the submersible dirigible

This podcast is a collection of simple pleasures, some old and some still with that new car smell.  Thick, sticky electronic taffy, creamy, dripping indiefolks, and garage-brew cotton candy make (I hope) for a well-timed wintertime treat.

My Career in Radio
by Garrison Keillor

I’m a radio man for thirty-some years
In St. Paul, an old variety show
Like those I used to hear, my dears,
When I was a child long ago.
To critics, my show is peppered
With little bits of Bob & Ray,
Jack Benny, and Jean Shepherd,
But those critics are dying (Hooray!)
And to twenty-year-olds who were born
Too late to hear the great Fred Allen
I am the master of the form,
Sailing the airwaves like Magellan.
If a thief escapes and is not hung
He may be honored by the young.

(Garrison Keillor’s new collection, Sonnets, 1983-2008, was just published by Common Good Books.)

mp3 / playlist

image: Josie’s Coney Island Nightmare (cinema 1914) (Flickr Commons, NYPL)

 

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Following the good example of his bandmate Daniel Higgs, Lungfish guitarist Asa Osbourne recently released his first solo album with the psych stalwarts at Holy Mountain.  Departing from the long, epic prog-scale psych behemoths so common in Holy Mountain’s catalog (namely, Wooden Shjips, La Otracina, The Shining Path, etc.), Zomes‘ sixteen tracks are each deletable snack-sized Fig Newtons of grainy krautrock, together sounding like a collection of lo-fidelity psychedelic sonnets.  At forty minutes, the album is brief, and its short, digestible tracks leave the album feeling even shorter.  With one or two exceptions, each track builds upon a single delectable electric guitar, drum or effects loop left on repeat. Zomes‘ looping, repetitive quality gives the album the endearing feel of a handcrafted, late-night attic composition.

‘Membranous Plane’ best exemplifies Osbourne’s reliance on simple looping melodies.  The track’s rubbery electric guitar melody pairs with a handful of lonely snare cracks, cycling together over and over again.  Slight changes in inflection liven up the loop, but these changes are nearly imperceptible.  At long last, as the body’s neurons begin to short-circuit in response to incessant repetition, an abrupt static interruption upsets the loop, and evolves into a brief decayed reprisal of the familiar arrangement.

‘Membranous Plane‘

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While imparting some urgency and a film-cut quality, Zomes‘ repetition does leave the album without any recognizable dramatic arc; the album’s sixteen tracks sound isolated from each other, each its own independent patchwork of colorful, snackpack loops.  Without cohesion, or long, focal tracks to establish theme, the album could pass for a compilation of film compositions.  Oddly enough, this kraut/psych hodgepodge not only works, it astounds.  The album’s layered attention-deficit disorder — each track isolated from the others, each track itself spun from tight internal loops –is it’s most endearing feature.  These soundtrack cuts evoke scenes ranging from the sideburns and tire smoke of Steve McQueen’s Bullitt (‘Crowning Orbs’) to the slow-motion contemplation of Jean Painleve’s underwater exploration films (‘Clear Shapes’, ‘Petroglyphs’) and the barren, post-apocalyptic tarmac of Mel Gibson’s Mad Max (‘Black Magic Band’).

‘Crowning Orbs‘

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‘Petroglyphs‘

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In the end, Osbourne’s Zomes amounts to a sort of cross between a Radiophonic Workshop collection and krautrock in the vein of Amon Duul II or Can.  The unique blend of the familiar Holy Mountain psych/kraut fare with the soundtrack aesthetic amounts to essential listening, an album begging for repeat listens.