7 songs for spiders revolution dawns

 by roving reporter thornswrath 

  

     the eagerly and long awaited new album from Dax Riggs, 7 songs for spiders, released on Fat Possum Records, arrived at my doorstep today breaking a fifteen year silence since Say Goodnight To The World dropped back in 2010. That's the year I got married, on April Fool's, following my heart like I always do.

    Boy does this album deliver the goods and live up to the hype.
It's everything any die hard could have ever dreamed and more so. If you know, you know. This album belongs on the perfect soundtrack for our endtimes, along with agents of oblivion, deadboy and the elephantmen, and the veritable resurgence of a new punk revolution as the terrestrial gears shift into the new post-political paradigm of Earth with the shattering intensity brought upon us by the technological singularity. We've made it this far so you know together we can pull through anything the great and sinister unknown may throw at us. In the meantime this record, at a short running length of 28 minutes, is just what the doctor ordered in terms of what our highest expectations could bring.

     I'm happy to include a brand spankin' new album in my 30 albums challenge, so yes in case you're among the lost legion who never heard of acid bath or dax riggs, this album is a modern day masterpiece and was just released today, I preordered it and it arrived with impeccable timing. the stars lined up for me again, boy am I not surprised. This is the only daks album that I haven't had him sign, yet. Just wait'll he comes to Salt Lake, I hope he hits up Aces High because that would be perfect. Hope to see you there. I'll try and work my underground booking sorcery and get him to tour with IV & the Strange Band or something.

A new cycle of the same ol' same ol' begins. Best strap in. We're in for one helluva ride. Don't follow the bouncing ball, people. Stay focused on your own life, your own dreams. Everything has always been not as it seems, and it's no different today. Step away from all the screens and live your best life. Hang on to yourself or your significant other or wife.

As good ol' Billy Yeats once said:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand. . .

 That haunting opening melody that starts off the second track, Sunshine Felt the Darkness Smile, captures perfectly the short, sharp shock of spirit this album injects into the scene. 

   It's really something to hear him singing with a full band backing in a perfect complementary manner, lush and velvety enough to be felt getting swallowed by the darkness, with exactly the amount of haunted reverb and cascading tremulous lines dropping like ripened fruit from the gathering shadows of a darkening garden.  The moon's prevalent over this familiar courtyard of desolate tunes, yet there's that underlying defiant hope that saturates these blues, the lingering spirit of having survived leaves an echoing impression that we may have actually just been haunted by a ghost. It's what records are when you stop and think about it deeply enough.  The ghosts of John Lennon and David Bowie are kept alive in the shiny reflective depths of grooved vinyl records.  The exquisite vibrations captured with infinitesimal detail separating the sound of Beethoven from Pink Floyd reveals an astonishing variety of sonic terrain, the music of the spheres divided into microtones. 

    

After spinning 7 songs for spiders, I don't know in a sort of unattachment from the experience, as if I were removing a suction tight sealed scuba mask and shaking out from under the weight of the tank, a gasp of clean air and I realized I was crying, an emotional tide from having just listened to daks.  

   I went ahead and flipped it back to side A and began the seven songs all over again.  deceiver is a great tune to start it all, a perfect little carousel ride into Dax's nocturnal dream world. 

    When Graveyard Soul begins, that's it, when he sings you lost your junkyard smile, it captures the spirit of my own memory of who I was back in my twenties discovering Boston and the strange  hyperactive rhythms interacting with all my friends and the Grubs that got caught up in our underground society.  You know, I owe this musical discovery to none other than my dear friend Gareth Allen, he turned me onto Acid Bath back when I lived three doors down from him on Douglas St, all of twenty years ago.  When The Kite String Pops remains to this day among the very few most impactful albums in my long life of obsessing over rock and roll music.  Not only is it the meanest, rawest, most primal and stripped down sounding band in the land, but there's a psychedelic soulfulness to their unleashed fury that in my view remains pretty unmatched to this day.  And I've always appreciated all of Dax's side projects and sojourns. From seeing him perform as deadboy & the elephantmen all those years ago at Club Sound in the back of Bricks with Wolfmother and maybe Pelican, I can't exactly recall offhand.  

