August Recap

Oxygen Destroyer, DJ Bailey, Louis Cole

Sep 11, 2024

Cover art by Shoggoth Kinetics / Layout by Nestor Carrera

I'm writing this section solely so the pull-quote for the Substack generated image doesn't look weird. Hey. I hope you're doing OK. If you're not doing OK, here's some Eric Alper-ass engagement: Let me know what band would soundtrack a trauma bonding session between us. Mine would be Trauma Bond.

New Tunes

Oxygen Destroyer - Guardian of the Universe (Redefining Darkness Records)

From: Seattle, WA
Genre: death metal

Guardian Of The Universe is a visceral album, a true leaves-marks onslaught pairing speed-demon death metal and chunky thrash pummeling that’s like if enlargened-by-radiation versions of Angelcorpse and Demolition Hammer did battle within a city that’s soon to be stomped to dust. Lord Kaiju and Joey Walker’s guitars fire forth with the anarchic precision of an atomic breath attack. Bassist Paul Wright and drummer Chris Craven bang out a bevy of bruising body blow rhythms. Oxygen Destroyer plain rips. And “Shadow of Evil” is a ripper on an album of rippers, somehow turning it up a notch on an album that already feels dimed.

Read the rest here.

Fabiano do Nascimento - Olhos D'água (Nascimento Music LLC)

From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: folk / jazz

Fabiano do Nascimento has been on a collaboration heater, some real LeBron James on the banana boat shit that actually has come to fruition. In January 2023, the Brazilian-born, LA-based guitarist cut Lendas with the august Arthur Verocai and Vittor Santos' Orquestra. A year later, do Nascimento joined forces with LA weird jazz staple Sam Gendel for The Room. And now do Nascimento is reunited with another Brazilian guitarist par excellence, Daniel Santiago.

Santiago was last seen around these parts collaborating with the incomparable Pedro Martins on 2023's Movement. (Perhaps Santiago is neck-and-neck with do Nascimento in the dream team development department.) And Santiago and do Nascimento go way back, last rubbing shoulders on 2023's more experimental Das Nuvens. They're also buds outside the studio, which may account for the two's near-telepathic connection. I finish my friends' dad jokes. These two wrap incredibly complex guitar passages around each other. Life is fair.

Olhos D'água shares a name with the town in Albufeira, Portugal. "Olhos d'Agua means eyes of water, a name it gets from the freshwater springs that sometimes bubble up through the sand at low tide," goes the sales pitch via whatever Don Draper is employed by Sun-hat Villas and Resorts. While I recognize the gaucheness of quoting ad copy, Olhos D'água, the album, is a good analog. Listen to how do Nascimento and Santiago's fingerpicking on "Floresta dos Sonhos" burble and bubble, breaking through the sand in droplets and illuminated by the sun. Where's my ad copy gig? Oh, you're saying music criticism in the modern age is basically ad copy? Fair enough.

Fittingly, Olhos D'água might as well be the guitar record equivalent of two bodies of water flowing into each other. When other musicians enter, such as Sakura Okamura on Sho and Jennifer Souza on guitar and vocals, they too rush into the stream of sounds. All seem to know precisely where the others are going, carried along on this gentle current that never feels inert. That propulsion gives Olhos D'água the juice that some hushed guitar albums lack, a real sense of movement through exemplary songcraft. Sure, everyone involved can shred, but this is more about creating a lasting impression. Thus, Olhos D'água imparts a serene melancholy, like what washes over you on the final day of a vacation trip. It's that gentle ache in your heart, of wanting to see the sunrise again in a land that's not your own.

Effluence - Convulsive Thoughts (Putrefactive Recordings)

From: California
Genre: extremely hard bop

The enduring joke around the Wolf's Week water cooler is that I'll spray-paint a "lol" tag on any extremely hard bop release because what else is there to say at this point? Effluence's Convulsing Thoughts, a two-song single inspired by "cicuta virosa," which is some fittingly Erowidian cryptic shit, isn't any different than other records under the Putrefactive Recordings umbrella. It's loud. It's weird. It'll make friends ask if you need help while they preemptively report your name to the depression care team, aka Sad Team Six. But, and I can't believe I'm writing this about Effluence, it's also the comprehensible thing sole member Matt Stephens has released under this band name. Yes, this is still the Effluence you know and love — one look at the smashed-melon artwork will tell you all you need to know. Pictures truly are worth a million brain cells, just like the ones pouring out of that poor soul's head wound. And, on the sonic side, this is, after all, the band that starred on I Can't Believe It's Not Encenathrakh. But it's also all of Effluence's idiosyncrasies condensed down to two tracks, which additionally sport the best production of this project's career. Better yet for nervous neophytes, Convulsing Thoughts's essential elements never overstay their welcome. I think the brevity, then, makes this more digestible than, say, the 26-minute "Undulating Alala" or even this year's Necrobiology, Effluence's shining moment as a brutal death metal band.

