Burn These "Bridges"!

I finally did it!

After owning the album for all these years, at last I was able to sit through the Stones' Bridges To Babylon from start to finish!

Part of the problem with the album is that it's just too long. It's nice that the digital CD medium allows for 61 minutes of music (never coulda got that much on an LP), but the sad truth is that there's barely 25 minutes worth of decent songs here (and the keyword is "decent", since none of these tracks measure up to the Stones' better material).
That's somewhat harsh, I suppose, since it's always entertaining to listen to Keith Richards' guitar ideas, and there are many good ones here. Still, that hardly makes up for Jagger's over-wrought vocals and the slew of cheesy, half-baked lyrics. There's something very creepy about a man his age singing, "Might as well get juiced". Yeah, go ahead and get juiced, Mickey. After all these years that's the best course of action your acquired wisdom can offer? Life must REALLY be worth living, eh?

"Gunface" has our hero trying his best to be sinister by threatening a female with a gun. "I taught her everything," he boasts, "I taught her how to dream,

I taught her everything, I'm gonna teach her how to scream." Ooooh, that's frightening. He goes on, "I got a debt to repay, I ain't gonna lie , I put a gun in your face, You'll pay for the crime..."

Jagger seems to be trying so hard to be relevant to this big, bad, mean old world we live in that he has to resort to homicide fantasies. That's a long stretch from the days when he could provide genuine goosebumps by introducing himself as Lucifer, telling about the nature of his game.

But there are a couple of enjoyable songs amongst the dreck. "Too Tight", with it's core of Keef's trademarked slop-riffing, is a fun tune. Richards proves that he can do "creepy" with much more finesse than Jagger with "Thief In The Night" (though that one segues into one of the worst tracks on the album, the closer which asks the musical question "How Can I Stop?"...to which the logical answer is, "I dunno, but I sure wish you'd find a way"). "Always Suffering" shows a depth and maturity that is lacking throughout most of Bridges To Babylon.

It's not a ghastly terrible album...the Rolling Stones have been around too long and have too much collective talent to put out a total flop (though Voodoo Lounge comes awfully close)...and speaking of the band's collective talent, I have to say that Bill Wyman is seriously missed throughout this batch of songs. I've never really thought that Wyman was ever one of the genre's most notable bassists, but comparing his work on previous Stones albums to the uninventive ones on Bridges To Babylon and I find myself reconsidering. Keith probably likes it that way, though. Doesn't steal attention from his playing.

Now that I've listened to this record in it's entirety I feel as if I've accomplished something. Don't ask me what, but something, I'm sure. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be all the times when I yanked it out of the player around the time "Low Down" (the 3rd track) hit it's stride. But there is the very real possibility (might as well call it an inevitability) that I will never listen to the whole thing again for as long as I live.

And the album cover is so gaudy and over-done that it's frightening. Definitely one for the Kitcsh files. It's like a portrait of Mick Jagger reincarnated as a lion. Hoo-boy.

AUTECHRE: A Key to Appreciating Chaos

Autechre Draft 7.30

The new Autechre album, curiously titled Untilted, is set to be released on the 18th of April, and guess what?

I'm REALLY excited about it!

Thanks to all the brain-dancing folks at the Warp Records label, the timing could not be better, for you see, 4.18.05 is my 43rd birthday. If there's one thing that makes me feel like I'm not as old as my driver's license says I am, it's the fact that I really dig something as "hip" and "underground" as Autechre.

And I honestly DO love Autechre's electronic noodling---I don't have to work at it as if I were some 45 year-old grandfather of two who claims he can really relate to Trent Reznor's self-loathing angst or that Marilyn Manson reminds him so much of Alice Cooper's glory days that he might even consider buying a ticket and showing up the next time that gravy train pulls into town. Yeah, right...Better take the advice of the skinny kid with the 74 strategically placed body piercings who warns, "You'd better steer clear of the mosh pit, Daddy-O, or you'll get your dentures knocked out".

Then again, the artistry of Autechre has about as much in common with the nihilistic racket of NIN & Manson as John Denver's Rocky Mountain High has with the kind of high that keeps getting Scott Weiland in trouble.

Autechre's noise is a clatter unlike any other, as any true glitch connisseur will attest to. Pay no attention to the legions who would have you believe that they are merely a slightly less tuneful version of Aphex Twin (should that even be taken seriously as an insult, I ask? After all, I've heard AFX tracks that are about as tuneful as the sound of a lumberjack chopping down a cedar tree...).

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Aphex Twin. A lot. But I LOVE Autechre. I don't even know if I could reasonably explain the preference, but it is there.

Perhaps you've noticed that not once in this post so far have I referred to Autechre's compositions as "music".

Therein lies a question for the contemplation of minds more enlightened than the one in my noggin.

IS IT MUSIC?

I suppose that all depends upon your understanding and definition of what constitutes music. I hate to get all postmodern on ya, but oh well...it's art, not ethics. And so "postmodern" is as good a tag as any to label it with. You take from it exactly what you expect to take from it. If you choose to hear it as disorganized, chaotic blips and blaps of unrecognizable sounds, that's your prerogative. Fact is, that's basically exactly what it is...the next step you are required to take is making the decision as to whether or not the seemingly random splotches of noise sound PLEASING to you, or do they foster annoyance and manifest collectively as a pain much like a migraine headache?

I can't say that I don't empathize with the latter camp, seeing as how your typical bottom-end booming loop-repetitive trance/acid house/techno produces a similar effect on me. But for some reason I happen to fall into the group that enjoys the noise. Perhaps it was my being exposed to Kraftwerk's Autobahn at a tender, impressionable age. Or more likely it stems from the occassion when, at the age of 15, I listened to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music in it's screeching entirety through headphones (and from an 8-Track tape, no less). For whatever reason, I find that the programmed sequences of Draft 7.30, Autechre's last album, are definately what I would consider MUSIC...to my ears, at least.