    It's good to have him back, and to know Acid Bath are going to give it a go. This year's kicking off to a delirious start.  I've seen a few reels of Sammy and Dax and them getting pumped up to play, so I hope they got a good positive energy going together and manage to keep it together, committing to at least another couple of years or three of touring smaller dive venues across the land just waiting to book them.  Aces High Saloon here in Salt Lake City for example would be the perfect place. Or S&S Productions could book them at the Urban Lounge or Club Metro.   I managed to get Cancerslug booked at Aces High last year, and then they happened to land on Valentines Day, here. What are the chances.

      I told you the stars always line up for me so I'm going to email S&S Presents and Aces and see if I can get a show with Cancerslug, IV & the Strange Band and Dax Riggs, because that would be the trifecta for me, like some voodoo magic borne of the raw quantum chaos of my mind control.  

  

BOB DYLAN & HIS BAND BLEW US ALL AWAY AT DEER VALLEY MOUNTAIN SKI RESORT PARK CITY UTAH SUNDAY AUGUST 31 2008 ONCE UPON AN ENCHANTED EVENING I'LL NEVER FORGET

 by your blood rover Shaun Lawton 

   reporting for the Oscillating Oculus 

photo by Mathieu David

@ Deer Valley Mountain Ski Resort, Park City UTAH Sunday, August 31, 2008.

Here's the setlist on that electrifying, stormy evening: 



Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Stuck Inside A Mobile w/the Memphis Blues Again

It's NoT DaRk yeT

DON'T THINK TWICE, IT'S ALRIGHT

a MILLION miles

DESOLATION ROW

The Levee's Gunna Break

she belongs to me

Honest With Me

Simple Twist of FATE

HIGHWAY 61 Revisited

QUEEN JANE Approximately

THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN

LIKE A ROLLING STONE


   Bob Dylan rocked our darned socks off. Damn that was a blazing blistering set to help a crowd withstand torrential rains, but no amount of bad weather could put a damper on Bob Dylan or his band's set this evening. They just seared their way through song after song — 15 in all, I think — yes, most likely a foreshortened set due to the inclement weather, but it just made songs like 'The Levee's Gunna Break' all the better.

   The fact it all started with 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' was just perfect. My sweetheart and I were well-prepared this time for an outdoor lawn show. We bought these low-slung back-pack chairs and these 2 overlarge wicked windproof, rainbow-colored umbrellas so when the downpours came (and boy did they ever come) we were sittin' pretty high and dry. We had a bottle of very nice Sonoma county wine we'd been saving since last year's vacation, which we poured into these medieval metal goblets. We enjoyed sesame water crackers with goat cheese as well as some Greek and Chinese food. No sooner than Bob was singing 'Everybody Must Get Stoned' at the show's start in the rain did I begin to dance; this was not the slow rollicking beat with brass instruments version your Dad remembers, but more of a wicked fiery Hellbilly ride.

   Bob loves nothing more than changing up the arrangement of his songs, and it was quite evident in the next song 'Stuck Inside A Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again', a much quicker and upbeat version which got me on my feet and dancing in no time flat. Bob's band really got into the swing of things. Before my mind could catch up with what was actually happening to us all, 'It's Not Dark Yet' began, and it was so pitch-perfect. It was a brisk and tense delivery of a heartfelt anthem and was really quite moving. Then the rain finally stopped, some clouds parted, and we spied a section of blue sky up there above the mountains. You gotta understand Deer Valley is a ski resort catering to the rich and, yes, famous. It is clear and beautiful up at that elevation. We were lucky the sun broke through because it would remain relatively sunny and dry for over the next hour and nine songs or so. Everyone began pouring their libations of wine and bringing out their fancy picnic meals and whatnot. Shasta and I broke out the gourmet dark chocolate w/bits of ginger in it and quaffed more red wine while Bob Dylan and his band began jamming out an intro to the next song, which struck a familiar chord yet was being played too fast to be immediately recognized. I started dancing my ass off to this song, and before I knew it, realized I was twisting to 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'!

