Tom McFarlane // 5
04.10.07 - Jeff Burch - 5, feature article, music
TOM MCFARLANE has been a friend for a few years now, a short history that harks back to the days when he screamed incessantly with a band called LOVE LIKE… ELECTROCUTION and another called ST ALBANS KIDS. He has since then moved on to live in two different cities, another country, changed girlfriends once or twice, been under the employ of a couple important people, and in his spare time manages to keep a few projects up and running including a solo drone project BRUTAL SNAKE, a doom- sludge-drone band CEASE and a CDR record label called BROTHERS that he runs between his homes in Perth and New York. Here he takes us through his five favorite records.
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1. Les Rallizes Denudes ‘le 12 mars 1977 a Tachikawa’ Double CD Bootleg
The first time I heard this record was like the world opening up before me and I’d realised that for the past 24 years I’d had my eyes closed. Absolutely life changing and life-affirming. I heard this for the first time sitting in a Tarago, with friends who were over in Adelaide on tour, drinking beers and watching the sun set over the beach – one of those things that was completely just a bolt from the blue. I had heard absolutely nothing about them prior to that moment and still know very little now other than that they were around from the late 60s in Tokyo and played through into the 1990s. The lead singer/guitarist Mizutani was supposedly involved in a left-wing terrorist plot to hijack a plane in the 70s and is apparently still on the run from the police. There are constantly reported sightings of him in Tokyo, but it’s getting to be some kind of Lochness Monster kind-of-thing. There are so many elements to point to… the absolute mystery of the whole thing, very little information at all in Englis on the CDs, Japanese band with French name, songs that go for 1/2 hour playing the same riff over and over. Then of course there is the sound; a rather plodding Velvetsy 60’s pop-psych rhythm section with the most intense, white-hot guitar sounds, sheets and sheets of white noise overwhelm everything constantly and the live recording is patchy at best but just adds to the whole spectacle. However many years later since I first heard it this still blows my head off and provides a benchmark for whether people are talking shit or not when they describe a band as noisy extreme-psych.
2. PÄRSON SOUND ‘Discography CD’ (Subliminal Sounds)
Similar momentous occasion for these guys, first time I heard them again tore a hole in my perception of music up until that time. Driving across the middle of New South Wales, enroute from Melbourne to Brisbane, someone flipped this on the car stereo and I was hooked. Totally overdriven drone-oriented-heavy-as-fuck-psych. These guys emerged out of some scene in Stockholm in the late 60s oriented towards Terry Riley type stuff and then mixed that in with the prevailing rock musical climate, ala Velvets, Pink Floyd, Hendrix etc. This stuff goes and goes and goes and I never grow tired of it. Again, emphasis on repetitive grooves that can lock in for up to 1/2 an hour with mantric vocals and the heaviest rhythm section this side of Pentagram. These guys would travel around Scandanavia in their painted Kombies playing ‘happenings’ wherever they happened to be, IE in parks, forests etc. Having all their own custom gear and PA certainly helped. They later went on to morph into Harvester and Trad, Gras och Stenar who are still playing today, but for my money this is where it was at for these guys, before the hippy vibe started to eat away at the jams… the heaviness is unbelievable for the times, especially in such a glacial, experimental context.
3. Double Leopards ‘ Halve Maen’ CD (Eclipse)
There is a theme running through here of musical finds that completely re-oriented my perceptions as to musicality and the journey of sounds. Double Leopards are another group who opened up one of those holes for me. Now, the various members of this band are veritable superstars of the US-underground, cross-fertilising so many side projects and solo efforts that i cant even start to attempt to document it here. Suffice to say, in my humble opinion this album ranks as their finest hour. Long, slow, drawn out drone compositions, layers and layers and layers of heaviness with sounds sourcing from effects-ridden guitars, processed vocals and various primitive electronics to form a murky, swamp-ridden wasteland of epic proportions. However, the thing that separates this for me from so much of the other output of this genre is how warm and organic this manages to sound, like as if the band were performing it all in your carpeted lounge-room. Of course this kind of stuff is all the rage now, but back in 2005 this was my first exposure to something so magnificent. Again, first listened to in a car driving interstate.
4. Led Zeppelin ‘Led Zeppelin’ (Atlantic)
Don’t need to say too much here, of epic proportions to this day. If only half the supposed rock bands kicking around today would study this album a little closer the world would be a much better place. In that 60s tradition not a single member was fill, all four of them were amazing at their chosen instrument. I’ve heard it said that Robert Plant was the weakest link and they would have been much better with Ozzy singing instead… but i’ll leave that one to another day.
5. Popol Vuh ‘Aguirre, the wrath of God - OST’ (SPV)
A lot has been written about this film and its making, in particular the locational difficulties and ongoing conflicts between the director Werner Herzog and its lead actor, the iconoclastic Klaus Kinski and it all contributes to make the film compelling viewing. However, of equal merit is this wonderous soundtrack composed by german Kraut-rockers turned composers Popol Vuh, helmed by the extremely talented Florian Fricke. Taken in tandem with the film this soundtrack evokes all of the mystery and despair as lost Spanish Conquistadors contemplate their own mortality and insignificance, adrift on a raft heading down through the amazon, terrorised by a meglomaniac monster in human form. Excellent down-baked tunes and synth explorations for late night ponderings.
