Sunday 24 December 2017

Blacklight Braille - The Carbonek Album -1991- (LP, Vetco), US


Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all followers of the blog!

Blacklight Braille was an ever morphing band from Cincinatti, Ohio led by musicians Owen Smith and Doug Knight. The band claimed their own style called "Fringe Rock". Once they described it in a very good and thorough interview from 1993 as:

"Music created by rock musicians, yet not quite meeting the classical definition of rock' n' roll. It differs to the degree that it might be said to fall within an entirely different location, fringe rock. When we started, we were doing a music that was so far out on the fringe that the beauties were cryptic or hidden. It is highly improvisational music created with the available technology, and it searches for new and different musical instruments and sounds, You can't dance to it, but it does have elements of rock music."

Blacklight Braille made numerous albums on their own Vetco Records and started out in the mid-seventies as a collective of street performance artists and musicians under the name Bitter Blood Street Theatre. They acclaimed some underground fame in Cincinatti for their weird shows. Eventually they created the project Blacklight Braille with their first totally demented and experimental collage album Electric Canticles Of The Blacklight Braille in 1981. 

Later on Blacklight Braille was also picked up by the international deviant music scenes through the many albums that they distributed to radio stations worldwide. Besides their Fringe Rock music they also started to incorporate the somewhat occult fascination for British King Arthur and the Arthurian Legends. The musical influences became even more diverse and were now being accompanied by oral stories and poetry, regularly dealing with the Arthurian Legends.

The Carbonek Album, (Castle Carbonek is the place where supposedly the Holy Grail is kept) is a strange Arthurian concept album in which the world of Arthurian legends unfolds. About ten different people are part of the band for this occasion and the album goes into many directions, ranging from electronic ambient synth sounds to the new age sounds of fountains to dark experimentation with spoken tales. It has a humorous yet serious approach always keeping a pace with Arthurian atmospheres and concepts with tracks like The Fountain Falling From The Ace Of Cups, The Gift For Galahad and Guinhwyvare The Tall And Fair. It sort of reminds me of later work by Legendary Pink Dots, although more demented in approach. Also It makes me think of Big City Orchestra and their vast discography of albums.

Blacklight Braille is another one of those great US bands that is very much overlooked considering their unique music and the efforts they have put in their albums. Look out for the rest when you can!

Path to the Holy Grail over HERE

Friday 15 December 2017

Dustbreeders - Le Procès Cannibale -1999- (Single-Sided LP, Élevage De Poussière), France


Dustbreeders is an abstract noise trio from Metz that consists of Yves Botz, Michel Henritzi and Thierry Delles. The outfit exists since the early nineties and is known for their noise-induced deconstructive cavemen wall-of-sound cacaphony. In that sense they belong to the less industrial side of the French noise scene known for bruitistes like Vivenza or Le Syndicat.

Dustbreeders frequently collaborate with Japanese Hijokaidan vocalist Junko. The members have also played together with a large spectrum of noise and impro musicians ranging from Jac Berrocal to The Nihilist Spasm Band and are furthermore involved in too many ofshoot projects and releases to count. Dustbreeders live performances are intense and memorable, look at this to get an idea. Le Procès Cannibale was recorded in 1998 and was Dustbreeders' first release on a 12 inch format. From the liner notes:

The Cannibal Trial
Our music, more than any other, and most of all with so much more cruelty than any other, feeds itself with music, thus, its own kind. Eating other people's music, isn't that terribly inhuman? What can be heard in it, if not the scraps from a cruel banquet? And the atrocious agony of our fellow creatures? 

Our Instrumentation, materially as well as methodically, is a complete alimentary canal, from one hole to another. There is obviously some litigation in our comprehension of culture, regarding every school ever, and, just as obviously, this is a court as well as a trial. A curiously fair trial, notwithstanding the torturing noise that's going on. 

Which music triumphs in this cannibal trial, the one that is both judge and hangman, or the victim that's been digested but so well defended by the music-loving memory of the listener and the genius of its begetter?

Dustbreeders still exist today and their latest record can be bought over at 213 Records.

Get it HERE