Feels a bit like 1987 here again; after raving over Dinosaur Jr's unlikely renaissance yesterday, today's Uncut pin-up boy is Thurston Moore. Not that he's releasing anything new with Sonic Youth, as far as I know. But for the past 25-odd years, Moore has been running a label called Ecstatic Peace, a home for some pretty deranged music - not least his own extra-curricular projects, where Moore pits himself against various heroes of free jazz, subterranean noise, art-skronk and that kind of thing. What's happening right now, though, is that Ecstatic Peace has finally committed to proper UK distribution, which means there's a bunch of excellent albums coming out here in March. We've been hammering a couple, especially. One is by a youngish Ann Arbor trio called Awesome Color, whose stab at sounding like The Stooges circa 1970 is slightly more convincing than the efforts of Iggy, at least, on the forthcoming Stooges comeback. Awesome Color were purportedly taught their skills by Scott Asheton, and they've got that evil "Funhouse" drone down to a tee. Thurston produced this one, too. The other is "Green Blues", yet another psych-folk beauty, by a wild collective called MV + EE And The Bummer Road. The gist here is that, while acid folk's West Coast acid folkies like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom have gone overground, East Coast originators like MV + EE have become more feral and uncompromising. There's a lot more about this one in next month's Uncut. But anyway, J Mascis plays Mellotron on it, and I promise I'll find something to write about tomorrow that has nothing to do with the old flake.
Feels a bit like 1987 here again; after raving over Dinosaur Jr’s unlikely renaissance yesterday, today’s Uncut pin-up boy is Thurston Moore.
Not that he’s releasing anything new with Sonic Youth, as far as I know. But for the past 25-odd years, Moore has been running a label called Ecstatic Peace, a home for some pretty deranged music – not least his own extra-curricular projects, where Moore pits himself against various heroes of free jazz, subterranean noise, art-skronk and that kind of thing.
What’s happening right now, though, is that Ecstatic Peace has finally committed to proper UK distribution, which means there’s a bunch of excellent albums coming out here in March. We’ve been hammering a couple, especially.
One is by a youngish Ann Arbor trio called Awesome Color, whose stab at sounding like The Stooges circa 1970 is slightly more convincing than the efforts of Iggy, at least, on the forthcoming Stooges comeback. Awesome Color were purportedly taught their skills by Scott Asheton, and they’ve got that evil “Funhouse” drone down to a tee. Thurston produced this one, too.
The other is “Green Blues”, yet another psych-folk beauty, by a wild collective called MV + EE And The Bummer Road. The gist here is that, while acid folk’s West Coast acid folkies like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom have gone overground, East Coast originators like MV + EE have become more feral and uncompromising. There’s a lot more about this one in next month’s Uncut. But anyway, J Mascis plays Mellotron on it, and I promise I’ll find something to write about tomorrow that has nothing to do with the old flake.