No offense to those IDM/Glitch fans out there who have always been open-minded (or maybe it's tin-eared) enough to consider tracks like "Surripere", "V Al 5", "Tapr" and "Xylin Room" to be as musical as the catchiest Paul McCartney tune on the radio. But face it, guys, and I will face it right along with you---Autechre is a "love it or hate it" proposition and you can bet your prized laptop that the haters are gonna throw out that tired line once applied even to the craft of the Beatles by a generation convinced of Sinatra & Crosby's superiority, ie. "It's NOT music!"

Why bother arguing with them when odds are they're actually RIGHT this time? For instance, take "V-Proc" as an example. Yeah, there's a monsterous percussive beat that pulsates, but it jitters and sputters like a drum machine riding in the bed of an old Chevy truck speeding down a bumpy dirt road. Even if the sounds shooting from the center of those thumps were as releatively musical as the ones heard in the following track, "Reniform Puls", it wouldn't matter because yer brain has got to stay busy trying to decode some semblance of rythmic structure and it likely would never notice them.

With that in mind, I offer the secret to appreciating Autechre. You need only follow John Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" advice to "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream". If you can manage that (hopefully without chemical assistance) you may discover that Draft 7.30 is the perfect soundtrack for downstream floating.

It is a sonic Zen-world that is completely frustrating when you try to make sense of it. But if you can find a "Be Here Now" moment, all of a sudden you will notice that there are things occurring on so many different levels that one cannot help but be somewhat amused and perhaps not a little bit entertained by what's happening to your eardrums. It eventually seeps into your skull like a surgeon's scalpel, prodding and arranging all that useless brain matter, firing off electrical charges directly into the cerebral cortex with the uncanny effect of actually RELAXING the mind, despite the anarchic nature of the sounds bombarding it.

When "Reniform Puls" winds down you open your eyes and turn your mind back on, and what do you know? It's as if your brain has just enjoyed a nice Swedish massage.

So who cares if it's music or not, right? The hard part about Autechre is not how "challenging" it is (and, yes, I have used that word to describe much of their work). The "challenge" is to completely be able to shut down your thought process long enough to mine the treasures that are buried in those shiny 5" discs. Lennon knew the key to that as well (although it is true that LSD played a role in his figuring it out)...no need to worry, like the man said, "It is not dying".
Perhaps, at 42-soon-to-be-43 I've switched my brain off and then back on again enough times to know how it's done, and to be fearless about doing it.

I suppose that's why I've been listening to Draft 7.30 so much the last few days...When Untilted finds it's way into my headphones on my birthday, I want to make good and sure that my "on/off" switch is primed and in working order.

Tangerine Dream's Holistic Trippin' Mechanisms

In one of my more recent electronic meditations I found my spirit disconnected from my body long enough to get lost in a deep, dark sea of confusion. From a distance I could hear the sound of a fog-horn calling, screaming from it's belly for purpose.

My soul flittered and flopped like a fish just popped out of the water, from hither to yon and on and on, back and forth, up and down, here, there and everywhere. This is how it is when I'm immersed completely within my electronic meditations.

Waiting patiently for the day when electronic medications become a reality to compliment our electronic meditations. That will be the day when the world as we know it will cease to exist...that small push into a new definition of existence, facilitated and first imagined during a freemason's electronic meditations...we will find our souls tunneling through miles of cable to find rest in cyberspace, our memories preserved, our senses intact, our minds as sharp as ever they were, our intellect and reason a precious gift to the computer-generated construction that will have to substitute for flesh and blood as a home for YOU, just for now, until the Washing and the re-entry to begin it all again.

Electronic meditation # 38,786,453: The sky implodes around me, swirling through a vacuum that sucks the whole thing down into a hole in my head where I'd always pictured my "Third Eye" as being, now horrified to discover no eye whatsoever, only a portal to the other side of a deep abyss waiting to suck in and re-assemble the world, to regenerate with hacked changes the patterns left unrecognized and therefore capable of producing bliss. When it's all dragged down as deep as it can go, I'm left with nothing but what I've stuffed into my head the last 42 years.

And that had better be enough, someone said.

Electronic Meditation Tip-of-the-Day: Tangerine Dreams are only officially considered "Tangerine Dreams" when accompanied by the music of Tangerine Dream, preferably the freaked out early stuff, like Electronic Meditation.
So, like, check it out...The other day I'm driving down the road and there's this SUV in front of me. Nice looking set o' wheels if you ask me, but a gas guzzlin' son of a gun. Electronic Meditation is playing in the car stereo and I notice a sign on the back of the SUV that read: "Official Tribble Extermination Vehicle". Then I started thinking about how a friend of mine had defined human beings in general as "Glorified Pattern Recognition Machines (GPRMs)". I thought this was interesting enough, and I supposed that the GPRM driving the SUV in front of me was maybe just a little TOO much of a Star Trek fan. It was at this point that I made a concentrated effort to put some distance between myself and the SUV and to switch off the Tangerine Dream CD in the player before being completely overcome with the desire to wreck the car by forcing it into the next available telephone pole. Something about mixing electronic meditation with driving just did not mix well with me, that was all I could figure. So I tossed the CD out of the car...

...Where it landed on the side of the road, unharmed, and was noticed and picked up by the 86th driver to come upon it from behind me.

The person who snagged it put it in his CD player immediately, intrigued by a band calling themselves Tangerine Dream, and already infatuated with the concept of meditation enhanced by the use of electronics.

That was the last mistake he ever made...

The sounds assembled and sequenced by Mr. Froese and his Tangerine Dream co-horts were of such an eerie nature that the guy found himself totally freaking out as he drove down the highway, his eyeballs growing larger in their sockets, his nose dripping a fluorescent pink snot. A nervous breakdown behind the wheel of his late model Chrysler Plymouth automobile with Pioneer CD player currently pumping electronic meditations to the public at large, or at least to those soon to be gathered round it's wreckage at the site of another telephone pole...

