Month: August 2021 (Page 7 of 13)

 

‘Readings of Mika Rottenberg’s work nearly always herald it as Marxist (or at least anti-capitalist) critique. It’s undeniable that her works address issue of labor, and that such a topic is imperative. But such readings of Rottenberg’s work are too simplistic: taking on factory work does not a Marxist critique make, but moreover, such readings overlook her works’ strongest points.

‘Take for instance the wall of air conditioning units dripping water into hot frying pans that serves as the entry to Rottenberg’s solo exhibition at the Bass Museum. Titled AC Trio (2016), the installation is spectacular and disgusting, mesmerizing and repulsive. And surely the AC units might speak to class and consumption—they call to mind a New York City housing project with seemingly infinite stacks of units, rather than the constantly blasting central air units more common to Miami, where they are currently installed. Such units rack up excessive bills and carbon footprints. But the sizzling sound of the AC juice hitting the hot frying pan is more absurdist than critical, as is the similarly mesmerizing composition of gigantic ceiling fans that comprise Ceiling Fan Composition #4 (2016), on view in the adjacent room.

‘The exhibition is sandwiched by two installations affixed to recent videos—NoNoseKnows (2015) and Cosmic Generator (loaded #2) (2017). The videos themselves are actually shown in traditional black boxes, rather than on monitors amongst elaborate installations that the artist used to exhibit earlier work. NoNoseKnows includes documentary footage from a pearl factory in China and shows women endlessly counting pearls and sorting them by color, quality, and size. The footage is interwoven with an absurdist narrative, wherein a white woman in middle management peddles a bike at a desk and sneezes out plates of Chinese food, while a large and seemingly heavy bubble floats but never pops in an adjacent room. The commentary is obvious—both in the sense that it is common knowledge and that it is legible in the work: factory labor has been outsourced to women of color.

‘This point is an important one, but this form of critique is, disappointingly, more literal and didactic—too on the nose, if you will—than the artist’s earlier videos, which elegantly blended fiction and fact in more nuanced ways. This is perhaps the result of the artist responding to and internalizing what I characterized as simplistic readings of her work. In past works, Rottenberg regularly hired women who rent their extraordinary bodies to perform. Cheese (2008), for instance, features a group of real women with hair well past their toes modeled after a historical family—the Seven Sutherland Sisters—who marketed a hair growth product to men and who themselves had long hair. (Although Cheese has only six sisters). Rottenberg’s camera played voyeur to these exhibitionists. These earlier works bring up interesting and complicated ethical issues surrounding the commodification of bodies and the objectification of women. Among the actresses in Cheese, for instance, there are feuds amongst long-haired women who enjoy indulging hair fetishists and see their ability to capitalize on male desire as empowering, while others find the fetishists degrading. Furthermore, I don’t know that NoNoseKnows necessarily shakes up any conversation. Unlike Cheese, it gives form to facts art-viewing audiences are already likely to know.

‘The forms it takes, however, are incredible. Colorful, intricate, absurdist, and textured, everything the artist produces is recognizable as Rottenberg. But these forms do little for advancing a Marxist critique. Instead, they delicately and complexly negotiate the lines between attraction, fetish, objectification, and perversion—and, specifically, how these lines might be negotiated to feminist ends, or how women might image their own bodies while responding to the long and abusive history of representations of women by men. So more precisely, her work can be considered Marxist in as much as it looks at how critiques of the commodification of everything—including bodies—intersects with the objectification of women’s bodies, by the apparatus of the camera and the ways in which women choose to commercialize their bodies.

‘Moreover, I question what Marxist critique can even do within a world where even criticism itself is a commodity. Admittedly, this is not a problem unique to Rottenberg, but the women Rottenberg hired for Cheese went on strike during production because they felt the artist had not given them enough time to tend to their hair. While she makes work that speaks to pressures to conform excess and extraordinary bodies to capitalist demands for productivity, she herself apparently struggled to accommodate such bodies. This is analogous to the problem of women working to reclaim images of their own bodies in that both are complex conundrums that to this day remain unresolved. This is Rottenberg’s strength: throughout, she reveals the absurdist impossibility of capitalist critique (though the later video works take this critique more seriously and literally) and does not resolve the complex ethical lines it walks. Rather, it highlights them, leaving viewers simultaneously uncomfortable and mesmerized.’ — Emily Watlington

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Mika Rottenberg @ Hauser & Wirth
MIKA ROTTENBERG: EASYPIECES
ARTIST MIKA ROTTENBERG TURNS HER ATTENTION TO HOLLYWOOD
Book: ‘Mika Rottenberg’
ArtSeen: MIKA ROTTENBERG
mikarottenberg @ instagram
Mika Rottenberg: body and production
Mika Rottenberg by Judith Hudson
Mika Rottenberg’s films can be both beautiful and repulsive
Fetishizing the Visual: An interview with Mika Rottenberg
MR @ Ubuweb
Ronald Jones on Mika Rottenberg
Plongée dans l’espace-temps malléable de Mika Rottenberg
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MIKA ROTTENBERG
Mika Rottenberg exposes the absurdities of globalism
Mika Rottenberg. Futile machines
Strangeness For Its Own Sake
Sneezing rabbits, dismal bingo and labour pains
Slime, Bald Dudes, and Siberian Throat Singing?
On The Ethics Of Renting ‘Extraordinary Bodies’ In Mika Rottenberg’s Videos
Work About Work
An Interview with Mika Rottenberg

 

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Extras

Teaser Mika Rottenberg

Mika Rottenberg Interview: Social Surrealism

Mika Rottenberg and the Amazing Invention Factory

 

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Interview

 

Where do the ideas for the videos come from? What gets you going?

