Isabel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Ballad of the Broken Seas
This unusual collaboration seems to weave together strands of British psychedelic folk, traditional Western music and some modern production values for an occasionaly Morricone-esque, epic and mythical fabric. It’s definitely unusual for both musicians, Campbell hailing from Belle & Sebastian and Lanegan from Screaming Trees, and the result is often something like Tom Waits meets Mellow Candle or Johnny Cash doing old Pentangle numbers. It’s all delivered in a somewhat mystical, folkloric tone that also rings modern due to the percussion and the merging is somewhat reminiscent of world/ambient fusions with this sort of past/present juxtaposition. Quite nice overall.
Derek Bailey - Pieces for Guitar
These almost sparse and bizarre guitar viginettes remind me quite a bit of the old Fred Frith guitar albums. The silence here is almost as important as the notes and it’s a lot like soft chiming at times, certainly in improvised and often dissonant themes, but all of it is strangely beautiful and I was very surprised, as I’m not usually as interested in solo work, how captivating this all is. Some are likely to hear this and think it’s some rank amateur banging away on the guitar randomly because it’s so far away from normal Western scales, in fact, I get the impression so much of this is tied together by a certain intuitive sense rather than any obvious rhythms or melody lines. So obviously only one to approach if you’re interested in music well beyond boundaries.
Cardiacs - On Land and In the Sea
Well the Cardiacs sure have a lot of really incredible albums, in fact I almost wish I’d have started with the late 80s/early 90s records rather than Sing to God and Guns. For one thing, after immersing myself in the lower quality live videos, these albums sound positively radiant in their production. In a lot of ways, I wonder how these guys get away with what they do. Their music seems similar over their career, based on very strange but almost signature chord progressions, all delivered with fantastic energy and bearing the stylisms of epic prog rock and bonkers punk. From a ways off I can imagine a lot of this sounding the same at first, but it’s really amazing how fast some of these songs start to stick to the head, revealing what is not just iconoclastic but brilliant songwriting. The epic finale “The Everso Closely Guarded Line,” at just under 9 minutes, works an instrumental melody that would put some of the classic symph bands to shame. To my estimate this band is still one of the world’s most occulted treasures, with a professionalism and sense of originality that belies how obscure they still are.