Captain Beyond: Sufficiently Breathless

CAPTAIN BEYOND: SUFFICIENTLY BREATHLESS (1973)

1) Sufficiently Breathless; 2) Bright Blue Tango; 3) Drifting In Space; 4) Evil Men; 5) Starglow Energy; 6) Distant Sun; 7) Voyages Of Past Travellers; 8) Everything's A Circle.

Although the band's second album was recorded less than a year after the debut, it already re­flected some serious changes in the lineup: keyboard player Reese Wynans was brought in, along with Guille Garcia on various (mostly Latin/African) percussion, and original drummer Bobby Caldwell was replaced by the much less known Marty Rodriguez. Additionally, Lee Dorman emerged as the only active songwriter , pretty much responsible for the entire structure and sound of the record. The result is fairly obvious: they drift farther away into the direction of symphonic-progressive rock, «cosmic conscience» and stuff, leaving much of the hard rock baggage behind, so there's just no way one could call Sufficiently Breathless a balanced mix of hard-rock and art-rock, and this is probably why the album usually tends to get a bad rap compared to its predeces­sor (even if there's still plenty of heaviness drifting about).

As somebody who likes the heavy-prog sound of Captain Beyond without being floored by it, I must say that from such a standpoint, the two records, although sounding quite different, are just about equal in overall quality. This here is pleasantly melodic, modestly catchy, adequately voca­lized, intelligently composed rock music, already a little outdated even for 1973 (but perhaps more easily appreciated in retrospect, as our perspective of time becomes more and more flat­tened and distorted), but totally inoffensive and occasionally charming in its hippie idealism. Its only real problem is contextual — everything that you hear here, you can hear done a little (or a lot) better by other acts (some of them already defunct by the year 1973).

Thus, the title track is an acoustic anthem in the vein of Crosby, Stills & Nash (except for the dis­torted psychedelic guitar solo that combines real nice with the acoustic rhythm track), a clever enough opener to pour some sunshine into your living room, but neither the instrumental exube­rance nor the chirpy vocal harmonies are on the required level to push the whole thing off the ground. ʽDrifting In Spaceʼ is a potentially great Latin rocker with a cool «exploding fireworks» lead guitar riff introducing each sung verse, but none of the verses is even resolved properly — they build up the tension all right, but they never explode it! And what's up with the quiet jazzy electric piano solo? It's nice, but in a song like this, it could only serve as a taster for a kick-ass guitar extravaganza, which never comes — it's like this whole song was thought of as a counter-example for aspiring songwriters: «here's what happens if you have some cool ideas but fail to bring them up to logical conclusions».

Pretty much every song offers something, but the something is never enough. Kick-ass guitar extravangzas finally arrive on ʽEvil Menʼ, a slow funk-rocker with Rhino milking the wah-wah for all it's worth, but the song's potentially fabulous heavy riff is inexplicably kept in the faraway background most of the time (maybe they thought that if they put it up front, they'd be sued by Deep Purple for ripping off ʽSpace Truckin'ʼ which it somehow resembles, but come on). ʽStar­glow Energyʼ has a great moody start, with probably Rod Evans' finest vocal performance on the album, but despite all the soulfulness that they try to muster, the song still never finds a proper climactic peak — the guitar solos are too quiet, the mix is too muddy and preoccupied with psychedelic sound effects, the fadeout arrives unexpectedly and again leaves the impression of something unaccomplished and unsatisfactory.

And yet, I am still surprised at how every song here sounds organic, warm, and tasteful — few things are easier than being embarrassed and angered at the unimaginative, derivative, inadequate pretense of a second-/third-generation art-prog outfit, but maybe it is precisely because Captain Beyond take so few risks that they consistently deliver this very decent vibe, almost free of cor­niness even when they tackle formulaic lyrical subjects (maybe it's just that Rod Evans, whose voice is not strong enough for operatic behavior, sounds like an honestly concerned human rather than a cocky showman even when he asks you "what is wrong with this world of mine, falling in a spiral?"). This way, although I'm pretty sure that in a week from now, I will not be able to re­member a single note from this album, the overall impression will still remain as a vague cloud of positive vibrations, and so, here is a thumbs up rating while that cloud is still holding together, nice, juicy, and thick.

Can: Radio Waves

CAN: RADIO WAVES (1971-1973; 1997)

1) Up The Bakerloo; 2) Paperhouse; 3) Entropy; 4) Little Star; 5) Turtles Have Short Legs; 6) Shikaku Maru Ten.

As with many similar jam bands whose moments of stupendous inspiration could come at any time and who always liked to keep them tapes running just in case, Can's dust-covered vaults used to be (and still are, I suppose) pretty huge, and before the Internet era at least it used to be pretty hard distinguishing officially sanctioned releases from bootlegs. Radio Waves, it turns out, is ultimately a bootleg, its closest official analogy being 1995's Peel Sessions, also covering the band's live-in-the-studio output from their peak years. However, since I am not even going to try and accurately cover every release that covers their radio sessions, these Radio Waves, released in 1997 on the German boot label "Sonic", will have to do as an example.

The package, as befits a proper boot, is a glorious mess: three tracks that actually represent live recordings made for radio broadcast, one track that seems to be nothing but a sped up version of ʽLittle Star Of Bethlehemʼ from Delay 1968, and two short studio tracks that were the A-side of ʽHalleluwahʼ and the B-side of ʽSpoonʼ, respectively, back in 1971. The two tracks in question can also be found on various compilations, but since they're included here, let us just briefly mention that ʽTurtles Have Short Legsʼ is a humorous combination of honky tonk piano, folk singing with a Japanese accent, and a mock-singalong chorus in the form of a variation on ʽWe Can Work It Outʼ; and ʽShikaku Maru Tenʼ is a soft groove that might well have been inspired by ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ — although Damo Suzuki's impersonation of Astrud Gilberto has certain cultural and individual limits, as you might imagine. Anyway, both tracks are nice remi­niscences of how Can essentially mocked the idea of «commercial single»: most likely, they only thought of these things as throwaways, but they made them so bizarre anyway that they get by on the strength of all those dadaistic vibes.

Still, these are just brief appendices to the main attractions of the album, and chief among them is the very grossly titled ʽUp The Bakerlooʼ (damn the Internet, because now I know what it really means and I wish I could un-know it) — a monstrous 35-minute jam recorded during the Ege Bamyasi era and featuring the band in top form, even if the piece suffers from lack of editing and can hardly hold you in its grip for the entire 35 minutes. The groove is not very tight, there is no specific main theme, Suzuki frequently gets annoying, but everything is forgiven whenever Karoli picks up the guitar and begins switching between blues, funk, and psychedelic noise. The track actually fades out after 35 minutes — I have no idea how long they carried on afterwards, but the fascinating thing is that they keep it intense all the way through: in fact, some of Karoli's craziest soloing, accompanied with a rise in intensity on the part of both the bass and the key­board player, takes place during the last couple of minutes.

Next to ʽBakerlooʼ, the album's second live jam, called ʽEntropyʼ and recorded sometime in 1970, suffers from worse sound quality, but allocates more space for Schmidt, whose piano playing pretty much dominates the entire track — minimalistic avantgardist lines, mostly, but very ener­getic, alarmist-paranoid style. Again, though, the basic rhythm groove suffers from being under­developed: Liebezeit's drumming is a little insecure and undetermined, which would make both of these jams unfit for inclusion on Tago Mago. Finally, the live performance of ʽPaperhouseʼ, although also poorly recorded, is even more frenetic than the studio counterpart — once the fast section kicks in, they never go back and just boogie the entire way through to the end.

