MahaKali

The Great Kali. Multi-limbed and eternal. Her skin the colour of charred wood. Lips painted with spilled blood; tongue forever lolling out - hungry, fierce, sexual (no, no, NO to any Miley Cyrus references). Around her throat a necklace of severed heads, beneath her dancing feet the body of a trampled god. Kali; mother of death, disaster and destruction. Goddess of chaos. The fire that consumes the earth. But more than that - she is the one who scythes the world clean and bare so that from that devastation something new may grow.
She is one of the vast pantheon of Hindu gods. She is definitely one of the most referenced and well-known.

There are very few artists capable of invoking this complex and terrible god, of paying her the due homage. I can really only think of one...

Jarboe, her name forever pursued by the suffix: '(formerly of Swans)'. Sometimes enigmatically referred to as The Living Jarboe. Raised in New Orleans. A classically-trained singer. Background in gospel and jazz. She joined Swans early on - her rich, honeyed mezzo-to-contralto a counterpoint to the grave-deep basso of Michael Gira. She credits Gira with transforming her into a rock vocalist; of teaching her to bite the words until they bleed between her teeth. Between her vocals and keyboards she added a layer of melodicism to the roiling, industrial clamour of that legendary band. Since then she has released a multitude of discs on a variety of labels, some independently. She has been part of more collaborations than Kali has limbs.

She is a fearless and restless vocalist. Her 'clean' singing voice is deep, lavish and nuanced; poignant and with subtle vibrato. But to that voice she adds a litany of others, so much so that she has been deemed 'the woman of a thousand voices'. She can variously sound like a child, a ghost, a siren, a seducer, a predator, a raging harpy, a ravening ghoul, an angel, or the victim of demonic possession. She whispers, growls, pants, hisses, shrieks, gibbers, moans and cackles.

Her music is equally varied. From the earliest of her solo discs onwards there has been evidence of a range of genres and styles - ghostly folk, gospel, sprawling southern blues, heaving industrial grime, avant-garde pop, choral electronics, and spindly dance rhythms. From the skewed exotica and psychedelia of 'Beautiful People Ltd' with multi-instrumentalist Lary Seven (an album that features a wonderful reworking of 'I Feel Pretty' - a boisterous, joyous pop ditty that seems forever at risk of collapsing into a whirlpool of dissonance) to the layered synths, repeating vocal mantras and grinding guitars of 'J2', her collaboration with Justin K. Broadrick (of Jesu and Godflesh) - an album that burns and hisses like the filament of a light-bulb (okay, so maybe I'm just linking the sound to the album cover, but to hell with it). Her music can be melancholy, hopeful, hypnotic, playful, introspective, macabre, and hymnal. It can also, on occasion, be very dark indeed.

One album looms large in her discography, its ghost haunting the sonic worlds of her later releases: her collaboration with legendary post-metallers Neurosis. This disc is succinctly titled: 'Neurosis & Jarboe' (Neurot Records). Just in case you didn't know - post-metal is an experimental genre heavily influenced by doom metal. The music tends to be extremely dense and thickly-layered, the songs building in slow intervals - smouldering away until they climactically erupt in a cathartic conflagration of guitar/bass/keys/percussion squalls. Neurosis are one of the leading lights in the genre - others include Isis, Battle of Mice and Red Sparrowes. Seething is an apt description of the music.

'Neurosis & Jarboe' is an immense, monolithic work. It towers: black, bleak and unknowable, the musical equivalent of the obelisk in '2001; A Space Odyssey'. I personally will forever be haunted by 'Within' - song that subverts religious certainty by juxtaposing it with an epically-creepy nursery-rhyme about an abductor and Recovered Memory Syndrome. Jarboe makes it seem that the God the narrator waits upon will be a vengeful and monstrous one indeed. "I tell ya, if God wants to take me, he will" she intones in her commanding speaking voice, her Southern accent very apparent. Before following with the chilling, whispered "He's coming..." while beneath her vocals writhing, smoke-choked layers of synth and bass shift like the plates under the earth. This sure as hell isn't the cuddly, benevolent God of the New Testament. It may not even be the scowling, testing God of the Old Testament. This is God reinvented as the monster under the bed, as the bogeyman.

