The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Musique de Film Imaginé (2015)
El penúltimo lanzamiento de The Brian Jonestown Massacre es un álbum en el que las huestes de Anton Newcombe han abandonado (supongo que momentáneamente) la lisergia Pop de la mayor parte de sus trabajos para adentrarse en algo así como una banda sonora de un film imaginario. Eso sí, inspirado por las películas de culto del cine francés a las que Anton rinde pleitesía.
Cortes sencillos, con pocos acordes en su mayor parte y de largos desarrollos que nos recuerdan lo mejor de la trayectoria de TBJM pero adaptándolos a la instrumentación de esta “banda sonora”. Disfrutable aunque no sea lo mejor en su producción.
“The Brian Jonestown Massacre always took a rather arty approach to their garage-spiked psychedelia, so it stands to reason that as the rock side of their personality begins to fade, the art side comes in to help fill out the spaces. That certainly seems to be the case with 2015’s Musique de Film Imaginé, which practically abandons rock & roll altogether in favor of a suite of languid mood pieces inspired by Anton Newcombe‘s love of French film scores. While Newcombe has name-checkedJean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut as inspirations for this album, Musique de Film Imaginésounds more like it would suit some Gallic thriller from the ’60s about lovers caught up in a nefarious blackmail scheme, or maybe an early Jean Rollin picture about elegant vampires in the City of Lights. The melodies are elemental but powerfully evocative, while the arrangements (scored for a small ensemble with brass, woodwinds, and strings) and production mimic the tone of European pop and film music. While there’s a faint hint of kitsch here and there, most of the time this is a sincere and honestly effective journey into a world where sounds merge with images, or at the very least, help the pictures do some of the emotional heavy lifting. Musique de Film Imaginé certainly isn’t the work of a dilettante; Newcombe has clearly done his homework, and understands the nuts and bolts of film scoring and the dynamics of a proper arrangement, enough so that he’d probably be a fine choice to write the music for some retro-style art film. Perhaps Musique de Film Imaginé is intended as a résumé item for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, but if it is, it’s a fine sample of Anton Newcombe‘s work, and anyone who thinks Take It from the Man! or Strung Out in Heaven represented the limits of his abilities will encounter a pleasant surprise with this album” (All Music)
Facebook / Cómpralo-Purchase
Courtney Barnett: Sometimes i sit and think, and sometimes i just sit (Milk! Records, 2015)
La zurdita australiana Courtney Barnett publicó esta primavera el que es propiamente dicho su álbum de debut, un disco en el que, además de exhibir un torrente vocal realmente impresionante, la chica saca a relucir todo su talento compositivo y literario en once cortes en el que nos muestran un paseo entre el Pop-Garajero, sonidos decididamente nineties y algunos cortes en el que la chica relaja algo sus emociones (y son precisamente aquellos que nos dejan menos sorprendidos).
Y lo cierto es que es un buen disco, que se digiere fácilmente y transcurre plácido lo mismo entre guitarrazos a lo Patti Smith que a delicadezas tipo Sheryl Crow o a recitados Loureedianos.
“Take what you want from me,” Courtney Barnett repeats near the end of “Kim’s Caravan”, a highlight from her new album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. That bit of exasperation is surrounded by some clever observational lines and a fiery guitar solo, but it sits at the song’s core, a reminder that Barnett is more than a Seinfeld-ian joker pointing out life’s little quirks. Like Stephen Malkmus or Kurt Vonnegut, Barnett looks at the mundane with a skewed perspective, turning it over in her mind and transmogrifying it into something extraordinary.
But back to that key moment from “Kim’s Caravan”. After letting out an instrumental sigh of empty-set bass and astral harmonies, the lyricist so notable for her real world observations gets a little surreal: “Satellites on the ceiling/ I can see Jesus and she’s smiling at me/ All I wanna say is.” And the song ends there. Barnett says a lot over the course of Sometimes I Sit…, but at this emotional climax, she leaves a thought to linger. Though her output to date has been uniformly strong, her formula could be seen as predictable: talk-sung eccentric looks at the real world over slouchy indie rock tracks. But this moment without language acts as a charming moment of raw honesty, a look behind the curtain of her witty turns of phrase.
That’s not to say that Barnett has been projecting herself as an infallible social commentator, always ready with a quip. On the excellent lead single “Pedestrian at Best”, she warns us not to think too highly of her: “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” she groans. “Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you.” Unsurprisingly, the track is also one of the album’s scruffier moments, the guitar distortion and burnt edges around her vocals matching her forceful delivery. She doubles down on “Debbie Downer”, noting that she’s “not fishing for your compliments” before calling herself boring and neurotic. But her summary of life (“We had some lows, we had some mids, we had some highs”) is the sort of “no shit” understanding of the world that largely gets passed over for the extremes of all lows or mostly highs.
