A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

**Janszoon** · 05-24-2013, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Powerstars

Very interesting concept, hombre!

Gracias, señor!

The Batlord · 05-25-2013, 11:33 AM

Hey, I read it. I even got my hopes up that you had actually updated twice in less than two months. Of course this wasn't so.

**Janszoon** · 05-25-2013, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Hey, I read it. I even got my hopes up that you had actually updated twice in less than two months. Of course this wasn't so.

Hey, you never know, I might update sooner than you expect. These things usually go in streaks for me.

**Janszoon** · 12-21-2013, 09:20 PM

12:00 am
Rocket from the Crypt—The State of the Art is on Fire (1995)

Several blocks south of the last of the city's glass towers, past the Salvation Army and the glowing neon cross of the Gloomy Bible Institute, past the crowd of people camped under the highway onramp with all of their worldly possessions in shopping carts, there is a smallish basement music venue with a peeling sign illuminated by a single red light. It's a place the invisible man has visited many times before, though of course no one there would know him as a regular. Tonight, he slips past the titanic bouncers and down the stairs to find the place packed from wall to wall with a sweaty, rowdy crowd surging with excitement. A band is on the stage—a six-piece blast of guitars and horns known as Rocket from the Crypt—and they're clearly relishing the way they're balancing this crowd on the knife edge between party and riot.

Because of his condition, the invisible man is understandably leery of crowds. So at the earliest opportunity he hops over the bar and starts pouring himself shots as he ducks and dodges the bartenders.

The reality with Rocket from the Crypt is that I could have picked pretty much any of their albums to review here—they're virtually all that consistent and that good—but I decided to go with this little seven song EP (nine if you have the CD) because I feel that it's the strongest, most concise RFTC experience there is. It roars out of the gate with "Light Me"—the first of several compact, high-energy tracks with something of a fire motif. Surf drums pound, horns and guitars blast, and a little vintage organ even weaves it's way in and out for a moment before the churning wall of sound that is "A+ in Arson Class" blasts its way through the wall. "Rid or Ride" follows quickly, allowing the slightest chance to catch your breath amid it's rockabilly vocals while still beating your ass with it's minute and a half of punk rock guitar herky-jerk. Then before you know it, you're being swallowed by the brassy assault of what is probably the album's defining moment, "Human Torch". Epic by this EP's standards, this three minute twelve second track takes you through a gut-wrenching lesson in build and release sonic dynamics before dumping you into the ever-so-slightly slower, bass-heavy spin cycle of "Ratsize". If you're listening on vinyl, the album closes out here with "Human Spine", a five-plus minute encore-evoking opus that most clearly harkens back to the band's 1960s garage rock influences. If you're listening to the CD release here, you're also treated to two more tracks—"Trouble" and "Masculine Intuition"—both covers of songs originally performed by 60s garage rockers The Music Machine. Both are quite good, and not surprisingly, even more 60s-sounding than the rest of the EP.

When the band decide to take a break, the invisible man sneaks his way out from behind the bar and back up the stairs to the the street above. He's had a lot to drink and knows from past experience that too much booze sometimes interacts very strangely with his unique physical condition. He makes his way down the sidewalk, gulping the cool night air, hoping to stave off side effects.

**Janszoon** · 02-16-2014, 12:25 AM

1:00 am
Goran Bregović—Alkohol: Sljivovica & Champagne (2009)

The invisible man stumbles a bit as he walks, the alcohol making him far less aware of his invisible feet than he usually is. After passing under a railroad bridge and a viaduct he notices that the neighborhood has changed subtly. No longer do trash and people pushing shopping carts dominate the streets, instead they have been replaced by a decidedly residential vibe. Brownstones line the streets here, the yellow light of domestic life glowing in their windows. The sweet smell of flowering trees hangs thick in the night air.