There are echoes of this album to be heard in 'MahaKali' (particularly the post-metal influence and the use of slow, simmering builds), but it is a very different beast. Again, Jarboe is joined by some striking collaborators. Here we find Attila Csihar - a survivor of infamous, black-metal miscreants Mayhem (pretty much every disturbing, horrifying thing you've ever heard about the Norwegian black metal scene is down to this band and its ever-shifting line-up) and occasional Sunn O))) conspirator (my favourite tale about this latter band is that the first time they performed live - a thirty minute set with the band concealed behind an immense speaker system - the audience assumed they were roadies performing a sound-check). We also have Phil Anselmo formerly of Southern metallers Pantera and...erm...Southern doomsters Down. They are joined by cellist Kris Force of experimental neo-classical group Amber Asylum. 

Now, I'm wary of concept albums at the best of times, and dammit if I don't have cause to be. Primarily concept albums seem the domain of widdly, wank-handlers with their ludicrously technical prog-style musicianship and towering sense of self-importance.  But consider also the brace of eighties fantasy-styled 'Metal Opera' discs - where the narrative plays out like the 'Lord of the Rings' rip-off that weird, sullen kid was always writing back in High School -  the story full of derivative plot twists, dark lords, magical weapons and alarming sexual violence. Either that or they're wildly incoherent - think of Queensryche's 'Operation Mindcrime' saga, or Marilyn Manson's incomprehensible 'Holywood Triptych'. Then there's the relentlessly depressing ones - Nine Inch Nails 'The Downward Spiral' (young man struggles with depression, tries to lose himself in drugs, sex and religion...finally kills himself, possibly by overdose or gunshot "so much blood for such a little hole" - I think, please correct me if I'm wrong). Or the maddeningly pretentious (Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'). Too often the shoddy, crayon-scribbled narrative derails the flow of the album - forcing the artist to have all kinds of weird interludes and filler instrumentals that only serve to advance a story you have no desire to follow anyway. Janelle Monae's 'Android Suites' are probably the best of the lot (although pretty damn near impossible to comprehend) considering their mix of forbidden love, android revolutions, mental illness, time travel and a futuristic dystopia inspired by Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'. But even then, I buy the albums for the songs...not the tale.

However, 'MahaKali' is thematic rather than conceptual; there is no overarching narrative, there are no characters. It is a song cycle that invokes that ash-skinned and sky-eating goddess; a series of hymns in her name...each track seeking to capture some aspect of her complex and contradictory nature. As such it passes from seething darkness (depicting destruction, annihilation, the all-consuming fire) into gentler, lighter territory (the world reborn: raw-boned and vulnerable).

'MahaKali, of Terrifying Countenance' opens the album. It begins with the swirl and swoon of atmospheric keys, the creep-crawl of distorted guitars, piano chords tumbling darkly down through infinite space. Suddenly Jarboe's voice enters at full, exalted howl - an overdubbed and multi-tracked choir of wordless ululations. The song erupts, shifts from melancholy towards wildness.

'House of Void (Visceral Mix)' sees a roiling sea of stressed-out guitars and bass over a rhythmic, tribal beat. Riding the seething mass is Jarboe's voice; achingly lovely and exquisitely pure - her cadence is odd, striking, faintly inhuman (as ever) - rendingly melodic as it crests the dissonance below.

'Transmogrification' is all blackened doom riffing and distressed electronics. Jarboe shifts her voice from eerily childlike, to rapturous choral, to stentorian spoken word, and finally to hungry, animalistic panting.

Album highpoint - for me at least - 'The Soul Continues' opens with basso throat-singing; like monks chanting from a lightless stone temple. Attila Csihar enters first, over feedback snarls and snaggers. He bellows a mantra in full death-style baritone. Floor toms surface from the murk - a thundering pulse that drives the song relentlessly forward - lending it a tribal, world music vibe. A thick fugue of church organ drones take over the melody and the music transforms into a ritual piece - an inverted hymn to a terrible god. Jarboe's voice flows over Csihar's guttural mantra - golden-hued and rich with vibrato - sweeping and swooping across the rhythm of the track. It's an intense, powerful and hypnotic performance from all involved.

'A Sea of Blood and Hollow Screaming' (man, these song titles...) is black metal deconstructed down to layers of atmospheric drones and scraped cellos; a beat-less, slithering miasma. Blackened, Neo-Classical Drone Doom? Jarboe pushes her vocal well beyond conventional use with this one; gurgling, rasping and snarling. Disconcertingly, she sounds at times like a child singing through a mouthful of blood.

