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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Th' Faith Healers and Steven R. Smith.
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Listed: Th' Faith Healers + Steven R. Smith
Th' Faith Healers
An interesting bit of trivia: Th' Faith Healers recorded the first release on Too Pure back in 1990. Needless to say, they've come a long way. Singer Roxanne Stephen, guitarist Tom Cullinan, bassist Ben Hopkin and drummer Joe Dilworth issued in a resurgence in Krautrock during their two albums and three Eps in the early 1990s. They broke up in 1994, but have returned from the dead to support a new Peel Disc on Ba Da Bing! Here are the dates:
17 March: Austin, TX - Blender Balcony at the Ritz
22 March: Boston, MA - Pa's Lounge
27 March: Brooklyn, NY – Northsix
29 March: New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
30 March: Philadelphia, PA - The Khyber
Roxanne took part in this week's Listed.
1. Can
I first heard Can circa 1990. My friend French Erick came to visit me with a cassette tape of Monster Movie and other Can material. He wanted me to hear it ‘cos at the time th’ fh’s were renowned for playing 20 minute repetitive groove based wig outs and so obviously people thought there were parallels. I was instantly blown away and this remains one of my favourite albums. I love Malcolm Mooney’s voice and lyrics even though he only did the one album with them. "Yoo Do Right" is a cracking track. We then ended up covering "Mother Sky" to play at a gig for our soundman’s birthday (John Wills from Loop who had previously covered the track) and it went down so well we kept it in our set.
2. Kate Bush
The 1st four albums are all favourites of mine, but I’ll champion the controversial “difficult “ release that is The Dreaming. It’s the album where I believe she arrived as a true maverick. She was given free reign to do what she wanted and the results are so bonkers that EMI shit bricks over it! It was a commercial flop but I think it’s British music at its quintessential, eccentric best. Uniquely talented, intelligent, beautiful and also a bit scary, I was completely obsessed with her when Hounds of Love came out.
3. Patti Smith
was and is one of the most important female musician role models for me. In a male dominated music industry, her fierce intelligence, poetry, music, politics and lifestyle are a great example. Everyone has heard the recent reappraisal of Horses - it’s importance musically as well as the impact of the iconic Mapplethorpe sleeve photo - but when I was a teenage girl, Easter did it for me. The sleeve with her showing off her hairy armpits, devoid of makeup or vanity was a revelation, and the shock of hearing "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger," confusing. Critically, at the time, this was seen as a disappointing sequel to Horses but I think it’s her most accessible album.
4. The Pixies
When I first heard Surfer Rosa, everything changed. Suddenly music sounded different. How so? I don't really know.... . Is it Black Francis’ and Kim Deal’s song writing? Their fabulous vocals? Steve Albini’s production? Everyone had this record on their turntable when it came out. It’s still on mine.
5. Lynne Ramsey
Lynne Ramsey is one of my favourite new filmmakers. Her debut feature Ratcatcher set in Glasgow in the 1970’s on a working class estate is both visually and emotionally stunning. I was in floods of tears when I left the cinema. Her screen adaptation of fellow Scots writer Alan Warner’s book Morvern Callar ( a favourite book of mine) is also visual poetry and a brave move. She has stuck to her vision as a true artist.
6. The Boyle Family
Hard to sum this art family up in a few sentences cos their work has been so diverse over the years. They’ve been around since the 60s, famously making liquid light projections for Soft Machine live shows. Probably most famous for their Earth Sections in which they throw darts at maps of the world,find the spot where the dart landed in order to recreate it, whether it be land, water, snow, sand, etc. . They are scandalously under-known in their native UK.
7. AC/DC
Ok, I know it’s obvious, sad perhaps, but, If You Want Blood, Highway to Hell and Back in Black are phenomenal rock albums. They have been with me since my teenage years which is surely when music makes it’s biggest impact. These records always come out at parties. My headbanging days are far from over.
8. Vashti Bunyan
After a 30 year gap she has returned with one of the most beautiful and fragile folk music albums, Lookaftering. Her recent concert at the Barbican in London was sublime.
9. Chrome Hoof
Chrome Hoof are one of my favourite new bands. A 9 piece from London who defy categorisation. They seem to extract the best parts of all genres, chuck it together, then spew it back out at you. A great festival band (as seen at Tapestry 2005)
10. Iain Sinclair
His book Lights Out for the Territory really influenced my relationship with London and its many layers of history intertwined with the present. I became obsessed with psychogeography after reading this and sought out my own hidden histories of the city. Pretentious, moi?
Steven R. Smith
Steven R. Smith is one of America’s great hidden artists. He has been composing and releasing solo music for almost a decade. Though affiliated with the Jewelled Antler collective through membership of Mirza and Thuja, Smith has suffered little from the spotlight glare that has fallen upon some of his peers. Instead, Smith slowly and humbly tends to his own compositions, moving between the historically charged meta-versions of traditional Eastern European music he records as Hala Strana and his solo conceptions for guitar.
1. 3 Women
Robert Altman's 1977 masterpiece. As the movie tag says: 1 woman became 2; 2 women became 3; 3 women became 1. Reportedly written from a dream; it sure seems that way upon viewing. Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule at their most out there. Gerald Busby‚s soundtrack is perfect, which I had to bootleg myself by recording the audio output from the back of the VCR.
2. Long Fin Killie
I don‚t know anyone who seemed to like this band, then or now, except my fellow bandmates in Mirza back in the day. I know I must be wrong but it sure felt that way. We saw them play back then at an afternoon gig and I think between Glenn, Mark and myself, we were the whole crowd. Underappreciated, but what a unique group.
3. Townes Van Zandt - "Rake"
Probably my favorite song by anyone, anywhere.
4. Remedios Varo & Leonora Carrington
They were good friends so they get to be listed together. Both influenced each other and there is much in common within their art. Over the last few years some nice books have finally been published on each of them. Go look them up.
5. Spike Fiddle
Mine's got frets on it cause I'm lazy and my pitch is questionable even at the best of times. The everyman's violin, capable of just about anything.
6. The 1972 Volkswagen Bus
Loud, slooooow, and unreliable, capable of just about nothing, but still...
7. Crime & the City Solution
Never quite got their due compared to the Birthday Party or the Bad Seeds, with whom they shared members. I spent many years ripping off what I could from their vibe, not sure if I succeeded. Shine is the record to start with, then head one record before and one after.
8. Dale Pendell's Pharmako triliogy
What on paper appears to be merely a drug and medicinal plant reference is actually a visionary and uncompromising work of poetry, history, chemistry, etymology, alchemy, myth, and drug use. The third volume was finally released last month and the picture is now complete.
9. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Sergei Parajanov‚s great film from 1964. Not easy to find but well worth the search. A Ukrainian folk tale turned upside down.
10. Don Cherry
Everyone should own his records, and all Dusted readers probably do. The light in the house changes every time he's on the stereo. I missed seeing him in New York just before he died about 12 or 13 years ago because I was young, stupid, and not in a "jazz" phase. My buddy went by himself anyway and I went to some other show that night which I can‚t even remember now. I regret it to this day.
By Dusted Magazine
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