The album kicks off with another classic haunted track... in which you can hear some weird almost freeform electronic tape hiss (?!) and Jandek's foot stomp, that also seems to have been accidentally fractalized into something greater than its parts by shitty technology. Then everything fucking EXPLODES and IMPLODES in Dylan-Live-1966-bootleg-proportions on ‘European Jewel’, featuring the funniest Rick Danko-meets-Mingus bass impersonation ever put onto tape! Jandek's guitar playing is getting choppier and more manic on this record until the freak-folk classic ‘Nancy Sings’ comes out of fucking nowhere for no reason causing time to momentarily stop — amazing what a woman's touch can do! The rest of the album noodles around aimlessly for a bit, but is no less ‘exploratory’, with some nice, frustrated steel-string buzz/drone on trax like ‘Blue Blister’ (speaks for itself really). It's interesting to note that despite the record being the most 'fractured' of his albums so far, Jandek's tapping foot is heard on nearly all tracks, proving there is some method to the meshigarse!
Jandek - Chair Beside A Window (1982)
Jandek - Follow Your Footsteps (1986)
The solo numbers with acoustic 12-string and intense vocals are hard to top, but the drum-guitar duo that starts the first side has its own kind of ambience that is also priceless. What we have here is a record but more than that, part of a career that comes to us almost rolled up in a time capsule. It is about only itself and makes everything else irrelevant.
Jandek - Blue Corpse
If there’s a single Jandek record to own, I would strongly recommend this one...it stands as a rare moment of clarity within his typically willful obliteration of blues and folk standards. Blue Corpse constantly returns to citations of killing time, falling into the river, and pining for lost love. Jandek’s naturally melancholic wisp of a voice mopes through each of these songs, presenting itself as an embodiment of his internal gloom. Of course, these could be allegorical fictions and metaphoric dramas. Musically, there is also a considerable change in the Jandek approach [here] as his solo guitar work is principally acoustic and actually follows recognizably folkish chord progressions.
JT IV - Cosmic Lightning
Chicago's most notorious and elusive loner punk from the golden era, J.T. IV has been evading the spotlight since his first primordial crawl back in the late 1970s that spawned his unearthly brand of psychotic desperation. I became familiar with two compilation tracks that instantly peaked my interest ("Out of The Can" on Homework vol. 1 and "Death Trip" on Staring Down the Barrel), his name was met with blank stares along with obscurities such as The Crucified, The Exit, Razer, and Pistol Whip, when we went over the list of notable late 70s / early 80s band names we'd gathered while researching the Chicago Punk History article a few years back that ran in issue 11 of Horizontal Action Magazine. While "Out of The Can" straddled the fine line between irresistibly catchy strum-along and folky beard-scratching fare, "Death Trip" reared an uncontrollable (and most likely unintentional) punk ugliness that contrasted into the remarkable repertoire of one of the most important underground music figures in the Chicago area at the time. It's evident in these two polarizing styles that John Henry Timmis (aka J.T. IV) was holding onto a delicate balance of twisted internal pop sap with a lashing and bestial ulterior motive, as he brazenly meshed trashy punked-out glam, creepy outsider folk, and noisy basement experimentation into a pattern of controlled chaos that defies all feasible geographical logic. With only one seemingly solid friendly musical relationship in the loosely-knit Chicago "scene" with Sundog Summit's Lee Groban at the time, everything about the J.T. IV saga seem to perfectly encapsulate the "loner/outsider punk" motif, as a poignant example.
As the story goes, Timmis was institutionalized in 1976 at Menninger Clinic for schizophrenia, and from the sound of "In The Can," it's evident that his inner torment from living life in the gutters, struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism, truncated his mental state and he literally has the songs to prove it. His debut single, "Waiting For The CTA" saw the light of day in 1980, and like the rest of the J.T. IV releases, was produced in a tiny run of less than 200 copies, thereby isolating his influence almost by default. The song still rings true as anyone who's ever had to wait on the buses or trains here knows, and plays a cheesy homage to The Velvet Underground's "Waiting For My Man" with a clowny yet perfect sax track. But it's just the tip of the iceberg as tracks like "Monitors" "Out of the Can," and "Song for Suzanne" really cut beneath the surface of the tortured soul at hand and reveal a genuine vulnerable honesty that seems so out of place in today's music. Timmis died in obscurity in rural Pennsylvania in 2002, with very few people aware of his music or his story, yet with the splendid job on this fine reissue package, I'd assume all that is about to change with the new availability of the Cosmic Lightning album.
Source: Victim of Time
If anyone has a rip of the DVD that came with this album I would be forever grateful if you could share it!
Gary Higgins - Red Hash
Red Hash is simply one of the best folk albums from the 1970s and was something of a lost masterpiece until Drag City re-issued it a few years back. Gary Higgins is criminally underrated... or maybe his excellence has reached redundancy. The composition and presentation of the songs is impeccable and Higgins' guitar playing is incredibly emotive and the range of emotions present on this album is absolutely stunning.
Factums - The Sistrum
Full-length follow-up to last year’s LP on the recently resurrected Sitlbreeze label from this band that vaguely circles in the A-Frames/Intelligence/Fruit Bats orbit. Critics have compared Factums to Tronics, Cabaret Voltaire, or Pere Ubu’s more chaotic moments also citing some heavy Kraut influenced flashes.
Buy It Here
Dead C - Secret Earth
The elegance of howling guitar noise was fully realized when The Dead C appeared. For over twenty years now, the trio has continually redefined what rock music is and can sound like, and have inspired Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Wolf Eyes, and Comets On Fire, not to mention the current fertile underground noise scene.
The Dead C is the ultimate blues band. But rather than departing from the heartfelt singing of the African-American South, they express the tenets of alienation in society with unrelenting force-- a focused soundtrack to accompany Knut Hamsun novels, Samuel Beckett plays, and Ingmar Bergman films. Michael Morley's monotonic vocal moan anchors the inherent isolation of our modern world--nothing is more earnest, nothing sounds so lost.
In its career, The Dead C has oscillated between two poles. Recent albums explore drones, electronic loops, and musique concrete. However, their new album, Secret Earth, proselytizes oceanic feedback, catastrophic drumming, and a return to the cripple rock blasts of their early material.
Along the axis of The Dead C's recordings, Secret Earth sounds like it was created between Eusa Kills and Harsh '70s Reality. It contains a straightforward (for them) expression of sound, while continually pushing their vast improvisational techniques into a realm of subconscious genius.
Sapat - Mortoise & Tenon
Sapat is sort of a black sheep among the trash-punk of recent Siltbreeze releases. It's a pretty clean-sounding record in comparison-- not to mention owing more to krautrock than punk or noise. But it still veers between extremes in unpredictable and often gorgeous ways, using instruments from country to classical as they quietly shift the face of rural America like a rust-belt expansion pack for Populous. "Phalange" is hazy ambient from solitary keyboard tones, while "Maat Fount" builds from a simple riff to inevitable full-band climax with droning strings and back-porch plucking. "Dark Silver" is a different band entirely, with huge ascending guitar riffs over witchy vocals and a tribal full-band throb. Common and comfortable ways to "jam", perhaps, but what Sapat add to it is subtle and striking, from the quivering bed of strings in "Root Bulb" to the skull-splitting phase tone that slices through the wah-pedal piddling of "Lovely & Free".
Folk Implosion - Pole Position 7"
The very under rated lead-off single for Dare to Be Surprised that captures everything that is great about this band into one concise statement. Also featuring an acoustic version of the EP track "Opening Day" and the great surf instrumental "Summer's Over"