08-02-2022 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [2019-2022] (2h 21m)

08-02-2022 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [2019-2022] (2h 21m)  # Tindersticks, The Cribs, Trees Speak, David Bowie, Seafoam Walls, Biffy Clyro, Jordana, Marika Hackman, Matt Valentine, Girlpool, Circles Around the Sun, Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio

M U S I C (2h 21m)

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Tindersticks were one of the most original and distinctive British acts of the '90s, standing apart from both the British indie scene and the rash of Brit-pop guitar combos that dominated the U.K. charts. Where their contemporaries were often direct and to the point, Tindersticks were obtuse and leisurely, crafting dense, difficult songs layered with literary lyrics, intertwining melodies, mumbling vocals, and gently melancholy orchestrations. Essentially, the group filtered the dark romanticism of Leonard Cohen, Ian Curtis, and Scott Walker through the bizarre pop songcraft of Lee Hazlewood and the aesthetics of indie rock...

Tindersticks 

Pinky in the Daylight 5:22

The Amputees 3:37

from No Treasure But Hope 2019

There are few if any working bands who craft their music as meticulously as Tindersticks; their music is like a suspension bridge built out of nuance, a wealth of small details coming together into something tremendously powerful even when it's whisper quiet (which is often). So it's surprising to learn that the group's 2019 album No Treasure But Hope was recorded in less than a week. Rather than creating an elaborately constructed piece in the studio and then figuring out how to play it on-stage, in this case they opted to establish the framework of their compositions first, and then played them live in the studio for a more natural, organic feel. But if anyone was expecting No Treasure But Hope to sound rougher or less precise given the way it was recorded, they'd be wrong. The craft these performers bring to this music is as stunning as ever, and the interplay between the musicians is wondrous, made all the more remarkable by the deeply affecting murmur of Stuart Staples' vocals. As one might expect from Tindersticks, No Treasure But Hope often feels dour and somewhat overcast, despite the strength of the tunes and the abilities of the instrumentalists...

Blending quintessentially British influences like Sex Pistols and the Smiths with American indie rock like Beat Happening, the Cribs became one of the U.K.'s cult favorite bands in the 2000s and beyond...

The Cribs 

Screaming In Suburbia 3:49

In The Neon Night 3:37

from Night Network 2020

On Night Network, the Cribs trade the serrated punk of 24-7 Rockstar Shit for guitar pop that's as joyous as it is cathartic. Exploring the extremes of their sound is nothing new for this band, but the reasons behind the shift seem clearer than ever this time around. Not long after the release of their previous album, the Cribs parted ways with their management when they discovered the rights to their early songs belonged to someone else. During the year and a half they spent in a protracted but successful legal battle to regain ownership of their music, they recorded Night Network at their longtime friend Dave Grohl's Los Angeles studio. Given the heaviness in their lives at the time, it's no wonder that the Cribs opted to make music that's lighter and often wiser-sounding than what came before it. On their first self-produced album, they don't just strip away much of 24-7's aggression and distortion; they come to terms with the complexities of the past on Night Network's frequently gorgeous songs...

Tucson, Arizona band Trees Speak look to 1970s Krautrock, synth drone, soundtrack music, and Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis for inspiration when putting together their dizzying experiments with electronics and song deconstruction...

Trees Speak 

Seventh Mirror 3:22

Pyramid 2:34

from Vertigo of Flaws: Emancipation of the Dissonance and Temperaments in Irrational Waveforms 2021

...Yet the tracks themselves are mostly short, and the band remain incredibly focused, even as they're venturing further out than they've ever gone before. The Krautrock and cinematic influences of their previous albums remain present, but this one seems far more influenced by vintage electronics of all stripes, from the alien soundscapes of the Forbidden Planet score to Tangerine Dream's iconic soundtrack work from the '80s. It almost seems like the audio equivalent of hyperlink cinema, as each successive track sounds vastly different than the last, yet it's all connected in some way, and it makes more sense with repeated listens. The band excel at channeling '60s psych vibes through a retro Broadcast/Ghost Box filter, with touches of Baroque pop and film noir influences, and there are also moments filled with hazy effects, making them sound like they're sourced from a crackly old film reel...

