Dan McGuire's "Phosphene River"
Ohio-based poet Dan McGuire of Unknown Instructors/Jamnation fame is back with a new “collaborative compilation” of poetry-rock. This time out, he was actually approached by the bands, who sent him tracks to overdub his spoken word performances onto instead of using found tracks. The resultant disc is 73 minutes, but seems shorter; the tracks have a nice organic flow, alternating shorter pieces with longer excursions and including a couple of musical respites, in contrast with Jamnation’s unremitting intensity.
If you’re creeped out by the stalker-like tone of the opening “Her Kind” (“A woman like that is not afraid to die”), don’t be; the words were penned by McGuire’s inspiration for the project, Anne Sexton, a Pulitzer winner who fronted her own “poetry rock” aggro (known as Anne Sexton & Her Kind, of course) before committing suicide in 1974. Cleveland improv outfit Fuzzhead builds a menacing groove around her words. On the following track, “Red Hills,” McGuire spins a Reedian drug tale while one man band Adam Payne a.k.a. Residual Echoes demonstrates the continuing validity of Uncle Lou’s “I Heard Her Call My Name” solo guitar style.
On “Are You A Dragon?,” Chicagoans Plastic Crimewave Sound set up a Krautrock-like ostinato before the words “He believed in the Stooges” cue an eruption of Ashetonian fuzz ‘n’ feedback frenzy as the poet spews Biblical jive: “Water from the rock my motherfucking friend / The miracles down here they never end.” The icily ambient tone poem “Heavy is a Dynamic” follows, surely the most accessible sounds ever to issue from the mind of Acid Mothers Temple guru Kawabata Makoto, as McGuire intones, “Rhythms I have so longed to take / Slowing speed a calculation / Like flies to a feculent pile / Full of flowers grown to beguile…” “Out There” is a tale of parental intrusion into a teen psychedelic idyll, with appropriate bleeps ‘n’ blorps from a crew of Ohio players McGuire dubbed Catacomb.
The album’s poetic payoff is the trifecta starting with “Potter’s Field,” a tale of familial betrayal set to more Stoogian guitar fury with the momentum of prime Hawkwind (courtesy of New York psychsters White Hills), continuing with “Sire,” in which McGuire imagines the idiot box as Dark Lord to the heavy blues-based psych of NoCal youngsters Mammatus, culminating with “Mystic Healer/Less Is More,” a sprawling free-form freakout by Bristol-based Brits the Heads, over which the poet explores repressed sexuality with the same relish Richard Hell reserved for the scene in Go Now where he fucks his aunt. The last track -- a guitar instrumental (“Memoration”) by Dave Mitchell, whose ‘70s band Josefus contributed “Dead Man” to Jamnation -- gently waltzes us out of McGuire’s world and back into our own.
Phosphene River is the most fully realized work yet from McGuire. Here’s hoping there’s more; currently, he’s taking a break from the rock to hone his poetry chops. Cop from facemop.com.
If you’re creeped out by the stalker-like tone of the opening “Her Kind” (“A woman like that is not afraid to die”), don’t be; the words were penned by McGuire’s inspiration for the project, Anne Sexton, a Pulitzer winner who fronted her own “poetry rock” aggro (known as Anne Sexton & Her Kind, of course) before committing suicide in 1974. Cleveland improv outfit Fuzzhead builds a menacing groove around her words. On the following track, “Red Hills,” McGuire spins a Reedian drug tale while one man band Adam Payne a.k.a. Residual Echoes demonstrates the continuing validity of Uncle Lou’s “I Heard Her Call My Name” solo guitar style.
On “Are You A Dragon?,” Chicagoans Plastic Crimewave Sound set up a Krautrock-like ostinato before the words “He believed in the Stooges” cue an eruption of Ashetonian fuzz ‘n’ feedback frenzy as the poet spews Biblical jive: “Water from the rock my motherfucking friend / The miracles down here they never end.” The icily ambient tone poem “Heavy is a Dynamic” follows, surely the most accessible sounds ever to issue from the mind of Acid Mothers Temple guru Kawabata Makoto, as McGuire intones, “Rhythms I have so longed to take / Slowing speed a calculation / Like flies to a feculent pile / Full of flowers grown to beguile…” “Out There” is a tale of parental intrusion into a teen psychedelic idyll, with appropriate bleeps ‘n’ blorps from a crew of Ohio players McGuire dubbed Catacomb.
The album’s poetic payoff is the trifecta starting with “Potter’s Field,” a tale of familial betrayal set to more Stoogian guitar fury with the momentum of prime Hawkwind (courtesy of New York psychsters White Hills), continuing with “Sire,” in which McGuire imagines the idiot box as Dark Lord to the heavy blues-based psych of NoCal youngsters Mammatus, culminating with “Mystic Healer/Less Is More,” a sprawling free-form freakout by Bristol-based Brits the Heads, over which the poet explores repressed sexuality with the same relish Richard Hell reserved for the scene in Go Now where he fucks his aunt. The last track -- a guitar instrumental (“Memoration”) by Dave Mitchell, whose ‘70s band Josefus contributed “Dead Man” to Jamnation -- gently waltzes us out of McGuire’s world and back into our own.
Phosphene River is the most fully realized work yet from McGuire. Here’s hoping there’s more; currently, he’s taking a break from the rock to hone his poetry chops. Cop from facemop.com.
posted by stashdauber at 9:12 AM
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