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Bo Anders Persson’s looping electric guitar, Thomas Ticholm’s aggressive sax and Anne Ericsson’s howling electric cello supply the swifling black center for a sonic tornado.
#Ryley walker and kikagaku moyo free#
On “From Tunes To India In Fullmoon (On Testosterone)», a live recording from 1968, the group bring into play their love and understanding of free jazz.
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Rather than just endlessly chipping and hammering at rock’s surface noise, however, the group carry out complex sound experiments, whose full richness only emerge with several patient replays. Metal brutalities of 60s heavyweights Blue Cheer than the minimalistic tone patterns of La Monte Young and Terry Riley (whose ideas Pärson Sound were also strongly attracted to indeed they met in an ad hoc ensemble put together to perform Riley’s music). It turns out that the intro is a short musical fuse setting off a cacophonic hard rock explosion that owes more to the psychedelic
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The first record opens with a lulling guitar drone that fools you into thinking that the remaining nine minutes or so of ‘Tio Minuter” (“Ten Minutes”) will be equally laid-back and hypnotic. Unfortunately, up to now their music has been a well-kept secret, despite such high profile appearances as supporting The Doors, and being personally invited by Andy Warhol to open his 1968 exhibition at Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art.Ĭompiling unreleased live and studio recordings, Pärson Sound is an astonishing find that successfully buckles all notions of how rock, jazz and experimental music should behave. If we all get to live on that edge a bit more, we should be so lucky, but I’ll take the seven runs at it here and just put ‘em on repeat.Defying the world to ignore the psychedelic shamanism and intense spirituality of their music, the battle cry of late 60s Stockholm underground quintet Pärson Sound was “We, Here and Now!”. There’s always a simmering feeling that the band will explore edges of the infinite, and they do for a time on “Pond Scum Ocean,” but Walker and his cohorts have perfected perching the slicked edged that runs between havoc and hooks. There’s a smooth veneer to the record that might harken back to Ryley’s Primrose Green, but this time around he lets the cracks show through and the improv soul saturate - breaking the stride on “Axis Bent” or downshifting styles on “Clad With Bunk.” Still, with his Genesis touchstone, he’s blending the wide-ranging touches on Course In Fable with enough pop to keep keep the record from getting bounced out of the indie bin and into the ‘Out’ row in the record shops. While I know that Walker has admittedly gone through a real Genesis phase during the recordings, they don’t feel as prominent to me as the shadow of prog-folk platters from Roy Harper, later period Tim Buckley, and the Suite years of Tim Hardin. The record that emerged from McEntire’s Northwest studio is touching, self-deprecating, and as complex as anything in Walker’s catalog. With an eye on the ambitions of his hometown’s post-rock past, he’s brought the legend, John McEntire (Tortoise, The Red Krayola) on for production and keys along with MacKay, Jewell, and bassist Andrew Scott Young. His first foray into a vocal record in three years finds him plucking a few of those collaborators back into the mix, while keeping a nice tie to his Chicago roots. He’s been plumbing the depths of the unspoken soul on records that nudge his playing into tangled visions, but have more or less left his voice out of matters. Bohannon, Kendra Amelie and Kikagaku Moyo. In the sunlight of sobriety, Walker has immersed himself in instrumental experimentation, racking up collaborations with Charles Rumback, Bill MacKay, Steve Gunn and Ryan Jewell, J.R. For his first record full studio LP on his own Husky Pants Records, Ryley Walker draws together parallels from his past while pushing the record further from his pastoral folk beginnings.
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