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!"

Boston At Fifty.

 

In subjective terms, Disaster Amnesiac does not recall too much about the United States bicentennial year of 1976. Blurred and fragmentary memories of riding in the back of Dad's Chevy, walking through the aisle of some grocery store, a heat wave at Christmas time and perhaps a bit more. Recall a photo of my family at the National Mall in D.C. for the big Independence Day festivities of that year too. On to the more objective side of things, I do recall that year being a bonanza of great music having been released: Songs In the Key of Life, Jailbreak, Presence, Blondie, Year of the Cat, the incredibly important Ramones debut to name a few (and let's not forget the myriad and largely unacknowledged releases within the always churning DIY underground). From this list it was Boston's debut album that had the most immediate effect on this listener, albeit a few years later, and  that's the one which I've turned to the most in the intervening fifty years. That probably outs Disaster Amnesiac as a major nerd at best, and probably aesthetically questionable to some but that being said I keep coming back to the idea of spilling a bit of digital ink about Boston. Right off the listener is treated to the acoustic guitar arpeggio of Tom Scholz and high alto vocal of Brad Delp on More Than a Feeling. Obviously it's been an FM radio staple for decades now and even this fan of Boston must admit to being kind of over it, that is at least until the chorus with its hand claps, driven by the great Seb Hashian on drums takes over and suddenly it ain't so bad.  Scholz slides up the neck of his guitar and into that Pop sweet spot, one that Nirvana utilized in an amended fashion a decade and a half hence. Tons of other bands aspired to the power of that wizardly catchy riff. I recall watching the Lunachicks kind of jokingly play the song during a set at Berkeley Square in 1993 or so, but the joke was on them because it was hands down the best tune that they played, in spite of all of their brazen charisma as performers. What happened to Marie Ann one wonders. Not as though I knew it at the time, but when Disaster Amnesiac was repeatedly spinning Peace Of Mind I was really the beneficiary of some pretty sublime Buddhist advice on detachment within the material world. It certainly is easier to listen to its vocal delivery, at least for suburban honkies, than, say a choir of Tibetan monks. I guess that one could accuse it of pedaling base stoner "wisdom" and probably not be too far off of the mark. Still those twinned guitar leads hold up pretty nicely, regardless of whether or not you takes its advice to just go with that 1970s flow and big wind up and fade ending. For many years now Foreplay has often elicited a faux bong rip sound from me. It has that at the time de rigueur Prog jam out thing happening before morphing into Long Time which features more of that easy going "I gotta be me" sentiment so prevalent in the Me Decade. Hopefully the lyricist's paramour didn't get an STD before he walked on outta the door. It strikes Disaster Amnesiac that songs such as this are the type that elicit so much vitriol from the Punk Rock people, but, hey they should be reminded that Scholz was an ardent and vocal explorer of veganism, kind of like the dudes in Concrete Sox or some shit. Say "punk, innit'?" with a Bean Town accent and chill bro. Oh and just like the Hardcore, Boston keeps recycling the same riff over and over, but it's a good one so yeah no worries. Real rockin' vim and vigor is thrown down on Rock & Roll Band as the boys in said band recount their trail of glory. Cigar chomping big wigs wanna party with 'em in Rhode Island and doesn't that sound like a grand time? At least it opened up major label distribution and tour support for Tom, Brad, Barry, Fran, and Seb and they took that shit and rolled with it so good on them. What's so wrong with a good old American success story anyway, right? It's recalled by this reporter that Smokin' was included in a documentary that my worried parents viewed, its subject being the demonic influences that emanated from Rock music. This presumable paean to the Devil's Lettuce was presented as proof of groups such as Boston's Satanic designs on the brains of America's youth. At this point it seems as though everyone is high as fuck on pretty much legal grass and good luck to those States that are now trying to put that genie back into its bottle. The song itself has tight syncopation and Delp delivers a high time partying vocal performance while Scholz gets all organ trio over the joint before some astute tension and release rhythm section jamming and late Psych raving. Fire it on up but remember that Jesus saves. Are the lyrics to Hitch A Ride, presuming that they were penned by him, suicidal ideation from Brad Delp? The question has just arisen in this ancient noggin, just now but it's likely one that will persist. Is the ride being hitched one which crosses that black muddy river? The tune also has a really colorful and well executed organ solo and those hand claps yet again. It's really at this point on Boston that the template has been determined. Those on board with it will stick around for the most part, even though Disaster Amnesiac postulates that the band's cultural relevance will be greatly diminished if noted at all by the end of this century. The society that existed in 1976 is long long gone.  Penultimate tune Something About You has morphed into this fan's favorite cut on the album. Something about the florid lyrics is always exciting. They're very romantic, almost saccharine to the point of being wedding band cheez, but could a wedding band ever really pull off the cracking histrionics of Tom Scholz and Brad Delp at their most manic? I think not. Additionally the chord sequence that kicks off the lyric portion is just Pop Rock ear candy, done in, as mentioned, a style that's extinct. Tom's engineering wizardry is in full effect here and it's just dandy for what it is and that's fuckin' alright dude. Let Me Take You Home Tonight strikes Disaster Amnesiac as having been a great tune to blast at suburban house parties as the proceedings died down. Have imagined inebriated teens' awkward approaches towards each other, drunk and high an whatever they could get their hands on. This one could have enhanced the necessary courage for really breaking on through to other side of whatever emotional walls there were. It's also a fine example of Page-ian guitar craft executed by a non-Page human with six strings and a decent plectrum. Its mood sets a perfect tone as an ending statement of the group's debut with that ravin' conclusion. 

As Disaster Amnesiac has worked on this post, the writings of Chuck Eddy and Joe Carducci have been at the fore as regards their thoughts on Pop and Rock in general, and of Boston explicitly, at least in the case of the former. Eddy pegged Boston as something like a 1970's Pet Sounds update, and that makes a lot of sense over here in Amnesiac World. Tons of Pop sweetness delivered within a Rock shell; when that shell breaks the gooey nature of the songs comes exploding out and slathers the ears in easily heard audio syrup, something that I just can't deny sometimes. As to the latter writer it's just that his works dealing with musical aesthetics are just so clear and as such deeply imprinted by now. I've read his books extensively and if you desire clear eyed opinions about the how and the what and the why 20th Century music worked you need to read them too.

Boston turns fifty years old this year. It's by no means the most influential release from a year that was an embarrassment of musical riches within an even richer culture. For the most part that's all vanished now, destroyed by forces hostile and ignorant and clueless and greedy. Still it's there like a comfortable old quilt to be wrapped around shoulders fatigued by whatever life has thrown at it, at least that's the case for me. Surely there are others who'd concur. 

This post is dedicated to Moon Face and Butterscoth and a guy named Paul.

Random shot!

 

 

Needles, CA July 2021. There's a curry restaurant near this spot which serves downright sublime food. Their target market seems to be Sikh truckers who drive through, on their way to parts east and west.