Aaron Dooley - Trapped In Purgatory
Another great tape from Island House Recordings. Aaron Dooley’s Trapped In Purgatory features four expansive pieces, each one free-floating but never meandering. The Denver-based bassist is joined by a big band of players who add djembe, saxophone, flute, dulcimer, dobro and more to these open-ended tunes. The highlight is on the 13-minute “Plainswalking” when the drift morphs into an almost Dead-worthy choogle, the musicians reaching a beautiful plateau, breaking out of purgatory and into ecstasy.
Aquarium Drunkard :: 2022 Year in Review
One list to rule them all! Yeah, it’s that time of year again — Aquarium Drunkard’s “unranked and unruly” year in review is live now. Overwhelming in a good way … there is a ton of great music to get into in 2022. As usual, I contributed a bunch of blurbs, but I’ve got my work cut out for me still; I’ve probably heard only about a third of the albums included.
Amazingly, if my calculations are correct, I’ve been scribbling away at AD for a decade now. In internet years, that’s a lifetime — but I have no intention of stopping. For me personally, it’s the ideal music website: always curious, always celebratory, always cool. Serious fun. It also doesn’t bombard you with horrible ads like seemingly every other place on the world wide web. Against most odds, Justin, Jason and the rest of the crew have built something that hopefully will continue on and on … I can’t imagine a world without Aquarium Drunkard anyway.
And not to belabor the point, but you can help us keep on trucking by becoming an AD Patreon! Onwards, upwards …
Bitchin Bajas - Union Pool, Brooklyn, New York, December 4, 2022
One of the very best albums of this year (in my humble opinion!) was Bajascillators, the latest masterpiece from the Chicago-based kosmische jam band known as Bitchin Bajas. The trio (made up of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Daniel Quinlivan) knocked it way out of the park with this one, like a dream collab between Sun Ra, Laurie Spiegel and Harmonia. I’ve listened to the new one over and over and it just continues to give. Highly recommended, to say the least. (Also recommended: Jennifer Kelly’s recent interview with Cooper Crain).
The Bajas went out on the road in support of Bajascillators recently, and for those of us not on the east coast, Roolin, the excellent YouTuber, was on hand to film an interstellar Brooklyn set in its entirety. Beyond the infinite! The sound quality is good enough that you can just listen, but the immersive, hallucinogenic Macrodose visuals are very much worth getting into, too. At some point, even Union Pool’s ceiling fans start to look pretty psychedelic. (For an even trippier experience, there’s an “animated” version, too!) More fresh Bajas? Here’s their D.C. set from a few days later.
Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Research Arkestra - Slugs’ in the Far East, New York City, 1969/70
Since Bitchin Bajas released an awesome Sun Ra tribute recently, let’s follow them up with some of the real deal. Ra and his Arkestra had a long-running residency at Slugs’ Saloon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s sort of hard to imagine this group just being a local bar band, but that’s kind of what they were! A truly unusual and amazing bar band, that is.
“The Arkestra made Monday nights at Slugs’ seem like testing grounds for new forms, new identities,” writes John Szwed in his excellent Space Is The Place bio. “One night a man dressed as a ninja warrior crashed through the door, and when some people began to laugh, he jumped on the bar and took the tops of the bottles off with a sweep of his sword. Another night, a man from India approached Sun Ra at Slugs’ and warned him, ‘You just played the forbidden sacred music!” Sonny replied, 'That’s what I hear.’“
We can only visualize these wild scenes in our imagination, but we can hear some of what went down thanks to tapes. This hour-and-a-half at Slugs’ is something else — occasionally it sounds not too far off from what Silver Apples were doing during the same period. But then it breaks into pseudo-spiritual chants, big band jazz moves and skronked out noize.
Another eyewitness account, this one from critic Michael Zwerin: "The beat kept on, building in intensity. Everyone in the band was playing a percussion instrument of some kind. One of them started to chant. The volume grew and spread. It built further. I was being altogether mauled and caressed at the same time. It was a loving grit, a soft racket. It wrapped itself around me.”
The Clean - Live in Dunedin 1982
We've been losing great musicians at a painfully steady clip over the past couple weeks — Christine McVie, Angelo Badalamenti, and most wrenchingly Clean co-founder Hamish Kilgour. The outpouring of love and admiration for Hamish since the tragic news broke shows what a positive impact he had on so many people.
Robert Scott: “He was the yin and the yang, the sturm and the drang, the bucket, the glue, the whole shebang.”
I always kind of loved that even though they were one of the greatest rock bands of all time, the Clean rejected most of the trappings of careerism, disappearing for years at a time, staying off of the treadmill for the most part. I think I heard Hamish say in an interview that they were "the band without a plan." Of course, that kind of dedication to music/art/creativity above all else comes with its fair share of difficulties; you always hope that musicians of that ilk are able to carve out a life for themselves somehow. Even though he was obviously struggling, I'm grateful that Hamish shared what he could while he could.
And of course, the wondrous sounds he made with the Clean, with Bailter Space, with the Mad Scene, with Tiny Ruins, solo and with many many other bands live on. And it's literally impossible not to feel better listening to the Clean, whose music is as life-affirming as it comes. For a limited-time treat, dig into this rare audience tape of the band right towards the end of their first run. Lo-fi for sure, but absolutely beautiful. That Dunedin Sound, ringing out for eternity.
Needles and Plastic: Flying Nun Records, 1981–1988, by Matthew Goody
And speaking of Hamish, you need this book! A remarkable deep dive into the Flying Nun universe, Matthew Goody's Needles and Plastic offers a wealth of insight into New Zealand's insanely fertile 1980s underground music scene. The big names are all here — The Clean, the Chills, Tall Dwarfs, the Verlaines, Dead C etc. — but Goody gives equal attention to lesser-known (but equally awesome) artists like Look Blue Go Purple, Able Tasmans and Ballon D’Essai. Goody balances a fan's enthusiasm with a critic's eye and an archivist's attention to historic detail; you'll learn something new on every page and add countless records to your listening pile. Founded by Roger Shepherd in 1981, Flying Nun sometimes comes across as a ramshackle affair, but one driven by deep passion and love of unusual sounds — the label's success is as good an argument for the make-it-up-as-you-go-along, DIY spirit as you're likely to find. Complemented by fascinating photos and visual ephemera, Needles and Plastic is definitive and authoritative, painting a rich portrait of a fascinating place and time.
From the Doom & Gloom Archives
Can - The Empire Theatre, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 25, 1973
I finally got around to reading All Gates Open, Rob Young’s authorized Can bio — and it was great. What took me so long? Young’s book (coupled with a separate collection by keyboardist Irmin Schmidt) is packed with insider info, excellent writing and wild stories. As ever, Can seems more like a dream than a band; the lesson, if there is one, is to be both totally rigorous in your life/art but also willing to be accept (even revel in) whatever twists of fate life throws your way.
Whatever! The real lesson is to listen to more Can! Here’s a tape of the band towards the end of the Damo era, flowing through and mowing down a crowd full of Scots in 1973. Amazing stuff, a band on the edge, yet totally in control. Tacked on at the end are some recordings with Michiko Nakao, who adds her vocals to an excerpt of this Edinburgh recording. Interesting!
Irmin Says: You know it in the moment when it happens: the Glücksgefühl, the ecstasy. I was looking for that all my life, because it happens very now and then in a different context, and it’s those moments where what you do is totally in accordance, in harmony with you. You are in harmony with the world and what you are doing.
Currently Reading: Dolphin Junction: Stories By Mick Herron