You never quite know what you’re going to get from the cult Portland, Oregon psychedelicists, Jackie-O Motherfucker. Are you going to be in for some deep brain thrombosis space rock? Are they going to prescribe you a dose of some heavily medicated camp fire drone? Will they be hitting you with some improvisational and angular free jazz? Will they be traversing the entire planet to bring you some previously unexplored global frequencies? Well, on Earth Sound System, JOMF’s 15th album since Alchemy… Shit To Gold in 1995, it’s a case of all of this and a lot, lot more.
New MP3: Jackie-O Motherfucker "Where We Go"
The band will celebrate the release of the record with a special Record Release Show at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR this Thursday, July 7th. Richard Bishop and a few special guests will also grace the stage.
‘In The Willows’ starts proceedings off with banks of hazy guitars that threaten to show the chillwave youngsters where it’s at with some sun dappled riffs which lie somewhere between MV & EE’s Bummer Road and Mercury Rev’s Yerself Is Steam. But then things get much weirder and introverted with ‘Raga Joining’, which comes on like Dub Narcotic playing Indian devotional music. ‘Dedication’ is an act of freak folk shamanism, with its repetitively ritual chant of progress: “This is dedicated to the person who is trying to find the next right thing to do.” ‘Raga Separating’ soothes like the brief lucid interval in the middle of a wall crawling acid trip, with analogue synthesizer drones, languid percussion and space creating noise. But it’s all leading up to ‘Where We Go’, the ragged glory of The Butthole Surfers trampling all over J Mascis.
With as many line-ups as The Fall, Jackie-O Motherfucker has always centred round the singular if fuzzy vision of Tom Greenwood an arty psych rocker from the high Dakota Plains. But perhaps he has found some certainty in his life as the most steady line up of JO MF is back featuring brothers Nick and Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry) on guitar and drums and Brian Mumford (Dragging an Ox Through Water) on guitars and home-made electronics. Brian also recorded and co-produced Earth Sound System, which also features the voice of Dana Dart-McLean, and a collaboration with visual artist Chris Johanson, who made paintings based on the music for the cover and inserts.
Going through their most stable period to date, and still with Fire Records, they are taking very local and rural elements of folk and psychedelia – the very stuff that’s been cast aside by other less inquisitive souls – and then transporting them into various new pastures, all of them designed to expand your mind.
As Tom Greenwood said recently: “Who knows if anyone has ever actually turned lead into gold, but at the core of all alchemical ideas is the concept of transformation: garbage in, lotus out. You’ll find that meditating on transformation can be a spiritual source, and as you spend time thinking about the possibilities, you will carry these concepts into other parts of your life. It’s the foundation of hope where you are toiling now, and this is the best way to pursue change.”
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