That’s a good question and it’s one I ask myself between pieces. For me the ideas make sense: of course we’ll make tissues out of bodybuilder’s sweat, and of course the bodybuilder needs stay-awake pills in order to produce more sweat, and of course she needs to drink lemon juice, and there has to be a naked guy running by.

So these are logical connections for you. They’re not unusual or extraordinary?

No. They don’t seem extraordinary at all. I don’t want them to be completely surreal. A lot of ideas don’t work precisely because they don’t make sense. It can’t just be any rendering. It takes a long time before I find an idea that I want to put everything into. I take a long time to develop each piece, and it’s not one piece for me. The last one especially seemed like a lot of different sculptures, different paintings and different things that I was thinking about brought into one piece. Once I fence it in, once I find the general idea and structure, then there is a whole other process that involves all the details.

Do you storyboard the way a filmmaker does?

Until now, it has really started from the building of the sets. That might change, but I have a general idea, which is usually a lot more complicated and impossible than the thing I end up doing. The way to bind it to reality is to start building something. When I’m done building, then I might do some kind of a storyboard. I do a lot of drawings and I have storyboards, but you probably wouldn’t call them that. There are a lot of idea diagrams and they show development and sequences, but it probably only makes sense to me.

You say it starts out being more complicated: is your process one of reducing the possibilities until you focus on what becomes the narrative? And the narrative is somehow determined by the set you’ve already built?

That’s pretty much how it goes. I’m looking for an essence, so it’s like I have this texture or a sound, almost like a physical feeling, like being squeezed, or sweating. I try different kinds of scenarios to see if I can get the sensations through them. It’s not as confident a procedure as the way I’m talking about it.

So you’re finding out where you’re going as you’re doing it rather than determining where you’re going from the outset?

Absolutely. But as the projects get bigger, it’s hard to insist on this way of working. People want to know what they’re doing, and your producers want to know so that they can budget. I’ve been working with the same cinematographer for the last three projects, and he is an amazing person. He’s very patient, which I think comes from the process of trusting each other more and more, and his understanding the way I work.

Do you build the sets inside your own studio?

No, I don’t really have a studio. It changed with the last video because I needed a really big studio. But it’s not something I need on a daily basis. I also like moving spaces and exploring a new space for each piece. Each piece needs its own space.

In that way you are operating like a filmmaker on location?

Yes, but the difference is that I am very hands-on in building the set, and a lot of the time the set dictates the narrative. That’s why it’s more sculptural because it is the result of a real construction.

At the same time that the set is important, you are also fascinated by the close-up. What is it about the flesh cartography that interests you so much?

I guess there is a voyeuristic element. I usually work with people who are exhibitionists; they have websites where they advertise their desire to be photographed and to be looked at. They’re not actors, but they have different talents. Part of it is that dynamic between voyeur and exhibitionist. I like those nuances, and I’m fascinated by the characters and by their bodies. There is this scrutinizing look that is so intense that it sometimes seems like a medical examination.

It’s interesting that you say that because one of the most compelling images in Cheese is the beautiful blue eye looking out between the slats of the goat pen. It isn’t just a question of the viewer looking in at the video, but the video is looking out at the viewer as well.

Yes. I also have it with the tongue in Squeeze. It’s the tongue, and then it’s the eye. I like the idea that it’s almost licking someone’s eye, which reminds me of Janine Antoni’s piece. I really think about touch, smell and sound, but it’s very visual for me. So if I take care of the other senses, then the visual will resolve itself and the piece will be visually interesting.

At some point Matthew Barney must have influenced you, and some residue of that encounter hangs about your work.

It’s unavoidable. I was blown away by his work when I discovered it in Israel. I still think he is an amazing artist. But there are a lot of other artists that interest me.

I think of Fischli and Weiss, and even Wim Delvoye and Cloaca. There is a sense of the excremental in your work, even though you don’t deal directly with shit.

I deal with the orifices of the body, so it’s everything that gets pushed out.

You walk a line between the grotesque and abject on one side and the lyric and sensual, to the point of the fetish, on the other.

I don’t see it as grotesque. I see it as more poetic. Things that are beautiful turn me on visually, so I never want to make them too grotesque or distasteful. It’s a thin line, and I’ve crossed it when someone stops being an individual character. I always want to feel that my characters are doing something with me, rather than me simply observing them. I think that becomes grotesque.

Is this part of what you talk about when you refer to the magic in the mundane?

Yes, I think that’s why a lot of the time I use people with extreme physiques. They have a lot of body, and the relationship between them and their bodies gets amplified.

 

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Show

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Mary’s Cherries (2004)
‘Mary’s Cherries, which shows a woman’s red fingernails being grown, clipped, and transformed into maraschino cherries, was influenced by a story about a woman with a rare blood type who quit her job to sell her blood. The women featured in Mary’s Cherries are all wrestlers for hire.’

