St James Infirmary - A Sound Is A Sound cdr

I thought St James Infirmary, the project of G.W. Lang played mostly in looped ambient styles, but this is a real change, and an excellent one at that. On this superb cdr you get lysergic 1970s psychedelic/kosmische rock, with equal parts Can (the voice kind of reminds me of Damo Suzuki at times, and insistent motorik rhythms prevail) and Pink Floyd-Meddle era, with a touch of post-punk and garage. On this one, it seems that St James Infirmary has turned into a quartet and it all seems to have been recorded live. I hope that SJI continue making music in that vein, although I've already expressed my fondness for other recordings of his. Oh, and the cover kind of reminds me of Andy Warhol's "Mao." 2019 cdr on Wormhole World, whose bandcamp is always a place to find new exciting releases to spend money on and support.

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St James Infirmary - Affidavits Of Unease

Isn't the guy on the cover identical to Lenin? St. James Infirmary returns with a fifty-minute epic and elevating journey of kosmische-inspired drone. 29-minute first track "The Great Anger Approaches" builds on an anthemic medieval accordion melody, with an unforgiving high-pitched guitar loop tuning perfectly with the accordion, and bringing to mind the finest moments of Ashtray Navigations, while also having perhaps a sense of Skullflower's latter-day obsession with sustained guitar noise. Track two, "Default Jazz Afternoon," is a completely different story. Based on a midi saxophone melody, and an additional synth theme, this is a weird Musick To Play In the Dark-era-Coil-meets-arcade-games-midi-music. I picture this either as a Sega Master System game theme, or background hypnagogic music for carpet commercials on a very early-morning schedule, that could easily be sampled by James Ferraro, were he to ever return to his earlier hypnagogic masterpieces. Lovin' this, and so should you, so go to Wormhole World's bandcamp and support!

TQ #17 & St. James Infirmary - Answers To Questions Unasked

New TQ issue is dedicated at length to the latest edition of the annual Tusk festival in Gateshead. Having never attended it since I live in less developed parts of Europe I like all these reports (one is this, the other one is from the semi-revived Radio Free Midwich); for one, when I was a child living in the non-Western part of Europe, and thus not being able to attend many gigs due to the high costs of transport for artists (= extremely expensive tickets), one of my favorite parts in reading rock and metal magazines was concert reviews. Secondly, with underground experimental music festivals, reading reports is a great way to discover new artists, and to slightly uncover the mystique of the No-Audience Undeground heroes you are never going to see live in your place of residence. A video of Smut during her impeccable Tusk performance was particularly such a good introduction. So we got live reviews of the great Vampyres and Liminal Haze, Lea Bertucci/Double Bass Crossfade, and the NWW Mail Art Action by Andy Wood of TQ and Chow Mwng accompanied by David Howcroft of No-Audience Undeground Tapes (I have referred to this project here), and of the Tusk film programme, interviews with Robert-Ridley Shackleton (check out his latest piece of junk gunk funk on Crow Versus Crow), G.W. Land (aka St. James Infirmary), and Ceramic Hobs, and a review of Drooping Finger's Arthur's Hell cd (Drooping Finger plays heavy ambient electronics, check some tracks here).

As always TQ comes with a giveaway cdr, and this issue carries St. James Infirmary's Answers To Questions Unasked. Never heard of the project before, so the cd and the interview have been enlightening; we're talking diverse experimental music, mainly on the heavy ambient/drone side with a strong psychedelic edge, as well as some surprising moments, as the weird black metal outbreak on track #1, and the fizzy electronic oriental psychedelia of track #3. Good stuff, will need to check out more.

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