For instance, "Paroxysmal Sesquiterpinoidal Insalubrity" opens with the kind of BDM that could conceivably be released on New Standard Elite, the sort of chronically clogged sewer chugs that Ecchymosis might spew out. When it gets weird around the one-minute mark with an explosion of free jazz sheets of sound, that section only lasts 30 seconds before the loud is followed by the quiet avant-garde tangent of insectoid instrument scratching. The quick cuts give Effluence a different momentum other than straight blasting, along with the sense that the extremely outre elements won't overwhelm. Again, I don't think normal people will ever listen to more than five seconds of this stuff, but this is the first time I might recommend it to music nerds who don't mind playing in a sandbox situated on the fringe of music. Then again, when the BDM kicks back in, with guttural barfs, unending drumline snare rolls, and screaming tones that sound like Steve Austin closed a car door on his nutsack, I wonder what the hell is wrong with me. Awesome as always. lol.

Tantric Bile - Unbidden (Putrefactive Recordings)

From: California
Genre: extremely hard bop

Effluence's jazz side. Free jazz freak outs for freaks. Check the liner notes:

Paul Acuña - vocals, bass
Ollie Burgess - guitars, recorder, keyboards
Matt Stephens - tin whistle, recorder, clarinet, drums, bathtub, percussion, organ, keyboards, kinnor harp

"Bathtub." Fascinating yet horrifying; The Art Ensemble of Elm Street. Somewhere, a jazz dork and gorenoise nerd are having a meet-cute because of this album. Don't have kids. Obligatory "lol." Earned.

Kevin Drumm - Constriction (self-released)

From: Chicago, IL
Genre: noise

I gravitate towards Kevin Drumm's gentler work mainly because I use those albums as background noise while I edit. Imperial Horizon, whose single song used to be titled "Just Lay Down and Forgot It" (I remember), is the all-timer in that regard and probably my most listened-to song ever that I haven't used as a ringtone. (I had "You Suffer" as a text alert. That is clearly number one.) I respect Drumm's noisier work, such as Sheer Hellish Miasma and Imperial Distortion, the latter being the dark-alley-in-the-big-city companion piece to Imperial Horizon, but I don't jam them as often because they're more of an active listen.

Constriction splits the difference. It's noise that shuts down one of your senses so you can focus. It also fills the sonic spectrum: The hour-long track has a constant bass hum, a Sunn-worthy wum. Points for the fitting album cover; Constriction really sounds like a Paulstretched recording of buildings imploding. In what is becoming a common refrain regarding my taste, I don't think this is for everyone — revisit last month's mini-essay on noise to understand why. But for those who want something close to power ambient, this is it.

Corrupted - Pray For The HOLLOW Sun (self-released)

From: Japan
Genre: ambient / noise / field recordings

It's hard not to be a little disappointed Corrupted's first full-length in 13 years is a 52-minute ambient track. One could read the tea leaves and predict Japan's finest doom/sludge export would eventually land here. There have been signs: 1999's "VIII - El mundo -," the minimalist to the extreme monster that occupied the entirety of Llenándose de gusanos's second disc, already inhabited the ambient zone if you want to get persnickety about it. But even that track was packaged with crunch main course before the hushed digestif. As far as I remember, Pray for the HOLLOW Sun (the last time I’m using the intended stylization) is the first time Corrupted has been completely crunchless.

Sure, the near-post-rock excursions of 2011's Garten der Unbewusstheit had more in common with the quiet/loud of Envy or Mono than Paso Inferior. Mushikeras, last year's surprise EP featuring two new members, was also more atmospheric-focused. And while it's been Corrupted's MO thus far to keep moving and evolving, to place just as much crunching importance on the deep-sea pressure of the negative space, it's, again, hard not to pine for the days of the early crust crush or even El Mundo Frio, when the band so ably balanced the pretty and the pummeling.

