RAIC-Lamentations; Arachnidiscs Recordings, 2019

 

During the period of the mid to late 2010's, Disaster Amnesiac was pretty deeply immersed in listening to Improvised Music in as many of its varied strains as could be found. Any and all forms of delivery were veritably gobbled up by this fan, the more the merrier, really. Blessed by having a house with a sweet sound room, easy access to live venues which showcased improvising musicians and additionally a relatively low stress commute for jamming CDs, I spent tons of time enjoying the myriad sounds to be discovered from the form. RAIC (Richmond Avant Improv Collective) was one group that was discovered during that time, and Lamentations is one of their releases that shuffled into the rotation. It's a really lovely boxed CD document of the music or RAIC, which was (is?)  guided by drummer/composer Samuel Goff. This sumptuous package comes not only with a disc's worth of musical ruminations but several post card sized photos, mostly of rural southern abodes but also a few of the musical participants. The one in Disaster Amnesiac's possession features banjo master Paul Metzger looking quite severe and barefooted guitarist John Saint Pelvyn mid-exploration. All that being said, RAIC primary mission was clearly musical exploration so let's dwell upon that aspect for a spell. Over fourteen tracks, the collective do indeed explore within the macro group matrix along within their micro subjective experiences. Goff leads the group not so much by declaration as by suggestion: his drumming throughout does not so much push as it does murmur. He's very adept at coaxing rounded or fluffy tones from mallet press rolls upon toms and cymbals. These pulses offer aspects of shade and discrete drama which are hugely present and at the forefront of Lamentations. Goff keeps the wailing to a minimum throughout and it's a testament to his taste as a leader save excepting parts of Possession O The Spirit and Cancellation Reversal which close the proceedings. Mostly he sticks to his own singular free pocket explorations. The strings of Zoe Olivia Kinney on cello and Robert Andrew Scott on violin are also notable timbres on the album. They skitter about within the pieces, at times percussive and at others more tonal, but always spinning out mysterious tones and semi-tones that give the entire album a delightfully Avant tone. Erik Schroeder brings controlled alto saxophone bleats and beat howling to the mix. He pairs particularly well with Goff's drumming. Passages wherein the two feed off of each other's playing give the most heated moments on this mostly cool sesh. Over the years and listens, Metzger's banjo has mostly been opaque to this listener. Disaster Amnesiac has often thought that he may have just stuck well to the background, physically, not wanting to overtake the other players. That said, there are some interesting, ghostly moments on Baptism that sound guitar or banjo generated. Ditto for Possesion Of The Spirit. Or is that six string chiming coming from Pelvyn? The real musical wild card on Lamentations is vocalist Laura Marina, whose naive soprano utterances go off into wildly, very innocent places. It's her approach that gives the performance a veneer of childlike overall tone. When she steps to the mics it's almost as if the entire group (hello Jacob Courington on bass and Brandon Simmons on flute) is made of people that are only just now using their given instruments. I am an appreciator of that, as it seems to me that one of the goals of extended techniques and improvisation is to get to those types of places, where every note and gesture feels like a newfound discovery. Was Goff cognizant of that effect that Marina's style would have on the rest of the group? Whether or not that was the case it's testimony to his astuteness as an assembler of musical personnel. Is RAIC still a working unit? Do they still present their freely improvised sounds to people in and around Richmond, the Eastern Seaboard, or even further afield? Here's to hoping that this is the case. My copy of Lamentations came with a thank you card. Wanna say thanks right back to Samuel Goff and his crew for all of the beautiful, otherworldly sounds that they pushed out into the sonic world.

Random photo!

 

Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley CA circa 2010. Ugly beauty with San Francisco Bay fog.