Excerpts/Interview

 

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Tropical Breeze (2004)
‘In Tropical Breeze, champion bodybuilder Heather Foster drives a converted truck that functions as a shop, packaging her sweat. In the back of the truck, dancer Felicia Ballos pedals a makeshift device, picking up tissues and using gum to stick them to a clothesline, transferring them to Heather, who uses them to collect her sweat for packaging and later for sale.’

Excerpt

 

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Dough (2005 – 2006)
‘Dough watches Raqui, a size-acceptance activist and frequent collaborator of Rottenberg’s as she cries tears that evaporate into steam, causing dough to rise. The dough is then pulled and pushed through holes into multiple rooms by Tall Kat, a skinny, 6’9″ woman who can reach from room to room. Through their actions, a unit that measures labor is created.’

Excerpt

 

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Cheese (2007)
‘Cheese is a multi-channel video installation that depicts women with very long hair milking cows and making cheese using a machine powered by the movement of the women’s hair.’

Watch it here

Excerpts/Interview

 

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Squeeze (20100
‘Squeeze is a video shot on location at a lettuce farm in Arizona and a rubber plant farm in Kirala, India. Actors engage in a variety of gestures including thrusting a tongue through a stucco wall, a line of women massaging hands that protrude through a wall, and Bunny Glamazon being smashed between two mattresses.’

Excerpt

 

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w/ Jon Kessler SEVEN (2011)
‘Over the course of three weeks, several times a day, seven performers clock in, ride a stationary bike, and work up a sweat before a live audience in an immersive sculptural installation. Each of the seven performers represents a particular chakra—cosmic energy centers located within the body—and are ascribed corresponding prismatic colors of the rainbow, resulting in chromatic sweat. The sweat is collected in a sauna-like “Chakra Juicer,” distilled by a self-described mad scientist in a laboratory, and metaphorically transported to the African savannah. Rottenberg explains how she wants her performers to not act or emote, being more interested in how their bodies behave and the physical materials she can extract from their exertions. Performing in sync with a video featuring a rural community in Botswana, Rottenberg and Kessler’s project unites laborers in New York with “the cradle of humankind” through timed exchanges of materials and a common purpose. Playfully absurd, Rottenberg and Kessler blend reality and fiction—extreme conditions and comedic sleights-of-hand—to create a zany, wordless narrative.’

Excerpts

Excerpt

 

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Sneeze (20120
‘Men with exaggeratingly large red noses sneeze, one after another, ejecting an odd assortment of objects on a tabletop—rabbits, raw meat, lightbulbs, among others. This absurdist, whimsical video work constructs surreal scenarios by means of minimal content and formal repetition.’

Watch it here

 

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Ponytails (2014)
‘In Ponytails, a pair of kinetic sculptures, one blonde and one dark-haired, extend and flip frantically through two glory-hole-like openings in separate gallery walls.’

Excerpt

 

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Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes (2014)
‘Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes is a video where bingo, stretching skin, clothespins, a dripping air conditioner, and melting polar ice caps collide in time and space. “You feel that you’re on the verge of comprehending a cosmic mystery.”‘

Watch an excerpt here

 

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NoNoseKnows (2015)
‘A video installation first shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale, NoNoseKnows is both an absurdist fantasy and a feminist polemic. Its subject is the global economy, an exploitative system that extracts wealth from natural resources and laboring bodies, in this case, the bodies of Chinese women especially. The video unfolds across two sites: a custom-designed set in New York and an enormous pearl-making facility in Zhuji, China, which the artist first visited in 2014, recalling, “It was sick but also beautiful and amazing . . . It kind of draws you in, even though it’s really pretty perverted what has to be done to a living thing to force it to create a pearl.” Through assiduous editing, which cuts together footage from both sites, interspersing it with scenes from around Zhuji’s worker housing, Rottenberg knits together these far-flung locations, which form the backdrop to a story at once factual and fanciful. Inside the factory, women are involved in the difficult, delicate, repetitive task of producing pearls, first by cultivating them, a process that involves seeding oysters with pieces of mussels and, second, by extracting the pearls and sorting them by type and size. Inside the set, which appears in the video to be an extension of the factory, Bunny Glamazon performs another kind of routinized labor, this one reminiscent of the sort of white collar, administrative work that often falls to women. The tasks themselves are bizarre and without clear use value. Within the context of the video, all of these actors serve as both protagonists and, just as importantly, as catalysts. Each does strange things that make other strange things happen, often to one another, resulting in an assembly line of cause and effect. At one point, for instance, a Chinese woman responds to a prompt from Bunny by turning a handle that powers a fan, which in turn blows pollen from a flower into Bunny’s nose, prompting her to sneeze. Perhaps the most important catalyst in NoNoseKnows isn’t a human being at all, in fact, but a sensation: irritation. Indeed, the sequencing of the video mirrors the creation of pearls, which result from the almost alchemical transformation of an irritant into jewels. (Other types of sensations—physical, auditory, and visual—play a prominent role in the artist’s video, too.) Counter-intuitively, perhaps, the ecosystem (or economy) that Rottenberg creates here is not only absurd and ridiculous but also functional and, to a certain extent, believable. Indeed, what distinguishes NoKnowsNose from Rottenberg’s earlier work is its depiction of an actual relationship of causality: the industrial production of cultured pearls and the cycle of employment and exploitation that this system both requires and precipitates. Rottenberg’s video is meant to be either projected on a wall or displayed on a monitor inside an enclosed space, either a dedicated gallery or a room constructed to the artist’s specifications. It is accompanied by a 50-kilo bag of cultured pearls, which are displayed outside the entrance, purely as a prop.’

