Oh, the humanity! (via Metafilter again).

Check out this thread on Italian prog at Metafilter. You know you want to. The beards, the bombast—fantastico! If the Banco link doesn't frighten you, nothing will.

I spotted this at the entrance to the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls. Alas, I didn't heed Keith, Greg and Carl's call—we checked out the Casino slots instead and lost it all. A Lucky Man I wasn't.

Some bad pictures taken from inside a moving vehicle.

Niagara Falls is extremely classy, with many amenities for the discerning gentleman.


One of the last vestiges of the Guccione empire? Needless to say, next time I'll stop in for a Caligula Calzone or maybe a Corinne Alphenburger.


I don't even want to imagine the kind of sick stuff that goes on in here.

Planets—s/t (Distile)
The avalanche of quality math rock continues. I’ve never encountered an incompetent math rock band—some have clearly mastered more advanced math than others, but none have out-and-out sucked. Maybe all the potentially lame bands realize they won’t cut the mustard before they commit their naïve arithmetic to tape and embarrass themselves. Releases like this can provoke that kind of harsh self-contemplation. Planets are a number-crunching duo from Napa, California. Paul Slack handles bass, while Thomas Crawford covers “not bass,” which must equate to at least drums and guitar, based on what I hear here. I’d be interested to find out how the two of them wrote and recorded this stuff because the guitar is tightly interwoven with the rhythm section. If it was overdubbed onto bass/drum jams, it’s impressively executed. Most of the songs are the kind of skittering riff farms to which any fan of Dysrhythmia, Upsilon Acrux or Ahleuchatistas would be attuned. If I can pick out any distinguishing attribute amidst their undeniably excellent musical execution, it’s their commitment to rocking out. They’re not afraid to linger on a particularly blistering riff for a few seconds, or ride a groove for a couple minutes (as on “Return of a Dead Man”). The sound is suitably chunky as well. Rest assured, Planets will scramble your synapses (12 varied, intense tracks over 25 minutes will do that), but on a number like “Exercise!” they show they can write a tune you have a hope of recognizing on your second or third listen. The disc comes sewn inside a cloth pouch, so have scissors and a clean pant leg (to wipe the lint off the playing surface) handy if you get yourself a copy. The music’s well worth the extra prep.

OM—Pilgrimage (Southern Lord)
OM are one of those high-concept bands that proliferate nowadays. The duo—Al Cisernos and Chris Hakius (ex-Sleep)—plays stripped-down low frequency vision-quest music, with bass and drums leaning heavily on each other during longform spiritual journeys towards a kind of ambient-metal Xanadu where pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath commingle in a space/doom void. All in all, it's quite a contrast to former bandmate Matt Pike’s maximum rock and roll approach in the equally righteous High On Fire. OM's compelling power-through-minimalism approach also stands in opposition to more assaultive duos like Ruins, Hella, or Lightning Bolt. Judging by this and their previous full-length, Conference of the Birds, OM releases straddle a format between album and EP. Pilgimage lasts about half an hour, so OM are either careful composers or ruthless editors...probably both. Each of the four tracks serves a purpose and resides comfortably in the running order. We’ll not hear any complaints about “value for money” because such materialistic concerns have no place in OM’s realm. This particular saucerful of secrets opens with the title track (also reprised in shortened form to close the album), a hushed affair, with delicately plucked bass and muffled tom work, sounding like Waters and Mason jamming circa 1969. Cicernos’s whispered vocals work a stream of consciousness vibe ("Witness from mind and psychic sheath a guardian sun restrains the world projection") as do the riffs, which have an idiosyncratic internal logic that encourages acceptance instead of analysis. “Pilgrimage” fades to make way for the distorted churn of “Unitive Knowledge of the Godhead.” This startling transition, bridged by a mellow passage that plays with a few notes from the previous track, is my favourite moment on the album. Having delivered a quiet one and a loud one, “Bhimas’ Theme” mixes the two dynamics, making for perhaps the most approachable, deliberately structured piece on Pilgrimage. While nothing on the album quite matches the superb and memorable “At Giza” from Conference of the Birds, the overall flow and variety of the tracks shows some significant progression, making OM’s third major release a satisfying listening experience. Pilgrimage is a testament to their staunch focus. If they keep widening their field of vision, OM should be able to keep at this for years to come.

