25th Anniversary F/i-Boy Dirt Cart Split

There’s a 25th Anniversary F/i-Boy Dirt Car split reissue coming down the pike…F/i’s Looking for my Head has been revisited with Cary Grace providing some new vocal rants. Vinyl should be out in 2012, which I’m told is right around the corner.

Looking for My Head :: F/i w/ Cary Grace :: F/i-Boy Dirt Car Split Reissue (2012, F/i-Boy Dirt Car)

New Breakfast Snob: Into the Ether

The New Breakfast Snob, Saturdays 1-3 p.m. on WRIR, is beginning to send the show into the ether … you can find the Snob’s first podcasts at radio4all.net.

Allan is one of the fine folks at WRIR who got me up and running and set the ship sailing … I wouldn’t have jumped into the fray myself without his help and encouragement. Not content with being a radio Sensei, Allan is also our ‘west-across-the-pond” half of the the transcontinental and trans-universal outfit Monday Machines with Cary Grace {U.K. … who also began podcasting … Airtight Garage}. He’s a busy man … spinning it and making it.

:: New Breakfast Snob; WRIR lp 97.3 FM, Richmond, VA, wrir.org

:: I’ll be stepping into the Snob’s mighty shoes 9/18 proving once again that I don’t always dissolve in sunlight

Monday Machines :: postscript

I already waxed about the debut single from Monday Machines, Ruined Morning, earlier when it dropped into my hands {review}. Now that I’ve got the whole thing {gorgeous package and all} in my grubby hands, I thought I’d flesh that out a bit more, since the album itself fleshes out the sweets hinted at in Ruined Morning.

Monday Machines is still very much of Cary Grace; it stands neck and neck with the other platters I have in rotation {Projections, Perpetual Motion, Vanishing single, Green Carrot Jam}. But there’s something else in the mix … that would be Allan Coberly, host of the New Breakfast Snob on WRIR, guitarist, sensei and atmospherist. Part of what I really loved about Perpetual Motion when Allan turned me onto it was this sort of smoky, bubbling slow-burn throughout the disc. It’s hazy, spacey, _____________ {insert own word here} … all that good stuff to take your ears someplace with your head. There are definite embers in it. Monday Machines has that, too. More in the forefront this time around though are the atmospherics pulled out of the ether by Allan. That’s not to say Allan is noodling away on Pluto without a care in the world as he gets light-headed. Not at all. His contributions, guitar and vocals, have to have a place to land. And Cary’s songs have the landing lights on. It all meshes wonderfully to add a whole new dimension to Cary {that said, this is out as Monday Machines, not strictly Cary Grace}, and to bring out flourishes and traits that were not ignored on other discs, just not the main focus.

It’s decidedly headier and obviously shooting to have it’s feet a few inches further off the ground than before. It’s still what you expect, and want, from Cary: you can call it prog, prog-folk, singer-songwriter space-rock, blah blah blah blah … but this time around, even more than before with Cary, it exists on the end of the spectrum with bands who thrive on their open spaces and rolling explorations: check out Released and Down in the Zero. {The coda to Down in the Zero actually brings the whole album full circle calling to mind the gentler sonic adornments that kicked off Ruined Morning} The meat of those two songs stretch out and let those sonic washes and details really build up. Some more overtly psych-pop leanings like Spinning Plates really give the disc dimension.

Where as Perpetual Motion was smoky, Monday Machines is a touch darker, even sinister. It is by no means depressing downer music, but compared to some of Cary’s other work, there’s a heavier side to it, through-a-darker-looking-glass feel. Some times that’s lyrically like Down in the Zero, with Allan’s “spoken” vocals delivery. Some times its those things coupled with the longer, drawn out overlays of pure sound, and instruments {hey, space is cold and unforgiving … } you can find in Narcissus and hefty slices of Alive.

