The Entrance Band is back

The Entrance Band, that sepulchral electric blues outfit led by Guy Blakeslee, put out another album this week, the sublimely dirge-like, mandala-spinning guitar-psychedelic Face the Sun from whence comes this disturbing video.



I like it a lot, especially the sprawling, vaguely Middle Eastern flavored "Fine Flow" which sounds like Richard Bishop and the Doors in some sort of unholy mashup.

I reviewed the Entrance Band's Prayer for Death a sort-of-astonishing seven years ago, saying:

To the hallowed triad of sex, drugs and rock and roll, we should maybe add a fourth: death. Like the other three, death has certainly been a source of innumerable song lyrics and the intoxicant of choice for mystics, bluesmen, rockers, folk singers and assorted other scruffy geniuses. It's certainly Guy Blakeslee's drug this time out. Prayer of Death, as its title implies, doesn't just face the great inevitable, it embraces it, celebrates it, psychedelicizes it, becomes giddy on its poison fumes. "I want to die without no fear / I want to die rejoicing," he sings on the title track, perhaps the most gospel and straightforward blues number here, and he's not kidding. He really is happy about the whole idea.

You can read the whole thing here.

Rangda feature at PopMatters

This is probably my favorite piece (of my own) for 2012. Really good record, too.

Just Don’t Call Them a Super-Group: The Rangda Interview
By Jennifer Kelly 5 November 2012

All three members of Rangda—that’s Sun City Girls’ Richard Bishop, Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny and free-jazz drumming legend Chris Corsano—have their own claims to “super-ness”, at least in pure musical ability. Just check out Bishop’s blur-speed, ethnically-tuned bouts of picking, Chasny’s hallucinatory arcs of psychedelic folk, or Corsano’s manic, chaotic yet totally-in-control percussive wizardry. Still all three palpably bristle when you bring up the term “super group”.

“It’s pretty ridiculous,” says Chasny, when asked about a phrase usually associated with unit shifters like Asia, Chickenfoot and the Travelling Wilburies. “That is a term generally given to bloated rock stars. You never hear that with jazz—‘Oh! That was Miles Davis’s super group!’ No, you just note the people playing.”

“Super groups are always kind of less than the sum of their parts,” says Corsano, noting that these ensembles are often put together with more of an eye towards commercial impact than artistry. “Rangda totally wasn’t that,” he adds. “It was Ben saying ‘I’ve played with Chris, and I’d like to play with him more. And I’ve played with Rick and I want to play with him more.’ I think that’s how every band should get together.”

Yet while Rangda may have started as the casual confluence of three major talents, it has evolved through touring and a second album. Formerly Extinct, released in September 2012 on Drag City, shows the threesome evolving from a fearsomely talented pick-up band into a living, breathing, continuing entity. We spoke to all three members about Rangda’s beginnings, their egalitarian approach to sharing leads, and their emergence as one of the most interesting part-time gigs in indie rock.

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Rangda, Round Two

I've got a PopMatters on Rangda coming (it's done but in the pipeline), but meanwhile check out my review of the band's second album, up late last week at Blurt.

Rangda
Formerly Extinct
(Drag City)

The last Rangda record, 2010's False Flag, was recorded just a couple of days after the band's three principals had their first practice session, a day max after the first time they played on stage. It was a rough, improvisational triumph, somehow melding the Richard Bishop's Eastern-tinged pyrotechnics with Ben Chasny's molten psychedelia, Chris Corsano's explosive energy with the two twining, exploring guitars. This second entry in the Rangda catalogue is altogether more premeditated, though still writhing with untamped power. It came after a month of East Coast shows, a day or two at Corsano's home to rough out songs and a full week of studio time at Jason Meagher's Black Dirt facility.


The songs are, consequently, more fleshed out and complicated, containing, in several cases, multiple movements and moods. "The Vault," for instance, starts in a blur-paced barrage of percussive picking, a batter and clash of chaotic drums, a bee swarm of noise and musical ideas that crowds sonic space right to the edges, everybody hammering at once. And then there's a break, and a slow, stately 1960s psych melody breaks out, two guitars moving in ritual accord, one frayed to breaking with dirt and distortion, the other ringing clear and luminous over it.


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Two reviews up at Blurt the last couple of days…both good stuff.

Today’s review is of the several-times-reissued Nigeria 70 compilation, a collection of tracks from the scene that grew up around Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade and others in Lagos…as James Brown’s aesthetic infiltrated highlife and other traditional West African styles. I’d heard of it – and had heard a lot of subsequent West African comps that this disc clearly paved the way for – but never heard it…and it’s well worth hearing.

Here’s the review.


There are some “videos” of tracks from this album on YouTube, with the music and a static image of the record cover, if you’re curious – including this one of William Onyeabor’s “Better Change Your Mind.”


And yesterday, my review of Richard Bishop’s Freak of Araby also made the Blurt website. I’ve been writing about him a fair amount lately, but this review is probably the last of the bunch…at least until he makes another record.



Here’s a video of a recent live show in Oakland.

Richard Bishop

I don't usually post on weekends, but my Richard Bishop interview just went up lasdt night at FlavorWire, the latest of my unpaid writing gigs...the good thing about this one is that it only took about a week and a half, from assignment to web posting, and also that Richard Bishop is so amazing and they said okay anyway unlike some websites I could mention...but won't.

Anyway, here's a link to the story


Also, wish me luck. I'm running the Pack Monadnock 10 miler tomorrow morning, a scenic jaunt through southern new hampshire that ends with a 1.3 mile climb up Pack Monadnock...not as big as actual Monadnock, the tallest mountain in SWNH, but still a big hill. I'm in reasonably good shape considering it's not even June yet, but maybe not that good. We'll see.

What would you ask Richard Bishop?

I mean...besides, how do you do it?



Interview at 9:30 tonight, wish me luck!