18-01-2022 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 22m) [2019-2022]

18-01-2022 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 22m) [2019-2022] # Deap Vally, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Night Flowers, Desert Sessions, Mike Dillon, Teen Daze, Rhye, Mura Masa, Sweet Whirl, Resavoir, Tindersticks, The Cribs, The Silence, Trees Speak, David Bowie

M U S I C (2h 22m)

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A rock & roll duo from California, Deap Vally deliver a primal mix of hard rock stomp, glam rock swagger, and greasy blues riffs, like the White Stripes colliding with the Black Keys after time traveling to the 1970s and back. With just guitar, vocals, and drums, the group manage to sound full-bodied while possessing a deadly sense of cool, a healthy degree of sonic punch, and a deadpan sense of humor in their braggadocious lyrics...

Deap Vally 

Perfuction 2:56

Phoenix 2:57

from Marriage 2021

Now that two-piece rock bands are no longer considered an anomaly, high-energy duos are expected to have ready answers to the question of how you keep things fresh and change up your sound when there are only two instruments to contend with. Deap Vally, consisting of guitarist and singer Lindsey Troy and drummer Julie Edwards, showed they knew how to deliver primal, stripped-back rock on their first two albums (2013's Sistrionix and 2016's Femejism), and their third full-length, 2021's Marriage, finds them expanding and exploring a bit after firmly establishing their template of straightforward hard rock with a side of blues and a dash of glam. Through the magic of overdubbing, Troy has added several extra layers of guitar on most of the tracks here, as well as multiplying her half-breathy, half-sneering insouciant vocals into massed choruses and casual but passionate harmonies... Though Deap Vally have found new ways to dress up their music on Marriage, at their core they haven't changed that much -- this is still a smart, powerful rock band with sharp wit and an abundance of well-deserved confidence -- but the added details and textures make a difference, and this music points to a more interesting future for them than one might have imagined after Femejism.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's sense of unfettered sonic exploration makes it easy to mistake them for a long-forgotten relic of the psych explosion of the 1960s. With a far-out sound that, at times, feels barely held together, King Gizzard evoke the eclectic rock experimentation of Frank Zappa's early work with the Mothers of Invention, the anything-goes feeling of the Flaming Lips, and the demented glee of a random, obscure '60s group plucked from a Pebbles compilation as they follow their musical flights of fancy wherever they might lead...

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 

Minimum Brain Size 4:18

Some Of Us 3:52

from K.G. 2020

Over a ten-year span spent releasing an album every few weeks (or so it seemed) King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard never repeated themselves, always pushing forward and trying new things whether it was lengthy jazz excursions, gloom-and-doom synth prog, or thundering thrash metal. That changed some on 2020's K.G., where the band revisit the approach used on Flying Microtonal Banana, the group's 2017 album built around the avant-garde sounds of their custom-made guitars and altered instruments. Stuck in their various homes during the global pandemic, the band gravitated toward the unique instruments and built a batch of songs using their non-Western tunings and tones. Unlike that album, though, where that almost felt like a (mostly successful) gimmick, this time the guitars are more fully integrated into the songs... 

Indie pop quintet Night Flowers cast a warm spell of dreamy guitar pop and dulcet boy/girl vocals that result in a wistful, romantic sound. Based in London, but with Northern English roots and an American singer, the band rode a steady stream of singles and EPs in the mid-2010s to critical acclaim, both in the U.K. and Japan...

Night Flowers 

Night Train 4:38

Merry-Go-Round 2:25

from Fortune Teller 2019

Awash with wistful, romantic lyrics and breezy guitar jangle, London's Night Flowers made a winning impression on their 2018 debut, Wild Notion. Greg Ullyart, Chris Hardy, Sam Lenthall, and Zebedee Budworth originally formed the band in Humberside before moving south to the capitol where they recruited American singer Sophia Petitt to complete their lineup. The sound they make together flirts with the misty borders of dream pop, but ultimately plays like a cleaner and more straightforward take on classic indie pop. Guitarist Ullyart shares some of the lead vocals with the dulcet-toned Pettit, making for some amiable interplay and sweet harmonies. Appearing a little over a year after their debut, Fortune Teller is Night Flowers' second full-length and sees the band shifting even more toward a mainstream sound with clear, full production from drummer Budworth and arrangements that fall somewhere between soft rock and the more earnest side of '80s college rock... 