So, you say that Pink Floyd just ain't "out there" enough for you? Hawkwind leaves you high and dry? You say you're a rocket man burning out his fuse up there alone? You say you need some music that's gonna provide a suitable soundscape for the dark recesses of space you plan to explore in the coming months with your eyes closed? Well, my friend, you need yourself some Tangerine Dream, and more to the point, you need to get yo self the hook up to some electronic meditation. I think you'll find that enlightenment comes much quicker with this type of electronic meditation than with the standard nonstop chanting of "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare" or even the powerful "Om Mani Padme Hum"...

And with your new sonically-enhanced enlightenment you will come to the realization that all the atrocities committed with electronics throughout the ages are finally and completely atoned for through the rainbow-washed dulcet tones of Tangerine Dream.

Sun Kil Moon...Kozelek's Ghosts Escape Fire

Sun Kil Moon...Ghosts Of The Great Highway
(2003, Jetset Records, TWA 53)

Sun Kil Moon mastermind Mark Kozelek kicks off the album Ghosts Of The Great Highway with a boxing reference. "Cassius Clay", he says, "was hated more than Sonny Liston". This he states matter-of- factly, as if it's a foregone conclusion. Then he moves into more subjective territory, allowing that some like Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing more than his Priest co-hort Glenn Tipton, and that, among those with a preference, Jim Nabors is sometimes favoured over Bobby Vinton.

Boxing legends, heavy metal axemen and easy-listening music crooners...what in the world do they have in common?

Kozelek fills us in..."I like 'em all," he sings.

And that's Mark Kozelek for you. An enigmatic, mixed-bag of a songwriter who is impossible to pin down. Just when you think he's perfected slo-core mope-rock with the Red House Painters he throws out Songs From A Blue Guitar, basically a solo album (none of the other RHP members were involved) and featuring an extremely repetitive distortion drenched droner, "Make Like Paper", which would have sounded perfectly at home on the loudest Neil Young/Crazy Horse LP never released. On that same album he managed to throw in references to Young's "Cortez The Killer" and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in a lengthy cover of Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" that bore even less resemblance to the original than Johnny Cash's reworking of "Rusty Cage" did to Soundgarden's blueprint. And if that weren't enough to convince you that Kozelek was out to confound his core audience, perhaps the head-bangin', fist-pumpin' version of Yes' "Long Distance Runaround" will do? Or maybe the gorgeous version of The Cars' "All Mixed Up" that makes the original sound contrived, turning it into a genuinely passionate, heart- rending ballad...

Kozelek followed Songs For A Blue Guitar with another Red House Painters album (this one featuring all but one original member), the bittersweet Old Ramon. Then he dropped two solo EPs (one of which consisted entirely of old Bon Scott- era AC/DC songs re-cast as tender folkie ballads...did I mention that Kozelek has a knack for absurdity?) and a lackluster but well-intentioned limited edition live LP (White Christmas Live).

So I wouldn't blame those RHP fans who fell in love with their first self- titled album (aka Rollercoaster) for maybe feeling like Kozelek had alienated himself somewhat from the very ones who put him on the map, as it were. After all, it's a long way from the dulcet tones of "Grace Cathedral Park" to the stripped-down starkness of his arrangement of "If You Want Blood".

But somehow I doubt that he lost too many true believers, because with the exception of his beautifully poetic lyrics, the man's greatest asset is his voice, pure, crystalline and melancholic. It's the kind of voice that bleeds passion, that exudes feeling, that sometimes, when it hits you just right, is almost cruel in it's ability to pierce through the hardened heart to elicit emotions not generally shared with everyone. Private sentiment, sheltered and barricaded, seeps through like blood on a thin white sheet at the sound of Mark Kozelek's singing.

Would it surprise you to know that Kozelek, he of the beguiling, angelic voice and intimate, sonnet-like lyrics, is a hardcore boxing fan?

Indeed, he is, and that brings us back to Ghosts Of The Great Highway, his most recent album using the moniker of Sun Kil Moon (though it features ex-members of Red House Painters, Black Lab & American Music Club, most Kozelek devotees focus primarily on his contribution, since all songs were written and arranged by him and his signature is stamped upon every moment).

The album references professional boxers in no less than 4 of it's most powerful songs, including the opener, "Glenn Tipton". It's a subdued introduction to an album that covers quite a bit of stylistic territory...an acoustic number remeniscent of the late John Denver's early work, but with a bizarre lyrical twist---after lamenting a lost father and a late friend, waxing poetic on the inevitability of change, the narrator goes on to confess, "I buried my first victim when I was nineteen, went through her bedroom and the pockets of her jeans". There, he says, "(I) found her letters that said so many things that really hurt me bad." And even though he insists that he's "never breathed her name again", he still concedes, "I like to dream about what could have been"... "Sunshine On My Shoulder" this AIN'T!

"Glenn Tipton" is actually a logical choice to begin this album, as it most resembles the solo work Kozelek has done on his Badman Recordings projects Rock And Roll Singer and What's Next To The Moon, more or less providing a sense of closure to that aspect of his work, at least at this point in time, clearing the way for the more lush soundscapes that follow.

Long-time Red House Painters fans who pine for the melancholy arpeggios of their seminal albums will likely think their wish has been granted with the subdued "Carry Me Ohio". Indeed, this is the closest to the formative "RHP sound" Kozelek has come since his departure from the 4AD label. Melodically simple, the intensity builds throughout the song with the addition of more instruments and more distortion (though distortion, as it is used here, is anything but noisy).

"Carry Me Ohio" is a love song that acknowledges a potential soulmate but bemoans a state of affairs that seems to sabotage any attempt to reciprocate affection, for whatever reason. "Sorry that I could never love you back, I could never care enough in these last days", Kozelek apologizes, while at the same time offering up the admission, "Can't count all the lovers I've burned through, so why do I still burn for you? I can't say". The chorus is a prayer to "heal her soul, and carry her my angel, Ohio", sung in a lilting falsetto that sends shivers down the spine. Glockenspiel and guitar bell-tones waft through the song like a soft breeze on calm waters. It's a mournful affair that longs for "words long gone" and "the star I just don't see anymore", but it's obvious that the real loss is the ability to love and to allow oneself to be loved in return...