   It was then and there during this 5th song that a feeling of Awesomeness struck like a bolt of lightning from above, this was one of Bob's ON nights! Every song he played was uncut, and if anything, an extended version from the original. His band was ON it, jamming this unbelievable fusion of down home country ragtime, rock'n'roll, periodically injected with elements of swing, jazz, and Mississippi delta blues. Gone was the old folk element Dylan cut his teeth on; these here versions were fully electrified and transformed beyond their classic guises into something far more electric & dynamic.

   His Bobness pretty much stood in one spot sporting this nice Stetson hat and these black pants with a silver stripe down the sides of the legs, he was all got up good'n'proper like the Man in Black oughta be. I couldn't quite tell if he ever played a guitar or not — most of the night I was letting go gyrating and having a grand ol' time — but his voice shone through the dizzying arrangement of musical stylings in a crisp nasal tone that, although a bit raspier than it used to be, nonetheless managed to carry the songs through to their respective ends. The energy Bob and his band instilled in the crowd was palpable and electric, everyone was going nuts.

   I proudly wore my original KoRn T-shirt, selected specifically for this show, and sported a Jester's Cap w/bells on — picture me dancing a crazy Peanut's Dance sped up to about 78rpms in this outfit, and you pretty much get the picture of Shaun @ Bob Dylan, 2008. Believe me when I tell you that throughout most of these rockin' tunes, the level of intensity in the musicianship was such that it afforded plenty of opportunities to break out in wild, spontaneous air-guitar soloes, and there was one point (during the song 'Honest With Me') where I gasped out loud in stunned disbelief on account of how much heavy momentum the jamming had acquired. Let me put it this way: there were a few moments wherein my imagination inserted speed metal leads to the music - it was that sick. \m/

   Needless to say, I kept exchanging astonished looks with the folks standing next to us. I had read somewhere that lately, Dylan's shows focus so much on his more recent material that some audience members get disappointed. Well at our show in Deer Valley that Sunday evening, nothing could be further from the truth. After just having heard 'Rainy Day Women', 'Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again', 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright,' and 'Desolation Row', I was personally so blown away with the hits that I didn't care one whit any longer what Bob had in store for us; it was just that well-delivered, and each song provided ample opportunity for the various musicians to shine respectively with their instruments.

   So when 'You Belong To Me' played it was just another amazing classic song in a setlist chockfull of them, as far as I was concerned. I don't know which recent album the song 'Honest With Me' is from, but I will say it was the most rocking song of the night, just a scorcher through and through. And then Dylan dropped the bomb I had no idea was to come, and that was 'Simple Twist Of Fate'. I don't know about you all, but personally whereas I think 'Tangled Up In Blue' to be Dylan's greatest song, my mind has never been able to accommodate for both of these songs at the same time; When Simple Twist Of Fate plays, I forget all about Tangled Up In Blue, and vice-versa. Its the weirdest thing. Even the memory of Tangled Up In Blue was utterly annihilated while 'Simple Twist Of Fate' played, and all I could think was This has got to be the greatest song Dylan ever wrote...and I shouted as much when it was over: 'BEST SONG EVER,' I yelled out loud with devil horns thrown.

   Then the well-oiled machine that is Bob Dylan's band launched into 'Highway 61 Revisited', and it was around this time that I realized we were witnessing an evening of pure transcendence. You Dylan fans reading this by now can most likely perfectly-well understand how fully amazed I was by this point in the show. Every song had a really cool and unique arrangement; but more importantly, the band were so in sync with one another, they just jammed all the tunes with masterful finesse.

   The clouds had been gathering for awhile and the sun had been gradually obfuscated by the mountain line looming behind us when 'Queen Jane, Approximately' began to play. Shasta and I sensed the rain begin to fall again, so I started bustin' up our picnic and packing it all in. We grabbed our brightly colored umbrellas and popped them open just in time to catch the fatter rain drops beginning to drop. That's when Bob began on one tune I particularly enjoy from Modern Times — 'Thunder On The Mountain' — I don't know how he kept lobbing out these perfectly appropriate songs, but yeah the thunder that pealed down from the storm-laden night sky during this song could not have been more properly timed. And a hard rain began to fall, indeed.