Up ahead he hears the sound of brass instruments being played at a frantic pace. On closer inspection he discovers a vacant lot strung with lights and converted into a garden which is filled with tables and chairs and a group of people dancing to beautiful Balkan music. At first he sits at a table and simply watches them, but before long he is overcome by a powerful urge to dance and he rushes out into the middle of the crowd, jumping and spinning and confusing the hell out of everyone he bumps into.

This is the perfect party album. Listening to it you can imagine drunk people grabbing the microphone from each other or grabbing a partner and twirling sloppily around the dancefloor. I'm sure the atmosphere of drunken revelry it evokes is no accident, it is called Alkohol after all. The tempos—with the exception of the slower track "Ruzica" in the middle of the album—are fairly upbeat across the board, bass horns oompah-ing enthusiastically left and right. The higher register horns laugh and weep with gusto in a way that is reminiscent of both klezmer and mariachi music. The vocals change a great deal from track to track as if, as previously mentioned, different people keep grabbing the microphone. The end result is an album that is thoroughly Balkan and utterly global, with noticeable links to everything from mariachi to bhangra to ska to Carnival and Mardi Gras music, all of it partying hard and reeking of booze.

Once he is thoroughly exhausted and sweaty as hell he staggers out of the crowd and swipes a bottle of champaign on his way out of the garden. One utterly blitzed guest, nearly passed out at a table, is surprised to see the bottle go floating away down the street, occasionally tilting upside down to drain its contents into an invisible throat.

Engine · 02-17-2014, 11:16 PM

This is still easily the best journal here. I love how the album reviews are neatly slipped into the prose, which is inspired. And the music choices are invariably good.

The invisible man sounds like a fun guy to have a few dozen drinks with.

**Janszoon** · 02-18-2014, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Engine

This is still easily the best journal here. I love how the album reviews are neatly slipped into the prose, which is inspired. And the music choices are invariably good.

The invisible man sounds like a fun guy to have a few dozen drinks with.

Thanks man!

**Janszoon** · 09-20-2014, 11:37 PM

2:00 am
Capitol K—Andean Dub (2008)

An empty wine bottle smashes in the street. Invisible feet stagger in a zig-zag pattern down the sidewalk. Brick buildings spin around him. A hard gust of wind lifts a tattered old plastic bag into the air and slams it into him. He looks down in disgust and is somewhat fascinated by the way the bag appears to hover in mid air as it flutters in a U-shape against his invisible chest.

Out of the corner of his bleary eye he spies movement: a square foot disappearing into the alley next to an industrial building of some kind. He stumbles off in pursuit, making his way awkwardly past piles of rusting scrap metal, down the alley and around to the back of the building. For a second he thinks he hears music but a moment later he isn't so sure. There is a door back here, a rusty old thing slightly ajar and squeaking on its hinges. He pulls it open and charges in, running down a hallway and pushing his way through another door. It's pitch black on the other side but he can sense that it's a vast space with a high ceiling. Around him, as far as he can tell, are rows upon rows of machinery. High above, a speaker erupts with the noise of an electronic cowbell counting off a beat with metronome-like precision. Then the music kicks in and row upon row of robots—hundreds of them—spring to life around him, their eyes ablaze like pairs of small headlights in the dark. They begin to dance with extreme precision. Like some incredibly complex country line dance, they form and reform in elaborate patterns, the stomping of their steel feet shaking the floor.

This is the nature of Maltese/British electronic music maker Capitol K's album Andean Dub. He's taken the Andean strain of cumbia—a style of music dating back to the slavery era of Colombia and Panama—and turned it into IDM. The beats retain the classic infectiousness of straight cumbia that just makes you want to hop up and dance, albeit robotically, while also delivering a level of quirkiness heretofore unknown in the word of cumbia. There's a good amount of variety here as well. The opening track, "Celestial", for example, starts with ambient analog-sounding keyboard and forest noises before segueing into the next song, the eminently danceable "Yo Tarzán, tú Jane". The album runs through a few more fantastic variations of typical cumbia—"Cumbiatronic", "Zokkor u Popcorn" and "Huayno"— before smacking you upside the head with the more aggressive, somewhat industrial "White Steal". "Cumbia Esqueletos" brings the quirk back for a few minutes, then the guitar and pan flutes of "7th Charango" and "Andean Dub" kick in to remind you this isn't just cumbia, it's Andean cumbia. At last, the album signs off with the brief "Diamond Skys" which strips away all semblance of electronica and simply ends up with Andean pan flute and guitar music that sounds like it's being played in a train station.