That said, all of that whining about Corrupted's relative mass on Pray for the Hollow Sun melts away when you finally take the time to listen to the thing. Despite being mostly riffless, this sucker has more density than most doomers, a head-squishing heaviness emanating from the highly emotional subject matter.

We'll get to all that in a second. First, let's diagram some nuts and bolts. Pray for the Hollow Sun is like a darker version of The KLF's Chill Out, spinning a yarn by navigating seamlessly through sections to construct a complete narrative. The difference is that Corrupted focuses on the noisier, more abstract side of ambient, from field recordings to floating tones to noise clangs and bangs to towering fields of distortion. There's a recurring arpeggio that floats in and out, but aside from some pedal-assisted trickery in the Fenneszian sense (I assume since three guitarists are credited), that's it for guitar stuff. Instead, the star of the show is the overall experience. It sets a scene, grips you with an aural story, and never lets go.

Pray for the Hollow Sun's unspoken "lyrics" are a poem by Norio Mob, a writer who formerly logged time in Ultra Fuckers. The poem is about Mob's feelings, 13 years later, about the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. I'm always made a little queasy approaching deeply personal albums like this from a critical perspective. Like, what, Corrupted doesn't feel the devastation enough? "Hm, yes, perhaps the sense of loss could've better permeated this noise section representing soul-deadening despondency." This is generally why people think music writers are morons.

Thankfully, I don't need to approach that kind of fart-sniffing appraisal. What Corrupted has crafted is as complex as the human experience. Everything between the opening clicks of a Geiger counter and the unsettling Lustmordian nothingness of the ending cycles through the stages of grief, adding up to an album full of anguish. It's a demanding but rewarding listen, a memorial that continues to come alive during replays. It's Corrupted through and through, mainly because it isn't, which is the most Corrupted thing, really. Heavy as it ever was.

Concrete Winds - Concrete Winds (Sepulchral Voice Records)

From: Helsinki, Finland
Genre: death metal

And thus, here we are again, back to “Infernal Repeater,” another fitting title for Concrete Winds’s incessant desire to wage an all-out onslaught. Nestled into Concrete Winds‘s four-hole and batting behind a couple sub-two-minute speedsters, “Infernal Repeater” opens with PJ’s phlegm-flinging roar. Before you can even appreciate the stridency of that scream, Concrete Winds is off and blasting, blazing through several cyclonically circular sections that are like 20 Slayer stuck grooves playing simultaneously. Enter churning chugs that give the track something of a dynamic tempo in the same way that being thrown out a window during a car crash and then getting run over by another car might be a dynamic experience. Enter the solos, the epitome of steel-melting shred. They sound like having a panic attack over a panic attack. And then, the song is over. A brief outro of static sets up “Subterranean Persuasion”‘s pounding industrial-y intro before you get to do it all again.

Read the rest here

Memorrhage - Anyo (self-released)

From: Dallas, TX
Genre: nu metal

We're at the point in the nu metal revival when we're starting to see some separation between artists who want to live in 1999 and those working to push the form forward. Garry Brents has always been at the forefront of whatever genre fusion catches his fancy, so of course Memorrhage's Anyo takes another big leap into the future. The general conceit remains the same: This is an album for people who love Slipknot and Nasum. That said, Anyo — a Tagalog word which translates roughly to "to shape" in English — has an intriguing twist on futurism: It's like what people who just came out of the theater during the opening weekend of The Matrix might think is in store for them in 2024. As such, you get these Y2K anxiety riffs that also live 25 years ahead in the wake of that apocalypse. It reminds me of all the paths a genre like death metal didn't take in the pre-codified late '80s/early '90s. It's one of those grand Brents thought experiments that swallows you up in its alternate reality immersion.

"An anthology album, much like Memorrhage self-titled, where each song is its own story within a sci-fi setting," Brents wrote in the Bandcamp liner notes. "Some songs are based on original concepts and some inspired by media like Macross/Robotech, Magic the Gathering's Merfolk, Fortress (1992 film), Quake, and Hellraiser." Sure. Whatever the touchstone, you get something like "Downstone," which is equally Slipknot, Korn, and Uphill Battle. But you also get "Dive," like if Crossbreed was Neuma, and "1st Level," which is like if Spineshank pivoted to dominate rock radio. However, like the rest of Brents's work, these aren't just experiments. No, the driving force is to shape these what-ifs into songs. Memorrhage succeeds, and is one of the handful of nowadays nu metal bands I feel comfortable endorsing.

