Almost by definition, musical side projects aren’t meant to last very long, but rather serve as brief, often one-time departures for musicians otherwise engaged with far more pressing or successful bands — and that’s why Greenleaf has proved itself to be anything but your typical “side project.”
After numerous line-up changes Greenleaf is on the move again, bidding Cedermalm “adieu” and saying a hearty “hola” to a tandem of new recruits in frontman Arvid Jonsson and drummer Sebastian Olsson, who joined Holappa and long-serving bassist Bengt Bäcke in time to record (incidentally, with no outside help, guest musicians, or other additives) what would become Greenleaf’s next and fifth long-player, Trails and Passes, which was released in May of 2014, via Small Stone Recordings.
And, as has always been the case with this ever-evolving sonic beast, the music magically draws out the best talents of whoever happens to be involved.
The Midnight Ghost Train is a heavy blues / stoner rock band hailing from Topeka, Kansas, originally formed by Steve Moss in Buffalo, NY. When deciding on a band name, a Hank William’s song lyric was partially used. Their first release was “Johnny Boy EP” in 2008. In 2010 they self-released their first full length album “The Midnight Ghost Train”. The album was self-recorded after the band relocated to Kansas.
For five solid years they have been touring relentlessly in both the U.S.A and Europe, spreading their own version of thick Mississippi Delta-rooted style of stoner rock.
With thousands of shows under their belt, The Midnight Ghost Train will be home to record their next album. “Cold Was The Ground” will be released in February 2015 via Napalm Records. Stay tuned!
Watter is a new trio made up of close friends and collaborators whose collective pedigree reads like a desert island list of must-haves in experimental rock musicians. Multi-instrumentalists Zak Riles (Grails) and Tyler Trotter are anchored by legendary drummer Britt Walford (Slint, Evergreen) on six genre-defying pieces of monolithic mood music. For Riles and Trotter, it’s a chance to dig deeper into the sandbox in which Grails have sculpted many mercurial masterpieces in recent years; for Walford, it’s the opportunity to play a substantial role in a new active band for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Written, recorded, and produced entirely in the group’s collective studios in Louisville, KY, This World is a stunning combination of heady psychedelic rock, vintage cinematic New Age explorations, and sinister Krautrock, performed with seemingly endless stamina. Born out of many late-night jam sessions, many songs also feature fellow Louisville icons – Rachel Grimes (Rachel’s) provides several of the album’s most sublime moments, and The For Carnation’s Todd Cook lays the heavy, bass-driven foundation for the penultimate epic, “Seawater.”
This World is the kind of album that inspires renewed wonder in the mysterious powers of Louisville’s water supply. It draws impossibly broad inspiration from decades of Eastern and Western folk, rock, ambient, film score, library music, and neoclassical, and masterfully emerges with an ever-enveloping suite perfectly befitting its constantly curious composers.
Lilacs & Champagne, the project of Grails’ Emil Amos and Alex Hall, is built on warped samples and scorched guitar solos, creating a playful, psychedelic take on damaged funk and pop. The duo’s 2012 self-titled debut suggested a template for a new kind of psychotic mood music, and the follow up, Danish & Blue, manages to be both darker and more ambitious. “Lilacs & Champagne was created to be a direct tribute to the musical outsiders of the past” says Hall.
Made up of sounds sourced from Scandinavian porn and hyper-obscure b-movies from the late ’60s, Danish & Blue pulls from records other DJs wouldn’t touch by strategy. “We want to twist the knife as far as it can go into sample-based methodology, by taking pieces of loner music history and empowering them to shed light on both the pathetic side of human life and its improbable beauty.” says Amos.
MidnightFeatures is a new series of “fantasy records” imagined by Lilacs & Champagne’s Emil Amos and Alex Hall. Inspired by the classic Marvel comic series What If?, the duo seek to place themselves into various musical eras, expanding and perverting each new stylistic context they land in. This first volume, Shower Scene, was inspired by the background music from 1970s TV shows – the frenetic solos, sleazy funk lines and jazz-influenced sounds that subtly lurk behind the tales of crime, drama and passion. The band scratch beneath the soft-focus surface of this era, discovering a darker, more realized territory.
Holy Sons is Emil Amos, a musician whose chameleonic tendencies and technical versatility has lead to him becoming an in demand multi-instrumentalist as a founding member of Grails and Lilacs & Champagne, as well as a member of Om and a hired gun for Jandek, to name a few. Holy Sons is at the center of his many musical personalities and is his longest standing project, acting as an outlet for some of his most personal and direct songs.
It’s hard to pull off such a cohesive mood piece from found sources, but Amos and Hall are so clearly in love with the sampled material that it never feels anything but natural. Title track “Danish & Blue” is all digital chaos and hyper-compressed drums, with the duo creating machine funk from vintage synth samples and expertly placed streaks of guitar. It’s knowing but visceral, tongue-in-cheek but dead serious about mining unexpected and disparate places for golden moments. On the too-brief “Sour/Sweet,” the duo crafts low-key beauty from stuttered drums and a distant, looped vocal sample that slowly teases out over warm vinyl crackle and piano. You feel like it should last forever.
