Grex - Monster Music

Just when my mailbox makes me feel like modular synth jammers have taken over the world (not an altogether unpleasant feeling, but still), there's always a great band lurking around the corner to remind me of the creative bliss in songform, melody, and collaboration. Today, that band is Grex, a playful and adept group from Oakland who just released their debut as a trio, "Monster Music," on their own Brux label.

Grex has been around for several years as a duo with Karl Evangelista on guitar and Rei Scampavia on keys/horns, frequently collaborating with guest musicians. Their earlier recordings, which can be found on their Bandcamp page along with "Monster Music," feel more like compositional workshop outings, methodically combining improv chops and songwriting prowess into surprising left-field arrangements that carry a bit of "new music" formality. But with the addition of percussionist/drummer Robert Lopez as an official member of Grex, the beautifully-crafted melodies of older pieces like "Up Popped the Snake" from the band's repertoire are feeling more like familiar pages in a well-worn songbook. "Monster Music" packs as much aural nutrition as earlier iterations of the band, but this lineup also knows how to swing and how to rock outrageously.

Opening track, the instrumental "Toy Time," is a great introduction to the Grex approach. With nimble percussion expanding on 60s surf beats, and unpredictable, serpentine unison lines between guitar and organ, you can't help but smile as the music veers in and out of free improv passages. And I just adore the guitar tones Evangelista uses for melodic line part-playing: with a touch of overdrive and a hint of rotary speaker swirl, his sound blends gorgeously into organ tones, a signature orchestration that returns in unison lines all over the album. When he rolls back the Leslie swoosh, he picks up a perfect gritty edge, sliding between Charlie Hunter and Henry Cow-era Fred Frith vibes with ease.

This is one of those unusual albums that can serve capably as a bridge between song-oriented and really "out"-improv-oriented listening. Over half of the tunes feature prominent vocals, Scampavia taking most of the leads, and it's obvious that these songs were built to emphasize accessible, memorable melodies, no matter how far they might stray in the course of their arrangements. The instrumental pieces always have hummable, or at least quite danceable, hooks. And the cover tunes--"Guinea," a late-70s Don Cherry number, and "Holy Family," an old Ayler head included as an unlisted bonus track--have melodies deeply rooted in blues and gospel music, particularly tuneful choices from their composers' respective catalogs. But those solo sections. . .

With the exception of the straight-ahead ballad "Love Song," all of these arrangements leave room for solo/free improv work, and the group approaches most of these passages with a near-opposite sensibility, eschewing melody for density, embracing tone clusters, tons of effects, and simultaneous freakout sessions. It can be a little jarring at first, as the melodic sections of Grex tunes are played with a lot of sensitivity to dynamics, focused on nuance and detail instead of loud, broad strokes. Every group needs some kind of strategy to succeed with contrasts this extreme, and in the case of Grex, I think it's their sound choices that make it work. The organ tones have a vintage 60s timbre, reminding me a lot of Don Preston's dancing-on-the-keys approach in the chaotic sections of early Mothers jams. If those same parts were played on piano or using some harsh synth tones, I think things would feel more academic/serious or maybe confrontational, but the organ keeps things playful and approachable no matter now close the actual notes get to Cowellian clusters. Ditto for the guitar tones: Evangelista lays on plenty of effects when the moment is right, but his basic tone avoids those hyperfuzz sounds that cut you in half. While that works on some recordings, these sounds combine to allow for very listenable sections of group improvisation where the fun of interaction is clear to listeners without compelling folks to duck for aural cover.

There are several great guitar solos on "Monster Music" that stay closer to conventional jazz vocabulary and even blues work: the cover of "Guinea" mentioned before draws out more of a deep blues feel than the original, and "Christmas Song" works lots of tasty volume swells and country-ish bends into a playful, mostly legato solo section with a nice hint of delay. But my favorite moments on the album tend to be the written instrumental passages: the amazing lines introducing "Toy Time" and "Mole Cricket,"or the complex rhythmic shifts, chromatic mazes, and whammy pedal workouts throughout the brilliant "Hurdles." But my choice for a single from "Monster Music" would have to be "Romancing Stone," rich with introductory unison lines folding in on themselves, great vocals from Evangelista that are warmly reminiscent of Mike Keneally, awesome harmony vocals in the chorus, and lots of room for thoughtful drum work to shine in the open section at its center. And be sure to dig into "Up Popped the Snake," too--as mentioned earlier, the basic tune has appeared on a couple of previous Grex recordings, but this new trio arrangement hangs onto the haunting melody of the original while drawing listeners a little closer than previous versions with great organ/guitar interplay and great contrasts in drum parts across sections.

