The Body Lovers - Number One Of Three

The Body Lovers - Number One Of Three (1998)

So the last post was 2023's The Beggar Lover (Three) from Swans and it is apparently the last piece in the trilogy which started here twenty five years ago with the first Body Lovers album. The Body Lovers were Michael Gira's first post Swans project. This was recorded not long after their 90s break up and it was an auspicious debut cd. When we first got to hear this, it made the demise of Swans seem not so bad. If we were going to get incredible recordings like this who needed the Swans moniker anymore. 

This is the the first part of the trilogy. A beautiful yet brutal expansive epic instrumental jam encompassing an infinite plethora of cosmic thrum. Check out some of the underground travellers contributing to this eternal monolithic mother of "psycho-ambient"* James Plotkin, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Larry Mullins, Mika Vaino, Martin Bisi, Helge Sten etc. Now lots of all star recordings end up with too many cooks spoiling the musical broth but not here. I think my favourite contribution here is by Ultra Vivid Scene's Kurt Ralske who plays a mesmerising flugelhorn for a glorious ten minutes from the 17:10 mark. He creates an entirely eerie stillness of the most wintry variety. 

Number One Of Three is a whirring rumble of infinite proportions and is indeed one of the great recording of the 90s. I can't remember if it was held in high esteem like say Techno Animal's Re-Entry or Talk Talk's Laughing Stock or Deathprod's 90s trilogy or early Pan Sonic but it deserves to be. It was disappointing that The Body Lovers/Body Haters project only went on to record one more cd before Gira started the less inspired Angels Of Light (I gotta say I stopped buying their cds after the first couple, maybe I need to go back...) 

*Psycho-ambient is a nifty term Michael Gira created to describe Number One Of Three.

**Swans sleuths have pointed me in the direction of the bonus cd accompanying the deluxe edition of 2010's My Father Will Guide Me... cd for the location of part two of the trilogy. It's a 46 minute track called Look At Me Go. 

Swans - The Beggar Lover (Three)

Swans - The Beggar Lover (Three) (2023)

It was extraordinary that Swans released the best LP of 2012 because you know they'd been around forever and even broken up. Recalibrated bands never really work cf Pixies: Nobody cares about their new music. Thee Seer (2012) however was glorious and quite possibly their best work. This never happens.

So it is excellent to hear this new 44 minute epic because it is actually comparable to the title track to The Seer as well as The Body Lovers/Body Haters project. There are no classic era Swans members left like Mosimann, Jarboe or Westberg. I love my 80s & 90s Swans but somehow I can just accept this 2023 band without many qualms. I guess in my head it is the 21st century Swans: A separate entity where the boundaries of Soundtracks For The Blind era, The Body Lovers, Angels Of Light and solo Gira dissipate then intermingle...anyway blah blah...I was not expecting anything from the second resurrection of Swans to be this monumental, so The Beggar Lover (Three) is like Christmas. 

A Michael Gira megamix of cosmic proportions. Expansive to infinity...

All hail the third coming!

Talk Talk - Life's What You Make It

Talk Talk - Life's What You Make It (1986)

The song that sounds just as good today as the first time you heard it back in the 80s when you were a teenager. 

No amount of inspirational self actualisation anthems can jolt me out of society's dysphoric present though. 

Talk Talk - Such A Shame

Talk Talk - Such A Shame (1984)

This went to number one in Italy and Switzerland. I do find it interesting when songs are way more successful in certain territories. I mean this didn't even crack the Australian top 100 and only reached number 49 at home in the UK, yet it went to number two in Germany and Austria. What about this tune made it appeal to Europeans so much? Or was it just marketed better in those regions?

Anyway what a great sense of dynamics they had along with classic tunefulness. The sound sometimes gets wild like it could get totally out of control but it is tightly conducted to an exquisite degree. 

Some say they couldn't see their later career aesthetics coming but come on you can hear they are absolutely on a different sonic plain to any mid 80s pop band right here. 

Jackson Browne - Somebody's Baby

Jackson Browne - Somebody's Baby (1982)

This just tears me apart. All these conflicting emotions within this song mixed with nostalgia for a time when music like this was on the radio and the dysphoria of 2023 coalesce for a perfect storm of intense poignancy. I honestly couldn't tell ya if Browne had any other decent songs but who cares, it this one that matters. 

The demented elated loneliness of being so in love but knowing your relationship is a doomed slow burning ticking time bomb, the heart wrenching jealousy of imagining the one you love fucking somebody else, the empty bliss of one night stands and all that shit comes rushing back upon hearing this. 

