The Church Series, #5: The Church- Gold Afternoon Fix (1990) Deluxe Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

EMI ~ 2005/1990

Tracklist/Info

Gold Afternoon Fix (Remastered with Bonus Disc)

Download in FLAC:    Disc I     Disc II

Download in MP3 (320kbps):    Disc I     Disc II

Additional Church Series Posts & Related

The Church Series, #2: The Church- Sing Songs EP (1982) / Remote Luxury EP (1984) / Persia EP (1984) MP3 & FLAC

"You stop to wonder as she passes by. Something inside you is never the same,
Something outside you is always to blame."

As a follow up to their promising 1981 debut, Of Skins and Heart, The Church released The Blurred Crusade in early 1982, and while it was a clear step forward sonically as well as conceptually, Capitol Records refused to release the album in the U.S., claiming it was not commercial enough. In part to placate their U.S. distributor, The Church quickly returned to the studio to hastily record a number of additional songs, including a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock," all of which were quickly rejected by Capitol, who then decided to drop the band, leaving them without a distributor in the U.S. for nearly two years. Despite this, the songs were given a European release by EMI in early 1982 as the Sing-Songs EP, and while, ironically, the songs themselves are less immediately accessible than those found on The Blurred Crusade, there are, nevertheless, a few standouts, including "A Different Man," one of the better examples of the band's early Jangle-Pop sound. The Church experienced more record label-related difficulties while recording their next album Seance, as one of the favorite songs from their live set, "10,000 Miles" was rejected by their handlers at EMI. As a result, the band decided to take a step away from major-label interference and a step toward creative autonomy by recording and self-producing two EPs in 1984, Remote Luxury & Persia, both of which recall the poppier moments found on The Church's debut while suggesting a more tightly focused approach to songwriting, as Steven Kilbey stated at the time, "Those earlier songs were great for people who had the time to sit down and listen, but this is such an immediate world we're living in. I want to make short, powerful statements rather than long, meandering, dreamy ones. It's time for The Church to stop messing about and hit home."

Steve Kilbey & Peter Koppes (back)

Although nearly thirty years after its release Steve Kilbey is prone to dismissing the Remote Luxury EP as a "lost opportunity," its five songs clearly constituted an attempt to diversify their sonic approach by integrating more keyboard-driven melodies and proggy flourishes into the mix with the Byrds-influenced Jangle-Pop they had, up to this point, been identified with. This is most evident on songs such as "Maybe These Boys," with its insistently trashy synth-line and the title track, which introduces some of the proggy guitar-work that would come to define the band's sound fifteen years later. However, the real gem happens to be the one most refective of their earlier work: "Into My Hands," a gorgeous acoustic 12-string-driven ballad that features one of Kilbey's most affecting vocals. While the follow-up EP, Persia, isn't as consistently excellent as its precursor, it does continue the sonic diversity found on Remote Luxury; in particular, "Constant in Opal" and "Violet Town" are among the more sonically adventurous "pop" songs The Church committed to tape in their early years, as it meshes the jangly Post-Punk of their intial recordings with the dark psychedelia they would mine throughout the mid-to-late eighties. While not as consistently memorable as full-length albums such as The Blurred Crusade, Seance, and Heyday, these EPs offer a glimpse of The Church in a transitional phase, pushing their sound into new regions with admittedly mixed results, but on the songs they get it right, to quote Kilbey once again, "The Church stop messing about and hit home."

The Church- "Constant in Opal" Video (1984)

Here's a classic from The Church's stellar Persia EP:

The Church Series, #1: The Church- Starfish (1988) Deluxe Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"The pursuit of adulation is your butter and your bread; it's an exquisite corpse and its lips are red, and its teeth are glistening."