Cortez the Killer—s/t EP (self-released)
Here’s more proof that the Vancouver music scene has entered a golden era. Though they take their name from Neil Young’s slow-burning epic, Cortez the Killer’s own music is a turbulent headrush more akin to Botch, The Refused, or forefathers Fugazi and Squirrel Bait. This fiery quintet shares a member with A Ghost to Kill Again, whose debut album knocked me on my ass earlier this year. The two bands also share a fanaticism for unpredictable action rock, although Cortez favour a harder punk rock edge compared to AGTKA’s shameless prog tendencies. Where AGTKA are sweeping and emotional, Cortez are taut and pissed off on this five-song EP. Each track writhes with rapid-fire lyrics—cryptic yet clearly imaginative political tirades whose stream-of-consciousness presentation in the booklet perfectly reflects their delivery. “Cocktails Mixed by Molotov” reimagines WWII’s Eastern Front as a hockey game while “East Vancouver Heart Attack” laments those being swept aside in the name of civic development (featuring the genius line “we all desire change but have none to spare”). Musically, flurries of hepped-up Iron Maiden licks and double bass (drummer Benjie Nesdoly turns in a heroic performance) pepper the spasmodic song structures—structures that still leave room for hooks in the form of gang-shout choruses and other vocal lines that get catchier with every listen. The songs seethe with debut-release excitement, and once Cortez the Killer catch their breath and hit the studio again it’ll be interesting to hear them stretch out across a full-length release.

The Benzene Ring—Breathing Water in a Dream (Vortex Gang Records)
New York’s The Benzene Ring are easy to enjoy yet difficult to describe. The band appears comfortable with the “indie rock meets prog” tag, so, even if it doesn’t do them sufficient justice, let us go with that. (Aside: I often find that bands are their own worst enemies when they label themselves—there’s a local band that describes themselves as “alt-country with a hip-hop backbone,” a phrase that nearly sends me screaming and flailing into oncoming traffic whenever I see it tacked up on a poster in my neighbourhood.) The Benzene Ring have their own musical hybrid figured out, integrating all elements seamlessly enough that you barely notice transitions between fresh-faced poppiness, sinister ‘n’ sinuous Steve Hackett guitar lines and Tool-worthy heavy sections. Hometown boys Bend Sinister are operating in similar territory, I think, albeit with a different set of styles and influences. The overall approach is guitar-based and economical, refreshingly free of the musical bloat that affects too many bands these days. The murky CD cover offers no clues to the wonders within—I thought the colorful, detailed painting on the back of the booklet would have done a better job of conveying the music's sensibility. There might be a concept underpinning the album, but I‘ve become so clueless in my old age that unless the booklet is
emblazoned with “Welcome to our heavy concept album,” I’m oblivious. Who has time to figure it all out? Songwise, The Benzene Ring have a flair for the mini-epic, such as on the 7-minute opening track, “You and Me in the Absence of Predators” which travels from a sprightly catchy opening to a noisy guitar duel to a placid, watery section before reprising the introduction, producing a nice déjà vu effect. The second track, “An Old Man Dies and Finds Himself in Hell” is equally strong, a rapid-fire REM-to-Genesis-to-points-beyond structure, with a nice use of the devil’s interval during the song’s latter third. The vocals are particularly good throughout, as they manage to work in some strong melodies no matter how eccentric the instrumental backing. The album then fragments into abstract pieces and semi-songs—the sort of thing that got me thinking “concept album”—deep-space whooshing and hissing or Eno-esque ambient diversions. Of the semi-songs “The Magical Road” is a favourite of mine—just a single lyrical mantra chanted against a driving guitar riff, a quick guitar-solo release, then back to the chant, which builds and builds to the end; all done in just over two minutes. The album finale, “Pretend I’m Not Here,” has kind of a Canterbury feel (with Leslie speaker vocal effects straight offa Camel's Moonmadness), for a time at least. If they added a slightly harder edge to their sound, this band would be perfect for an adventurous label like The End. These songs, each a humble triumph of imagination, go to some interesting places, and I’d be pleased to see the Benzene Ring go places in the next few years as well.