On the whole, despite the mixed-bag approach, this is actually a fun, diversified sample of Can's powers in their peak years — with the exception of the obvious mistake of ʽLittle Starʼ (surely they could have picked up a better Mooney sample if they really wanted to?), we have the serious side of Can fully exposed in the first three tracks and their humorous, lightweight side perfectly portrayed in the last two. Being a bootleg and all, not to mention being rendered somewhat ob­solete by later and more accurate handling of the vaults, culminating in Lost Tapes, neither Radio Waves nor The Peel Sessions can any longer be considered essential stuff, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for these rough shards, carried over from a more chaotic era.

Alan Price: Liberty

ALAN PRICE: LIBERTY (1989)

1) Fool's In Love; 2) Everything But Love; 3) Days Like These; 4) Bad Dream; 5) Double Love; 6) Changes; 7) Mania Ureania; 8) Liberty; 9) Say It Isn't True; 10) Free With Me; 11) Man Overboard.

In the 1980s, Alan's musical activity abruptly decreased, which now seems kind of a good thing, given the general inauspiciousness of that decade for veteran rockers. Discographies of that peri­od are vague and contradictory, which probably has to do with the fact that, once his contract with Jet Records had expired, he found himself without a permanent record label, and whenever he did choose to record something, it could only be picked up by some minor team for a very limited release. As far as I can tell, he did manage to put out an album of old folk cover tunes (but also including Dylan's ʽGirl Of (sic!) The North Countryʼ), called Geordie Roots And Branches, in 1982 on a local Newcastle label; and then there's Travellin' Man from 1986, for some reason released on the Jamaica-based Trojan Records and largely consisting of covers of New Orleanian music from Snooks Eaglin to Fats Domino. Good luck finding these in any form — nobody ever thought of properly digitalizing either — but something tells me that you won't miss too much if you never hear Mr. Price digging all the way down to his Geordie roots or confessing his burning love for Louisiana bayous.

The first and only Eighties' album that is available on CD (because that was the way it was ori­ginally released) is Liberty. It consists largely of original material (although a re-recording of ʽChangesʼ was still thrown in, probably in the same vain hope of boosting sales a little bit that had already made Alan cheapen his act with the new-and-not-improved ʽHouse Of The Rising Sunʼ at the beginning of the decade), but most of the songs were co-written by Price with guitar player Steve Grant, formerly of the band Top Secret that was managed by Chas Chandler. The band itself only had one LP out in 1981, but apparently, Steve and his brother Pete Grant (on bass) got acquainted with Alan through Chas, and eventually got together as almost equal partners to try and help Alan get back in show business.

The result is pretty much what you'd expect from Price at this point. There seems to be no force in the world that would tear him from his beloved vaudeville and Randy Newmanisms, but just as he was always okay about combining them with contemporary trends in the Seventies (disco etc.), so is he willing to try out some Eighties' clichés here. So get ready for some really plastic and corny electronic keyboards, even cornier electronic echo on the drums, and at least one or two very, very bad songs on the fringe of arena-rock, synth-pop, and hair metal (ʽFree With Meʼ, where Mr. Price confesses that "I really want a woman with me tonight" as if he were Bryan Adams to really awful synths and testosteronic guitar solos).

On the other hand, ten years of relative inactivity have not completely extinguished his song­writing talents, and there's still a nice stack of good taste that cannot be totally hidden from view by corny arrangements. The record is bookmarked by two catchy, fun pop rockers — ʽFool's In Loveʼ is harmless danceable vaudeville, and ʽMan Overboardʼ, despite the grim title, is an upbeat, ʽDon't Stopʼ-like power pop number whose charm largely consists of making you sing "throw me down another line, this man's overboard" as if you were celebrating rather than panicking. In be­tween, there's decent New Orleanian R&B (ʽEverything But Loveʼ), a surprisingly gripping funk rocker with a "girl we gotta get out of this place" message (ʽBad Dreamʼ), and a completely un­expected baroque-pop number about the illusion of liberty (title track) with orchestration straight out of 1967 — probably the only song here that would feel well at home on any of the records from his classic period.

That does not mean that the record should have included boring adult contemporary balladry like ʽDouble Loveʼ, or a completely unnecessary eight-minute long Epic Cover of Jackson Browne's ʽSay It Isn't Trueʼ, or the energy-wasting New Wave rocker ʽMania Ureaniaʼ; nor does it mean that it is, in any way, an improvement over his middle-of-the-road albums from 1976 to 1980, although it does seem to have a higher percentage of «socially conscious» tunes than any of those. But this is by-the-book social consciousness, not really supported by equal feeling within the music, and, as I said, only the title track truly gives away the same sensitive, emotional Alan Price who used to be such an enchanting spokesman for the North. Overall, quite listenable and suffering much less from Eighties' overproduction than it could, and Steve Grant makes a decent songwriting (if not necessarily guitar-playing) partner for the man, but certainly not the kind of «big comeback» that could be hoped for after ten years of near-silence.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (IAS #24)

Okay, this one was almost as tough to write as it is tough to type in its entire title:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Anthrax: For All Kings

ANTHRAX: FOR ALL KINGS (2016)

1) Impaled; 2) You Gotta Believe; 3) Monster At The End; 4) For All Kings; 5) Breathing Lightning; 6) Breathing Out; 7) Suzerain; 8) Evil Twin; 9) Blood Eagle Wings; 10) Defend/Avenge; 11) All Of Them Thieves; 12) This Battle Chose Us; 13) Zero Tolerance.

As the legendary thrash heroes grow older and older, each new album becomes a test of will­power and endurance: can they still make it? won't it feel too embarrassing? is tinnitus finally setting in? It's not as if a band like Anthrax really has a choice of switching to acoustic folk or didgeridoo music, even if an ethnic reworking of ʽCaught In A Moshʼ, if done authentically enough, might be curious.

Anyway, the good news: Anthrax are still together, featuring more or less the classic lineup — only lead guitarist Rob Caggiano has been replaced by Jon Donais, but he was never part of the classic lineup anyway, so good luck to him in Volbeat or whatever other Scandinavian metal band he'd wish to join. Technically, the rhythm section remains tight, and Joey is still Joey, keeping a youthful spirit at the age of 55 (which we now know is not that hard to do — hey, my own memories of a 55-year old Mick Jagger make him seem like a youngster at the time). Even better, though even more subjective, news: it seems to me that this new bunch of songs is some­what better written than the disappointing Worship Music. Better riffs, catchier choruses, it all kind of makes a bit more musical sense.

But everything comes at a price, and one other definite feel I get (among with quite a few other critics and fans, it seems) is that For All Kings is somewhat lacking in energy. Where Worship Music tried too hard to sound like classic Anthrax, this one does not try enough (yes, I know we amateur writers are hard to please, but what can you do? Writing about Anthrax albums is almost impossible without comparing them to each other and to that one classic-ideal-immaculate An­thrax LP that they never really recorded). For starters, most of the songs are too slow: there is not a single proper brutal lightning-speed thrasher to remind you of this band's ultimate powers. Far be it from me to demand that all their songs be like that — but a couple would still have been nice. Instead, we get way too many tunes that sound like «regular» metal, or hard rock, or even pop-a-roll: not really bad or anything, but not exactly something that we need an Anthrax for.

Second, the older they get, the more they tend to sermonize: most of the songs here carry social or generally moralistic messages, ranging from the individuality-acclaiming title track to ʽEvil Twinʼ which condemns the Charlie Hebdo killers (because, as we all know, Anthrax are espe­cially popular among Islamist terrorists and ISIL leaders, and whatever Scott Ian tells them to do, they will execute instantly to wild cries of «Anthrax akbar!»). Again, even if there's nothing par­ticularly new that they might tell us, it wouldn't be such a problem if one didn't get the feeling that the message is occasionally more important than the execution, and also because Joey Bel­ladonna simply might not be the best voice to deliver these serious messages — even after all these years, I still keep seeing him in a sarcastic haze, playing the fool a little. To be Moses or Jonah, he'd probably need extra vocal powers sent from above, and if they didn't arrive thirty years earlier, it's useless to wait for them now.

