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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Undermind and My Latest Novel
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Listed: Primordial Undermind + My Latest Novel
Primordial Undermind
Primordial Undermind's earliest work, evolving out of band leader Eric Arn's earlier projects, established them firmly in a burgeoning psych-rock scene during the 90s. The Undermind's trajectory from the late 90s to 2003's Thin Shells of Revolution, however, veered in a different direction from their contemporaries, embracing elements from free jazz, avant stylings, international musics, and more. Loss of Affect, just released on the Strange Attractors label, comprises 2004 recordings done prior to Arn's relocation from Austin to Vienna.
Focusing on music, especially some crucial stuff that doesn’t get namechecked all the time. --------------------------
1. Stalk Forrest Group: St Cecilia – Before the mighty BÖC stalked the earth as cryptic, evil hard -rock shamans (see their untouchable first 3 albums), they operated as an east coast psych/jam band under the name Soft White Underbelly. The Stalk Forrest sessions they recorded for Elektra fell in between these two incarnations, temporally and stylistically. Best of both worlds really, with lyrics split between Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman. Rescued by Rhino Handmade and surprisingly still available.
2. U. Shrivinas/U. Rajesh - Eternal Bliss
Mandolin bros - duelling fretless electric mandolins as carnatic devotional instruments. Believe it. Live, these two young masters and their double-mrdingam support strode onto an Austin stage like young gods and delivered a three hour out-of-body experience for all without breaking a sweat. The recordings may be a ghost of that experience, but they’re better than no hint at all.
3. Third Ear Band - Alchemy
“New Weird Renaissance Fair”? Proof that electricity is not required for tightly-focused alien avant-drone manipulation. Well-read ergot-infused wandering minstrels armed with gut strings, holed pipes, and hand percussion, creating ritual music for heroic doses. And you can St. Vitus dance to it.
4. Garbage and the Flowers - Eyes Rind As If Beggars
Raw gobbets of gray matter, filthy drone, and vintage ennui smeared across four sides of vinyl. Extended New Zealish explorations combining the Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum molds, but with Helen Johnstone’s distinctive voice weaving a beautifully pop melodic sense through the lofi squall.
5. New Life - Visions of the Third Eye
Hypnotic groove-based jazz explorations using drums/bass/guitar and the occasional vocals. Esoteric influences and wandering improvisations take this to a higher mind. Recorded for the elusive Mustevic label, with underrated and understated rhythmatist Steve Reid on the traps.
6. Davis Redford Triad - Code Orange
Steven Wray Lobdell is not just the cracked guitar whiz people would paint him as – he is a total sound manipulator, virtuoso of the Echoplex as well as the SG, and can juggle an array of pedals and samples at the same time. These recordings came from the 2002 Triad tour, which I can witness was a third eye-widening force of nature every night.
7. Mauro Antonio Pawlowski - Secret Guitar
Acoustic steel string flying finger and hard strumming outsider virtuosity driven by a relentless push to discover new modes. Devoid of precious “old-timey” referents that can yank this stuff out of the eternal and into the 20th century, or paint it with nostalgia. A truly unique statement, opening some new doors for the unaccompanied guitar.
8. George Russell - Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature
Alchemist Russell’s hour-long meisterwerk flows smoothly between purely electronic interludes, deeply dark big-band electric fusion, and transcendent free blowing – just as I imagined the electric Miles records were going to be like until I actually heard them.
9. Iancu Dumitrescu - Anything you can find
Dumitrescu, along with Ana Marie Avram and their Hyperion Ensemble, have been pushing modern academic music beyond all boundaries for decades, following lines of pure human expression instead of conceptual conceits. Maybe incubation as state-sponsored composers in an isolated Bucharest was necessary to evolve such singular works. The national orchestra of Romania actually plays their stuff, where else would that happen?
10. F/i - Paradise Out Here
Straight out of Milwaukee. A first hearing of this LP proposes a serious spacetime anomaly had occurring there, funneling this music in from some high frequency DMT dimension. It’s pretty well disconnected from rock music, but manages to create complete engrossing otherness from the standard tools of guitars, drums, and synths, drenched with a few buckets of reverb.
