a little kraut/prog corner...

[Brandon Burke]

Has anyone mentioned Träd Gräs och Stenar yet?

[Guest akanalog]

i heard some dungen. sounded a bit cheesy actually. too poppy at points.

hmmm-so i have listened to some more stuff.

i think eiliff has been my biggest disappointment since i was so excited to hear rainer bruninghaus do krautrock. but eiliff is a little too stiff and straight-up fusioney. too much show-offy soloing.

this dom "edge of time" album was also a big diasppointment since it had been hyped up. the songs start slow and never build up too organically or go anywhere too great. each song starts promising then rather than improving they sort of fall apart.

embryo's album "embryo's rache" is pretty cool. for the time period-the keyboard sounds seem pretty far ahead. not spacey synth sounds, but a lot of clavinet type action. this is a good album.

[Guest akanalog]

also heard this annexus quam record "osmose". it is good-some loose jazzy jamming. but a little too loose. no memorable themes. sounds like warming up.

in this style i much prefer the live xhol album "hau-ruk" which is really cool. lots of wah wah'd organ and saxaphone. bad sound though.

[samnat]

Try to find Embryo--Steig Aus. Good diversity--not too slow, not too quiet, not too Eastern. Mal Waldron on keyboard.

[AfricaBrass]

In the past, I've said how when it came to CAN, I didn't like much past Ege Bamyasi.

This cat is eating those words.

I've been listening to Future Days (the album after Ege Bamyasi) quite a bit lately and I've really gotten into it.

When I first heard it fifteen years ago, it didn't resonate with me and I didn't have anything to do with it. Now, I'm really into this album.

Thanks for getting me to re-evaluate this one.

:rsmile:

[hutch head]

I got the Dungen CD a few days ago from Forced Exposure and it blew my freakin' mind. If by poppy you mean the songs are in the 5 - 8 minute range rather than the typically bloated 12 minute+ freak-out, then, yeah, I guess so. I cannot believe one guy is playing almost all of the instruments (including mellotron, hell yeah!). The drums sound very HEAVY.

Listen to sound samples here:

http://www.subliminalsounds.se/DOK/dungen2.html

Here's the Pitchfork review (the operative adjective is "triumphant"):

Dungen

Ta Det Lugnt

[subliminal Sounds; 2004]

Rating: 9.3

Despite the constant influx of catchphrase-coordinated marketing campaigns that would lead you to believe that life-affirming records are released daily, it's forever rare to stumble upon one as consistently mind-blowing and aesthetically far-reaching as Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt. Because of this scarcity, when such an unexpected (and immediate) discovery does take place, it's like being struck by indescribable melodic lightning: Unlike discs that warrant facile disses or mediocre passing grades, the countless reasons for its boundless successes remain ineffable and shadowy despite repeat late-night close-listening sessions.

Simply put, Dungen exhibit all the signs of legitimate, hard-won staying power. Ta Det Lugnt is an exceedingly triumphant psych-pop oddity that evokes Keith Moon's drum fills on The Who Sell Out, the wraiths of unsung bedroom psyche celebrants, and the acoustic sustain and harmonizing of The Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday, Ta Det Lugnt feels less like a new release than some ancient tome, a fully formed masterpiece dropped unexpectedly on corduroy laps from some blue-brown sky. It's so aesthetically tight, jangly verdant, and musty that even carbon dating insists that it could not be post-millennial.

To be sure, there's a major difference between retro and somehow embodying your parents' vintage zeitgeist: It's damn-near impossible to believe that the humming tubes, crackling drums, smoky backdrop, and complexly interwoven melodies on Ta Det Lugnt were birthed in a quick-fix iPod age. But perhaps even more impressive is that, despite the music's headiness and intricacy, its anachronistic results feel unusually effortless, earnest, and unpretentious: Dungen seem driven to this sound not for bloodless cred points, but out of a very sincere devotion to the music from a bygone era.

Accomplished beyond his years, 24-year-old Swedish multi-instrumentalist Gustav Ejstes is the pin-up mastermind behind Dungen's vibrant polish. For the full duration of his third album's 13 bracing tracks, he perfectly inhabits-- and then expands upon-- his homeland's late-60s/early-70s acid-rock scene. Ta Det Lugnt particularly taps into the expansiveness of his Swedish psych predecessors, Pärson Sound, while maintaining a murky rocker edge: Imagine that band colliding with The Kinks, or Amon Düül II with Olivia Tremor Control, or Comets on Fire with The Zombies on their way to Terrastock.

Interested in pushing pop glitter to its limits, Ejstes doesn't go as far afield into psych-pop cliches like chirping birds and hippie atmospherics as his elder brethren, but his equally vintage garage sound allows a definite space for ethereality in the form of funereal dew-drop strings, free jazz breakdowns, brief whiffs of AM radio tuning, flute minuets, lushly cascading pianos, prog time changes, florid medieval chimes, sky-melting freakouts, church organs, fuzz-guitar jousts, doubled mountain-top whistles, roaring six-string solos, and autumnal instrumental interludes. It's obvious his songs are painstakingly arranged with a sense of depth, gradations, and tonal three-dimensionality redolent of something as off the charts as Pet Sounds.

Continually, there's a perfect push-and-pull between catchy melodies, roaring solos, and spaced-out dramaturgy-- the band's output is consistently upbeat even when heartbreakingly tranquil and melancholy. "Gjort Bort Sig" flutters and drifts, reaching for the outer realms, before catching a subtle hurricane of quicksand spirals behind doubled astronaut vocals. The sweet arboreal folk of "Festival" appears straightforward until it unleashes an echo-chamber bridge that absolutely shimmers. And the title track feels like chamber-pop expanded to include a psych history lesson.

Because I took Latin and not Swedish in high school, I have no idea what Ejstes is singing about, but I like the verbal opacity-- the way syllables meld to the Hammond, flute, violin, bass, drums, guitars, and the way it masks any potentially subpar lyric that might detract from such brilliant arrangements. Indeed, as the summer finally turns to dying leaves, Dungen's lush palette of mystical earth tones and trade winds seems the ideal soundscape. This has been one hell of a year for psych, folk, et. al., but even with such fine releases as Animal Collective's Sung Tongs and Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral, I doubt 2004 will birth a more blissful sonic encounter than Ta Det Lugnt.

-Brandon Stosuy, September 17th, 2004

[Note: This record currently has limited distribution, and is presently available only via Swedish import, but can be purchased through such reputable retailers as Forced Exposure, Other Music, and Aquarius Records.]

Edited January 28, 2005 by hutch head

[Guest akanalog]

FWIW, i am usually burnt by pitchfork reviews. pitchfork is one of my main sources of finding new interesting indie stuff and usually i end up disliking whatever it is i purchase.

by poppy i mean there is a lot of serious verse chorus verse stuff going on.