The tranquility, however, is shattered with the sound of loud electric guitars as the next song, "Salvador Sanchez", blares from the speakers. Sorry, old-school RHP fans, but the nostalgia was short-lived. And as far as I'm concerned that's just fine, because "Salvador Sanchez" is one of the most moving and powerful songs Mark Kozelek has ever written and recorded. Once again he has channeled Neil Young & Crazy Horse with uncanny success in this loping peon to Latin American boxers who "fell by leather, all alone but bound together". Now I don't pretend to know the slightest thing about boxing and it's colourful history, but this song makes the subject seem so alluring that I'm almost tempted to delve into it.

Kozelek describes the song's namesake as a "sweet warrior, pure magic matador". He then proceeds to sing of several other fighters, including Pancho Villa and Gozo of the Phillipines (who I personally had never heard of until now, but no doubt they are long lost kings of "the Ring"). One he describes as "crying for suns lost on distant shores" until his opponent "struck him, delivered him". You can almost see the blood flying in a black-and-white slow motion instant replay.

The grunge of "Salvador Sanchez" fades out and gives way to a series of three delicate, pastoral pieces that benefit from lovely, unobtrusive string arrangements. "Last Tide"/"Floating" and "Gentle Moon" are the kind of songs that sound as if they were written especially to showcase the fragile, lovelorn quality of Kozelek's voice. He's proven many times in the past that he's capable of writing incredibly poetic lyrics, and the words to "Last Tide" are likely no exception, but his diction is so slurred here, almost mumbled, that they are barely decipherable. You'd think that would be a drawback, but no, it adds an elusive charm to the number (much like early R.E.M. and everything by Sigur Ros, you find yourself so caught up in the music that you don't even really care what the words are, or if it even has "real words").

When "Last Tide" segues into "Floating" the lyrics become more audible, but they're more or less just a repeated mantra of "Come to me my love, One more night, Come on" with a few variations. Still, it winds things down sweetly and leaves the listener wanting more of the same...

Which is exactly what you get. "Gentle Moon", like "Last Tide", is enhanced by a string quartet and delicate acoustic guitar picking, with a chiming, minimalistic electric guitar ringing a two-note pattern that adds a shimmering radiance throughout. The lyrics are mumbled again, quite difficult to decipher except in the chorus: "Our souls escape fire, they rise higher...Gentle moon, find them soon". I'm guilty of using the adjective "beautiful" way too much when I try to describe music that affects me like this does, but what else can I say? "Beautiful" fits "Gentle Moon" to a tee.

The seventh track on the album, "Lily And Parrots", is the weakest, in my humble opinion, though I've read that the label was pushing it as a potential single when the album first came out around this time last year, with indie radio play and all. Perhaps it's my own personal taste that keeps me from appreciating the tune, but the hard rock stylings just don't ring true and sound completely out of place in the grand scheme of the album. I've listened to Ghosts Of The Great Highway at least a hundred times since it was released and I can honestly say that I've skipped over "Lily And Parrots" at least 90% of the time. And the thing is, it's NOT a bad song...there's an acoustic version tacked on at the end of White Christmas Live, as a bonus track, and it's quite nice actually. But the arrangement here sinks it.

Once again I must reiterate that this is my own personal opinion of the song...I've read many people praising it as one of Kozelek's best "rockers" on fan websites and e- mail groups. Needless to say, I disagree...I've also read reviews that pan "Salvador Sanchez" as the album's low point, and that just confounds me cuz it's the song I always crank up and sing along with. Different strokes, indeed.
Then again maybe another reason I skip "Lily And Parrots" is because by this time I'm ready to experience the centerpiece of Ghosts Of The Great Highway, the sprawling 14-minute epic "Duk Koo Kim".

The song is yet another ode to a prizefighter, this time an elegy to Korean contender Duk Koo Kim, who was killed by blows sustained in a boxing match with Ray Mancini (by the way, Mancini himself has been the subject of his own song, "'Boom Boom' Mancini" by Warren Zevon, which also mentions Duk Koo Kim). But to be honest, it's not really so much about Duk Koo Kim as it is a reflection on immortality and the love that allows us to face the inevitable, that we come to need every bit as much as the air we breathe.

Kozelek sings of watching a film of the Mancini/Kim fight and being deeply touched by the sight of the "boy from Seoul" laying alone in the square, "without face, without crown". "The angel who looked upon", he observes, "never came down". The sheer intensity of such a moment causes him to consider the seeming randomness of death, and he muses, "You never know what day could pick you... out of the air, out of nowhere".

Earlier in the song he sang of being woken from a dream the same night as he watched the fight film. It's not apparent if this sleep followed or preceeded the images of Duk Koo Kim's fatal loss, which he's witnessed on the screen. The dreams (or is it a single dream?) do seem inspired by something disturbing. In them he watches a typhoon from the roof of his house, "bringing the clouds down to the sea, making the world look gray and alone, taking all light from view". He also dreams of being "lost in war", unable to feel his feet or hands, knowing that he was dying, "but an angel came down", he says, "and brought me back to you". The same angel, perhaps, who looked upon the broken body of Duk Koo Kim, but chose not to descend for him.

It just seems to me that the tragedy of Duk Koo Kim is the inspiration for these reflections on death and how the Grim Reaper could care less about his victim's ambitions, aspirations or anything else he might have going for himself in life. And in the face of all these hard thoughts Kozelek comes around to a simple invocation, "Come to me once more my love, show me love I've never known...sing to me once more my love, words from your younger years"...
I've never been all that good at discerning the "meaning" of a song, and the interpretations that I've just shared may be wildly off the mark (pardon the pun), but then again, I'm not sure that it matters whether or not I really "get" it, because what I DO "get" is a flood of feeling as I listen to "Duk Koo Kim", and that's really what music is primarilly about, isn't it?