 Now, I've never thought much of Philip H. Anselmo as a vocalist but on 'Overthrown' he inspires me to completely reevaluate his talents. He takes the lead here - his voice split across the three speaker channels, playing call-and-response with itself. Jarboe lends ghostly atmospherics - her vocal fluttering and evanescing in the background. Over ragged acoustic guitar - playing a Southern blues-style riff - Anselmo alternates his sandpaper howl with fragments spoken in his strikingly deep and compelling natural range. He sounds frigging amazing here -  his visceral, bluesy wail recalling Chris Cornell in his prime.

Later Jarboe reprises this piece herself - taking the lead vocal and repeating the mantra in an oddly enunciated fashion - to dizzying effect. In place of the slithering blues guitar she employs a skittering dance pulse and trembling synth-pads. It is a surprisingly upbeat number, danceable if you've the limbs for it, an effect utterly subverted when the song collapses into a disturbing choir of screams and wails.

'Bornless' finds her adopting a creeped-out cutesy voice, squeaking over gurgling bass/guitar textures and scraps of found sound, all pinned in place by a circular, loping drum beat. Here, juxtaposed against the queasy roil of the instrumental arrangement her 'child' voice is unnerving ...and delightful.

'Mouth of Flames' is a rich, folk-influenced piece; lovely, delicate and spacious. An acoustic guitar pattern plucked over and over, fingers squeaking and hushing across the strings, Jarboe's voice is ripe and sweet as dripping honey; warm, melodic and deep, as instantly recognizable as ever.

Tension mounts again in 'Ascend' over a low-slung steel-string guitar riff and a driving drum groove. Jarboe drops her voice into a sharp-toothed whisper - feral, urgent, almost sexual and threatening ...it compels.

'Violence' is an instrumental - all chittering, sparking electronic effects (recalling Brian Eno's work with Nico). It sounds like a collapsing void full of flames and the beating of terrible wings. 'Empty Mouth' closes the album - reprising the main lyric from 'Mouth of Flames' - here spoken over silence, her voice is deep, commanding. And so it ends; the track counter running empty, the disc hissing to a halt. The ritual is complete; the goddess Kali invoked and exorcised.

Both the mix and production on this album are expertly-judged - clear enough to preserve the nuances and textural detail of the music, while raw and grimy enough to deliver some serious heaviness. It is a dark, challenging and difficult album. Fascinating and strikingly weird; it is one hell of a head-trip, man.

Swans fans would be well-advised to check this beauty out. Hell, by the standards of that fearless band, this disc is actually pretty accessible (closer to 'The Great Annihilator' than 'Soundtracks for the Blind').

Note, all that has gone before refers to the European release of 'MahaKali' (on the Season of Mist label). There is a North American version (via The End Records), with a slightly different track-list. I think the above applies pretty well to both releases, in spite of these variations.

To be filed under...erm: ritual neo-classical, apocalyptic folk, tribal, world music, drone, dark ambient, experimental electronica, blues, choral, post-metal. Enjoy.

The Nudge live at Wellington Botanic Gardens

Last night I saw this band...

When I first met this guy (in my usual capacity at my not-important day job) I figured him for a musician: he had that vibe, you know - tall, dreadlocked, heroically blessed in both beard and teeth.  His last name struck some kind of half-memory chord in me as well, so when he left I googled him.

Please note: I do not make a regular thing out of googling strangers.  That would be wrong.  And peculiar.

Turns out his name is James Coyle and he has clocked up some impressive musical credits under his completely awesome alternate moniker Reverend Black Keys.  He is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a keyboard player.  On top of that he is a hard-line reggae fan and a collector of keyboards and organs.  He is also one of the nicest damn people I have ever had the pleasure of randomly meeting so when he told me on Friday that he was playing the ASB Gardens Magic show the following night I assured him that I would head along.  And I meant it.

The ASB Gardens Magic show is a series of free open-air gigs held at the sound-shell in the Wellington Botanical Gardens.  They run this thing yearly, scraping together financial support from businesses (this year, thank you ASB) and the Wellington City Council.  Typically it falls over a couple of weeks in whatever it is that Wellington has passing for summer that year.  By-the-by that's Wellington, New Zealand.  Just so you know.

I arrived just as the first hush of dusk was creeping over the gardens.  It was a rough evening, the wind tattering through the bush and biting at the buildings.  The sky constantly threatened rain.  The grassy stretch in front of the soundshell was already starting to fill up with small huddles of twenty-somethings, hipsters in the wild.  The band hadn't taken the stage yet and low-key reggae music was playing through the sound system.  Where I sat a sign advising people not to climb into the flowerbeds kept getting lifted by the wind and battering lightly against my head.  It was not unlike being gently flogged with a manilla folder.

