Shearwater Records is pleased to announce the fifteenth in a series of weekly – more or less – releases in their virtual seven inch “OCF” series.
Caregivers – OCF 15
Active since the mid-2000’s, Caregivers were a band from Martha’s Vineyard who were originally lumped in with the New Weird America. Certainly, they had both social connections and some points of aesthetic convergence – loose, jammy, improvised song structures, varied instrumentation and membership, ritualistic live performances, and an overall feel that put them on the darker side of the psychedelic experience. That said, there was always a bleaker and more electronic edge to their music that meant they were more likely to soundtrack Solaris or Silent Running than The Blair Witch Project.
A notorious tour in 2009, promoting the album Pensublie Bloc, saw them play a series of narcotics-fuelled descents into chaos in construction sites, parks, empty warehouses, silos and abandoned factories that culminated in a show in a half-built nuclear power station in Wichita. A two year hiatus followed.
In 2011 they returned to public life with the release of the excellent Simone Gold’s Poison Chalice. Several members had been shed, and the remaining core trio of Nick Johnstone, Daniel Drake and Ngu Yen Gi moved to a more industrial, sample driven sound, combining loping basslines with ethnoforgery and sheets of electronic noise. A recent show by the three at New York’s Pale Turd club apparently terrified a reviewer for Pitchfork into (appropriately enough, given the name of the venue), literally shitting his pants in public.
Here’s two examples of their new sound. Primitivist Velvets style bass underpins keyboards, sampled Japanese drumming and – on the first track – a vocal loop that sounds like PJ Harvey having her teeth extracted. On the second track a recording of Ngu Yen Gi’s aunt’s traditional singing floats serenely over his band-mate’s chaos. A new Caregivers album with live tracks and a jam with deconstructionist sax player Turner Blake Miles will be released on UK label Roadscape in a couple of months.
Available for free from the DivShare link below. Size: 9.53 Mb.
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