Evilyn - Mondestrunken (Transcending Obscurity Records)

From: USA / Australia
Genre: death metal

Without tipping into hyperbole, “Forgotten” and its album twin, the equally whiplash-inducing “Interwoven,” sound like the kind of tunes a lab-created virtuosic death metal mutant would make if it were reared on nothing but Immolation and Gorguts. Bassist Alex Weber (Malignancy, WAIT) and Robin Stone (more bands than a three-day festival; what happens when you’re a drummer and the scene finds your phone number) emphasize those herks and jerks like they’re exclamation points, giving “Forgotten” that undulating, seasick feel. Both musicians also let their instruments spill into the negative space between waves. And, hot damn, those waves emanate from the eruptions being spewed out of Anthony Lipari’s guitar amp. Lipari’s riffs feature a diverse set of walk cycles — lurches, grooves, wriggles, squiggles — outfitting “Forgotten” with a pleasingly discomforting sense of otherworldliness. That helps sell the song’s seemingly conflicting combo: a kind of orderly chaos. It’s an attractive oxymoron that hints at an underlying profundity, a peek at the grinding gears behind the universe that animate reality’s unpredictability. Fine. I’ll put the bong down.

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Citric Dummies - Trapped in a Parking Garage (self-released)

From: Minneapolis, MN
Genre: punk

I don't know, man. I don't know what more you could want. Trapped in a Parking Garage is punk that's fast and goes hard while retaining an anthemic quality. As has often been cited, the Killed By Death comps, and perhaps Hüsker Dü's deliriously cranked-up Land Speed Record, are a jumping-off point. From there, Citric Dummies finds its own way, turning in four songs that could've easily made the cut on last year's excellent Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass without sounding like much on that album: "Look Out World (I'm Eatin' Arby's)" is Poison Idea doing Misfits, or vice versa; The Hives are probably mad it didn't craft "Trapped in a Parking Garage;" and on and on, each track a twist on the anthemic fast punk formula. An ass-kicker with a diversity that will play for punk obsessives.

DUHKHA - A Place You Can’t Come Back From (Good Fight)

From: California
Genre: metalcore

…kind of. Actually, the things that make A Place You Can’t Come Back From float in 2024 are the necessary firmware updates. Barney and Aranda play with more dexterity than the bygone breakdown beasts that once walked the land with the same stumbling wooziness as a concussed brontosaurus…or Rick Ta Life riding a horse. Like, just the fact that DUHKHA can blast well wasn’t really a frequently heard facet of this stuff in the pre-Dave Witte days. So, every swing of the rhythmic sledgehammer is on point. Same goes for the juds. Ulug thankfully frees many of these beatdowns from the stale tropes of yesteryear, retaining the most powerful elements and sharpening them into something more incisive. Remember when lesser riffs were the stale bread sandwiching the breakdown meat? The rest stops for weary spin-kickers? DUHKHA does not. Ulug always seems to have a good riff in his quiver. That commitment to killer over filler really plays when DUHKHA quickly shifts from one section to the next with the alacrity of a mathier band. That sets the table for Miller to scream with expert control. Even better, Miller’s vocal variety far surpasses the once endemic-in-the-scene replacement-level roars that couldn’t even match the power of infuriated gym teachers. (Personally, I think the lyrics skew a little too close to the Poison the Well eyes-paralyze school of cryptic emotionality, but your mileage may vary depending on which SSRIs you’re on.) All that comes together for another rarity for albums of this ilk: A Place You Can’t Come Back From is front-to-back solid.

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Louis Cole (with Metropole Orkest & Jules Buckley) - nothing (Brainfeeder Records)

From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: jazz / pop

So, here's the orchestral album, a time-honored tradition taken on by artists needing to release something. Here's the wrinkle: As the press copy states, Louis Cole went into his date with Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley with a whole new song cycle. Orchestral versions of old stuff? Hell no. Eat shit, S&M Metallica. These songs are newer than the confidence of a midlife crisis sufferer after buying a new Corvette. Louis Cole: always the overachiever.

Now, in the interest of embracing my pedantic final form, I should specify that there are two old songs redone with the requisite orchestral window dressing on this set: "Shallow Laughter/Bitches" and "Let it Happen," both from 2022's Quality Over Opinion, Cole's strongest work as a solo artist. Cole isn't hiding that fact, pointing it out in the liner notes: 15 tracks of the 17-song cycle are new. But...man...I think those old tracks are the best moments on the album.