That said, I honestly enjoy bits and pieces here — even stuff like ʽThis Battle Chose Usʼ, with its singalong pop chorus that arrogantly bridges the gap between Anthrax and Bon Jovi, is endowed with gutsy riffage, and I'm all in favour of the sacrilegious transition between the more thrash-like verses and the clearly pop metal chorus and backwards. The title track starts out almost accap­pella style, as if Joey, inspired by the title, were going to deliver us an epic Anglo-Saxon ballad from ye olde times — fortunately, it picks up steam very soon, but then nothing about the song really is as interesting as this contrast between the introduction and the main riff. And the riff itself is nowhere near as tough as the one on ʽBreathing Lightningʼ — now here, after a boring epic intro, we get a monstrous variation on the ʽCaught In A Moshʼ riff that almost sounds like classic Anthrax. And then it, too, gets betrayed with an epic «melodic» chorus that turns this band into something it ought not to be. Belladonna singing in an operatic tone? He's neither Rob Hal­ford nor Bruce Dickinson, why should he bother? (Oh and, by the way, note them cop the riff of ʽThe Song Remains The Sameʼ for a bit in the mid-section).

In short, this is Anthrax all right, but an aging Anthrax, with slightly (or maybe seriously) diminished powers of con­viction, but an ever-increasing level of social consciousness that drives them to taking themselves more seriously than ever before. But time is a bitch — as is evident, for instance, from the way less than stellar live rendition of ʽCaught In A Moshʼ that is included as a bonus track on the expanded edition of the album, with Ian messing up the classic bassline and the entire band messing up the playful call-and-response harmonies on the chorus. This per­formance might serve as an allegory for the entire new album — if you think I'm dreaming things up and this current live incarnation goes every bit as strong as it used to, you'll probably also love For All Kings, but... well, I am not suggesting that the band retire or anything, but yes, they are getting old, there's no getting around it, and I feel as if they have not chosen the ideal way to adapt to it. Although, frankly speaking, I have no idea what that ideal way would be, so it's damned if you do, damned if you don't all the way. At least the old pals are still together, and there's always something to be said about long-lasting musical friendship.

Carbon Based Lifeforms: Refuge

CARBON BASED LIFEFORMS: REFUGE (2013)

1) Rca (+); 2) Birdie; 3) Rca (-); 4) Leaves; 5) Lost; 6) Escape; 7) Marauders.

CBL's output rates seem to have slowed down considerably since Twentythree — the only com­plete album in five years has been this soundtrack for an obscure indie movie that allegedly tells some sort of macabre story about one family's survival after a mass catastrophe and is usually pigeonholed in the «survival horror» genre. You'd think that CBL, of all people, would be the most uncanny choice for composer — but I guess this was precisely the point, to have a couple of people known for making some of the most serene music in the universe to lend their hand in the creation of a disturbing, suspense-based movie. Then again, you don't really need to go farther than ʽCentral Plainsʼ to be reminded that these dangerous Danes (Swedes, really, but «dangerous Danes» rings so much cooler) can also be fairly threatening and suspenseful once they get the opportunity to saddle that vibe.

That said, there is not much about Refuge, an uncharacteristically short (less than 45 minutes!) collection of ambient soundscapes very much in the vein of Twentythree, that would suggest dan­ger or threat — at least, not immediate ones. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the artists simply used up some of the outtakes from previous sessions: most of the tracks sound like less elaborate little brothers to their far more thoroughly polished elders. Everything sounds nice, elegant, melancholic, but without too much depth: ʽLeavesʼ, for instance, floats on a shiny, multi-layered, but common bed of synth tones with a repetitive two-note drip-drop landing on them at regular intervals — well, we've heard that kind of «look at how elegant the universe is in its static mode and how all life is just a regularly ordered icing on top» musical metaphor so many times now that it is futile to expect some new epiphany. But it's pretty, all the same.

The best track is arguably ʽRca (-)ʼ, with a steady, carefully orchestrated electronic crescendo that Godspeed You! Black Em­peror might well have appreciated — it's a little lost out there in the middle, but it well deserves your undivided attention for about four minutes, with layer upon layer of synth added until you really start getting the impression of climbing the proverbial stair­way to heaven, as the air becomes sharper, the temperature colder, and the intuitive feeling of a supernatural presence more and more distinct. Unfortunately, even GY!BE would probably com­plain that the track is much too short, and the climax is over way too quickly, for the track to become truly cathartic. The soundtrack curse, striking again and again!

The only time the record actually comes close to becoming «scary» is, amusingly, on its most optimistically labeled track — ʽEscapeʼ, structured as soft techno with a deep, almost subconsci­ously planted, bassline and, on top, populated with what sounds like a series of alien explosions, coming from faraway but powerful enough to resonate all over your living room. That sound is so atypically harsh for CBL that the track really stands out, and in quite a respectable way at that, although eventually it morphs into full-scale danceable techno, and the explosions are almost lost against a foreground of much less interesting loops and effects. And then, for the last track (ʽMa­rauders"), we return back to the same predictable world of static serenity (well, dark serenity this time — sounds like all those other «out there in space, watching faraway nebulae» tracks of theirs), lightly sprinkled with electronic chirps from interplanetary-flying birds on their way to the nearest warphole.

In short, nice and, like almost everything from these guys, perfectly listenable, but a soundtrack is a soundtrack — or, rather, a soundtrack is a collection of second-rate material that you wouldn't normally want to include on a «proper» LP, especially when you're a loyal disciple of Tangerine Dream. (Okay, not that loyal. Being loyal to TD necessarily implies a schedule of at least three albums per year, proportionally increasing at the same rate at which the artist is running out of new ideas.) For major fans only, I'd say; others will just have to wait and find out if there is still another Taoist way left for CBL to tell us how wonderful and mysterious can a world be in which, for all it's worth, nothing is really happening.

Carcass: Wake Up And Smell The... Carcass

CARCASS: WAKE UP AND SMELL THE... CARCASS (1996)

1) Edge Of Darkness; 2) Emotional Flatline; 3) Ever Increasing Circles; 4) Blood Splattered Banner; 5) I Told You So (Corporate Rock Really Does Suck); 6) Buried Dreams; 7) No Love Lost; 8) Rot 'n' Roll; 9) Edge Of Darkness; 10) This Is Your Life; 11) Rot 'n' Roll; 12) Tools Of The Trade; 13) Pyosified (Still Rotten To The Gore); 14) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II; 15) Genital Grinder II; 16) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation; 17) Exhume To Consume.

An essential compilation for the band's loyal fans: released one year after Swansong, it collects most of the stuff that was only previously available on EPs and a bunch of outtakes and BBC Radio 1 performances that were not available at all. A couple of the songs repeat themselves (which is a little annoying, because the live versions are predictably hard to tell apart from the studio takes, except for worse sound quality), and a few more have since been added as bonus tracks to the remastered CD edition of Necroticism, but even so, with a total running length of 75 minutes, this is as much prime fresh rotten Carcass as one can stand.

