This is the first installment of what I intend to be a regular review column here on the Free Form Freakout website. Over the past few years, I’ve mentioned the idea of trying to include more writing on the site, but for one reason or another, mainly my own lack of interest, it never seemed to lead anywhere. This summer I have a little extra time on my hands and rather than just fall into the cycle of what feels like endless consumption, I thought I’d try to commit to creating something instead. During the weekdays in the coming months, I plan to write a review a day and then post the results here on Fridays under the header, Down in the Bunker. I openly admit that this will not be the most rigorous “music criticism” that you’ve read, and I know that there will be plenty of avoidable typos, grammatical mishaps, and clunky phrases. But, I’m fine with owning all of that. You can expect the writing to be a bit more informal and a bit more personal, qualities that in the past have been major barriers for me when sharing my writing publicly. Part of my motivation for doing this is because I just don’t see that many places writing about the area of music that is covered on Free Form Freakout, the podcast version of the show at least. For me, I hope that this will not only be a good exercise in staying productive, but I also hope that a few people out there will find it as a useful resource, too. I know that I won’t be able to maintain the same level of writing and publishing regularity come Fall, a monthly column seems more likely then, but for now, let’s see what becomes of Down in the Bunker.
The Dictaphone – How To Improve Your Relaxing LP (Un Jenesais Quoi)
Following hot on the heels of an LP on the French label, Un Jenesais Quoi, The Dictaphone, the solo project of Jeremie Morin, returns with a full-length on the same label that finds him returning to his post-punk roots. Last year’s Time Flies When You’re Having Fun was more of a focused study in expansive, overlapping synthesizer textures and bubbling rhythms. It was an interesting enough exploration into longform hypnotics, but I find that Morin’s strengths are better served in the short song bursts featured throughout his latest, How To Improve Your Relaxing. The ten tracks here are built primarily upon forceful, poly-rhythmic grooves composed from either live drum patterns and/or locked-in synth sequences with Morin’s blurred and obscured vocals and other electronic washes of sound providing additional ambiance. A ballpark reference point might be Liars circa The Were Wrong, So We Drowned up through their self-titled release, particularly on tracks like “Defeated All Chance of Successful Search” and “Conundrum,” but The Dictaphone’s one pair of hands versus three guides a more minimalist punk throb. He does, however, throw in a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. Take “Cul De Sac’, which could pass as a prime-era Butthole Surfers’ piss-take cover of a Blur song, or even “Amezce Kcatta” that sounds like a possessed Speak-and-Spell patched its way into Marin’s gear to wreak havoc. I can’t say I feel any more relaxed, but I do find myself returning to this album quite frequently.
Sholto Dobie & Mark Harwood – The Blue Horse CD (Penultimate Press)
The first time I listened to this disc was while barreling down the interstate on a balmy 90-degree afternoon. The AC unit was broken in my vehicle, so I had to alternate between the windows-down blustery breeze or the maxed-out vent breathing warm air in my face in a fickle attempt to combat the heat. I mention these details because there were many points while driving and listening along that the surrounding sounds and the album became one and the same. The Blue Horse, the first collaborative effort from London-based artists Sholto Dobie & Mark Harwood, is a collection of wheezy, breezy, moaning, droning configurations of sounds set within what I presume to be open-air environments. Closer, non-blustery listens, have revealed an album of considerable nuance and subtlety, though. In places, it sounds like looping, mechanical systems are set in motion with little human intervention, while in others there are more performative aspects at play with string and organ tones interlocking with the airy textures. Not sure of the significance of the title of this album, a nod to German Expressionist painter Franz Marc perhaps, but there is something rather mysterious, graceful, and eerily majestic about the sounds spread across The Blue Horse. Saddle up!!
