Weird Owl - Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed – (TeePee Records) Keith Boyd 12.19.08
And you were just wondering who could be relied on to keep bringing the FREAKY? Well seek no further Pilgrim! Your quest is fulfilled! Come shake your medicine rattle, burn your herbs and grab hold of the mighty wings of Weird Owl…Time to take flight!
Although this Brooklyn band has an EP out, this disc is their first full release proper and it’s an all around delight. Glorious swirls of sound punch and tug at your head with alternating moments of Crazy Horse fury and exotic, opium den ambience. Layered and pulsing song structures hypnotize and enchant with stories of astral travel, mountains growing out of the living room floor and spiritual memories of Native American genocide. Listening to the disc you’ll catch glimpses of Captain Beefheart blowing his crazy Skeleton Breath and hear strains of Buffalo Springfield mourning the Broken Arrow. Singer Trevor Tyrell accomplishes an amazing vocal feat by channeling the cadence and intonation of a Powwow drum singer while remaining melodic and in tune. His voice and the mysto-steam approach of the band remind me at times of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the late, great Gun Club. There is the same shamanic intensity and slight hint of decadence permeating the proceedings here. I’m thinking specifically of the GC’s album “Fire of Love” with its’ Santeria/Botanica shop window display songs like “Jack on Fire”. It’s not at all a retro trip here though. Rather these songs and the themes that inform them come off as perennial and somehow out of any timeline whatsoever. more

The Sword at Cox Arena 12.16.8 Eric Nielsen

Look deep into The Sword, see yourself, blind your eyes, empty your mind. Remember. Remember the time when music was a valuable instrument of change. That was last night, lingering into today, at The Sword, blessed, broken, uncommon and soulful. Reality blurred perfectly into the shadowy world behind Steppenwolf's door. When's the last time the music shook you loose, shook you into a rebirth, halved, split and baptized? Naturally and unpretentiously, The Sword melted most of Gods of the Earth. Too bad fucking Metallica hogged the volume for their set and kept The Sword's sound at a level that screamed, no corrupted, for more.
Through the distraction of stage in the round, the songs thrust forward, through the mist and stirred a Sabbath air. Great downplayed vocals, superb soulful double guitars, Allman old school, emotion balanced on a Ministry's backdrop of relentlessness dominated the complete thirty minute set.
With a sacred confidence did The Sword outshine the other bands on the bill. Destiny determines this feeling, simplicity and sophistry dominated the evening. Most of the crowd missed the best of the night. Oh yeah, Metallica and Lamb of God played too.

Metallica at Cox Arena 12.16.8 Ed Moller
The lights went down, the crowd roared, the lasers lasered and Metallica ripped Cox Arena apart playing songs off their new album “Death Magnetic “ as well as many old standards...Metallica had the crowd in the palms of their hand for the entire show.. The Pyrotechnics were something to be seen. Flames of different colors shot 10 feet into the air during the song “One”. Sitting in the 11th row we could feel the heat on our faces. The crowd was a mixture of old metal fans like our selves and the new generation of metal heads there to see the band Lamb of God. All in all, Metallica still has the same energy they had when I saw the And Justice for All tour when I was 13 in Ames, Iowa.

Sakura

Night Horse – The Dark Won’t Hide You (TeePee Records) By Keith Boyd 12.10.8
From riff one to the final note this disc is a heaping helping of great, greasy and bottom heavy ROCK! The grooves are so thick and meaty here you find yourself not so much looking at the liner notes as checking for a cattle brand. Night Horse is comprised of some folks (and friends) from the mighty LA band Ancestors whose dirge mythology infuse debut came out on TeePee earlier this year. Whereas Ancestors deals in extended epics which ebb and flow with mysterious grace, Night Horse comes straight to the point. And what point is that you might say? Well it’s a heavy blast of early 70’s Blues Rock mainlined through a modern punkish sensibility. more

High Mountain Tempel - The Glass Bead Game From Plan B Magazine in London by Frances Morgan 11.28.8

Heads from California and beyond get busy with Hesse refs and analogue synthesis, with a new release purporting to be a sonic realisation of The Glass Bead Game. Moog Voyager, a couple of Korg models and DSI are layered in a truly wyrd-ass style, augmented by vocal samples, processed guitar and – it says here – eldritch vapours. Those fearing an indulgent dronefest will be pleasantly surprised  by cerebral, alien synth dialogues that are more Ghost Box, Kluster, Delia Derbyshire than stoner jam, even taking into account sporadic chanting.
highmountaintempel.com on Lotushouse Records

From Peter Case's Blog about Michael Bannister
Michael Bannister 1950-2008
My old friend, drummer Michael Bannister, was found dead by police this weekend, sitting in his van in the mountains near the Jerome, Arizona area. Michael had suffered from years of untreated severe depression. He was destitute and homeless at the time.

