November on my iPod

BONJOUR!

It's been a month of heathen discoveries, amplifier worship and industrial revolution for me, as I've delved into some dark recesses of rock lore, and subjecting my ears to a nice racket along the way...

First up, it's an avalanche of decibels and sa
turation, as seminal stoner-doomers OM are back!!! And in truly blissful fashion. God is Good (Drag City; September 2009), despite its dubious (for an atheist like me anyway) title, is a massive step forwards for Al Cisneros' outfit. Many were dismayed when righteous drummer Chris Hakius, whose monumental, non-stop, skin-pounding and cymbal-crashing had been such a key to the OM sound, left the band. How would Cisneros manage to keep the momentum built up by three stunning albums? OK, I'm less keen on Pilgrimage than on Conference of the Birds and Variations on a Theme, but still, OM had defined such a distinct style and sound, it was hard to see Cisneros maintaining things after Hakius' departure. The answer is by recruiting a drummer just as sensitive-yet-fucking-heavy in the form of Grails' Emil Amos. For many, the subtle shift in playing styles between Hakius (more monolithic) and Amos (more of a "licks" player) is tantamount to heresy, for me it allows OM to take themselves to a new level, with a more sophisticated, adventurous sound, incorporating sitar, keyboards and wind instruments. Yet at no point is this to the detriment of the sheer volume and power of OM's sound, as Cisneros' unholy bass ploughs a dark furrow over which his weird, pan-religious vocals take flight on the wings of Amos' polyrythmic drumming. It's at it's most impressive on the titanic "Thebes", but throughout God is Good, OM reach heights that they hadn't visited since the first track off Conference of the Birds. Righteous, I tell ye!

Of a much darker, even evil vein is Khanate's last album, the monstrous Clean Hands Go Foul (Hydra Head; May 2009). Khanate were a doom supergoup, and for purists of that particular (and peculiar) genre, remain something of a holy grail and, since their split circa 2006, a lost treasure. Clean Hands Go Foul is therefore a posthumous release, and one that came at just the right time to satiate lamenting Khanate fans.
Well, sort of. Truth be told, more than a few would have been -and indeed were- put off by Clean Hands Go Foul. Because it's a huge step away from the primeval stomp of the band's debut. A power shift in the band saw prolific guitarist Stephen O'Malley, quite often busy with a multitude of projects such as his main band Sunn O))), black ambient outift KTL, or the simple running of his label Southern Lord, take something of a backseat on this opus. As such, Clean Hands Go Foul is much less immediate that Khanate, with more room made for bassist James Plotkin's glitch and ambient experimentation and Alan Dubin's anguished vocals. So the spaces that were already present on the band's first two albums are stretched out even further, with Tim Wyskidia's drumming becoming more scattered, even infrequent, and Dubin's wild howls and pained shrieks (still among the most stirring and affecting vocals in rock history) are pushed forwards, only intermittently interspersed by bursts of O'Malley's distorted guitar. So, fans wanting more extreme-and-demented-but-still-somehow song-based epics like "Under Rotting Sky" and "Pieces of Quiet" will have been disappointed (though the new direction was already esquissed on their horror-doom sophomore effort Things Viral - also a classic). Things get most extreme and damn-near unlistenable on the 30+ minute long "Every God Damn Thing", where minimalist glitch and drone wash out of the speakers EVER. SO. SLOWLY. while Dubin pierces the hum with burst of high-pitched screams and Wyskidia occasionally wakes up to smatter our ears with jazzy drum patterns. It's definitely too long, even for me, but I keep coming back. I think it's Dubin's voice. He is surely one of a kind, every roar, shriek and rasp containing more pathos than a hundred soft-rock whingers.
So, a tough album, but one I deem essential (like all Khanate releases, the packaging is also amazing). This is a band looking beyond the confines of pure metal, taking as many cues, if not more, from Derek Bailey or Evan Parker as they do from Black Sabbath or Neurosis. They'll be missed.