The Church's fourth album, Heyday, released in 1986, was a pivotal experience for the band, as it marked the first time they had attempted to write an album collectively (previous to this, Steve Kilbey had served as the primary song-writer), and they did so despite the fact that going in to the recording sessions, the band was on the verge of disintegration. Steve Kilbey: "I think we released a few dud records that weren't as good as they should have been, after The Blurred Crusade, the band was just drifting along in a sea of apathy. I was writing not-so-good songs and the band wasn't playing them very well, so everyone's enthusiasm just waned." While the process of creating Heyday gave The Church a creative second-wind, the album failed to break through commercially; as a result, the band was unceremoniously jettisoned by their record label, EMI. As Kilbey recalls, "One day [...] I went into EMI and met the big chief who was this big fat fellow with a gold chain around his neck [....] I don't think he had ever thought about the Church before and suddenly he became aware of this irritating little mosquito that was on his label. About a week later the call came through: 'your album has been postponed indefinitely.'" At this point, the various members of The Church decided to go their own separate ways, several intending to focus on solo projects; however, when they quite unexpectedly garnered major-label interest in the U.S. from Arista in early 1987, they quickly decided to reform the band. As The Church had consistently enjoyed more commercial success abroad than at home in Australia, Arista pushed for the band to record their next album, Starfish, in Los Angeles with a couple of well-known session guitarists/engineers/producers, Waddy Wachtel and Greg Ladanyi, who, with résumés filled with names such as Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Fleetwood Mac, seemed, at the time, a strange fit for a group of Aussie psych-rockers with a taste for the esoteric.

Steve Kilbey

Kilbey: "I really do like the random element of doing things and when these guys were suggested, I liked the idea that anything could happen. The Church recording in Los Angeles with these guys was a ridiculous concept. I mean Waddy Wachtel is this long-haired, sort of Furry Freak Brother, and Greg Ladanyi was a complete unknown. But somehow it worked." However, the Starfish sessions were contentious from the start; as Kilbey describes it, "It was Australian hippies versus West Coast guys who know the way they like to do things. We were a bit more undisciplined than they would have liked." Reportedly there were bitter clashes over guitar sounds and Wachtel's insistence that the band master techniques they had previously avoided; at one point, Wachtel even had Kilbey take some vocal lessons. The band's distaste for living in L.A. also affected the sessions. Kilbey: "The Church came to L.A. and really reacted against the place because none of us liked it [....] All the billboards, conversations I'd overhear, TV shows, everything that was happening to us was going into the music." Despite the difficult circumstances surrounding its birth, Starfish represented a huge step forward for the band, not only in terms of refining their sound by introducing some minimalism into the mix, but also in terms of honing their musicianship. Kilbey: "Seven years ago, if someone had asked me if I would ever get better at singing, playing bass, and writing songs, I would have gone, 'No I know everything about it. I've reached excellence and now I'll continue to maintain it.' What I realize now is that I don't know much at all, and I hope I'll continue to improve."

What had made The Church's previous album, Heyday, so distinctive was its orchestrated sound, as producer Peter Walsh had made liberal use of multi-tracking instruments and vocals to lend the album its oceanic depth and ethereal textures. In contrast, on Starfish, Wachtel & Ladanyi spent the better part of a month rehearsing the band before entering the studio in an effort pare their sound down to its essential guitar-based core, an approach The Church would embrace to varying degrees until guitarist Peter Koppes exited the band in 1993. Though the band voiced its concerns about the album sounding too spare, it did manage to capture their live sound to a far greater degree than previous albums. Marty Willson-Piper: "It's really strange that this album is more obscure yet more commercial; it's gentler but harder sounding. Basically it's a guitar album. See, the band live has this soaring energy, a much harder edge than we have been recorded, and I told them [Wachtel & Ladanyi] that that's what we wanted in the studio this time." While The Church's only hit single, "Under the Milky Way" recalls the esoteric lushness of previous albums, songs such as "Blood Money," "North, South, East and West," and "Reptile" reveal a much more muscular though still highly melodic guitar-dominated approach. While these songs are all quite strong and memorable, the most distinct tracks are the album's slower numbers such as "Destination," Lost," and the gorgeous guitar waltz "Antenna," a song featuring Kilbey's new-found vocal prowess. Kilbey: "I wanted The Church to build a snakey, slimey feel because one thing I want to kill forever with this album is 'paisley mop-tops play jingle-jangle music.' It was great in 1981 but it just isn't where I'm at anymore. I really want to get into this evil, nastier sort of theme."

