Finnish Krautrockers, Circle, began their US tour with a FREE performance at Other Music in NYC on Tuesday night and will soon be heading west. Circle will play with a few different bands along the way, including Endless Boogie, Grails, Assemblehead in Sunburst Sound, OM and Oneida. Should be a fantastic tour. I saw them at the Great American Music Hall about 3 years ago and it was such an experience… Growing and Earth opened the show with incredible sets of experimental metal and then Circle took the audience to another dimension! The music was psychedelic and totally trance-inducing. For some reason they remind of Les Savy Fav, but with really long, drawn out jams that take you deeper and deeper into the music. They also put so much energy into the performance, much like LSF do. If you are near one of their shows, I highly recommend checking them out. The recorded versions do not come close to describing the sounds and experience of their live performance. ([More →])

Our favorite psychedelic space-rockers - Spectrum - are currently weaving across the Northern US on their way to V Festival in Toronto. If you heard Sonic Boom on his tour earlier this year, you may have been left with an appetite for a full Spectrum experience. Boom played a handful of songs from the Spectrum archives during his sets, and now we can hear them in proper stereo. Spectrum just played two shows in NYC over the weekend and Tuesday night they were in Cambridge Mass. After that, it’s on to Philly, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Then in September, they hit Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, and a lot of midwest in bewtween. And of course, Portland, SF and LA will get their turn before the band travels through the south, finishing up the tour at the Wall of Sound Festival in Fort Worth, Texas. ([More →])

Fans of surf rock, Beach Boys instrumentals, and late 60’s psychedelic jazz, may I please have your exquisite attention for a moment. I have some big news for you…

“Here’s a little story, I got to tell, about 3 bad brothers, you know SO well. It started way back in history, with Doug, Daryl, Dennis, and Donn Landee….”

It begins with the story of the Dragon brothers, which reads like the Lords of Dogtown for psychedelic surf rockers. In the late 60’s, Doug, Daryl and Dennis Dragon lived, surfed, and rocked in Malibu California. Donn Landee, a high school friend of Dennis Dragon, was working as a recording engineer at Sunwest Recording Studios in Hollywood. The Dragons would sometimes go to the studio to record tracks in the wee hours of morning after finishing a gig in LA. This story is so good, I need to let the original author tell it:

They call the sessions “Blue Forces Intelligence,” find themselves layering their instruments in new ways, adding deep, bassy vocal lines and then ramming them up against falsetto harmonies, adding organs and space age sound effects, recording spirituals and pop and crazy rock opera. The effect is increasingly spacey and weird, but also funky - a missing link between new directions others are exploring in jazz and soul as well as rock music.

Unfortunately, the suits at the West Coast offices of the major labels aren’t ready, complaining that they don’t hear a hit. After shopping the record, now called just “BFI”, for a few months, the boys become disillusioned and focus instead on their session work. They all end up working in the Beach Boys’ backing band. Doug moves to Hawaii, tours Australia. Dennis becomes a successful record producer. Daryl hooks up with Toni Tennille and experiences international chart success as “The Captain”. The Dragons’ “BFI” is forgotten.

In addition to this surf album, Dennis Dragon also composed the soundtracks for skate movies and ski movies…

Jump on 37 years. Strictly Kev/DJ Food, influential mixologist and designer for Ninja Tune and obsessive record collector - picks up a new batch of vinyl from a record dealer he knows. In amongst them is a 500-run private pressing of the soundtrack to a surf movie called “A Sea For Yourself”. On it is a track called “Food For My Soul” by a band called the Dragons. Kev being a fan of all possible food-based puns and currently putting together the mix for his new “Solid Steel” mix cd for Ninja, drops the needle on the groove.

What he finds amazes him - a true psychedelic original from a band he’s never heard of. Using his extensive contacts in the world of vinyl mania, he manages to track Dennis Dragon down. He emails him, asks him if he can include “Food For My Soul” on the mix. Sure, says Dennis. There’s a whole album of the stuff if he’s interested. Dennis checks. Donn still has the master tapes. He converts them to mp3 and emails them to Kev. Kev is blown away. He forwards them to Ninja Tune. Ninja Tune think it’s a scam. But then they listen. And they listen again. And then, after nearly forty years sitting on a recording engineer’s shelf, Ninja Tune decide to release “BFI”.

I was so entranced by this story that appeared as a humble press release in my inbox today, that I had to just quote it directly. I rarely do this, but this was just too good.

“And moral of this story is: keep your master tapes. Whatever you do, keep your master tapes. ”
-James from Ninja Tune

Boy is that the truth! The question now, is ARE YOU READY?

BFI, recorded by The Dragons in 1970, will be released August 27th 2007 by the one and only Ninja Tune! “Food for my soul” was included on both the full length album, Solid Steel Presents DJ Food & DK: Now, Listen Again! and the limited edition Now, Listen Again! 7″ promo record which were both released in April of this year. Check the Ninja Tune Store for copies.