Excerpt

 

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Cosmic Generator (2017)
‘Cosmic Generator is a video installation shot partly in Mexicali, along the U.S. Mexico border. It follows workers in cramped spaces performing absurd tasks such as crushing lightbulbs, accompanied by a soundtrack of electronic buzzes and blips.The viewer is shown a series of tunnels, ostensibly linking a variety of workshops and restaurants shown later in the twenty-six-minute piece.’

Excerpts w/ interview

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Untitled Ceiling Projection (2018)
Single-channel video installation, sound, color

Watch it here

 

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Spaghetti Blockchain (2019)
‘Spaghetti Blockchain was premiered at the New Museum in New York, in a show called Mika Rottenberg: Easypieces. This piece “explores ancient and new ideas about materialism and considers how humans both comprise and manipulate matter.” The video consists of female throat singers from Tuva, Tyva Kyzy, ASMR-esque videos of colors and sizzling goo, a potato-farm, and interior shots of a Genevan Hall. Rottenberg places these scenes in “a kind of superfluous factory of her devising, whose primary product seems to be imagery that’s simultaneously pleasurable and queasily troubling.”‘

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Lips (Study #3) (2016 – 2019)
‘Through a small hole in the wall of a gallery, a pair of fleshy lips protrude. Moving closer and leaning in, one sees light flickering between them. A puff of what looks like smoke emerges from the lips – as if some bodily or industrial activity is taking place behind the wall. Peering into the cavity, the source of this steaminess reveals itself – a mirror box that holds a hilarious view of bodies working, labouring, performing.’

Watch it here

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Thanks. Oh, right, mid-Atlantic, kind of the crossfading area. Well, having a mask permanently sewn to your face would help you achieve eye-catching status on the beach, at least until your target audience was reduced to skeleton fetishists. My fucking gums infection/pain made an unwelcome return yesterday so I’m off to the dentist this morning, so rocking my week is probably a toss up. But don’t let that stop you. ** Sypha, Hi. Yes, knowing your tastes, that is not so odd. See, you and a Middle Ages novel is like soup and sandwich. Sympathies on the root canal maladies, especially since, as I just told George, I’m off to the dentist this very morning to try to get the pain out of my own mouth. Race you to oral bliss? ** _Black_Acrylic, There’s quite a readable and good book about the history of Spacemen 3, but I can’t remember its title this morning. They’re pretty great. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’m sure whoever did that post looked in and smiled warmly at your appreciative comment. Getdown 4ever!!!! Ha ha, your fortune teller is most welcome and probably much needed. Love fast-forwarding evolution to the point where nostril hairs are a thing of the past then hitting Play, G. ** T, Yes, very nice of Mr. ‘Kaukonen’. The last concert I was going to see before the pandemic first hit was a subsequently cancelled one by Acid Mothers Temple, alas. They’re still out there roaming the world of venues, so you may still get your chance. Me too. Okay, thank you, let me see what I can do about ‘Helicopter Story’. I have to go to the dentist very shortly, so my Tuesday is off to an unnerving start but it could feel comforting later depending on what he/she/they diagnose and treat. All is not yet lost. I hope your Tuesday drives you toward midnight at 300 miles per hour with no speed bumps. ** Steve Erickson, Check T’s comment yesterday if you didn’t already. Glad you got swept into ‘Jorma’s’ gig. Kind of a wealth, yeah. Caught me by surprise not a few times. Everyone, It’s Mr. Erickson, listen up: ‘Over the weekend, I made a Spotify playlist of my favorite new music from the past 6 weeks.’ Oh, that’s what those posters are. They’re plastered all over my Facebook feed at the moment. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Time will tell, of course, but I suspect I’m right? Decorating is going toe the best part. Well, the best part of the physical moving in portion. The interesting project I’m working on is a virtual walk-through home haunt that Zac, the writer Sabrina Tarasoff, and I are creating with the help of these game designer guys in the UK. We’ll present it here in Paris as a Halloween themed event at the Pinault Foundation, and, if it works out well, we hope to take it on the road. I hope the pre-move stuff for your brother goes as unstressfully as possible. Oh, cool, thanks for foisting ‘The Sluts’ on him, and sweet that he dug it. I hope your Tuesday has ticker tape parade-worthy happy surprises galore for you. ** Right. Today I ask you to stroll/scroll through my galerie and peruse the works of Mike Rottenberg. Sound like a plan? See you tomorrow.

