Thumped album club (2 Viewers)

[Lili Marlene]

Yeah do the Red Krayola band, whoever they are. I could do with some more aggressively avant garde bands in my musical diet. What's the album?

 

[ann post]

I know nothing about them so I'll +1 this for the fun of it

 

[Nate Champion]

I'd go for three albums off the top of my head by them that might be fun to do:

God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It [1968]
Soldier Talk [1979] {This is their post-punk return... might be akin to Pere Ubu who Mayo Thompson joined shortly after, and also became an in-house producer for Rough Trade about the same time firmly putting himself in the post-punk conversation].
And for a completely different context of Red Krayola - Introduction from 2006 which features a load of post-rock Thrill Jockey type people, but is not a very Thrill Jockey muso type record imo. It was released on Drag City, and might be the most accessible of these three suggestions...

The first one will be a real challenge, I'd say... so that would get my nomination. It might be one of the most twee, flimsy, playful records from that or any era... could it be the first twee record??? It makes Belle & Sebastian look like Dr. Feelgood by comparative twee terms.

Must break it out myself now... haven't listened in a long while.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

I used to own God Bless on vinyl but it was shite.

 

[Nate Champion]

This will be 80% the reaction from Thumped Album Club posters, and exactly why we should do it!

[Albeit with more nuanced disdain.]

 

[nuke terrorist]

there are several tracks on the first RED CRAYOLA LP Parable Of The Arable Land called ' Free form Freak-Out'. I previously tried to post one of them on thumped (track 12 @ 32 minutes). as it shows them accidentally inventing noisecore / noise grind (other fans of the genre also noticed this). but youtube wouldn't let me do the link on copyright grounds.

at the other end of the spectrum Hurricane Fighter Plane is one of the greatest weird psych tracks.

 

[shidheat]

i think those first two red krayola albums are great. i always thought the "free-form freak-out" bit was like a sub text for each song. like they had to point out that each song was a free-form freak-out.

 

[nuke terrorist]

my fave famous LP is Metal Box by PiL. I'd say most anyone interested already knows it?

of the 64 Album Club LP's so far I've owned 13 and l listened to at least another 16 the whole way through at some stage.
only the bands Midlake, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Blue Nile weren't familiar to me.

 

[Nate Champion]

Just listened to The Parable of Arable Land there for the first time in a while.

It's all very 60s psychedelic but with more of a free-form anything goes vibe you'd expect from acts thirty years later [Jackie O Motherfucker, but maybe Sunburned Hand of the Man is the one that comes to mind in it's more chaotic moments.]

The last song is very pretty. Thompson's vocals remind me more of Arthur Lee than do himself with his trademark burr from later records.

I can imagine Bobby Gillespie listening to this with his zip fully up on his Pull & Bear leather jacket, black shades on, no expression. Cut to a close-up of one of the shades where a tiny tear becomes apparent, just the tiniest one, mind. Even his tears are weak, the bastard. Not even close wee Bobby will you be getting to this sort of vibe.


Pointless fact: Frederick Barthelme, Donald Barthelme's brother, is the percussionist on this record. He would rejoin them at a later date. He became a writer like his brother. I bought two of his books in Marrowbone Books last year [Never seen his stuff before in a bookstore, so took a shot]. One novel was good, in a freer sort of dirty realism way where you imagine some offbeat late 80s film late on bbc2 with Mimi Rogers and James LeGros in the lead parts. The other was the sort of short fiction collection that seems rife in America in the 80s and 90s - utterly infuriating shite.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I literally never, EVER, believe someone when they say an album sounds like something from decades later. It always sounds exactly like music from that time, usually with a bit less of a tune than the hits of the day.


Anyway, throwing on this God Bless Red Krayola album now

 

[Nate Champion]

my fave famous LP is Metal Box by PiL. I'd say most anyone interested already knows it?

Great suggestion, but very much high canon.

 

[Nate Champion]

I literally never, EVER, believe someone when they say it sounds like something from decades later. It always sounds exactly like music from that time, usually with a bit less of a tune than the hits of the day.


Anyway, throwing on this God Bless Red Krayola album now

It does of course sound like something from the 60s. It's just that freeform folk thing which was happening in America late 90s/early 00s shares a lot of sonic signifiers with the eh, freeform stuff that was happening in the 60s.

 

[Lili Marlene]

American Britpop.

 

[Lili Marlene]

lol, what on earth am I listening to?

 

[Lili Marlene]

So what's the deal? Is a lot of this, like, improvised songwriting, jazz but not jazz? Or did they spend a fortune and months in a big studio making it sound this bad?

Either way, it's quite engaging, i'll give it that.

 

[Nate Champion]

Free your mind, Lili baby.

 

[Nate Champion]

Is this an unofficial preamble to actually doing this record for TAC???

 

[Lili Marlene]

We're doing TAC, right here, right now.


and lol this music is a total scam. If they mean it then even better, who am I to judge? There's no way of critiquing it without making yourself out to be a fool who doesn't get it.

Two listens left.

 

[pete]

NOMINATIONS PLS

 

[ann post]

I nominate that first Red Krayola album they are talking about, I've no idea what it is but I think that's the point.