...if you know Galás of the last twenty-five years or so, you probably know what to expect. All 'covers' (if that description still holds any water to what Galás actually does) with her on vocals and piano. In this case a live recording from Seattle, US in 2017.
Monthly archives: July 2024
8 posts
...creatively, Jodorowsky has always embodied a near singular collision of European high art and Latin American magical (sur)realism. Despite having been born in 1929, and thus being over thirty before the Sixties even began, Jod’s unique and psychedelic approach to writing, art and film-making clicked into place during that decade like a machine-tooled piece of jigsaw, its liberated, vision-questing aesthetic perfectly in tune with the new age of Aquarius:...
...the LIVE energy this duo are giving off here is insanely satisfying, pushing a mirage of over-driven echoes into the red. A devotional daggered addictive that whirls around shrill and crowing, wounded in the rewind dry whirr of a tape player. The cicada rub of maracas accenting them strumming lacerations, those stippling busts of air-raid siren, all abruptly cut off shortly after the nineteen-minute mark.
Drag City The Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, paraphrasing Aristotle (or maybe Aquinas), suggested that “the whole is something else than the sum of its parts” and here we are: two artists that I’ve followed and respected, both of them arch innovators with collaboration in their bones, joining their heads together […]
Pearling a Pokemon itch, Xylitol opals an enviable optimistic. The maligned clubland default of drum'n'bass given a serious facelift as those needling hi-hatted hares of "Jelena" leap into some heavenly lifts and whispery ambient glows, something Kate Bunnyhausen expertly showcased at her recent Acid Horse outing.
I kept imagining that what I was hearing is what might happen if somebody kidnapped the B52s, got the band drunk and started slowly torturing them. It is not so much post-punk as post-apocalyptic, with rhythm crawling from flaming wreckage, a spiral of unsteady guitar body-slamming the bass and drums as the voices taunt and tease.
Sharp and guttural -- the vocals beam, the more romantically inclined tracks literally glowing. Kim’s slow-roasted delivery unwrapping in your ears… the vibrating brilliance of "Off You" caught in a gentle hula-skirted lilac; the spiralling quaffs of "Do You Love Me Now", the nocturnal burn of the only track from Mountain Battles they played, "Night Of Joy", a gentle melancholic wonder that clung warmly to you.
The concept of a “desert sound,” if such a term truly exists, is more about a state of mind than a specific genre. It embodies a sense of vastness, solitude, and sounds stretched to the limits of the infinite. While I wouldn’t say the desert sound has always been a direct influence, the themes it represents have certainly resonated with me throughout my music.