The Church- "Under the Milky Way" Video (1988)

Well, after much delay, I am finally ready to start the Church series. The first post is up next...

John Foxx- "Underpass" Video (1980)

It amazes me how little-known John Foxx is these days. After three incredible records with the original incarnation of Ultravox, he made one of the most important albums of the eighties, Metamatic. if you've never heard it, stay tuned, because I will be posting it along with his second album in a few days.

Brian Eno- Here Come the Warm Jets (1973) / The Winkies (Bootleg) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh perfect masters, they thrive on disasters. They all look so harmless 

till they find their way up there."

Brian Eno on the random circumstances leading to his tenure in Roxy Music: "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting Andy [Mackay], I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now." Although initially, Eno's role in the band was behind the scenes as "Technical Adviser" due to his lack of experience as a performing musician, it didn't take long for him to join his Roxy Music band-mates on stage where he quickly evolved into one of the most flamboyant figures on the British Glam scene (which was an achievement in itself). Truth be told, Eno was never going to last long as part of the supporting cast for a figure like Bryan Ferry, who was becoming more and more concerned with mainstream success just as Eno was trying to push the band in a more artsy, proggy direction. Eno: "My position in Roxy Music was always half-way between the musical and the theoretical. I was never the sort of person who could sit down at the piano and hammer out a song, or says, 'Here man, play this.' I'm much more interested in talking about the ideas behind the music. Working things out from the aesthetic." Things came to a head immediately following the tour in support of Roxy Music's second album, For Your Pleasure, when Eno as well as several other band members expressed concern over Ferry's increasingly domineering control of the band's direction. What resulted was Eno's June, 1973 departure from Roxy Music and the beginning of one of the most innovative and uncompromising solo careers of the rock era.

Brian Eno: "I'm always prone to do things very quickly, which has distinct advantages- you leave all the mistakes in, and the mistakes always become interesting. The Velvet Underground, for example, are the epitome of mistake-filled music, and it makes the music very subtle and beautiful." As would prove to be his habit throughout the remainder of the seventies, Eno took very little time after exiting Roxy Music to finish his first solo LP, Here Come the Warm Jets. Armed with a highly suggestive title, which, in an infamous NME interview with future-Pretender Chrissie Hynde, Eno hinted might refer to the dreaded "golden shower," the album was all but guaranteed to turn heads, but Eno's time in Roxy Music had also garnered him quite a following among critics; all of this helped make his debut one of the most commercially successful albums of Eno's career. The sessions for Here Come the Warm Jets included Roxy Music sans Ferry, Robert Fripp & John Wetton from King Crimson, as well as members of Hawkwind and Pink Fairies, and aside from taking over lead vocals (for the first time), Eno was apparently content to reprise his Roxy-era role of master sound processor, something which lends the album its uniquely manic feel. While in some ways the album is clearly grounded in the artier margins of the U.K. Glam movement, which had more or less defined the early seventies but by late '73 was beginning to lose steam, in other ways, its avant-garde flourishes and heavily processed sound are anticipatory of the Post-Punk and Shoegaze movements that would respectively punctuate the closing years of the seventies and the eighties. Among the album's many standouts, none is as instantly memorable and confounding as "Dead Finks Don't Talk," a song which Eno has admitted was, at least on an unconscious level, a riposte directed at Ferry. With its military drum beat, darkly humorous lyrics, lovely piano part, heavily distorted guitars, and multitude of vocal effects (including an Elvis impersonation by Eno), it is a tour de force in tension-building and integrating the unexpected. The loveliest song on Here Come the Warm Jets is "Some of Them Are Old," which sounds almost like late-period Beatles with its psychedelic organs and multi-tracked vocals, but what really sets the song apart is the off-kilter Hawaiian-style guitar solo that sounds like it's being played underwater. Eno's early pop-oriented solo albums are often a shock to those who are only familiar with his ambient work; however, they stand as some of the most inventive and prescient records of the Glam-era. Eno: "I'm more of a technologist, manipulating studios and musicians in a funny way. It sounds fantastic but one of the things I tried to do with Warm Jets was to bring musicians together who would normally never play together and to play a music that they couldn't agree upon. The music would come from the chemistry."

