Sunday, May 5, 2024

Cardinal Fuzz & Friends: A Non-Accidental Hat-Trick... and then some.

The most consistenly diverse and edgy rock oriented record label in the world;  CARDINAL FUZZ has simply put the puck in the net with 3 brand new exceptional records. Capably assisted by Feeding Tube Records with 2 of the LPs, also co-released by Deep Water Acres as well as bearing the Sunrise Ocean Bender stamp, none of this is an accident!❤ 

Well schooled and properly turned out artists all, each have produced game winning albums, no question whatsoever. 



Ambassador Hazy (Sterling Deweise) out of New York state has unleased his 4th LP in as many years.  A veteran with a  signature sound and unique take on the vibes of the 60's garage-psych scene while channeling the influences of punk, krautrock, prog, folk and experimental-ism.  Tripped out and fired up, "Leaving Here" exudes the "everytime I spin it, it takes me different places" effect,  which for me makes a truly crucial album...so good !!








E-Gone (Daniel Westerlund) is from Sweden.  My mind was completely blown 10 years back by the 2014 vinyl issue of "All The Suns Of The Earth"(2013 and a Desert Island Disc),  an album released on the stellar Sunrise Ocean Bender label run by the late music svengali Kevin McFaddin💕.  I knew through talking with Kevin at some point in late 2022, that this new record "Adventures Before The Body" was in the pipline some 8 years after a second album called "Advice to Hill Walkers" (also awesome) was released on CD.  "Adventures.." is magnicant!  Full of Eastern Psych meditative,  meets electrifying kosmische. It's a deep edgy dive embellished by driving percussion & some deadly guitar histrionics...total monster!





Elkhorn from New York, principally known for their impeccable twin guitar,  psychedlic, instrumental, cosmic Americana folk ramble, blew out the speakers on 2022's "Distances" album with the addition of a drummer.  They have upped the anti on this "Other Worlds" recording !  To my old ears and musically overloaded grey matter, it's a trip akin to a less adrenalized Earthless!  This fucker rocks and grooves.  The drums are all over it framing the guitar interplay and the whole listen is forward propulsive with an adge of calm...just WOW!









Another wickedly great treat is a newly minted album from Ollie Heffernan and Patrick Pärk.  A wicked collision of Berlin School magic between 2 music freaks, one in the UK and one in the USA.  A total zoner session that is fit for consumption and deep meditation around the clock!  Ollie keeps busy with a number of projects and is well known for leading the awesome Ivan The Tolerable!  Patrick has a number of projects including loads under his own name and I defo also dig his older 
Kösmonaut recordings which yeilded the wicked "Future Machines" LP in 2013!  Check this track out from the fantastic "Sun Reflector" LP ...





                                 


Coming in June...3 x LPs "Eine Nacht" Cardinal Fuzz . 9 players, one night of live improvisation. Dead Sea Apes. The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol . A variety of purchase variants available depending on where you hang your hat. All revealed soon. June is just around the corner                                  



More CARDINAL FUZZ news here !  Check it out ! 

Thursday, May 2, 2024

2021: A Record Most Of You Missed In Fat Cat City...Byron Coley's Thoughts on Attya X Attya




A GLOWING review in The Wire UK May 2021 (Issue 447) by Byron Coley.

Attya X Attya - "Alpharabius" is a solo project developed by Hisham Attya, a musician of Palestinian descent, though born in Kuwait with Canadian citizenship. His work achieved wider recognition when he joined the Ottawa based psych crew The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol in 2010. 





Attya played electric oud with them for a couple of years until his day
job – designing Formula 1 race tracks – required a relocation to Germany, where he began working on the Âlpharabius project in 2016. Attya’s dad played the oud and regularly hauled his son around to oud makers’ workshops, where he developed his own taste for the instrument by the age of 16. When he joined TBWNIS he built himself an electric oud so he could be heard amid their psych onslaught, becoming enamoured of various electronic doo-dads in the process. Âlpharabius is an autobiographical suite, inspired by the semiotics essays in Roland Barthes’s Image-Music-Text. I’m not smart enough to unravel the album’s structural details, but I can attest that it’s full of superbly involving music.  The record is accompanied by a 20 page book of lyrics, drawings, scores and photographs, which serve as a roadmap to the proceedings. The music is quite amazing. 


Players include personnel from TBWNIS among others, allowing Hisham access to a great range of styles, from “Ahwak II”, which sounds like a collaboration between Shady Grove-era Quicksilver and 50 Foot Hose, to “Ya Yaffa”, which mixes semi-traditional oud and vocal motifs with dubby, drifty melodica-laced smoke. One of the recurring musical threads combines folk forms with synthesized washes of sound. These tracks recall (at least in terms of construction) parts of Ikona, the 1990 debut album by Macedonia’s Lola V Stain, whose work had a similar syncretic bite. But there are few other models I can make to describe the aesthetic trajectory of this fascinating album. Âlpharabius is a very personal and idiosyncratic triumph."

If yer' keen to grab a copy. I have copies available!  Get in touch...👽