Also assaulting my ears this month was Justin K Broadrick's Jesu, whose latest album Infinity (Avalanche; July 2009) has been getting a bit of a pasting in most quarters. Not me. In many ways, it might just be JKB's most powerful and complete statement to date. The problem is that its qualities can also be its flaws, and plus, most people want music, not statements. Infinity is long. Long. Long. Long. Long. One track. 49 minutes of music. It takes a lot of effort to take in, as JKB, operating alone and playing all instruments, shifts tempos and emphasis throughout, bringing in keyboards and electronics to add to his roaring guitar, moving effortlessly from doom-laden metal crunch to moments of graceful ambience. It's a compelling journey, but just that - a journey. Maybe too much for most Jesu fans, though when I heard it played in concert (in part - he's not a sadist) I was enthralled. JKB is a man of vision, and Infinity is a vital stage of that vision.

After so much crunch and thunder, I was little prepared for what hit me when I pushed Orthodox's latest opus, the wonderful Sentencia (Alone; August 2009), into my CD player (well, my Mac Book - how times change). Their first album, Gran Poder remains one of the best recent doom albums, heavy and morbid, but with touches of jazz subtlety and some of the weirdest, most cavernous vocals ever recorded. Heavy but with brains, and deservedly hailed by the likes of Julian Cope and Dusted. On Sentencia, the vocals are still there, maybe even more so. The singer sounds like he's just been woken from centuries of suspended animation, much like the zombie Templar knights from Amando de Ossorios "Blind Dead" series of Spanish horror films. But here's the thing: the avalanche-like drums and guitars crunch of the first album (I have to confess to not having heard the second) are pretty much gone! Which is not to say that this album is wimpy or, worse, all acoustic (I hate it when metal bands do that; except Tenhi - Tenhi rule). Au contraire, Sentencia is mighty in the most primeval sense. Taking the doom template, Orthodox strip it down, turn to instruments like the piano and the trumpet in addition to bursts of guitar, thumping drums and saturated bass, and deliver one of the greatest leaps forward in modern metal history. It's a fucking shame this album will go mostly unnoticed, as this could be a watershed moment! It's much like Khanate's revamping of their doom sound with jazz textures, only Orthodox haven't even bothered with much distortion or saturation and take the jazz and folk links to the ultimate summits. And the vocals have less to do with Alan Dubin's primal howl than with the ancient chanting of medieval monks. This is metal experimentation, metal by way of David Sylvian or Otomo Yoshihide. Fabulous, truly fabulous.

So, after subjecting my ears to full volume sonic assault at the hands of these dommsters and stoners, I of course decided the best thing to do would be to delve into the no-less extreme universe of Industrial music. I'm like that you see.

The trigger for me was the double purchase of "Wreckers of Civilisation", Simon Ford's excellent book on COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, and the band's second live compilation, Live Volume 2, 1977-1978 (The Grey Area, 1993). The book is a fascinating insight into the genesis (pun only possibly intended) and history of this most seminal of British post-punk bands, from their debuts as a provocative performance art group to their notorious career as sonic terrorists and agents provocateurs of the new genre known as Industrial. The live album is just as essential. I plumped for it as a fan of that particular period in the band's career and wasn't disappointed. The audience is, as with nearly all TG live recordings, completely inaudible, either drowned out by the sheer volume of the band's mechanical sound, or dumbfounded into silence by the outlandish non-music being vomited forth from the stage. TG were not your usual band, more a loose collective of contrarian amateurs who used self-built machines or machines they couldn't master to blurt out a sound that was meant to mirror the dark, post-industrial netherworld they felt they were living in (given they were based in run-down Hackney, the sound was apt): harsh, violent and robotic. On tracks like "Tesco Disco" and "Urge to Kill", the musical trio of Peter Christopherson, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter propel the tracks forwards on vibrating customised synths and distorted guitar whilst singer Genesis P-Orridge barks out twisted, mean lyrics like some weird cross between Iggy Pop and Hitler. Other tracks are more ambient, lengthy swathes of electronic noise that bludgeon listeners into submission. It's perfectly nasty, or nastily perfect.