Peter Hammill- "German Overalls" (1973) Live in the Studio, Rock en Stock

Peter Hammill, who was a key member of the seminal Art-Rock group Van der Graaf Generator, is a recent obsession of mine. There are few things in life more pleasurable than discovering a brilliant new band/artist with an immense discography to get lost in. Look for a few Hammill posts in the near future.

David Bowie- Space Oddity (1969) 40th Anniversary Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"I'm the cream of the great utopia dream, and you're the gleam in depths of your

banker's spleen."

David Bowie (aka David Jones) had been struggling for years to achieve some semblance of commercial and artistic success as a musician, a journey that included stints as a blues-singer for mod-rock groups such as The King Bees and The Mannish Boys, a campy dance-hall dandy with a taste for Anthony Newley, and a Dylan-esque folksinger. While all of these musical incarnations failed miserably, it was, strangely enough, Bowie's participation in an avante-garde mime troupe that put him on the pathway to the kind of success he so badly craved. In 1968, now a solo mime artist, Bowie opened a show for Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex, and in the process, crossed paths with Bolan's producer Tony Visconti. This was, of course, a fortuitous meeting because Visconti would prove to be instrumental in shaping the careers of both Bolan and Bowie, as well as helping to foster the birth of the Glam-Rock movement that would make them both superstars by 1972. Bowie had recorded a self-titled debut album for Deram in 1967, but when it failed to chart, his days at the label were numbered, and he was unceremoniously dropped in early 1968. Despite this turn of events, he had written a good deal of new material by the time he entered the studio in 1969 on Mercury Records' dime to record his second album, now with Visconti as his producer. Among the new songs was "Space Oddity," which was obviously influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the impending Apollo moon landing. Bowie had originally written and recorded the song for a promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday, which ended up staying in the can until 1984.

While the song was deemed worthy (or timely) enough to be chosen, previous to the Mercury recording sessions, as the lead-single for the new album, Visconti reportedly hated the song and had no interest in producing it, which is why his assistant, Gus Dudgeon, who would later become Elton John's producer, was pressed into service. The Dudgeon-produced version is a dark, lush, and dramatic epic that quickly transcended the initial impression by critics that it was a novelty song. Central to the song's success are the haunting "space" effects provided by a mellotron and a pocket electronic organ called a stylophone, Bowie's now-iconic vocal performance, and the distinctive prog-folk arrangement. Not only was "Space Oddity" Bowie's first hit (top five in the U.K.), but it also, in many ways, provided the blueprint for his Ziggy Stardust persona and his ongoing thematic preoccupation with social outcasts and aliens. Originally titled David Bowie in the U.K. (inviting confusion with his identically-titled Deram debut), Man of Words / Man of Music in the U.S. and renamed Space Oddity for its re-issue in 1972, Bowie's second album is an edgy dystopian artistic breakthrough, which, though suffering a bit from a lack of stylistic cohesion, offers several glimpses of the genius Bowie would demonstrate in his work throughout the seventies. The approach to recording the album was a bit haphazard, but proved to be a valuable learning experience for all involved; as Visconti recalls, "we had no idea what we were doing. It was all over the map. But we met Mick Ronson at the very end of making that album and allowed him to educate us." In addition to the title track, Space Oddity features several gems, including "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed," a proto-Glam kiss-off (both stylistically and lyrically) to what Bowie took to be the "lock-step" mentality hiding beneath the surface of various late-sixties counter-cultural ideologies. At the outset, the song sounds as though it might be an idealistic ballad, as Bowie strums his acoustic 12-string and, with a heavily reverbed voice, sings to a pretty girl in a window. However, when the bass and drums join the mix, things turn dark, as the song transforms into a snarling indictment of class from the perspective of a social outcast. The album concludes with another epic, "Memory of a Free Festival," which, in effect, closes the door on the last traces of the hippie-influenced utopianism that had preoccupied much of Bowie's earlier work. While the song recounts, in beautifully idealized terms, his first appearance at Glastonbury Festival, it maintains a funereal tone until the cathartic fade/chorus of "The sun machine is coming down / And we're gonna have a party" brings the song to a powerfully ironic conclusion. Upon its release, Space Oddity garnered a number of ecstatic reviews, but, in the eyes of Mercury, the album failed to deliver on the promise of its lead single, as the tracks recorded with Visconti are far from accessible and quite gloomy in tone. As a result, they failed to properly promote the album, so Bowie's commercial fortunes once again took a tumble.  It was to be on the next album, The Man Who Sold the World, that Bowie, Visconti and Ronson would craft the sound that helped change the face of rock music in the seventies.