Barnett clearly doesn’t always take herself or her surroundings seriously, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have serious things to say about both. The beautiful “Depreston” ostensibly details the singer’s search for a home in the suburbs of Melbourne, but it unlocks deep feelings about aging, mortality, and memory. There’s something telling in the switch from living near coffee shops to having her own percolator; the transition into adulthood can be seen in the art of homemade lattes as well as the suburban move itself. The house she tours has a two-car garage and pressed metal ceilings, but the things she latches onto (“the handrail in the shower,” a photo of a young man in Vietnam) are the remnants of an older person who left the place “a deceased estate.” Though the world often boils value down to property itself, she focuses on how property represents individual people. It’s with a wink and a tear, then, that Barnett repeats a line about how those memories can be burned away by a cruel world: “If you’ve got a spare half a million/ You could knock it down and start rebuilding.”
Some of the tracks revel in their simplicity. After spending the majority of the twanging “Aqua Profunda!” describing an attempt at impressing a fellow swimmer in the lap pool, Barnett describes how her lack of athleticism caused her to sink “like a stone/ Like a first owner’s home loan.” Later, “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” finds her brain circling a decision that many struggle with on Friday nights: “I wanna go out but I wanna stay home.” She details a crumbling hotel room on “An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in New York)” in the way that only an insomniac longing for their significant other halfway across the world could.
Barnett doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal, but the beautifully rendered, poetic observations on Sometimes I Sit… might just put one under her anyway. Luckily, she doesn’t seem like the type of person that would be changed by that sort of experience. If anything, it’ll just give her a fresh set of strange situations with which to draw out new realizations of the world’s absurd depth” (Consequence of Sound)
Facebook / Cómpralo-Purchase
Postcode: The Dandelion Radio Session (2015)
“We were honoured to be asked to record a session for Dandelion Radio by Mark Whitby, a long-time supporter of the band. This is the result, originally broadcast throughout September on Mark’s show atdandelionradio.com. If you’re unfamiliar with Dandelion Radio, it’s an internet-based radio station inspired by the late, great John Peel and we recommend that you check it out.
The session contains a new version of ‘Reds’, originally found on 2013’s ‘The ZebrATP EP’ and the first electric recording of ‘Donny’, an acoustic rendition of which featured on ‘Zebracoustic’ back in 2010. The set is completed by three brand new songs, two of which had never been performed live before they were recorded for this project”
Facebook / Descarga legal, pon el precio-Legal download, name the price
Heather: Inside (Famelic, Single, 2015)
Los barceloneses Heather acaban de editar el que es su sencillo de debut, este Inside, un sano ejercicio de Emo-Hardcore de ritmos urgentes y guitarras al punto de distorsión requerido para asimilar como un gran tema del mejor Noise.
Facebook / Cómpralo-Purchase Vinyl
¡Mahalo!: Funny songs that make you bored (Ep, 2015)
Surf-Pop con algo de aderezo de comida mejicana y ecos garajeros. Vienen de Madrid y tienen pinta de ser muy divertidos.
Facebook / Descarga legal, pon el precio-Legal download, name the price
The Legends: The embrace (Labrador, Single, 2015)
Muy muy lejos de lo que The Legends pudieron llegar a representar, se nos presenta este nuevo sencillo, el tema que cierra el que será nuevo álbum de los nórdicos. Un corte de Synth-Pop sin absolutamente nada reseñable…
” It’s a melancholy sliver of electro pop with a hopeful core” (Under The Radar)
Tara King th. & Halasan Bazar: 8 (Ep, 2015)
“Said by Halasan Bazar & Tara King : “The lead single – “TK. 16 pt 1” have had a long journey, deemed unfit for the album itself, it was also worked up during the sessions for “8”, but appears only in the piano/drums-driven ballad “TK16pt2” on the record. Driven by an aggressive bass-riff & a dusty Farfisa drum machine it has a whole different feel to it than everything else on the record, and could not work in the cowboy sunset atmosphere of “8”. However, after the record was done and released, we kept coming back to this song, listening to different mixes & textures, and instrumental versions & disco remixes kept appearing, and it became a live favorite when the two bands toured france & scandinavia fall 2015. A year on it finally hits the streets, with two remixes to accompany it”
Jacco Gardner: Hypnophobia (Polyvinyl, 2015)
French Cinema
El segundo disco del holandés Jacco Gardner, amén de confirmarlo como una de las promesas (cumplidas) del sonido Psicodélico, nos presenta un trabajo algo más amable que el de su debut, en tanto que nos podemos encontrar en él con trazos cinemáticos a los que Jacco se ha acercado con gusto: Before the dawn, Grey lanes, Hypnophobia, All over… nos dejan la sensación de encontrarnos, por momentos, en una película de culto de los años setenta (a mí esa es la sensación que me deja).