 

 

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Spacemen 3 Big City (1990)
‘Spacemen 3 were an English alternative rock band, formed in 1982 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Peter Kember and Jason Pierce. Their music was “colourfully mind-altering, but not in the sense of the acid rock of the 1960s; instead, the band developed its own minimalistic psychedelia” Spacemen 3 came to prominence on the independent music scene around 1989, gaining a cult following. However, they disbanded shortly afterwards, releasing their final studio album post-split in 1991 after an acrimonious parting of ways. They gained a reputation as a ‘drug band’ due to the members’ drug taking habits and the candid interviews and outspoken views of Kember about recreational drug use. Kember and Pierce were the only members common to all line-ups of the band. Both founding members have enjoyed considerable success with their subsequent projects, Sonic Boom/Spectrum and Spiritualized.’ — collaged

 

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Sun Dial Exploding in Your Mind (1990)
‘Sun Dial’s first album came out in 1990, but it was as determinedly retro an effort as anything released that year; Gary Ramon and his bandmates clearly worshiped at the altar of all that was psychedelic, and there wasn’t the smallest bit of irony in their approach on Other Way Out. Many latter-day psych bands sound as if they’re trying as hard as they can to capture the lysergic sound of the late ’60s, but Sun Dial never betray any such effort: they simply seem to have dropped through a wormhole in time from the UFO Club into Balham Market, and their natural and unaffected embrace of drifting melodic structures, guitars floating on clouds of fuzz, phase shift and wah-wah, splashy drumming that colors the music as much as keeping time and firm, thick basslines that anchored the music in some sort of reality are genuine enough to convince most folks who haven’t looked at the liner notes that this was put to tape in 1969, not 1989.’ — allmusic

 

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Butthole Surfers No, I’m Iron Man (1991)
‘Coming off a backlog of LP’s and EP’s that had yet to disappoint and after a frustratingly long wait since Hairway to Steven, Pioughed showed that The Buttholes could make a bad album. Taken in isolation, Pioughed isn’t a total write off. The problem lies in the fact that it sounds like a band trying to sound like The Butthole Surfers. In bits it’s convincing. ‘PSY’ and ‘Blindman’ are passable 2nd rate Butthole’s songs and the 1st 20 seconds of ‘No, I’m Iron Man’ is hilarious, but mostly its just awful. ‘Lonesome Bulldog’, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’, ‘Something’, ‘Golden Showers’ all stink both lyrically and musically (why the awful country music parody… why the horrible J+tMC pastiche?). The whole thing is aimless and pointless.’ — Smelsch

 

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Cheops O.T (1991)
‘A space/psychedelic rock band from Newcastle, this band have been around some time having formed in the early 1980’s with the purpose of playing the festival circuit, culminating in an appearance at the 1984 Stonehenge festival. In 1991, the band released their first cassette. Flirting briefly with the name Space Case, the band began to get support gigs for the likes of Nik Turner and the Lloyd Langton Group.’ — Panda Paul

 

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Mercury Rev Chasing a Bee (1991)
‘With their early records, Mercury Rev offered experimental, psychedelic rock, which gradually shifted to a melodic, ornate sound. Mercury Rev is often compared to The Flaming Lips, and in fact share close ties: soon after the band’s formation, Donahue also joined the Flaming Lips as second guitarist and appeared on two of their albums; and since the 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance, Dave Fridmann has co-produced every Flaming Lips studio album to date except 1993’s Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. A music video for the song “Chasing A Bee” was shot at an abandoned infectious disease hospital that once housed “Typhoid Mary” on North Brother Island in New York City, and was directed by Jim Spring and Jens Jurgensen.’ — collaged

 

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Dr Phibes and the House of Wax Equations Hazy Lazy Hologram (1991)
‘Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations were an English psychedelic rock band, formed in 1989 in Crewe, Cheshire. They were composed of vocalist and guitarist Lawrence Howard King Jr., bassist Lee Patrick Belsham and drummer Keith York. The band were regulars in the UK Indie Chart and had some links with other local bands in the North West. On 16 February 1997, Lawrence Howard King Jr. was charged by North Wales Police for the murder of his mother, Avril Fiona King, two days earlier at their shared home in Connah’s Quay in north east Wales. King Jr., who stabbed and beat his mother, was jailed for life at Caernarfon Crown Court.’ — collaged

 

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Cul de Sac Death Kit Train (1992)
‘Shunning the burgeoning alternative rock movement, Cul de Sac intertwined elements of surf rock, Krautrock, Middle Eastern trance and folk music, post-rock psychedelia, and avant-garde to create a unique blend that garnered immediate critical attention. Formed in the early ’90s by guitarist Glenn Jones, multi-instrumentalist Robin Amos, formerly of the Girls, and Bullet La Volta drummer Chris Guttmacher, Cul de Sac released their first LP, Ecim, on the independent Northeastern label. Early live shows were enhanced by the experimental films of Fujiwara and A.S. Hamrah, adding to the band’s eclectic mystique. Their original compositions and recordings have been enhanced by instruments of their own creation, including the Contraption and the Incantor.’ — collaged

 