Cary’s keyboards are really brought to the forefront and they work tremendously. The keyboards certainly bring to mind a certain era of space and psych-rock. Allan and Cary aren’t hiding their influences, nor are they aping anybody, so the keyboards make sense … perfect sense. But I’m at a loss why things like this are labeled “retro” or “throwback.” A Hammond sounds like a Hammond … because it is one. Or a Moog because it’s a Moog. I’m not sure how long the guitar as been around, or the drums, but, fundamentally, they’ve been pretty stable. I own an acoustic guitar, and an electric. They’re only a few years old. But they both sound like guitars of yore, when somebody who knows what the Hell they are doing picks them up. Are they retro because they carry on the mission of all the gitboxes that came before them?

I thought that was called tradition …

All the little extra details and slight re-directions on Monday Machines jell seamlessly. They all work together extremely well, pushing Cary’s catalogue comfortably, and successfully, into some new territory. And I’ll hazard an outsider’s guess that is due in large part to a successful collaboration between not only Allan and Cary, but their co-horts and co-pilots Andy Budge and David Payne. I don’t think you can introduce a new spice like Allan into the mix and produce something that works if there wasn’t a free back-and-forth going on. Even if it is across the Atlantic.

Monday Machines isn’t a re-invention of Cary Grace. We don’t need that. A re-introduction to some things hinted at in earlier work might be more appropriate. Call it what you want. It works. Allan, Cary, Andy and David work. Their cogs and gears all mesh. Their name could be more of an ethic for them, rather than a quick encapsulation of their music. They may call themselves a machine, and from out here they sound like they work like a well-oiled one, but the music they make sure doesn’t sound like one.

Better Than the Check Being in the Mail

I’ve been long overdue in waxing poetic about the new Monday Machines debut, but in my usual selfish fashion, I was waiting to get the whole shebang into my grubby hands. And I will wax … once the eyes catch up with the ears.

And it’s worth the wait … the pix don’t do the package justice … like I’ve mentioned before with other Cary Grace projects, you can’t help but care yourself when you get a package like this that just exudes “care” from the artist(s).

And Allan Coberly {Monday Machines co-conspirator, WRIR’s New Breakfast Snob and station mentor} hand-delivered my copy.

I can’t promise hand-delivery on your planet or in your zip code, but there are perks to being a responsible fan … and it doesn’t matter how it gets there {and Monday Machines get there}, because this one knows exactly where it’s going.

More to come … I’m sure …

> Read and hear more

Perpetual Motion Comes ‘Round Again

Cary Grace‘s Perpetual Motion is in it’s second run, so grab one while they’re fresh.

Get the skinny, and disc, here. It’s a great record, in a great, lovingly made package …

“Numbered SECOND EDITION of 50 copies.

Two black LP-look-alike CDs, in inner mini record sleeves, packed in a hand-made black card outer sleeve. Original linocut artwork is printed in metallic silver.

As the printing is done entirely by hand, no two prints are exactly alike, making each sleeve a unique work of art … “

>Read more

While you’re at it, don’t forget to head on over to Cary’s other project, Monday Machines to get the lowdown, and check out the new single, Ruined Morning.

Graced with a Free Song

Cary Grace‘s superfine platter Perpetual Motion, one of the great ones to fall into my hands this past year, has sold out it’s first run. While we’re holding on for the second edition, you can get a free taste with the track The Scarab, up for grabs gratis here … a click well spent.

While you’re there, check her other project, Monday Machines, for another free taster, Ruined Morning.

Monday Machines See the Light of Day

Monday Machines :: Ruined Morning

Allan {Monday Machines/guitar} occupies the same stomping grounds as me and, as my planets would have it, has become a friend, as well as a mentor at WRIR where he spins some wonderful things on Saturdays {The New Breakfast Snob, 1-3 p.m. … check it … Virginia time …}. I’ve been privy to entrance into the airlock with Allan where he’s not only let me spin some tunes myself, but has turned me on to some great music, some I don’t know and some I’ve always wanted to explore with a bit of guidance. Some I might never have considered. A rare case on this globe of just bumping into someone with a similar wavelength and hitting it off. Simple, when nothing else is. Allan in turn, turned me on to Cary Grace with her stellar release Perpetual Motion.