Además de ello, nos encontramos con las clásicas referencias Psicodélicas del tipo Left Banke, Zombies, Syd Barrett e incluso alguna incursión en el Raga vía The Byrds, al Folk más lisérgico o al Kraut.
Lo cierto es que Hypnophobya resulta ser un trabajo muy ameno, muy entretenido, muy dentro de los cánones más Pop del nuevo sonido neopsicodélico del que muchas bandas han optado por explorar por terrenos más densos o incluso desviarse por las sendas más comerciales y más ochenteras (sí, me refiero a Tame Impala). Jacco Gardner posee aún esa frecura que le acerca al punto de vista más Pop y más fácilmente reconocible como un músico de canciones. Y de éstas hay muchas en este segundo trabajo.
“Maybe the title of Jacco Gardner’s Hypnophobia finally explains how he’s been able to master so many instruments (he plays everything but drums on his recordings), in addition to putting together a spot-on paisley psych impression: He’s working all those late hours, afraid to sleep. But if that’s the case, the fear doesn’t show through; the Dutch psych popper’s sophomore album is more Wes Andersonian ’60s pastiche than Nightmare on Elm Street terror.
Here, Gardner adds a few more tricks to his already deep toolbox. Tellingly, he reached out to Julian House, an artist known in the music world for working with Stereolab and Broadcast on their packaging, to design the album’s cover. That burbling, twee electro-prog shines on the eight-minute “Before the Dawn”, in which Gardner’s imitative power dips gleefully down into the uncanny valley.
The resonant bass and curtains of glockenspiel weave together into a swirling core on the album’s title track. Throughout, Gardner develops glistening psychedelic tunnels between baroque pop hooks. While the hooks and narrative structures were the greatest strengths of his 2013 debut, Cabinet of Curiosities, they smear considerably on Hypnophobia. The emotionally salient tales sink almost unreachably far down into the glittery psychedelia.
Hypnophobia doesn’t grow much out of the groundwork Gardner’s laid on past releases, and neither does it hide its deeply studied inspirations. But when you sound as natural and masterful in that indebtedness as Gardner does here, it’s hard to deride the homage. Though he pushes deep into that professional retro sound, he’s exploring caves that have very little darkness, and the continued warmth and prettiness loses some of its shine due to the lack of contrast. Hypnophobia is a pleasant listen, but it passes by as quickly as a warm breeze on a spring afternoon” (Consequence of Sound)
Facebook / Cómpralo-Purchase
Chatam Rise/The Lightshines: We are the Sun (Picture in my Ear, 2015)
Tienes un puñado de canciones que te las remezcla Mark Gardener, tienes una banda de colegas que llevan la misma onda… y sobre todo tienes un sonido de auténtica pureza Psicodélica–Espacial.
Chatham Rise y The Lightshines publicaron este verano este álbum compartido para un sello especializado en sonoridades psicotrópicas y sustancias sólo digeribles para oídos hechos a la lisergia…
Facebook / Cómpralo-Purchase
Rhythm Scholar: Blondie – Rapture (Rhythm Scholar Recurring Dream Remix, 2015)
Nuestro amigo Rhythm Scholar ha realizado un esfuerzo remezclador para presentarnos estas seis remixes del clásico de Blondie: Rapture, un original de 1982 que se presta perfectamente a esa ampliación musical de la que un talentoso como Rhythm es capaz de realizar, actualizándolo convenientemente para los tiempos que corren utilizando para ello cantidad de samplers.
Para la ocasión, nos presenta media docena de versiones entre las que destaca una particularmente apropiada para Halloween y que presentaremos en su momento…
A Shoreline Dream: This is a machine gun (Single, 2015)
“A Shoreline Dream has been best described as creating “melodipsych night music” by combining lush sampled textures, wall of sound dynamics, and vocals layered like a synth, similar in vein to bands such as Cocteau Twins, Porcupine Tree and Sigur Rós“
Yast: Together forever (Single, 2015)
Un título un tanto previsible para un sencillo en el que nos reencontramos con esa manera de hacer tan de los ochentas: frases de sintetizadores y guitarras con mucho efecto por detrás. Las influencias son fáciles de rastrear, pero Together forever nos ofrece ciertas emociones.
