Spire

'Here's the church...' More printing fallout, I'm afraid - it reminded me of a painting I saw at the Bauhausmuseum in Weimar called 'Gelmeroda XI' by Lionel Feininger. Actually it's the somewhat stained chopping board I use as a makeshift press when I'm rather inexpertly lining everything up (the other side is here with some ghost birds on it...)

I read an article about the band Tame Impala a while ago and it seemed to me that the way the new album, 'Lonerism', was produced explained a lot about how it ended up sounding. Apparently for recording purposes T.I. is less a band and more one man, currently relocated from Australia to Paris and recreating all that sunkissed-bliss in a studio. He gets a load of mates together later to actually play this stuff live and I imagine, as a result, you probably get more of the actual sand-between-the toes feel of the first album if you see them in that context. Now I like this album a lot; it doesn't have the immediacy of it's predecessor, 'Innerspeaker', but it's a definite grower and probably actually a better album precisely because there's a slight sense of dislocation to add to the overall feel of the thing. This is by way of an introduction to this years other 'psychedelic' sensation, Swedish band Goat, about whom I knew nothing until Middleman (a.k.a. "my friend in the North") turned me on to them this week. After a few days intensive listening I can only add that they do indeed 'rock' like a very rocky thing. The point being that whilst I was initially thinking 'Perry Farrell fronting (live) Tame Impala' I'm now thinking Perry Farrell, assisted by Karen O's choir of 'kids', with the rhythm section from Fela's Africa '70 and lashings of added Hendrix-Funkadelic guitar. Whatever studio this disco was cooked up in it has the 'feel' of being made by some communal 'Lord of the Flies' type group of painted savages rolling ecstatically in the mud. Maybe that's what actually happened. Very much recommended, particularly on a frosty old morning like today. Very good music for playing loud whilst printing, too!