"Men" #108 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 10-11-2020

 ALTER.NATION #108

Mourn, Population II, Christian Kjellvander, Elvis Costello, Puscifer, Eels, Trees Speak, Nothing, Dope Body, Tobacco, The Flower Kings, Mary Halvorson's Code Girl,King Khan,

weekly favtraX 

1 0 - 1 1 - 2 0 2 0

"M e n"

Raw Spanish indie rockers inspired by Patti Smith and PJ Harvey who formed while the members were still in their teens. Inspired by legendarily raw artists like Throwing Muses and Patti Smith, Barcelona's Mourn started forging their fearless sound while they were in their teens.
Mourn - Self Worth / Men

On 2018's vibrant Sorpresa Familia, Mourn celebrated the end of the label issues that hampered them from playing and promoting their music. However, they're still frustrated by plenty of other things -- capitalism, the patriarchy, relationships -- and on Self Worth, they tackle them head-on. Somehow, they sound even more liberated on these songs than they did on Sorpresa Familia. Self Worth is filled with big guitars and even bigger harmonies... New drummer Victor Álvarez Ridao is a worthy addition to the group, providing a whomping backbeat for the chaos the rest of the band unleashes... Knowing your value and demanding respect are some of the most punk things women can do, and on Self Worth, Mourn do both with fiery eloquence.

Québécois heavy psych power trio with a sprawling and muscular sound. Hailing from Montreal, Population II are a heavy psych power trio with a sprawling and muscular sound that traverses blues, rock, and sludgy metal. 
Population II - A La O Terre /Attraction

The first album by Montreal psychedelic explorers Population II sounds like transmissions from various locales in outer space, the trio recording and transmitting the drifting nothingness of endless expanses punctuated by the impact of comets, the blinding flash of exploding stars, and the beauty of distant galaxies. Singing drummer Pierre-Luc Gratton, guitarist/organist Tristan Lacombe, and bassist Sébastien Provençal are well versed in all forms of psychedelia, and it wouldn't be surprising to find out they had impressive collections of jazz and prog records at home too... Regardless of which avenue the band pursues, Lacombe's guitar playing is a thing of wonder. He coaxes all manner of sounds out of his instrument, ranging from gentle fills to raging shards of noise; whatever the song requires, he delivers... As it is, À la Ô Terre is merely superb and vaults the band onto level footing with fellow travelers like Dungen and Osees, which is pretty good company to be in on your initial voyage.

This Swedish singer and songwriter was also founder and frontman for the Loosegoats. A Swedish-born singer and songwriter whose style is rooted in the indie Americana tradition, Christian Kjellvander's songs are marked by his resonant baritone and a poignant, often haunting tone.

Christian Kjellvander - About Love and Loving Again / Baptist Lodge (The Galaxy)

Recorded mostly live with drummer Per Nordmark and keyboardist Pelle Andersson, both of whom also appeared on Christian Kjellvander's previous two albums, About Love and Loving Again takes an even darker, more involving turn than predecessor Wild Hxmans... About Love and Loving Again opens with pulsing distortion and chaotic drumming on "Baptist Lodge (The Galaxy)," a reference to the remote, converted chapel where Kjellvander wrote and recorded much of his prior solo work until a divorce that informs parts of the album. The track eventually hits a middling stride sketched out by brushed snare, with measure-marking bass drum, sustained guitar strums, and humming synths backing Kjellvander's deep-voiced, subtly melodic recollections, including "It was what it was/And is what it is/And you know, you know it ain't ever coming back." Like most of the entries here, it eventually grows in volume and expansiveness, including a guitar solo that says a lot with limited notes, before falling away to expose eerie synth shimmers (and building back up again)...

The most evocative, innovative, and gifted songwriter since Bob Dylan, with songs that offered highly personal takes on love and politics.
Elvis Costello - Hey Clockface / No Flag

Hey Clockface arrived quickly on the heels of Look Now, but where that 2018 album seemed constructed as classicist Elvis Costello, drawing upon his strengths as a melodicist and the muscle of his regular backing band the Imposters, this 2020 affair feels as if it was designed to surprise... The spell is broken in a flurry of gnarled guitars that usher in "No Flag," a transition that establishes how Hey Clockface doesn't follow any particular path... It shows Costello's mastery of mood and storytelling, the kind of skill he's acquired over the course of a long career, but the key to Hey Clockface is that these techniques are applied to a record that's as restless as anything Costello made in his younger days.

