New/Improved PROG/KRAUT/SPACE/PSYCH ROCK Listening Club - New albums every Friday!

Sign me up!

done!

08/30 -- AG
09/06 -- DaM
09/13 -- frogbs
09/20 -- balls
09/27 -- ZS
10/04 -- dronestreet

I wonder what Mr. Goalie will put up for us to listen to tomorrow.
Note: you can post it Friday *your time* so if it's Friday where you live put 'er up.

http://i.imgur.com/XNsR9Rs.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/141Ss6mGivtZpTMt4eN4Q8
spotify:album:141Ss6mGivtZpTMt4eN4Q8

Review by Rolf Semprebon [-]

Cottonwoodhill is one of the trippiest records ever made, capturing the intensity of the peak LSD experience far more successfully than any Timothy Leary recording, and even today, when many such documents from that era can sound silly and dated, Brainticket's fascinating debut still holds hallucinogenic potency. The record has only two proper songs, "Black Sand" and "Places of Light," with a side and a half of the album taken up by the three-part "Brainticket." "Black Sand" opens the disc with a driving funk beat and powerful organ and guitar interplay, adding in vocals distorted beyond coherency. "Places of Light" begins in a slightly lighter vein as a flute leads the proceedings, a looser jazzier piece that throws in some of Dawn Muir's odd spoken word vocals. Before one realizes what has happened, the piece has faded out and there is suddenly a crashing sound, car horns, and engines starting up. "Brainticket" is a bizarre roller coaster ride through weird sound effects and electronics, an endless organ riff, and Muir's acid-rush ramblings from hushed whisper to urgent screams, as any coherency she had earlier becomes lost to mind-expanding visions. Rather than the laid-back mellow groove of some psychedelic music from this era, Cottonwoodhill has a hyper energy in the frenetic organ riff and Muir's voice, like an acid trip out of control, while at times the various sound effects take over completely.

Oh man I love this album! Excellent choice.

yup, this is a good one and it's been a while.

can you put me down for a week, viceroy?

you got it!

09/06 -- DaM
09/13 -- frogbs
09/20 -- balls
09/30 -- ZS
10/06 -- dronestreet
10/13 -- Alan N

forget some of those earlier dates I was looking at my calendar wrong.

thanks!

How do I get in on this?

I have a recommendation or two which some might like.

Also, how far can we stretch the definition of prog/kraut/space/psych rock? Because I have some which throw in some folk in there, as well.

just request a week, it'll be late next month so you have plenty of time to decide on an album. Then on Friday, post the name of it, with a picture possibly a little blurb about it if you can find it. If you don't use spotify that's ok, we can post the spotify link. If the full album is up on youtube you can post the link to that.

As far as stretching the definition... I am very flexible, straight up "folk" probably doesn't fit but if it's 'out there' with sound effects/long complicated passages/prominent synthesizer passages then I think it fits just fine.

Do you want a go?

Anyway though, to talk about the album this week -- man I love how the vocalist shouts stuff out in this kind of scared/tense way, and says contradictory stuff, like "Stop! No! YES!! Of course not, of course you can..." etc, like she's responding to stuff during a really heavy acid trip or something. It's kinda creepy but totally awesome.

Dawn Muir. She rules.

Coming soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtwJSAEh7Uc

Sorry to crash in. Just sharing. Please carry on as you were :)

nice choice AG, need to listen to that more. I would like a week please!

This is one of the few real psychedelic freak out albums that actually wound up being as insane as the description makes it sound. I wonder how much of Muir's ranting and raving was scripted, it's just so totally ridiculous and almost terrifying, like you'd think after the recording she went straight to the hospital (or the loony bin!)

Can't say I could listen to this often (that groove does kick some ass though), but it's definitely a singularity

I listen to it a lot actually.

Uh, sacrilege I know, but the vocals are what put me off this otherwise very fine recording!

i like the nurse with wound cover with jim foetus on vocals.

Braintickets please!

Cottonwoodhill = so f'in rad!

Thanks for reminding me about Brainticket

Oh, Muir's ranting/raving is totally scripted to me

Yeah, it's all a bit Home Counties am dram, though tbf, the Radio 4 continuity announcer accent doesn't help.

The material that most of the players on taht lp cut as Toad is pretty great too. I'm not sure if I've heard any of the other Brainticket stuff, have heard it was more spacerocky though I think. So neither party actually makes music exactly similar to that elsewhere. Quite a good combination on there though.

Well Brainticket is really just Joel Vandroogenbroeck (sp?) and whoever else he's playing with at the time

OK, I'm tuning in. Could I have a week?

So I was really into the first couple of songs on the Brainticket album but this is starting to feel a little interminable when they're just repeating this one riff. Admittedly, I'm listening on laptop speakers while unpacking so I'll reserve final judgment until I can listen on better headphones or speakers.

09/06 -- DaM
09/13 -- frogbs
09/20 -- balls
09/27 -- ZS
10/04 -- dronestreet
10/11 -- Alan N
10/18 -- Sund4r

hope I finally got the dates right this time.

Sund4r- Headphones are great for this album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjw6jEPgSHg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT3E2iWjVyw

Since Drugs A. Money hasn't turned up how about asking Drugs B. Money to take his shot?

Good idea! Drugs? You around?

Sorry about forgetting! I cant do this until tomorrow morning

But I have an album picked out and can get to it then...

Cool!

OK, Brainticket is sounding a WHOLE lot better on headphones.