Curiously, the tracks are sequenced «backwards», beginning with a bunch of outtakes from the Swansong sessions that I like much more than a true fan probably should — I think the basic riff of ʽEdge Of Darknessʼ, for instance, is one of the most terrifyingly melodic things they ever did, but, of course, it sounds way too much like Tony Iommi or any «regular», old-school-influenced metal band, so hardcore fans would give it the cold shoulder. ʽBlood Splattered Bannerʼ (a song about the old Dixie, with all of Carcass' grindgore imagery fanatically applied to the conservative South) is another relative highlight that could have benefited from cleaner vocals to go along with its political message, but even so, the riffage (a fun kind of wobble which you'd pretty much expect from a blood splattered banner, I guess) is impeccable. ʽI Told You So (Corporate Rock Really Does Suck)ʼ is a little less memorable, and besides, I am not sure if this particular track, which sounds fairly acceptable for MTV standards, really has the most convincing musical struc­ture and texture to count as a true anti-corporate anthem.

Skipping the four live tracks, we arrive at EP material — Tools Of The Trade from 1992 and the two additional tracks on the Heartwork maxi-single. Of these, ʽRot 'n' Rollʼ is probably the most fun, alternating between military-martial mid-tempo and speedy metal-boogie (and "let's ROT!" should have always functioned as the band's prime slogan — if I find out they never tossed this into the crowd at any of their shows, I'd be much disappointed), whereas all the songs from Tools Of The Trade pretty much sound like anything on Necroticism — fast, ravaging, ridiculous, and not individually memorable. Finally, the last three tracks, taken off some obscure «various artists compilations», seem to date from even earlier periods (Symphonies Of Sickness era?) and re­mind us of the good old times when making out even one single word without the aid of a lyrics sheet would make you a genius of a practicing phonetician.

For the record, ʽExhume To Con­sumeʼ is a different version here from the one on Symphonies: slightly cleaner, and featuring a thirty-second necro-psychedelic intro with various weird threa­tening guitar noises — also, that unexpectedly melodic guitar solo in the middle is brought much higher in the mix. Maybe the idea was that they had to show themselves off a little bit more in terms of musicianship on a compilation, surrounded by such worthy competing acts as Cadaver, Carnage, Godflesh, Hell­bastard, and Terrorizer (can you distinguish between all these bands?), or maybe I'm imagining things, but in any case, this one comes across as slightly «artsier» than it used to be. Nothing like an atmospheric intro to sweeten the impact of goregrind brutality.

In any case, for an outsider like myself the most «fun» part about this whole disc is that it rolls the tape backwards, and lets you revisit once more, over a short time period (especially if you throw out the somewhat superfluous Radio 1 tracks), the (almost) complete evolution of Carcass: now, however, in a mode of «backwards degradation» from an almost normal, classic-influenced metal band to the formless-nameless-dyslexic monster they used to be. Whatever one might think of heavy metal's formulaic limitations and its tendency to fall back upon self-parody, Wake Up And Smell The... is an obvious demonstration of how it is possible to evolve even within a rigid­ly set paradigm — and how it also makes total sense to break up once no further evolution be­comes possible, instead of persisting within the same repetitive formula for decades.

Captain Beyond: Captain Beyond

CAPTAIN BEYOND: CAPTAIN BEYOND (1972)

1) Dancing Madly Backwards (On A Sea Of Air); 2) Armworth; 3) Myopic Void; 4) Mesmerization Eclipse; 5) Raging River Of Fear; 6) Thousand Days Of Yesterdays (intro); 7) Frozen Over; 8) Thousand Days Of Yesterdays (Time Since Come And Gone); 9) I Can't Feel Nothin' (part 1); 10) As The Moon Speaks (To The Waves Of The Sea); 11) Astral Lady; 12) As The Moon Speaks (Return); 13) I Can't Feel Nothin' (part 2).

This band, and their debut album in particular, seem to have acquired somewhat of a cult status over the years — as usual, once one becomes sick and tired of all the predictable art-prog-rock masterpieces of the early 1970s, the discovery of something seemingly special under the surface is always a source of joy, and yes, you can construe Captain Beyond as a band that had some­thing special about them if you really put your heart and mind to it.

The band's background does not look terribly auspicious: a «second-rate supergroup» assembled from past members of early Deep Purple (singer Rod Evans, whose main claim to fame was the popularity of ʽHushʼ), Iron Butterfly (bass player Lee Dorman; also guitar player Larry ʽRhinoʼ Reinhardt, who only really played with the band on one of their albums, and far from the best one at that), and Johnny Winter's band (drummer Bobby Caldwell). All of these people were known to be «okay» at their jobs, but you wouldn't want to accuse any of them of having a unique style or songwriting genius or anything. So how could they all get together and make a record that not only would not stink, but would even be capable of getting a cult following?

Essentially, by sounding like a slightly softer, slightly more «sincere» (rather than openly post-modern-cynical) version of Blue Öyster Cult. On the whole, Captain Beyond could be classified as hard rock with a psychedelic edge, relying on a combination of heavy distorted riffs, spaced-out guitar soloing, and half-macho, half-stoned vocals (to acquire which Rod Evans had to smoke triple amounts of pot and grow himself an extra pair of testicles — at least, if you compare this style with Deep Purple circa 1968) suggesting that only strong, well-endowed males with big swords and hairy chests deserve to go to psychedelic heaven (think also of Hawkwind, although Captain Beyond are more song-based than jam-based, and sound more like a tight rock band than a bizarre psychedelic orchestra).

This can theoretically be a fun suggestion if you don't take it too seriously, and, indeed, the record is quite pleasant. Side A is essentially a collection of loosely joined not-too-fast riff-rockers; Side B is technically more conceptual, with two mini-suites consisting of several short movements, but there's not that much difference in terms of atmosphere, and there are soft acoustic interludes on both sides. The band also experiments with time signatures (the rhythmic pattern on ʽDancing Madly Backwardsʼ, for instance, does suggest a bit of moonwalking), delays and echoes (ʽMyopic Voidʼ owes a heavy debt to Jimi), and occasionally tries to build up some suspense (ʽAs The Moon Speaksʼ, probably influenced by Electric Ladyland and In The Court Of The Crimson King at the same time) — in other words, spending half an hour with Captain Beyond is anything but a boring experience, and it is nice to see how those guys managed to bring out the best in each other where few people probably suspected that «best» existed in the first place.

Unfortunately, the songs do not lend themselves easily to detailed descriptions, largely because there isn't much diversity — a bit slower, a bit faster, okay — and because the riffs, while defi­nitely «crafted» rather than just tossed off at random, are not awesome by themselves or even tremendously original. Everything is perfectly enjoyable while it's on, and there's plenty of headbang potential in numbers like ʽI Can't Feel Nothin'ʼ or ʽRaging River Of Fearʼ, but all of these elements had been well exploited before; in fact, the album looks positively archaic for 1972, because this heavy-psycho style was already present on plenty of «nuggets» from the US and UK scenes circa 1969-70 — yet, unlike Blue Öyster Cult, these guys were not smart enough to turn the whole thing onto itself and give it a smarmy, ironic, self-interpretative edge.

They were smart enough to give the songs a slightly paranoid edge: with the exception of a few starry-eyed misfires (ʽThousand Days Of Yesterdaysʼ), the album sounds like the band is perma­nently on the run from something, be it a «raging river of fear» or a «myopic void». This is pro­bably the only angle from which the record could ever be loved by anyone — with enough listens, it can become a «Manifesto of the Impossibility of Escaping», which certainly goes against the common trend in that era's progressive rock. But it is still difficult for me to lock myself onto that vibe, because the ingredients aren't fully adequate to the task; and, for that matter, Rod Evans is just not that good a singer to properly convey paranoidal horror.

Ultimately, the guys from Iron Butterfly are the main winners here, supplying decent riffs, mo­destly energetic solos, and (sometimes) expressive bass lines (Lee Dorman is at his best on the softer numbers, most notably ʽAs The Moon Speaksʼ), and because of their honest work and the general appeal of the record, I give it a thumbs up without too many reservations. But do not really expect some unique forgotten masterpiece — I'd say this is about as good as the actual Iron Butterfly at their best (which, admittedly, happened rarely).

