Brian Grainger & Millipede - Play Ancient Hylian Folk Songs, Volume II

(Milieu Music, 2011)

So, I think it's probably important that I admit, prior to featuring this brilliant, brilliant tape, that I only ever played the very first Zelda.  Which isn't to say that I don't love video games, or the Zelda franchise at large; I just never had a Nintendo 64 (and yes, obviously didn't play any other Zelda titles on NES and SNES).  I guess I'm more of a Final Fantasy nerd.  Still, I do love the original Zelda and the bottom line, I suppose, is that I have major sympathies towards anyone willing to make a tribute album to something as awesome as Zelda (volume II!!).

But this tape requires no sympathy.  Especially when the tribute/trouble-makers are as wildly talented and inspired as Millipede and Brian Grainger.  Millipede takes the first 6 tracks and transforms whatever was previously Hylian folk into slabs of earth-scorchingly beautiful guitar-balladry.  Joseph Davenport, AKA Millipede, just keeps getting better and better.  It feels like it's not a new Millipede review on Forest Gospel if I'm not writing that its the best thing he's ever done. 

Brian Grainger completes the tape with 4 fuzzed-out tracks of his own.  The most wonderful addition being the final song, "Earth God's Lyric / Sage of Earth," a nearly fifteen minute masterpiece of layered, mutating, groggy-eyed bliss.  In a perfect world, the song would soundtrack the game's closing credits, after Link comes away triumphant (or whatever).  Possibly why it stands as the last song on the tape.

You don't need to love or even be familiar with the Zelda gaming franchise to be in love with this tape though.  It's simply really good, gritty music.

Millipede - Realms

(Dead Pilot, 2011)

What I think about when I am listening to Realms:

Four heavy beasts, horned and tusked both—dark, gorgeous, mammoth-sized beasts—each roped around the neck and pulling, the four of them, an enormous coffin. The scene is painted over groggily in pre-dawn mist, the heavy breath of the beasts, pockets of ethereal fog and a long-tailed parade of torch flames held in the memorial convoy. The coffin drags laboriously, scoring the earth like a massive plow, grinding against the rocks and soil; a cacophony dirge in its wake. The kingly funeral procession of a darkened lord.

Realms is what it sounds like in the mourners' hearts. What's ringing in their ears. The appropriate requiem song.

Realms is also the third full-length album of Chattanooga guitar slayer, Joseph Davenport, AKA Millipede. His magnum opus. And, appropriately, (finally), his first album pressed to wax.

There has always been a certain sense of masochism present in the Millipede sound palette. A trenchant abrasiveness and acerbic pop that’s warded off weak-boned, weak-bodied, weak-eared listeners. (An otherworldly loudness.) Realms is similarly abrasive, but the sorrowful gorgeousness that has long been lurking beneath Davenport's mordantly slathered guitar is finally dawning in a way that makes Realms a perfect entry point into the Millipede sound-world.  But this isn't simply an entry point, Realms is it: the genuine article: a massive melting pot of beauty and ugly, perhaps the true nature of what it means to experience the deathlinks of life and come away with two lung-fulls of air and circulating heart.

Millipede - "Magma"

Stream the full album Here.

Millipede - Full Bloom

Millipede
Full Bloom
(2010, Install)
RIYL = Yellow Swans, The Goslings, Fennesz

Loud. It’s a term whose description is most notably a reference to sound produced at high levels of audible volume. That the term feels uncomfortably lacking when used as a descriptor for Millipede’s latest album, Full Bloom, is telling. This album isn’t simply loud, it’s is deafening. This is one of the few albums that demand a parental advisory sticker (remember those?) for audio abrasiveness alone (notifying Tipper right now). It's the tangible threat of Millipede’s thunderously noisy guitar jarring loose components of one’s inner ear. Despite having listened to the album well over twenty times now, whenever I start listening to Full Bloom, without fail, the sheer audacity of the recordings require that I turn the volume to its lowest level and then slowly ease myself into the uproar. Otherwise, I fear the unbridled raucousness of Millipede’s guitar will cause my headphones to sprout teeth and consume my ears whole. Like boiling a live frog, or something. What? I don’t know. However, the fact that Millipede’s latest (and might I add at this juncture, greatest) album is indisputably, to put it ever so lightly, loud, is not to say that the tonal architecture here is ugly. Do not be fooled into thinking that something so vociferous cannot also be intensely gorgeous, because - my friends - that is exactly what Full Bloom turns out to be. Once you’ve peeled through the oniony layers of this dauntingly strident album, what you’ll find running underneath is almost beyond description in terms of its depth and beauty. Up front, the guitars are shattering like crystal, but the refracted vision that these fractured tones illuminates something wholly unique, and gorgeous. There sits deep within these recordings, that, I’m sure, to 99% of the population can be simply qualified as unbearable noise (“kids these days!”), a Zen that isn’t manageable at softer, more contemplative tones. Full Bloom achieves what all those minimalist drone kids are aiming for, but can never quite attain: something concrete, compelling and enlightening, all at once. Don’t get caught in the crowd that will flippantly label this as just another noise album. I promise, it is so much more.