Now, I don't think Nothing’s new stuff is bad — far from it. They’re very accomplished works. They showcases Cole's growth as a composer and arranger. They’re leaps and bounds more impressive from that perspective than Cole's last foray into working with an expanded collection of musicians, 2019's Live Sesh and Xtra Songs. That said, Nothing doesn't scratch the same itch for me. There's a DIY dirtiness to Cole's Live Sesh and Xtra Songs, a by-all-costs immediacy, that sells the hell out of the material. Likewise, Cole's third album, Time, and the "live band sesh" versions of Knower's material, embrace the nerviness of clever kids pushing the limits of their musicianship in bedrooms outfitted with limited recording tools. There's a spareness to that stuff, the kind of pushed-into-the-red, brittle funk Prince made in his ultra-hungry pre-Purple Rain era, that makes Cole's artful, music school compositions pop. In those cases, there's nothing to hide behind. The hooks need to kill because there's no safety net. And there's an intensity inherent in Cole figuring this stuff out on the fly, like how to record drums with a shitty laptop mic. So, there's tension in the concessions, of needing to find the middle ground between ambition and execution. That space is where great art is made.

Nothing trades in the spareness of Cole's earlier work for the warm blanket of grandiosity. Songs in the older mold, such as the pretty solid "Things Will Fall Apart," are able to survive the adornments. But the self-consciously important songs of this cycle just don't hit the same way. The immediacy is swallowed up by the bombast, which, again, is impressive, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to listen to it. What comes into stark relief on this set is that Cole is no longer writing music with grit, without the Zappa-esque incongruity of someone crushing their instruments while singing about sending off late night risky texts. Sure, a few sections have a Mahlerian heaviness, such as "Who Cares 2," but it's still an amiable sort of heaviness, like your harmless friend trying to act aggrieved during meaningless spats. To put it another way, it's like if The Beach Boys circa Smile tried to be dangerous.

Ultimately, I think Nothing will live or die for you depending on how much you want to hear Louis Cole on his Van Dyke Parks shit. That's just not where my head is at right now. Like, give me Todd Rundgren's Something / Anything, but you can keep Utopia. ("The Ikon" bangs, but you know what I'm saying.) There will be a bunch of people who view this as a masterpiece, particularly kids working on music degrees. I don't think they're wrong. But, man, I'm listening to older jams right now and it's so much livelier: "Weird Part of the Night," that acidic bite of Cole's humor juxtaposed over some brain-sprain music theory stuff; the Stevie Wonder wonderful "Dead Inside Shuffle," the groove that allows you to live a whole life inside that pocket. Nothing isn't nothing, but I wish it had more of that old something.

Old Tunes

Way, way back in a bygone era, when saber-toothed tigers used to sack unsuspecting cave dwellers like Warren Sapp from the blind side, the ancients downloaded MP3s on the internet. Prehistory! I know because I was there, fighting off pterodactyls and trying not to get brained by clubs made of femurs, but still living in a relative state of zen because I never had to listen to someone talk to me about Sleep Token. Soulseek and Blogspot ruled the bandwidth, opening up the whole history of recorded music so agoraphobic nerds could explore the vast riches of rarities they otherwise could've found by talking to exactly one person at a record store.

While most downloading was done with rapacious zeal, filling up external hard drives with eons of tunes no one could possibly ever listen to in one lifetime, a few brave souls bucked the free-for-all trend and weren't interested in leaking These Arms are Snakes albums four months in advance. No, they wanted to ensure their glory days lasted, that their dust-to-dust teen years transcended the ephemerality of the moment. It was a way of holding on tight to those endless halcyon summers that settled significant acreage in their souls as deathbed memories. So, in an archivist state of mind, they started sites with the explicit purpose of preserving music moldering on analog formats. I have undoubtedly written some of the names of their hallowed blogs before in these very pages. But I haven't had a chance to blab and yap about the retired ravers who became anthropologists, turning their troves of tapes and bootlegs into MP3s for curious idiots such as myself. You know, the kids who missed it, the tots in the late '80s and early '90s who were worrying about, like, which swing to sit on during recess instead of doing ecstasy in a warehouse in the middle of London.

That's how I had the pleasure of hearing the fruits of the Yaman label, a brief but essential purveyor of c90 cassettes featuring the cream of the early rave DJs, especially those pioneers who were broadening the possibilities of jungle, the antecedent of drum and bass. I found Yaman during my obsessive LTJ Bukem phase.

