Mamaleek - Kurdaitcha (2011)

Mamaleek are two anonymous brothers from San Francisco who play a mixture of black metal, jazz, and world music.  Kurdaitcha, their third album (whose name refers to the office of "ritual executioner" among some Australian Aboriginal peoples) has fewer jazz elements than their previous work, but is the most streamlined and easily listenable.

The shuffling electronic percussion at times sounds like, oddly enough, a cross between ritualistic drumming and witch house-y programming.  Throughout the course of this album you will encounter strangely trilling wind instruments (some type of flute?), sampled chanting in what sounds like German, blackened dungeon-scraping noise, and, during the anthemic highpoint of penultimate track "The White Marble Stone," rhythms slightly reminiscent of hip-hop.

Just an observation: the fuzzed out ending of "My Body Rock Long Fever" would sound right at home on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, complete with a final loop that calls to mind "Touched"...

These are all disparate parts of Kurdaitcha, but as a whole there is really nothing to compare it to.  This album demands to be taken on its own terms.  Mamaleek are one of the most unique, curious bands I've had the pleasure of hearing.

One more note: to my knowledge I was the first person to realize (or at least the first to post on the internet about it) that all of Mamaleek's song titles are taken from old negro spirituals.  I don't really know what to make of that, but there it is.

Kurdaitcha is available as a pay-what-you-want download from the always superb Enemies List Home Recordings.

Or, you can get it as a direct download below:

Trance soul journeys to the realm of spirits (192).

They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18 (1992)

It took me about 15 years to realize how weird Apollo 18 is.  Having been exposed to it as a small child (I have no memory of the first time I heard it; to me, it has simply always been), I had no frame of reference for its insular strangeness disguised in pop and rock trappings.  Sure, I knew the words, but I was unable to separate the lyrical landscape from the bouncy, catchy music.  Upon revisiting the album as a grown n' sexy adult, it was now clear.  This is 45 minutes of two weird, possibly probably mildly autistic dudes dropping you into the sea of circular linguistic abstractions and curious situational hyperspecifics that exist within their inscrutable headspaces.

Take the lyrics to "The Statue Got Me High" out of the context of its upbeat instrumental (dig that tuba work), and you have an ominous tale of monolithic possession and destroyed psyche.  Even Flansburgh, usually the more conventional of the two Johns, gets waaaay out there on the creepy, foreboding "Hall of Heads" while still remaining white-boy-fawnky.  Yet despite the sinister edge underlying most of the songs, this remains a toe-tapping, fun listening experience.  There's even a couple of "normal" tunes; the biology lesson "Mammal" is a precursor to their later-career material oriented toward educating children, and "Narrow Your Eyes" is an earnestly straightforward lament to love diminished by time and bitterness.

Musically, the songs branch out into a lot of different territories.  Imagine if Ween were socially dysfunctional eggheads building worlds inside their heads as they daydreamed in the back of class, instead of socially dysfunctional shitheads huffing glue and chuckling like Beavis and Butt-head in the back of class annoying the hell out of everyone, and you'll have a vague idea of what this sounds like.

The interstitial snippets of "Fingertips" were originally meant to be scattered throughout the album while listening to it on shuffle, but here I have left them as a single combined track.  Strung back to back to back etc., they become pleasurably disorienting.

Looking back, I wonder if absorbing such a bizarre album at such a young age had anything to do with me becoming the weirdo I am today.  I sure hope so.

If you've never listened to They Might Be Giants and only know the name, start here.  If you can't find anything about Apollo 18 to appreciate, they are probably not for you.

Let's get weird (320).

Enslaved by Owls - III - Trip the Light Phantasm (2008)

Enslaved by Owls is a one man project creating what could be soundtracks to psychedelic horror films that don't exist.  However, this is much more than mere Goblin worship.  His own description sums things up well: "Human Synth, Organ, Guitar, Drum Programming, LSD, Graveyards."  EBO is frequently goofy, often spooky, and always off-kilter.

Force fed 13 hits of Black Pentagram Acid, stuffed into a coffin, and buried alive.
Snorting crushed werewolf bones (it feels similar to ketamine) in a cobwebbed mausoleum.
Trapped, paralyzed in the back of a hearse that is, for some reason, chasing after another hearse (or is it the same hearse?).
Alien mold spores invading your mucus membranes and exploding out your orifices.
Struck by a weird freezing moonbeam, transformed into an eternal statue.

If all this sounds intriguing, you've got your work cut out for you; Enslaved by Owls has released seven full lengths, all available on Bandcamp.  There's no real best way to proceed with this strange body of work, so I've chosen III largely at random.  Light some black candles, and let the otherness wash over you.

III - Trip the Light Phantasm (320)