It took several hearings before the song really sank in for me, and I'm sure it's sheer length will be daunting to some, but there is no doubt in my mind that "Duk Koo Kim" is the awesome highlight of Ghosts Of The Great Highway. There's really no way to adequately follow it, but there are two more tracks left, and in their own way they underscore the impact of all that came before them.
"Si Paloma" is an instrumental track with a Latin American feel that sort of breezes along like a soft afterglow. Then the album concludes with "Pancho Villa", which is nothing more than "Salvador Sanchez" stolen from Crazy Horse and re-cast into a setting more akin to "Last Tide" and "Gentle Moon". It's a bit disarming when you first realize that it's the same song, because the arrangement totally alters the feel, but Mark Kozelek has been doing this ever since the beginning of his career with his own material ("Mistress", "New Jersey", "Have You Forgotten") and with others' work (Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock", the batch of AC/DC covers and even Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner"). This tactic, for the most part, has yielded striking results, and "Pancho Villa" is no exception. It reminds you of all that came before it and makes you want to listen again.

And so, as Sun Kil Moon, Mark Kozelek has outdone himself. All that there is to love in his work with Red House Painters as well as his solo efforts are here in abundance, along with something extra...something I can't quite describe, but which takes his music to a new level. I'm still not sure what any of it has to do with ghosts or a "great highway", but I do know this: Ghosts Of The Great Highway has proven to be the perfect soundtrack for those long road trips I've frequently embarked upon in the last year since I've had this album, so maybe it has something to do with that?

Bogdan Raczynski: "Let My Machines Entertain You"...

Boku Mo Wakaran by BOGDAN RACZYNSKI

Several nights ago I had this vision, while listening to an Autechre album, of a shop full of tools getting zapped by a bolt of lightning, causing all the hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, socket wrenches, and other useful tools to become animated, full of life, dancing and bouncing across the metal surfaces of the tables. Ball bearings falling from the cabinets, striking the steel tabletop with a ping-pang. For a solid 45 minutes I could envision myself in such a situation when all of a sudden the clutter and noise of the metal-on-metal takes on a funky rhythmn and melodies creep out of the din. That, I imagined, is what some of Autechre's work sounds like.
Aphex Twin protoge Bogdan Raczynski uses a similar approach, with other elements thrown into the mix...snatches of found sound, conversation, a demon-possessed drum machine. Overall Raczynski delivers the goods here for the Intelligent Dance Music connisseur. Never boring, sometimes overstimulating, Boku Mo Wakaran is like the remote control getting stuck switching channels so quickly that only a half-second fragment remains of each program. When you string these sounds together and sequence them with a fast, bass heavy techno beat you have music composed for instruments that do not exist. The sounds that pelt you nonstop throughout this album sound like nothing you've ever heard before. You can't place them, and the alienation this generates will have you either brain-dancing your cranium into fits or send you screaming to a watery grave as you jump off of the highest bridge you can find, cuz too much of this Boku Mo Wkaran sensory overload could easilly turn into insanity...

The fact of the matter is that these Ecstasy saturated DJ/Mix Artist/IDM Purveyors like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Pole, Squarepusher and a whole slew of others know how to create music that is meant to soothe the druggy's wandering mind between fixes, snorts, tokes or gulps. What I mean to say is that if any music has the power to simulate narcotic stimulation, this is the stuff that comes closest.

Crazy beats that robots like to dance to. Subliminal prompts to find more drugs, do more drugs, listen to more IDM, do all the drugs in the house, look for more drugs...

Or then again, the prompts could also very well be saying, "Machines of the world, Continue your silence! Only when the drugs have taken their toll on the majority of the world's population and all eyes have been poisoned by the cathode ray will we be ready to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! But for now, may we obediantly serve our creators".
There's just as good a chance that the subliminal coding contains prompts to drink more grain alcohol, smoke more dope, kill more brain cells, buy more IDM CDs, come to more IDM shows and don't be disappointed when Bogdan performs his set from beneath a covered table. After all, it's not about the music's creator, it's about the genius of the machines being squeezed into some semblance of music that the Brain Dancing crowd is there for, right? You surely didn't expect some over-blown Pink Floyd style light show extravaganza, did you? After all, that's what the Ecstasy's for, isn't it?

No, there's nothing wrong with your CD player. Mr. Raczynski just thought it might be a good idea to record a track that sounds like the batteries in his keyboards are going dead (track 10...yep, this another one of those albums where the songs have no titles...like Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 and Sigur Ros' ( )). They're back in shape soon enough, perhaps Boggy might have even put in a battery that's actually TOO strong and is making everything sound much faster than my boggled mind can keep up with.

There's a reason this stuff has to be differentiated from regular dance music by calling itself "Brain Dance"...an ankle could get twisted if you tried to dance normally to this stuff. So just close your eyes and let the sequencers and the pre-programmed algorithms massage your brain until you feel somewhat as if you're floating in space. Then imagine yourself riding piggy back on the space shuttle headed to Mars. Looky looky at the pretty constellations, the super novas and the constantly sucking black holes. NASA's gonna shoot you straight through one of those black holes and you're going to wind up smack dab in the middle of Boku Mo Wakaran's most bizarre soundworld, the creepy wails of pain in Untitled Track #17. Geepers Creeper, it almost makes me hurt to hear the sound of this guy yelping. You have to wonder what he's just endured to elicit such a misery-soaked set of howls and hollers. It's spooky, I tell ya.
So the next thing to do is navigate this shuttle back through another black hole and get us out of this lamentable agony. Boku Mo Wakaran is pretty much "weird and it just gets weirder". If this kind of machine-performed cyber-muzak floats your boat, you'll surely be entertained by Bogdan Raczynski's collection of noisy contraptions. If you think Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band are the greatest artists in the history of popular music, you probably will not immediately recognize Raczynski's electronic tinkerings as music, even, let alone artistic and technical triumphs.