Can- Tago Mago (1971) MP3 & FLAC

"Well, I saw mushroom head, I was born and I was dead."

Named after a private island off the coast of Ibiza associated with Aleister Crowley, Can's Tago Mago is generally considered one of the pinnacles of the Kraut-Rock genre. It is also noteworthy for being Can's first full-length album with Damo Suzuki as lead vocalist. After the exit of vocalist Malcolm Mooney due to psychological problems, Suzuki, legend has it, was discovered by Bassist Holger Czukay busking outside cafes in Munich and was invited to join Can based on his performance at a single gig the band played later that night. While no one will confuse Suzuki for an accomplished singer, his untethered vocal style, shifting from mumble to chant to shriek by turns, fits Tago Mago's more experimental ambitions perfectly. Julian Cope has described the album as "sound[ing] only like itself, like no-one before or after," and with influences ranging from Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis to Stockhausen, Can's sound at this point was somewhat resistant to categorization. Tago Mago starts out modestly with the somewhat plodding opening to "Paperhouse," but at the two minute mark things transform into an insistently ominous tribal beat punctuated by some amazing layered and multi-tracked guitar work from Michael Karoli. On the album's centerpiece, "Halleluhwah," Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit settle into a Funk-inspired groove which is sustained for the entire 18 minute duration of the song while a parade of different sound effects and textures (as well as Suzuki's vocals) move through the mix. It is hard to over-estimate the ground-breaking status of Can's early-seventies work, and while they would hit similar artistic heights on the two albums that immediately followed Tago Mago, Can would never sound quite this mysterious again.

Paisley Underground Series, #10: Pink Floyd- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) 40th Anniversary Box Set (3 Discs) MP3 & FLAC

"You only have to read the lines; they're scribbley black and everything shines."

While there had already been a burgeoning underground psychedelic music scene underway in the U.K. and elsewhere for at least a year (e.g. the Los Angeles and San Francisco scenes in the U.S.), the summer of 1967 was the point at which this psychotropic-inspired sound crossed into the mainstream with the release of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. While an endless amount of material has been written about the cultural and artistic impact of this album (I might even try to add to this if I ever decide to post some "Fab Four"), Pink Floyd's debut LP, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is arguably the most innovative, experimental and hallucinogenic masterpiece released that iconic summer. At this point in their development, Pink Floyd was essentially Syd Barrett's band, and while the the lyrics are often replete with images of childhood and fairytales (the album's title is borrowed from The Wind and the Willows), musically, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, while containing more than its share of  whimsy, is often quite dark thanks to Rick Wright's electric organ work, which would prove to be highly influential on later neo-psych movements such as The Paisley Underground. And this is the reason Pink Floyd's debut outshines many of its "summer of love" contemporaries; rather than offering straight forward pop tinged with psychedelic refraction or hippie anthems to acid utopias, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn explores both the intense euphoria and the terrifying chaos comprising a psychedelic experience. A perfect example of this brilliant duality is "Matilda Mother"; while Barrett sings from the perspective of a child oscillating between fantasy and fear, the music progressively grows creepy and unsettling. However, things are even darker on "Astronomy Domine," which contains some great acid guitar work and constitutes the aural equivalent of falling down a rabbit hole. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn manages to sound both time-bound and timeless, and in doing so, it stands as one of the most essential and influential albums of the psychedelic era.

Kate Bush- "Breathing" Video (1980)

The genius that is Kate Bush. This is one of her strangest and one of my favorites.