-Thistle

Millipede on MySpace
Full Bloom via Install

Brian Granger / German Shepherd / Millipede / MOTH - Traveling

Brian Granger / German Shepherd / Millipede / MOTH
Traveling
(2009, Sunrise Acousitcs/Imperfect Music)
RIYL = Any of the listed above, avant-noise, experimental

With all the noisy sound experimentalists out there churning up bliss amidst feedback, sometimes it is hard to know who to follow and what to listen to. That is why I was super happy to get this collective work of four likeminded artists who each contributed 15 minutes of their individual clatter to disc, all following the theme of the album's namesake, Traveling. And just as a precursor to its success, I definitely think that more groups, experimental or not, should be doing stuff like this. It develops an instant community and provides listeners with several avenues for further investigation and enjoyment. Whelp, moving on, we might as well take this thing on artist by artist. Traveling gets kicked off with two stellar tracks by one Brian Granger. Granger is no newcomer to the independent experimental scene with his back catalog of previous material and two labels. The tracks he contributes are a testament to his experience. Granger's work here reminds me a lot of Stars of the Lid if they allowed themselves to be more heavily processed and decided worked with decrepit, disintegrating equipment. As a result Granger’s tracks are grimier and much more interesting than SotL, while retaining that ambient beauty. Both songs hover around the 7 minute mark and have just enough time to contort and shift around before reaching a pleasant resting place. Of the three new-to-me artists on Traveling, Brian Granger is definitely my favourite. Really top notch stuff here. Next up is German Shepherd. There is this omnipresent fuzz in German Shepherd’s tracks that, if I’m being honest with myself, sound a little amateurish. I don’t know why this little bit of background fuzz in an album of artists that continually bounce ideas off of the static feedback of their recording equipment is a nuisance at all, but in this instance it kind of is. I guess one of the major reasons is that the three tracks that German Shepherd lends to Traveling are really great in every other way. Following the thematic and artistic similarities present to one degree or another with each of the artists, German Shepherd blesses his tracks with gorgeous guitar moments that meander and overlap into well conceived and executed pieces. It’s just that omnipresent fuzz! It dents up his contributions a little bit, unfortunately. German Shepherd’s tracks are followed by FG favourite, Millipede. As always, Millipede brings the heat with 4 concise bursts of doomy guitar grinding that seem to be examples of a perfect contradiction. In one sense they seem to spiral heavenward and in another they definitely dig deep into a more hellish territory. However, it is this joint clause of intent, this beautifully-ugly mess that sets Millipede apart as a master of his analog craft. I’m probably beginning to sound like a broken record on this front, but keep an eye on the happenings emanating from the Millipede camp - he’s presented nothing but consistently delicious slabs of noisy goodness since his very first release (this is the third group of recordings we’ve reviewed of his in 2009 alone!). Concluding our little foursome is another artist with whom I am glad to be introduced. MOTH puts his entire 15 minutes into one track and throws an early curveball by presenting the first vocals to the instrumental guitar domination of the first three artists. The opening strumming and vocals, in comparison, is downright pop accessible, but things quickly evolve into solo acoustic guitar with sample conversations and then into a more lo-fi territory with a throbbing bass and drum loop topped with the prickly strum of what sounds like a metal-stringed toy guitar. After a few minutes this portion quickly cuts out and is replaced by a twangy song with some effects laden vocals that reminds me of Pumice and Blank Dogs in a weird way. It is definitely the highlight of the 14+ minute track. Traveling is pretty awesome as a whole and is definitely worth picking up, especially for those of us that have a hard time making up our mind choosing an album from a single artist.

-Thistle

Brian Granger on MySpace via Milieu
German Sheperd on MySpace
Millipede on MySpace
MOTH on MySpace

Millipede - Sand & Surf

Millipede
Sand & Surf
(2009, Install)
RIYL = Yellow Swans, Geoff Mullen, Mouthus

For anyone who found the super incredible Death Mountain (the Millipede full length released earlier this year) a little too brief, Millipede and his cohorts at the Install label have teamed up once again to provide us with a little supplemental listening. Sand & Surf is not really directly related to Death Mountain, but it is still pure Millipede, which translates to earth shattering feedback via guitars and pedals. Sand & Surf is being toted as a digital 7”, so things are still pretty brief; however, the four songs here are al up to snuff with Millipede’s previous work. In fact, amongst these four mosaics of tone destruction, Millipede sound tip toes into some new area with the non-destructive prettiness of “Sand,” offering a short respite from the gluttonous malingering of its sandwiching tracks. All and all, there isn’t a lot to say that hasn’t already been said about Millipede’s previous releases here on FG. And we are still awaiting the release of a new full length that is in the works and should also be due out later this year. Millipede is keeping himself busy, that’s for sure. Oh wait, I almost forgot. Millipede and Install are giving this gorgeous “seven inch” away for free. Check the link below, enjoy and destroy!