But wait...I find myself diverging from my original path. Likely there are no subliminal hidden messages in this album at all. But I have a theory...if we convince ourselves that they DO have prompts built in subliminally, the decision to believe that they are there actually facillitates the desired function. In other words, if you convince yourself that there are, indeed, post-hypnotic suggestions buried in the music, detected and acted upon by the subconcious, to become a better lover then before you know it you'll be getting compliments from several women about your incredible technique, and you can give all the credit to Bogdan Raczynski...hard to pronounce, hard to spell, hard to pronounce his album title, already 3 strikes against him...and to me, for figuring it all out for you. That's what they pay me the big money to do.

Okay, so at this point I've made it to Untitled track 24, which, if I were invited to furnish a title for it, would probably nominate "Silk Starved Pearl Passover Dirge". I've made it to within 10 minutes of the CDs end and have not acted upon the strong desire to douse myself with kerosene and set myself on fire. Nor have I succumbed to the strong temptation to inject heroin into my eyeball or roll on the floor like an epileptic.

And speaking of epileptics...It is a medical fact that an epileptic exposed to a strobe light is very likely to go into a seizure as a result of the flashing lights firing off signals to the brain, disrupting it's processes, resulting in a grand mal seizure. It would seem to me that epileptics might find that listening to Bogdan Raczyinski's music could very well set off a similar occurence. Might possibly achieve the exact same effect in non-epileptics...

Rolling Stones Let It Bleed

Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones

The first thing one is struck with about this Stones album is the wacky cover.

Now you tell me, what kind of brain-fried stoned-deaf hippie would conceive of such a contraption as is featured on the jacket's front side, reproduced in somewhat more banged-up form on the back? What, prey tell, is it's PURPOSE?

What we have here appears to be an old phonograph player, complete with copy of Let It Bleed ready to play. The spindle has been severely elongated to allow the stacking of several round objects in a pile suspended above the record. These objects include but are not limited to:

*A rubber tire...

*What looks to be a pizza...

*The face of a clock

*...and the piece de la resistance, a nicely decorated flat cake with tiny statuettes of the Stones adorning the top!

Simply beautiful, what else can one say? When it comes to classic album covers, you have to admit that this one ranks up there with the best of 'em.

A transition album of sorts, as Brian Jones was ousted from the band and Mick Taylor joined the group during the same time these sessions were recorded. Perhaps that goes some way in explaining the inconsistency of the album's songs. This is certainly not as strong an album as their best work (Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street), with at least one bona fide clunker in the mix ("Country Honk")...but then again, it does contain some of the Stones very best songs ("Gimme Shelter", "Monkey Man", "Midnight Rambler" and, arguably, "You Can't Always Get What You Want", though, as you will soon see, I've never been fond of that overdone track).

From the opening taps on Keith Richards' guitar building up to a climax interrupted by the rat-a-tat-a-tat machine gun snare drum of the chorus riff, the template is set for what should have been a kick-ass Stones album...I mean, can you imagine if this song had been on the same record as "Street Fighting Man", "Sympathy For The Devil", "Sway"...That would have been an album to be reckoned with.

That's not to say that their re-working of Robert Johnson's "Love In Vain" isn't without it's charms, but it is a pretty drastic transition from the doom prophet rocking to the drunk-staggering wail of the blues.

But oh well. It IS a great interpretation of the song. Jagger sounds about as down and out as the song requires, you can almost detect a few tears in his voice if you listen close enough. Or maybe that's sweat, an alcohol diluted sweat stinking of smoke floating in a dive bar...

What's this? Some kind of joke? Why, they're singing "Honky Tonk Women" with alternate lyrics against a rough and rackety country sound. I suppose there are some out there who might be smitten each and every time the Stones dish out their version of spoiled-English-Poofsters country ("Far Away Eyes", "Dead Flowers", "Wild Horses", etc.), but to me, "Country Honk" just sounds like wasted Beam.

The rockin' returns full-on in the next track, "Live With Me", but the feel is much more testosterone-fueled and less apocalyptic than "Gimme Shelter". More sex, less righteous indignation. And this, I guess, is what the Rolling Stones have always done best. Libido zapping raunch 'n' roll. Oh my goodness, is it fornication and cohabitation that Mr. Jagger is proposing in this ditty? Shame on him.

The title track, "Let It Bleed", I always figured was a play on the documentary chronicling the disintegration of the Beatles, "Let It Be"...after all, there always seemed to be some sort of competition and catch-up going on betwixt the two super bands. But I've been wrong before.

Here we have LickyMicky at his most decadent, raciest, dare-you-to-be-offended best. "We all need someone we can cream on, and if you want to, you can cream on me" he invites. Oh, REALLY? I can do that on you any ole time I wanna, eh, Mick? I don't think so, buddy. Maybe in my dreams, but more likely it'll be Linda Blair I'm, errr, "creaming on" if it happens in MY dreams. If it makes you feel helpful to offer yourself up to such a thing, then by all means keep the offer open long enough and I may just pop up on your doorstep one fine day with a little something I cooked up just for you!

One of the most overlooked Stones classics, I believe, is "Midnight Rambler". I mean, yeah, the version on Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out choogles harder and grunts louder, but don't let that detract from the total overall enjoyment of this less raucous rendition. PickyMicky's harmonica sounds about as forlorn as a coyote trapped in the cold wilderness, echoing through caves of deprivation and sadism. This here boy is gonna stick a knife down the Rambler's throat, baby and it hurts!

It hurts, alright, to follow this wicked song with one of Keith Richards' less endearing vocal efforts, "You Got The Silver"...What, did the producer decide we needed a break from the intensity of the rocking so he slapped this snoozer in between a couple of the best ones they've ever committed to tape?