I was at Progressive Ears this morning, reading an unspectacular thread on power trios, when someone threw up a link to November, a Swedish trio who released three albums between 1969 and 1972. Holy crap—these guys were right up there with Night Sun in terms of obscure early '70s heaviness, and definitely on par with more famous acts like Captain Beyond and Budgie. I can hear a lot of their sound in Witchcraft as well (speaking of whom, I've been waiting for a review copy of their new album The Alchemist for a while. I'll probably just buy it, because hey, new Witchcraft!).

Here are the Top 100 Canadian Albums, as voted by our nation's critics and documented in Bob Mersereau's new book. No list is perfect, and lengthy lists drawn up by critics are especially suspect, but this one avoids total blandness with some worthy and surprising choices. Here are some notes on the ones that I own.

1. Harvest, Neil Young (1972)
Strange that this would prevail on a critics' list, even if it is his most popular album. I thought the rock-crit junta preferred scragglier Young albums, like Tonight's the Night. As Sam Inglis writes in his book on Harvest (part of the 33 1/3 series), "...it would be fair to say that Harvest was a hit despite the press, rather than because of them; and it's not only rock critics who have expressed distaste for Young's most successful album. Ask serious Neil Young fans to name their favourite album of his and you'll hear votes for any one of ten or so, but Harvest is unlikely to be among them. If you love Young for the searing rock 'n' roll of Rust Never Sleeps or the raw emotion of Tonight's the Night, Harvest is too safe, too bland, too popular."

I think Harvest is a fantastic album, and a very worthy #1.

2. Blue, Joni Mitchell (1970)
Truth is, I bought this used from Neptoon's bargain bin because I wanted the original version of "This Flight Tonight." It gets a fair bit of early morning play here.

3. After the Gold Rush, Neil Young (1970)
After Harvest, this is probably Young's most hit-filled album. It's hard to beat that initial stretch of songs on side one.

9. Moving Pictures, Rush (1981)
Again, what a killer first side! An easy selection for the top Rush album here; Moving Pictures had a huge impact on a generation of basement-bar and backs-of-car dwellers across the country (sorry, I'm referencing the wrong album there). "Tom Sawyer" is pure jean-jacket poetry, while I'll always have time for "The Camera Eye"'s 10 minutes of elegance on side two.

16. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Neil Young with Crazy Horse (1969)
"Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" probably use up over half the running time on this album, the first Neil Young release to showcase the shambling, jamming side of his musical personality.

17. 2112, Rush (1976)
The album that pulled them out of the dumper...jeez, it's all about side one again. It always bugs me when it's called a concept album, or even when "2112" is called a side-long epic. No, it's seven little songs that tell a story that can only be properly discerned when you read the 'tween-song "narration" between the lyrics in the gatefold. Duh, you guys.

19. Whale Music, Rheostatics (1992)
I'd place Melville first in the Rheostatics discography myself (see more below). Whale Music has "Self Serve Gas Station," though, which is a whole movie's worth of depressing, soul-destroying, suicidal drama in five minutes.

22. Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young & Crazy Horse (1979)
This album is badass, though I don't think it has the depth of the previous NY albums on this list. I do think "Powderfinger" is one of his best-ever songs, and I have a soft spot for "Welfare Mothers."

30. Tonight's the Night, Neil Young (1975)
I got this after reading all the critical hoopla in one of those special Rolling Stone issues ("Best 8 Million Albums of the Mid-70s" or something), but I've never really gotten into it.

31. Decade, Neil Young (1977)
A greatest hits package makes the list? I have this, and I like to open the triple gatefold up and look at it. I rarely put it on.

38. Melville, Rheostatics (1991)
This is my favourite Rheostatics album. They were ON for this one, just brimming over with piss 'n' vinegar. "Record Body Count," "Aliens (Christmas 1988)," and "Horses" can reduce me to bubbling goo. Capped off with "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," it's a Canadian classic.

