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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Lungfish and Adam Gnade.
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Listed: Lungfish + Adam Gnade
Lungfish
Lungfish should intimidate everyone: musicians, citizens, the elderly - everyone. Not only are they the most intense-looking dudes you're likely to find anywhere short of Pirate Island, but their music is some of the most pounding, mesmerizing and fierce from the past decade-plus. Though they have somehow slipped under the radar of many would-be fans, their output has been pretty consistent over the past few years, and they're even touring on a reasonably regular basis. Their most recent album, Feral Hymns came out earlier this year on Dischord, their label since forming in 1988. While it contains few surprises, it's as captivating as anything in Lungfish's catalog. While Daniel Higgs is the public face - err, beard - of the band, Lungfish would not be what they are without the driving rhythm section of Mitchell Feldstein (Drums) and Sean Meadows (Bass). Anyone who has seen the band play in the past few years can't help but walk away with an appreciation for their contribution to the band's sound, and evolution. Meadows and Feldstein participated in this week's 'Listed.'
Mitchell Feldstein:
1. John Cale - Process
Piano-based soundtrack. Dreamy in a Cale kinda way.
2. Tujiko Noriko - Blurred in my Mirror aand 28
With Aoki Takamasa. She is some kind of goddess.
3. Into the Depth of Time
Various composers preformed by Mie Miki on accordion and Nobuko Imai on viola highly recommended. Composers include: Toshio Hosokawa, Yoshiro Irino, Yuji Takahashi, and Isang Yun.
4. Jeff Parker - The Relatives
Amazing player. Chicago Chicago Chicago.
5. The Concretes - Lay Our Battleaxes Down
Sounds authentic. I like...a lot.
6. Japanese pop in 2005
As evidenced by Nissennnmondai, Asano Brother's Revenge, Ootto, Idea of a Joke.
7. PEACELOVEANDUNDERSTANDING
8. David Bowie - Station to Station
So druggy/metalic and "Lodger" so organic/spaced out. I have to revisit Bowie from time to time. He helped changed my idea of art.
9. Mike Figgis - Hotel
He seems to be playing with film. Nice soundtrack too.
10. James Kelman - The Busconductor Hines
Also "translated accounts" which opened my mind wide. he seems to be playing with words.
11. (bonus selection) Itoken - Bookstore
More merry making from Japan.
Sean Meadows:
1.Jon Brumit - Vendetta Retreat
This guy's music is often overlooked because of his other antics like his Bring Your Own Big Wheel race down Lombard Street in San Francisco. This guy is one of the most capable musicians I know. This record is a good introduction.
2.Deerhoof- The Runners Four
This record is the catchiest thing I've heard in years. The sounds of a band totally gelling. I love that they did this themselves at their practice space in Oakland. I look up to the giant Deerhoof.
3. Golden - Golden Summer
This may be the best indie-rock record....totally overlooked.
4.Current Birdsong
Some of the best music I'm hearing these days isn't even made by humans. Is there anyone studying the evolution of birdsong? Ethnomusicaligistic ornothology?
5. Roberta Flack doing Leonard Cohen's "Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye"
Great example of someone doing their own while respecting the original...and making it something else....
6. Orthrelm
A friend described their music to me as being pleasantly attacked by hornets.
7. Tinariwin
Total revolution freedom music. this Tareg group moved me with every song i've heard of theirs....whatever "it" is they have "IT!
8. Nessenennmondai
Live tokyo 2005 tribal trance in the belly of the modern world.
9. P.I.L. - 2nd Edition metal box
Still the best "post-rock" record to date.
10. Mitchell turned me on to Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy by Brian Eno. Completely infectious freak music.
Adam Gnade
Adam Gnade's newest album, Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender (Loud + Clear Records), is an alternately lurching and frenzied journey through our collective American identity crisis. It is a nine-track odyssey of anxiety, catatonic silence and healing, set to a psych-folk tapestry of clanging tambourines, clattering drums, ambient piano keys, and the weary but ever-searching voice of Adam himself. Run tells the narrative of doomed lovers jumping in a car and flooring it away from one set of problems, only to drive straight into a storm of self-destruction, war fever and heartbreak. Adam's spoken vocals send the listener first fleeing from trouble and then barreling straight towards it.