- Lil' Thistle

Millipede - Sand & Surf

Millipede - Death Mountain

Millipede
Death Mountain
(12.2008/01.2009, Install)
Verdict = Merriweather Post Pavilion and now this!? I think I could sleep through the rest of 2009 and be just fine.

Though part of a marginally larger edition than his Hyrule cassette (30 copies), Death Mountain is still a criminally limited edition at only 50 copies. The concept for Millipede this time around is the same: Zelda + My Bloody Valentine = monolithic cathedrals of towering guitar feedback that somehow instills a depressing beauty amidst the swirling chaos. Think Fennesz, if he was performing an exorcism gone horribly wrong (but at the same time - horribly right!). I don’t know why the labels that are putting this stuff out (and they’re great labels to be putting it out at all, that’s for sure) aren’t placing more stock into it because Millipede’s brand of melodic guitar feedback is devastatingly good. Let me be the first to request that someone put this stuff on wax at an edition of 500 or something because once someone notable finds out about this stuff, it’ll be gone in no time. But then again, I’m just a lowly music blogger, the scum of the music world, what do I know? Well, if nothing else, I know that Death Mountain is noise done right. This is the kind of stuff that us odd, experimental leaning folk devour after wading through pools of the BS noise releases that everyone else and their little sisters have cranked out on CDR. This is one of those holy grail type records that make wading through the crap a bearable means to an end. And let me just say this so that I can be the first (why else blog about music?): If Millipede keeps this up, there will be a day when his moniker will be uttered in company with noise stalwarts like Yellow Swans, Axolotl, Earth and Sunn O))). His stuff is that good. Don’t sleep on Death Mountain on the basis of its limited edition status or its peculiar Nintendo associations – this ain’t no lame, glitched out NES cover band. Death Mountain is transcendent, apocalyptic, magnificent and searingly beautiful; a true work of art. As you could imagine, I could probably go on all day. However, I’d rather give my full attention back to Millipede and Death Mountain. Sample below for the unbelievers…

-Mr. Thistle

Sample of "Daphnes Nohansen"

Millipede - Hyrule

Millipede
Hyrule
(2008, Epicene)
File Under = My Bloody Valentine + Zelda?

The other day Wooly Mammal approached me in utter distress. You see, Wooly is taking a course on rock n’ roll history at the University of Utah and while scanning forward to see what was up next on the class syllabus, Mr. Mammal was devastated by the absence of My Bloody Valentine. I can certainly understand. Not discussing Loveless in a class spanning the history of rock is simply irresponsible. Fortunately for Wooly, Millipede, the solo alias of one Joe Davenport, is a project which rightfully honors MBV in its mission statement…MBV and Zelda. Yeah, who knew, right? This should come as welcome news to Wooly Mammal who just happens to be the biggest Zelda fanatic I know. In fact, with his credentials, he is really set up quite nicely to review this release. Unfortunately for him, this one is too good for me to pass up. I myself am a fair Zelda fan. I can definitely hold my own on the original Nintendo version (though my current copy has been out of commission for some time). However, that is about the extent of my experience. But Hyrule doesn’t really require those type of qualifiers anyway because, as it turns out, when you mix My Bloody Valentine with Zelda the results are something more akin to reverberated noise of Yellow Swans or Wzt Hearts. For those who don’t know, both of the afore mentioned FG favorites announced their demise this year making the arrival of Millipede’s Hyrule all the more welcome in order to fill the void. Released as an ultra limited edition cassette (don’t stop reading), Hyrule runs its course in five tracks that reach just passed twenty minutes. In that time frame, Davenport evokes MBV’s disheartened guitars and then distorts and layers them with devastating results. The tracks struggle constantly between downtrodden beauty and analog violence that coalesces into a marvelous whole. Hyrule is really quite marvelous (like year end time marvelous), and as long as Davenport continues to run his idea of Zelda through MBV pedals we are all in good hands. Now, there is the matter of these ultra limited cassettes (only 30). Turns out they were snatched up as soon as the were produced (and with good reason), so Mr. Davenport has graciously made Hyrule available to the rest of us, not-quite-so-geeky-but-still-pretty-geeky folk who didn’t have the inside scoop on his MBV/Zelda/cassette madness so, please, take advantage of the link below – I promise that it will be worth your time!

-Mr. Thistle

Download Hyrule