The eclectic solo project of Tool and a Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan... To close out the decade, Keenan revived both A Perfect Circle and Tool, which kept him busy into 2020. That year, along with longtime collaborators Carina Round and Mat Mitchell, Puscifer issued their fourth long-player, Existential Reckoning.
Puscifer - Existential Reckoning / Apocalyptical

Amidst societal strife and global pandemic, Maynard James Keenan returns with the most personal and human of his three main bands, reviving Puscifer with the group's fourth official full-length, Existential Reckoning. As the title suggests, this time things are more serious than usual and the core trio of Keenan, Carina Round, and Mat Mitchell crafted a politically charged takedown of the state of the world circa 2020... Drowning in dread, frustration, and anxiety, the journey falls between Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' introspective film scores and something that could soundtrack The X-Files in another dimension. The band also pepper the effort with touches of Bowie's spaced-out glam, Kraftwerk's robotic detachment, and Reznor and Ross' work as Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels... As the beat pulses with mechanical precision and the bass slinks along, Keenan and Round trade vocals over a slowly building buzz that eventually bleeds into the album's central concept, "Apocalyptical." Atop guitar groove and industrial percussion, Keenan growls, "Be damned, dumb.../Go on, moron, ignore the evidence," morphing into a twisted dystopian version of a Willy Wonka Oompa Loompa. Without mincing words, he calls out a populace that's content with manipulation and disinformation, ignoring facts and reality to its own detriment...

Eclectic and eccentric pop music with flashes of rock and electronics, the brainchild of songwriter Mark Oliver Everett (aka E).
Eels - Earth to Dora / Are You Fucking Your Ex

Mark Oliver Everett, the man who is the benevolent despot behind the Eels, is not adverse to change, and after the cool electronic surfaces and nervous lyrical viewpoint of 2018's The Deconstruction, he decided to take things in a different direction for his 13th album, 2020's Earth to Dora. By Everett's standards, Earth to Dora sounds optimistic, or at least he seems reasonably content most of the time, which is pretty impressive given the dour, edgy tone of much of his music... Of course, Everett probably isn't capable of making an album that's devoid of dark thoughts, and between the uncomfortable jealousy of "Are You Fucking Your Ex,"... For the Eels, those are not emotions to dismiss offhand. In an era of malaise, Eels are contrary enough to take a shot at feeling good, and Earth to Dora is well-written and imaginatively produced pop for grown-ups that reminds us Mark Oliver Everett is crazy enough to try anything once -- even feeling OK for a while.

Instrumental post-rock project that channels Cluster, This Heat, and Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis in their fragmented experiments.  Tucson, Arizona band Trees Speak looked to '70s Krautrock, synth drone, soundtrack music, and Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis for inspiration when putting together their dizzying experiments with electronics and song deconstruction.

Trees Speak - Shadow Forms / Tear Kisser

Trees Speak’s new album ‘Shadow Forms’ is a blend of 1970s German electronic and ‘motorik’ Krautrock instrumentals (think Harmonia, Can, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Neu!), haunting and powerful 1960s & 1970s soundtracks (think Italian prog-rock Goblin and John Carpenter horror movies, Morricone and existential John Barry spy movies), together with a New Nork no wave electronic synth and guitar analogue DIY-ness (think Suicide, anything on Soul Jazz’s New York Noise series or Eno's New York No Wave)!

...

Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic night-time magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives – and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.

Gorgeous, intense, shoegaze and noise rock hybrid from former Horror Show member Dominic Palermo. With a sound that splits the difference between heavy metal darkness and shimmering shoegaze beauty, the Philadelphia band Nothing revolves around the songs and vision of Domenic Palermo.
Nothing - Great Dismal / Ask the Rust

Nothing burst onto the shoegaze and metal scene with the brilliant Guilty of Everything, an album that perfectly juxtaposed the swooning nowhereness of the former with the pounding immediacy of the latter. It was such a perfect debut that the band struggled a bit to figure out exactly where to go from there. After a record that was too slick and melodic (Tired of Tomorrow) and one that set them back on the right track but neglected the metal side of the equation (Dance on the Blacktop), on 2020's The Great Dismal, they finally get the balance just right...

Noisy mesh of post-punk and dance rock from this Baltimore quartet. A frenzied convergence of post-punk danceability and noise rock abrasiveness, Dope Body's sound straddles that fine line between a tightly packed dancefloor and a mosh pit.

Dope Body - Crack a Light / Curve

... Crack a Light is by some counts the group's fourth proper studio album, and pushes their danceable art rock in new directions while keeping explosive energy at the center of every track. Album opener "Curve" blasts out of the gates with some familiar elements of the band's signature sound, with distorted bass, red-lined guitar, swaggering vocals, and hyperactive drumming all congealing into three minutes of tightly controlled chaos. ..It's one of the most exciting, complex, and captivating statements yet from a band already notorious for their electrifying turbulence.

Black Moth Super Rainbow member making similarly weird and warped synth-based music. The frontman of psychedelic/electronic indie pop outfit Black Moth Super Rainbow, enigmatic Pennsylvania-based artist Tobacco casts summery spells with analog synths and tape machines.