The Church- Untitled #23 (2009) MP3 & FLAC

"On our way to crush the revolution, camp by a lake in the blackened lands, dealing out love and retribution, dealing out the deadman's hand."

While The Church's recent creative resurgence had certainly produced some good albums, most notably Uninvited Like Clouds and Forget Yourself, no one could have suspected that the band had an album like Untitled #23 in them, a psych-rock masterpiece as essential as anything else in their brilliant and expansive discography. Since reforming in the late-nineties, The Church had been slowly moving into more proggy territory and away from the pysch-laced Jangle-Pop of their best known work. While the results were always intriguing, there was a lingering sense of sameness about these albums. With Untitled #23, something of a balance has been struck by returning to the gauzy psychedelia of albums such as Priest=Aura, while integrating the sonic innovations of more recent albums. For example, on "Operetta," Steven Kilbey offers up one of his trademark nuanced vocal performances, treading, as always, the fine line between detached beauty and sublime narcosis, while the band paints a soundscape of restrained yet yearning psychedelic grandeur. This is a song an earlier incarnation of the band wouldn't have been able to pull off quite so evocatively. Conversely, "Dead Man's Hand" sounds like classic Church, catchy, dynamic, and cathartic, though it must be said that the famed guitar interplay between Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper is far more subtle in nature here, going for texture over serpentine exploration. A wonderful surprise from a criminally under-appreciated band.

Scott Walker Series, #15: Scott Walker- The Drift (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"Has absence ever sounded so eloquent, so sad?"

In the years preceding the release of Tilt  in 1995, the prospect of a new album of original material from Scott Walker seemed remote at best; however, the possibility that he would not only release such an album but that it would also turnout to be an avant-garde masterpiece was unthinkable. He did just this. Eleven years later, Scott Walker somehow managed to top this by releasing a darker, more dissonant, more harrowing, and less structured album equally deserving of being labeled a "masterpiece." Yet, like its predecessor, The Drift is anything but a user-friendly masterpiece, a shiny jewel to gaze upon over and over again; rather, it functions more like a bitter glass of absinthe, tearing down your assumptions and skewing your perceptions as it seduces you into its terrifying arms. As on Tilt, Walker's lyrics are cryptic to say the least, but they always provide a revealing counterpoint to the music, which Walker has described as "blocks of sound."  These "blocks" put each song into a state of constant flux in which moments of melodic stability (and they are just moments) explode into an abyss of dissonance. This makes listening to the album feel a little like riding a huge roller-coaster when you were four years old: horrific and awe-inspiring all at the same time. For example, on "Jolson and Jones," Walker croons over ominous-sounding strings that sound straight out of an old noir film, until oscillating industrial static breaks into the mix, which then gives way to a burst of cacophonous dissonance that even includes a sample of a he-hawing mule; the first time I heard this (wearing headphones), I almost dove for cover (seriously). While The Drift isn't for everyone, what is? Proceed at your own risk, but do proceed. Scott Walker's nightmares will always be worth listening to.

Slapp Happy- Sort Of (1972) MP3 & FLAC

"Walking through the city, your boots are high-heeled and shining bright."

Comprised of British experimental composer Anthony Moore (later on just More), German cabaret singer Dagmar Krause, and American singer-songwriter (and sometimes clarinetist) Peter Blegvad, Slapp Happy were pop-deconstructors of the first order. Post-Modernists before the term had any currency, there is a prickly ironic tone permeating their eclectic debut, Sort Of, an album full of quirky pop experiments and amazing "lost gem" moments. Despite having recruited Kraut-Rock legends Faust as their studio backing-band, Slapp Happy's sound on Sort Of  is deceptively accessible, even verging on psychedelia-tinged folk-rock in places. The enduring gem here is undoubtedly "Blue Flower," which Mazzy Star covered to great effect on their debut, She Hangs Brightly, a song that bears a striking resemblance (though not in a derivative sense) to The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale." Another gem is the opening track, "Just a Conversation." Anticipating a sound that Richard & Linda Thompson would mine a few years later, the song's overly simple lyrics contrast beautifully with Krause's wonderful vocals. Sort Of does suffer a bit when Krause's vocals are not the main focus, but overall, the album is unconventionally delightful.

