PEASANT YERMO

 

Q: Is there a place for vaguely funky outsider hippie cult oldies music?

A: Yes. Here.

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I don't know how to describe PEASANT YERMO, and typically when that is my conundrum I tend to blather on nonsensically. I'll try to avoid that today and simply suggest that you listen for yourself and draw your on conclusions and comparisons. I hear East Side Story comps, Krautrock, GONG, 4-track bedroom improvisations....and a San Francisco band from the '90s whose name I cannot conjure and thus I will spend days and (hopefully not) weeks trying to remember. I saw them at Kommotion and gave the guitarist free bagels often and they had a lot of amps. Anyway, this is really damn peaceful music and I love it and please focus on "Bullwinkle Sutra." You're welcome. 

HOMESPUN DANCE

ELLEN RIPLEY

 

This one is really tough to describe, but it scratches all of the right itches. You're going to to hear heavy KrautRock sounds and elements of anarchist post/art punk mingling with early '80s Czech punk innovators (think FPB and MICHAEL'S UNCLE) and proto-goth punk. To really listen to "SGR A*" is to hear early PINK FLOYD reincarnated as sonic Scandinavian activists in a reality far removed from any tangible comfort zone. The beauty of ELLEN RIPLEY is that they own everything they touch - it only takes a few bars to forget what you might have thought they were emulating. If this were a just world, then ELLEN RIPLEY would be music for the masses. This is not a just world, so ELLEN RIPLEY is music for oyu. 

BODY PACT

ENFER DORÉAL

 

On 2009's Devotion, French savant Maxime Primault (aka ENFER DORÉAL) both reinvents and confirms the brilliance of drone. Musique Concrete imagined as atmosphere. Simplicity. Patience. The casual tumult of "Amlothi" coming out of the excruciating 13+ minute "Reborn On Assi Ghat." The ability to make the "Rainbow Warrior" sound so incredibly hopeless and beautiful at the same time....this is a special artist. I'm late to the game (this is typically the case) but I am so glad that I have arrived. And now - listen to "Une Respiration D'ombre" in darkness and silence. You'll thank me. 

DEVOTION

LOOSE BLOODY STOOL

 

The genius of LOOSE BLOODY STOOL is that you're going to spend the next fifteen minutes thinking they're going to do something. And they do, but they never....they never finish. The White Tape is all a set-up. Yearning noise and subtly chaotic improvisations that build with no crescendo, each movement just....ends. Rarely do I finish a session so desperately wanting more of whatever I just had. And rarely yo I wish for a longer loose bloody stool. 

THE WHITE TAPE

DESTRUCTION UNIT

 

I heard of DESTRUCTION UNIT through MARSHSTEPPER, who I heard of through AVON LADIES who I stopped to see because they were playing with someone I had already heard of on a trip through the Southwest sometime in the previous decade. All three acts share (or have shared) a member, and all three are completely different (in general and from each other). Also, all three are fucking incredible. There are a ton of DESTRUCTION UNIT recordings and I have yet to hear one that I didn't like (a lot), and 2014's Deep Trip is exactly that; a dark-psyche journey that lands like BAUHAUS and HAWKWIND simultaneously conjured by DIY punks. Probably because that's basically what they fukkn are. To hear a band go this deep and somehow never veer off course is something truly magical. Deep Trip is magic.  

DEEP TRIP

LUKE SWEENEY

 

BOWIE, CUDDLY TOYS, MOTT THE HOOPLE, CHILTON, T. REX, FANTASY....the blueprint has been public domain for decades. Any interested party should know how to make it happen and make it right, so why is it that acts like LUKE SWEENEY only seem to appear once in a blue moon? And why do they always seem to be lurking in the shadows? If this were a self released two song 45 released in 1974....? Well, you know. 

MISS ME? / TIE MAO TO MINED

SNICKERS

 

I could dig into the internet archives and regurgitate the things that pundits pre-me have said about SNICKERS....instead I will leave these sounds here for you. This lands somewhere between bedroom 4-track experimentation, (early) MERCURY REV and wallowing in a murky lake in the middle of America at sunset. What a gloriously damaged collection of sounds. 

ON THE HI-FI VOL.2

ARMAGEDDON EXPERIMENTAL BAND

 

Tempted to just leave this one here and see if y'all know to do the right thing.

