Earth's Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I & II

The recent release of Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II concludes the most recent song cycle by Earth. Angels… I & II sees Dylan Carson & co further extending the musical platform forged by Earth to embrace time and space. And as has been the trend throughout Earth’s 20 + year existence the textures and sonic palate of the drones have evolved, reflecting the changing of influences and personnel, however the element of accessibility continues.

For early incarnations of Earth, resonance, distortion and the drone of hooks and riffs channelled through the conduit of slow dense repetition were the staple, however their sound seemed injected with a boxed in and confined aesthetic. With their releases from 2005 on a new plateau or open expanse seemed to have been arrived at. The fixture of Adrienne Davies behind the drum kit and her drumming style, that gets in behind the beat, was perhaps the missing link that allowed Earth to open up and realise the expansive possibilities of drone: a free roam on a plateau of distortion instead of the – whilst at the time ground-breaking – churning masticating riffage of Earth early outings.

With the Angels cycle a new found minimalism has been achieved. Arrangements have been peeled back to allow the textures and sounds produced the space to come forward and articulate themselves and breath in the mix. Also the addition of the cello has laid mournful inflections that add to the stark foreboding journey of these two albums; that sound to be in no rush drawing them selves to conclusion.

A mood of a doubt lingered over the Earth as it entered the studio for the two-week recording session that produced these two albums. Prior to the recording session Carson was diagnosed with hepatitis, his future hung in the balance and with it Earths. It is well known that doubt is an epic thought and emotion that can lead to a myriad of expressions.

To give this myriad of emotions the scope to roam an open and expansive tabula seems to have been taken up. Unlike HEX from 2005, which used genre signposts to point out locations in the Western Americana, Angels seems to ditch the obvious genre signposts. Sounds are given more room to speak for them selves to relate to sounds around them and forge an abstract space.

This is abstract drone without much that can be classified as metal. Each instrument concentrates on the sustenance that can be elicited from each note played and sounds are brought forth to mingle communally. Yet the music of Angels isn’t so abstract that it’s without emotive impact and it also has a sense of identity. Essentially this is music from some place and some time that is accessible.

There’s an apparent linier mood and song structure progression to the track ordering form the gritty and overcast opening Old Black on the first album to the closing The Rakehell on the second. A continual process of striping away density and form whilst always retaining a stark foreboding mood – almost as if the two albums are a long roam macabre where the futures doubts are brooded upon, until they eventually morph into a free form funeral procession paced funk – guides this album through its engrossing space.

The Angels recording session constitutes the latest evolution of the band that has persisted at incorporating and naturalising new styles of play whilst being a band of the mythology of the American west: vast alone spaces with possibilities and option open. Earth has maintained its identity whilst exploring new options.

Music From Saharan Cellphones

Apparently there’s a map somewhere within the web that depicts continental Africa, its terrain cut up and divided amongst various music labels, the likes of Awesome Tape From Africa and Sublime Frequencies are apparently the large shareholders of this topographical sound carve up. Said labels and others, trawl Africa’s regions and cultures for fresh and untapped sounds for hip Western ears: sounds that come from the source, with notions of authenticity and without musicians that have been transplanted into some state of the art Western recording studio. These are sounds for Africans that intrepid Western musicologists with passion have unearthed. To the list of labels Sahelsounds can be added.

This carve up has the potential to be haunted by the ghosts of colonialism and imperialism. We now have cultures as commodity resources being exploited and mined for Western cultural capital ends. Of course the above mentioned map may very well only be myth.

But then, myth or not, there are music labels and compilers traveling Africa to sauce some of Africa’s rich musical resources, along with nation states and multi national companies. What lies on the African continent is heavily sought after. There are now more international players looking to get some of the African action with the emergence of China, India and Brazil as major economies to compete with the old imperial economies of the West.

But cultural capital and the consumption of it is a Western plaything. A new music pusher is Sahelsounds, which set up in 2009 with the intent of exploring the “musical phenomena of the Sahel region of West Africa”. The labels first release was Music from Saharan Cellphones vol. 1, which is essentially a collection of music that caught the compilers ear whilst they travelled the West Sahel region.