A fellow traveller and some new music. I would have been happy with that right there. It doesn’t really take much.

Then they started working together. Now, I have nothing to do with this, but I have seen it go from talk back and forth, to mutual admiration, to collaboration. So, being perched on their timeline, I’ve been waiting patiently to hear what comes from this cross-pond experiment. I’m just peaking behind the curtain, but from the cat-bird seat, I know all parties have their hearts in the right places and eyes forward.

Ruined Morning is very much Cary Grace. And, knowing Allan, it’s very much Allan. You can read about the impetus for the song yourself, but just coming to it without that back-story won’t leave you out in the cold. It’s as inviting and open as any of Cary Grace’s other work. It pushes some of the more pastoral/folk-tinged aspects of her work to the forefront with Allan’s respect for more esoteric “singer/songwriters”, and considering the subject matter and where the song came from, it’s no bulldozer din {though I’ll hazard an educated guess neither party is opposed to din}. It’s not feather-light wispy noodling either. It’s a very comfortable mesh … Allan, Cary and Co. are obviously very much at ease working together and it comes across sonically: just like the construction groans outside Allan’s window seamlessly ground to this collaboration. It fits. And it works.

Allan takes the grunts of modern progress and, with his “guitar atmospherics,” turns them into the kind of sonic details that, when used with a discerning hand, don’t overwhelm a song and steal its focus. It’s a very distilled approach. It’s not a case of using it a lot, or not enough, or sparingly, or flippantly, it’s how you use it. Not too hot, not too cold … just right, Mama Bear. Just because it treads on the ground of “head music” or something spacey doesn’t mean it has to overwhelm you with its details to the point that you’re listening to nothing but a sonic wash {though there is absolutely nothing wrong with that … either}. Listen to that dreaded sound of a land-mover beeping as it backs up, and probably over someone, in the intro as it blends into, and becomes, the music. It folds in on itself, pistons quietly crunching in sync, without giving up their respective identities. Just like, I imagine, Cary and Allan do when operating their machinery.

It’s always my intention to agree to disagree. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? This may not be your cup of tea, and that’s just fine. But anyone can listen to something, look at something, eat something, and walk away with wildly disparate, and valid, takes. What you can’t disagree on, hopefully, is that when something is made with the right intentions, with a love and respect of the process, you can hear it, see it, feel it and taste it. Since we’re talking music, I could make a list {I won’t, don’t fear} of bands I don’t like that I at least respect for doing what they do and doing it well. And I get that from Monday Machines: they set out to do something and do it well. That sounds simple, but I can only imagine, not being a musician, that when you factor in personalities, individual aesthetics, influences, motivation and intention, not to mention a “carrier pigeon” relationship across the sea, that that’s a very, very heady thing. Call it God { _________  insert yer own here} in the details or the deceptiveness of simplicity, but when things work together well, you notice, and have to at least acknowledge it.

Monday Machines took the creaks of construction and the modern world, geographic dislocation, conflicting time zones and all the other endless obstacles to interaction and got them all to play nice together. No small feat.

I for one would have let all that ruin my morning, if not my whole curmudgeonly day. Monday Machines, thankfully, didn’t.

David Max :: Simple Psychedelic Pleasures

I love the Tadpoles, a quintessential American psych band, so chances are I was going to be all over David Max‘s solo platter when I heard about it. And I am. I don’t want to go on and on with endless comparisons with his work with the Tadpoles because much of that is obvious. Let me just say that maybe it’s sort of another tentacle from the body of the Tadpoles; sprung from it, indebted to it, but operating with a mind of its own.