So I'm going to just leave this one here.....you know what to do. 

CRIES FROM PLANET EARTH

KASIDAH

 

Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî is a long form poem from the 1800s, presented here by Daniel Higgs with sonic interpretation/s by Buck Curran and Jefferson Zurna. "The Kasidah is essentially a distillation of Sufic thought in the poetic idiom of that mystical tradition." It's Thursday as I write this. 

THE KASIDAH

WHITE DOG

 

I have two options, and both are correct. I can either spend a lot of words trying to dissect sixteen minutes of guitar bursts and blurts and applying a deeper meaning to the sounds on 2009's Beer Guzzle. Or I can just say that WHITE DOG offer made ten minutes of droning, meandering guitar blurts and then played one of the sides backwards because I guess that's what you do when you're from Texas because drugs. You know how good it can be to put on a music and then forget that it's even there because it becomes a part of your environment? That is what Beer Guzzle does. I guess I had a third option, and I chose it. 

BEER GUZZLE

Members of: TOTAL ABUSE, THE SNOBS, MENTAL ABORTION, RAYON BEACH, MUTATING MELTDOWN, BREATHING PROBLEM, CAPTIVE, ARCHITECTS, FINALLY PUNK...but somehow it sounds like this tape was made by two-and-a-half stoners. 

BLUE CHEER MIX TAPE

I ripped two ripping BLUE CHEER sets from 1968 last week, and there was some other shit on the tape that I liked even better. Honestly, one of the BC sets kinds sounded like shit but it's still BLUE CHEER from 1968 so it's worth it, you know? But it was still the other shit that got me all charged up, so here you go: EJERCICIOS ESPIRITUALES (probably '80s, probably Spanish, definitely rocking fuzzed lout garage punk with keyboards and wildly distinct vocals). MINT TATTOO was a BLUE CHEER offshoot I had never heard of but I'm not actively seeking their sole LP from 1969. Then there are four sweet ass '60s lite-psych numbers from a band I can't identify. Mix tapes rule, even and especially when they are accidents. 

BLUE CHEER MIX TAPE

COMP OF NARF !!!

 

More madness from folks at Fag Tapes, this time in the form of a nine track tape compiling nine artists who were (and still are) complete mysteries to me. Improvisational minimal psychedelia from K-9 SNIFFLES and THE BIBS, the latter dropping a weird French film vibe in my lap that I can't seem to shake. A no fidelity live track from WEYES BLOOD flows in to some kind of distant acoustic ramble by MOUNTAINS AND RAINBOWS before ANDREW COLTRANE delivers a damaged layer guitar raga. A deranged grunge dirge from LIVE NOT ON EVIL and then BODY HEAD drops a two chord depression missive. QUILT BOY are the most energetic act on the tape, and their primal garage rock stomp features a guitar that plays chords with such ferocity that it feels like the whole damn thing is a solo....and then THE INTENDED bring your journey to a (merciful?) end with a two minute wash of throbbing harsh noise. It's not an easy listen, but then..."easy" is not exactly what Fag Tapes are known for.

COMP OF NARF III 

CANTOS OSCUROS

 

A stunning collection of obscure tracks put together by the folks at Little Axe in Portland, Cantos Oscuros is an hour long journey into a series of other worlds that left me reeling. MARTHA JEAN-CLAUDE, THOMAS MAPFUMO, ARLETA, FALLING STONES, HILDA MURILLO, NORA HERMOSA.....and a few artists the even the creators couldn't identify. Choice cuts for me are the devastatingly mournful cut from OH JHANG-SAN and a subdued screamer from Tacoma, Washington rock 'n rollers THE WAILERS. Sprinkling a few North American rockers (KEN DAVIS, THE JENSEN SISTERS, CARLA OLSON, THE WAILERS) into a mix filled with artists from Indonesia, Suriname, Cambodia, Jamaica, Greece, Japan, Sweden and Zimbabwe helps to contextualize all of the included music instead of presenting any of the songs as exotic anomalies. But really....? It's a fucking beautiful collection of sound, and that's what I'm here for. 