The title derives from the utilised means of information sharing in many parts of West Africa; as Africa’s landline internet perpetration is so poor and the no-fixed-abode lifestyle of many inhabitants, many people use cellphones for information transfer. Initially a tape release it’s now available as a digital download.

Contained between the spools of Music from Saharan Cellphones vol, 1 is an assortment of the musical delights of the Western Sahel belt. Touareg desert blues with its spidery guitar, Moroccan chaabi festive sounds along with D.I.Y. beats and hip-hop lauding rags to riches are amongst some of the styles that Music for offers up. It’s a scintillating collection that grasp many regional sound and lays them down together, like regions lying next to each other in the sand: often it’s only that tracks are laced with lo-fi distortion that ties them together.

Must of the music sounds like it has been recorded in rough n’ ready studios with feeling and excitement of low budget, lo-fi commitment to the moment. And amongst other things its this spontaneity that makes this music so appealing, many of the tracks here are classifiable as African pop/chart songs, but they lack the glossy production prerequisites required for chart success in the West.

Music from Saharan Cellphones vol, 1 has musical styles as old as sand dunes whilst others are new mutant urban genres adapted from exposure to hip-hop and recent Western technologies. Either way, a unique musical palate and peek into another culture is offered up: music for African ears brought to the West by intrepid cartography. The only thing missing from this compilation is an alert from the compiler: people of the Western Sahel region are getting fucked over by hunger, desertification and the prying interests of major state and corporation looking to carve the place up.

Bill Callahan

A Pick From The Year: Bill Callahan – Apocalypse

2011 was filled with upheavals, interventions and conundrums, music too appraised it’s own influential and addictive past. All the while, hypnagogic acts flowed from the periphery to the centre, hip-hop rejuvenated like it hasn’t for years and tapes n’ mixtapes were the vogue. The past weighed heavy.

Amid all the years hype and releases came Bill Callahan’s fourteenth album Apocalypse. Callahan, a stalwart singer/songwriter, has over twenty years continually delivered cryptic sound postcards of where he’s at. Often introspective, on Apocalypse Callahan seems to have turned the mirror on his craft.

Apocalypse kicks off with the Drover and the line “The real people went away”, pulsating strumming of nylon strings follows, a rockabilly open cord sweeps in, then the tumult of whip cracking, leather snapping, cattle herding rhythm falls in behind. With Callahan’s Drover herding cattle across inhospitable terrain and being pressed for time we glean a metaphorical idea of what it’s like for an artist to bring in an albums from the wild west of life.

Drover acts as something of a manifesto, a mustering and marshalling of creative forces must be undertaken if results are to be had and this is a point that permeates all walks of life.

A hallmark of Callahan is his lyrical ambiguity, listeners are invited to make what they will of songs presented without asking the recalcitrant Callahan to explain himself. Over the course of Apocalypse themes of nutriment, growth, inspiration, loss, solitude, rapture, motivation and meetings arise with the characters Callahan presents confronting these themes and it’s Callahan’s talent as a storyteller that these themes arise implicitly.

The Apocalypse song cycle come to rest with One Fine Morning. Light strumming accompanied with plaintive piano, the narrator sets out unburdened yet tinged with loss to lay his droving to rest, concluding with the haunting sung epitaph DC 4-5-0; Apocalypse’s catalogue number.

Sonically Apocalypse has a strong live and pared back sound that is augmented sporadically with flute and fiddle arrangements. Song structures don’t depart from the tried but rather explore them, with cross-referenced lyrics to other songs within the cycle creating a metanarrative of inspiration and reappraisal. To the fore is Callahan’s singing, measured and passionate with a hint of lachrymose fracturing all along accompanied by haunted and reverberated electric comments from Matt Kinsey’s guitar.

2011, majorities sought another way, found vent with gauche London Riots and fluid considerations of the Occupy movements. Whilst Callahan, a lone man, appraised his craft and what he sought to achieve: all, is a process of confrontations to be journeyed and begot.