This weeks AE podcast is one long mix (divided into convenient hour long sets)  covering music from some of Sweden’s greatest psychedelic music makers, all not coincidentally appearing to varying degree, in three seminal outfits spanning from the mid 60’s to the early 70’s.

Starting around 1966 “Parson Sound” came out on the scene – easily the heaviest of the three, the group played huge, revolving walls of sound – thundering drum patterns, shreiking electric violins and guitars, ghostly moans and super blown production. Tracks would shamble in and after 10 minutes of building tension, crumble away.

allmusic described their one (compiled from various sessions 30 years later…) album as “mind-bending music that draws on the Velvet Underground, West Coast psychedelic bands, and Terry Riley and 1960’s minimalism, as filtered through a Krautrock-like angst and with some Swedish folk influences thrown in.”

Next followed (international) Harvester – The lineup remained mostly the same but this time they decided to abandon some of the more alienating elements of Parson sound and focus more on swedish folk roots and a more progressive psychedelic sound, described by someone in the know as “mastodon waltz-drone / acid soaked free jam psychedelia.” pretty apt – very stoned, very hippy – but so very heavy.

After a few years of this arangment the band reformed into their most successful arangment as “Trad Gras Och Stenar” translating to “Trees Grass and Stones”. Stripping back some of the heaviness and distortion Trad Gras opted instead for a more measured sound drawing more from the ongoing west coast psychedelic sound including the extended guitar interplay that bands like the Grateful Dead were popularizing. Though the volume has been dialed down to just under 10, the band still remained true to their vision of anarchic music making, playing at illegal festivals, staging shows at protests and writing their music to incorporate crowd participation.

SET 1: Harvester – Nar Lingonen Mognar // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Dansa Jord // Harvester – Och solen Gar Upp // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Rochtrall // Harvester – Kristallen Den Fina // Harvester – Hemat // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Sommarlaten (previously unreleased extended version) // Parson Sound – Tio Minuter // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Kangbron

SET2: Trad Gras Och Stenar – Halsa Ulla // Parson Sound – India (slight return) // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Chrisboogie // Trad Gras Och Stenar – Drammen export – Sommarlaten // Parson Sound – One Quiet Afternoon (in the king’s Court) // Harvester – Nepal Boogie

COMMENT HERE

 

 Aether Everywhere #15 Set #1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Aether Everywhere #15 Set #2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For this week’s edition of Aether Everywhere, we played Grm: Concert Imaginaire, an album featuring some of the very first musique concrete recordings from the late ’40s through ’50s.  Probably the most well known of the artists is Pierre Schaeffer, who is considered a pioneer of the musique concrete genre.  Listening to these amazing and sometimes jarring recordings, it’s easy to detect the marked influence they’ve had on the various strains of electronica, right up through to the present day.  To illustrate this, we rounded out the second hour of the show with a mix of songs by Christian Fennesz and Tim Hecker, two juggernauts of the current experimental electronica scene.

Our decision to feature Fennesz and Hecker was calculated, as Tanner and I had the pleasure of watching the two perform back-to-back in a tiny Montreal theater during last weekend’s Mutek Festival.  If you’d like to hear a thorough run-down of our experience, you can check out the thread in the “general” branch of the discussion section.  Needless to say, it did not disappoint, and we left the venue with our jaws on the floor.  This is stating the obvious, but a big part of what makes these two artists so special is their ability to meld the harsher elements of musique concrete with some of the most awe-inspiring melodies you’ll hear in any genre.  Enjoy the download of this set–it’s equally suited for sunny afternoons and early morning comedowns…well, most of it anyway.   For those of you who are new to these artists, we strongly advise you to check out Fennesz’s Endless Summer (universally regarded as a ground-breaking masterpiece) and Venice, and Tim Hecker’s Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do it Again and Harmony in Ultraviolet.  Don’t expect all of it to click on first listen, but trust us–once you put in the time and locate the buried melodies, you won’t be listening to much else for the rest of the summer…

Hecker – Incurably Optimistic! // Fennesz – Caecilia // Fennesz – Instrument 4 // Hecker – Balkanize You // Fennesz – Circassian // Fennesz – Happy Audio // Fennesz A Year in a Minute // Hecker – Chimeras // Hecker – 7000 Miles // Fennesz – Laguna // Hecker – Whitecaps of White Noise I & II // Hecker – Blood Rainbow

DISCUSS IT HERE

 

 Aether Everywhere #14: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

i went and saw ornette coleman & band saturday night at the flynn theatre, one of the most exciting groups brought to town in years by the discover jazz fest, in my opinion. i had been excited for this show ever since i first heard the rumors, at least six months ago or so. ornette with three bassists and a drummer, his own son denardo who has been playing with the group on and off since he was 10, forty some odd years. wow.

i got to the show fashionably late and was surprised to see the band already playing. i guess there was no opener. i heard that they’d approached a local group to open, but the money was so low they passed. i also heard they payed ornette an obscene amount of money to play. if only it was worth it!

the first thing that struck me was how strong ornettes sax playing is. this man is approaching 80 and he can still blow. i was pleasantly surprised by that. the second thing that i noticed is that there were two bassists not three, one of the guys was missing. i dont know if they explained why before i got there or not. one electric one upright, the electric guy playing more like lead guitar type stuff with the upright holding it all together. not the best combination. why not just have a guitarist?

denardo coleman, like i said earlier, has been playing with his father since the late 1960’s. you’d think after all this time they would have some chemistry together. not at all as far as i could tell. he went back and forth from playing kinda rock like beats to sloppy free jazz flights. even though i didn’t really like the double bass sound they were both, like ornette, talented top shelf players, sadly their musicianship was overpowered by Denardo’s awkward drumming.

i was fairly disappointed by the whole show and after 45 minutes or so decided it was time to go.

Discuss it!

before i go i would like to add that these factors might have contributed to my blase feelings about the night:

1. i had been up since 4:30 in the morning.

2. i spent all afternoon and evening in the blazing hot sun drinking and helping to plant a garden.

3. there was so much going on downtown saturday night i was anxious to get the hell out of the flynn.