Lords Of Falconry - Lords Of Falconry (2011)

Lords Of Falconry is a duo from Portland consisting of Steven Wray Lodbell (Davis Redford Triad, Sufi Mind Game, Faust) on guitar and Sammy James (Fireballs Of Freedom) on drums. It's probably the most straight forward rock band that Lodbell's ever been involved with. Here's a description I'm stealing from the label's website...

Lords of Falconry are a rock group with a spectacular psychedelic edge. Songs blast green, inferno-like hard rock, funneling clouds and stripping away sludge, turning it into the waltz-like sound of mastodons stomping across the tundra. Classic heavy psych is alive in tracks that interweave soft voices and loud guitars that continuously pummel and enchant at every turn like a seven-headed cobra. C.S. Lewis had better watch his step!
If psychedelia is quixotically naive, then Lords of Falconry is its 21st-century doppelganger or spectral double wise to the ways of the fallen world. In an era of organized play dates and close parental supervision, there are already enough people ready to cooperate. Lords of Falconry offers what is missing--real rock music.
Formed in a quest to find the lost note, Lords of Falconry examines the intersection of a mystical crossroads between the fourth dimension and their own 3-D universe.

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Goat Witch - Blind (2005), Naked (2006) & On Fire (2009)

Goat Witch are another collaboration band much like my previous post of the Moon Phantoms album. The Melbourne bands Spider Goat Canyon and Fire Witch got together and spent two days in a studio recording a improvised jam session that resulted in the trilogy of Blind, Naked and On Fire. This link is for all 3 albums. They sound surprisingly tight and together considering it's all just being made up on the spot. Me, not being a musician myself, am so amazed how two different bands can just get together one day and create music from absolutely nothing and make it sound like it's been written and rehearsed for weeks. It makes more sense when it's solo'ish guitar noodling with a basic repetitious rhythm section like the band "Earthless" or free-jazz etc. It's just when a band can really follow each other with different movements and time changes and make it seem so seamless without any prior rehearsals it's really impressive to me. But like I said I'm not a musician and can't really relate. Maybe it's just instinctual for some people I guess. Thanks to Sludge Swamp for these albums that were recently posted on their site. I just basically took it from them and put it together into one link.

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Moon Phantoms - S/T (2009)

Moon Phantoms is a collaboration between the bands Bardo Pond and Suishou No Fune from Japan. This record came about as most of these collaboration records do by two bands doing a tour together, hitting it off and deciding it would be fun to record a session together. Here's a review I'm stealing from Aquarius Records who always seem to sum up the mood of an album perfectly in just a few sentences:

"Deep in the forest ethno-drones, drenched in buzz and shimmer. Sitar, guitar, cumbas and all sorts of percussion create exquisite layers psych drone Nirvana that will transport you to another dimension. Strangely peaceful, the music we hear in our heads when we lay in grass at night staring at the stars."

This vinyl only release was limited to 500 copies.

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Hovercraft - Experiment Below (1998)

Hovercraft and Magnog (see below) both formed out of the break-up of a band called Space Helmet which I've never heard and never had any recorded material that I'm aware of.  The guitar player of Hovercraft and the drummer of Magnog are brothers apparently.  Hovercraft are much in the same vein as Magnog but not quite as lush. They are generally more chaotic than Magnog and became more well known (for better or worse) because of their association with Eddie Vedder.  Eddie was married to bassist Beth Liebling (AKA Sadie 7) and played drums on their first single under the pseudonym Jerome230.  So the band would tour with Pearl Jam and were exposed to a huge crowd that normally wouldn't even consider the band.  I personally think the Vedder connection really taints the work of this great experimental improv band.  I say this only because they really have no real similarities to Pearl Jam musically and got grouped into a scene they never belonged to in the first place.  So if you're a fan of space-rock of the Pacific Northwest (Jessamine, Kinski, Subarachnoid Space etc.) this album is what I would consider a classic.

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Magnog - Magnog (1996)

Since I've been posting a lot of space rock/psychedelic/drone/krautrock/improv or whatever you want to call it lately I figured I'd post a couple more and get it out of my system then try to move on to something else for a while.  Seattle's Magnog only put out this one proper studio album (although there was a compilation of home recordings later released in a collection called More Weather) that was released on Kranky Records.  It's mostly instrumental with the exception of one song and was produced by Jessamine's Andy Brown.  It's just a really great album to zone out to.

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Juneau - Juneau (1998)

I honestly don't know much about this band. It's something I picked up years ago and kind of forgot about. A song from this album recently came up on my Ipod shuffle and liked what I heard and decided to give this album another listen to. It's droney space-rock in the vein of Bardo Pond or Paik and it's not bad for a band that nobody's ever heard of.  Nobody I know anyways. The only info I could find on Juneau was that Marc Orleans of Sunburned Hand Of The Man was in the band.

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Morkobot - Mostro (2006)

Morkobot are an Italian space-psych post-rock/metal band.  Does that make any sense at all?  Once again it's kind of hard to throw this into one genre.  They are on the Italian label Supernatural Cat which is a small label that's home to other great bands from Italy such as Ufomammut and Lento.  They have a lot in common with the doomy post-metal of the aforementioned bands but with more of a spaced out vibe similar to Helios Creed or maybe Six Finger Satellite.  Kind of like a dark twisted retarded offspring of Black Sabbath and Devo.

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Acid Mothers Temple And The Cosmic Inferno - Starless And Bible Black Sabbath (2006)

I've always been a big fan of Acid Mothers Temple.  They have a super energetic live show and really are the current "Kings of Japanese Psychedelia."  Their only problem is they really put out too damn many records.  They seem to have like 10 releases a year which makes it really hard to just let one of their albums sink in.  There are so many of them it gets really hard to distinguish one album from the next.  Starless And Bible Black Sabbath isn't really much different from the rest I suppose.  Although there's just something about it that keeps me coming back to it in their gigantic sea of a discography.  It has this sleazy groove to it's 35 minute repeated riff that just takes me to another place...

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SubArachnoid Space & Bardo Pond - Split (2002)

Some of the best songs these two bands have put out.  Really trippy.

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