Ninja Tune And Dragons LINKS

Ninja Tune - ultra cool website that features all the Ninja’s allies: Big Dada, Solid Steel, Coldcut…
Ninja Tune music$pace
Dennis Dragon Page in the Composers Index of Soundtracks

Soundtracks by Dennis Dragon include:

Hal Jepsen: surf / skateboard films:
“Super Session”
“Go For It”
“A Sea For Yourself”
“We Got Surf”
“Skateboard Madness”
… etc.

Other films:
“Winter Equinox” (ski film)
“Spinnin’ Wheels” (skateboard film)

Warren Miller Productions, Hollywood, Ca / (ski film):
“Steep and Deep”

Yay! Southern Lord mates BORIS - the tiny Japanese trio with a great big GONG and a great big metal sound, will also be touring Europe this summer! Some stops will find them joining the ISIS/OXBOW concerts previously announced, one stop will find them sharing the stage with Pelican, and the others seem to be independent gigs. Southern Lord + Hydra Head = Serious Audio Doom!!

BORIS Tour Dates

06-17 Ljubljana, Slovenia - Cvetlicarna Mediapark w/ ISIS + OXBOW
06-18 Vienna, Austria - Szene
06-19 Wroclaw, Poland - Firelej w/ ISIS + OXBOW
06-20 Warsaw, Poland - Progresja w/ ISIS + OXBOW
06-22 Prague, Czech Republic - Palace Akropolis w/ ISIS + OXBOW
06-23 Dortmund, Germany - FZW
06-24 Tilburg, Netherlands - 013 Popcentrum
06-25 Brighton, England - Engine Rooms
06-26 Manchester, England - Sacred Trinity Church
06-27 Glasgow, Scotland - Nice’n'Sleazy
06-28 Newcastle, England - The Cluny
06-29 Sheffield, England - Corporation
06-30 Nottingham, England - TBA
07-01 Bristol, England - The Cooler
07-02 London, England - KOKO w/ ISIS + OXBOW
07-03 Kortrijk, Belgium - De Kreun
07-04 Stuttgart, Germany - Club Schocken w/ Pelican
07-05 Hamburg, Germany - Molotow Club
07-06 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival

LINKS

BORIS page on Southern Lord as always, you can listen to Southern Lord artists on their band pages and sometimes even grab the mp3.
BORIS HEAVY ROCKS Homepage
You can download “Farewell” off their album Pink at Southern Lord

Hurray!!! Finally, EAR, Experimental Audio Research, is touring!! Not too many chances to catch his far out experimentalism, only a handful of US dates spanning April, and only 2 in London, but better than nothing which is all we have heard from EAR lately!
EAR was created by an experimental electronic scientist, Peter Kember, aka Sonic Boom, who may be more well known for his participation in surf guitar rock band, Spaceman 3, and psychedelic spaced out guitar rock band, Spectrum. There seems to be no limit to the scope and direction of the experimentations. he is notorious for his use of mulitple speak and spells as instruments and found sound recordings. i own an album which consists of nothing but recordings and simulations of daily noises, starting with the time of dinosaurs, and progressing to the modern experience. For further and deeper descriptions of this project, please read the bio on Sonic Boom’s website.

It gets better, the April 15th London performance will have EAR opening for Cluster! The April 30th London performance will also present a performance by Bert Jansch! Cluster, formed in the 70’s, is one of Germany’s pioneer experimental electronica bands. Cluster has collaborated with experimental krautrock band, Neu! and Brian Eno. These days, Cluster play mostly ambient electronic krautrock, and as far as i know, they have not toured since 1997. Bert Jansch is the founding member of Pentangle and won the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 for his work in folk music. The Scotsman has worked with Neil Young, Johnny Marr, and Jimmy Page, among others.

According to Sonic Boom’s website, here are the dates and places :

1 APRIL 2007, NYC, NY

E.A.R., REBEL NYC
2 APRIL 2007, PHILADELPHIA, PA

E.A.R., JOHNNY BRENDA’S
3 APRIL 2007, CLEVELAND, OH

E.A.R., BEACHLAND TAVERN
4 APRIL 2007, CHICAGO, IL

E.A.R., LAKESHORE THEATRE
5 APRIL 2007, AUSTIN, TX

E.A.R., EMO’S
8 APRIL 2007, SAN FRANCISCO, CA

E.A.R., HEMLOCK TAVERN
9 APRIL 2007, HOLLYWOOD, CA

E.A.R., SAFARI SAM’S
10 APRIL 2007, SACRAMENTO, CA

E.A.R., BLUE LAMP
12 APRIL 2007, NYC, NY

SPACELINES DJ SET, TRIBECA GRAND
15 APRIL 2007, LONDON, UK

E.A.R. SUPPORTING CLUSTER, CAMDEN UNDERWORLD
30 APRIL 2007, LONDON, UK

E.A.R., ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL. as part of St.Etienne’s launch of the refurbished room. Bert Jansch also playing.

Spectrum is also planning to tour the Pacific Rim in the late summer and fall of this year. Spectrum will release an EP and LP before the year is over.