Original Photo by Todd Gehman
Once again, our specialist on hot topics took a look at records we almost forgot at the NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION memory loss clinic: Our beloved Dr. Passion, a specialist on genres, weapons and affairs you wouldn’t imagine taking leading parts in your wildest and wet dreams, reclaims his territory as most irresistible grand seigneur of pop.
As the list of reviewed records in this section does not display any logical order (except being listed maybe or slightly alphabetical, but who calls that coherent?) the Doctor comes into our office and randomly picks what he likes. It is records artwork, names he knows or once read, interesting record titles, labels he relies on and vinyl. He picks on vinyl first, like a drug dog at the airport sniffing coke in young girls’ underwear, you beautiful music-people all over the world.
PS: There is a pop-up link to the music, hidden inside the album covers, below.
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[two_third last=”yes”]ACID BABY JESUS
Selected Recordings
Label: Slovenly
At best, psychedelic musics whirling and free floating sound-aesthetic is anchored by a mythological idea, or heritage. Like that, we must think of desert and delirium when listening to THE DOORS. For ACID BABY JESUS though, this psychedelic wonderland isn’t California, it’s Greece. So basically the whole western civilizations dusty cradle of birth. The outcome is pure and fundamentally dionysian. Like a last drop of Greek wine descending down an Alabaster-breast.
NBHAP Rating: 3.5/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]ADRIAN CROWLEY
Some Blue Morning
Label: Chemical Underground
Some Blue Morning must refer to a song by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The weirdly sexual and haunting duet is poetic and dark. ADRIAN CROWLEY‘s seventh album takes on a similar approach. Its arrangements are highly effective, shifting between sparse and epic. Idiosyncratic like the TINDERSTICKS, elegant like NICK CAVE in a clean suit, stalking his seductively morbid phantasy: For her lips were the colour of the roses, that grew down the river, all bloody and wild.
NBHAP Rating: 4,3/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]BEARDYMAN
Distractions
Label: Tummy Touch Records
Distractions is so multi-faceted, it’s spectral range should, let’s hope, cause epileptic seizure inside every Urban Outfitters shack this nutty record is put on the wheels. Like MAX TUNDRA given Vicodin. As if BEARDYMAN cut off a kindergarden’s daily supply of Ritalin, to employ a gone mad horde of kids pushing his blinking iPads buttons. It’s quieter passages are quite sexy grooving though.
NBHAP Rating: 3.1/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]BIG SKIES
Never Going Home
Label: Half Human Half Robot Music
BIG SKIES perform a raw, pure and rich version of what people did not call Britpop in the early 90s yet. Now, of course, nothing else comes to mind if you ask the poorly educated music critic. But it’s a little fiddlier obviously: Like throwing Roses off an Inspiral Carpet Ride to get this dude James off fucking your young Bloody Valentine in her Ash on a Happy Monday Madchester rave.
NBHAP Rating: 3.3/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]DAN BODAN
Soft
Label: DFA RECORDS
Soft is really sexy, but of a shy and restrained nature, like someone lightly touching your arm while leaving a way too crowded bar. A modest and soulful record that nimbly draws upon any move pop-music has ever made. Like that, any reference appears superfluous: My fists feel just like tender kisses. It’s just there to breathe and flatter the sweetness of love.
NBHAP Rating: 4.1/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]DREAM POLICE
Hypnotized
Label: Sacred Bones Records
Psychedelic rock music built on the fundaments of white American blues, all filtered through the weird and for-no-one-ever-to-get-hold-on algorithms of a drum-machine. Mathematically composed and wildly fringing at the same time.
NBHAP Rating: 3.9/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]FOO FIGHTERS
Sonic Highways
Label: RCA Records
If a serious man of my academic calibre would seriously like this record, in Kreuzberg, Berlin, he’d never get laid again for the rest of his life. And I heard having sex in a tent on a festival is a way too slutty affair for people wearing Prada shoes. So what to do when the FOO FIGHTERS throw out a record a little better than expected? Probably just believe what one of Dave Grohl’s probable heroes and close friends of Patti Smith just recently told me about him: That he is a fucking asshole.
NBHAP Rating: 2.6/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]HOOKWORMS
The Hum
Label: Weird World Record Co.
The Hum, referring to an invasive low-frequency phenomena, responsible for people going insane or committing suicide, is a wild punk, garage-rock freakout, cutting space with raw psychedelic drone.
NBHAP Rating: 3.9/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD
I’m In Your Mind Fuzz
Label: Castle Face Records
These Australian musicians wear their hearts on their sleeves: This bands name, the really great or just horrible record cover, the literal album title. This psychedelic fuzz-out is a long jam, swelling and receding. The first circa four songs are bound by the same bass line, but the record is far from boring. More like a locomotive heavily hallucinating through freakish territory and not giving a fuck about the colourful landscape it’s ripping to pieces.
NBHAP Rating: 3.4/5
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[two_third last=”yes”]1000 GRAM
Dances
Label: Fixe Records
1000 GRAM from Germany play emotional guitar pop like it was ‘sort of’ fancy to do more than 15 years ago; when music like this was called Emo and at the same time not yet referring to long haired mascara made up boys wearing skinny pants. Wide eyed and gestured it was, smartly arranged and made fun of by men and women wearing LIMP BIZKIT t-shirts. But who’s the whiny loser now you assholes?
NBHAP Rating: 3.3/5
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