A Year of Music

Stuck in my head this morning: a vague montage of material from Michael O’Shea’s self-titled solo album on WMO, chopped and reconfigured by my dreaming mind to sound vaguely Chinese. I was dreaming about the NPR affiliate in Portland changing to broadcast all in Chinese, and my mom tuning all the radios in the house to it, you see. Which is weird inasmuch as O’Shea played mostly traditional Celtic folk drones, albeit on an instrument of his own devising (one that sounds like a hammer dulcimer with a built-in flange pedal).

O’Shea’s music sounds like a cross between John Fahey and Roy Montgomery, which is my way of saying it’s great and weird, and I’d like to find more material by him. Too bad for me! The only other record he released is a desperately out of print LP from 1982, all of which is included on the WMO release. Also, the WMO release itself is completely out of print (as are most things on WMO, the private label of Wire’s fan club). I heard this in the first place via Mutant Sounds. You can too, if you like.

Choosing to end his Raag Manifestos with a simple old hymn (“Blessed Be the Name of the Lord”) was a good move for Jack Rose. He can produce a storm of sound with two hands and a steel-string guitar, but the uncomplicated rhythms and old-time, major-key vibe of “Blessed Be” sends a sometimes chaotic album out on a sunlit high note. One reason among many why Jack Rose is my favorite of the Fahey-esque folk guitar wizards rambling the backwoods byways of today’s America.

After reading this inspirational article, I decided to do my part for the music industry and pay a visit to my friends at Aquarius. Some of this stuff had been on hold for me for months now, so it was past time.

I spent a while distracting Andee and Allan while they feverishly tried to finish the newest edition of the infamous and sprawling Aquarius New Releases list. And “feverish” is right – there’s a certain amount of urgency to the proceedings, but they’re also not too tough to distract, the sustained effort of putting together the behemoth list having broken them down until they have the attention span of disease-enfeebled gerbils.

Here’s what I got:

• A Sunny Day In Glasgow: Scribble Mural Comic Journal (notenuf)
• August Born: August Born (Drag City)
• Buried At Sea: Ghost (Neurot)
• Dead Meadow: Howls from the Hills (Xemu)
• Malicious Secrets / Antaeus / Mutilation / Deathspell Omega: From the Entrails to the Dirt (End All Life)
• The Necks: Townsville (ReR)
• Paolo Parisi / John Duncan: Conservatory (San Sebastiano) CD + book (Mascietto Editore)
• Jack Rose: Raag Manifestos (vhf)
• Torche: In Return CD + 10” (Robotic Empire)
• Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters (Southern Lord)
• Xasthur: Defective Epitaph [2CD Daymare edition] (Hydra Head / Daymare)

The Torche is packaged in a seriously beautiful gatefold sleeve with the vinyl in one sleeve and the CD fixed inside the gatefold, with art by John Dyer Baizley (by way of Pushead and Alphonse Mucha):

(Many thanks to Cosmo Lee for his excellent article on John Dyer Baizley’s illustration, which alerted me to the existence of this record. I shamelessly stole his high-quality scans, which are of course © John Dyer Baizley, used only for purposes of promotion and review.)

My record is marbled pale green vinyl; if anybody else with this stops by, let me know what color yours is.