Kikagaku Moyo Live at WFMU (2019)

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WFMU recently announced the opening of their vaults and began sharing videos from their Monty Hall archives. So guess what we’ll be featuring more of lately!?

From the show’s Youtube page:

“Japanese psych band Kikagaku Moyo played at WFMU's Monty Hall in 2019, following the release of their album Masana Temples on the Guruguru Brain label in 2018. The powerhouse group announced their final tour in 2022 and are on an indefinite hiatus.

Recorded at WFMU's Monty Hall in Jersey City, NJ on June 27, 2019.”

The Deets and Setlist:

Recorded at WFMU's Monty Hall in Jersey City, NJ on June 27, 2019.

  1. Green Sugar

  2. Nazo Nazo

  3. Kogarashi

  4. Tree Smoke

  5. Fluffy Kosmich

  6. Entrance

  7. Dripping Sun

  8. Gatherings

  9. Streets of Calcutta (Ananda Shankar cover)

  • Visit the group's official website

  • Follow the group on Facebook

  • Follow the group on Twitter

  • Purchase the group's music at Bandcamp

  • Purchase the album at Amazon

  • Visit WFMU’s Youtube page

  • Browse other Holiday at the Sea Kikagaku Moyo posts

Staraya Derevnya :: Boulder Blues

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Staraya Derevnya is a psychedelic/kraut-folk collective based in London and Tel Aviv. Active since 1994, the group’s newest album Boulder Blues will be out August 5th on Ramble Records. Recorded between 2020 - 2022 in Israel and the UK, the album percolates and bubbles with creativity. A collective of varying size and members, this iteration consists of 11 people, and album credits include “cries and whispers,” silent cello (which apparently is a very real thing, though somehow it would still make sense even if it wasn’t), “objects,” and a marching band kazoo.

How does one make sense of such music? Maybe that’s not the point, but if we need landmarks to help find our way; then maybe the meditative groovy bass foundations of Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin and Natural Information Society or some of the murkier moments from Animal Collective or Paavoharju come to mind, but only as touchpoints. They are the friendly neighbors you meet on the path to Staraya Derev. Like the cover artwork, one is left with more questions than answers, and sometimes that’s the point.

My son calls it “spooky alien music but in a good way.” Krautrock grooves underpin an ever evolving sound collage. Instruments, voices, and noises sometimes float by barely notices and sometimes shock you back into the groove. Concrete Islands uses the phrase “murmurations from unknown tongues” to describe the bands music, and that seems about as apt as any description we’re likely to conjure.

The title track emerges from primordial squigglings over an ever-reliably-chugging bassline and builds upon a repeated phrase dervishly swirling and repeating and building and repeating and building and swirling. The piece doesn’t so much resolve as exhaust itself in experimental ecstasy. ‘Tangled Hands’s fleeting fog swirls through the atmosphere punctuated by skronks and ambient waves.

The album’s centerpiece, the nearly 21-minute ‘Bubbling Pelt’ was recorded live at TUSK Festival 2020. The piece bubbles and swirls over minimal but hypnotic bass rumblings. Percussion skitters back and forth until becoming one with the ether. As the bass returns, wind instruments and electronic squiggles reveal themselves from the fog, forming a nice relaxed groove which gives home to all sorts of vocalizations.

Though heavy on krautrock repetition, this is not background music. Though it requires your attention, it grooves in unexpected ways.

Boulder Blues is out August 05th on Ramble Records and is highly recommended.

Watch ‘Bubbling Pelt’ performed live at TUSK Festival 2020 here: