Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
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Quest For Fire - Set Out Alone
I got into Quest For Fire’s 2010 album while I was gone. It felt like a natural progression from their first album, which I liked a lot, and I love the cover art. A lot of modern bands seem to rock this type of bottom-heavy distortion, and I really need to dig around the internet and figure out what their set-up is. Hopefully because they’re a Canadian band, their equipment will be easy to track down.
6 Plays
Rotor - Karacho Heizer
I took a few newish albums with me to Italy and they were pretty hit and miss. My favourite has to be 4 by Rotor, a German post-rock band that’s been putting out records since 2001. Their fourth album is filled with tons of great riffs and enviable guitar tones. I need to go and track down some more stuff by them for sure.
0 Plays
Ramases - Life Child
As usual I didn’t post these songs in the right order. I really thought I’d done something from Ramases’ Space Hymns before, but as I haven’t, here’s the opening track, Life Child. It has about 50 seconds of ambient flute stuff, but after that, it’s one of the best psychedelic guitar pieces ever recorded, and it has one of my favourite guitar solos.
Though Ramases died in 1978, a significant fan network has built up around his two albums. If you want to read about him and his career, there’s an extremely detailed fan site here run by Brian Currin.
13 Plays | Download
Ramases - Long Long Time
I’d never thought to look for another Ramases record after listening to the debut, Space Hymns, because it seemed so unlikely to me that a record company would twice back a guy who claimed to be the reincarnation of a Pharaoh, destined to spread through the world the truths he’d learned about the universe during his multi-millennia trip through the after-life.
But Vertigo was such a company, and apparently Ramases (Barrington Frost) had a fair bit of charisma since he scored the services of Royal Philharmonic Orchestra members for this record. I love Ramases’ first album for its unabashed strangeness and eclectic psychedelic moments, but Glass Top Coffin might actually be a lot better. Its songs feel more cohesive, all focussed on a progressive rock space opera that unfolds at just the right pace.
8 Plays
Lindisfarne - Meet Me On The Corner
Lindisfarne’s second album,Fog On The Tyne, was just as magical as the first, full of lots of short folk songs. I love the amount of harmonica that’s played on this album, and all of the vocalists have wonderful British voices. Some people think that most of the songs are short because their record company was pressing them to produce records too quickly, but I think some of it has to do with the band pursuing more of a traditional blues and country style without a lot of psychedelic touches like lengthy soloing.
4 Plays | Download
Smith - You Don't Love Me (Yes I Know)
Smith, the late-60s act featuring Gayle McCormick’s fantastic vocals, is another band whose second album I’ve only recently come across. Their debut album, A Group Called Smith, is one of my favourite psychedelic records, and this one, Minus-Plus, has already claimed a lot of my listening time. They still had this weird tendency to under-use McCormick. The guys aren’t bad singers exactly, but it just seems crazy not to sub her in on a verse occasionally.
6 Plays
Stained Glass - Piggy Back Ride and the Camel
Stained Glass started out as a Beatles cover band, and this song, Piggy Back Ride and the Camel, really drives that home with its kazoo tomfoolery.
18 Plays | Download
Stained Glass - Light Down Below
I’d been told that Stained Glass had released 2 albums, but I’d only ever come across Aurora, the follow-up record. Just before I went to Italy, I found a copy of their debut, Crazy Horse Road, and it’s most of what I listened to while away. It’s so good that I’m going to post a pair of songs off of it. This one’s called Light Down Below.
It turns out that the band put out a number of great singles, bundled onto a CD reissue of this album because none of them wound up on Stained Glass’ LPs.
16 Plays
Wigwam - Frederick & Bill
Wigwam’s second album is a progressive rock masterpiece. Half of the Finnish band’s material would feel at home in a Clapton set, slow jamming blues songs with tasteful guitar and organ flourishes, while the others, like this song Frederick & Bill, borrow heavily from Canterbury prog influences and feature great jazzy guitar riffs. I found this long interview of the band’s keyboard player which is worth checking out if you’re interested in the history of Finnish rock.
41 Plays | Download
Friendly Strangers - Bellflower
My room-mate and I have been devouring this album over the last few days. Friendly Strangers are basically what I think most indie bands ought to sound like. They’ve got a smattering of banjo, viola, and accordion on this record, set to a number of different styles. They’ve got a good sense of humour, as you’ll see in the lyrics and in the descriptions of the band that they’ve put onto their website:
Innocent bystanders have described Friendly Strangers’ music as “really pretty except for that one song” and “like that other band but not really at all.”
Pretentious folks have described Friendly Strangers songs as “modern Americana sewn to the corpse of a prominent early 20th century poet” or “a collection of spiteful hymns sprinkled with rosemary and carefully burned about the edges.”
52 Plays
