:Episode One Hundred Twenty-Two: 09.28.2018

Description

This week's show opens with some good old-fashioned motorik, like Großmütter Neu! used to make, from the somewhat confusingly monikered Teksti-TV 666 (also, they apparently have five guitarists - if each of them played one of those guitars that are like, double guitars then it would be like, ten guitars!). After that, we get some psychedelic pop from Chile's Holydrug Couple (a name that has always sounded to me like an ill-conceived insult: "Oh... you two think you're so great, just because you know where to get the best weed... you think you're like some, holy... uh... drug... couple."), some JAMC-ish sunglasses-at-night Wall of Sound rock (which I will never not be a total sucker for) from Boston's Magic Shoppe, some absolutely phenomenal stoner metal from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs (so good I wrote out their whole name), and some vaguely Madchester-ish electro-rock from The Oscillation (who have been around long enough that I remember playing them on the original incarnation of the show in the late-2000s)

The middle set leads off with a twenty-minute slab of boogie rock drone (which, not surprisingly, should appeal to fans of Endless Boogie) by Wet Tuna, aka Matt Valentine and Pat Gubler. After that, we hear a track from the recently reissued cult classic "Mu", which was the self-titled debut (and finale, as it were) by a band led by Jeff Cotton, guitarist for Captain Beefheart, and including a few other standouts from the 60s L.A. psych scene. The set wraps up with yet another member of Chile's weirdo-music underground, Embassador Dulgoon, from an album that I'd say is worth buying for the fantastic, slightly H.R. Giger-ish cover alone, but that also happens to include some pretty decent tunes.

The last set begins with someone who, in my mind, belongs in the pantheon of 20th century avant-garde minimalist composers that includes Phillip Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, etc: Yoshi Wada. Seriously, if you've never heard of him (and sadly, not many people have) go listen to Off The Wall right now! Go on, I'll still be here when you get back WITH YOUR MIND BLOWN! Anyhow, the vowel-averse label RVNG Int'l has released a collaboration between Yoshi Wada, his son Tashi Wada, and some "Friends" (not Ross, I hope - what a wet blanket, am I right?) as part of their FRKWYS series, that is... maybe my favorite album of the year. And speaking of albums of the year, another candidate, to my mind, has to be Big Bang, the second album by Le Réveil Des Tropiques, which is just pure Expo 70-ish droney neo-Kraut/Kosmische bliss (pretty rad M.C. Escher-ish cover, too). We end with a track from the most recent album by Tim Hecker, which is perfectly OK, but that the twin towers of bourgeois dullard music criticism, Pitchfork and NPR, are furiously stroking their immaculately trimmed homeless-guy beards over.