Logical Progressions Level 1, the 1996 compilation LTJ Bukem compiled, was the seed. It collected the most intelligent drum and bass tracks in one place, thus allowing contemporary writers to give the substyle the most terrible name: "intelligent drum and bass." And so, as one does after becoming enamored with a DJ, I went looking for other mixes. I eventually landed on one of the databases described above that collected tape rips. And these weren't cleaned-up rips. No. These were crackly, dusty, warped rips that had extended silences at the 45-minute mark when the tape turned over. But those analog artifacts just made the experience so much richer, imbuing the rips with a bootleg ambiance, like you traveled back in time and got to fiddle with a radio's tuning knob so you could dial in a pirate radio station.

So, my hunt for mixes eventually led me to Yaman, for which LTJ Bukem was tapped to record quite frequently. But while LTJ Bukem's mixes were good, I ultimately fell for the works of labelmate DJ Bailey. Where LTJ Bukem's bootlegs were smooth, DJ Bailey's mixes had the hyperactive, quick-cutting kineticism of hip-hop DJs.

"So back then most early hip-hop DJs were good at scratching but not as good at mixing," Bailey said in an interview with UKF." "But when the whole disco and house sounds came over, that's when people realised blending and beat mixing was a big thing. My sister's friend Garfield was collecting the house records. She told him I was into mixing and got me to go over his place for a mix. That was the first time I touched Technics turntables. I'd mix for hours and never really stopped since then."

Bailey soon moved to pirate radio, most importantly Energy FM, the London station that broadcast from 1991 to 1997. From there, Bailey became a fixture on the DJ circuit, playing at all the now legendary locales, such as Blue Note, the club owned by Eddie Piller that became ground zero for advancements in drum and bass during Metalheadz's Sunday showcase.

Bailey's acknowledged masterpiece is Intelligent Drum & Bass, a 90-minute survey released in 1996, which, like Logical Progressions Level 1, surveyed the smarter practitioners in the scene. But my favorite works of Bailey's are the five "Studio Tapes" recorded in 1992 and 1993. These sessions spotlighted a more embryonic form of jungle when it regularly came in contact with breakbeat hardcore. Thus, you get to hear jungle mixed in with those blown-out-on-MDMA piano chords, providing something of a missing link for electronic music's notoriously hazy evolution. And, you know, the tapes also whip ass, speeding along with an angel dust freneticism that includes plenty of surprises, such as a chipmunked-out Kate Bush vocal.

My favorite of these tapes is the third one, mainly because it opens with LTJ Bukem's "Demon's Theme," perhaps the best song of this era. But they're all a blast and have the excellent quality of working as something to focus on or relegated to aural wallpaper like ultra-caffeinated background noise. I've worked to these tapes. I've driven to these tapes. I've stared at a wall to these tapes. And we have some intrepid uploaders to thank for them and my continued enjoyment 30-plus years later. We might not live forever, but maybe these will.

Concert Highlights

Mikaela Davis - The Echo, 8/1/2024

There was a moment during Mikaela Davis's set when I thought, Huh, this is much more Grateful Dead-inspired than I surmised. This, of course, was a stupid thing to think because the first hit on a YouTube search for the harpist is a three-year-old Reflix set of Davis and company doing nothing but Dead covers. Remember this the next time you think about complimenting my research skills.

Anyway, Davis headlined a fun night of extended country-ish jams at The Echo, the venue that has become another country draw in LA. Jeffrey Silverstein, the Portland cosmic country songwriter who released the great Western Sky Music last year, kicked off the show with languid jams. The thing I respect about Silverstein is how he doesn't mind being pushed to the background despite being the band leader. Most of his recordings foreground the other elements, such as the scintillating pedal steel and surprisingly tight rhythm section. Silverstein is even more generous in a live setting, content to color within the lines with laconic strums and leads while the rest of the band redistricts the boundaries. All in all, it was a great hang despite not playing the Steve Gunn-esque "Clear Cut," the, uh, clear cut best song on Western Sky Music.