The invisible man tries his best to remain undetected throughout all of this but he inadvertently bumps a robot and they all begin to get wise. In a short span of time, all of their eyes turn red as they snap into infrared mode. Once that happens, there's no hiding for him. Dozens of metal heads jerk abruptly in his direction and metal arms seize him, passing him overhead from one robot to the next before tossing him out the door and locking it behind him.

**Janszoon** · 08-05-2015, 10:09 PM

3:00 am
Jimmy Radway & The Fe Me Time All Stars—Dub I (1975)
(Errol Thompson at the controls)

Being hit now with the full brunt of all the alcohol he consumed an hour ago, the invisible man is feeling the strange effects that he experiences on the rare occasions when he drinks to excess: he is losing the sense of separation between himself and the rest of the world.

He's standing on the sidewalk in a residential part of the city when a trio of sharply dressed club refugees brush by him, one seemingly passing through his right arm. With nothing else around to guide him, he follows them down a dark street, along a fence between two homes, and finally to a backyard and a backdoor with a red light glowing above it. When the club kids go in, he does too. He observes with detached amusement that the last one slams the door on him but it passes right through. Inside the house it's warm and clouds of smoke fill the dimly lit rooms, drifting through him where ever he stands. Balloons are inhaled here and there around him, lines are snorted, pills are swallowed. He settles down onto the floor next to a couch, wary of being sat on—or rather, given the way he's feeling now, sat in. The faces around him are obscured in shadow and wreathed in smoke but they seem to be shifting in shape—sometimes seeming long or wide or covered in spines like a pufferfish, sometimes smudged, sometimes whirling above people's shoulders like slow-motion cyclones. The conversations he hears are mumbled and impenetrable.

This is the world Dub I inhabits—a dim, smokey place of heat and shadows. It was apparently Jimmy Radway's final album before he got fed up with the music industry and retired to the Jamaican countryside. That being the case, it's quite a swansong. The production here is probably the best I've ever heard on an old dub album—sparse and reverb-drenched in all the right ways. The bass is some of the deepest, heaviest, warmest tones you will ever hear, perpetually sounding like it's coming at you through a shag carpet covered wall. The drums reverberate like they were recorded in the bowels of a subway tunnel. The horns are overdriven and fuzzy, coming on like sparkles of light in a shadow and fading just as quickly. Organ, when it's present, is warm and right up front. Guitar drifts in and out, barely noticed. Vocals only appear on one track, but they're every bit as spacey and transient as the guitar.

Strangely enough for such an incredible album, this release languished in obscurity for decades before it was reissued in 2008. Not only did the reissue do the world a favor by putting this album out there again but it also added five bonus tracks, and unlike most such situations, these bonus tracks are all excellent and fit perfectly in with the rest of the album. Honestly, there's not a bad song to be found here, but there are assuredly some standout tracks. "Back to Africa" and "Mother Liza" are both the epitome of that heavy, heavy bass mentioned earlier. "This Child of Mine Version" and "Black I Am" tear at your heart with their beautiful, bittersweet chord progressions. "The Great Tommy McCook" turns guitar triplets into part of the rhythm section and even tosses in some surprising piano for good measure. "Wicked Have to Feel It" closes the album out with some more elephantine bass and the heaviest, most prominent organ on the album. Some samples are below, but If you check this out,do yourself a favor and listen to this on a decent sound system or headphones because you are just not going to get the full badassery of the low-end from computer speakers.

Trollheart · 08-07-2015, 06:53 PM

And so we have this week's contender for the "Back from the dead!" slot on the update thread! Welcome back Jansz!