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Love Battery Dayglo (1992)
‘Formed by singer/guitarist Ron Nine and drummer Jason Finn (veterans of local warhorses Room Nine and Skin Yard, respectively), Love Battery had a mighty impressive unveiling in the form of the classic 1989 single “Between the Eyes,” later expanded as the lead track of a six-song Australian EP which was itself expanded into a domestic LP. The full-length Between the Eyes includes four songs from the Dayglo sessions that are far better than mere outtakes, including a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Ibiza Bar.” Nothing on Dayglo approaches the headbang- necessitating riffery of “Between the Eyes,” but the superfuzzed overkill that guitarist Kevin Whitworth wrings from songs like “Out of Focus” brings on wooziness faster than a liquid light show.’ — Trouser Press

 

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Zendik Orgaztra Strontium Rain (1992)
‘Band formed by residents of the hippie art commune Zendik Farm and its leader Wulfgang Zendik. This was the californian branch, which later relocated to Florida.’ — discogs

 

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Brian Jonestown Massacre Crushed (1993)
‘The Brian Jonestown Massacre began as a shoegazing group in San Francisco in 1988. After their debut and sophomore albums, the group quickly turned to a broader style of psychedelic rock incorporating folk, blues, raga, and later, electronica influences. The name “Brian Jonestown Massacre” is a portmanteau of The Rolling Stones’ founder and guitarist Brian Jones and the infamous mass cult suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. They have gained media notoriety for their tumultuous working relationships and the drug addiction of their leader, Anton Newcombe.‘ — collaged

 

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The Flaming Lips Pilot Can at the Queer of God (1993)
‘The addition of guitarist Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd recharges the Flaming Lips’ batteries for the superb Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, another prismatic delicacy that continues the group’s drift toward pop nirvana. In typical fashion, the record’s left-field hit, the freak-show singalong “She Don’t Use Jelly,” bears little resemblance to the album as a whole; the remainder of Transmissions is much more sonically and structurally ambitious — the towering “Moth in the Incubator” keeps generating new layers of noise before erupting into an amphetamine waltz, “Pilot Can at the Queer of God” dive-bombs with kamikaze recklessness, and the slow-burning “Oh My Pregnant Head” is as mind-expanding as its title.’ — collaged

 

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Opel Winter Morning/First Light (1994)
‘OPEL were a four-piece female-fronted band that was active circa 1994-1999. They played the late 60s-like psychedelic rock & acid-folk. Aside of self-released cassettes, unfortunately they didn’t accomplish any official release back then. In late autumn 2017, OPEL released online The Bough At Jacobs Rake the album as an  archival release.’ — daoubourg

 

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Polvo Tragic Carpet Ride (1994)
‘Polvo is widely considered to be standard bearer of a genre which came to be known as math rock, although in interviews the band disavowed that categorization. Their sound was defined by complex and dissonant guitar harmonies and driving rhythm, complementing cryptic, often surrealist lyrics. Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars. Polvo’s songs and artwork frequently featured Asian/”exotic” themes and references. The band’s name means “octopus” in Portuguese and “powder” or “dust” in Spanish; in Spain it also is a slang word for sex.’ — collaged

 

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Further California Bummer (1994)
‘Before anything there was Further. They’ve been a huge influence for so many bands in Los Angeles and the world. Here is one of their classic songs.’ — dublab

 

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The Asteroid #4 No More Vitamins (1995)
‘Asteroid #4’s Introducing folds and blends in on itself like the long rays of a setting sun shimmering through the trees, like coloured oil on water, morphing into shapeless avenues that teeter through time. Coloured trails sweep by at the speed of sound, yet seem to take forever to pass, only to have another, and then another wash in together and explode on the irises of your half closed eyes.’ — streetmouse

 

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Elf Power Grand Intrusion Call (1995)
‘island on the wall / grand intrusion call / unicorns and antelope / erase their nowhere glow // deeply drifting spies / rolling through the sky / unicorns and antelope / erase their nowhere glow // enter at the light / forceful fits of fright’ — Elf Power

 

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The Olivia Tremor Control The Opera House (1996)
‘The Olivia Tremor Control is a psychedelic rock band that was prominent in the mid-to-late 1990s. The band’s distinct sound is a mixture of Doss and Hart’s pop and experimental tendencies. This chemistry is evident in their albums given that some tracks are 2–3 minute songs, while others are electro-acoustic collages ranging in length from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and differing in content from vibrant horns to near silence. The band is influenced by the odd quality inherent in dreams and asked their listeners to send in tapes describing their own, examples of which can be heard in the final track of Black Foliage and the OTC-BSN collaborative LP. While their debut album Dusk at Cubist Castle focuses more on complex vocal harmonization and upbeat melodies, Black Foliage is more noise-oriented, with more feedback samples and tape loops.’ — collaged

 

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Fishmans Long Season 3 (1996)
‘If Long Season had never been released, Fishmans would be remembered as an act that reached relatively humble success in Japan, but nothing more. They would have drifted away into obscurity, and that would be the end of their story. There would be no live album like 98.12.28, there would be no resurgence in their popularity in the age of the internet, but most importantly, the band’s other great projects would cease to exist in the public eye. Luckily, that’s not the case, as Long Season is Fishmans’ moment of triumph. It’s the moment they broke from their reggae cocoon and spread their psychedelic wings, leaving an imprint on any listener blessed enough to come across this masterpiece.’ — Album of the Year

 

