drag city
Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums that explore gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound as Matchess for a number of years now. She began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic stakes. Since that blissful …
News: Bitchin Bajas bring their Sun Ra moogfest out on the road Stateside and in Europe
COOPER CRAIN’S side-alley Moog buccaneers Bitchin Bajas are taking their their latest album, a re-exploration of the works of Sun Ra purely for synth and keyboard, out on the road in the new year. That album, Switched On Ra, their seventeenth, sees them apply the concepts of one avant-garde legend to that of another: Cooper …
Album review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Bill Callahan – ‘Blind Date Party’: a rolling thunder lockdown revue of the Drag City stable, cast in cover versions
NOTHING at all, really. That, for a lifer musician with new songs in the back pocket, older ones to take out and share with fans on the road across the country and the world, no chance to get into a proper studio even, if it is only to kinda dick around and have a laugh …
See: Matchess invites us to embrace meditative drone and transcend the flesh in the practise of ‘Almost Gone (Excerpt)’
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic …
Album review: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – ‘Far View’: a curated, cosmic library set from the Belgian psychedelic scion
A MUSICIAN who ventured far in both life and his chosen creative form, Joel Vandroogenbroeck is maybe not a name that trips with ease from your lips; unless of course, you’re a proper head of the deep psych persuasion. For Joel was both the driving force behind and ever-present in the hard-psych voyagers Brainticket, whose …
Album review: Ben Chasny – ‘The Intimate Landscape’: Six Organs’ driving light delivers an instrumental fingerstyle masterclass
LIKE all of us, I guess, Ben Chasny, the man behind the psychedelic guitar explorers Six Organs of Admittance, is a person of many facets; forget the personal here, we’re concerned with the musical. There’s the more carefree, garagey Ben we’ve seen laying down frayed and wholly lovable tunes, sometimes teetering on the edge of …
See: Bill Callahan & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – ‘Kidnapped By Neptune’ (feat. Hamerkop): a double album of collaborative covers follows from the pair
NONE gigs; none proper studio time; none nothing, except, perhaps, as Big Black once memorably put it, to “sit around home, stare at the walls / Stare at the walls and stare at each other.” It’s a tale we’ve heard oft told since the virus got tough, got going. What was a committed, lifer musician …
Album review: Alasdair Roberts og Völvur – ‘The Old Fabled River’: Scots-Norwegian sextet debut a record of correspondences, life cycles and exploratory depth
HE’S GRACED us with a very Northern European and delicious take on introspective folk since that trio of lovely albums, The Rye Bears A Poison, Daylight Saving and The Night Is Advancing as Appendix Out, beginning back in ’97; and it should come as no surprise that a man whose music arguably sounds best with …
See: Alasdair Roberts og Völvur lead you through the sombre, beautiful out-folk of ‘Nu Solen Går Ned’
WITH a rather gorgeous new record in cahoots with the Norwegian experimental folk collective Völvur just a little over a fortnight away now, our favourite Perthshire and formerly appendically removed songsmith Alasdair Robert has dropped one final teaser, in which he gives way front and centre to Völvur’s Marthe Lea for an absolutely beautiful Norwegian …
Album review: Birds of Maya – ‘Valdez’: Philly stoners come back for your greasy, sexy soul after eight long years
PHILADELPHIA is a city that knows how to properly rock, dirt under its nails, filthy fuckin’ fuzz in its heart. With the news that Philly headz Bardo Pond are getting a silver jubilee expanded repress for their ’96 psychotropic masterpiece Amanita, comes news from more of the city’s favourite prodigally noisy sons, Birds of Maya; …