GHOST + Six Organs of Admittance

May 1st 2009 My friend Jordan Barnes-Crouse and I took a trip to Seattle to see some psychedelic music at The Crocodile.

Six Organs of Admittance

Special guest: Chasny’s friend on guitar

Highlights
A Thousand Birds
Whatever the closer was… new song?

Ben Chasny

I’ve never really dug singer/songwriter musics but in Ben Chasny’s case I make a most enthusiastic exception. Although I prefer his work in album format, he puts on a heavy and engrossing live performance which benefits from simplicity.

Apparently Chasny was in a bit of a bad mood when he came onstage, but he soon felt better after learning someone had found his car keys. Played material mostly from Dark Noontide and School of the Flower (including a personal highlight of a slightly uptempo A Thousand Birds) and a few new tunes.

 

The last number was characterized by an intense drone and heavy-ass singing more gravitas than anything I’ve ever heard from Chasny to date… guitar on the floor feeding back into a delay pedal that kept it somewhat under control then growling and shrieking melodically into the mic while a companion strummed away.

Too bad the set ended just as it seemed to get going. I’d hoped they’d make more of the drone and get a bit more abstract, possibly involving that lonely and underused gong… still, a most appropriate opener for the main act…

GHOST

w/ special guest Helena Espvall

Highlights
Intro Improvisation
Mex Blue Square
Comin Home

For the past few years Ghost has grown on me gradually and unobtrusively, like a soft moss, insulating from cold winds of shitty music and trapping valuable life-giving moisture. They are so reliable and diverse – a flawless mix of softness and heaviness, improvisation and detailed composition… melodic, charismatic, jammy and spiritually-tinged. 

Ghost kicked their set with a slow-building improvisation in a odd time sig – perhaps 17/8 – starting off on frame drum, drones and moans building into an intense drumkit-led freakout with Batoh blowing a weird shrunken church organ lookin’ thing and everyone just givin’ ‘er. Then, all warmed up and psyched out they launched directly into their set which, to delight of every Ghost fan in attendance, covered material from nearly every studio album, except Snuffbox Immanence and their S/T debut.

The excellence of the band’s instrumentalists was on full display: drummer Junzo Tateiwa was center stage with his rhythmic mastery (tabla training with Zakir Hussain obviously pays off). Guitar monster Michio Kurihara mixed in his usual cocktail of restrained arpeggiation and all out psych wailing, understated Kazuo Ogino painted pretty pictures with his keys and harp while Sax/theremin/flute/etc. maestro Taishi Takizawa provided melody and texture (despite some feedback issues) and bassist/tingshaw tinger Takuyuki Moriya kept it all glued together. Special guest Helena Espevall on cello and vocals was also welcome if a bit underused. And that brings us to bandleader Masaki Batoh, who was in top form, strumming away and singing like an angel.

It’s hard to pick a highlight from such an awesome and well-executed set, but when they launched into that rocked-out-to-the-max piano-led version of Mex Blue Square, that really did it for me. Tateiwa really made it his own, replacing the sparse snare-phobic pummel-rhythm of the original with a strident, straight ahead groove. The closer, Comin’ Home , was a gorgeous spiritual catharsis with Chasny returning to the stage to join the chorus. Fucking beautiful music.

The Bootleg

I made a bootleg of this show – my first ever! My apologies for the low sound quality, the missing first part of the Intro Improvisation and the cell phone interference in the last song.

I realize the audio isn’t great, but the quality and energy of the performance may well give you a taste of the awe-full Ghost live experience… to quote Batoh, “Enjoy it… it’s very beautiful.”

Recording info
Device: Zoom H4
Location: In a bag in a baffle slightly off center stage
Post processing: EQ

1. Intro Improvisation
2. Motherly Bluster
3. Piper
4. Orange Sunshine
5. Way to Shelkar
6. Higher Order
7. Who Found a Lost Rose in the Warship
8. Mex Blue Square
9. Second Time Around
10. Hazy Paradise
11. Dominoes / Celebration for the Grey Days
12. Aramaic Barbarous Dawn

Encore

13. Feed
14. Comin’ Home

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?z2zaimmndju

“That’s just AWFUL.”

Awful is one of those words with an unjustly negative connotation. In common usage it means “extremely bad or unpleasant” — the complete opposite of its original meaning!

Awful comes from the same root as Awesome; that is, Awe, an amazing emotional abstract we can define as “immediate dread mingled with veneration and wonder.” Yeah, complete emotional and spiritual overwhelm… like pumping waaay too much voltage into the human perception system. Total paradigm blow out.

We all know and love awesome and use it a lot to describe everything that’s better than plain ol’ good.

But see, there’s only some awe in there… wouldn’t things be way better if they were full of awe instead?

So how did this bizarre signifier slide take happen? Well, we can thank America for that one…

From Maven’s Word of the Day :

The Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles declares awful an Americanism and traces its first appearance in print to 1809. John Pickering, in his 1816 Vocabulary, or, Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the United States, wrote: “In New England, many people would call a disagreeable medicine awful, or an ugly woman an awful-looking woman.”

So I say we gotta take this word back. “Awe-full” works in written English but sounds wrong in speech… for now. I encourage you to abandon “awful” in its negative form and try feeling awe-full for a change.

HANUMAN in 2D

Recently I discovered an Indian animated film about Hanuman, one of the most revered deities in Hinduism. Hanuman is divine  monkey royalty and is usually said to be an incarnation of Shiva. He’s most famous for his role in the Ramayana Wars.

The film is from 2005 and is really trippy, despite (or possibly because) it was made for kids. It is a good introduction to this famous Hindu myth and is very unusual, cheesy and somewhat psychedelic to boot. 

Hanuman is jam packed with all your favourite Hindu gods, semi-gods and mythical creatures, laughable dialogue, multi-heads and multi-arms (although I admit not as many as I would have liked),  third eyes and cosmic craziness.  And of course Hanuman can’t help but break into song every once in a while.

The blogging begins

So I’ve just started a blog, ya. Held out for as long as I could, but I figure I could use a place to dump stuff and post my creations. 

Stay tuned for:

• Photos (mostly by me, or maybe of me)
• Music (mostly by me, or by bands featuring me)
• News articles (not by me)
• Other stuff