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Super Furry Animals Something 4 The Weekend (1996)
‘Super Furry Animals are probably influenced by recreational chemicals. They draw from a deep well of 1960s and 1970s influences, merging the madcap iconoclasm of early Frank Zappa and Syd Barrett with the skewed melodic majesty of Brian Wilson and the British art-pop group the Soft Machine. On Fuzzy Logic, SFA openly play their hand in “Something 4 the Weekend”: “First time I did it for the hell of it/Stuck it on the back of my tongue/And swallowed it.” But while Fuzzy Logic is rich in hallucinogenic spirit and shimmering guitars, SFA also evoke the decadent ’70s pop of Mott the Hoople and David Bowie, while the album’s celestial-flute passages and overdrive-guitar storms resemble those of America’s own Mercury Rev.’ — Rolling Stone, 1996

 

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Acid Mothers Temple Speed Guru (1996)
‘Kawabata Makoto initially formed Acid Mothers Temple (originally “Acid Mother’s Temple”) with the intention of creating “extreme trip music” by editing and dubbing previous recordings, being influenced by progressive rock, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and krautrock. Kawabata, along with Koizumi Hajime, Suhara Keizo, and Cotton Casino formed the original Acid Mother’s Temple lineup as a group; however, the first recordings released were Kawabata’s own mixes and overdubs. The band released two self-titled tapes on their eponymous label in 1996 before dropping the apostrophe from their name. They soon released their first self-titled album. The group began to tour overseas in 1998.’ — collaged

 

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Oneida Salad Days (1997)
‘Oneida is a rock band from Brooklyn, New York. Their influences include psychedelic rock, krautrock, electronic, noise rock, and minimalism, but the overall structure and intent of their music cannot be easily traced to any of these styles. Common elements found in their music include improvisation, repetition, driving rhythms, antique and analog equipment, and an overall eclecticism. A prominent aspect of Oneida’s music is their use of repetition. Oneida’s music can also be distinguished by the band’s use of antique keyboards and analog electric pianos.’ — collaged

 

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The Legendary Pink Dots Hellsville (1997)
‘Founded in 1980, the Dutch band Legendary Pink Dots takes place in the field of experimental and psychedelic music. The band is fronted by Edward Ka-Spel who doubles as singer and chief lyric writer, but other members including Phil Knight (The Silverman), Erik Drost and Raymond Steeg make up the current lineup of the band. The sound is often made up of a conglomerate of electronics, saxophones, guitars, drums and Ka-Spel’s distinctive voice and lyrical invention. Although distinctly underground, the band have been musically influential over the years. Their name was derived from pink dots of nail varnish on the piano in their squat, where founding members Edward and April lived. Their music is nothing if not original and it is difficult to categorise, but comparisons may be drawn with bands like Pink Floyd and Can.’ — collaged

 

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The Chemical Brothers The Private Psychedelic Reel (1997)
‘“The Private Psychedelic Reel” is what Britpop should have been: brimful of confidence, but also a feast of sound and quite unlike anything the charts had played host to before. You grope for reference points – My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” after eight pints of lager? – but nothing fits. The Chemical Brothers’ guest-stars policy has never paid off so handsomely as here: approaching Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue to fuzz up and enlighten “…Reel” was an act of curatorial genius. It’s not of course possible to exactly define where Donahue ends and the Brothers begin, but that’s hardly the point. “The Private Psychedelic Reel” is that great and rare kind of collaboration where both parties seem to raise their game out of respect for one another – the Chemicals offer a beat of total propulsive acumen and a nagging sitar line to ground the surrounding madness, and with the security of that structure behind him Donahue goes all out for texture. He smears effect after effect over the track, dissolving the edges of every sound until “…Reel” becomes a disorienting head-riot of whistling, chiming, howling and swooping.’ — freaky trigger.co.uk

 

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Grandaddy A.M. 180 (1997)
‘The solar-powered neo-psychedelic space pop combo Grandaddy were formed in 1992 in Modesto, CA, by singer/guitarist/keyboardist Jason Lytle, bassist Kevin Garcia, and drummer Aaron Burtch. Although a noisy, lo-fi approach characterized early recordings like 1994’s Complex Party Come Along Theories, the addition of guitarist Jim Fairchild and keyboardist Tim Dryden in 1995 expanded the band’s sound exponentially, fueling such subsequent efforts as the unreleased Don’t Sock the Tryer and the 1996 EP A Pretty Mess by This One Band. Originally issued on indie label Will Records, 1997’s acclaimed full-length Under the Western Freeway proved to be Grandaddy’s creative breakthrough, and the following year the album was reissued on major label V2, with “Summer Here Kids” earning Single of the Week honors in the pages of the NME.’ — collaged

 

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Bardo Pond Walking Stick Man (1999)
‘Bardo Pond was formed in Philadelphia in 1989 by guitar-playing brothers Michael and John Gibbons, who’d long had an interest in making free-form noise, though they didn’t pick up non-percussion instruments until attending art school in their twenties. Their first collaborator was guitarist Clint Takeda, a friend of Michael’s who shared their enthusiasm for free music. Over the next two years, the band held twice-weekly jam sessions in their living room. At first, their aesthetic was one of naive, unfettered freedom, but they slowly grew convinced of the need for some semblance of structure and proper instrumental technique. Takeda christened the band Bardo Pond in 1991, after a location described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.’ — Fire Records

 

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Walter Ghoul’s Lavender Brigade Hourglass (1999)
‘A collection of songs recorded by a couple of British psychedelia obsessives from Louisiana during the mid-nineties. Damien Youth and Zane Armstrong working under the pseudonyms Julian Starr and Oliver Crumb set out, not to simply create music inspired by the sixties, but rather to become a sixties band. The idea evolved into a fully fledged “band” complete with back story, photos, and period recordings set between 1964 and 1970. The results were reasonably convincing, especially given that the songs were recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder with lousy guitars, a cheap keyboard, a pawn shop drum machine (AKA Biff), and a handful of effects pedals.’ — b.c.