12-21-2013, 09:20 PM	#34 (permalink)
Janszoon Mate, Spawn & Die Join Date: May 2007 Location: The Rapping Community Posts: 24,593	12:00 am *Rocket from the Crypt—The State of the Art is on Fire* (1995) Several blocks south of the last of the city's glass towers, past the Salvation Army and the glowing neon cross of the Gloomy Bible Institute, past the crowd of people camped under the highway onramp with all of their worldly possessions in shopping carts, there is a smallish basement music venue with a peeling sign illuminated by a single red light. It's a place the invisible man has visited many times before, though of course no one there would know him as a regular. Tonight, he slips past the titanic bouncers and down the stairs to find the place packed from wall to wall with a sweaty, rowdy crowd surging with excitement. A band is on the stage—a six-piece blast of guitars and horns known as Rocket from the Crypt—and they're clearly relishing the way they're balancing this crowd on the knife edge between party and riot. Because of his condition, the invisible man is understandably leery of crowds. So at the earliest opportunity he hops over the bar and starts pouring himself shots as he ducks and dodges the bartenders. The reality with Rocket from the Crypt is that I could have picked pretty much any of their albums to review here—they're virtually all that consistent and that good—but I decided to go with this little seven song EP (nine if you have the CD) because I feel that it's the strongest, most concise RFTC experience there is. It roars out of the gate with "Light Me"—the first of several compact, high-energy tracks with something of a fire motif. Surf drums pound, horns and guitars blast, and a little vintage organ even weaves it's way in and out for a moment before the churning wall of sound that is "A+ in Arson Class" blasts its way through the wall. "Rid or Ride" follows quickly, allowing the slightest chance to catch your breath amid it's rockabilly vocals while still beating your ass with it's minute and a half of punk rock guitar herky-jerk. Then before you know it, you're being swallowed by the brassy assault of what is probably the album's defining moment, "Human Torch". Epic by this EP's standards, this three minute twelve second track takes you through a gut-wrenching lesson in build and release sonic dynamics before dumping you into the ever-so-slightly slower, bass-heavy spin cycle of "Ratsize". If you're listening on vinyl, the album closes out here with "Human Spine", a five-plus minute encore-evoking opus that most clearly harkens back to the band's 1960s garage rock influences. If you're listening to the CD release here, you're also treated to two more tracks—"Trouble" and "Masculine Intuition"—both covers of songs originally performed by 60s garage rockers The Music Machine. Both are quite good, and not surprisingly, even more 60s-sounding than the rest of the EP. When the band decide to take a break, the invisible man sneaks his way out from behind the bar and back up the stairs to the the street above. He's had a lot to drink and knows from past experience that too much booze sometimes interacts very strangely with his unique physical condition. He makes his way down the sidewalk, gulping the cool night air, hoping to stave off side effects. __________________ A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man Time & Place 25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die** last.fm

02-16-2014, 12:25 AM	#35 (permalink)
Janszoon Mate, Spawn & Die Join Date: May 2007 Location: The Rapping Community Posts: 24,593	1:00 am *Goran Bregović—Alkohol: Sljivovica & Champagne* (2009)** The invisible man stumbles a bit as he walks, the alcohol making him far less aware of his invisible feet than he usually is. After passing under a railroad bridge and a viaduct he notices that the neighborhood has changed subtly. No longer do trash and people pushing shopping carts dominate the streets, instead they have been replaced by a decidedly residential vibe. Brownstones line the streets here, the yellow light of domestic life glowing in their windows. The sweet smell of flowering trees hangs thick in the night air. Up ahead he hears the sound of brass instruments being played at a frantic pace. On closer inspection he discovers a vacant lot strung with lights and converted into a garden which is filled with tables and chairs and a group of people dancing to beautiful Balkan music. At first he sits at a table and simply watches them, but before long he is overcome by a powerful urge to dance and he rushes out into the middle of the crowd, jumping and spinning and confusing the hell out of everyone he bumps into. This is the perfect party album. Listening to it you can imagine drunk people grabbing the microphone from each other or grabbing a partner and twirling sloppily around the dancefloor. I'm sure the atmosphere of drunken revelry it evokes is no accident, it is called Alkohol after all. The tempos—with the exception of the slower track "Ruzica" in the middle of the album—are fairly upbeat across the board, bass horns oompah-ing enthusiastically left and right. The higher register horns laugh and weep with gusto in a way that is reminiscent of both klezmer and mariachi music. The vocals change a great deal from track to track as if, as previously mentioned, different people keep grabbing the microphone. The end result is an album that is thoroughly Balkan and utterly global, with noticeable links to everything from mariachi to bhangra to ska to Carnival and Mardi Gras music, all of it partying hard and reeking of booze. Once he is thoroughly exhausted and sweaty as hell he staggers out of the crowd and swipes a bottle of champaign on his way out of the garden. One utterly blitzed guest, nearly passed out at a table, is surprised to see the bottle go floating away down the street, occasionally tilting upside down to drain its contents into an invisible throat. __________________ A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man Time & Place 25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die last.fm