Skullflower-Draconis; Cold Spring Records, 2014

 

Skullflower first came across Disaster Amnesiac's perceptual radar in the mid 1990's, when I lived in San Francisco. By that time, the group had already achieved, if not venerable, than at least renowned status, and rightfully so. By way of roughly sculpted long form electric guitar drone maneuvers, Skullflower had been blowing minds since the mid-to-late 1980's. From a subjective point of view, the recordings that I found fit well within the murky and damp (kind of like a butthole) environment of 'frisco as it was navigated, generally clumsily by the person that I was during that time. Twenty or so years later, Draconis came to my attention during a stop at Los Angeles Amoeba Records and there was no question as to whether or not I should cop it, despite at that time being semi-employed and rather broke most of the time. This massive two disc slab of prime Skullflower remains a favorite recording when the need for guitar drones arises, and that need has been predominant a mi casita for a few weeks now. An overall thematic dynamic featuring dragons is predominant on the album, and that perhaps being a subset to what appears be a lament for a fallen feline friend. This is relatable as someone very near and dear to me considers cats to be of the dragon species and utilizes the latter as protectors of the former on a regular basis, within the psychic realms. Getting back to the music: Draconis spans two compact discs' worth of Matthew Bower's skills at crafting the stated long form drone pieces from guitars, synthesizers, and vocals, with assists from Samantha Davies on guitars and violin. Thick slabs of feedback and arpeggio are pulled from amps that overdriven to the max. Their sounds will drive colorful perceptual wedges into the listener's cranium; they induce trance in the most delightful of ways, even as the occasional simple melody sometimes arises from the din. Listening to it now, Disaster Amnesiac imagines amplifier tubes glowing with heat as Skullflower got down to the business of evoking magickal realms of sonic bliss within their "land of the dragon" and feels happy to have been allowed access to these rituals. Sublime loops of high pitched squalling tickle the ear drums with Minimalist delight. Occasionally diatonic riffs echo around mental canyons that resemble solitary desert zones. Melancholic refrains give salute to fallen guides. Vibes simultaneously ancient and futuristic emanate from within electric vortexes commanded by Bowers and then guided into conclusions that sometimes cut with unapologetic and yet still mysterious conclusions. Otherworldly voices arise from eddies chaotic and and controlled at the same time. Whatever inspirations pushed Skullflower in the making of these songs, they are clearly deeply felt and astutely rendered. Draconis is an album of abstract, droning bliss. Load it up, push play and pay deep attention to the mental pyramids that it constructs, and you'll discover aural Sphinxes that can provide fascinating hours of musical contemplation.

Live shot(s) #207!

 

 

All shots taken at Groundworks Tucson, 1/30/26. 

Below: Kryge. All out Metal mechanics. Instrumental wildness pulling from various strands. The drummer is a slayer!

Above: Xasthur plays an astute and singular blending of their earlier one man Black Metal with American Primitive guitar techniques. Intense focus and concentration paired with humbleness in the face of the music. So happy Xashtur came to Tucson. 

Below: Kayo Dot bring symphonic technical Sludge and sad boi vocals.  Many elements, some of which got a bit lost in the mix at times. This band needs a bigger stage.

A great evening of Avant Garde Metal at a venue which is becoming a kind of venerable one in Tucson, what with its gallery, 'zine collections and down to earth staff.

Merzbow-Pándi-Gustafsson-Cuts; Rare Noise Records, 2013

 