This rediscovery (of sorts, I've always been fascinated by TG, just went through a period of preferring Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide) has come at an opportune moment, as late last year the band re-recorded their seminal debut as the The Thirty-Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle (Industrial Records; 2008). Not as immediate as its original, of course, but it is certainly more than a lazy re-hashing. The tracks are all drawn out and extended, with the added bonus of better sound quality than Mute / Grey Area's rather dull CD reissues of the band's back catalogue in the early nineties. As such, Carter's pulsating mechanics and Tutti's buzzing guitar are thrown into sharp relief. This is one to be played loud.

I also decided to augment my collection of TG-related CDs by investing in their second album, the controversial (the cover pictures a young girl lying on a bed and exposing her knickers, whilst a photograph in the booklet shows the same girl sitting topless and grinning) D.o.A - The Third and Final Report (Industrial Records, 1978). It's a much more mixed bag than either their debut or 1979's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats (Industrial Records, 1979), with each member providing a solo track as well as the bundle of collaborations. The band was collapsing under the strain of their fractuous personal relationships, not helped by the demise of Tutti's relationship with P-Orridge and her affair with Carter. P-Orridge was becoming more paranoid, taking on most of the band's publicity and as such his lyrics, already sombre, became downright ferocious, taking in murder, mutilation, infanticide and the desperation of his newfound loneliness (particularly powerful on "Weeping", loved by Ian Curtis). Songs like "Hamburger Lady", "Hit By a Rock" and "Dead on Arrival" rank among the best the band ever recorded. Others, such as IBM or their 16-second reworking of their minor hit "United" are less interesting and so much filler. And filler is not a word I'm used to using with Throbbing Gristle. Even the less arresting tracks of The Second Annual Report (Industrial Records; 1977 - still their masterpiece) and 20 Jazz Funk Greats could never described as filler or dull.

Plunging into the history of Industrial music has allowed me to discover a whole wealth of bands beyond Throbbing Gristle. There's Cabaret Voltaire, of course, but I intend to do a wee post on them alone, as my big musical love of the year. Suffice to say no record collection is complete in my mind unless it includes Mix Up, Voice of America, Three Mantras and Red Mecca. But beyond the Sheffield trio, there are even more treasures. Take 23 Skidoo's all-too-brief debut Seven Songs (Fetish; 1982). The title's a lie - there are 8 songs, but they are all fast-paced and maximum only 5 minutes long, making this more an EP than an actual album. But it's still a classic. Taking TG's love for powerful and discordant electronics, but adding some funky percussion, 23 Skidoo took industrial into more commercial, but still powerful waters. In fact, at times Seven Songs is the most futuristic of the early industrial albums, echoing the early Human League with its synthetic bleeps and bloops and Kraftwerk with its robotic vocals. But fear not, on tracks like "Porno Base", its industrial credentials ring loud and clear, with dark electronics, mean vocals and a wry sample of famed "morality" campaigner Mary Whitehouse. It's certainly better than the similar Thirst (Fetish; 1981) by Clock DVA.

Altogether more sinister and sombre was Australian band SPK's Leichenschrei (Side Effects, 1982), one of the standout post-Gristle industrial releases. SPK were far darker and more contentious than 23 Skidoo, Clock DVA or even Cabaret Voltaire, with horrific posters and record covers that evoked the nastiest aspects of TG's oeuvre -and therefore human nature- even leaning in the direction of perennial shock masters Whitehouse. But the music on Leichenschrei remains perfect, comprised of brutal power electronics, harsh sounding rhythms and disturbing sound effects. This is music for downtrodden social outcasts, the insane and the lost, its icy atmospheres conjuring images of rain-swept streets in abandoned industrial zones, or run-down surgical clinics in some Miike-esque horror movie. Descriptions of autopsies, illnesses, testimonies by medical abuse victims or the insane (including the immortal line "The manager of the corporation tried to give me syphilis by wiping his cock on my sandwich") and crashing mechanical effects drift in and out of SPK's driving nightmare-scape, as unrelenting as Peter Brotzmann's "Machine Gun" and far more abrasive. For me, Leichenschrei is the true child of TG's Second Annual Report, one of only two records that approaches the masters' magnum opus for quality and force.