02-17-2014, 11:16 PM	#36 (permalink)
Engine air quote Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: pollen & mold Posts: 3,108	This is still easily the best journal here. I love how the album reviews are neatly slipped into the prose, which is inspired. And the music choices are invariably good. The invisible man sounds like a fun guy to have a few dozen drinks with. __________________ Like an arrow, I was only passing through.

09-20-2014, 11:37 PM	#38 (permalink)
Janszoon Mate, Spawn & Die Join Date: May 2007 Location: The Rapping Community Posts: 24,593	2:00 am *Capitol K—Andean Dub* (2008)** An empty wine bottle smashes in the street. Invisible feet stagger in a zig-zag pattern down the sidewalk. Brick buildings spin around him. A hard gust of wind lifts a tattered old plastic bag into the air and slams it into him. He looks down in disgust and is somewhat fascinated by the way the bag appears to hover in mid air as it flutters in a U-shape against his invisible chest. Out of the corner of his bleary eye he spies movement: a square foot disappearing into the alley next to an industrial building of some kind. He stumbles off in pursuit, making his way awkwardly past piles of rusting scrap metal, down the alley and around to the back of the building. For a second he thinks he hears music but a moment later he isn't so sure. There is a door back here, a rusty old thing slightly ajar and squeaking on its hinges. He pulls it open and charges in, running down a hallway and pushing his way through another door. It's pitch black on the other side but he can sense that it's a vast space with a high ceiling. Around him, as far as he can tell, are rows upon rows of machinery. High above, a speaker erupts with the noise of an electronic cowbell counting off a beat with metronome-like precision. Then the music kicks in and row upon row of robots—hundreds of them—spring to life around him, their eyes ablaze like pairs of small headlights in the dark. They begin to dance with extreme precision. Like some incredibly complex country line dance, they form and reform in elaborate patterns, the stomping of their steel feet shaking the floor. This is the nature of Maltese/British electronic music maker Capitol K's album Andean Dub. He's taken the Andean strain of cumbia—a style of music dating back to the slavery era of Colombia and Panama—and turned it into IDM. The beats retain the classic infectiousness of straight cumbia that just makes you want to hop up and dance, albeit robotically, while also delivering a level of quirkiness heretofore unknown in the word of cumbia. There's a good amount of variety here as well. The opening track, "Celestial", for example, starts with ambient analog-sounding keyboard and forest noises before segueing into the next song, the eminently danceable "Yo Tarzán, tú Jane". The album runs through a few more fantastic variations of typical cumbia—"Cumbiatronic", "Zokkor u Popcorn" and "Huayno"— before smacking you upside the head with the more aggressive, somewhat industrial "White Steal". "Cumbia Esqueletos" brings the quirk back for a few minutes, then the guitar and pan flutes of "7th Charango" and "Andean Dub" kick in to remind you this isn't just cumbia, it's Andean cumbia. At last, the album signs off with the brief "Diamond Skys" which strips away all semblance of electronica and simply ends up with Andean pan flute and guitar music that sounds like it's being played in a train station. The invisible man tries his best to remain undetected throughout all of this but he inadvertently bumps a robot and they all begin to get wise. In a short span of time, all of their eyes turn red as they snap into infrared mode. Once that happens, there's no hiding for him. Dozens of metal heads jerk abruptly in his direction and metal arms seize him, passing him overhead from one robot to the next before tossing him out the door and locking it behind him. __________________ A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man Time & Place 25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die last.fm