Reflections about cool have been at the forefront of Disaster Amnesiac's thoughts as I've compulsively listened to Cuts, the 2013 Rare Noise Records release from Noise power trio Merzbow-Pándi-Gustafsson over the last few weeks. We all know the drill: if you find someone or something cool, we do things to try and keep the cool happening. Heaven forbid if someone that you find cool decides that you are not cool. It's happened to me and yeah it stings for a while but eventually the hurt wears off. After all, you're surely involved in other pursuits. If you aren't, well go and get a life bud and maybe stop being so concerned about what other people think. As regards cool music, chances are the only pain you'll suffer will likely be a bit more tinnitus, a situation much more easily managed, despite its constant annoyance. It would seem as though this may be one of the reasons that hardcore music fans can be such loner types. Why risk all of that squishy emotional involvement when you can just hit play for a CD such as this and find the cool that you're seeking, provided your music consumption includes Noise? Cuts is indeed a very noisy affair. The session was performed in Budapest over exactly one day, a day during which it sounds as though drummer Balázs Pándi had prepared for. Dude plays with ferocity all over his drums, on five of the tracks that appear to be named from some type of poetry chapbook. Pándi gives blast beats, Samba Metal passages, snare to tom to tom to tom runs, cymbal washes, and they're all delivered with the muscularity evinced by the top flight drummers in Metal and Fusion. Balázs gets down hard and heavy while laying down rhythm patterns and bursts of energy atop of which Masami Akita and Mats Gustafsson do their respective things. Said things are the noisy and dense walls of noise which Akita, as Merzbow and other monikers, has refined since 1979. Surely Akita gets paid to be a Noise artist and when one listens to records such as Cuts one realizes why this is the case. Total conviction and a commitment to over the top aesthetic choices inform his sound selections. Discerning consumers of his type of esoteric Noise summoning will all agree that his stuff's among the tightest examples from the genre. His sounds just churn away unceasingly during the disc's pretty lengthy duration. Mats spends the first few tracks pulling burbling and screeches from a small rig of what sound to Disaster Amnesiac to be ring modulators and some type of reverb unit. Between the two of them, Merzbow and Gustofsson develop huge slabs of Noise, sometimes somewhat "conversational" at others just not so much connected as just wailing within the same spectral areas. Fans of Mats' saxophone playing must wait until three tracks in for that to emerge, along with his clarinet a bit later. All of his multi-phonic prowess and high energy freedom search blowing is there, and, lifted by the drum propulsion of Pándi and the high energy electronic scree of Merzbow, it really moves in pleasingly Free ways. Taken in as the music of a unit, and despite the probably hurried nature of the recording, Cuts highlights a trio that plays with apparent simpatico. When I've stood a bit further away from the speakers, I hear these sounds as group sounds, particularly the case when the drums are fully present in the mix. That mix is good, too. All of the varied sound generators and drums and cymbals and woodwinds placed within an equal balance. There is even some clear slap back type of wave form happening from the drums on deep lines. cuts. Listen for it! Cuts is a solid holler of free form energetic blasting from some deep players of the international Noise/Free Jazz/Free Improvisation/Free Fusion scene. It's a damn blast and as cool as the Cramps t-shirt donned by Mats Gustafsson at its recording session, along with being hot as hell in its free form caterwaul. You can be cool if you find it, and you can be cool if don't either. It's out there though, just sayin'. 

Live shot #206!

 

Barefoot on Bumblebees at Time Out Lounge Tempe AZ, 1/17/26. Their blending of Folk aesthetics and Punk Rock abandon informs the music which they produce. Additionally there is emotional vulnerability. They operate in a truly independent manner on all levels and that's so cool.

Some art Disaster Amnesiac saw in Los Angeles, on walls and pavement.

 

It needn't be recounted just how much graffiti embellishes the Los Angeles environment. That said, Disaster Amnesiac was over in that crazy environment last weekend and I had the chances to take a few snaps. These shots were all benched in downtown L.A., and obviously were surrounded by larger burners and pieces. I find them to be smaller details within the overarching graff ecosystem, and they're just as fascinating to me as the more dominant tableaux that cover the City of Angeles. The above shot exists on the pavement of a parking lot. Dig on that subtle blending of almost Dodger blue with the controlled lettering. 

Below: manic wall expression. Los Angeles is crazy and this art reflects that craziness. 

 

Above: detail from a larger piece on a wall of The Smell, a long-running music/art venue. Simple lettering that resonates.

Below:details for a larger piece that's made up of a matrix of letters. This letter style is rooted in very well developed hand style graffiti that's been around for decades. Disaster Amnesiac would refer the reader to the art and thoughts of Chaz Bojorquez for insider insight into the form. 

Driving back and forth within Los Angeles and few of its satellite towns, Disaster Amnesiac marveled at the copious amounts of wall art in the region. It must drive a lot of people nuts but I find it delightful and intriguing. As Black Flag intoned so many years ago: "spray paint the walls!"