Grab your medium of choice (LP, CD, digital) at the Grex Bandcamp.

Ernest Gibson - Island Records

Copenhagen-based label Skrot Up recently sent me a batch of their latest cassettes that's completely blowing my mind, but before I can jump into those (or their killing German Army comp LP from last year), I have to highlight their brilliant "Island Records" LP from California-based composer Ernest Gibson. This album dropped late last year, and it's a rewarding listen with some of the best dark cinematic soundscapes I've heard in a long time.

Gibson is half of Net Shaker, and his solo debut has some sonic similarities with that project: almost every sound you hear is maxed out. Voices and guitars are obscured by copious reverbs with overdriven signals punched into the recording console, speaker cabinets are pushed into and slightly beyond their limits, and mixes feel like they've been left out in the sun for a faded finish. But "Island Records" follows a unique sonic path, less vocal oriented and aiming toward a unique blend of vintage exotica influences like Les Baxter and Martin Denny with the anxious, unsettling tensions of early industrial music.

As welcoming as it is menacing, this is a hard record to describe emotionally. The reverb-drenched guitars and flabby kick drum vibes of opening track "When You Get There" open a secret door to a crime noir-meets tiki bar kind of island universe, where you can't help dancing with the natives even though you can be certain they're just waiting for you to crash so they can lift your wallet. Like many of the pieces on "Island Records," this feels strongly like a film cue: it's visually evocative, and it simply creates and sustains a "scene" rather than developing through different formal structures. German Army fans should totally check this album out, too: Gibson and the GeAr crew are certainly kindred spirits, and some tracks like "All of Us Together" employ similar kinds of sounds and dark atmospheres.

This is a dream album if you're into guitar and bass tones that seem to come from a timeless Lynchian kind of space. Almost every piece is anchored by dirty, sweaty bass with a lot of midrange attenuation, sometimes feeling a little flabby and downtuned like "When We Switch" or "Loosa Lake," and sometimes pulled back in the mix to let the guitars and insectoid synths take the wheel, like the motorik-inspired momentum of "Groupwork." Guitars come in fifty flavors of overdrive, and the reverbs they're usually forced through bring out the more metallic overtones the instrument is capable of. While synths play a significant role here, to my ears they end up weaving around the substantial footprints of guitar and bass riffs, blending into the muggy reverb atmospheres left by decaying fragments of guitar.

Other than the more obvious rhythmic nods, exotica inspirations come though most clearly on some of the shorter pieces, like the drowned tribal vibes of "Ocean Section," or the singular orchestral swell that comprises "In a Daylight Loop." Other sections of this music have an almost modern-classical approach to arranging, dense clusters of sound coalescing into something approaching Ligetian soundmass within the mixes of "When I Translate" or "Moon Paean." And I'd be remiss to ignore the post-punk and new/no-wave influences percolating in this music, especially on the tunes where vocals rise closer to the surface. "Everywhere You Roam," for example, lurches through a humid landscape close to early Birthday Party, a creepy space lit by garbage can bonfires. And "Groupwork," as mentioned above, keeps up the dirty, raw postpunk vibe but with a kind of assertive rhythm that almost evokes Kraftwerk lost in a jungle.

This LP also features some of the most stylistically thoughtful artwork/packaging I've seen in a while. The album cover and images on the printed inner sleeve depicted isolated island scenes, and the oversaturated-then-faded treatment of the cover perfectly matches the music. There's a postcard of a tropical scene just like you'd pick up to send back to your cousins--wish you were here, dear reader! And the back cover has the kind of layout you might expect to find on a jazz or exotica album from the 50s, simple black and white with a fantastic hype-essay in three columns. But you don't have to hope for this one to turn up in some antique booth bin to begin immersing yourself in the sultry retrofuture: you can still get a pristine copy of your own at Skrot Up.

Label spotlight: Eiderdown Records

After a debut LP in 2011 and a pair of tapes in 2012, Eiderdown Records ramped up their 2013 release schedule to six potent cassettes. While the cassette label scene feels pretty crowded right now, and there is a really humbling amount of great music to be heard, none of these Eiderdown tapes ever make it far enough away from my decks to get shelved. Eiderdown batches show excellent curatorial taste and incredible attention to design, balancing great sounding pro-dubbed cassettes with gorgeous screenprinted j-cards. It's not just some of the best psych/drone music around: the striking yet intimate handmade vibes of the Eiderdown artwork mean that you recognize these from a mile away by sight or sound.

