Glorious Group Therapy
(Ecstatic Yod) Used LP $8.00
On this 2003 reissue of a 1990s Polyamory cassette, “Feel The Music” starts off [with] barking dogs, picked six-string and … Tim Barnes’s clattering percussion. As the tune spirals onward, a bass voice adds echoing, wordless chants as a spine-tingling falsetto repeats the title phrase. The percussion grows into a deep, subsonic dub, filling the spaces with a chest-denting whomp. MV’s guitar continues to peel off twangy licks, as if unaware of the madness growing around it. “Cocola’s Chronic Journey” is a journey where guitars slowly nudge one another, meandering along at a lackadaisical pace, backed by some free-jazz tinkering by Barnes on “chopstick cymbals.” “Riverboat Au Go Go” recalls the awe-inspiring lyricism of John Fahey. “Moonshine Raga” starts quietly with a whispering, autumnal dance. The players are in no rush, and they let notes hang, allowing percussive hits to dissipate into nothing. After a lengthy wait, Barnes begins to awaken things by settling into a stuttering tabla groove. Valentine follows suit on guitar, raising volume carefully, before letting it slide back to silence. “Ceremony Without” adds the hovering drone of harmonium to MV’s up-tempo guitar figure. The rhythmic breaths of the harmonium bring a warm buzz, rubbing against the quickly picked guitar and loud, staccato percussion. Amid looped drones “Psychic 78 Sound”, the album’s strangest track, the group creates a multi-layered percussive stomp that coheres into a lulling tribal groove.
Small As Life and Infinitesimally As Pure
(Radical Readout / Child of Microtone) Hardcover book $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second edition of the psychoactive pulp novella by mountain beardo from MV&EE Medicine Show and Tower Recordings asks and answers the question “what was literature?”