CANTOS OSCUROS

PURLING HISS

 

This is some of the most glorious damage I've ever come across - timeless freaked out Kraut-esque mostly instrumental jams with a funky monotony that's impossible to describe. There's a moment in "Crocodile Tears" where I start to wonder if Philadelphia's PURLING HISS are doing a little too much until they cross an intention threshold and make it clear that they are going all in.....and then clearly I'm right there with them. You know the music that you put on and think you kinda forget about and then you notice that it hasn't been in the background at all? You notice that you are a part of it? That's the power of Meandering Noodle, and it's formidable. 

MEANDERING NOODLE

CYANIDE TOOTH

 

Got the latest CYANIDE TOOTH joint in the mail from EB a while back, but waiting until I had the time to properly listen before I popped it in...this was a wise move. It was dark, it was quiet (a rarity around my place), it felt right. Psychedelic other world sounds that move the listener light years beyond the realm of simple knob twiddlers - the pieces that make up the first side are absolute mind melters, while the three on the flip act in concert as a calculated come down. Sometimes you just need to get away - and a vacation to the sixth dimension might be exactly what the doctor ordered. 

SIXTH DIMENSION VACATION

SELF-IMMOLATION MUSIC

 

Appropriately dreary desert psych from Leeds. Serious '90s REV + SPIRITUALIZED + LIPS vibes, even more so than on their debut in 2020 (Psychedelic Unknowns was released the following year), and the way SELF-IMMOLATION MUSIC deftly annihilate the simplest riffs is.....something special. There's something truly special about a band who sets their sights on a goal and then surpasses it, and that when these chaps (continue to) do. 

PSYCHEDELIC UNKNOWNS

MILK CULT

 

On the 1994 MULTIPLE CHOICE and the 1995 FUCKFACE tours (same band, different drummers, different band names - it made sense at the time) we listened to basically the same tapes over and over. I'm sure there were others, but the three that I remember are (in order): 

1. A homemade mix that with a full ECONOCHRIST album and BORN AGAINST's Nine Patriotic Hymns

2. A promo copy of BUZZOV•EN's Sore

3. MILK CULT's 1992 opus Love God

I'm sure there were other tapes, but these are the ones that will stick with me forever. I can talk to you about MILK CULT from a position of ignorance if you prefer, but basically it was a side project from two of the STEEL POLE BATHTUB dudes heavy on beats and samples. And I still love this shit - not (just) because it's good (and it's really good), but because it reminds me of a then. Reminds me of a time when sometimes we did stupid shit and didn't even know it was stupid, and sometimes we did stupid shit because we fucking did what the fuck we wanted to do. Dip into MILK CULT if you like, and take a trip back into (a different) time with me. It's nice there. There are jerks and assholes and bad people still - but they are more abstract and distant. They are other (even though we still hate them), but they just don't fucking matter, you dig? 

BURN OR BURY

GO LIKE THIS

 

No one does it like the West Bay Coalition, not then and certainly not now. I only saw GO LIKE THIS once - it was towards the end of their run and I had just moved back to the Bay, and it was a good reminder that it was good to be back. To watch Kindred and Frank riff off of each other was truly something special, and these songs come off like a culmination (and evolution? a progression?) of (or from?) the bands that came before them. Song construction is just way fukkn out there, and it admittedly takes a listens to really let tracks like "Dan Hogan" really sink in....but when they do? PLUTOCRACY with organs, soundtrack vibes, early aughts heavy alt and bizarro prog...fukk dude. It works, and no one does it like the West Bay Coalition...that's it. 

VATOS LOCOS EASTSIDERS HONKY TONK GRIND VOL.666

•••••••

WOVEN SKULL // NACHT UND NEBEL

 

From deep in Satan's Pimp comes this two track offering from two previously unknown to me acts. Twenty minutes of live psychedelic expanse from WOVEN SKULL with a crushing low end minimal noise experience from NACHT UND NEBEL on the flip. Both deserve more time than one can give...but that's what repeated listens are for.

SUMMER TOUR TWENTY THIRTEEN

GUN OUTFIT

 

Be careful when you start sifting through the formidable collection of sounds GUN OUTFIT have been responsible for the past decade plus. Dreary PNW melancholy and NY No Wave dissonance join forces, join hands, and drop the needle on Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and you still never know what you're going to get from one release to the next. The band's legacy and output are well documented justifiably revered so there's no need to throw my words onto the pile...but I respect the band's ability to exist between and in spite of categorization. This one came from 2012, but there's so much more where this came from. 

GUN OUTFIT