Timeless one hit wonder here in Australia and still occasionally heard on golden oldies radio. The guitar in this is just divine here as is the entire arrangement on this sweet luxurious soft-rock jam.
[Added Entry]
Old Grey Whistle Test 26/3/76
Me old mate Retina Soup recommends this version in the comments and he's right as these guys are totally peaking here in a laid back, funky in the pocket manner. Masterful.
That moment when you hear a song clearly and properly for the first time in your life despite it having been in your life for over forty years. An enticing glimpse into the promise of adult life. You didn't know what it meant but you knew there was something seductive and glamorous awaiting. Lusty romantic desires waiting to be fulfilled.
The connoisseur's choice for best guitar cd of 1992. That's me and me old mate Tony but somebody at Melody Maker liked it too and somebody at 3PBS-FM Melbourne and I guess it got a cd release in Australia and me old mate Dan from Grafton liked it too... but you know I guess it wasn't a sleeper hit like Slanted And Enchanted or Spiderland or a guaranteed blockbuster like Copper Blue or Automatic For The People or have a cult-y groundswell status like PJ Harvey, Screaming Trees or Red House Painters... yet it's surely the coolest guitar record of the early 90s.
David Freel was the most detached deadpan fella out there. He wasn't doin no cheese or overtly emotional crap, nah his gloomy yet understated post-154 neo-psych jams were stoic, cryptic and cool. I hazard a guess that this is the exact reason Well? isn't a popular record and only an acquired taste, despite having swinging drum hooks galore and melodically mysterious guitar lines to die for.
The bittersweet noir of Swell's Well? is even better than I remember.
Moody.
The hit single! not...(In a perfect world.....)
There's magic on this when that bendy cosmic guitar line and those drums do that hypnotic push/pull thing... glorious.
An impeccably considered simmering jam of the highest order where the menace and tension are tightly controlled, restraint before histrionics.
Throwing out their most angular shapes and apprehensive dialogue.
Reminds of when sex was all important and serious and necessary. When too much sex still wasn't enough. That's a great vibe to live by. Don't let the doctors ever fuck with your libido ie. Don't go on antidepressants ever! They are a fucking gip and in fact keep you depressed, dependant, take your life-force away, make you violent and totally fuck with you your brain and body functions. You think Greg Dulli would have let anyone interfere with his manly functions? No fucking way! You need to fight depressive episodes without pharma and their gaslighting making you think you need them. I don't. I'm so embarrassed that I allowed big pharma to rule my life for so long. Don't let them trans you or let you think obesity is ok or ... There are healthy alternatives and their agenda of keeping you unwell for life so they may suck your financial blood continuously is fucking criminal and a reckoning is coming.
Sometimes you just gotta forget that Twitter ever happened and remember when great tunes were made by people whose opinions you never needed to know. This is so great 32 years later! It's easy to forget what a great band SY were. Twitter fucked up a lot of things. So many artists have done the wrong thing by going on twitter and saying that they are better than you and that their opinion is the correct one. We as a society have been pushed to the limit with the cultural revolution nudging politics. Mark Fisher could be an insufferable Marx-ist but even he knew (as he wrote in one of his final essays) that identity nonsense, cancel culture and censorship was backwards unenlightened dark ages stuff.
Oh boy I forgot about this epic! The last great grunge record. This slacker jam will take you by surprise as it goes into this amazing insistent mode where it just becomes unstoppably anthemic in the most contagiously affecting manner.
You might think "oh this is nerdy third rate slacker grunge" but Carry The Zero is undeniably sensational.
I've finally singled out this track from the substack digital album dump Anonymous Productions from last year. This is fucking great vintage AP. It's got all the new wave, 70s radio rock, neo-psych-glam, post-punk indie vibes he's famous for. Except now he's infamous for playing a part in the worst day in American political history by instigating a coup at the capitol with Ray Epps... oh wait he was just photographed in a DC hotel room on insurrection day... still I mean he's a deplorable so why isn't he locked up? I mean we need to consider our safety.
Anyway is that the ghost of Mark E Smith on backing vocals with Mercury Rev's Grasshopper wailing away on his cosmic guitar?
*Actually a quick Brave search reveals AP to have contributed to a few tunes on Sean Ryder's most recent solo record Visits From Future Technology from 2021.Ariel co-wrote three of the tracks and did guitar, bass, keyboards, background vocals and beatboxing. As far as I can tell these collaborations were recorded ten years prior to the release of this LP.
I'm sure I have this confusion every time I go back and listen to early Black Dog records: Hang on wasn't this Origin Unknown or one of Andy C's tunes? Oh what? Did he sample it though? I'm sure my first encounter with these sounds was on a hardcore tune maybe from 92 or maybe a darkside or jungle track a year or two later...something on Reinforced or Moving Shadow maybe... blah blah blah...
Then sure enough you figure out that big chunks of Black Dog's Virtual are sampled on DJ Crystl's King Of The Beats (1994) which was on Moving Shadow, Young Head's The Way I See Things (1992) on Reinforced, DJ Junk's Monsters & Demons (1993), Jo's Imagine The Future (1993), DJ Red Alert & Mike Slammer's Heavy Duty (1992) etc. Virtual's entire vibe and atmosphere is all over these tunes which means it was massively ubiquitous and influential for the fist half of the 90s.
It doesn't need to have influenced every second hardcore IDM darkside junglist to be a great tune on its own though.
Listening to stuff like this through your computer or phone just doesn't do it justice. Hearing a tune such as Merck through a bangin' club PA is a mystic experience. So you gotta pump this through yo headphones or sound system proper and it'll be sweet! The intangible tone of 90s ambient techno records is like no other. This mysterious wistful yearning, a sort of cosmic nostalgia blissfully connecting our eternal space-dust with each other, our ancestral heritage, the earth and the stars. Thank-you Black Dog Productions!
It's unbelievable just how many great electronica cds came out of the UK in the 90s. So it's easy for a track like Pot Noodle to get lost but it's well worth your attention. Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards Of Canada get all the kudos for 90s British tech by the now people but innovative originators Black Dog were also exceptional. Not only that they're essential. While the early Black Dog EPs get all the praise and credit the Spanners cd released five years into their career is a lost treasure in their catalogue.
This here track could almost be a blueprint for a tune from Boarrds Of Canada's Campfire Headcase or something off Pluramon's Pick Up Canyon album with its gentle guitar, tranquil ambience and playful minute detail. Black Dog's tones were just more pure than everybody else's. I don't know how they did it but they were just impeccable and serene and understated yet insidious and emotional. Pot Noodle's nimble breaks are otherworldly begging the question why do i ever leave such luxurious sonic zones? It must have been incredibly flattering for this trio to have been so vastly influential. Electronic acts were releasing Black Dog facsimiles while Black Dog were still issuing their own peak material.
I'm really not up with release schedules in the reissue/archive world anymore but I came across this terrific bit of Drone-y ambience the other day. It was released last year by Black Truffle. Tonic 19/01/2001 is an exceptional ever evolving myriad of tones and drones. A trio of premier drone-ologists create some top shelf whirring vibrations to subtly mesmerize your mind... perhaps at a higher volume it might overwhelm your mind.
I mean as far as 7 inch moments go the electric whip-crack crazy of Save My Soul is as good as it gets innit.
It's all about that bass, those crisp-a-tonic snare hits and the pent up tension of it all. The push and pull of the quiet-loud dynamics. The ominousness and the pandemonium.
