Posts Tagged ‘Dan Balcer’

WRITHING SQUARES – ” Rogue Moon “

Posted: March 17, 2021 in MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Philly duo Writhing Squares (Kevin Nickles [sax, flute, synth] & Daniel Provenzano [bass, vocals]) release new double album Chart for the Solution on March 26th via Trouble in Mind. Opening cut “Rogue Moon” gives you a good idea of what they’re about — an 11-minute jam that incorporates psych, jazz, krautrock, punk, prog and more across one-chord jam. If you’re a fan of Suicide and Hawkwind you’ll dig this. The cover art is pretty sweet too. Can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.

Over the course of “Chart For The Solution”s four sides, Nickles & Provenzano utilize the extended format to stretch out & settle into a groove all their own. From the relentless synth pulse of opener “Rogue Moon”, thru the aggro-throb of “Geisterwaltz” & four-on-the-floor scree of “Ganymede”, The Squares have no mercy for your weary ears. After a brief, (slightly) mellow respite thru three tunes (“The Abyss Is Never Brighter”/”A Chorus of Electrons”/”The Library”), the band ratchets up the intensity with the cacophonous clatter of “NFU” (featuring Philly legend “Harmonica” Dan Balcer Ripping thru runs on his harp) leading right into the album’s centerpiece; all of Side Three’s “The Pillars”, a near-nineteen minute epic suite that launches the listener straight into the maw of a black hole & thru the other side.

Side Four closes out “Chart For The Solution” starting with the slinky stomp of “North Side of The Sky” into “Resurrect Dead On Planet Whatever”s unsettling, cosmic-funeral dirge.

Fittingly, “Epilogue” closes out the album, with Nickles’ sax dive bombing around Provenzano’s bass throb like an alien interpretation of “Funhouse” howling anarchy, augmented by live drums by John Schoemaker & organ by Alex Ward. “Chart For The Solution” really is a Zone, & the perfect auditory cleanser to scrub away the stain of the previous year. 

http://

The Writhing Squares are Kevin Nickles and Daniel Provenzano. Two piece psych explorations constructed out of bass, sax, drum machine and a few more things. :
Kevin Nickles: Sax, Flute, Clarinet, Synth, Vocals
Daniel Provenzano: Bass, Synth, Percussion, Vocals

“Harmonica” Dan Balcer: Harmonica on “NFU”
John Schoemaker: Drums on “Epilogue”
Alex Ward: Organ on “Epilogue”

releases March 26th, 2021

All songs written by Writhing Squares except for “NFU”

 

 

SPARROW STEEPLE – ” Roll Baby “

Posted: February 18, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Image may contain: 4 people

Sparrow Steeple’s music exists in its own universe. An imagined utopia (or is it a dystopia?) of wolfmen, murderous wizards, whispering woods & leprechaun treasure. Their second album “Tin Top Sorcerer” arrives near the front end of 2019, just in time for spring to blossom.

Comprised of three members of inscrutable indie legends Strapping Fieldhands (who blazed many musical trails in the Nineties via records for Siltbreeze, Shangri-La & their own Omphalos Records), Sparrow Steeple specialize in mini-opuses that drift & careen haphazardly like Grimm’s Fairy Tales sung by Syd Barrett – psychedelic tales of rapturous joy & sinister machinations by creatures real & imagined, all wrapped around dreamlike tunes of avant folk, psychedelia, and outsider music. “Roll Baby”s drunken-tavern sing-a-long is peppered by blistering guitar leads & wobbly harmonica (courtesy of Philly-legend “Harmonica” Dan Balcer) while “Stabbing Wizards” backwards guitar lends a foggy aura of disquiet to the tale of treachery & betrayal. Despite the fantastic yarns spun (see the tragic tale of the “Wolfman of Mayberry”, or “Girl of the Whispering Woods”), “Tin Top Sorcerer” has an air of realism – or perhaps “magical realism”, that place these songs in a place simultaneously out-of-time and from a possible future, permeated by a sense that these things could actually have happened (or will happen) at some point in our shared existence.

http://

From the Philadelphia band’s second album “Tin Top Sorcerer”, out April 5th, 2019 via Trouble In Mind Records