Now a quick complaint: Two dudes wouldn't shut the fuck up during Silverstein's set. This isn't that big of a deal at most shows I go to because most shows I go to are loud. Plus, I'm accidentally blessed with the added benefit of needing to wear earplugs after wrecking my hearing for years, meaning that the silicon in my ears tends to cut out crowd noise anyway. But these two dorks kept nattering away about basketball during Silverstein's gently hypnotic jams. My guys, it's fucking Summer League. It's not like you're even talking about anything of consequence. I asked them to move to the back if they wanted to talk, and they looked put off by my suggestion. AITA? Isn't this a free country? I think any jury in the land would let me off if I freed their teeth from their face. Whew. Is it hot in here? I'm going to pass out.

Here's my Mikaela Davis headline: We need more harps. Why aren't there harps in everything? Corrupted's El Mundo Frio has a harp, and I think that's the best metal song of all time most days. Alice Coltrane. Dorothy Ashby. Harps. Give me the harps.

I don't know how novel Davis's country-fried harp is; that's probably a question for Tyler Mahan Coe whenever he's done complaining about some band you have the indignity of enjoying. But I do know that it fits the music like a glove, glittering like streaks of tears running down someone's face that are illuminated by streetlights. That's "Cinderella," the lead single from last year's And Southern Star. What a gorgeous song. Opening with harp and Davis's voice, a crepuscular croon that falls somewhere between hardy and wounded, "Cinderella" takes off with that first pedal steel swell, becoming this grandly melancholic song with a velvet lushness.

Like everything else Davis performed that night, the band used "Cinderella" as a base and went exploring from there. I couldn't tell you the runtime of each mainly because the chrono-center of my brain no longer works, but it felt like "Cinderella" stretched past the 10-minute mark with each member getting a solo. This was the "journey" effect in action, brought over to a rock/indie country context. And, I gotta say, if you want to onboard someone and show them the light of why jams and improvisation can be good, this ain't a bad way to do it. Davis and her band were able to keep these elongated bridges and codas engaging, pushing and pulling through tension and release without losing the general shape of the material. That is to say, nothing was static or far afield, a cul-de-sac that some jam bands can't wank themselves out of. So, it really felt like we were hearing something no one ever would again, a one-off performance just for us that made the small show feel even more intimate. That's why we go see live music, right? To hear and see something we can't get on record? To be present for something that, yes, may be ephemeral but still leaves its fingerprints on our souls? So, I kind of get what Deadheads hear in their deities. And when Davis wished Jerry Garcia a happy birthday, it all made sense.

Egyptian Lover - The Lodge Room, 8/8/2024

8-oh-motherfuckin'-8. Egyptian Lover, probably the foremost evangelist for the 808's impact on early hip hop and electro, led that chant at the Lodge Room for, what else, 808 Day, the first (annual?) festival celebrating the Roland TR-808 drum machine. I'm not sure this debut was a great concert experience, but it was a memorable one. Sometimes, that's worth the ticket price.

Let's speedrun the pre-headliner highlights:

Arabian Prince spun the original version of J.J. Fad's "Supersonic" between extended stretches of story time with Arabian Prince.
Prince Paul delivered the best dance set of the night with a fistful of East Coast bangers. This set deviated from the theme because it, uh, had some tunes with debatable 808s. After A Tribe Called Quest song, Paul: "This one had 808s in it. I swear. I was there."
J Rocc broke the mold by playing 808 dance music. Nice change of pace after Peanut Butter Wolf's sluggish BPMs.
Your surprise guest: Holy shit, it's L'Trimm. Did not think I'd hear "Cars with the Boom" live this year.

And then Egyptian Lover. The LA legend pretty much played the same set he always does — I'll flex on all of you again that I saw him on New Year's Eve — but he still nails it. Even after countless pleas over thousands of concerts, when the man makes the request for a freak, I wholly believe he needs a freak. At the very least, he knows how to structure the rise and fall of a live experience so it draws you in. As soon as he starts freestyling on the 808, you're sold. Cue "Egypt, Egypt" — your last chance to dance. And then off you go into the night.

Louis Cole Choral Music - First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, 8/9/2024

Hidden in his hoodie and shades, Louis Cole was perched atop the pulpit overseeing his grand choral creation. Louis Cole Choral Music, one of those 'you're never going to see this again' shows, was what it said on the tin. Inside the heaven-scraping First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, a nearly 100-year-old building built by Allison & Allison with a gothic, fainting-in-the-presence-of-the-lord interior and the world's second-largest church organ, frequent collaborator and KNOWER member Genevieve Artadi directed a choir singing new Cole compositions.