39. Love Tara, Eric's Trip (1993)
Great to see this underrated band make the list. This was their first album for SubPop, and the follow-up, Forever Again, was even better, IMO.

40. On the Beach, Neil Young (1974)
I really really liked this album when I first got it, but looking at the song titles, I'm hard pressed to remember most of it. I reviewed it briefly here back in 2004: "It’s Neil down in the dumps in 1974, dressing down Lynyrd Skynyrd (or perhaps Crosby, Stills and Nash) one more time ('Walk On') then embarking on a series of more stripped-down numbers, some of which are quite beautiful. 'See the Sky About to Rain' and the title track are two of my favourites right now." Some penetrating analysis there.

47. Harvest Moon, Neil Young (1992)
Having attained iconic status after Freedom and Ragged Glory, it was time for a sequel to Harvest. Like most sequels, Harvest Moon doesn't quite recapture the magic of the original. The subsequent Unplugged album was great though, and remember that video with Dale Crover as young Neil?

51. High Class in Borrowed Shoes, Max Webster (1977)
"a foot in the kitchen/a foot in the door/but the foot in your mouth/is so u don't get bored." Yeah, Pye Dubois is the people's poet, fuckin' A, and this is Max Webster's most rockin' album. Thanks to Martin Popoff's books for pointing me towards their catalogue beyond the s/t debut—five records and about 10 bucks got me endless hours of enjoyment.

56. Si on avait besoin d'une cinquieme saison, Harmonium (1974)
I remember our French teacher playing us Harmonium songs so we could read along with the lyrics. Little did I know at the time that there was such a thing as Quebec folk-prog, and that I would be buying Harmonium albums 20 years later when there was no other progressive rock left to buy.

62. The Trinity Session, Cowboy Junkies (1988)
I think I liked the idea of this record more than the record itself. They were well ahead of the mope-rock curve, as evidenced by those MOJO tribute albums where cutting-edge artists of today turn ebullient works like Revolver into dirge-fests.

64. Nothingface, Voivod (1989)
See, this is where this whole Top 100 exercise justifies itself. Voivod! Nothingface! Cyber-metal masterpiece at #64 with a bullet(belt)! I guess that "Astronome Domine" video really burned a few impressionable brain cells back then.

70. Love Junk, The Pursuit of Happiness (1988)
Moe Berg was clearly a young man relishing the prospect of a mid-life crisis when this CanCon power pop classic was released. While nobody needs to hear "I'm an Adult Now" ever again, there's a bunch of other songs here to pick up the slack. "Hard to Laugh" kicks pretty hard, as does "Killed by Love" (Berg's reply to Motörhead's "Killed by Death"?) and the immortal "Looking for Girls."

86. Smeared, Sloan (1992)
There were other Sloan albums further up on the list, but this is the only one I own. "Underwhelmed" (their own "I'm an Adult Now") is on here in its speedy incarnation, which I think I like a bit better than the lumbering EP version. I have to say the thrill of those days—when that DGC logo accompanied epochal releases by Sonic Youth and Nirvana, and our own Maritimes lads got in on it too—is long gone for me.

100. A Farewell to Kings, Rush (1977)
I remember getting this album from Woodward's and having it melt my face even when played on my folks' old faux-Victorian woodclad all-in-one phonograph/radio hi-fi (or mid-fi) unit. Only "Madrigal" flounders here, like "Tears" on 2112, and it doesn't matter anyway because "Cygnus X-1" tears apart every nerve afterwards, obliterating its feeble predecessor like so much space dust.

What about these, eh?
It would have been cool to see these albums make the list:
Nomeansno—Wrong
Sons of Freedom—s/t
SNFU—And No One Else Wanted to Play

"I was trapped into being alive." The Guardian profiles Robert Wyatt and his partner Alfie. As someone who has tried to sing in the past, I enjoyed this passage:
"Wyatt is brutally modest about his voice. Described by Ryuichi Sakamoto as 'the saddest sound in the world', it is limber and beautiful - yet Wyatt once likened it to Jimmy Somerville on valium. 'There's no deliberate or conscious input into the way I sing,' he says. 'It's more like damage limitation.'"