Mine is gonna veer more drone/freak rather than prog/kraut, but it still fits I think....

And wow, that was great, actually. And that was just on mediocre headphones. Now I'm eager to listen to this with my good headphones after I set up my audio interface. I like the theatrical 'scripted' nature of the vocals: it's a great performance imo. In a weird way, it actually made me think a little bit of some of Crass's stuff that came later. But, more obviously, the influence of 60s sound collage stuff is handled well, I think.

Glad this thing is a thing again (the new listening club).

Where are the download links??

How do you listen to spotify without signing up? I am not a facebook user.

well, the album I wanted to pick out--Angus MacLise's The Invasion of Thunderblt Pagoda--is not available on Spotify, or on Grooveshark, and apparently Grooveshark has fallen victim to both the social networking format and current insane copyright issues, and it's v risky business to just upload shit to it now, or at least so it seems...album is way cool tho and worth checking out; lots of acid trip flutes and bongos

so here is an album on Spotify that is really cool too that a few people on here may not know, even though I discovered it from the whole John Peel's record collection exhibit or w/e

C.A. Qunitet - Trip Thru Hell

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S5Fy7tmHhso/UbTGJ5cw5fI/AAAAAAAAAC0/ehEjR8wL1ac/s320/C.A+Quintet.jpg

can somebody help me out with the Spotify links?

not a spotifier but the whole album's available on youtube ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfJ-P-GP7XA

http://open.spotify.com/album/13S4y1iJkLrDnhJu5VWv35

spotify:album:13S4y1iJkLrDnhJu5VWv35

Starts off sounding like something from The Secret of Monkey Island or something -- wandering the graveyards to rockin' fartybass keyboardgothicisms. Yeah, this sounds good. Never heard of it during my brief period of exploring "protoprog" or whatever (most of which basically was hardrock albums of the late 60s early 70s)
extended drum section kinda lost me -- guessing that zooming in'n'out effect is the sorta thing that might work when you're stoned.
Oh, but the screeching guitar bit was badass. (god, I'm a liveblogger.) Bummed that "Colorado Mourning" is more like the theme song to a bad ghost cowboy western TV show -- curious but lame. Gotta go, but will try posting later when I've actually listened to the album a couple of times. Can't wait to find out what a song called COLD SPIDER sounds like!

(hooray for this thread btw! Perhaps a Spotify playlist compiling all the featured albums would be a good idea?)

who is doing todays album?

Froggie?

He's in space afaik

I was gonna up this somewhere but my car went kaputt and well, Spotify will have to do

Anyway, my selection is Echolyn - As the World. If you don't know who Echolyn are I'm not surprised, they are a sort of neo-prog group (formed around 1990) from PA that never quite made it. They're still doing awesome stuff today, in fact they're now maybe better than ever, but ATW is really a great album and the one I'm really into now. Basically the band's first album tanked, but their second (Suffocating the Bloom) sold alright and caught the attention of Sony records, and they were offered a major label deal. Now the thing about Echolyn is that they're very passionate about the music, and ATW is really an attempt for the 5-piece to give everything they've got on the platform they're given. It's over 70 minutes, full of all sorts of hidden connections and the kind of songs that take many many listens to really unravel. This isn't like a long Yes or Crimson album though, it's pretty much all ensemble playing and awesome 3-part harmonies. I mean they've got the talent to be a band like that and they've definitely got the compositional skill but they're more akin to Gentle Giant, they're not afraid to bring in outside players when it suits the song, and they're more interested in compositions that reveal themselves over time rather than doing tricky things for the sake of it (there is some flashiness on this album but it's the kind of thing they really tried to reduce over time)

As legend has it the album sold well for its genre but they were dropped anyway, which split them up for a good while. You can probably hear why on this album - in my opinion it's really great because it's as good as a lot of the classic prog albums but it maintains that quality for much longer (Suffocating the Bloom was like this too, including a 30-minute suite that is quite similar to "Supper's Ready"). So they gave it their best and ultimately failed, got real jobs, reformed the band in 2000 and are still great, though they work at a slower pace. But ATW is their attempt at taking the world by storm and it's one of those albums that I listen to a ton now. Enjoy!

open.spotify.com/track/6j3YSd6ZJhpNnGMLskbGgN‎

Has anyone heard of Alexander Gradsky? I first heard him on a Russian science fiction animation called the Passage and was fascinated by the proggy sounds and his tense passionate voice ((lots of European and soviet animation from 70s to early 90s has weird avant-garde music)).
It turns out Gradsky is a superstar in Russia. A singer-songwriter, rocker, soundtrack guy for films and ballet, and does lots of full blown classical and opera. Huge discography.
I've had difficulty finding his proggier stuff on youtube but lots of it is said to exist ((but I did find duets with John Denver and his proposed new Russian national anthem)).

I couldn't find The Passage soundtrack by itself but I did find this amazing thing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOFeLuYKc8

I've been looking at these insanely comprehensive lists...

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/honganji/
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/groonrikk/progressive_music_artists_worldwide___indexed_by_region/

...and a little worried about how far I should research.
In most genres I feel I know the tell-tale signs of what to look into and what to ignore, but hundreds of generic prog bands have fascinating and unusual cover art.
Cover art for books and films is totally unreliable but I feel bad bands generally have bad cover art. I've heard it said that album cover art often reflects the tastes and efforts of the bands.
I think it's difficult finding a reliable critic for the outer reaches of the genre.

I too latched on to that North Sea Radio Orchestra album.