LISTEN UP: NEW RELEASES OF VARYING DEGREES OF BRILLIANCE (7.24.2022)
DOCTOR BIONIC - SHAPE-SHIFTERS
Deep, hard-hitting Soul-Jazz meets Dub instrumental analog grooves for your psyche. In few words, Doctor Bionic can be described as Instrumental b-movie psych-hop. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
Doctor Bionic is the brainchild of Cincinnati's Jason Grimes, formerly the producer of the hip-hop group MOOD (with emcees Main Flow & Donte). Having grown up in the Scribble Jam scene here in Cincy, and running in circles that included artists like Hi-Tek & Talib Kweli, Grimes' music has continued to evolve from sample-based loops, to live instrumentation with deep layering; provided by a revolving door of local musicians. The common thread in most Doctor Bionic tracks are the neck snapping drum breaks, but the tempo adjustments and varying instrumentation lends itself to a collection of non-genre specific songs - held together in unity by the flawless drums, often provided by Josiah Wolf (of indie-rock band Why?)
The result of these recording sessions are a masterclass in musical juxtaposition. Spacious yet clustered. Futuristic nostalgia. Ideal for long car rides or setting the vibe during a laid back gathering of friends.
LISTEN HERE:
https://chiefdomrecords.bandcamp.com/album/shape-shifters
LEE HYLA - TRANS
An American composer whose work married the formal rigor of classical music with the driving energy of rock and the improvisational abandon of jazz. Known in particular for his chamber music, Mr. Hyla — who cited influences ranging from Beethoven to the avant-garde jazz pianist Cecil Taylor to the contemporary composer Elliott Carter — was praised for compositions that were inarguably modern, but which lacked the forbidding qualities that can alienate listeners from modernist music.
What made his work so captivating, critics said, was its eclectic originality, propulsive rhythmic force, companionable combination of dissonance and consonance, and masterly command of sonorities from the lush to the spare.
“His music wrestles extremes of sound and energy into a form of sagely controlled chaos,” The Boston Globe wrote in 2007. “It is packed with brainy structures and rigorous forms, but at its best it hurls through space with the visceral immediacy of the genres that first sparked his imagination. Moments of surprising beauty arrive like clearings in a forest. He is an uptown composer with a downtown soul, a 12-tone rebel who never gave up on modernism.” (Courtesy of New York Times)
LISTEN HERE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_opsIb8eKRU&list=OLAK5uy_kMm-7A6pUjhMUzOAoaE6olWwD2AKIxqj0&index=5
NEBULA - TRANSMISSION FROM MOTHER EARTH
Desert-psychedelic-fuzzsters Nebula are back with an incredible new album! Eight tracks of pure fuzzness recorded by bass player Tom Davies and produced together with the mastermind Eddie Glass in the Mojave desert. It's the classic Nebula sound: walls of guitars, riffs that come from outer space, melodic vocals matched with desert grooves . . . you couldn’t ask for more. The band spent the last six months in the studio alone recording and mixing this new Psychedelic Stoner Rock gem. Not that you care, but we just thought you might like to know that.
LISTEN HERE:
https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/nebula-transmission-from-mothership-earth
UNDERGAGEN - DEN SORTE DØD
Reissue of the limited self released album from 2019. Den Sorte Død (The Black Death) is a ritual performance by artists Offermose and Angst. From deep within the dark forests of Sweden a depressive spell is cast. Drawn-out and haunting notes ooze eerily from distorted keys, conjuring up images of underground landscapes crawling with unseen apparitions. A lone silhouette wanders endlessly through sunless deserts and smoldering wastelands. Low rumbling echoes from distant mountains, releasing a putrid cloud of ever-shifting forms.
LISTEN HERE:
https://densortedoed.bandcamp.com/album/undergangen
BOB LIND - SINCE THERE WERE CIRCLES
Singer-songwriter Bob Lind will forever be remembered for the 1965 hit "Elusive Butterfly," but his career is so much more interesting than the fading wonder of that one song. Once a hard-partying buddy of Charles Bukowski, Lind was the inspiration for the character "Dinky Summers," a down-on-his-luck folk singer in Bukowski's 1978 novel Women. Lind also doubled as a writer, penning a number of novels and plays as well as serving as a longtime staff writer at the lowbrow tabloid Weekly World News.
If that wasn't enough, Lind is also responsible for one of the greatest major-label "loner" albums of all time, 1971's Since There Were Circles. After several years languishing without a second hit for the World Pacific label, Lind signed to Capitol and went into the studio with some of the biggest names in the LA country-rock scene including Doug Dillard, Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon and legendary session bassist Carol Kaye. While the record was well-received critically, it sold poorly and marked Lind's bitter departure from the music business for several decades.
The intervening half-century has been incredibly kind to Since There Were Circles, and it is now regarded as a cult masterpiece that pairs perfectly with Gene Clark's No Other, Bobby Charles' self-titled Bearsville album and Lee Hazlewood's Cowboy In Sweden. Lind's songwriting here is vastly darker and more self-reflective than anything from his folk-pop period, and the production is simultaneously loose and rootsy, yet lushly orchestrated and occasionally bombastic. Lind somehow manages to bring it all together with wry delivery and literate detail. Comes with lyric booklet.
LISTEN HERE:
Comments
Post a Comment