Refusing to be left unmentioned: the Magic Carpathians, Bruce Langhorne (Hired Hand), Salamander, Robert Wittinger, Crawlspace, the Habibiyya, Alan Lamb, Paavi, Intersystems, the Fourth Stream
My Latest Novel
They're from Scotland, there are more than four members, they make orchestra indie pop for softies. Can you guess who? That's right, My Latest Novel are the latest export to his US shores, and their new record is nearly as endearing and catchy as, oh, I don't know who else they could rightly be compared to. Barely a year old, they've already had a career's worth of praised heaped upon them. The record in question, Wolves, is out now on the esteemed Worker's Institute label, as are a handful of 7"s and other such Still Single eligibles. Paul and Gary were kind enough to chime in with this week's list.
1. Drawing
It's a darn good thing to exalt some artistic talent now and then. we are working on revamping our website and for the last 4 days i have been drawing hundreds of tiny, very detailed buildings with a 0.05 pigment liner. We better use them. (P)
2. Animal Collective - Hollinndagain
A rare live album from 2003 that i think has just been re-released. I saw Animal Collective in the Tramway in Glasgow around this time and was utterly blown away. It was so tribal and spiritual, the room had this buzzing atmosphere. Im not sure the crowd new what to make of it, awestruck sitting on the floor. I must have been the only one standing "dancing" amongst this sea of seated bodies. (P)
3. Promising to make Mix Cds for friends and never producing the goods
I'm reminded of how much I'm into this everyday. But I don't have any blank cds at moment. I really should use them to back up my bravado self righteousness when discussing music. Note to oneself - buy blank cdss with first royalties cheque :) (P)
4. Hella - Chirpin' Hard
I like to force myself to listen to music I wouldn't normally listen to. A friend gave me a list of stuff to check out. Out of the list including Botch, Converge etc but this was a little gem. Zach Hill's drumming is fucking brilliant. Makes me want to smash stuff up but in a good way of course. (P)
5. The Microphones - It Was Hot we Stayed in the Water
I remember we played a show in Dublin and afterwards I was sitting in the dressing room and could hear a guy singing and playing a classical guitar in the next room. It wasn't until I was outside bumming cigarettes off the rich audience that someone told me it was Phil Elverum, Mt Eerie were playing in this 12ft by 10ft room. I can't believe I missed that. I'll forever let this album haunt me and continually torture me about missing the show. I'm now clean from Nicotine. (P)
6. Shakespeare & Co.
This is a little bookstore in Paris in which Henry Miller and Ernest Hemmingway among others used to sleep. It still has beds upstairs, and has this beautiful aura of being lived in. I bought a lovely copy of Ulysses in it, which I have never managed to read, but will do sometime soon. Over the door it reads "Let not be inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise". (G)
7. Alasdair Gray - Lanark
This is almost certainly the greatest novel by a Scottish writer. Set in Glasgow, and the fictional city of Unthank, it swings from science fiction to biography. I read it for the first time a few years ago, and although a bit of an epic, it is a magnificent achievement of the human imagination. It took 20 years to write, and comes in four volumes (which are to be read in the order 3,1,2,4) with the epilogue apparently too important to go at the end!! (G)
8. Chess
I've recently started playing against my laptop while on tour. Now I know this sounds like a lame way to spend a tour, but I played and lost once, and thought I'd try again. And again. And again. Until in fact I realised I could not beat the stupid computer! I still can't. It's so frustrating. Even when I think I\'m winning, I'm actually getting beat. (G)
9. Albert Camus - The Outsider
This is probably my favourite novel. It's a story of an alienated man, who commits a murder, but is largely unaffected by it. He feels no remorse, and is therefore considered dangerous. It's is really wonderful.(G)
10. My telescope
For Christmas last year, my girlfriend bought me a wonderful telescope, which I must confess, I have yet to use...outside. Regularly, I set it up in my room, but never commit my eye to the lens. My reason for doing so is obvious. I don't want to get it outside, and then struggle to set the damn thing up. This way I'll know exactly what I'm doing and know where every part goes even if it's dark. Makes sense!(G)
By Dusted Magazine
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