I saw his new album Comicopera in a store a couple weeks ago, and I stupidly didn't buy it right then and there.

I'm having problems managing my time and being productive these days. I start every day with the best intentions—get some work done in the morning, get out of the house before the hordes of SFU students swarm my transit route(s)—only to fritter away the time here at this machine.

This morning the time wastage was worth it, though. Check out this Metafilter thread about my second or third or fourth favourite band. It boasts a healthy 88 comments so far too, most of them witty and fond, e.g. "I enjoy annoying my sister, a huge Rush fan, with random outbursts of 'SALESMAN!'"

Now I must get dressed.

Roland Kirk with Jack McDuff—Kirk’s Work (Prestige)
Reading the liner notes to this Rudy Van Gelder remaster, I learned that Roland Kirk had a bit of “novelty act” stigma. I guess the sight of a big blind guy blowing on any number of wind and brass instruments out of any number of orifices was difficult for people to take seriously back in 1961. All I know is Roland Kirk rocked really hard. His flash, showmanship, and pioneering spirit definitely appealed to certain players on the adventurous fringes of rock in the late ’60s. I’m thinking of Ian Anderson, who borrowed Kirk’s vocalizing flute style and adapted a couple of his signature tunes, as well as the Kirk-style twin-sax attack of Van der Graaf Generator’s David Jackson. Rock music and Kirk’s brand of jazz also shared a blues foundation. It doesn’t get any more down and dirty than “Doing the Sixty-Eight” or “Funk Underneath” off Kirk’s Work. “Funk Underneath” is an especially interesting track, with its shifting moods. Kirk leads off on flute, tentative and coy. When Jack McDuff takes over on organ, working overtop the marauding bass line, the tune toughens up and turns into something that I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. McDuff shares billing with Kirk, and his Hammond lends a pervasive sense of menace laced with ’60s cool. (I’ve discovered recently that jazz organ is one of my favourite things on earth. Larry Young, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff—they’re all killer. I’m up for more recommendations.) The double shot off the top of the album features my favourite tracks. “Three for Dizzy” sounds like the theme to a spy flick, all dramatic sax stabs and slinky melodies. In contrast, the version of “Makin’ Whoopee”that follows defines the word “peppy” and I’ll throw in the term “shit hot” while I’m at it. It’s the kind of live-off-the-floor mayhem that makes you want to throw down your chosen instrument forever, knowing you’ll never rock that hard. At a little over half an hour, Kirk’s Work is like the Reign in Blood of jazz albums, making for the best jazz fix I’ve had in a while.

Kosmos—s/t (The End)
I don’t know if the late Carl Sagan liked rock music at all, but I think he would have appreciated Kosmos. Not only did this splendidly psych-rocking Montreal quartet borrow and mutate the name of the good doctor’s landmark TV series, they also make music that would have worked perfectly as that show’s soundtrack. I can picture Sagan guiding us around billions and billions of galaxies to the chilling Kraftwerk vibe of “Dream” or using the burbling synth raga of “Mothership” as a backdrop to a discussion of black holes. Kosmos play planetarium rock to be sure, but they pull in so many styles and musical colours that the album easily avoids becoming a drone-fest. Instead it’s a vital, concise cluster of Euro-prog explorations mixed with unexpected detours into heavy rock raveups and fuzz punk. Voivod drummer Michel Langevin powers the whole enterprise (along with copilots Jetphil, Alex Crow of Tricky Woo, and Vincent Peake of Grimskunk) with an authority befitting decades of laying down off-kilter rhythms for Voivod. He provides plentiful bombast and bluster for more extroverted tracks like album opener “Psycho,” “Messe Noire” and “Grand Grizou” where his bandmates provide thrills aplenty with their organ vs. synth vs. guitar battles. Some pieces bring to mind Heep and Purple sans crooning, as well as the vanished instrumental NOLA-scene side project The Mystick Crewe of Clearlight. Fans of Goblin, Zombi, Djam Karet, and Pink Floyd’s soundtrack work would also be advised to tune in and turn on. I suspect this album is the inevitable by-product of someone’s cool record collection and an attitude that anything’s worth trying once. From Red Giants to White Dwarfs, they’re all here in the Kosmos.