Decimus – Decimus 6 LP (Daksina)
It was a shot of good news when word of a new Decimus album arrived in my inbox a month or so back. From roughly 2011 to 2016, Pat Murano, a member of the late, great No Neck Blues Band, was on a prolific roll with this solo project, the bulk of which was issued on his own Kelippah label. I was so enamored with Murano’s work that I invited him to join me on the FFF podcast show back in December of 2012 to discuss both Decimus and Kelippah (*check out episode #10, if interested). After a few year hiatus, Murano has reactivated the Decimus project and, instead of continuing on with Kelippah, has launched a new imprint called Daksina that in his own words is “… an experiment in trying to keep the whole process more personal and direct.” All Daksina releases, including the other collaborative album between Murano and Tom Carter that just came out, will be limited to 100 copies and housed in folded heavy card stock with art silk screened by Alan Sherry at SIWA. In terms of the music, Decimus 6 picks up right where the other previously numbered albums left off, though I wonder if this was actually recorded during that highly active period, as those releases didn’t necessarily come out in sequential order. The A-side of this one is set in motion around a simple sputtering beat and two-note bass throb. Electronic swooshes, processed guitar swells, and a general air of spooked ambiance seethes and recedes as the sidelong track pushes ahead into the darkened horizon before downshifting in the closing minutes. The B-side carries with it some of NNCK’s penchant for the slow and steady build, but this piece comes across like a more bloody-minded take on the whole kosmische/motorik thing. Taken as a whole, Decimus 6 doesn’t skip a beat from Murano’s previous output.
Thistle Group – Thistle Group 7” EP (Soft Abuse)
The first vinyl offering of New Zealander Claire Mahoney’s solo tape-thud project, Thistle Group. This one comes issued by perennial favorite, Soft Abuse, who also happened to have released the debut wax by It Hurts, a trio that Mahoney is involved in, and one that also happens to operate in a similarly lo-fi variation that’s oddly reminiscent of another group with the initials, T.G. (hmmmm… Thistle / Gristle??). But, on this 7” EP, I’m reminded more of Siltbreeze-era U.S. Girls when Meghan Remy was rockin’ it floor-core style at the local noise show rather than dancing on the main stage for the summer festival circuit. What I’m getting at is the four tracks are all pretty blasted, but there is a certain tunefulness that comes through, especially on tracks like “High”, which I frequently mishear the melody of Madonna’s “Into The Groove” within Mahoney’s hypnotic vocalizations for some reason, or on the lo-fi lullaby of “Into the Night” where she gently sings along to moaning tape loops and sputtering electronics and feedback. This is all really of a piece of the whole New Zealand underground, from Xpressway on up through the latest on Stabbies etc.. It’s the First Annual Report of a new T.G. in town. Get acquainted.
Blaine Todd – Every Road Is A Good Road CS/LP (Full Spectrum/Debacle)
Every Road Is A Good Road is the third release by Blaine Todd on fellow Real Life Rock ‘N’ Rollers, Andrew Weathers and Gretchen Korsmo’s Full Spectrum label. The album features contributions from a number of fellow travelers within the Full Spectrum family, and it was recorded at various locations throughout 2017-18, but it sounds to these ears like his most cohesive album yet. Given Debacle Records involvement in co-releasing this on both cassette and vinyl formats, I’m thinking I’m not alone in this assessment. I took a liking to Todd’s ragged-ass, drone-inflected Americana going back to Dillingham, but Every Road… is by far a bigger, bolder, and more psychedelic sounding version of that debut. The opening sequence of tracks is particularly noteworthy with the smoldering, raga-tinged romp of “Beat Up Little Seagull” spilling into the wondrous, psych-folk dream racket of “Reach Into the Red Sky” and on to the fiddle-fried social music jaunt of “This Town is Yearning.” Elsewhere, on such tracks as “Digging Up Dead Wood” and “Big Joe”, where Todd’s songs are relatively stripped down, his delivery can come off like a less sneering version of Kurt Vile, which I mean to be complimentary on both fronts. What impresses me about Blaine Todd’s music is his ability to blur the lines between traditional folk music and more experimental sound making, and I don’t think he would alienate fans that are more hardliners in either camp. In a time where a band like Big Thief has gained some Best New Music traction, in my mind, Blaine Todd should be uttered in the same whiskey-soaked breath.
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