COLUMN: Future Forms
by Bernardo Rondeau | 00.00.0000

While the last year or so has palpitated with press salvos on the so-called New Weird and/or Freeform Folk and/or Weirdo Beardcore movement(s) , its only fitting that one of its progenitors will return. England’s pilose troubadours the Incredible String Band will tour the States as a stripped-down trio -- Mike Heron, Clive Palmer and Lawson Dando — focusing on the 66-70 window of their catalog so beloved by graying buccaneers and novice sprites alike. Dates and support acts as follows:

09/23 Northhampton. MA @ Iron Horse ~
09/24 Brooklyn, NY @ The Hook *
09/25 New York, NY @ Joe's Pub *
09/26 Philadelphia, PA @ North Star *
09/27 Alexandria, VA @ Birchmere *
09/28 Winston-Salem, NC @ The Werehouse #
09/29 Atlanta, GA @ Echo Lounge #
10/01 Houston, TX @ Super Happy Fun Land *
10/02 Austin, TX @ Church of the Friendly Ghost
10/03 Denton, TX @ Hailey’s
10/05 Tucson, AZ @ Solar Culture *
10/07 San Diego, CA @ Canes Bar & Grill *
10/08 Los Angeles, CA @ McCabe’s *
10/09 San Francisco, CA @ Noe Valley Ministry *
10/11 Portland, OR @ Berbati’s Pan ^
10/12 Seattle, WA @ The Triple Door ^
10/13 Missoula, MT @ Crystal Theater at the Bridge
10/15 Salt Lake City, UT @ Inner Mountain Acoustic ^
10/16 Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge ^
10/18 Columbia, MO @ The Blue Note ^
10/19 Bloomington, OH @ Bluebird ^
10/20 Chicago, IL @ Logan Square Auditorium ^
10/21 Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center for the Arts ^
10/22 Pittsburgh, PA @ Andy Warhol Museum Theater
10/23 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
10/26 Oberlin, OH @ Dionysus

* with Espers
^ with Joanna Newsom
~ with PG Six
# with Jack Rose

Also, there’s the new Nebulous Nearnesses long-player from Amoeba Records which documents a 2003 concert performed at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios. Tracklisting as follows:

1. You Know What You Could Be
2. Cousin Caterpillar
3. Everything's Fine Right Now
4. Chinese White
5. Ducks on a Pond
6. How Happy I Am
7. Water Song
8. Banjo Tune
9. Log Cabin Home in the Sky
10. Painting Box
11. Empty Pocket Blues
12. Hedgehog's Song
13. A Very Cellular Song

Even more picked and plucked luminescence from these aged sages will come in October when ISB banjoist Clive Palmer delivers a new solo disc -- All Roads Lead to Land (Communion) -- which collects two previously issued compositions along with ten unreleased songs from the banjoist. The complete album will be:

1. O For Summer
2. You Were Meant For Me
3. Lament for Shelley
4. Sands of Time
5. Breizh
6. Broken Dreams
7. Paris
8. Linden Lea
9. Dans La Campagne
10. Big City Blues
11. Baby Sing The Blues
12. Embraceable You

And for all those on the mellow coast, Palmer will appear with bard du jour Devendra Banhart at the following:

11/19 San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo's 365 Club
11/20 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex

MICROBE_HUNTING (New records of note from the fringe):: When LA’s short-lived psych-cowboys Beachwood Sparks quietly dissolved a few years back singer Chris Gunst headed to Santa Cruz for some bedroom mellifluence as Mystic Chords of Memory while Dave Scher and Jimi Hey expunged the twang and upped the flange as All Night Radio. Now the band’s Brent Rademaker is issuing his own solo permutation. Frausdots finds the bassist with girlfriend Michelle Loiselle and bevy of musicians expertly simulating early-to-mid 80s melancholia. On Couture, Couture, Couture (Sub Pop), the band toggles between Bunnymen angst-bops high on plexed jangle and gauzy Cure gloom mantras. Voiced with more sunsoaked harmonies than the pasty Brits, it far surpasses the overwrought self-parody of Fat Bob’s latest comeback effort even while sharing its keyboardist Roger O’Donnell. But perfecting a faux relic does have its problems. Couture, Couture, Couture’s stale production sqaunders all range for a single shade of murky gray that swallows all dynamics. Rather than some great lost LP, it ends up playing more like an unearthed demo reel.

Far crisper, ”Rain”/A Leaf Spiral (Sub Rosa) from Dublin’s Hard Sleeper (aka Peter Maybury) crosses stray frequencies into drifting tonal clusters. Mayburry subtracts the beat and creates an expanse of telefax shuffles from laptop pips and fizz. Also lone but far louder, Dan Friel’s mini-album Sunburn (Velocirecords) is a late summer scorcher. A member of Brooklyn shrapnel-heapers Parts & Labor, Friel plies yard sale electronics for fried metallics and Ur-robotnik rhythms. Occasionally caking his warped orbs of fuming toxins with candied rust zips, Friel’s concoctions may have slight confectionary semblances but they require a steel stomach.