The songs on The Fact Facer creep up on the listener, their fiercely addictive melodies unraveling slowly and purposefully. Jumping smoothly between many facets of Amos’ songwriting, the album does much to establish him as a talented multi-instrumentalist. From the lysergic leads of “Selfish Thoughts”” to the Danny Kirwan referencing solos of “Transparent Powers” and the skillful acoustic flourishes of “The Fact Facer,” Amos proves himself as adept and creative a guitarist as he is a drummer. It is telling that Amos has built up two Holy Sons bands simultaneously: one based in Portland and one based in New York. Wherever the wind takes him, there are musicians willing to pick up their instruments and follow his lead.
Siena Root is a group and an experimental project with its roots in analogue old school rock music. The foundation is a trio from Stockholm that’s been around since the late ‘90s. The sound is classic but yet original, founded on heavy organ, strat leads, bass riffing and big drums. It is also often enriched with bluesy soulful vocals, indian classical instruments and psychedelic vibes.
In the sense that blues is blue, hard rock is black, and reggae is pan African coloured, this music has the colour of siena. It is a warm, earthy colour, originally from the muddy roots of Toscana. Because this sound has roots that go deep, it was also natural to let root be a part of the bands name.
Six full length albums and one 7” single have been released so far, each one marking the development and refinement of the bands diverse style. Through touring the music has developed in such a way, that jamming and improvising has become an essential element, always keeping you on the edge of your seat. A Siena Root concert is dramatic and exciting, visually, as well as emotionally. It’s a dynamic rootrock experience.
Earth’s career, like its music, has always been a slow, deliberate progression. Each record slightly removed from the last, a constant refinement of a singular vision. Dylan Carlson has remained focused throughout on coaxing moments of strange beauty and reflection from “the riff”. That one monument of pure rock refracted, in their earliest recordings, through the prism of sheer volume & feedbacking drone or via a sparse unraveling take on folk in the twin Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light set from 2011 & 2012.
With Primitive and Deadly, Earth’s tenth studio collection, Carlson & long term foil, drummer Adrienne Davies, manage to pull off the trick of completing an Ouroborean creative cycle, 25 years in the making, whilst exploring new directions in Earth’s music. For the first time in their diverse second act, they allow themselves to be a ROCK band, freed of adornment and embellishment.
As much as Carlson’s guitar has always been the focal point of Earth’s music, it’s been surrounded by consistently diverse instrumentation. Here the dialog between Carlson and Davies drumming remains pivotal, underpinned by the sympathetic bass of Bill Herzog (Sunn 0))), Joel RL Phelps, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter) and thickened by additional layers of guitar from Brett Netson (Built To Spill, Caustic Resin) & Jodie Cox (Narrows).
Perhaps the largest left turn on Primitive and Deadly, though, is the dominance of guest vocalists Mark Lanegan and Rabia Shaheen Qazi (Rose Windows) who transform the traditionally free ranging meditations of Earth into something approaching traditional pop structures.
On Rooks Across the Gates, a song stylistically the closest to the folk inspired modality of Angels of Darkness, Carlson stretches out into some of his most lyrical playing to date, creating an almost symbiotic relationship between his performance and the vocals of old friend Mark Lanegan. From the Zodiacal Light, meanwhile, takes the late 60’s San Franciscan / freaked out jazz-rock transcendence of Bees Made Honey in the Lions Skull and quickly re-appropriates that sound into a musky torch song for the witching hour. Think Jefferson Airplane on a heavy dose of Quaaludes and Aleister Crowley.
This contradictive tension between a band pushing themselves ever forward whilst surveying their history is reflected in the twin recording locales of Rancho de La Luna in the mystic desert high lands of Joshua Tree, California where the band laid down hour after hour of meditations on each tracks central theme before returning to Seattle to edit, arrange, and expand upon these takes at Avast, aided by the return of long term collaborator Randall Dunn (who was at the helm for the Hex, Bees Made Honey in the Lions Skull and Hibernaculum sessions).
Black Spirituals is a collaboration between two soloists who have found a new platform for the intersection of tone-generating electronic technology and the heart-thumping technology of acoustic percussion. This duet features a new tradition in conversant, duo vernacular dynamics that sparked a revolution in our conceptions of space, stage, ritual, performance, geography, praxis, brotherhood, relationships, rockin’ out, and more.
Multi-Aesthetic percussionist Marshall Trammell’s STTRCRFT platform articulates his commitment to the study of the worlds’ percussive arts in his multi-limbed Improvisation system. Utilizing super bananas electronic and guitar sounds, live processing, and heavy-heavy percussion Mr Watkins “weaves…undulating dronescape(s), of deep sonic swells and muted electronic buzz, utilizing analog synths, guitars, drums and percussion, cassette, Casio, bass, and of course electricity(!)”
Disaster! Blue Cheer kidnaps Tina Turner and ties her to the tracks of the Grand Funk Railroad. The Wild Eyes express bears down from San Francisco, wheels churning.
