Spectre Folk - The Blackest Medicine Vol II

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4...according to our Phil on Thu 17 Mar, 2011.

I thought this was gonna be well noisy but I should have realised that as it's on Woodsist it wasn't gonna be noisy at all and it's more than likely gonna be ace cos Woodsist know their shit. So some of you may know that Pete Nolan who is the main dude being Spectre Folk is possibly more known for his work in Magik Markers? And the idea of Ghost Folk is so you can play it when you're dead. Makes perfect sense. I know as soon as I die I'm gonna be rushing to the stereo to whack this on. Actually I'm gonna be dead so I'm not gonna be rushing anywhere. Mind you I rarely rush anywhere these days... oh I'm rambling again. This EP (play at 45) features Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on drums, Peter Meehan (The Grey Lady) hits a guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) touches bass and together they do play music. It's very psyche-y sounding rock with fuzzy guitars making me think of Yo La Tengo, MV & EE and eve bits of Moon duo and Neu! with it's motorik psyche fuzzyness. It's great fun and way way poppier than I expected. You'll have some fun with this baby, just like I'm doing now.

Pete Nolan was Spectre Folk before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be Spectre Folk long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you re dead, and while you re alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Michigander Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) runs drums, Peter Meehan (The Grey Lady) glues guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) slithers bass, creating an alchemy the Spectre hasn t floated since the days of basement wig-wearing in the short-lived Norman Bates era. The band entered Echo Canyon West with the intention of recording a 7-inch of the up-tempo version of The Blackest Medicine, the title cut from the 2007 home-fi Woodsist debut. After several sessions, they emerged with a four-song studio collage monster that won t fit in your locker and smells like smoked banana peels and undies blowing down an alleyway. A vibraphone, piano, and a plate reverb unit the size of a Brooklyn apartment were all employed by the Spectre like Uri Gellar used spoons inappropriately, desperate and bent. They physically turned the two-inch reel of tape over so Meehan could put subliminal backwards masking under his Erkin-Koray-worthy guitar solo on Fourth Dimension Refs, and Nolan put the Temple Screamer to good use on tracks one and two, using samples of Shirley Temple Black s Good Ship Lollipop as vocoder harmonies on choruses. Oh yeah, it s full of burning psych-pop jammers, too! Earmarking Nolan s longstanding but unspoken obsession with personal hygiene, Keep Your Teeth Clean! is a krauty suite that betrays Shelley s and Mullan s recent stint as the rhythm section for Neu! Their teutonic influence has the effect of putting the dreamy psychfuzz exhibited on last year s Compass LP through a blender with a frog... that spills out into a wide open Milky Way head zone. You can t snuggle with this record, so strap yourself in and feel the Gs! Fearless as a lemming, Nolan has created a private universe here, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let s have a drift. Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers)

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