Top 10 Random Cool Things I’ve been listening to this week!
I swear that I’ll be back to writing reviews next week, but for now enjoy this collection of bits and pieces that have crossed my path in the last week, enjoy!
Peter Tosh – Stepping Razor Red X (Documentary 1992)
I saw this documentary years ago and perhaps I was too baked to make note of how great it was but reviewing it the other day rtekindled my admiration for the late, great Peter Tosh . I mean you play in a band with the God of Reggae and still manage to carve out your own niche. More militant than Marley , direct, outspoken and angry, Peter Tosh drove his points home with a hammer. Shot dead in 1987, he left behind a canon of sharp as razors revolutionary songs. The documentary is a semi hallicinogenic trip through Tosh’s life semi-narrated by his own words captured on a series of autobiographical tapes called the “Red X” tapes. The film wends and warps with Tosh and shows some very compelling images of real Jamaican life and struggle. A must even if you’re not a reggae fan.
DOOMSTAR! – Night at the Movies
I have extolled this band from Cambridge Mass before, but I have to speak up again because this track, the B-side of their new single released January 1, 2011 is one of the best tunes I’ve heard yet this year. Full on hypercharged rock n roll, with flashes of old Flaming Lips , bits of East River Pipe and just sparkling and exuding epic joy and sublimation. People, it is really tough to be heavy but happy sounding at the same time, but DOOMSTAR! makes it sound as easy as breakfast!
UK folk hero Roy Harper has been a favorite of mine since hearing Valentine many years ago. No one can write a tune quite like him. One of his anthems from the masterpiece Stormcock , “Me and My Woman”, has to be one of the greatest and realest songs about love in all it’s striations, problems, redemptions and edurances. It’s a love song for REAL. That’s the only way to put it.
Panopticon Eyelids – Psychic Spy (Paslmany Tapes)
Like most good bands these days, Panopticon Eyelids will keep you guessing what they are all about from track to track, even from minute to minute. Are they some sort of neopsych Hawkwind worship extenda-jam band? Are they some sort of dank lo-fi crust dwelling bizarro-punk thing? In the end you have to take them as they are, a bunch of dudes doing whatever comes to mind with whatever is at hand, and absolutely ruling at it.
Find more artists like Panopticon Eyelids at Myspace Music
Billy Joel
The only way I can enjoy Billy Joel is with this self explanatory video:
Scientist – Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space (Tectonic 2010)
Can it be? Is this for real? The living legend of dub production, Scientist remixing bass tunes by the likes of Kode9 and Shackleton ? This is huge. For deep bassheads only, this is an immense compilation that will texture many a dark night to come. Like most people, I got bored with the 140 bpm zombiestep formula, and now Scientist has arrived to bring life back to the genre. BOOOM!
Brutal Gooch – “Foo Fighters are great fuck” (Cuchabata Recs)
From the swampy cracks of rural Quebec, Brutal Gooch emit a fierce and darkly awesome nuggets of whatever. Ensconsed the incredibly prolific and diverse cradle of Quebec’s Cuchabata Records, Brutal Gooch is undefinable, enigmatic, a pisstake.. but who cares what it is, it’s great stuff with no context. In their own words- “ Gooch will insiminate your ass full of bad thoughts. “
Find more artists like Brutal gooch at Myspace Music
John Fahey – Poor Boy Long Way From Home
Fahey ’s beautiful and compelling rework of the Bukka White classic, it’s been in my head all week, so I’ll share it with you so that you may be infected too!
Les Pharaons – “Marche des Martiens” (Laval 1967)
Taken from the blog http://www.ventedegaragepodcast.blogspot.com (a cornucopia of obscure queb psych/yeye/garage from the 50s and 60s) is this copy of a 45 put out in 67, I assume timed for the futuristic Expo 67 in Montreal. Whoever they are, Les Pharaons have left a golden nugget of amazing behind with this track. Oh those drums! That riff! Endlessly, timelessly cool.