Tobacco - Hot, Wet & Sassy / Babysitter feat. Trent Reznor

... The track doesn't appear on subsequent full-length Hot, Wet & Sassy, but the album clearly takes the sparkling perfection and wide-eyed, fantasy-like optimism of '80s pop as a primary inspiration, even if the songs themselves are laced with grimy distortion and filled with self-loathing lyrics... This mood is quickly upset by the mutant talkbox groove of "Babysitter," which sports a Trent Reznor cameo and intentionally creepy lyrics, flitting between sleazy horror and odd displays of tenderness... Simultaneously one of Tobacco's most difficult and most accessible records, Hot, Wet & Sassy might seem contradictory, but it makes a strange sort of sense in the context of his catalog, and he manages to make his grotesque vision of pop music work.

Longstanding, innovative prog rock band from Sweden led by guitarist and composer Roine Stolt. RetropolisSweden played a crucial part in the progressive rock revival of the 1990s, but amid dark-sounding King Crimson-influenced bands like Anekdoten and Anglagard, the positive-thinking Yes-enlightened act the Flower Kings felt almost out of place.

The Flower Kings - Islands / Serpentine

The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to inspire art of all stripes for years to come. Touring musicians have been forced to reckon with a situation that challenges their livelihoods and their ability to collaborate. The Flower Kings respond directly with Islands, a 90-minute, 21-song double album whose theme is isolation, loss, and the fear of disconnection. It is adorned with a "floating islands" cover painting from Roger Dean... "Serpentine" melds hoary prog and Zappa-esque fusion with a soulful soprano sax appearance from guest Rob Townsend... Its bright, warm production and inspired performances contradict the dire global circumstances surrounding its creation, rendering it all the more remarkable.

Hard-picking, harmonically advanced, nimble and swooping electric guitarist, a unique stylist among 21st century Brooklyn avant jazzers. Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, ensemble leader, and composer who continually pushes against established musical categories with a signature instrumental sound and an aesthetic that evolves with each album and musical configuration.
Mary Halvorson's Code Girl - Artlessly Falling / Walls and Roses

Artlessly Falling is the second album by Mary Halvorson's Code Girl. Its core remains Halvorson on guitar; Tomas Fujiwara on drums; Amirtha Kidambi on vocals, and Michael Formanek on bass. Trumpeter Adam O'Farrill replaces Ambrose Akinmusire, and Maria Grand is added on tenor saxophone and voice. The date also includes three vocal cameos by Robert Wyatt... While "Walls and Roses" is introduced by Fujiwara's cymbals and Halvorson's fingerpicking under Wyatt's vocal; it erupts in under a minute as the guitarist unleashes distorted shredding. Kidambi calms her on the second stanza, but Halvorson shakes loose here, and between each succeeding exchanged stanza, as Fujiwara and Formanek brace her screaming lead lines...This remarkable album cannot be quantified, only experienced. Mary Halvorson's Code Girl are so mercurial in method and content -- and mystifying in execution -- they actually deserve their own genre.

From his work with mid-'90s underground garage bands to his work with Mark Sultan, King Khan gained a reputation as a wild and dangerous frontman... Khan took a detour into jazz-inspired music on 2020's The Infinite Ones, which included appearances by longtime Sun Ra sidemen Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott, as well as John Convertino and Martin Wenk of Calexico.
King Khan - The Infinite Ones / Theme Of Yahya

...The song "Theme of Yahya" was a song I wrote for Yahya El Majid who played for many years with the Arkestra. I met Yahya in 2005 during my first meeting with the Arkestra. He shared many stories with me about the teachings of Sun Ra, the discipline he learned from him, and the many adventures he had all over the world travelling with the Arkestra. He told me these tales while playing a chinese harp, jamming to the sounds of Tuvaan Throat Singers, while burning a large amount of frankincense and myrrh. When I recorded the song I had four harps panned in stereo to form a sonic flower. When Yahya heard the track he telephoned me and told me that he was really moved by the piece and was proud of me. Yahya had been struggling for years with cancer and sadly passed away late August, 2020. I did not realize that my tribute to him would become a requiem, and it means the world to me that he was able to hear his tribute before he left the planet...

Mourn, Population II, Christian Kjellvander,  Elvis Costello, Puscifer, Eels, Trees Speak, Nothing, Dope Body, Tobacco, The Flower Kings, Mary Halvorson's Code Girl, King Khan,