Can: Delay 1968

CAN: DELAY 1968 (1968; 1981)

1) Butterfly; 2) Pnoom; 3) Nineteen Century Man; 4) Thief; 5) Man Named Joe; 6) Uphill; 7) Little Star Of Beth­lehem.

It would have been more fun if they'd dared to release this under its original title — Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom, but I guess they thought it might be bad luck to put it out under the same name under which it was originally rejected by every label they tried to peddle it to back in 1968. Curious, really: just two more years and they got no less than United Artists to distribute Mon­ster Movie, a record that was no more accessible (and in terms of track length, even more ex­treme) than Delay 1968. By all means, though, this here is an essential album that honestly de­serves to be proudly placed at the beginning of Can's official discography — a complete experi­ence in its own rights, with a fully-formed sound by a band that already knows very well what it is doing and a frontman who never really knew what he was doing at any place or time.

The skeletal structure of these early tracks is not that much different from Monster Movie: for the most part, they are blues-rock and funky jams with plenty of droning, but not a huge lot of psychedelic effects or guitar tones — together with Mooney's rants and raves, this makes the whole thing very similar to what Captain Beefheart was doing at the time with the Mirror Man sessions across the Atlantic. There is, however, already an atmosphere of grim determination, a ferocity, passion, and precision to the playing that suggest meticulously orchestrated ritualistic frenzy rather than Beefheart's diligently rehearsed insanity.

The very first track, ʽButterflyʼ, is, in fact, more strung up and tense than anything on Monster Movie — an eight-minute jam on one chord that can nevertheless take your breath away as it ploughs on and on and on, while keyboards, lead guitars, and occasionally pirouetting bass lines slowly build up tension; all over this a clearly exalted Mooney, half-madman, half-little kid, vocally follows the proverbial "dying butterfly" who nevertheless "begins to fly" because what's a good Can track without a little koan to help pass the time? In any case, that good old Can magic is already here, right from the very start, even if technically, the individual members had not yet fully hit their respective strides.

They did have a knack for finding great grooves, though: I don't think there's really a single dud among these tracks. ʽNineteen Century Manʼ (sic!) is a nice early showcase for Karoli as a funk player, taking a good lesson from James Brown, but also effortlessly sliding from funk into a flurry of blues-rock slide guitar soloing. ʽMan Named Joeʼ is a fast-moving R&B groove that shows how much of an influence the African-American scene exercised over them at the time, and ʽUphillʼ already presages the likes of ʽMother Skyʼ, moving at a fast tempo and featuring the most sonically insane bits of soloing on the record.

The real two highlights, besides ʽButterflyʼ, though, are ʽThiefʼ, a bitter-melancholic elegy that brings some sentimentality and vulnerability to the sessions — so much of them, in fact, that even Thom Yorke would later go on to cover the track, although I think that he must have been more impressed by Mooney here, singing "oh Lord please won't you tell me why must I be the thief?.." in the most miserable (yet totally non-whiney) voice that a human being might be capable of. If you want to laugh Mooney off as a silly annoying lunatic, just listen to ʽThiefʼ and get ready to drown in the man's misery — I honestly want to give him a hug each time I hear that "far too late, far too late, far too late..." (and it's kind of amazing that as of 2016, the man is still alive, but I guess that the switch back to painting and sculpting eventually helped a lot).

Then there's ʽLittle Star Of Bethlehemʼ, which has little to do with Nativity, but a lot to do with the absurdist story of Froggie and Toadie... actually, it begins like an absurdist story, but then turns into vocal improvisation because, apparently, Mooney just didn't have enough original lyrics to last him through the entire jam. Where ʽButterflyʼ is aggressively in­tense and ʽThiefʼ wallows in misery, ʽLittle Starʼ is more like an ironic mockery of the blues jam paradigm, with Karoli engaging in small-scale guitar pyrotechnics (switching between jagged, broken-up Neil Young-like rhythm playing and psychedelic howling) and Mooney checking how many different variations on the same "verse" he can produce without completely repeating himself. There's something so delightfully silly, and yet at the same time disturbing about this experience that I'm kind of sad they decided to fade it out after seven minutes — I could have stood at least twice as much, because this thing deserves real EPIC treatment, like a ʽSister Rayʼ or something.

In the end, the whole thing is quite short, but holds together well, and when it was finally released from the vaults (two years after the complete demise of Can), it must have indeed played the part of the Great Lost Can Album for true believers, as well as somewhat reinforced Malcolm's role in the band's history — not to suggest that its release had anything to do with the somewhat later reunion attempt, but he did tend to get lost against the titanic reputation of the Suzuki-era albums, which is somewhat unjust. Like Suzuki, he largely played his own game and wrestled with his personal demons in the studio rather than paid much attention to the actual music, but that was the whole point of «vocal Can» — we play our stuff, you vocalize your stuff, we put 'em together and say that's how it was always meant to be. Thumbs up.

Alan Price: Rising Sun

ALAN PRICE: RISING SUN (1980)

1) The House Of The Rising Sun; 2) I'm Coming Back; 3) Mr. Sunbeam; 4) Love You True; 5) Perfect Lady; 6) Wake Up; 7) The Love That I Needed; 8) I Have Tried; 9) Don't Make Me Suffer; 10) Music In The City.

Well, you knew it would happen some day, and that day would be the beginning of the end — the day that Alan Price finally resorts to re-recording ʽHouse Of The Rising Sunʼ. Looking at how he trimmed the song title for the album title, and at all the stereotypical Japanese paraphernalia on the album sleeve, I sort of hoped that he'd at least go for a pseudo-Japanese arrangement, for amusement's sake — but no, the arrangement is fairly uninventive, with a slightly funkified beat and a wailing saxophone part replacing the original guitar melody (the organ solo is, of course, preserved, though it's nowhere near as tense as it used to be). Surprisingly, Alan sings the thing really well, almost on Burdon's level, which just goes to show how much confidence he had gained as a singer over the past decade — but still, was that really necessary?..

Because the rest of the record is just completely incompatible with the re-recording: it's almost as if the latter was forced on the man by his record label or something, as they were worrying about the impending lack of sales and all. (People are stupid, see, and they have this uncontrollable urge to buy everything that has ʽHouse Of The Rising Sunʼ stamped on it — 100% success if it is also accompanied by a picture of a bikini-clad geisha). All the songs are very lightweight, unpreten­tious, lyrically simplistic (but with a few fun Newman-style twists woven in here and there) and reflecting Alan's by now traditional integration of old school vaudeville and new school dance-pop. No social observations or philosophical undercurrents whatsoever.

Actually, that's nothing to be ashamed of, because the record is fun — harmless, fluffy fun. Even when he takes a merry country jig (ʽPerfect Ladyʼ), replaces the banjo part with bubbly-funky, synthetically treated guitar and the fiddle part with a really stupid-sounding synth, it still works, because the whole thing is a musical joke, and this time the joke's on the instrumentation. It's maddeningly catchy, too, even if (like so many other songs of his) the man probably pilfered it from some country record that I've never heard. The same applies to the majority of the material: these songs sound more like lighthearted parodies of various musical genres than sincere exer­cises in any of them, which is probably what makes the album ultimately enjoyable rather than embarrassing.

Anyway, here is a quick run through the «highlights»: ʽI'm Coming Backʼ sounds like a send-up of Cheap Trick-ish power pop, everything very ecstatic, but with an ironic smile behind all the hystrionic guitar soloing and vocal roaring; ʽWake Upʼ borrows the opening piano line of ʽMess Aroundʼ for its own purposes — a comedic send-up of the "get up and work" idea; ʽThe Love That I Neededʼ and ʽDon't Make Me Sufferʼ are old school pop rock, with female vocal harmo­nies, pleasant chorus resolutions and no ambition whatsoever; and ʽMusic In The Cityʼ caps things off with the album's only straightforward disco number that, once again, sounds pretty tongue-in-cheek to me, although — I admit — this might simply be due to the overall strange­ness of the idea of the Animals' keyboardist and Malcolm McDowell's soul mate doing disco.