Flamaradas: Pasaje entre las cañas (Producciones Doradas, El Genio Equivocado, 2015)
“Hay un espacio que se descubre como casi rural o casi urbano. Existe a las afueras de las ciudades, y cualquiera que lo conozca lo imagina con facilidad. Casi rural o casi urbana es la música que contiene “Pasaje entre las cañas”, el nuevo disco de Flamaradas, bañado por las orillas del Llobregat a su paso por sus huertos traseros que cohabitan con sus últimas fábricas. Rural o urbano, ambiente de periferia al fin y al cabo el que se estampa en este pasaje, entre la crudeza de la voz de Daniel Flamaradas y los coros aliviantes de las Llamitas (Lorena Álvarez y Eli Lloveras), las guitarras de Germán Carrascosa y las de Daniel Granados(Tarántula), quien también se apunta a los tambores, los teclados de Raúl Navas y el bajo acompasado de Nacho Gago. Una banda en toda regla que marca ese devenir templado y fuerte de río rehabilitado, de silencio y trompicones industriales.
Este disco es un guiño al desarraigo identitario, un batiburrillo de influencias tamizadas por las dificultades técnicas de quien solo ha tocado disfrutando. Rumba africana con coros de gasolinera en “Pasaje entre las cañas”, como un Elvis en Las Vegas en “Los amigos de la plaza” o el misterio de Ry Cooder a su paso por el Ebro en “Se me echaron a reír”, donde la sutileza se contamina de una lírica tan profunda como anormal, “ahora todos se han callado y se sienten más valientes”. El golpe en la mesa llega con “El puño piensa”, contra “los que gozan el trino de un mirlo deshuesado”, para luego seguir navegando a golpe de corrientes en “Piel de piedra”, una bossa nova metropolitana que pajarea, “Gaviotas blancas”, en la que cambia de río y se acerca a un conocido barrio sevillano desde el Guadalquivir. “Y es que a todos nos ilumina Un sol diferente”. Y en la desembocadura del disco, mezclando aguas dulces y saladas, “Pararrayos” y “Tricerátops”, la sombra de un animal grande y reposado nadando en las playas de un río que ahora es mar” (Prensa)
Facebook / Descarga legal gratuita-Free legal download
Cloakroom: Further out (Run for Cover Records, 2015)
Densidad guitarrera, riffs pesados y pedales de overdrive a muy alto volumen. A grandes rasgos, es la esencia del sonido de este trío de Boston que se hace llamar Cloakroom. Si quieres encontrar sus influencias, puedes encontrarlas en el Emo o en el Slowcore. Ellos mismos se han autodefinido como “stoner emo“. Escúchalos y juzga por ti mismo…
“(…) Most likely, it’s himself, but his lethargic delivery becomes a part of the hook: on “Asymmetrical”, Martin describes suburban, drunken intransigence as a night out where he, “Took a long drive/ Got a few dents/ Told a couple jokes at your expense”; the major-key melody appears to be mocking the target, as Martin’s words drip with both dejection and derision, a perfect match of content and delivery.
Cloakroom once described themselves as “stoner emo” as a joke and they’ll probably spend the rest of their career getting shit for it. It’s clearly meant as a joke, the punchline being the obvious incompatibility of its two parts. The latter is defined by anxious rhythms, a tenuous connection to straight edge, brazen, high-register melodies and a desperate desire for human connection amidst a litany of misunderstanding and communication failures. Meanwhile, a band named Sleep made one of stoner rock’s formative documents, which just so happens to be called Dopesmoker and sounds exactly like what you think it does. To the extent that their turbid, somewhat timid debut EP Infinity couldn’t achieve, Further Out presents those genres existing as a continuum rather than in conflict: Cloakroom are driven by a distinct Midwestern despair and disillusion, they just don’t make music that reflects it. Instead, they hit a very specific catharsis wrung from exhaustion; at a certain point, you’ve earned your place on the couch after a hard day at the factory, the office, or just enduring a line at the grocery store, and you figure you may as well just spark up and crank up the amps” (Pitchfork)
The Citradels: A night of contemporary feedback music (2015)
Los mantras, los sitares y la actitud absolutamente arrebatada y Psicodélica son los protagonistas absolutos de este trabajo de The Citradels, como dije en otra ocasión, el nombre más apropiado para una banda de este tipo.
