Fuzz Sagrado & co.: December 2021

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Library Music & the KPM 1000 series

Guess I have to thank my old buddy Wolf at World In Sound for once turning me on to stuff like this -- Don't let the boring covers distract you, this is awesome stuff from the time "when music still was music" ;) You'll find some of these sounds more at youtube too. I'll set it as a life goal to at least once produce an album that sounds that perfect.

Friday, December 17, 2021

SBB - Szukaj, Burz, Buduj

SBB in the 70s - now that's my kind of prog ;)

Here's an odd thing, I never liked King Crimson and wasn't a super big Pink Floyd-fan either although I like them much more than Crimson, but one band that really struck a chord in me was this odd Polish 70s Prog group that is still active today: the Silesian Blues Band a.k.a. Szukaj, Burz, Buduj (Search, Break-up and Build) or just commonly referred as SBB. They have traits of other big British groups of the era, yet something very different which I always referred to as some sort or Slavic melancholy. Well, or maybe it's just that they sing in their mother tongue which is Polish and some of my own ancestors are from Poland too. My grand-grandma's parents spoke no word of German is what I've been told.

So I discovered SBB sometime in the late 90s in my father's record collection. Their abstract covers may have attracted me but I listened to every LP in his collection anyways. Back then we really lived in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the East German woods of the Harz region. Our village comprised of a total thirteen houses and I was the odd kid with long hair and doing my odd things like handcrafting a bong from a beer can and sat there in my little room in the light of one lonely green bulb and listened to this old music from the 70s. And for some reason SBB had these weird sounds that always attracted me: I thought it was a guitar (!) but much later found out that it was a Moog synthesizer that they used excessively among other popular Prog Rock-keyboards of the era like a String Orchestra drenched in lush Phaser-sounds, a Fender Rhodes etc.

Their 1977 album "Ze Słowem Biegnę do Ciebie" would probably be among my top ten of all times, or at least top 20. I don't have lists like that but SBB are very close to my heart and for some odd reason I never really liked King Crimson at all who may be like SBB's own big influences along with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. While SBB is that type of band that has a kind of cult following of mostly old dudes from Poland or East Germany but never really made it much further than that despite even playing shows outside the Iron Curtain. I guess it's because of the (mostly) Polish lyrics but then these make a significant difference. Well for me most of their 70s albums are real highlights along with master Józef Skrzek's solo work and parts of the album "Geira" as a backing band of pop singer Halina Frąckowiak.

Monday, December 06, 2021

Early influences: Gas Giant

Gas Giant live 2005 by Scott Heller

I'm recently (re-) discovering the GAS GIANT-discography. They kindly provide us with all their studio releases on Spotify, quite a boss move if you ask me, every band should do that somehow ... and I know not nearly no one earns much at all from that, but at least these recordings don't get lost like so many, but so many from the "early days" of Stoner/Psychedelic-rock. So many 12inches and stuff that no one has ever heard of, yet a lot of cool material. For me somehow much more interesting than what you could find on any kind of virtual 'stoner meadow' these days ;) but maybe that's just some old dude's rambling because not many of the new groups really strike a nerve in me.

Not much hits me like Gas Giant for sure, who were one of these groups that really impressed me a lot while we shared a gig with them so many moons ago in a little town in the middle of nowhere East Germany (read here). And it's actually funny how after so many concerts with so many bands with SBE, many of the bands that I kind of worshipped in my adolescent years, it's still these early memories that shine the brightest. Gas Giant, House Of Aquarius, The Hidden Hand - these shows were so special in so many ways, or am I after all experiencing what everybody does at some point in his life: moaning the lost youth? Well anyways... Gas Giant, man what an amazing band they were!

Back in 2003 while watching their soundcheck I already felt like they were completely another league. Even though from Denmark, they could have easily been among those California heroes of the 90s; Nebula, Fu Manchu, Kyuss - Gas Giant totally belongs into that realm. And it made me a bit sad to see how after their brief comeback in the mid 2010s, it seemed people had almost forgotten or still never heard of them and you found them under the little names of the few festivals they played. But ofc these days it seems more important how many social media followers you have - at times it seems all about numbers - but then how can you not acknowledge these are the kind of forefathers of a whole scene?!