Neurosis—Given to the Rising (Neurot)
Neurosis have earned the right to do anything they want at this point. They release their own records, they tour when and where they want. If any other band was in this position, one might expect a certain laziness to creep into their music. This is Neurosis, however, so the only expectation is steadfast, indomitable excellence... Their releases since Times of Grace have seen the gradual introduction of a certain terse moodiness and quietude associated with post rock, a tendency that Neurosis acolytes Isis have embraced much more decisively on albums like Panopticon. The logical outcome of Neurosis's musical progression could result in an album entirely mellowed out and interchangeable with any mopey indie-rock outfit. But Neurosis music comes from the heart, so forget logic and the unimaginative reductionism that usually constitutes other bands' “artistic growth.” Given to the Rising slams the brakes on that stylistic trajectory with a batch of dark, heavy songs built upon riff after riff after riff. The album is full of those Neurosis terror moments, where a murky tangent suddenly explodes as the whole band unleashes one of those crusher riffs. This is nothing new for Neurosis, of course. The most novel aspect of Given to the Rising is that they’ve chosen to focus on the dark and heavy. They played one or two of these songs live when I saw them in November, but I was too busy trying not to die to file away the fine details of the new material. They’ve worked with Steve Albini again, who’s given them their best recording yet...perfectly spare and direct. Neurosis songwriting methods don't stick to any rules other than songs should have a beginning and end and be terrifying, so to try to describe the unpredictable tangents within each track would be the equivalent of spoiling the plot of a long-awaited film. I’ll just say that once you’ve experienced the opening title track—one of the greatest songs they’ve ever written—you’ll want, you’ll need, to stay seated and hear the rest. Those who’ve felt the exhilaration of a new Neurosis album know what I mean. You can write me afterward once you've recovered sufficiently and we’ll compare notes. With many bands of Neurosis’s vintage, the tendency is to point new listeners to an album four or five releases back, where the band made the big breakthrough. With Neurosis, however, their sense of quality control is such that you could start with Given to the Rising and immediately "get" what they've been about since they began their magnificent trek.

I'm guest blogging this week over at Heavy Metal Time Machine, where Metal Mark was kind enough to let me sound off on Voivod's Killing Technology.

Just as I'm playing favourites with the Porcupine Tree discography, ProgressiveEars has a poll going. Here are the results so far:

1 In Absentia
2 Stupid Dream
3 Deadwing
4 Signify
5 Lightbulb Sun
6 The Sky Moves Sideways
7 Fear Of A Blank Planet
8 Coma Divine
9 Up The Downstair
10 Recordings (b-sides compilation)
11 Metanoia
12 Voyage 34
13 Arriving Somewhere (DVD)
On The Sunday Of Life
Staircase Infinities

Porcupine Tree—Fear of a Blank Planet (Atlantic)
I know the score with a new Porcupine Tree release. The music will be impeccably played and produced. Steven Wilson's melodies and songwriting will far outstrip any "prog" or "prog metal" outfit going today. I also know that it'll take me a few listens to fully appreciate the sonic richness that saturates every Porcupine Tree album. And Fear of a Blank Planet proves me right. So why do I feel a little underwhelmed? Maybe I'm feeling they haven't brought anything new this time. The gut-punching tech-metal moves they introduced on their Atlantic debut, In Absentia, still rise up at crucial moments. So do the searching, intense ballads, like "My Ashes" and "Sentimental," which reprises an acoustic guitar riff from "Trains," a standout track from In Absentia. There's a surging title track to open the album, just like the title track from Deadwing. But I'm looking back at the previous couple albums and realizing that "Deadwing" is a better song, and "The Creator Has a Mastertape" (a like-minded bit of mayhem from In Absentia) is more inspired than either of them. I'm thinking "Trains" is a better ballad than the more sedate songs on this new album. So why bother with ...Blank Planet then? Well, there's "Anesthetize," all 17:42 of it, where Porcupine Tree's Floyd-meets-Tool method reaches its apex. It's divided into three sections (almost songs within the song) of which I like the second—the heaviest—the best. Alex Lifeson adds some keening guitar textures as a bonus, and the whole thing zips by effortlessly. The album plays itself out on two strong tracks, "Way Out of Here" and "Sleep Together," the former distinguished by its tsumani of a chorus and crushing denouement (with drummer Gavin Harrison performing unspeakable wonders), the latter by its ingenious string arrangement. If you're a fan already, you're on board and nothing's going to stop you from diving right in, just as I did. There's 50 minutes of excellent music to enjoy. I just don't think they've bettered previous albums or hinted that they're going somewhere new in the future. I think this album and Lightbulb Sun are destined to be the dark horses of the catalogue, holding pattern albums ripe for rediscovery when I've spun classics like Stupid Dream and Deadwing one too many times.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I'm almost finished with another issue of Unrestrained! We've got some upcoming masthead shakeups that I hope will result in an even better magazine. I know I have some ideas...