I really really like one song here — the straightforward cabaret number ʽMr. Sunbeamʼ. Of all the tunes here, this one seems to be the only one to capture some of Alan's patented Englishness, in­cluding some awesomely quirky lyrical lines ("It's tough at the top, but rougher at the bottom / And positively boring in between") and a properly sunny attitude for those of us who feel down and out. Simple as it is, this is the one that could have easily fit in on any of his mid-Seventies masterpieces. But one song, of course, is not enough to salvage the record from the misde­meanor of «fluffiness», and the re-recording of ʽHouse Of The Rising Sunʼ (which, by the way, on this record is directly credited to Alan Price, not even listed as «traditional, arr. by Alan Price» as it used to be — did they think nobody would notice?), decent or not, is still an unforgivable artistic gaffe, so no thumbs up here.

Neutral Milk Hotel: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (IAS #23)

This one's bound to be controversial today:

Neutral Milk Hotel: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

(Flamethrowers have been removed from the area as a precaution measure).

Animal Collective: Painting With

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: PAINTING WITH (2016)

1) FloriDada; 2) Hocus Pocus; 3) Vertical; 4) Lying In The Grass; 5) The Burglars; 6) Natural Selection; 7) Bagels In Kiev; 8) On Delay; 9) Spilling Guts; 10) Summing The Wretch; 11) Golden Gal; 12) Recycling.

After the overdubbing excesses of Centipede Hz, its follow-up Painting With almost sounds like an exercise in stripping down to the basics — quieter, less cluttered with bombastic overdubs, sort of an «Animal Collective-lite», back-to-roots version of the transcendental-psychedelic AC of the past ten years. As far as I understand, much of this has to do with the band dropping their reliance on the reverb effect — and so, this time around, they bring the music right into your living room instead of having it drop down on you from the skies, in a benevolent gesture from the Olympian gods of candy-colored psychedelia.

Another change is that the songs are getting shorter: the entire record is over in less than fourty minutes, with the longest track clocking in at a measly 4:33 (which led them to jokingly calling this «our Ramones album»). By throwing out lengthy build-ups and drones and relying far more on the strength of vocal melodies than they used to, they are indeed moving as close to the «pop» format as is possible for The Animal Collective without ceasing to be The Animal Collective and beginning to be The Sellout Collective. Not that anybody should be worried — the whole thing still sounds totally insane — but this time we are presented with a lighter, fluffier form of insanity, sort of a silly romp of elfish kids through Central Park rather than a solemn ritual performed with the goal of breaking through into another dimension. Or, perhaps, a more accurate analogy would be that, if Merryweather Post Pavillion is this band's Pet Sounds and Centipede Hz is an attempt at its Smile, then Painting With is their Wild Honey — a definite step backwards in terms of experimentation without sacrificing too much of the essence.

Contrary to rumors, Painting With is quite a diverse record: capturing the songs in an analytical web, anyone can see that ʽFloriDadaʼ is retro-sunshine pop, ʽHocus Pocusʼ is folk-based prog­ressive rock, ʽVerticalʼ is contemporary R&B, ʽNatural Selectionʼ is fast-tempo techno-pop, and there's quite a few other musical genres lurking in the shadows, too — the problem being that, once they all go through the prescribed Animal Collective filter, the substantial differences be­tween them are neutralised. Sure there's no more reverb, but the band's technique of overdubbing psychedelic vocal harmonies and entrusting the melodic backbone to humming-bubbling synthe­sizers remains quite stable, so every single song sets almost precisely the same mood, and the inherent differences of all these musical genres are not only not exploited, but diligently covered up by the production. In the end, there's absolutely no reason for me to discuss what makes any two of these tracks stand out from each other — who really cares about complex time signatures or peculiarities of voice distribution over different sound channels when no matter what you do, you come out with more or less the same result?

Repeated listens are essential for the record, because at first (and at second, and at third...) it just sounds like a big jar of sweet sonic goo — short song lengths not helping any, and vocal hooks all reduced to the same common psychedelic denominator. Eventually, through the aid of some particularly outstanding vocal lines (like the chorus to ʽFloriDadaʼ), the tracks come apart, but just barely so, and I am still left wondering: it is one thing when we are exposed to, say, a full album of same-mood ballads by Sinatra or Dusty Springfield, but with a band as experimental as these guys, is it really right that it should take so much time to separate one track from another? I guess you really have to love The Animal Collective to death, and to «get» this kind of sound in your heart the way other people «get» Willie Nelson or J. J. Cale, to give Painting With all the admiration it may deserve.

But there's the catch — I think that this shorter-song, simpler-sound approach does them a dis­favor in the end. At least for me, much too often, the album ends up on the verge of being annoying: all those hee-haw-hee-haw vocals, when they are not directly carried out into the stratosphere, as they used to, eventually bring on associations with village idiots and bad taste humorists. If the record's major purpose is to convey a feeling of light-hearted joy, as I believe it is, then, as far as I am concerned, it fails. Not that I envy the band's position: having clearly peaked at the turn of the decade, they have nothing left to prove and (probably) nothing left to blow our minds even one more time, so any further experimental detour, be it even in the direc­tion of «de-experimentalizing» themselves, is potentially welcome. But one cannot also avoid asking oneself the horrid question about jumping the shark — because, for all I know, the point of Painting With might be to state "It's Only Psycho Pop, But I Like It, Yes I Do", and if so, who's gonna be carrying the real banner of psychedelia into the 2010s? Kanye West?..

Carbon Based Lifeforms: Twentythree

CARBON BASED LIFEFORMS: TWENTYTHREE (2011)

1) Arecibo; 2) System; 3) Somewhere In Russia; 4) Terpene; 5) Inertia; 6) VLA (edit); 7) Kensington Gardens; 8) Held Together By Gravity.

For the weak-willed and feeble-minded, the very same day upon which Carbon Based Lifeforms introduced us to the sonic monumentality of VLA (July 23, 2011) also saw the release of a «nor­mal» album — so, if you are spiritually baffled and morally destroyed by the sixty minutes of ʽVLAʼ, here is a nice little compromise for you: ten minutes of ʽVLAʼ (in the form of an edit), plus seven other seven-to-ten minute tracks that pretty much do the same thing — only in several different ways. It's kind of like spending your time in a museum: would you want to spend one hour of your time staring at one fabulous landscape, or divide that time between eight different ones? Actually, the correct answer would depend on many circumstances (starting with the in­dividual quality of the pictures and ending with the individual quality of your soul), but here we won't be getting too pretentious about that, and just admit that VLA is an extreme, and Twenty­three feels quite accessible in its company.

It also feels somewhat more pleasing to me than its two predecessors — despite the stark mini­malism and a complete shift to the hardcore ambient paradigm. The major reason is that the silly electronic beats are gone: they never really needed them anyway, and now that the music no longer pretends to invite you to dance, you can just tune in with the cosmos and stuff, because, you know, The Creator has a Masterplan and it doesn't necessarily involve all the living things getting into a trip-hop groove or anything. It does involve various atmospheric shifts and transi­tions, though, and there's plenty here, from track to track.