1. The Mamas and the Papas - "Twelve Thirty (Young Girls are Coming to the Canyon” (from The Mamas and the Papas Deliver, MCA)
I’ve always dug the Mamas and the Papas, but never paid much attention to this song. That is, until last week while on tour in Southern California. We stayed at this honest-to-god mansion on a hill on Mulholland Dr., nestled up among the canyons. Burning sage. Warm, breezy, salt air. Tiny gray lizards sunning themselves on rocks. California palaces tucked back down circular drives among the Eucalyptus trees. Sad Mexican gardeners. Red sports cars racing downhill, to which we yelled “Slow down, Tom Cruise!” at each one and laughed hysterically. It was the whole horrible affair of Southern California and LA and Hollywood and big, aching nothingness encapsulated. I put “Twelve Thirty” on while we were winding through the hilly streets and everything suddenly made sense. LA can fall into the sea for all I care, but I want Cass to sing me to sleep in heaven.
2. Jigsaw Gentlemen – untitled (unreleased)
I’m living in Portland right now and just got to hear these guys’ debut CD that Dan O’Hara produced. Watch for them. John Henry writes lyrics that murder me.
3. My guitar
This new, shiny, black Ovation/Applause guitar appeared mysteriously on my doorstep in Portland a few days before tour, sent by a mysterious ladyfriend in the Southern US. I brought it inside, took it out of its box, plugged it in, and fell in love.
4. Lady Bic or Boxer Cutter
We played with these kids in Sioux City, Iowa. Huge, dark, deathly, droning Hawkwind-like songs. And they’re only, like, nine years old! Maybe younger. Five? Six? Four? Just imagine the heaven and hell and blood and love they’ll rain down on us when they hit puberty. Sioux City is punk rock’s last, great, safe haven. Too bad most all of her residents are fucking pricks that wanted us dead soon as we rolled into town.
5. Our new lineup
Our last touring lineup had six people, big loud electric guitars, crazy rock drums, bass, acoustic guitar, sax, musical saw, four keyboards, four tambourines, trumpet, saxophone—it was heavy, man. Just really heavy. And it was great, but it feels nice to do a 180 and have a completely different set of instruments. We’re down to banjo, acoustic slide guitar, acoustic rhythm guitar and organic percussion. It feels like sleeping under a tree for an entire drowsy Virginia summer just imagining it. Thank god for communal lineups.
6. Akron/Family
If Pink Floyd replaced “darkness” with “fun” in their Magical Musical Handbook of Career/Artistic Intent, they’d be these boys.
7. Donovan
I’m seeing him play for the first time ever tonight. People talk a lot of shit on Donovan, and maybe some of it’s warranted, but the man can write a dark, menacing rock song like nobody’s business. I asked him a couple days ago if he’d heard of people like Devendra and he told me he’s probably gonna do some music with him next year. He said they met in Ireland a little while ago and got along really well. This is a good thing for the world.
8. Castanets
Ray’s a friend from San Diego. Finally got to see him play for the first time in... maybe two years. It was outstanding! Take all the Neil Young or Velvet Underground, 6 Degrees, whatever, etc, comparisons and flush them in the fucking crapper. Ray’s lyrics are some next level shit, and his sound—both live and on record—is constantly evolving, kept fresh by a revolving lineup. It’s beyond folk, beyond psych, beyond country, beyond rock, beyond everything. It’s big music—big in too many ways to say here.
9. The state of Virginia
Best place in the world to write and record music. There’s just nothing else to do. Empty days sitting on docks at the banks of buggy swamps, dreaming up song ideas. That’s how I spent my summer.
10. The Locust
Before anything, I need to say that you should take my opinion on this one with a grain of salt. I write this band’s record bios for them, and we share the same PR company, Blue Ghost Publicity, but goddamnit if the Locust isn't the most incredibly organic-sounding band in the world. It's brutal, crazy and all but the songs sound more like the forces of nature than anything. Huge icy glaciers cracking and falling into the ocean. Little white squiggling maggots eating the brain out of a dead cat. Bones crunching. Stampeding cattle. Earthquakes. Ice storms in the Midwest. Heavy wind down in the gulf. People always call these guys "hardcore" but I think of them as earth music.
By Dusted Magazine
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