They dress the gardens up quite beautifully for these occasions, painting the various trees in different coloured lights.  A clever installation piece had been set over a nearby pond - a series of illuminated orbs suspended above their reflections in the black water.  One low-weeping tree was hung with mirror-balls of various sizes, catching and refracting the lights beamed at it from several points.  In case your wondering, the Wellington Botanical Gardens basically looks how you picture NZ Native bush: dense trees, huge ferns, everything damp and green and ancient-seeming, only in the gardens it's better cultivated and there's ample  wide paths to walk.  Also, ducks.

Coyle is MCing these concerts and he took the stage just as the area really started to fill.  He did the usual banter and then announced that the band to play, his band, were The Nudge.  Now, I'd heard the name before, read an article about them some time ago.  I remember I'd been curious at the time.  I don't remember much else.  I'd figured I was in for an evening of chilled-out reggae/roots sounds (Coyle being an avowed reggae fan and Wellington's musical scene being weirdly dominated by the vibe) but as soon as the guitarist/vocalist - Ryan Prebble - took the stage dressed in a sort of pseudo-Eastern take on a Sgt Pepper's costume and a top hat it became clear that things were going in a different direction.  He set the keyboards to play a weird oscillating tone not unlike that of a glass harmonica (exactly the way sunlight glinting off ice would sound, if it were rendered in musical form).  He then fetched up his guitar and laid down a psyched-out guitar riff, presently joined by the drummer - Iraia Whakamoe - who added his own intense, tribal pulse to the song, spurring the mantra-like rhythm onward.  Coyle then returned (having changed from his MC outfit into something more thematic) and fleshed out the keyboard pattern with some denser bass tones.  All this paired with a repeating vocal phrase, issued in a back-of-the-throat rasp by Prebble, gave the vibe of a really tight jam band.  Now I know enough of this stuff to know where this vibe is heading and sure enough, layer after layer the song built and built until finally in a cathartic rush the song blossomed in a starburst of sound: keyboards erupting into a barrage of siren noise, the drums pounded down as though Whakamoe didn't want to see them getting up again, and the guitar spitting an acid lead break.

Through the applause the band dove straight into the second piece of the night: a dirty blues-boogie that had a whiff of early Sabbath about it.  So that's how the night was to be: a thrilling display of pyched-out blues rock, played by three very fine musicians who seemed to feed off one another.  Man, what I'm saying is the band was tight.

Incidentally, I hope nobody is expecting me to name any of these songs as the band didn't announce them and I didn't even know who I was going to see before I showed up on the night.  It didn't matter.  A great song is a great song and these were all great songs.

The keys remained psychedelic and astonishing, whether they were set to that glorious Seventies' farfisa organ sound or conjuring delicate waves breaking on a Bali shoreline, whale song, or at one particularly memorable bit - the sound of a jet engine imploding.  And the drums, man, Whakamoe is a very precise drummer - tightening and loosening the rhythmic pulse in perfect fit with the rest of the band.  He repeatedly used his hits to build and release the tension of the piece while always spurring the music onwards.  Prebble on guitar is a thing to behold - now, I'm a huge fan of a heavy blues riff and those were in ample supply on the night, that coupled with his psyched-out leads and the odd surf-esque roll made for something plenty special.  As a vocalist he's delightfully unhinged: possessed of a rough-edged blues rasp and a tendency to sound almost as if he's gargling the words.  He growls, pants and howls his way through the songs - an id who can carry a tune.

The dark crept over the venue and the trees lit up all in otherworldly colours.  A hoard of people moved in sketched-out silhouettes against the front of the stage.  From somewhere amongst the lights a device regularly issued clouds of tiny bubbles that drifted on the weirdly still air - the wind had disappeared as soon as the band took the stage.

Eventually after a couple of damn fine and very energetic encores the band were out of time and the audience were left to drift off into the strange, phantom-lit world of the botanical gardens after dark.  The wind picked up again shortly after that and pounded me in the face on the walk home.  It was a great night.

So that's it.  If you get the chance to see the Nudge performing live, I say take it, it's a wild ride and I know I'll be keeping an eye out for their albums from here on in.

And here's some links...

http://www.thenudge.co.nz/
http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2013/asb-gardens-magic/wellington
http://nudge.bandcamp.com/