Again, the composers are jumping from macro- to microcosm here: ʽAreciboʼ, with its obvious reference to the Arecibo Observatory, is clearly influenced by planetary movement, whereas ʽTerpeneʼ should probably induce you to feel the smell of conifer resin (at the very least, there is definitely something sticky-liquid-like about the wobbly flow of its programmed loops). ʽInertiaʼ brings you back to the world of intertwining underground caverns, with gentle gurgling streams trickling through and harmless night owls and bats hooing off echoes (although why it is called ʽInertiaʼ, we'll never know); ʽSystemʼ is the closest they come to transmitting the idea of being lost in space.

ʽSomewhere In Russiaʼ, one of the few tracks with the very, very faint presence of an underlying beat, probably means Chukotka rather than Moscow — somewhere, in short, where temperatures are quite low and human presence is scarce. In direct contrast, ʽKensington Gardensʼ are lively, replete with tolling bells, singing birds, and echoes of what seems to have once been noises made by children and other visitors — yet now there's a certain ghostliness to it all, and, in fact, many of these tracks could be thought of as coherently conceptual, like it's a record about a universe that suddenly, for no particular reason, found itself devoid of people. I mean, most ambient albums give off an air of total solitude, but Twentythree quite specifically feels like an odd deconstruction project, where you have a soundscape that is densely populated by actual people, and then, whoosh, all human presence has been erased and only faint echoes remain.

It probably wouldn't have hurt them to find at least a few strikingly impressive melodic lines for some of these tracks, rather than resort to the usual «glide one note into another so that nobody even notices» technique — but the music still works, and the tracks seem alive and meaningful in the vein of all those old Klaus Schulze records. At least I can say that it made me feel like the only living man on Earth for a brief while, and I'd rather get that from music than from a VR headset, so while I'm still hesitant to move my thumbs in the presence of hardcore ambient, let us count this as an endorsement of sorts.

Carcass: Surgical Steel

CARCASS: SURGICAL STEEL (2013)

1) 1985; 2) Thrasher's Abattoir; 3) Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System; 4) A Congealed Clot Of Blood; 5) The Master Butcher's Apron; 6) Noncompliance To ASTM F 899-12 Standard; 7) The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills; 8) Unfit For Human Consumption; 9) 316L Grade Surgical Steel; 10) Captive Bolt Pistol; 11) Mount Of Execution; 12*) A Wraith In The Apparatus; 13*) Intensive Battery Brooding.

Legendary bands never really die — they just build up anticipation for a reunion tour. In the case of Carcass, this happened as early as 2007, and they even got Amott to take a break from Arch Enemy and rejoin. However, by the time they were ready to re-enter the studio, Amott left once again, so the resulting album was made by the trio of Steer, Walker, and new drummer Dan Wilding, whose style, it is said, reminded the band very much of original drummer Ken Owen's (Ken was debilitated by a hemorrhage and could not play, but, in a carcass-sweet gesture, they still invited him to provide some backing voc... uh, grunts).

Asking the common question of «can they still cut it?» is commonly senseless, because of course they can — had they not been able to keep up with past standards of loudness, speed, heaviness, and grossness, this album would have never been made. A better, and tougher, question is «is there still any reason left for them to cut it?», because the entire (relatively brief) career of Car­cass had been about evolving, and unless they convincingly show that they can pick up from where they left off with Swansong and show new paths of activity for the 21st century, Surgical Steel is pretty much bound to find itself in the used instrument bin.

Adding up the style and quality of the riffs, the production values, and the ambiguous nature of song titles and lyrics (which has more than a few nods to the early goregrind values, but also hearkens back to the sociopolitical angle of Swansong), Surgical Steel finds itself closer to Heart­work, I'd say, than any other Carcass record — which is hardly surprising, considering how Heartwork has emerged as the most fondly remembered album of 'em all. Elements of almost perverse melodicity shine through beginning with the very first track (ʽThrasher's Abat­toirʼ), where Walker growl-sings strings of polysyllabic words to a sped-up Sabbath-style riff, concluding that "Hipsters and posers I abhor / Welcome to the thrasher's abattoir" — a nice amal­gamation of the band's morgue grossness and social stance all in one. (So now you know who was actually pictured on the front sleeve of Putreficiation — hipsters and posers!).

That said, like on Heartwork, any perceived melodicity here serves one and only one purpose, and by 2013, we should have all learned that purpose by heart. That all the songs immediately merge into one big ball of thrashing riffs, histrionic solos, and werewolf growls, is a self-under­stood limitation of the genre. Problem is, there's hardly anything else to it: the band's sense of humor is not very efficient, the social message is not working, and they have not really developed any new musical ideas — all that «now we're playing fast... and now we're playing very fast without losing the melodic edge» schtick is already so familiar that only a total novice could be properly amazed at the way they're doing it.

The last track, ʽMount Of Executionʼ, is their first (I think) attempt at a massive epic, a sort of revision of Biblical history where the events of Golgotha are perceived as the signal for a "dark mobilization" (well, it's Carcass, what do you want? not exactly the house band for love, mercy, and forgiveness), and it's got an acoustic introduction, some old school metal riffage, and on the whole sounds more like a mix of Sabbath and Amorphis than a band that once vied with Napalm Death for supremacy on the grindcore field. Repeated listens turn it into a clear favorite, but it's still just one track, and, unsurprisingly, the least Carcass-ish of 'em all. The rest all sound kinda cool while they're on, but fade into oblivion exactly fifteen seconds after they're gone.

Incidentally, one of the bonus tracks on the Japanese edition, called ʽIntensive Battery Broodingʼ, sounds almost exactly like Sabbath ­— in fact, they could have done a generous deed and donated it to Iommi for his 13 project (on the other hand, it lifts a crucial chord change from ʽInto The Voidʼ, so maybe they'd be too embarrassed to hand Tony a variation on his own music). This just goes to show how much the band has «regressed» back to heavy rock values of the 1970s, which is indeed in line with their development in the 1990s — but also suggests that this is sort of the natural way to go, as you just cannot keep chugging out the same radical thrash / grindcore riffs forever, if you think of yourself as a musician rather than a sonic entertainer. Unfortunately, it's way too hard to be just a heavy metal musician and retain your own unmistakable identity, and lack of identity is what Surgical Steel suffers from the most, even as it keeps kicking your putrefying, suppurating, crepitating, virulently ruptured ass all the way through.

Camel: A Nod And A Wink

CAMEL: A NOD AND A WINK (2002)

1) A Nod And A Wink; 2) Simple Pleasures; 3) A Boy's Life; 4) Fox Hill; 5) The Miller's Tale; 6) Squigely Fair; 7) For Today; 8*) After All These Years.

Apparently, the idea of once again writing pretty, life-breathing music stuck with Latimer for a while, because this slightly belated, but logically continuous sequel to Rajaz (formally dedicated to the memory of Peter Bardens, who had died in early 2002) sounds every bit as lively as its predecessor, and sometimes even livelier. Again consisting of a few lengthy «progressive» tracks rather than a big bunch of short pop ones, A Nod And A Wink features two new band members (Guy LeBlanc on keyboards and Denis Clement on drums), plenty of musical ideas, and all of that uniquely Camel-esque melancholic atmosphere provided by a variety of Latimer guitar tones (rather than a single howl-at-the-moon one), flutes, acoustic and electronic keyboards.

The biggest difference from Rajaz is that this record is much more noticeably «English» in nature — where Rajaz took its inspiration from Arabian deserts, A Nod And A Wink has a sub­set of tunes very specifically loaded with British imagery, such as ʽFox Hillʼ (which wouldn't sound completely out of place on a classic early Genesis album like Nursery Cryme or, for that matter, Foxtrot) and ʽSquigely Fairʼ, a near-instrumental with alternating folksy / Elizabethan themes and even a very Jethro Tull-ian flute solo in the middle. This is not necessarily a good thing (immersing himself in Irish motifs did not help save Harbour Of Tears from being boring), but with the entire positive retro vibe going on, these influences are not ruined by stuffy produc­tion or too much dull instrumentation, so it's okay.