Michael had just moved back to Arizona after a few months visit back to LA this summer. I saw him several times out here, and on one occasion met his son Story, and visited with them both for awhile. His death is a great tragedy for the people he's left behind, that's for sure. I can hardly believe the news, yet I know it's true. My prayers are with you, and your family, Mike. You'll be missed.

He was like a brother to me, with all that can entail. See you later, man.

Expo 70 – Black Ohms (Beta/Lactam Ring Records) 10.13.8 Keith Boyd
If you are willing to wait and keep listening eventually your music will find you. It will come to you from sometimes unlikely sources. A few seconds overheard on the radio blasting from a passing car. A snatch of melody on some jukebox in a bar. Maybe it’s a friend who loans you a disc and says, “I think you’ll dig this”. Whatever the byways and highways that lead your music to you, you’ll recognize it as your own almost immediately. Some twist of sound will push a deeply buried genetic part of you and waves of excitement will pulse through your brain. I heard it once with Jane’s Addiction’s first live EP on a New Year’s Eve about a million years ago. Then it came to me while falling through the infinite layers of Terry Riley’s circular drones. Now I’ve heard it again. Expo 70’s new disc, “Black Ohms” is such an all encompassing and overwhelming listen that at times you’ll find the need to back up a bit and delineate what’s actually vibrating, your body or the music. This intimacy and warmth are combined with an alien fingerprint that beckons you to move ever deeper into these sounds. more

Buzz or Howl + Astro - Western Mystery School (Lotushouse)
(LHRCD13) 2008
This collaboration was born at the UFO Club in Tokyo. Buzz or Howl (Bruce McKenzie and Eric Nielsen) met Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa) through mutual friend Junzo Suzuki. after a face-melting set by that duo and a celebratory, raucous set by Bruce and Eric's other band Maquiladora (with Phil Beaumont) - during which they were joined by Saya and Ueno from the Tenniscoats and Koji Shimura from Acid Mothers Temple and White Heaven - music was exchanged and plans were hatched to combine forces somehow. The music Astro took home that night was by Buzz or Howl, a fierce improvisatory psychedelic duo from southern California, using guitars, violin, synth, and lapsteel to create long tracks exploring time and tide. And tone. Through continuously evolving, fugue-like riffage drone and feedback.

For the purposes of this collaboration a new instrumentation was found. After an initial flirtation with guitars, the Californians decided on a markedly more pastoral direction and an arabo-andalusian flavor for the music they had been given. Over two tracks of Astro's synth textures the same instrumentation - mandolin, strum stick, and voices, - is radically transformed by electricity. Track one is spare and celestial, a delicate acoustic track that employs spare free improvisation and a repeating ancient-sounding chord progression as a basis for both Astro's sonic flights and a lilting wordless melody. Track two explodes with feedback and a crunching assault develops from exactly the same elements, electrified. One would never know that the sonic roar is created by electric mandolin and modified vocals atop brother Astro's synthesizer. Musical imaginations have reached across the pacific for this combination of filigree and mutilation.

Limited release (220 hand numbered) double sided silk screen with a black on black silk screened disc (CDR).

Track List
1. Nine Months More I Am Happy Suffer Is In My Life (Incubation Remix)
2. The Sins Of The Flower Are Visited On The Shunned

Sex and Veggies from SD Reader
By Jay Allen Sanford | Published Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008

“The Motherhouse and The Ascended Master Moves On (Hang Gliding in Heaven) are our homage to Father Yod, the spiritual master of musical vegetarianism,” says Eric Nielsen of High Mountain Tempel. The two songs on the band’s new album, The Glass Bead Game, include sampled sermons given by controversial sex-and-veggie cult leader Father Yod.

Nielsen’s partner Ras Al H’nout explains, “Father Yod lived a storied and adventurous life as a military hero, jiu-jitsu expert, and craftsman when he came to found one of the first health-food restaurants in America, the Source. What started as a series of lectures morphed into a full-blown commune, the Source Family. The group venerated Yod as the living embodiment of God and created a completely alternate lifestyle based on communalism, chanting, meditation, vegetarianism, and ritual sex.… The Source Family engaged in marathon sex magick sessions.”

Yod was also a musician and recording artist championed by fan and sometime follower Sky Saxon of the Seeds.

“The Source Family released roughly ten albums,” says Ras Al H’nout, “going under names like Ya Ho Wa 13 and Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76. The music was a wild and thrilling ride through Yod’s various beliefs and manifestos.… Father Yod played gongs and kettle drums while preaching.”

The Source Family ended with Father Yod’s 1975 death in a hang-gliding accident. According to Nielsen, “Family members went their own ways, but in recent years they’ve reconnected to publish oral histories of the group and stage concerts.… We use Yod’s chants and snippets of wisdom on the new album to hopefully re-create the atmosphere the Family felt during their morning meditations.”

– Jay Allen Sanford