And name-checking all of David’s influences, though tempting and valuable, seems obvious as well. I can hear all kinds of things swimming in this water, upstream, downstream, spawning. But, like I mentioned when I was turned onto Cary Grace towards the end of last year {and this disc does, for me, make a nice set of bookends with Ms. Grace’s Perpetual Motion … probably for reasons only clear to me … but you can ask …}, there’s no shameless aping or imitating. I could easily go through various tracks and say that sounds like Barrett, that sounds like 13 Floor Elevators, etc … but that doesn’t say much in this case. For me, as I listen to SPP, names like those pop into my head, but that’s only because they came first, I heard them first. I can strum a chord or two, and I bet if I sat down and really focused and saturated myself endlessly with, say, Syd, I could figure out something to play that people would say, “Hey, that sounds just like Syd!” But artists like Max, and Grace, don’t imitate in the name of flattery or irony or sarcasm or street cred … Max is far more in tune with those artists’ way of thinking, than he is with recreating their structures. This comes through as well in his covers of Syd and Nick Cave; sure, I know the songs. I recognize them. By forsaking note by note rebuilding, Max turns the tunes into his own and at the same time pays very loving respect to the songs, and the songwriters. Certain snippets and tracks make me think of other stuff, certainly, but not because he’s quoting a snatch from here or there, or trying to recreate a certain sound. If he was simply imitating and rehashing, it would all be a very backwards looking excercise. But by tuning into his touchstones’ paradigms and ways of thinking, Max is looking forward and building on what came before him. Psych, neo-psych, psych-pop {Everyone is Alien is a pop gem if ever there was one} has been around long enough “formally” that we’re a generation or two down the pike. It has its own continuum {sort of like that free-thinking tentacle mentioned above} that Max is a part of. He’s a master of the idiom.

In a nutshell, it’s traditional.

Dreamy, loose stretches of tracks like Three Moons in the Sky or The History of Man weave seamlessly together with buzzy, often slow burning, rocking tunes like The Deep End and the jauntier Everyone is Alien. There’s an organic ebb and flow making it very clear that Max has a firm grip on said tradition, but doesn’t shy away from taking the captain’s helm and taking it someplace fresh, and personal .. how else to account for the bouncy sparkling Dreamtime as it conjures up images of very happy dancing rubber-bands or some scalloping, ululating  treatments that point to some of the Elevators’ jug-band blowing details. That ebb and flow washes up on many kinds of beaches … I opted in for the obvious influences for simplicity’s sake and, well, the record itself has ‘psychedelic’ in the title, but you can hear many, many more ingredients being stirred in the pot. Max has created a very singular voice, but not a dogmatic or exclusionary one.

Hands down, this is one of the best things to fall into my claws this year, or any year. It’s a fantastic spin that … spins and orbits around itself and all the other planets that make up the system that it calls home. It’s its own, but part of that continuum and tradition; I guess like, on a smaller micro scale, how SPP is part of the Tadpoles own tradition and history. It’s not the Tadpoles, but it thinks like they did. And I for one and am ecstatic that it does … it’s a great way of thinking that just happens to feed the head as much as the ears. It’s up to you when you put it on to decide who is hungrier, the ears or the head. Either way, there’s plenty for both and enough for endless pleasures. I’ve only had it a short time, but I know I’ll be going back in over and over again … when someone sets up a house this complete and well stocked, it’s my job to visit as much as I can.

For all my long-windedness, it’s really very simple; get it.

Vanishing … It’s Not Just the Point, It’s the Destination

I know I’ve been on a highly justified raving for Cary Grace and “Perpetual Motion,” and I had to go back for more.

“Projections” is in heavy rotation after breaking the piggy bank again, and her single “Vanishing” is in constant rotation. What a great track … intergalactic chrome for sure.

You can check it here, and stream her other tunes. Well worth your time, well worth your dollar.

Cary Grace—Perpetual Motion

Just got my copy of Cary Grace’s “Perpetual Motion.” What a gem from across the pond, by way of the colonies. Greats disc(s), great little package; Ms. Grace obviously is in it for all the right reasons.