So, here's the thing: Even when transposed to choral music, Louis Cole sounds like Louis Cole, and it wasn't just because Cole's cherubic falsetto took the lead on a couple songs. No, there were the usual hallmarks: spicy harmonies, sprinkles of yuks, and twists on the form. Regarding the latter, saxophonist Sam Gendel came out for a couple solos, and Cole played Tangerine Dream-y synths on one song. And, like a lot of Cole's work, each song was injected with a general amiability. As I mentioned above, I'd love to hear Cole head down a different path, exploring the darker side of the human experience, but that doesn't seem to fit his temperament, something that I'm coming to regard as the modern, weird-jazz version of The Beach Boys. (I mean, sure, give me the "God Only Knows" version of a Lacrimosa or something.)

Still, as a concert experience, this was a fun one. There was an informality that took the edge off the stuffier moments. For instance, Cole asked to restart a song when the parts didn't line up, which was less the demands of a perfectionist and more the opportunity for a good laugh line. And, I mean, there's nothing like hearing many humans harmonizing, a straight-to-your-soul act of art that incites horripilation. Plus, getting your very being vibrated by a huge-ass organ? (Heh.) Can't go wrong there, either. Then again, this could've very well been a disaster. Cole acknowledged as much, intimating this was one concert he was apprehensive about. Still, that this even worked at all is a testament to Cole's ingenuity, doggedness, and love of music.

Shadowland - Giant Rock, 8/14/2024

Out in the middle of nowhere next to Landers, a town already in the middle of nowhere, is a giant rock named Giant Rock. Let me hit you with some Giant Rock fun facts:

It is a giant rock: "...a freestanding boulder about seven stories high and covering about 58,000 square feet in California's Mojave Desert," per Smithsonian Mag.
The first person to inhabit the rock in the 20th century, and I really do mean inhabit, was Frank Critzer, a German immigrant who set up shop there in the 1930s. Did Critzer dig a cave underneath the rock? He did. Did he live in said furnished cave? He did. Did he put a radio antenna on top of the rock? He did. Did he blow himself up with dynamite after police came knocking to see if he was a Nazi spy? He did.
Next dude up: George Van Tassel. Van Tassel, a bud of Critzer's, bought the land and moved there in 1947. Van Tassel settled in Critzer's subterranean living quarters. And then, he thought big: a restaurant, an airstrip, an, uh, "extra-terrestrial research center." Yes, our man was a UFO dork. He believed "tanned" aliens sent him instructions to build a time machine. Those blueprints became The Integratron, which still stands a few miles away. (That's a whole other story.) To fund the domed building, Van Tassel cooked up the annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention. You can see pics at Messy Nessy, along with an excellent write-up from which I've pilfered much of this information, such as the following:

As for the rock, in the year 2000 it fractured in two when a large piece broke off, revealing its white interior granite. Since the 1920s, Native American priests had predicted that the future of the 21st century would be foretold upon its fracture. Most likely, it was just telling us that too many UFO tourists had been burning their campfires under the rock. Sadly, the exterior surface is now partially covered in graffiti.

And now, to add another chapter to the Giant Rock story, bands play there. I missed one of the earlier metal-leaning shows put on this year by Uncle Bill's BBQ — that would be The Body — mainly because I didn't know there were shows out there. To wit, when I questioned Shadowland about the date on their tour flyer that just said "Giant Rock," I assumed the Brooklyn heavy metal band meant the Giant Rock Meeting Room, a tiny bar-ish place that usually hosts stuff with, like, fiddles and washboards. But no, Shadowland meant Giant Rock, as in the giant rock. And when I drove out to said boulder, I spied the band sound-checking on a slab of concrete next to the former home of Frank Critzer.

There's something about a dubiously sanctioned generator show that adds an extra frisson of je nais se quois to the proceedings. Shadowland, a band already heavy on atmospherics as its pushed-to-the-limit fog machine can attest, reveled in this open-air environment. Under a clear night sky, the quintet pumped out its traditional heavy metal with aplomb. Next to a rock that has been there for ages, shout out to Def Leppard, Shadowland's set took on a timeless quality: could've been 1984, could've been 2024. It's no surprise that every band I've seen there since has said some awe-struck version of the following: Playing in the moonlit shadow of a giant rock in the middle of the desert is something of a bucket list item for them. I don't blame them. If you're in the area, you gotta go. Critzer, Van Tassel, and some George Hamilton-shade aliens knew what was up.