Scott Walker Series, #13: Scott Walker- Tilt (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"The good news you cannot refuse, the bad news is there is no news."

Scott Walker fell silent for 11 years following the release of  Climate of Hunter, and while nothing could have prepared his increasingly cult-sized audience for the singular (and quite challenging) experience of listening to Tilt, in retrospect, it is hard to deny that he had somehow managed to deliver the second masterpiece of his long, circuitous career. Cinematic, nightmarish, lush and caustic all at the same time, the only tether dangled to the listener is Walker's still-peerless baritone, but this is where all recognition ends. Walker recorded the vocal tracks for Tilt in single takes in order to avoid the effects of over-familiarity with the material. Describing his reasoning for this, he has stated, "I'm basically terrified of singing, and I want my own terror to come across on the records." On  Scott 3 and Scott 4, Walker had toyed with actively integrating dissonance into otherwise lush and melodic compositions; however on Tilt, he dives head first into a method of composition that seeks to draw attention to the arbitrary relationship between voice, lyrics, and instrumentation. A perfect example of this is the ironically titled "Patriot (A Single)," which is a mournful, dirge-like song under-girded by monotone strings and stand-up bass until Walker's heart-rending vocals descend from above, delivering the most random, banal lyrics imaginable. To call this disorienting does it no justice. Admittedly, this is not for everyone, but Tilt deserves every bit of its reputation as an avant-garde masterpiece.

Scott Walker Series, #7: Scott Walker- Climate of Hunter (1984) MP3 & FLAC

"He arrives from a place with a face of fast sun. Arrives from a space, his refuge overrun."

An oft-overlooked gem in Scott Walker's oeuvre, Climate of Hunter, a difficult and sumptuous paradox of a listening experience, is, in many ways, an extension of where Walker was heading with his shockingly groundbreaking work on the final Walker Brothers re-union album, Nite Flights. Lyrically, Walker has left behind the Brel-influenced existential flâneur narratives of his early solo albums, entering instead a more abstract realm that would give the album a sheen of artistic impenetrability if it wasn't for that familiar, burnished (yet now slightly unhinged) baritone. Musically Climate of Hunter is a strange and heady mix of classical arrangements, Prog-Rock excess, Post-Punk atmospherics, and synth-pop bloat, and yes, it sounds as strange as it reads. This was to be Walker's last album until his unanticipated experimental masterpiece Tilt  12 years later, but the groundwork for his ongoing deconstruction of the relationship between melody and lyric has its roots in this underrated project.

The Church- "Destination" Live, Italian TV (1988)

I saw these guys in '88, and I remember my ears ringing like hell for two weeks after. IMO, THE most underrated band of all time:

Tame Impala- S/T EP (2008) MP3 & FLAC

"Broken drums, thriving dreams, not much else between these walls."

This is Tame Impala's debut EP, and while a little more scruffy than  Innerspeaker, it contains some great down & dirty psych-rock. "Half Full Glass of Wine" is damn catchy if given half a chance.

Tame Impala- Innerspeaker (2010) MP3 & FLAC

"Nothing else matters, I don't care what I miss. Company's okay, solitude is bliss."

Reviewers love to take bands such as Tame Impala and reduce their sound to a list of its more obvious influences, and while this can be an informative approach to describing music for those unfamiliar with an artist (yes, I confess to doing this too), it can also implicitly suggests an artist's lack of originality.What this overlooks is that all art integrates influences and previous forms, so in the case of music, what makes something derivative or fresh-sounding depends a lot on whether or not it pushes these influences or previous forms into new contexts. On Innerspeaker, Tame Impala effectively weave nearly every disparate thread of the psych-rock tradition, ranging from British Invasion to late-sixties San Francisco psychedelia to the hard-edged early-seventies riff-driven sound of Detroit bands such as MC5 to the space-jangle of another Aussie psych band The Church, into something truly distinct. Take, for example, "Expectation." While soaking with psychedelic overtones, there is also a surprisingly Electronic feel to the song, which envelops the listener in an unfamiliar billowy haze of sound that makes for some pretty damn fine listening. More please!