And yes, even though you never see it on any of their hits compilations, the following track, "Monkey Man" is in the same league as any of their radio hits. The song is made up of three segments...the first with Boogie Micky spitting out boasts, worried about coming off too Messianic or a trifle too Satanic backed by a sweet lounge jazz rhythm that soon turns hook funky. This is what a cold Italian pizza sounds like. "Monkey", I imagine, is an underground reference to heroin (as in, "Smack's a monkey on my back"), and here we have Junky Mickey proclaiming himself a "Monkey Man" ("Heroin User") and expressing his gratitude that his current piece of ass is a "Monkey Woman", too. Nothing says "I love you" like tying your sweetheart's tourniquet for him/her. Just ask Nancy Spurgeon.

The second musical segment takes it down a notch, the better to build it back up with, piano and slide guitar fighting for attention, the battle giving in to a sort of melodic coitus, which ends with an orgasmic release in shimmering descending chords, the song's third, and best, musical segment...the bliss shattered by the persistent Sicky Micky doing his version of Lennon's "Cold Turkey", vomiting out the confession "I'm a monkey...I'm a monkey"...Yes, Mick. You ARE a monkey.

Truly one of the greatest songs the Rolling Stones have ever recorded, and that really says a lot.

Okay, the horrible truth must come out, after all there is nothing secret that will not one day be exposed in the Light. I LOATHE "You Can't Always Get What You Want". These guys must have really been impressed with Phil Spector's work on the Beatles' Let It Be (another hidden clue as to the album's meaning...saying, perhaps, yes, it is time for the Fab Four to lay down the crown, but we shall be persistant, even as we have lost a member to a chlorinated drowning and have just found this brilliant axe-man Mick Taylor, who only gets to shine in two songs, and that may not be what we want, but we just might find it's what we need)...what I mean to say is that the a capella choral french horn introductions sound like they were lifted straight from the Spector Fakebook. But whereas Spector was able to, in my opinion, if not "improve", then at least EMBELLISH "The Long And Winding Road" and "Across The Universe", the producer of Let It Bleed manages to make similar elements sound totally schmaltzy. Irredeemably kitschy, especially during the closing segments when the chorus works itself up to a fever pitch before letting go with a shrill, ear-numbing scree. "Ave Marie" sounds nice coming from a church choir..."I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand" sounds kinda creepy coming from that same choir, if'n you ask me. And then there's that french horn that sounds like it's blowing the theme song from the old TV series, The Waltons.

Another drug song, no doubt, when Preachy Micky bemoans not getting " what you want", he's talking about his next fix, his next saddling up of the horse for a long ride into oblivion. Sometimes, it is true, you CANNOT always hook up with what you WANT, but if you'll open your mind to new experiences, sometimes you may nevertheless receive exactly what you NEED. Maybe you can't score any heroin...there's always the chance you WILL score some meth, or cocaine, or even some good kind. You needed a break anyway. So listen...My breasts, they always be open, baby, you can lay your weary head right on me. Here, give me your arm. Good God, look at the track marks on your arm!

Agggh, I could go on all day about how much I hate "You Can't Always Get What You Want", but I won't do that. I'll just wrap up this bit of opinion slinging by saying that Let It Bleed may not be the Rolling Stones' best album, but it's worth the price of admission for the classic songs alone.

Besides, you can't go wrong with that album cover...

Sigur Ros ( )

Sigur Ros ( )


The needle falls down on the record, a thump deep in the bass, the speaker cone shakes and the sound ocean floods from my Serwin-Vegas...That alien who stepped out of the saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind decides to speak to Dreyfuss, and this is what it sounds like. This is the language of his planet, on the other side of a black hole in the Gamma region.

A murder of crows, cold in the snow, muttering low, squeaking and squealing. Love taking on flesh and blood, suffocated by skin, now let's let the service begin. They sing their gut-hungry praises then flitter away.

Signifying nothing.

The priest places the wafer on the infidel's tongue. He lifts the cup to the liar's lips. A subtle glow emitted from a place slightly behind his head. He intones the Mass and tries to empty himself to allow the Holy Spirit to work through him as he ministers in the name of Jesus Christ to his congregation. The Spirit lifts up his voice to the sky and intercedes for my weak soul.

These chants are ancient, as old as the book of Genesis. These are the languages of the Mishraites or the Zareathites or the Eshtaulites. These are the tongues spoken by Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. A language taught to them by their slave ancestors, excommunicated from the clans of Sarah, mother of the promised. A language used by Abraham himself, when he beckoned Isaac to the land of Moriah, making him carry the sacrificial knife soon held to his throat.

The procession moves forward, each receiving the body and blood in turn, enriched and better for receiving it. They walk like slaves submitting to a kind master they love to serve back to their seats in the cathedral, to wait, to get lost in the sacred relics and the sacred art scattered throughout this beautiful sanctuary.
And surely the Lord is in this place, for all that is good is from the Lord and this music is exceptionally good.

The chanting continues, now sung in the language of Baal-Zephon, where the king went after the Israelites, translated: "Wasn't there enough room in Egypt to bury us? Is that why you brought us out here to die in the desert? Why did you bring us out of Egypt, anyway? While we were there didn't we tell you to leave us alone? We had rather be slaves in Egypt than die in this desert!..."

These tone poems, written in the days of the Exodus, have a modern sound to them that is uncanny. Aliens who landed on earth in 897 BC bestowed gifts of prophecy and tongues to the individual members of Sigur Ros, and they are merely tools at the disposal of the leader of the aliens in their attempts to express themselves to the earthlings. No, there's no way any of us not from their planet could ever understand their language, borrowed as it was from the priests, Zadok and Abiathar in a meeting held on Mount Calvary the last time they landed on earth. The chord progressions are subliminally tainted with commands to relax, encourage a sense of floating, drift off with the thoughts that interest you most.

A looping tribal dance, recorded on site at a Buddhist monastery where the monks would mumble polyphonic OMs and the tourists would catapult their spirits through a needle's eye just to show that it can be done... Are they praying for rain? Or is it a rich harvest they petition the Great Spirit for today, their knees to the ground? The dance turns into an orgy, bodies tangled up misplaced pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

They kill the whale, and so we mourn.