I get lost pigeonholing stuff to achieve some sort of shorthand, so I’m loathe to throw around words like “prog” and “art-rock” (isn’t it all art? In one way …) if only for the baggage those terms carry. Let’s just say spacey.

There’s a lot going on in here. I can here a lot of influences and touchstones, but not once does it sound like aping another band, or going into it sarcastically, or with that dreaded hipster irony. I can hear some Floyd in here, circa ‘Animals’ maybe. Especially in some of the production and how things are layered. I can pick up Hawkwind-like flourishes floating around, especially in some of the accents; the beeps and bloops and blips and washes remind me of how Hawkwind would use them (when they did so judiciously), the amount of them (again, see “judiciously”). But the execution is more like small doses of Can or some other Krautrock allies; more of a color, more of a wash. And the use of the violin points to the influences as well; Gong, Hawkwind again, Crimson … it may not sound LIKE them, but it breathes much of the same air (when there is air out in space). It’s a nod to the past with eyes looking ahead; it’s not all old school as the kids say. Contemporaries that come to mind might be of the ilk of 7% Solution, Uni-sex or even the stretched out Escapade.

Underneath all this though, is a gorgeous ragged slow burn. It’s not lo-fi by any means, but you can tell this is coming from the garage so to speak. Or maybe a room off to the side, a room specially built with a lot of care. And it’s great to hear music like this coming out not overly polished and refined so all the nice burrs are burnished off. Conversely, it’s fantastic to have something out of the garage that’s not just another White Stripes or Stooges or … “garage” mock job. You can do a lot in the garage, more than just pump up the octane and polish chrome. And this quality doesn’t mean low budget either. This is obviously very nurtured and coaxed. But Grace left in some rough hewn edges that really bring it all together: it’s what the band wanted. Bands like Swell or Grandaddy (obvious examples for me …) had a decidedly junkyard-art approach. And it was conscious and on purpose. That “lo-fi” patina was aimed for and spun and spun until it was clear that the production was an obvious choice made to achieve that signature sound. And “Perpetual Motion” benefits the same way. Now, I don’t know Cary Grace, or the story behind all the recording. Maybe given a budget the size of Wal-Mart’s economy she would have opted for some overblown bloat and helped to add to the sad reputation that prog has, or music like this … whatever you want to call it, or have to call it to make it make sense. But I doubt it. It’s not a by-product of home built studios, or shaky recording environs. It’s purposeful and works with all the other planets in tandem to reach it’s sweet end orbit.

And Ms. Grace lets many of the tracks take their time to reach that end point. She’s not afraid to let the sonics really stretch out, to let the bubbling slow riffs and melodies play out to one of many possible conclusions. In a way, she kind of leaves a lot of it up to YOU; if you want to that big planet caravan impact, you have to go with it and enjoy the ride and don’t think about it … too hard at least. If you do, you’ll miss some things.

All this comes to you via download. Pshaw—buy the disc. It comes in a lovingly made pack; simple but elegant and just cool. You can poke around carygrace.com and see a shot of the bundle if that floats your boat. It sure floats mine.

Why? Because she obviously cares. If she didn’t let us peek into that a bit, why should we care?

“Perpetual Motion” was a stellar find (thanks to the New Breakfast Snob at WRIR for turning me on to it) in lots of ways. It’s home-spun all right. It’s home-made I guess you could say, from that ragged edge to the hand-made limited edition packaging. But it has its eyes and ears on much bigger things. Maybe a new planet.

Ok. I have to do it. And I’m sorry. It’s downright graceful, too. It really is.

I usually let things cook for awhile longer before I get on a soapbox about them, pro or con. But this one didn’t need to simmer very long. As soon as I put it on and gave it a maiden voyage spin, it was pretty clear that Cary Grace already let this simmer for just the right amount of time. It arrived fully baked out of the oven.