Then there's that whole vibe of the song being on the radio when you were eleven. So you could only imagine what this song's sentiments were all about but you felt them through your preteen heart anyhow. And flashing back to that feeling as an old bastard who ended up going through all those emotions, it's a complex array of feelings. All the feels.

Talk Talk - It's My Life

Talk Talk - It's My Life (1984)

Because it's like the greatest 80s tune: An undeniable timeless anthem. 

We need more songs like this in our lives to remind us that, yes this is our life and it doesn't belong to the fucking retarded government, the insane cultural revolution people who run everything, the fucking hideous mega corporations, the mental patient climate alarmists, big tech, big pharma, the UN, the WHO and all these unelected fucks trying to social engineer everything. 

Australia is done. They have forgotten what pluralism means and there must only be one viewpoint à la Stalin & Mao style otherwise you are demonised as an extremist.

I'm not changing any of my fucking words. I'm not participating in the daft cultural revolution. Fuck identity politics. Fuck the victimhood olympics of the mental intersectional oppression hierarchy. Fuck cheerleading endless war. Fuck the idiots who think male-inclusive lesbianism can be a thing. Fuck the censorship industrial complex. Fuck the racial division of Australia's voice to parliament. Fuck Kieran Perkins. It's all nonsense! 

Anyway thank you Mark Hollis for your song that strikes me right in the heart of my human-ness. A lot of us wish it was still 1984 instead of Nineteen Eighty Four.

Is the best quality in a pop song defiance? 

Mortiis - Født til å herske

Mortiis - Født til å herske (1994)

Old school Norwegian ambient black metal that's now categorised as dungeon synth. Had to post this as it's an example of what a masterpiece in the genre is. Creepy organs, even creepier liturgical chanting and whooshes of exquisite darkness. Supreme sombre tone throughout. 

Hole Dweller - Flies The Coop

Hole Dweller - Flies The Coop (2019)

This is the sorta sound that I was expecting from the previous post's Gnometopia by Eldergleam. Even though this album has been termed "Comfy Synth" it's still pretty much "Dungeon Synth" ie. it isn't dissimilar to Burzum's ambient tracks or early Mortiis. Flies The Coop would have been called black metal or dark ambient back in the day. In the last fifteen years however many of these recordings dating back to the early 90s have been retro-actively categorised as Dungeon Synth. Then in the last five years a few current divergent micro-genres have emerged from that including "Winter Synth", "Dino Synth" and "Comfy Synth". The type of music in these new categories is pretty self explanatory and perhaps a bit stupid.

In the comments of this Hole Dweller video I notice a lot of nerdy references to gaming, tech, hobbits, pipeweed etc. but it's just good synth tunes to me. Like church organs emanating from a Norwegian woods, these pastoral synth jams sometimes become haunting and at other stages quite anthemic. 

Eldergleam - Gnometopia

Eldergleam - Gnometopia (2023)

So I came across this somewhere on the interwebs and thought well thats the best album cover ever. Hoping it was gonna be some kind of cute black metal crossed with something like Tubular Bells or at least some classic old school dungeon synth. That wasn't to be. It's eleven minutes of simple wobbly synth ambience which is lovely enough while it's playing. Apparently this is part of the recent "Comfy Synth" genre which is actually related to "Dungeon Synth" which was a 90s black metal micro-genre. Anyway there is a childlike innocence here to match the cover, perhaps just not matching what the band logo promised. I guess it has a retro science/kids telly vibe which in turn makes it a somewhat distant cousin to "Haunty-logic" music. I mean this is much closer sonically to Paddy Kingsland than say Depressive Silence.

The New Breeds - Girl In Love

New Breeds - Girl In Love (1966)

This group didn't even release a single in the 60s. The New Breeds only had one recording Girl In Love which appeared on a 1966 compilation album that was never commercially released. Hillside Album No. 1 was a promotional sampler for a bunch of Columbus Ohio bands that was used to try and get gigs. Then this tune wasn't rediscovered until it appeared in 1998 on the brilliant Teenage Shutdown Volume 6: I'm Down Today compilation. 

Hearing something like this you might assume half the 80s Flying Nun roster, The Blue Orchids, The Moles or The Beta Band were big fans but Girl In Love wasn't in wide circulation until 1999 long after The Moles Tendrils & Paracetamol or Beta Band's The Three EPs had been released. 

A moody garage classic: The rolling jangles, atmospheric organ and to die for enthusiastic gloomy harmonies all add to the el-cheapo lo-fi bargain basement Beach Boys charm of this record.

One of the best 60s tunes you never heard...unless of course you have.