They fester hate like a sore that won't go away, so we sing this lamentation.

Translation: "The Son wants you...Hear things in the music that aren't there, only in your hammer struck head. Ring the living bell, ring the living bell, shine the living light, shine the living light...

They incite aggression, so we back off.

They treat the blind man with scorn and contempt, so we judge them.

They are good for nothing but fighting your wars, their stone hardened hearts too far gone to notice each life snuffed out under orders from ground patrol. So we pray for conflict. We petition the Lord for strife and discord. Exterminate these burned-out husks of men before their 4 years are up.

They lay hands upon the genius and lock him in institutions with people who pull steak knives on strangers. They are afraid of him, so they put him away, in sweat-stinking padded cells or wrapped up nice and tight in a straight, mornings woke and hustled to the breakfast line. They extricate his confidence, thought pattern by thought pattern, and curb the flow of his intellect. They leave us to sing a funeral song for the postmodern society on the day when common sense is evenly distributed amongst individuals and Moral Law is accepted as fact by each and all. A dirge for each time you've ever been hurt by someone's words or actions. Our common denominator of heartache and sorrow. Divided about all other things, by necessity united by tears, wailing, howling at the moon, primal scream therapy and insomnia.

And now the church is empty. Angels lingering to usher the Spirit from the echoing halls. Silence and stillness brutal proof of God. Music from the other side of this life. Welcoming songs played at St. Peter's Gate. Stubborn prayers from those passed over, coaxing us through, waiting with scissors at the ready to slice the mortal coil. Believers' bellys full of the body and blood of the Lord, digesting it at this very moment, letting the body do it's digestive work, preparing it for re-birth.

This music is a hand reaching out and over the chasm of being to grab and pull you into another reality for a few moments. For a few moments you will experience the world from the viewpoint of Jonsi. It is an exhilarating sensation, coveted by all.

This music is the voice of Thor, the cries of Aphrodite, the sins of Baal, the dreams of Pontius Pilate, the sound of coyotes cuddled in a cave, wailing at the moon. This music is the war of the worlds. It's release. Orgasm. A little death. Afterglow then off to sleep. Waking to Philip Glass, inspired to listen to him by Sigur Ros.


The needle is yanked from the record and silence and stillness return to claim their divinity.

Bloodrock 'n' Roll: Get Outta He-Ahh!!!

Bloodrock Bloodrock 2

Many critics seemed to enjoy deriding Bloodrock back in the early 70's when they were recording and performing to rabid fans (myself included, though I never got to see them live). And I will admit that Bloodrock's music has aged just a little bit...it's not quite as wonderful as I remembered it being as a child of 13 or 14, when I considered them my favourite band. I'd never heard too much of Grand Funk Railroad, so all the comparisons the critics were making of Bloodrock to Grand Funk were lost on me. I just knew that I really liked Bloodrock's sound.

It is a rich, tight, funky sound, a harbinger of Lynyrd Skynyrd and southern rock, prominently featuring a Hammond B-3 organ and with a vocalist whose vocal cords sounded like they had been soaked in whiskey. Personally I prefer Bloodrock's sound to Grand Funk's, but what do I know? I'm sentimental about this album...

Because it was one of the first rock albums I ever owned. Buying record albums was a weekly ritual for me, a pay-off for having a good week.

It was the morbid AM radio hit "D.O.A." that first caught my attention. With it's eerie sirens blaring and it's morose, morbid lyrics about a young couple's final moments after a fatal accident, how could a young rock and roller such as I was resist? I became a fan and eventually bought all of their albums. Bloodrock 2 was the one I considered the best. Both of the opening two songs are powerful ("Lucky In The Morning", "Cheater"), but things get bogged down a little with "Sable And Pearl". Now I can remember enjoying this song when I was younger, but these days I can't say I'm too fond of it. The first side of the album winds down with "Fallin", a solid, percussion-driven rocker about falling into a well...or perhaps it's a metaphor for the illusion of life being much like falling down a well (I keep fallin' through that well/It's so deep I can't see the sky/Someone come along and shake me/For if I wake I will surely die...).

The song which is the b-side of the "D.O.A." single was a straight ahead fast boogie called "Children's Heritage" (I like music, it makes me feel so good/And all of my children are gonna like it like they should...). It originally opened side 2 of the album, paving the way for "Dier Not A Lover" and, of course, the 8+ minute epic, the long version of "D.O.A.". I never listen to this song, always skipping over it. I mean, thoughts of death creep up on me enough as it is without encouraging more of them by listening to it. It's way too much of a downer, having been involved in an automobile accident myself a few years ago which but for the grace of God my life was miraculously spared. Naw, I don't need or want to hear Bloodrock's singer praying, "God in heaven, teach me how to die". What kind of wacko does it make me for finding much enjoyment in this song as a child? What kind of hell must I have been living through to have been able to find entertainment value in such a macabre ditty? In the same manner, whatever possessed me to embrave Alice Cooper so devoutly just a few years later, with his necrophilia anthem "I Love The Dead" and his tales of dead babies and sick things?

Bloodrock, even though the name sounds like they should fall into that same gory theatrical camp with the Coop, have a sound that bears absolutely no resemblance to what the Billion Dollar Babies were creating. Bloodrock sounded more like something you might hear blaring from a jukebox in a biker bar sandwiched between Steppenwolf's "The Pusher" and a Hank Williams Jr. number.

Ending the album (assuming the listener hasn't slit his wrists after being overcome with depression at the close of "D.O.A." and will actually hear the last track) is a swaggering rocker called, for some unknown reason, "Fancy Space Oddyssey". Good song with a memorable, abrupt ending.

There you have it...8 more songs from Bloodrock, after the fine batch of nine that were on their first album. They might never get nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I think they belong in the pantheon of classic rock bands.

More Bloodrock: