:Episode One Hundred Twenty: 09.14.2018

Description

This has been another glorious late summer/early fall week in the Pacific Northwest, made all the better by being able to accompany it with Popol Vuh's soundtrack to Werner Herzog's "Coeur de Verre." One of their best albums, it up until recently was extremely difficult to come by, available only as an expensive import (with even illicit versions somewhat hard to find). So, I lead off the show with my favorite track from it, Hüter Der Schwelle, or "Guardian of the Threshold" auf Englisch. After this we hear from Swedish retro 70s-rockers Svvamp (with the "w" spelled with two v's, a la the film The VVitch or engravings of Latin phrases on buildings), followed by NYC performance art weirdos Hairbone and then another dose of retro from Philadephians Ecstatic Vision with a cover of the MC5's Come Together (my second favorite cover version of a song named "Come Together," the first being Aerosmith's version of the Beatles' Come Together). Rounding out the opening set are Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Bitchin' Bajas with a track from their surprisingly excellent collaboration (up there with peanut butter and chocolate) Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties, recently repressed by Drag City, and Daniel Higgs, with a psychedelic song-sermon from Metempsychotic Melodies, a release of the late, frequently lamented (by me, anyhow), Portland-based Holy Mountain Records.

Opening the second set is TONTO's Expanding Head Band, who, when I was first really diving into obscure music around twenty years ago, was one of those groups that I would always see name-checked in descriptions of retro-sounding electronic artists (Add N to (X) was frequently compared to them), and that when I finally was able to hear them, absolutely lived up to the hype (I mean, they're not mind-blowing, but still pretty terrific, when it comes to (literally) bleepy-bloopy proto-electronic sounds). After this we hear from Bostonian psychedelic new-wavers Guerilla Toss (who stole the font for the cover of their new album from the Doobie Brothers, of all bands), pioneering home-taper John Bender (whose Pop Surgery was just reissued on vinyl by Superior Viaduct), the vaguely Stereolab-ish, Swiss psychedelic popsters L'Eclair, Portugese neo-Fourth Worlders Niagara, and, finally, the sitar-centric drone of Unearth Noise.

Leading off the last set is some absolutely stellar neo-Kosmische (that also has a strong Fourth World vibe to it) from Mike Nigro & Andrew Osterhoudt followed by some similarly excellent original Kosmische (albeit somewhat latter-day, having been recorded in the early-80s) by Lapre. After this, we hear a cut from the Bureau B Records (profferrers of Krautrock both old and new) produced soundtrack to the forthcoming documentary Fly Rocket Fly about OTRAG, a German, 70s-era, privately-held spaceflight company (making them a sort of proto-SpaceX), who found a patron in Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. We then close with a track from legendary, not-quite-prog jazz rock oddballs Henry Cow.