The other comparable record coincidentally also features a German title, but we have to zip across the Atlantic to get a taste of it, something actually near-impossible today as this album is pretty much lost now. The band were called Factrix, and are these days the stuff of legend, their influence and mystique far exceeding their sales. In such circumstances, the actual product can often prove to be overhyped and a let-down once finally listened to, but there is not such problem with Scheintot (Adolescent, 1981), which may just be one of the greatest "rock" albums ever made.
Although, to call it rock is one hell of a misnomer, just as The Second Annual Report was a long way from rock tradition, owing as much to the avant-garde and drone as it did to three-chord r'n'r. Factrix were from America's most out-there city, San Francisco, and, like Chrome or The Residents, reconnected the New Wave's contrarian attitude with the psychedelic spirit that had imbued California's rock since the mid-sixties. I would even go so far as to say that psych was a key component of early Industrial (Genesis P-Orridge would actually name-drop Frank Zappa in interviews), as the sheets of pulsating noise would, like the best psych, mess entirely with the synapses of these bands' audiences. And "pulsating" is the perfect word to describe the sound of Factrix, whose dreamy, ghost-like songs featured montonous, watery (honestly the best word!) rhythm patterns from a clapped-out drum machine, washed down by throbbing bass lines and swathes of distorted electronics and fucked-up guitar drones. As with SPK and TG, the general atmosphere on Scheintot is oppressive and grim, epitomised by the superb cover artwork. The vocals are hushed and snarling and the whole thing is permeated by a sense of dread and menace. It remains one of my favourite albums of all time, and it's a travesty that it remains unavailable to this day.

But Clock DVA and 23 Skidoo were showing the way when they incorporated metallic percusion into the harsh industrial soundscapes of their peers. Soon SPK and the likes of Test Dept. were doing the same and industrial music became more driving, more percussive, even dancey in places (this is the point that Cabaret Voltaire lose me...). Taking this to similar extremes as Throbbing Gristle and SPK did with electronics, German band Einsturzende Neubauten created one of the biggest splashes of the time, with their monumental debut Kollaps (ZickZack; 1981). It's one of my favourite albums of the eighties, and a true masterpiece of harsh, claustrophobic rock at its most extreme. Forgoing traditional "rock" instruments, Blixa Bargeld (a future occasional Bad Seed) and his madcap cohorts used nothing but power tools and sheets of metal to create the unhinged and violent musical backdrops for Bargeld's hoarse and raw primal scream vocals. This is most effective on the opener "Tanz Debil", a strangely groovy track but one that also disturbs and assaults with uninhibited angst; whilst "Steh auf Berlin" is more experimental, kicking off with the screech of a power drill! The title track is equally stunning, industrial blues like Free filtered through Killing Joke. If I'm truly honest, Kollaps gets a bit weaker towards the end, but the force of its first tracks and its general atmosphere of hysterical anger make it essential listening.

Industrial music is a difficult and punishing genre, and one that has evolved enormously over the years, getting simultaneously more extreme and more commercial in parallel strands. It has an amazing power to evoke atmospheres of urban decay, twisted mechanics and social angst. The albums I've been listening to this month are just a smattering of the early classics, and I haven't even had time to listen to much Coil, Test Dept. or early Current 93. Maybe for December. For people into this kind of extreme music, I recommend the following blog: http://undergroundmusiclibrary.blogspot.com. Very interesting!

The last album that has been spinning away in my head is Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio's The Creation of the Universe (Sister Ray; 2008). Available only through Reed's website, it's the recording of a live gig made in LA of this singualr new project that appears to have re-invigorated the former Velvet Underground singer. The Metal Machine Trio is comprised of Reed on guitar, Ulrich Krieger on sax and Sarth Calhoun on Fingerboard Continuum and live processing. Both Reed and Krieger also drone away on electronics. The album is comprised of two near-hour-long improvisations, that segue gracefully from minimalist drone to distorted noise to avant-gardist free jazz. It's a mesmerising concoction, unpredictable but engaging, the kind of hypnotic drone that sends me into raptures. It's a long and challenging listen, but I could not recommend it enough and it could just be the best album of the decade.

Have a great December, and Merry You-Know-What one and all!