No more half-hearted apologies about not posting. All two of you who read this blog are just going to have to get what you deserve, which is an uneven posting schedule. As pretty much anybody who ever talks to me about music says: Max I want to hear more noise. And why the hell not? Here it is babies. The second Black Eyes record starts where their first one left off, incorporating two bass players, two drummers and lots of falsetto screaming and putting a nice glossy layer of guitar wreckage on top. This album adds some ugly Ornette Coleman-style saxophone shrill too. Black Eyes is so awesome. They are so good. Black Eyes is so good.
Sounds like: Harry Pussy, Derek Bailey, Marc Ribot
Some more weird solo guitar 'cause I know everyone loves it as much as I do. I've been on kind of a kick lately. Bill Orcutt used to play in a 1990's noise band called (ahem...) Harry Pussy. I won't pretend that I listen to much noise but it's a good starting point for trying to figure out Bill Orcutt's new stuff as an acoustic musician. His guitar only has 4 detuned strings and I would say that he "rattles" on it as much as plays. In fact it's not entirely clear that he actually knows how to play guitar - as this Dusted review points out, he just sounds like Bill Orcutt. Sometimes melodic, sometimes furious, and all times challenging, How the Thing Sings ends up conveying a lot of different emotions despite it's austere approach. His previous LP A New Way to Pay Old Debts seemed liked it was an obvious next step for the former rocker, a stripped down version of pure ear splitting noise. This is more subtle, the space in between notes more pronounced.
Here's why I decided to write this up: I saw him this year at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and it blew my mind. Here's the setup: 300,000 people converging on Golden Gate Park for a good 'ol throwback to the down home music of the south, complete with a dried-up Robert Plant singing Black Dog (an octave lower cause he's old as shit) and fat, drunk moms and dads bumping into each other on the way to the Banjo Stage. One of the organizers (maybe somebody with a sense of humor) booked Orcutt at the small stage near the front entrance as the last act, meaning that most of the crowd got to listen to him as they walked to their cars. For such a huge festival the crowd in front of him was sparse and I think he was as bewildered as anyone about his presence. And it was awesome. For a festival that prides itself on emotional music, he fit right in.
Genre: Experimental, Solo Guitar, Noise, Minimalist
Sounds like: Lounge Lizards, John Zorn
Marc Ribot is a weird semi-classical guitar player who switches genres enough that he's pretty hard to nail down. For anybody that's a fan of Tom Wait's stranger, "lounge band from hell" sound - a lot of that comes from this guy. He plays with a lot of other well known musicians (Elvis Costello, John Lurie) in a variety of functions and plays everything from bitchin' Cuban music to balloon-on-strings noise. I was really tempted to just do a huge link dump but those get overwhelming so I'll start with this - it's his most recent release and it sticks to him playing thin, haunting instrumental guitar songs. It's good music for a rainy day and really shows off his style. What I like is that while he's a well trained player, he knows when to settle down and go for mood too. The video I linked below isn't actually from this album but it's awesome and should be posted. It's cribbed from the Scorsese Blues documentary which was mostly full of well-known wankers covering classic blues songs in a way that would make the original artists spin in the ground at lathe-speed. Packed away on the extras disc is this video - Ribot reinterpreting Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark was the Night" and KILLING it.
