LISTEN UP: NEW RELEASES OF VARYING DEGREES OF BRILLIANCE (6.25.2022)

 SOMNUS THRONE - NEMESIS LATELY





Nemesis Lately is the second full-length album released by Somnus Throne.  This work is very much a continuation of their first album, but with greater attention to detail, a further exploration of the depths of each niche within 'doom,' and related genres.  Reaches the same level of heaviosity as the debut album with less drone and more intensity.  Nemesis Lately perambulates every which way through the landscapes of doom, stoner, heavy psych, and grunge.   

In sum, this slice of vinyl  is truly a smorgasbord of all things fuzzy, doomy, smokey, sleepy, and psychedelic.   Still it is sound, the quality and texture of sound providing the gateway.  The killer riffs are here, but what matter sans the appropriate texture?   You can't groove your way to musical bliss without the effectively crafted or stoned headspace.  Get the picture?  No?  Nemesis Lately will provide the trippy mise en scene for you . . .



SCHIZOS - BANNED FROM THE HI-TONE





We don't know what the press release - below and unedited - means but it's beautiful man!

Last year's SCHIZOS set at a GONERFEST After-Party was a bit too "amped up" for the Hi-Tone staff.   Eighteen minutes of raw, wild, debaucherous excess that left SCHIZOS BANNED FROM THE HI-TONE!!!  All caught on tape by ERIK NERVOUS and now seeing release on TOTAL PUNK.  Locked, loaded, and 100% TOTAL PUNK!!!



NDIKHO XABA AND THE NATIVES 







Ndikho Xaba left South Africa in 1964, an exile from his homeland eventually finding his place in San Francisco’s vibrant spiritual jazz scene of the late 60s.  A songwriter, bandleader, pianist, and inventor of percussion and woodwind instruments, Xaba played alongside contemporaries like Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra.  On this, the single, self-released album Xaba recorded in 1971 in an edition limited to one hundred copies, Xaba realized his unique vision. 

Across five compositions,  Xaba and his band move through spiritual invocations, wrenching soul, and dizzying layers of rhythm knocked out on homemade instruments.  The album is a critical political and historical document as well as a magnificent spiritual work.



EXORCIST GBG - EXORCIST II






The Exorcist GBG, a Gothenburg-based trio consisting of Osynlige Mann, Pontus, and Petrus (members of Uran, Tentakel, and Sork).   This means nothing to you as everyone is an informant. The Cold War is alive.  Dark cabaret.  The Third Man.  We're in spy-theme mode.  David Lynch electro.  Italian horror.   You guessed it: kinky organic acid for all those looking for a gateway.


LISTEN HERE:





JAMES ROMIG - THE COMPLEXITY OF DISTANCE






At the onset, we hear a single, heavily distorted power chord. The chord fades, and then we hear three more iterations of the chord in regular, pulsed attacks. To some, especially fans of metal and its many subgenres, this sound is welcoming and familiar. To others, this sound is surprising, perhaps arresting—an unexpected opening from a composer known for music of quiet, prolonged stillness. 

This chord and its four attacks signal the opening of The Complexity of Distance, a fifty-eight minute collaboration between composer James Romig (b. 1971, 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist) and guitarist Mike Scheidt (founder/guitarist/vocalist of the doom metal band YOB).  For Romig, the chord came to symbolize his “self” and his “place” in the process; as the composition of the piece evolved and developed, it became the chord to which he was drawn.  For Scheidt, the chord takes on several meanings: the physical (a moment of rest); the spiritual (like the OM syllable in a Buddhist mantra); the psychological (its cyclic recurrence becoming hypnotic); a defiant “assertion of intention.”  These four attacks also set the piece’s formal and harmonic structure into motion. 


LISTEN HERE:







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