   Of course I think everyone there was half-expecting Bob to actually sing this song ('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'). I personally was holding out with fingers crossed for 'Buckets Of Rain', one of my perennial favorites. But the final song of the evening that was delivered with almost apocalyptic fury was 'Like A Rolling Stone'. Do I even need to mention we weren't let down in the least? We're all howling "Without a HOME like a complete UNKNOWN... like a ROLLING STOOOONE..." up into the rain at night on a mountainside with hundreds of other people while Bob Dylan led us along was certainly a memory I will carry with me for awhile, yet. Just as soon as that song was done, Dylan tipped his hat and briskly exited stage left along with the rest of his band and all the spotlights went on. Nobody in the audience hesitated, we just grabbed our shit and began our mass exodus in the pouring rain, every single one of us all smiles and chattering excitedly and making our way for the gates, nevermind we were all drenched to the bone. The thunderstorm never once let up from that point on, it was like a soundtrack for the end credits. The time was about 9:45 pm, which meant Bob Dylan had played for two solid hours in the sun and the rain. I can't imagine being more shocked and satisfied than I felt at the end of this stellar show which Mr. Tambourine Man & his devoted band delivered to us all that last day of summer in Deer Valley, Utah, 2008.  In many key ways it stands out among the many mind-blowing concerts I've attended as the most enjoyable and gratifying I've had the good fortune to experience.  

   

~ Poet Laureate of the Soul ~

horror skunx RISE

by your friendly Station 3  DJ Shaun Grub   

      Squeezed in between  Hank III and Human Drama  there's the unforgettable sensational rising star of horror skunx with all fifteen of his pop song hits forming the basis for one of my favorite albums from the past couple years   "BENDYLAND"  as I like to think of it,  but whatever Winston Julian decides to end up naming the album itself^, all fifteen of these songs are classics in the making, and we'd better make no mistake about that.   

      [Look,  I went out and purchased all fifteen trax  for .99c each and ripped 'em to my 16gig nano long ago already, and if there's a sixteenth tune that drops of a sudden, it will be on my phone before sundown. Except my nano's in a state of shock right now, with the white screen of death and the two beeps.  This could be the end of an era.]*  It's true my nano never recovered. I advanced to using my iPhone / Apple Music.   

... O, did I say fifteen trax?  *fast-forward a few years to 2024* Try more like thirty-two now (by my count) which doesn't include the instrumental film score I'm not a Monster (PJ Pug-A-Pillar Soundtrack), which clocks in at 2:27 of surprisingly emotive neoclassical sound, but does include the smash hit Revive My Soul (Side B) collab w/Rockit Music, from the Revive My Soul (Bendy and the Dark Revival) EP, feat. 2 different versions, one sung by just Rockit I think, and the one I really like, the duet w/Winston Julian aka my #1 favorite recording artist today.  He's been Cupid-launched into my heart ever since Zane & I discovered him back during the pandemic, when his early short Sirenhead reels were hitting YT, we were instantly hooked,  my boy & I are most die hard horror skunx fans on the planet. 

                                                              just push PLAY and listen to this earliest

of horror skunx hits, the absolute classic Run Away:

 Before reading any further, stop and think out loud to yourself so you can hear your own voice in your head saying it, what did you think of the song?  If you're not sure, listen to it again. Now you may continue reading my soliloquy to the one and only horror skunx.   (to be cont.)  Cont. 

^the album itself:  To make a finer point of it, you see, this is where it becomes necessary for me to point out, in this footnote, that what we're dealing with here, as an emergent post-media phenomenon, is just one of many YouTube rising stars, doing their own thing, and in the case of Mr. Winston Julian, from the Netherlands, self-made singer, songwriter, VFX artist and filmmaker, what I would humbly describe as a rising superstar whose significance to current young generations of followers comparatively speaking in contrast to the Boomers' and their spawnling gen-X of cohorts in arms, I think of Winston as a sort of ultramodern equivalent to Charlie Chaplin.  