08-05-2015, 10:09 PM	#39 (permalink)
Janszoon Mate, Spawn & Die Join Date: May 2007 Location: The Rapping Community Posts: 24,593	3:00 am *Jimmy Radway & The Fe Me Time All Stars—Dub I* (1975) (Errol Thompson at the controls)** Being hit now with the full brunt of all the alcohol he consumed an hour ago, the invisible man is feeling the strange effects that he experiences on the rare occasions when he drinks to excess: he is losing the sense of separation between himself and the rest of the world. He's standing on the sidewalk in a residential part of the city when a trio of sharply dressed club refugees brush by him, one seemingly passing through his right arm. With nothing else around to guide him, he follows them down a dark street, along a fence between two homes, and finally to a backyard and a backdoor with a red light glowing above it. When the club kids go in, he does too. He observes with detached amusement that the last one slams the door on him but it passes right through. Inside the house it's warm and clouds of smoke fill the dimly lit rooms, drifting through him where ever he stands. Balloons are inhaled here and there around him, lines are snorted, pills are swallowed. He settles down onto the floor next to a couch, wary of being sat on—or rather, given the way he's feeling now, sat in. The faces around him are obscured in shadow and wreathed in smoke but they seem to be shifting in shape—sometimes seeming long or wide or covered in spines like a pufferfish, sometimes smudged, sometimes whirling above people's shoulders like slow-motion cyclones. The conversations he hears are mumbled and impenetrable. This is the world Dub I inhabits—a dim, smokey place of heat and shadows. It was apparently Jimmy Radway's final album before he got fed up with the music industry and retired to the Jamaican countryside. That being the case, it's quite a swansong. The production here is probably the best I've ever heard on an old dub album—sparse and reverb-drenched in all the right ways. The bass is some of the deepest, heaviest, warmest tones you will ever hear, perpetually sounding like it's coming at you through a shag carpet covered wall. The drums reverberate like they were recorded in the bowels of a subway tunnel. The horns are overdriven and fuzzy, coming on like sparkles of light in a shadow and fading just as quickly. Organ, when it's present, is warm and right up front. Guitar drifts in and out, barely noticed. Vocals only appear on one track, but they're every bit as spacey and transient as the guitar. Strangely enough for such an incredible album, this release languished in obscurity for decades before it was reissued in 2008. Not only did the reissue do the world a favor by putting this album out there again but it also added five bonus tracks, and unlike most such situations, these bonus tracks are all excellent and fit perfectly in with the rest of the album. Honestly, there's not a bad song to be found here, but there are assuredly some standout tracks. "Back to Africa" and "Mother Liza" are both the epitome of that heavy, heavy bass mentioned earlier. "This Child of Mine Version" and "Black I Am" tear at your heart with their beautiful, bittersweet chord progressions. "The Great Tommy McCook" turns guitar triplets into part of the rhythm section and even tosses in some surprising piano for good measure. "Wicked Have to Feel It" closes the album out with some more elephantine bass and the heaviest, most prominent organ on the album. Some samples are below, but If you check this out,do yourself a favor and listen to this on a decent sound system or headphones because you are just not going to get the full badassery of the low-end from computer speakers. __________________ A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man Time & Place 25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die last.fm Last edited by Janszoon; 08-05-2015 at 11:39 PM.

08-07-2015, 06:53 PM	#40 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	And so we have this week's contender for the "Back from the dead!" slot on the update thread! Welcome back Jansz! __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018