For the second issue in a row I've interviewed a band that intrigued the hell out of me, only to have that band's new album get a drubbing in the reviews section. That's fine by me; I realize I'm hardly the typical U! writer or reader. The band in question last issue was Phazm, and this time it's Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

I'm a crummy journalist; something I realized during my Voivod junket in Montreal last year, watching Martin Popoff working the room with his voice recorder. Interviews fill me with dread, although I suspect I'm getting better at them—thinking on the fly and following up on morsels of unexpected information dropped by my interviewee. The best parts about writing for U! are clicking off my tape recorder after a good chat, then (much later) clicking Send after I've finished the piece. Getting the finished magazine is cool too...just to see how my article looks. I can't actually read it again very closely. The nonsense I spew is just too painful.

I knew Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime would be one of the good ones about a minute into the interview. He was just a staggeringly cool and articulate guy, and I'm sorry my piece couldn't have been twice as long. Here are some of the outtakes (Gorilla droppings?) from the interview.

While explaining SGM's adherence to the principles of "Rock Against Rock" (which he described as "a recognition of the need to destroy rock music in order to preserve what have been the useful elements of rock music") he mentioned that the movement had a number of historical precedents. With that in mind, I asked him if these historical precedents had anything to do with Rock In Opposition.

"I would say any movement in rock that has ambition has been a precedent. Punk rock certainly had strong elements of that. The Rock In Opposition movement was a big inspiration for us. Actually we'd been using the Rock Against Rock name for many years before knowing the name Rock In Opposition. When I discovered that I thought, 'Oh my god, wait a minute!' But I knew the groups. We were big fans of Art Bears, Henry Cow and a number of those bands before we knew that they called themselves Rock In Opposition. I think Rock In Opposition is explicitly political whereas Rock Against Rock is not explicitly political, although certainly a lot of what we’ve done has political connotations. The Rock In Opposition movement had strong ties to a European tradition of anarcho-communism, which, incidentally, we could use a dose of in the United States. Rock Against Rock is maybe more philosophical and more reckless."

Bearing in mind how amazingly dense and involved their music is, I had to ask the inevitable question about their songwriting process: what does an SGM song sound like when it’s in its “first draft” form? Is the hyper-complexity built into it from the start?

"No, not at all. Actually, that’s not true. Sometimes it is. There’s very different writing styles that are the basis for the songs. Sometimes the hyper-complexity is there from the beginning and somebody comes in with a score, essentially, and passes out parts. Dan Rathbun [bass] tends to write that way. He doesn’t typically write a lot of material, but every album has a song or two of his, and his have tended to be that way, just conceived from the ground up. My tendency has been the opposite—to come in with the most bare-bones version of a song, almost something you could sing around a campire with a guitar part and some vocal refrains or something. I’ll bring these things in and I’ll toss them out to the wolves of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and they just get ripped apart and layered and built up until I’m saying 'Yes, yes, yes! That’s it.' So everyone writes their own parts on their very idiomatic instruments in ways that I certainly could not conceive of while I was sitting around the riverbank or wherever I was writing the song. That’s part of the process. Often those things will get built up very slowely, very rehearsal intensive, with very little going to paper. I’ll write the very minimum down to paper or one specific section that has an interlocking melodic thing that is easiest to work out on paper. Everybody is comfortable with that format, but that isn’t the way we end up working most of the time."