 

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Boredoms 7 (1999)
‘There may be no other band in the world that has traced a history quite like Japan’s Boredoms. Across over 20 years, founder and leader Eye, along with frequent collaborator Yoshimi, has taken the band on a cosmic road trip, from the early swamps of chaos through times of tribal frenzy, oceanic tranquility, and massive sonic constructions. Perhaps most remarkable is the unceasing commitment to vision above all else, and the effects of that Commitment. The influence of Boredoms in underground, experimental, noise, and performance-based music cannot be overstated. The early Boredoms seemingly harnessed that chaotic energy and began melding it into a No Wave-influenced rock format. The first release under the name Boredoms appeared in 1986. The frenetic, maniacal live show cemented their reputation. The incredible rhythmic power, clever melodic punches, and sheer chaotic intensity of the band to play off each other in ways that had perhaps never been heard or seen before. From their associations with bands like Sonic Youth to their explosive tours through the U.S. and Europe, the Boredoms were partially responsible for opening the eyes of listeners in this country to the possibilities of the Japanese music scene.’ — The Windish Agency

 

 

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p.s. Hey. Let me say right off the bat that I don’t know if the Jorma Kaukonen who guest-curated today’s gig is the Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane. I asked, and he/she/they wouldn’t answer. So while it’s humanly possible that one of the great fathers of psychedelic music chose my humble blog as a place to give some props to some of his neo-psychedelic offspring, it seems highly unlikely, and yet … ** Dominick, Hi!!!! I am ever at your confidence’s disposal. The hacking thing is rather lazy this time. I only get an alert email every, oh, hour or two. Which makes it seem even less serious, although I guess the deliberateness could be more ominous? Ha ha, you know, when I found that adderall-infused escort there was a moment when I thought, you know, my living room does need a rage cleaning. I’m with you. Getdown was absolutely the mind-scrambling king of the bunch for me too. Sigh. Love air-lifting Mexico City and fitting it over Budapest like a glove, G. ** Sypha, Hm, if I get an idea for a novel set in the Middle Ages — now that would be a self-challenge if there ever was one — I’ll consult the Gies. Thanks for the fill in. You good, buddy? Your summer winding down in a respectful manner? ** Misanthrope, You liked the athletes, did you? Fifth fattest … could have been worse given you were in the southern portion of the USA. Anyway, one more birthday conquered. As someone living where there’s been an indoor mask policy for almost two years, I would say it’s a small price and there is a reason. I saw those goodreads reviews the other day or week. Yeah, my books always get some of those ‘pretentious, confusing, I don’t get it’ reviews. C’est la. Oh, I actually think someone could read ‘I Wished’ without having read me before with no problem at all, but what do I know. Crack your week wide open. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Thanks a ton, bud. Right, college is soon, it’s that time of year. Scary, yes, I’m sure, but I suspect that one day, and possibly even soon, you’ll look back on the big move as that time when your life got that big boost. I’m glad you liked ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. I’m definitely pro it, like I probably already said. Favorite Kubrick … ? Push comes to shove, I guess ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Hard to choose one, obviously. The only Kubrick film from the period beginning with ‘Paths of Glory’ that I don’t think is great is ‘Full Metal Jacket’. I think that one got away from him. Congrats on glimpsing the exit of ‘2666’ in the near distance. I’m good, busily working a project I’m excited about. I hope your week ahead exceeds its promise. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, Mr. E. Thanks for the links. That Mahler one looks especially watchable. ** T, Greetings, T! Your recent silence is more than understandable under those circumstances. It does sound purgatorial, but France gleams in anticipation. Coherence is so overrated. High five. I’m good, working on stuff, looking forward to the return of all of my vacationing Parisian friends. I’ve never read ‘Dhalgren’. Weird, right? I must have been gifted copies of it by enthusing friends a half-dozen times over the years, but … Sci-fi is a super weak part of my reading experience. There’s some considerable reluctance there, and the hugeness of books like ‘Dhalgren’ does not help. And your calling it a slog, which is what I’ve always anticipated, will keep all those gifted copies squarely on their shelves. Congratulations, though. I’m of course happy that the ‘scorts brought joy and wonder to you. That’s the least escorts can do, no? My week ahead ending up artful in the way you wish is an exciting yet tall order. Let me see what I can do. Can I wish you the very same? Will that jinx it? I’ll take the chance. xo, DC ** Okay. You have the trippily golden opportunity to psych the fuck out today courtesy of someone who goes by the name of the great Jorma Kaukonen. Later, and see you tomorrow.