In the tender, drummer Ben Richardson and bassist Carson Binks (Saviours) fuel the engine with syncopated clatter and incendiary rumble. Whirling riffs and searing, psychedelic solos by guitarist Chris Corona (Floating Goat, Hazzard’s Cure) soar from the smokestack. Just before the crash, a soulful siren: singer Janiece Gonzalez, whose warning comes too late. Carnage! Then, from the wreckage – twisted metal, pulverized rock, burning soul – comes “Get Into It!” a new album on Who Can You Trust? records. Celebration! The Wild Eyes express thunders on!
Following the release of their 2012 Debut, Black Moth have had a storming couple of years. Playing festivals such as Leeds, Reading and Download, as well as two european tours and a massive UK tour. Also stamping their live authority on support slots with Red Fang, Karma to Burn, Turbowolf and Truckfighers to name a few.
2014 saw the release of their 2nd full length “Condemned To Hope”.
Once again produced by Nick Cave sticks man, Jim Sclavunos and recorded by legendary Leeds engineer Andy Hawkins, it turned out to be a true banger!
“Like Electric Wizard meets Band Of Skulls, in a dungeon- KKKK” – Kerrang!
“A riveting blend of stoner metal and garage rock” – Metal Hammer
“Sludgey, grungey, NWOBHM-ey, Riot Grrly- don’t you just love it when a band are so awesome that they’re undefinable?” – Terrorizer
The world was introduced to Antlered Man in 2012 with debut album ‘Giftes 1&2’. Rave reviews and award nominations followed the release, along side 100+ tour dates and 15 festivals in that year alone.
With influences spanning The Melvins, Tool and Mike Patton their unique mix of punk, metal, prog, hardcore and alt rock was quick to translate in to packed tour dates.
At the beginning of 2013 the band recorded down LP#2 ‘This Devil Is Them’ with Belfast based ASIWYFA producer Rocky O’Reilly. A heavier and stranger beast than the first.
About half a year ago retro-rockers Spiders opened for Blood Ceremony at Arena´s small hall.
They will be back November 6th alongside fellow hard-rocking Swedes Horisont and Vidunder.
Don´t sleep on this one.
Last week the one and only Brant Bjork kicked off his Low Desert Punk Tour at Arena´s big hall. Torso from Vienna was opening.
Needless to say it was a revelatory stoner rock night.
October 1 st, Jex Thoth and her gang, whose blend of alchemical doom, kraut-influenced experiments and mastery of the riff earned them a spot way on top of the doom heap, laid waste to Arena´s Dreiraum once more.
Vienna based photographer David Visnjic took some great shots this evening.
Burning up in fine style, Sweden’s Spiders mines a hard late “˜60s tough rock sound with a touch of proto-metal and a somewhat sinister motif to re-ignite the Scando garage scene once more.
Spiders was formed in Gothenburg in February 2010. A few months later the band appeared at one of Sweden’s most successful music festivals, Way Out West. It was around this time Spiders for the first time as a band stepped into the studio with producer Don Ahlsterberg (The Soundtrack of Our Lives, International Noise Conspiracy) and started recording. Since then they released Vinyl on Kemado Records, Crusher Records and De:Nihil Records and completed tours with Kvelertak, Graveyard and Blood Ceremony.
The new album “Shake Electric” is due in late October through Universal Music.
Real rock‘n’roll cannot be faked. It is the immortal celebration of prized atavistic values – power and volume, sweat and adrenalin, uncompromising good times and the invigorating squall of past, present and future colliding. Those with the artistry and soul required to make music that stirs the blood will never stop chasing that distant horizon, and so Horisont have both the name and the know-how to blow minds and disperse life’s oppressive clouds.
Since forming in 2006, this Swedish quintet have steadily established themselves as one of Europe’s premier underground rock bands. Their first two albums – 2009’s Tva Sidor Av Horisonten and 2012’s widely acclaimed Second Assault – made it plain that the band have tapped directly into the heart of heaviness and guitar-wielding derring-do. Now, with their latest masterpiece, the vividly realised Time Warriors, Horisont are raising their game, refining and re-defining themselves and leaving the competition spluttering in the dust.
Vidunder from Malmö, a city in the south part of Sweden, features Martin Prim (vocals and guitar), Linus Larsson (bass) and Jens Rasmussen (drums). The band was formed in mid-2011 and it didn’t take long before they released their debut single Asmodeus on Crusher Records (the very same year). The release was followed by gigs around Sweden.
In late 2012, it was once again time to step into the studio, this time to begin the recording of the Vidunder debut album. The result was a ten tracks album. On the album can be found, for instance, Summoning The Not Living, reminding of a young Roky Erickson and his 13th Floor Elevators; the bluesy ballad Threefold giving the album a balance to the more heavier and up-tempo songs; Threat From The Underground which is one of the three tracks on this album with guest appearance by guitarist John Hoyles (guitarist of Spiders, ex-member of Witchcraft and Troubled Horse).
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