Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Crystal ladies, riddum queens

Pocahaunted - Gehetto Ballet

I just got home from an art gallery where there was an opening on after my positively grey day at the office. I walked up the stairs to the gallery which was lit at an astonishing brightness, the artist has put in special super bright fluorescent bulbs himself (I mean, walking into an art opening is usually blinding enough all white walls and people everywhere but this was cer-razy!). The exhibition was by Lee Cunliff, paintings of familar sights in Christchurch done in the suitable style of drab, all washed out and flat (like Christchurch). Anyway, that doesn't have much to do with this Pocahaunted song which I've been wanting to BLOG about for a while now because its been blowing my brains out, their new album that is (there are two of them, the Olsen twins of drone, they put out music on LA label Not Not Fun (oft' mentioned on here) on which the new record Island Diamonds is not on, it's on some other label called Arbor). Most of their other music has been in the murkier ambient sort of school of primitive experimentalism but this new record is all druggy tribal rhythms and hypnotic dub jams, drenched in a grimey sort of reverb that positively smacks of the desert, not that I've ever been there, but I have been on a major Alejandro Jaworski kick lately; this is El Topo on the streets of California (I have been there but only when I was seven). ANYWAY my friend Shea walked up to the art gallery that I was by then standing outside of, he came up with his headphones in his ears listening to Island Diamonds and you shoulda seen the look on his face, well, it was more his eyes, they were WIDE open and he walked right up to me before he seemed to realise where he was or what was going on. He had just come back from a vision quest by the looks of him, from teepee to white walled room, with this sprawling murky dubby stuff as his soundtrack.

[Pocahaunted website]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, the first time you've posted about something i like/know! a friend sent me some rips he'd done of a bunch of their tapes...with no tracknames or information or anything.

i think i almost like it like that though. i just looked them up - i didn't know it was two pretty women behind it. not that it should matter, but that's slightly surprising. i really like their stuff though

did you see el topo and the holy mountain at the rialto for film festival? i think they're still probably my favourite movies i've ever seen. the holy mountain is especially amazing on the big screen. it's just beauty overload... i wish i'd gone to it both times it played now.

RICHARD said...

ahh im so bummed, i NEARLY went to see holy mountain last night but i got home from the opening and was super hungry/tired so just stayed in. apparently that's where it's at for jaworsky, and i was particulary keen to see it on the big screen. did you go? i work there now, so i saw a couple of film festival films but most of the time i was too busy working to see them.

but yeah i was really getting into some of pocahaunteds older stuff which is more just droney ambient stuff, but this is right up my alley

Anonymous said...

yeah i went last night. i would've gone to the 2pm one but i was working and anyway i would've felt silly watching it twice in a day.

it's sort of like el topo x1000... it's just staggeringly ambitious. i have no idea how jodorowsky could've afforded to make it. el topo is also great obviously and is maybe a bit more succinct, but HM is just so over the top it kind of takes the cake. especially on the big screen with big speakers etc etc

they've got the new el topo / holy mountain / sante sagre DVD boxset at alice in videoland if you haven't seen it. they used to just have this dodgy bootleg version which still looked great... so definitely see it if you haven't.

RICHARD said...

ohh. now i really wish i had just gone on tues. i'll check out that box set though

one weird thing happened the day after i saw el topo though, at work, listening to an album i hadnt heard for a year or so, bardo pond's 'ticket crystals', where on the last track they sample a few bits from el topo, like the bit with the blind guy. that was a weird coincidence