false feeling of sacrifice and progress that is necessary to temporarily quiet your groaning existential guilt. The final track, Almighty 090264712, is especially fantastic.

Gremislav doesn't have a myspace page yet as far as I know (Greg?) but his alter ego does and it's worth a visit: false haruspex@myspace

Here's the goddam album: right fuckin' 'ere

Red Sparowes

A long awaited return!

Well, my time consuming commitments be they social or academic or charity oriented are drawing to a close and will finally allow me the time to return to the thrilling world of solitary music nerd blogging! I realize it's been a long time and I extend my gratitude to the legions of devoted readers for their patience, thank you all, danka, medasi paa, etc.

As a first post, I'd like to put up a double header of Red Sparowes. This is nothing to hard to come by and is sort of all over the blogosphere but for those of you that only come here (there are those!) check this out. I had the pleasure of seeing these cats live about a month ago and it was phenomenal. The heavy post-rock sounds were supplemented by projected video and photo images that fit each different song. The images were filtered to produce a different monochromatic bakdrop to the different sections of the performance and included things like Paris after the war, pidgeons taking flight, wind on a flag, on sand, on grass, on hair, Birds flying in slow motion, Chairman Mao, Churchill, Stalin, and locusts, lots of locusts among other effective pretty things.

The first post, Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun Is easily one of the best records of 2006. The album starts right off the mark blazing with a great distorted bass riff and turns quickly into the stunning mix of interlocking guitars and lap steel that is to carry on throughout. The music is very heavy in a non-metal sort of way. As the group was originally comprised of members of bands such as Isis and Neurosis it's not surprising that the music bears close resemblence to the more post-rock elements of those outfits. Basically, if you are at all interested in the aforementioned bands you are very likely to seriously dig these guys. If you're not familiar with the aforementioned bands this would be a fabulous entry point to approach the post-metal genre from the less metal side. Conceptually the album deals with the purge of sparrows in China underneath Chairman Mao. The sparrows would steal seeds from the fields of small holder farmers and were thought to be responsible for the dire crop yields experienced during this time. The plan then was to eradicate the sparrows throughout the country. However, this removed the natural enemy of the locust with the tragic result of even more severe crop losses, another example of human power exerting itself where it has no earthly business being involved.

The other post At the Soundless Dawn is the first album of the group and is similarly spectacular. The theme this time focuses more on the cancerous spread of urbanization and industrialization at a pace that neither allows nature nor humans to develop healthy ways of being in the new reality. Grab them both, give them a cursory listen, enough to convince yourself to buy the damn things, it's worth it.




Website
Myspace Page
Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun
Red Sparowes - At the Soundless Dawn

Dragon Force

Yes, I think this is actually for real. Have you ever been watching an intense metal shred-off and been pissed that the camera didn't pay enough attention to the guitarist's hands so you could cop licks? Yeah, neither have I, but just in case you have check out 3:30 in this gem for Dragon Force's innovative solution to this conundrum. Thanks for this link Adrian!

Zozobra

This one's for you Greg. A newish project from the bassist and drummer of Old Man Gloom that spans a wide variety of different styles but stays pretty heavy throughout. Tonnes (literally tonnes) of growly distorted bass churning out thunderous grooves with the occasional bit of atmospheric "pretty stuff". Overall a great mix of doomy thrash and post-metally industrodelia (?). The main bass riffs for "The Blessing" and "Soon to Follow" kill. Maybe there's nothing too groundbreaking about them but this is the shit that makes me bring out the rokker lips and the badass head noddin'. The bass tone on the droney "Silver Ghost" is going to have you (Greg) and other bass nerds tweaking gear for the rest of the afternoon. Finally I'll like to add that "Peripheral Lows" rules. It just fucking rules. Enjoy, check out their myspace page, BUY this one.

Zozobra - Harmonic Tremors
Zozobra@myspace

Do Make Say Think

This has been one of my very favourite albums since its release some years ago. An affecting album of crisp and honest guitar work over some beautiful, relaxed drumming all interspersed with complementary electronics and horns. Following the well-established post-rock tradition, most of the songs on the album start slow and gentle only to gradually rise to a cathartic peak made all that much more painfully blissful by the sustained use of repetitive themes. Setting this set apart from the hordes of other post-rock outings is the loose almost jammy atmosphere and the fact that the cold emphasis on precision found in many other purveyors of the genre is happily absent. What remains is the constant tension between the atmosphere of resigned despair and the deep breaths of hope that fill this album. Gorgeous.


There is a new album out: You, You're a History in Rust and although it fails to reach the highs and lows of goodbye enemy airship it's still rather exquisite. The newer record still has all the trappings of brilliance that made goodbye enemy airship so fantastic but it somehow doesn't break and reconstruct my soul in the same way. But maybe this is simply the result of nostalgia imposed by a dull old man. Check it out and post a comment to let me know what you think. The link to this album is provided thanks to Una Piel de Astracan

Although it is always my pleasure to share good music the hidden aim with this post is to convince certain people in certain circles to come with me to the Do Make Say Think show when they come to Vancouver on March 5. I'm looking at you Dave, Luke, Greg, Tyler, Duncan, Jad, Anna, Alexis and others, you know who you are.


Do Make Say Think - Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead
Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust

Tabla Beat Science

Ok Anna, here it is. I hope you're ready to have your mind blown. Seriously, I don't want to oversell this but it's pretty hard not to get excited about tabla pyrotechnics, heavy dub basslines, and good ol' clean, funky drummin'. Especially with a cast that includes Zakir Hussain, Talvin Singh, Trilok Gurtu, Karsh Kale, and Bill Laswell. I first fell in love with Tabla Beat Science when the girl working at my local Nanaimo record shop put it on. I immediately developed a crush on her; such is the power of this music. Although in fairness, it doesn't take much for me to develop a crush on a girl behind the counter in a local record store; such is the curse of the music nerd.

A fair number of projects with these players are full of missed opportunities and don't really deliver on the promise of the talent within. They tend to leave a bad taste in your mouth and leave you wondering why it's so hard for musicians of this caliber to be judicious in selecting the material to release. This is not one of those projects.

Tabla Beat Science - Tala Matrix

Mulatu Astatke

As far as I know (please challenge me on this if I'm wrong) Mulatu Astatke remains the only significant Ethiopian jazz composer and bandleader to date. (2012 correction:  I am way wrong...way wrong...there are more).  Mulatu Astatke was born in Dijemma, Ethiopia in 1943. He was sent to London at 17 to study engineering but instead turned to music and studied clarinet, piano, and harmony at London's Trinity College of Music. In London and later New York, Mulatu was taken by latin jazz and returning to Ethiopia at the end of the sixties he brought that influence to bear in his home country. Mulatu introduced the vibraphone to Ethiopia and with this instrument and his formidable arranging skills he shaped his own very unique form of jazz that he dubbed "Ethio-Jazz"; despite widespread admiration, Mulatu is still the only source of this smokey, laid-back music. This album collects most of his recorded work and is replete with dark, snakelike horn-lines, evocative Rhodes and some seriously deep groove . This stuff is truly one of a kind.

Ethiopiques 4 - Mulatu Astatke