Just because.
The Flaming Lips recorded this song for their 1987 (breakthrough? probably not.) full length Oh My Gawd!!!… The Flaming Lips, and to my ears it is one of the most perfect album intros in the history of history. This fan-made video I find to be inconceivably appropriate.
Just look at that trippy, phallic, jeuvenile fucking cover art! If you don’t love it well that’s just too damn bad.
Enjoy.
First: sorry I’ve been sort of quiet for a few weeks.
Second: this.
It’s true. This one pays far more than my prior occupation so it’s worth the being-busy-all-the-time aspect. However I have not – cannot – neglect music and thus always have something worth sharing with the world. Every commute, every bicycle ride, every nighttime book devouring session is accompanied by something new, expansive, exciting… punctuated by old favorites I find myself doubled over with joy upon re-hearing. So I’ve got something to say.
Unfortunately I worked my brains out today and must save the in-depth breathless praise and wild exhortations to purchase vinyl for the remainder of the weekend. I will simply state that there are a few albums I’m quite taken with, continually listen to, and wish that more people would get familiar with. These are a few of them:
United Waters – Your First Ever River
Sensations’ Fix – Fragments of Light
Robert Fripp – Let The Power Fall
Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Thundercat – Golden Age of the Apocalypse
and finally, with apologies to the artist herself:
Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Colour Libres
Because this is, by some distance, one of the most powerful and heartfelt albums of 2011 and I really should have shared all about it when I got it months ago. I promise – I swear – I will soon. Keep an eye on this page, and stay ready for the deluge.
So the Flaming Lips made a 6 hour song.
As a longtime fan I am horrified, annoyed, and yet.. far too curious not to listen. I’m over halfway through the first hour and thinking this hasn’t been any more a waste of time than any other new music from a great band I could be hearing. In other words, I’m glad I dove in. In all likelihood you will be too. It’s the only sort of trippy space adventure you’d expect to last so long. Listen below.
The Flaming Lips – I Found A Star On The Ground
Part 1 / 3
Part 2 / 3
Part 3 / 3
The story goes that band leader Wayne Coyne was playing with some psychedelic toy and thought, if this one device can provide hours of entertainment, why can’t a song? Hence the astounding, ridiculous length of this piece. For the increasingly preposterous band – already known for their gummy skulls, fetuses, and assorted collaborative gimmicks this year – it’s not such a leap toward releasing a quarter-day song. Let’s face it, if you’re already on their weird train, you’re psyched about this.
The USB stick containing the music is in there somewhere.
Having heard almost a third of this I can report that it’s basically a version of their Embryonic-era dirty ambient krautrock jams, stretching ever deeper into a black hole. It stretches as it goes on and folds in a few new wrinkles along the way. I won’t speculate as to where it goes in the next two segments but I can imagine if you enjoy the first 10 minutes, consider it a keeper. Fucked up way to get our attention aside, this is actually fun. Let me know if any of you have purchased the hallucinogen accessory kit pictured above.
Here we go with another case of “heard it in aQuarius” and even better, the album comes from a San Francisco band. Moon Duo played in the store on a day I visted; unfortunately it was an hour after I left. Checking email at home, I realized that the band playing was one I’d heard on the PA already. I got Mazes and realized the band packs a ballsy psychedelic punch, towering over their peers.
Knocking me down with a slab of jangle drone (or is it caveman trance?) like nobody else today, Moon Duo are probably the first to truly nail this headspace since the bluesier end of Spacemen 3. If you’re into Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Warlocks or Black Angels you need to hear this immediately – it flies straight through the sweet spot these bands have been skirting around for years. Storming the White Light/White Heat monolith, the band pares this vibe into direct bursts of machine gun immediacy. There are almost no intros to speak of; they simply step right on the hypno-rocking point and ride hard for several minutes.
If you’re into the kind of motorik-infused scuzzy bangers The Velvet Underground hinted they were capable of before Doug Yule fell from the sky, just listen already. If you miss the days when psychedelia had a ragged edge and a pulse, you know what to do.
Come on, you know you liked it. If not, take a shot of whiskey and repeat.
[buy this bad boy direct from Sacred Bones Records or any fine shop in person or online]
So I know I’ve been sluggish this year with Optimistic Underground. I relish being able to share the music enriching my life with you. I hope to rectify this laziness starting now, with The Psychic Paramount and their (hopeful) breakthrough album II.
I had this whole through-line about jet engines and surgical instruments and LSD and This Heat and Les Rallizes Dénudés and Miles Davis and cathartic volume levels… but I got caught up, slack-jawed and blasting this album again. It’s almost like a psychedelic brillo pad, carving clear my thought channels and surrendering my body to oblivion. A therapeutic breakdown of cogent narrative, this thing blasts away the outside world and disconnects me, sets me free in a way only the most blissed out Lovesliescrushing or hard droning Boris album can. It strikes an unknown sweet spot, defying gravity while splaying my brain with crushing heft. Crucial to this power is the flawless production, zooming in on every microscopic detail yet capturing the panoramic magnitude these songs inhabit. A dizzying high wire act of wide-eyed clarity, this album satisfied me in places only a fellow Swans or John Coltrane or Fennesz fan would recognize.
Second track DDB, opening with one of the more gentle passages on II, grows like marshmallows in the microwave, devouring 9 minutes in a wild-fire.
While I’m dropping names, I should mention that if you like Boredoms, Eternal Tapestry, Lightning Bolt, Fushitsusha, or anything within orbit of those bands, you will find yourself punch drunk and melting to this album.
[Released by No Quarter, the album is available at the label’s page for only $11 on cd or vinyl. So get it there. Listen to the free stream while you wait.]
My Best of 2010 was basically an attempt to carve my musical experience of the past year down to its most essential, most ingrained elements. An attempt to sum up the music I feel had the largest impact on my listening, on my life.
I left out a lot of great albums. Thankfully, they were drawn from a text file kept on my desktop throughout the year, chronicling each album I decide, at a given moment, is awesome. Yes, it’s that simple. As time passes I remove the fleeting infatuations, anything not holding up. So I’m left with a solid list I can refer to in search of everything I really, truly enjoyed this year. This is it, in order I heard them.
So there it is. Something to remember is that any one of these albums may end up defining the year as much as the ‘true’ list – and that something I haven’t even heard yet may best them all. It’s happened before. This is why Optimistic Underground will soon post its first Music From Before 2010 But Discovered This Year list. This will cover the much wider range of music I was into this year, since there is already much more music out there than is being released at any given time.
[This post is subject to change. Like I’ll probably add one or two more by January.]
Boredoms are one of the greatest living bands on the planet. Here is an obscure, tangential testament to that unavoidable fact.
Optimistic Underground 