   Cont.  I think the 2nd horror skunx song to strike a chord in me, was the responding tune My Savior, which concerns the mythical skeletal being Long Horse, in fact a hero who pits himself fearlessly against any one of the legion of antagonists popping up out of the shadows who would intrude into our animate world from their paper conceptualized cartoon plane of existence, such as Cartoon Cat and Cartoon Dog and Cartoon Mouse, and a lot of other ancillary villains cribbed from the creative commons platform occupied by SCP and an endless amount of literary precursors, enough to fill the coffers of any multiverse scenario schemed up by the Moorcocks & Kings of the world. 

to be cont. 

LAST Perform Depleted Host live in SLC June 7, 2024 at the International Artist Lounge

by roving reporter (for the Oscillating Oculus) Thornswrath 

click to watch

and listen to
LAST 

live in

SLC 

     Man, my friends Ian and Chase in Salt Lake's own electronic death duo's LAST are sending out permanent waves from the heart of their soul, and I'm feeling it.   I'm so damn lucky I went to this show.  I used to see them perform live all the time while they were in 2-Headed Whale, back around when the pandemic broke, when they were a four piece, with Grayden on the saw and Angela on electric violin.  

   

       There was absolutely nothing like a 2-Headed Whale show.  Like that time I saw them at Crucial Fest I think it was, opening for Wovenhand.  What a damn magical night that was. 

And the time they opened for THOU at Diabolical.  With barely enough space to hold 26 people, that makes for a legendary scene.  THOU covered Would by Alice in Chains, if I recall rightly.   And now LAST has gone on a few tours, and have gathered a nationwide rep as the hard core bad asses they are.  I can't stress enough how much love I have for these guys. They have played with absolutely everybody in the scene. From our very own Portal To The Goddman Blood Dimension, Thou again just last Friday (I missed it), Crippling Alcoholism in Boston, Izthmi out of Seattle, Guhts outta Brooklyn, Void Eater from Atlanta, Ghostlight, Drifter, Tenant, Stander, Exosphere, Glass Artery, Mold Farmer, Lechers, Debilitating Lower Back Pain, Jain Broom (which I filmed a post-Odyssey trip-sequence I'm saving to release on my YT channel for that special rainy day) and I'm pretty sure they played with Primitive Man. I guess my point is LAST aren't going places THEY BEEN PLACES.  LAST is all set to conquer the world.  These two guys bring it to the post core scene or whatever you wanna call it. LAST remain standing on four legs in plain defiance. You do not fuck with LAST. They are the nicest guys you're ever likely to meet in any dive bar or club across the nation.   

    Watch this video again if you have to, and keep an eye out on them. cuz LAST are killin' it, and they're only getting started.  If you're on bandcamp, you may have already discovered them there, their auspicious debut ALL TUNNEL, NO LIGHT dropped in January of 2021. Then, nearly three years later, in October of 2023, they released their sophomore effort SIFTING THROUGH ASH FOR THE BELONGINGS OF OUR LOVED ONES, which shifts their colossal sound into the next phase of their shattering odyssey.  I can't even begin to imagine what they have in store for us on their third monumental release. 

    It's really not worth me trying to even describe to you the power and emotional impact of LAST.  If you take a minute to google the history of their tours, well good luck pulling anything up as of yet because they are nestled firmly and comfortably deep in the underground where they ought to be. You will soon enough discover that we have unearthed a legend yet in the making of the post hard core death noise doom scene, right here in our fair city by the great salt lake of shedding toxins.  Ian and Chase are the coolest guys to come out of this cracked city in a god damn dog's age. Do yourselves a favor and buy both of their albums immediately, or an alternate future self of yours will be lamenting in shame and sorrow over your missed opportunity.   

    Both of these albums are so amazing that I owe it to myself to write reviews up for each of them.  By the time I get around to doing that, we'll likely get absolutely crushed by their third. It's coming like that darkened asteroid NASA doesn't even know about lurking just around the cosmological corner and coming at us like an extinction event the likes of us have never heard. Get prepared now and familiarize yourselves with their first two albums. You've been warned.