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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists determined by our favorite artists. This week: Town and Country and Loney, Dear.
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Listed: Town and Country + Loney, Dear
Town and Country
Drifting somewhere between modern composition and acoustic drone mastery, Chicago quartet Town and Country have mellowed out rooms and auditoriums for over six years and six albums. Its members come from all sides of Chicago's improvised and otherwise music scene, including Josh Abrams, Ben Vida, Liz Payne, and Jim Dorling. Their latest record, Up Above, draws heavy influence from time spent on the road with legend Tony Conrad. It is now avaialble on Thrill Jockey Records. Tambura, autoharp, harmonium, organ pipe, hmong harp, shakuhachiplayer player (/vocalist) Jim Dorling contributed this week's Listed.
1. Dreamachine
We love our dreamachine.
2. Ira Cohen - Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda (Music by Angus MacLeish)
Just saw this at Arthurball. Arthur is going to put it out on DVD. This makes them like gods to me. I would like to spend the rest of my life watching this movie over and over and over again. Shiny, Shiny mylar. And Tony Conrad is in it, somewhere, covered in greasepaint.
3. Nika Soup & Saya Source - Ipiya (ontonson 01/HEADZ 62)
The CD is almost as good as the show they did in an abandoned amusement park in Tokyo next door to a huge shrine. Just voices, melody and joy. Oh, and a touch of glass harmonica.
4. Pandit Pran Nath - Midnight
For the bath. Last winter I listened to this in the bath every night all winter. Very low and very dark.
5. Kustom Kar Kommandos - Kenneth Anger + Dream Lover-Paris Sisters
The greatest video ever made for the greatest girl group song ever recorded (by Jack Nitszch of course) and on top of that its really gay!
6. "All the Things You Are" sung by Donald Raphael Garrett
(Not available, although there's actually a chance that my old friend Avi has this on tape and I should get off my ass, find out which kibbutz he lives on, get it from him, and put it out)
Late in the evening Raphael used to bellow out this number at the top of his lungs, hunched over his bass, mouth gaping wide, semi-toothless. He said his biggest influence was Popeye, it was so wonderful.
7. Jorge Lois Borges - The Circular Ruins
The first few lines sound like Pink Floyd's Echoes - "No one saw him slip from the boat.."-"No one flies around the sun" all negation. The protagonist sleeps for the whole story, all day, all night and conjures up some sort of dream child, which is like the best parts of all that Aleister Crowley stuff.
8. Om - Variations on a Theme
Metal stripped down to the ground and trudging on and on. And its even better live. The word "ascending." Say it, say "ascending."
9. Serge Eisenstein - Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 & 2
You could take these two movies in both hands and grind Citizen Kane into dust. The faces in this movie, and the fur! At he end of part 2 B&W turns to blood red &color for a cheerful number about chopping off heads.
10. Turn Off Your Mind by Gary Lachman
A crash course on hip occultism. Now that it's cool to be witchy again, you better bone up. This guy (from Blondie) delivers the goods and the dirt. Do you know what the Process is? Jack Parsons? You will be tested.
Loney, Dear
Loney, Dear is a one man band with nine members, and the alter ego of multi-instrumentalist and DIY expert Emil Svanängen. In his tiny, sweltering Stockholm studio apartment, or in the cool basement of his parents house is where all the magic happens. The outside world has no idea of what's going on. Creativity explodes, an old clock walks tick-tack-tock onwards to the Loney, Dear prophesy. Two records a year is his M.O., and by new years eve of 2009, all is said to come to an end.
1. Jan Johansson - "Stepp min stepp" from jazz på ryska
My absolute favorite song, and an internationally well kept secret. One of the greatest I know. Rhythm couple Egil Johanssen and Georg Riedel plays 40 years ahead in style. Jan sometimes hits deep bassnotes, just to put some mud in the lower frequencies. Johansson died in 1967, when he was about to give a church concert in Jönköping, 37 years old. (My math teachers actually going to that very gig)
2. John Coltrane - "Alabama"
Such a great song. For some reason they stop playing somewhere in the middle of the song, which creates a stunning moment. I am not sure it is the drummer talking in the background of the recording. John wrote this song as far as I can remember, with the knowledge that dozens had been killed in a race-assassin, And it is such a sad song. Vibrating, condensed and not a single leftover from the heavy burden of the earlier bebop.
3. Bob Dylan - "Love Minus Zero" from Bringing it all Back Home
Beautiful. I'm not always comfortable with Dylan's way of putting music in the second room, but this is a great song, with beautiful lyrics.
4. Jussi Björling - "Så kall ni är om handen"
It means something like: "Your hand is so cold". I think the composer is Puccini and the opera is called "La Bohème". Great pop music from long gone.
4. The innocence mission - "Rooftop"
Such a beautiful song. Too short, so mistreated, but some parts still so great. Dont know much about them really.
5. David Åhlén (Namur) – "In the well" from Conquer Me
I heard his next record will be non-electronic, David is a great musician with an original expression. "Far from home, please keep me warm, I didn't choose life, life choose me"
6. Björn Isfält (1942-1997)
Motion picture music composer. Great music from Astrid Lindgrens Bröderna Lejonhjärta and En Kärlekshistoria by Roy Andersson. "Lejonhjärta" has this beautiful nonfixed pitch from being replayed on analogue media. Unfortunately, this didn't make it to the recorded version I heard. I am pretty sure I met Björn once, when he visited my school when I was twelve for a concert.
7. Paul McCartney - "Dear Boy" from Ram
I love the triplets played on piano. Thought for a while about choosing the demo version of "Fool on the Hill" from Anthology # 2.
8. Tom Waits - "Coney Island Baby" from Blood Money
My friend Oscar told me in a humorous way that Tom Waits have two modes of singing: twisted growling and the other one is some kind of (without reaching it) attempt to sing smooth. A successful melody spares important notes 'til they're needed. This song reaches its peak when Tom hits the highest notes.
By Dusted Magazine
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