And then there's the video, which I hope you've all seen by now. Why did the band choose the very, very crazy “Helpless Corpses Enactment” when there were one or two more casual-audience-friendly choices on the album?

"The fellow who made the video, Adam Feinstein, chose that song. He was actually working on a video for 'The Companions.' He had the whole thing storyboarded out to the last detail, and it sounded like a really interesting video. Just as we were about to start production on that, our label, who was helping fund the whole thing, pointed out that on most video channels you can’t show anything longer than 4 and a half minutes. That song weighs in at around 10 minutes. We tried doing an edit to get it down to 4 and a half minutes, and we weren’t satisfied with it. We had just finished a mix of the Helpless Corpses song and said, 'Well, um, gee, this is a really different sounding song from that, but check this out. What do you think?' We weren’t finished with the album by a long shot at that point, so we didn’t have that many songs to choose from. So we sent him this mix of that, and he just loved it.

"Not having worked on metal stuff before and not having really listened to metal before, Adam was just excited at the idea of making a very non-metal video to a very metal song. That song is actually 6 minutes and it’s something very easy to make a 4 and a half minute version of. He immediately had all these ideas for it. He could right away picture the whole thing. Maybe someday we’ll make a little movie of 'The Companions,' but with today’s Internet-based video world you need to be able to make these little bite-sized packages, so… The video director had some strong ties with the lyrical material, to corpses. The song was—and I have to be somewhat cryptic about this—written by an Irish sorcerer, as we mention in the liner notes. He was well acquainted with that particular Irish sorcerer, so he immediately was excited about working on it. The song of course ties in lyrically very strongly with all of the other themes on the record—the themes of death and recycling of matter and rebirth and persistence of form and all those things...although it’s very hard to understand, I realize. We didn’t print the lyrics for reasons which I will have to leave undiscussed for now."

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum—In Glorious Times (The End)
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s music is dense, tricky and ultimately rewarding once you get past its initial “what the hell?” factor. You plug this CD into iTunes and it comes up under the genre “Rock,” which is a woefully inadequate description of the tangle that tumbles out after pressing “play.” They claim to pursue something called “rock against rock,” a contradictory, negating slogan that actually suits their music better. They generate enough bombast and chaos to rival any metal band, but they manage to do it without the conventional metal weaponry—no power chords, no cod-classical/medieval melody lines, no climactic guitar solos. Instead they create an onslaught comprising odd homemade instruments, slashing dissonant guitars, percussion that skitters around every obvious possible beat, and vocals that range from Nils Frykdahl’s slavering rapid-fire rantings to Carla Kihlstedt’s beautifully plaintive singing. No matter how much the quintet piles on—and the songwriting does take an all-hands-on-deck approach—just when the clutter and counterpoint become too much to absorb, branches of musical accessibility eventually emerge as little handholds to which to cling. The folk/hymn opening of “The Companions,” for example, has a great deal of appeal, with Frykdahl singing beautifully and dramatically against a tinkling backdrop. But SGM can’t help themselves, they build and build upon that opening theme before finally exploding into the inevitable cacophony in the final three minutes. The next song, “Headless Corpses Reenactment,” is a more concentrated burst of dramatic ferocity, kind of like Univers Zero interpreting Suffocation. This, of course, is the song they blew their wad on a splendid video for. I would have thought they’d pick the user-friendlier Kihlstedt-voiced “Formicary,” a perfectly pleasant number that veers into King Crimsonville only at the end. As if the music wasn’t challenging enough, cryptic phone messages are interspersed between several tracks, inviting you to imagine and construct a storyline for the album. Who are these people and why are they saying these things? So many questions…some of which Frykdahl answered when I interviewed him last week. I won’t say anything more here. You should give this album some time, wait for the questions to come, and start chipping away at your own conclusions. The most important conclusion I’ve drawn is that this is one of the year’s best albums.