“The album has been slowly put together over the past year in between recording our other albums. With a break in playing and recording, we were able to finish this album, which is mostly based around acoustic sounds, experimentation and the idea of making a conceptual album based around a poorly executed meditation session. One that would leave you out of pocket and empty minded. So bow your head, light another incense stick and prepare your aura to get fucked, cause here comes The Citradels”
Facebook / Legal download, name the price-Descarga legal, pon el precio
The Black Ryder: The door behind the door (The Anti-Machine Machine, 2015)
En la reseña de Pitchfork, su autor lo dice claramente: The Black Ryder son una banda fuera de su tiempo. De alguna manera así es. El dúo es una agrupación de esas que se satisface en llevar la contraria a cualquier moda musical imperante en el momento. Con su Ambient-Pop de tintes Psicodélicos, TBR se emparentan más con Spiritualized que con cualquier banda neo-shoegazer de las que podamos encontrar en nuestros días.
Y un aviso: conforme avanzan los cortes de su segundo álbum, The door behind the door, el ambiente es cada vez más claustrofóbico y axfisiante, más sombrío y oscuro. Pero, inexplicablemente, algo te empuja a querer seguir escuchándolo. Será cosa de la inspiración…
“In some ways, the gap between the Black Ryder‘s cult-favorite debut Buy the Ticket, Take the Rideand its follow-up The Door Behind the Door feels even bigger than the five years that separate them.Aimee Nash and Scott Van Ryper went through some major changes during that time, including their divorce and a move to Los Angeles, and these songs reflect what they weathered together. The talent they showed for crafting atmospheres is even more impressive here: thanks to the lavish production and arrangements, The Door Behind the Door is crisper and more massive-sounding than its predecessor. However, as they polish their narcotic haze, the Black Ryder sacrifice some of the rock & roll grit that made Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride so captivating. On songs such as “Until the Calm of Dawn” and “Throwing Stones,” Von Ryper and Nash downplay walls of distortion in favor of strings, keyboards, church bells, gospel choirs, and other grand touches that make this album the Ladies and Gentlemen… We Are Floating in Space to their debut’s Psychocandy. The Door Behind the Door‘s best moments show that the Black Ryder‘s songwriting has taken even bigger steps forward than their sound. At times, they seemed content to let Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride‘s sultry, sullen vibe do most of the heavy lifting; this time around, there’s a clarity to Nash and Von Ryper’s melodies and lyrics that makes them that much more resonant. Von Ryper is lovelorn but not bitter on “The Going Up Was Worth the Coming Down” and “Santaria” (which comes the closest to Buy the Ticket‘s hypnotic churn), and while Nash is never less than alluring on the love scene-ready “Seventh Moon,” the way she coos “we could destroy and conquer all” on “Let Me Be Your Light” hints that her sensuality isn’t all sweetness. The duo saves its biggest departure for last, and the 12-minute, string-driven instrumental “(Le Dernier Sommeil) The Final Sleep” may be too indulgent and too different for some fans. Nevertheless, The Door Behind the Door takes the essence of the Black Ryder‘s music in directions that distinguish them from the like-minded bands that sprung up in their absence” (All Music)
Mystery Flavors: Demo (2015)
No. No conozco nada de estos Mystery Flavors, tan sólo que he encontrado en Bandcamp este Demo, un sencillo de dos temas que me subliman bastante: Byrds-Watchers, algo de Psicodelia suave y ese espíritu lo suficientemente jangle como para interesarnos.
Dead Professional: Young hardware (Ep, 2015)
John Harouff, o lo que es lo mismo: Dead Professional, continúa provocándonos regresiones placenteras a lo mejor de la Americana y del Power-Pop de finales de los setenta para ofrecernos en este segundo Ep titulado Young Hardware buenas píldoras concentradas de ese jarabe recetado por doctores tan ilustres como Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Springsteen o Nick Lowe.
The Lemons: Cherry Lemonade (Single, 2015)
Sencillo absolutamente veraniego el que nos ofrecen The Lemons con Cherry Lemonade, un corte hedonista y vitalista a partes iguales: “Everybuddy’s a Lemon”
The JangleBox Mixtape, LoFi-Dj
Mixtapes
The JangleBox en Facebook
The JangleBox en Twitter
The JangleBox en MySpace
Jangle-Comments
Jangle-Visits
Feed The Jangle
The JangleBox, 10th. Anniversary