January brought the first pair of Eiderdown releases for 2013, both with covers by Max Clotfelter in a very original Monster Mash-filigree kind of style, rendered in deep oranges and yellows. Datashock's "LIVELOVEDATA$," containing a couple of outtake recordings from the "Pyramiden von Gießen" sessions, was the release that first made me aware of Eiderdown, and it's a serious burner. If tracks as good as these had to be left off their double LP, I suspect there's no such thing as a bad Datashock jam. As always, these guys and gals sound deeper, darker, and drone-ier than their OG Kosmische ancestors could ever have imagined. Wicked highly recommended. Since this tape, Datashock released one more cassette called "Status Blod/Modus Dummheit" though Meudiademorte that is apparently a sort of anticipatory set of outtakes from their upcoming double LP "Keine Oase in Sicht," one of the records I'm most looking forward to this year.

Released simultaneously with the Datashock tape, "Cosmic Job" was my first exposure to Planets Around the Sun. Having gone back to hear some of their older recordings now, I think this is the best distillation yet of their driving low-fi psych with folk overtones. When I listen to this tape, I wonder if reverb and delay are getting pressure from their parents to have kids, and I hope they get prodded a while longer. Sadly, the physical copies of this one are already sold out.

Eiderdown's spring pair of releases featured cover designs by Aubrey Nehring and Rena Luelle of Ecstatic Cosmic Union, with labyrinthine clouds of metallic silver ink on black-ink backgrounds over blue stock (screen-printing is crazy!). And their release in this batch, "XCU," is a six-pack of satisfying ideas ranging from drones to spacy pop. My only complaint about this tape is that I'd love for every one of these tracks to be extended to album length--I'm bummed every time these great pieces end.

Also in the spring batch was Jon Collins (himself of the venerable Winebox Press label) with "The Great Stink," a heavy album of out-guitar ideas. As a (somewhat) reformed shred guitar dude, I'm always impressed by guitar work like that of Mr. Collin, able to say so much through understated changes in texture, timbre, and acoustical space. He knows when to overheat his tubes, and he knows when to let touches of field recordings or subtle percussion peek through. The long B-side piece, "Furniture Makers Medley," is my favorite here, embracing the sounds of the large space he's working in with some extremes in slide guitar approaches, from gentle and elegiac to aggressive, overdriven passages that take on violinistic qualities. 

Autumn brought us another pair of Eiderdown releases, again with creepy-melty designs courtesy of Max Clotfelter. I've been following Argentina's Ø+yn (pronounced "Omasin") for a while, and their new collaboration with recent Finland transplants Uton, "Solid Geometry and the New Mental Order," is a warped field recording and drone-lover's dream come true. Managing to feel both intimate and hauntingly alien, it's no wonder this had to be recorded on two other continents considering all of the anti-drone legislation talk in North America. As drone/psych-oriented projects go, I find Ø+yn's work notable for how non-electronic it feels within a scene often fixated on relatively synth-heavy soundscapes. While I love the wild potential of modular synths, it's refreshing to hear so many acoustic instruments prominently featured in this kind of music--it creates a very different kind of musical space that I find comforting. They venture into the often ignored potential of alternate tunings and mircotones, too, which feels quite organic and even inevitable with a thoughtful approach to stringed instruments. With careful employment of tape manipulation techniques, and a great feel for bringing these arrangements down to just an instrument or two in all of the right places, "Solid Geometry" is deeply contemplative and solid, indeed.

Another great guitar recording, "Colour Breathing" by Endless Caverns is a quartet of looped guitar improvisations recorded straight to tape, complete with EQ recommendations (boost yr treble a touch). I especially dug the little staccato scraps of "Indigo Eye" that patiently build up to a consonant wall of sound. If you want to spend an afternoon with some free-psych guitar, grab this and the Jon Collins album above, add a little Beard Closet via Horror Fiction Tapes, and let your cares slip into fuzz tones for a while.

It seems crazy, but all of these releases except the Planets Around the Sun are still available both physically and digitally via Eiderdown's Bandcamp page, so dig in while you still can--with editions of 100 each, these tapes can't last much longer. And seriously, even if you're not usually into the "tape thing," brush off your old Walkman and enjoy these the way our analog overlords intended. Not only are most of these recordings analog from birth to duplication, which makes tape playback a no-brainer for me, they really are too beautiful too behold for digital. These aren't your dad's stash of car tapes from the early 80s with poorly-printed fuzzy square album art reproductions--you probably haven't held such beautifully designed cassettes before with such artisan-level screenprinting work. Treat yourself.