Like on Rajaz, the individual tunes do not seem to be too memorable; it is more important that they keep mutating, never letting a particular mediocre groove overstay its welcome before re­placing it with an aggressive guitar solo or a pensive acoustic part or a jazzy interlude or some­thing else — and that the tones, tempos, and moods constantly shift between tunes as well. ʽA Boy's Lifeʼ alone goes through an acoustic introduction, a heavenly anthemic theme with Andy on rainbow slide guitar, a gentle folksy waltz section, and a grand climax with a thick, juicy psychedelic solo: a prog lover's dream come true once more, in other words. The only bad news is that the band does not use enough tricky time signatures — but then again, think back on the old times: Camel were never really that big on 15/8 or 21/4, preferring to leave that side of the business to King Crimson, Genesis, and Gentle Giant.

As it is, it's fairly hard to explain why A Nod And A Wink sounds so good — its compositions do not linger too long in memory, its innovative potential is close to zero, and it does not even have a proper concept, let alone all the fox-hunting and village market references that are only valid for parts of the record. But somehow it just does. Even the slow, ponderous, anthemic ʽFor Todayʼ that ends the album with a choral sermon of "never give a day away / always live for to­day", somewhat echoing the old "never let go, never let go", sounds good, with Andy's «Gilmour-lite» bluesy soloing beginning in deeply tragic mode and then merging with the regal choir in an oddly uplifting-depressing symphonic sound, leaving us somewhat confused as to whether that admonition about never giving a day away is to be understood sincerely or ironically.

Still, if I truly had to single out one track, it would be ʽFox Hillʼ, for its ability to take the Camel sound and drag it out of its typically sluggish shell — the song is quite an agitated, spirited romp through several distinct musical parts, culminating in one of the most fabulous slide guitar solos I've ever had the pleasure of hearing from Latimer: catchy, yes, but most importantly, almost fox-like sly in execution. It is the kind of epic that was so sorely lacking for the previous twenty years, flexing a little muscle and sporting a bit of an ironic smile; essentially, there's always hope for any artist who, in the twilight years of his career, is still able to put out something like that.

Naturally, the album as a whole gets another thumbs up, and it is quite regrettable that Camel were not able to continue this winning streak — largely due to Latimer's own health problems, as he found himself battling bone marrow cancer and only managed to somewhat recover in the early 2010s. (The latest official «new» Camel release is a 2013 studio re-recording of the entire Snow Goose, which I have not heard and have very little intent to do so). And although this long break may be fatal, A Nod And A Wink definitely does not sound like a proper swan song re­cord may be expected to sound — because, of course, it was never meant to be Camel's last album, and we might yet get to hear another report on another day in dromedary life, provided there's any audience left in the 2010s to want to hear it.

Can: Unlimited Edition

CAN: UNLIMITED EDITION (1968-1973; 1976)

1) Gomorrha; 2) Doko E; 3) LH 702 (Nairobi/München); 4) I'm Too Leise; 5) Musette; 6) Blue Bag (Inside Paper); 7) E.F.S. No. 27; 8) TV Spot; 9) E.F.S. No. 7; 10) The Empress And The Ukraine King; 11) E.F.S. No. 10; 12) Mother Upduff; 13) E.F.S. No. 36; 14) Cutaway; 15) Connection; 16) Fall Of Another Year; 17) E.F.S. No. 8; 18) Transcen­dental Express; 19) Ibis.

Can had originally opened their vaults as early as 1974 — with an LP called Limited Edition that was, appropriately, limited to a few thousand copies and targeted at the hardcore fanbase they had developed. Two years later, the collection was expanded to the size of a double album and re-released as Unlimited Edition, even though the fanbase did not exactly double in size over the 1975-76 period. However, in May 1976 Can were no longer on the cutting edge of experimental pop music, and were probably thinking in earnest about the systematic preservation and protec­tion of their rich legacy... and so, here you go.

Frankly speaking, much of this record is crap. But what can you expect of chaotic odds and ends, salvaged from years of hunting after inspiration in the confines of a recording studios? Some days there's plenty of game (and it usually ends up on your regular albums), and some days it's just a bunch of meaningless, emotionally uninterpretable sound collections (and that's what usually stays in the vaults). And even if something there does make sense, it is still going to sound infe­rior compared to all the stuff that you trusted far enough to polish for official release.

Many of these snippets come branded as parts of «Ethnological Forgery Series», whose ironic title suggests that these are parodies / avantgardist imitations / deconstructions of various genres of world music — thus, ʽNo. 27ʼ, with Suzuki on vocals, is built around quasi-deep-folk-Japanese singing; ʽNo. 7ʼ and ʽNo. 11ʼ are quasi-Near Eastern pastiches; ʽNo. 36ʼ is a take on New Orlea­nian jazz; and ʽNo. 8ʼ is a percussion-only bit of pseudo-Caribbean fun. These are all short, fun, usually pointless, and always harmless — but I couldn't say the same about the 17-minute long ʽCutawayʼ, where similar and other snippets have been sewn together into one large and totally incoherent sheet of short grooves, mood pieces, and studio hooliganry. Without any central unifying theme, mood, or purpose, the very title ʽCutawayʼ certainly surmises ʽThrowawayʼ, which should have been its real title, even though I'm sure there must be people out there who'd swear by this as the ultimate Can experience. (I'd take the amateurish, but sincere experimenta­tion of the studio half of Ummagumma over it, though, any day).

So is there anything here of real worth? Actually, yes: several tracks represent more or less com­plete experiences, and could make respectable companions to regular albums from the respective era. Namely, from the Monster Movie period we have ʽThe Empress And The Ukraine Kingʼ, an absurdist funky rave with Mooney at his fussiest and some kick-ass guitar overdubs from Karoli; ʽMother Upduffʼ, a bizarre spoken tale of one family's unforgettable European adventures that sounds like a cross between similar tales by the Velvet Underground and The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp; and two perfectly reasonable pop songs (ʽConnectionʼ, with a Stonesy vibe, and ʽFall Of Another Yearʼ, with some truly autumnal-mood interplay between Holger's bass and Karoli's acoustic guitar).

The Suzuki era is represented less adequately; from the peak years, only ʽTV Spotʼ, with its re­lentless paranoid groove and one of Suzuki's most comprehensible vocal performances, stands out, but I don't really see any place for it on Tago Mago. However, ʽGomorrhaʼ from 1973 would definitely have fit on Future Days, and I am actually sorry not to see it there — with those sad, distant, ghostly slide guitar wails and echoey crescendos it is as otherworldly evocative as the best stuff on that album, and might indeed be the best composition here (which is probably why it serves as the album opener — to lure you into a sea of ultimately broken promises). Finally, the album ends with two later tracks that are at least intriguing: ʽTranscendental Expressʼ, completely dominated by a lead banjo part, sounds like psychedelic deconstructed country-western, and the lengthy ʽIbisʼ from 1975 shares the creepy nighttime mystique of the best tracks on Landed, even if it's a bit of an overkill at its nine minutes.

The best spots for these individual tracks, though, would have been bonus slots on the respective albums — taken together, they do remind us of the vast scope of this band's interests and of its refusal to be strictly tied to any conventions, but they do not exactly kick the ground from under your feet; and as for all the short snippets in between, it is not clear to me if they add to the awe­inspiring brilliance of the Can kaleidoscope or simply act as irresponsible nuisances, preventing you from dedicating your complete attention to the good stuff. In any case, I suppose that this is pretty much what anybody would expect from an album of Can outtakes — diversity, unpredic­tability, and a total and utter lottery when it comes to spiritual impact.