Search - Angus Maclise :: Brain Damage in Oklahoma

Angus Maclise
Brain Damage in Oklahoma
Genres: Jazz, Special Interest, Pop, Rock

Track Listings (8) - Disc #1
1. Another Druid's Nest
2. Haight Riot Mime
3. Epiphany
4. Loft Collage
5. Drum Solo
6. Dreamweapon Benefit For The Oklahoma City Police Dept. Pt.1
7. Dreamweapon Benefit...Pt.2
8. Cembalum

CD Details

All Artists: Angus Maclise
Title: Brain Damage in Oklahoma
Members Wishing: 4
Total Copies: 0
Label: Siltbreeze Records
Original Release Date: 8/29/2000
Re-Release Date: 9/5/2000
Genres: Jazz, Special Interest, Pop, Rock
Styles: Avant Garde & Free Jazz, Experimental Music
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 655030118128

Synopsis

Amazon.com

The second archival release by founding Velvet Underground percussionist Angus MacLise, who died in 1979, is even more powerful than 1999's excellent Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. Where the former record had its share of psychedelic whimsy, Brain Damage in Oklahoma City exudes an implacable determination to deliver both the performers and their audience into an ecstatic state. MacLise's three solo performances on hand drums and cembalum (a variety of hammered dulcimer), with their driving rhythms and needle-in-the-red recording quality, are bracingly mind-clearing. "Epiphany," a duet with his organ-playing wife Hetty, radiates ritual splendor as it builds toward a swelling climax. But most affecting are the two works titled "Dreamweapon Benefit for the Oklahoma City Police," which took place to defray costs incurred when the MacLises were busted by Oklahoma City's finest. On "Dreamweapon," Angus and Tony Conrad, playing a homemade "limp string" that sounds like an electrified sitar, engage in exhilarating duels over a backdrop of droning voices, flutes, and tanpura. They sustain a ferociously intense level of interplay over 43 gloriously transcendental minutes. --Bill Meyer

CD Reviews

Absolutely essential document of (????????)

C. Moon | Valley Village, CA | 09/06/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"While Table of the Elements was getting hassled over their overpriced and low quality 'Day of Niagra' bootleg, Siltbreeze silently slipped this amazing CD out its doors which better captures the idea of 'dream music' or whatever you want to call it than the 'all Conrad and Cale for 30 minutes' that's served up on Day of Niagra. What we have here are some quite varied and historic recordings including the 'dreamweapon' piece which in its entirety is over 40 minutes long--yet there are many other standouts. What really strikes me with this recording though and why I contrast it so heavily to the ToE bootleg is because, via the Tony Conrad box, we already have 5 discs (not to mention Slapping Pythagoras) of stringed drone. What's really needed is some variation to that theme--and that's just what's served up here. MacLise's fantasic percusion gives the same old drone a shot in the arm, giving a disc of ultra-psychedelic cuts, often with organ and/or flute. The overall feel after giving this discs a few spin is that this -is- the archetypal psychedelic sound. One particular cut with MacLise's wife on organ sounds as though its the template for the ensuing Krautrock flood. Other pieces are just so amazingly freaky that it makes this non-drug user feel as though it's time to get some substances into his life (OK, I'm only joking, but you get the idea.) To wrap this off then: If you are at all a fan of psychedelic music--and that's a pretty big chunk of musics when you come to think about it--then you need this recording. This is about as close as you will come to a real and compelling document of where it all began!"