zandarthemagnificent

Ah, I detect a note of hesitation in your choice of the word "enough..." but I will definitely check it out, thanks for the tip.

EDIT: I Love it!!! It's like Avey Tare and Panda Bear from Animal Collective sitting in on a Cornelius album! Thanks, man.

hexcake

I love Battles. Zandar if you like "mirrored" you should check out their earlier EPs "EP C/B EP" its also really good. All the members come from good backgrounds aswell, the guitarist was formerly in "Don Caballero", the drummer is from "Helmet" and one of the other members is the son of avant garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton. All good things in my book.

Thanks for the review of "The Hellers" album, i have to check that out, iv never heard of it before, but its defiantly my kind of thing. Im a sucker for the moog!

You would'nt happen to be a fan of guys like Bruce Haack and Jean Jacques Perrey?

Also i was spun out when i saw you started this thread, because the day before you posted it, i was thinking to myself "There should really be a strange recordings thread, maybe i should make one." But now i dont have to, must have been a premonition.

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zandarthemagnificent

In a big way! I was thinking of doing a review of Harry Breuer and Perrey's The Happy Moog.

I think it would be great if you posted some reviews in this thread. I'm always interested in knowing more stuff out there in strange-land.

Pistol

If by any chance, you haven't heard about 65daysofstatic, they are awesome too. Math rock band are always awesome and strange.

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zandarthemagnificent

It seems exploring the dark side was hitting some kind of peak in the late sixties and early seventies, if movies like "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist" and "The Devil's Rain" are any indication. Maybe it was brought about by the high profile Sharon Tate murders in the mansion of the man who had just made "Rosemary's Baby." The irony was too much, society had get seriously obsessed about it.

So riding on this phenomenon's coattails is Julliard trained and thoroughly tweaked soundtrack and concept album enthusiast Mort Garson, who has thrilled me in the past with not one, but two albums devoted to the Zodiac, trying to make me poop myself with a concept album about the Devil himself. What's so weird is not the subject matter, it's how Mort Garson thinks this could be scary. This is evil lite. A goofy, Halloween neighboorhood kids haunted house complete with spaghetti brains and grape eyeballs for your enjoyment variety of evil. Garson thinks hitting keys and turning knobs randomly is frightening. Only to the engineer of the record, maybe, and perhaps the people who bankrolled it.

Most of the record is a swirling maelstom of organ and synth, panned liberally from left to right and back with occasional rather nicely played classical snippets devolving into pseudo creepy synth noises and ufo-ish sound effects. Then some outright noodling at which point Mort must have been eating lunch or reading the paper while continuing to record. That's the only logical explanation.

Not to say this album doesn't have some highly entertaining moments. The cascade of notes that opens "Incubus" is pretty nifty, made even niftier when little happy baby sounds appear in with the otherwise somber track. The backdrop is littered with wah-wahed bass synth notes and square wave washes. Ooh, he's run the baby gurgling through a filter. Dang, that IS scary. Could this be Rosemary's Baby? Koochie koo!

Then there is the faux-exotica of "The Ride of Aida (Voodoo)." I chuckle to myself as I see Garson in my mind turning the tempo on his rhythm machine, which is set to something exotic like "Rhumba," slowly to 11 through the track. I'm chuckling about a song about voodoo. Maybe Garson meant me to feel this way. In that case, I should thank him for making me feel almost giddy listening to his album about Lucifer.

But wait, this could be some kind of insidious plot to spread the gospel of Satan through goofy, happy-go-lucky electronic music. Now I think of the light-bearer in the same way I think of Pac-Man or Bontempo organs: they don't want you to feel bad. They want you to have fun! While they rob you of your mortal soul.

Maybe this is a scary album after all.



Boo!

Magic

^^that was pretty funny, Z. Makes me want to explore this album. Is this the kinda music you would hear in the backdrop of a cheesy slasher movie?

zandarthemagnificent

Maybe a very cheesy one, with obviously fake blood, made in Italy in the early seventies. Not that I don't like movies like that, I do.

I can make it available if you want- just let me know.

Magic

does it have subliminal messages? With a title like Lucifer, I would expect back masking or something. These creep me out

zandarthemagnificent

Possibly, though the only narration is provided by a baby, so even if you could hear something in it backwards, it would still be something like "goo goo, ga ga."

Magic

a baby as a narrator, the plot to this strange album thickens