I haven't checked out new James Ferraro music for like twelve years or so. I missed this one when it came out on Christmas day back in 2021. They Don't Know Its Christmas is some sort of neo-classical electronic Christmas music jam. Nowhere near the mind altering deliriousness of peak Ferraro but it's pleasant enough while it's playing with all of its fake frosty ambient bells, fake choruses, wintry synths and faux holy minimalism. Lonesome Christmas melancholia...
What happened to this guy? For five or six years he was one of the greatest, most vital and unusual musicians on the planet, running the underground. In 2009 alone, he released sixteen innovative solo albums and they were all pretty good, over half of which were mind blowing epic ambient-drone-noise hypnagogic pop sound-collage extravaganzas.
James Ferraro - Star Digital Theatre: Movies For P.T. Cruisers [2009]
This is not normal music. At the start it might not sound like much but wait until you're about twelve minutes in then tell me how you're going when the bubbling off kilter psychedelic ambient stasis starts getting delirious. Twenty two minutes in and the frenetic tribal new age starts becoming unhinged. Thirty minutes in and the electronic arcade synth-waves are going barmy and zig zag-y... and that's just the first track...
Rose McDowall again. I don't know if this is a Christmas song but it sounds like one so... Happy Christmas.
It's pretty crazy that this recording was originally just put on a cdr which was given away at a gig because actually this is a pretty incredible far-out ambient folk trance with atmospheric pipes, strings and bells all twinkly and covered in snow. Then Rose's vocals are multi-tracked to the hilt becoming an overwhelming dreamy snowflake kaleidoscope choir.
Immigration policy that then decides to include the enemies of previous immigrant groups is a fucking dumb idea. We all knew this in the 20th century but somehow in my lifetime politicians and bureaucrats have allowed it to happen in the name of globalisation so we can all (pretend to) be one man. So here we are with a fucking imported holy war on our shores because we can't have discrimination. We can't even discriminate against people who want to kill us! That would be Hitlerian! This retarded suicidal empathy will be our demise and it's upon us...
There's some pretty fishy stuff surrounding this entire horrific event. Why the fuck is Australia being used for this foreign conflict...
Expand government powers in Australia in ...3...2...1.... Less freedom for all!
Goodbye civil liberties, Hello more restrictions, censorship and surveillance for you! It's for your own safety man.
Happy Christmas everybody.
Oh the song... this is Rose McDowall guesting with Coil, singing a ye olde British Christmas carol in a haunting folk style.
This week the new epic three hour Moon Wiring Club possible masterpiece Gruesome Shrewd/Grisly Exaggerated arrived. It's a double cd & cassette combo pack. Like a further extension of their already pretty unmoored 2023 LP Sepia Cat City, this is Moon Wiring Club at their most sprawling and stretched out. The off kilter samples and loops are deformed to new and unprecedented relentlessly elongated extremes here. Amongst the disorientating psychotropic eeriness sometimes there are even fizzy ecstatic bursts.
To paraphrase Mr Hodgson (the man behind MWC) himself this three hour magnum opus is a "corroded sludge-adelic ambient slurry"
It's all so psychedelic and insane... all backwards and forwards, chopped and slopped, and woozy and wonky... a sensory dislocation.
The signature haunted and hallucinatory disembodied voices are malformed and contorted to unforeseen levels...
Anti-logical prolonged loops of random vhs textured electro-acoustic dub experiments.... smeared-out tunes freed from the constraints of time so discombobulating and busted... you start to wonder are they still music at all?
Hop aboard the mind melting altered state of Gruesome Shrewd/Grisly Exaggerated the only sonic trip worth taking in 2025.
Many didn't but I loved Just For A Day in 91 and it stills sounds great today with the added extra of crushing bittersweet nostalgia.
Spanish Air is supreme goth-wave dream-gaze. You forget that Slowdive influenced Low but it's all here in this Simon and Garfunkel go goth epic.
Slowdive - Celia's Dream [1991]
Like a slowed down slacker attempt of the Cocteau Twins aesthetic. The waves of dream waves get satisfyingly rapturous when they go into overdrive at 3.24.
Slowdive - Primal [1991]
Epic.
Guitars, guitars, guitars!
...and cellos.
Sometimes Slowdive's early technique of having all the faders all the way up all the time worked.
A wild ride of atmospheres somewhere between brooding and blistering.
Haunting yet heavenly.
A relentless incandescent swirling maelstrom surging to the stars (not their shoes).
These first three tunes are absolute classic Slowdive unknown treasures from the Souvlaki sessions that ridiculously never got released. I mean it's unbelievable that after being cut from Souvlaki these songs didn't end up on an EP or a single in their own right or at as least b-sides to other singles, mental.
Guitarist Christian Saville wanted Hide Yer Eyes on Souvlaki and the fact that one of these bootleg versions was mixed by Ed Buller means it was in contention for inclusion. Neil Halstead ixnayed the track though on the grounds of it being too poppy and the quota of poppy pop tunes for the album had already been filled...
This stands alongside Alison and Machine Gun as one of their best pop moments.
Slowdive - I Saw The Sun [1993]
Another Ed Buller mix which means this was almost included on the final track-listing of Souvlaki but the band pulled it on the basis of it being too much like The Cocteau Twins which is funny because... well have you heard the records Slowdive made before Souvlaki? Anyway this is pure Slowdive to me. The group at their best.
Beautiful pastoral psychedelia that floats off in a hazy breeze.
Dreamy.
Slowdive - Silver Screen [1992]
We live in a crazy world where one of the greatest songs of the 90s never saw the light of day, only getting leaked onto the internet in the 00s. Fucking absurd.
Starts out with buoyant fluctuating guitars that morph into fantastic eternally swirling waves of elation combined with irresistible nostalgic vocal hooks. Pure bliss.
Slowdive - Joy [1992]
Ok these next three are definitely oddities probably only of interest for diehard fans. They are interesting though and display what music Slowdive were big fans of.
Joy is post-punk with a drum machine somewhere between Chameleons and New Order. I mean its called Joy for fuck's sake. This is pretty surprising if you've never heard it before. After brutal press coverage and ruthless record company rejections Slowdive lost their nerve and went back to their roots and musical influences looking for a an inspirational way out of the crisis they perceived they were in.
Slowdive - Stars That Shine [1992?]
I always thought Mercury Rev's psychedelic space rock freak-outs were influenced by Slowdive's more overwhelming blissed guitar journeys but here you've gotta think Neil had probably given Yerself Is Steam a bit of a listen and liked what he heard. I probably would have dropped this one from Souvlaki for being too much of a homage as consummate as it may be.
Slowdive - Bleed [1991?]
They never hid the fact that they loved The Cure and this one is an incredible tribute to their musical heroes. Still it's unmistakably Slowdive but that bass line might have perhaps attracted some attention from litigation lawyers for being a bit too close to The Cure's Fascination Street. While it may have been too derivative to put on any type of official record it's a whole lotta fun.
