fifteen

114-121


Bastro - Diablo Guapo (Homestead) 1989


Bastro - Sing the Troubled Beast (Homestead) 1990

You could more or less look at Bastro as an "in between" group. A couple of years earlier in Louisville, KY was a bunch of scrappy teens who played blistering post-hardcore under the name Squirrel Bait. One of those kids, David Grubbs, was a bit older and when he moved to go to school in Chicago this was the new group he brought with him (including Clark Johnson, another Squirrel Bait alum). The last piece of the Bastro puzzle was the addition of drummer John McIntire who was already studying and living in Chicago. Diablo Guapo was a slightly more sophisticated version of Squirrel Bait's speed/style mix... while with Sing the Troubled Beast a new experimentalism, both in composition and instrumentation, opened up. The aggression and tension that defined the earlier band was still present, but Grubbs began working with forms of minimalism and repetition to create that tension. Meanwhile a few of the other ex-Squirrel Bait folks were working in Slint; Grubbs put Bastro to sleep and began Gastr Del Sol, a collaboration with Jim O'Rourke that also featured John McIntire... who in turn was working towards the beginnings of Tortoise. More on all of the above in coming months.
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Bauhaus - Mask (Beggar’s Banquet) 1981


Bauhaus - Sky’s Gone Out (Beggar’s Banquet) 1982


Bauhaus - Burning from the Inside (Beggar’s Banquet) 1983

Naming your group after a German art movement most famous for their furniture design might not be the cleverest thing to do... but it was the 80s. If you know these shadowy Englanders for anything at all it's probably for the Hallowe'en favourite, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," which ironically never appeared on any of their albums... only as a single. Because of that song and their black clothed visual presentation they often get lumped in the goth category of music genrification. In reality they are probably closer to glam, if anything... proving this with covers of Ziggy era David Bowie and post-hippie T.Rex. Instrumentally the group let the the bass and drums (David J and Kevin Haskins) propel songs with inverted funk/dub signatures while guitarist Daniel Ash's fragmented textures gave things a tense, disjointed feel... occasionally alleviated by prettier twelve string acoustics and other such stuff. Vocalist Peter Murphy cemented the whole goth label with his vampire-chic high cheekbone emaciation and Transylvanian tenor. There was a definite temptation to mock these guys... but if you got past that, the music they made was quite compelling. It was as off-kilter and more consistent than Bowie's best mid-70s output, and it offered a nice middle range for those who wanted a challenge in their listening... but weren't ready for the wigglier stuff like Brian Eno's solo albums (Eno was another Bauhaus cover subject). On a personal note... Burning on the Inside was among the first ten compact discs I bought after going digital.
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Bay - Alison Rae (A Noise Annoys) 1995

This is one of those weird random albums. I ordered it based on a three or four sentence description in release sheets from Cargo Records in Montreal not long after starting work at Backstreet. I was just getting into Elliott Smith's self-titled solo album and other such sad and quiet acoustic stuff... and Bay seemed to fit the bill. As it turned out... and this was something I didn't twig to until later... it was also my introduction to Aidan Moffat, later of Arab Strap (see earlier)... but since he was not a singer but a drummer in this outfit my prolonged ignorance of the fact is a little more understandable.
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Beachwood Sparks - Make the Cowboy Robots Cry (Sub Pop) 2002

I've always meant to go back and get one of these guys' full lengths... maybe it's not too late? Celebrated and criticized for their homage/appropriation of the country-folk-rock style popularized by Byrds, Flying Burrito Bros, Buffalo Springfield... on this e.p. they showed signs of branching out into a more modernistic world with help from Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL and The Postal Service (before that group's first release). It unfortunately turned out to be their last release. Pleasant and catchy.
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Beastie Boys - Check Your Head (Capitol) 1992

OK. I may have mentioned this earlier... but I am in no way funky. We non-funky people cope with our unfunkiness by poking fun at casually funky people. People like, say... Ultimate Frisbee teams. I've found myself in situations where I've had to satiate these casually funky people... thus I eventually purchased this album by the Beastie Boys. Well... to tell the whole truth... it actually came into the store second hand and had some scuffing which made a couple of the later tracks unplayable, so I brought it home instead of throwing it out. It has proven to be a good tool of appeasement when asked for "funky" music by people for whom James Brown or Parliament is a little "challenging." There are definitely other albums in the collection that would fall under a sub-heading of "social play" albums... albums for specific situations or specific crowds. Now this is not to say I dislike this album... or the Beastie Boys... it's just that, well... you wouldn't bring an albino sunbathing, would you?

fourteen

106-113


Bardo Pond - On the Ellipse (ATP) 2003


Bardo Pond - Ticket Crystals (ATP) 2006

The two elements that seem to define all of Bardo Pond's albums are density and clarity. When those two things are in balance the albums tend to soar; when they aren't... have you ever seen an oily seagull? On the Ellipse wobbles a little in places... with most tracks medium length and with moments of greatness, but never truly airborne. Ticket Crystals is a return to greatness... the shorter tracks have the Sabbath-grime riffs to drive them and there's even a not-embarrassing Beatles cover ("Cry Baby Cry"). The tour-de-force and, conversely, also the track that most non-believers will hate is the nearly 20 minute "FCII"... epic space rock done right.
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Bark Psychosis - Hex (Caroline) 1994

This took me a long time to come across... I could've ordered it at any time, but there's something about randomly encountering an album you keep an eye out for. Bark Psychosis is one of those legendary bands that get referred to as influential despite having a tiny, elusive back catalogue (this is their only full length), and a sound that some credit as the roots of what became after referred to as "post-rock." To hear it now, after a decade of music that has used elements of their light-but-portentous atmosphere and abstracted or absent vocals, some of the initial impact the band possessed is sublimated. Still you can hear where bands on labels like Kranky cribbed some of their influences. They reformed in some incarnation a couple of years ago, but I've not had a chance to sample any of their new work.
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Barkmarket - Vegas Throat (American) 1992


Barkmarket - Gimmick (American) 1993


Barkmarket - Lardroom (American) 1994


Barkmarket - L.Ron (American) 1996

Having gone from being almost exclusively a metalhead until the mid-80s out into a broader spectrum of sound thereafter I've always had a hard time going back to loud music... it seems regressive... in more ways than one. I was turned off by the move into glam/hair metal that the popular scene was devolving into, and consequently I missed the birth of the whole Metallica/Megadeth speed metal trope (I was listening to The Cure, The Smiths and... er, The Cult (sigh). There were bands that pulled free of the grunge ooze like Soundgarden and the rise of Stoner Rock with post-Sabbath bands like Kyuss and Monster Magnet... and simultaneously there was the accursed nü metal of the spelling impaired groups like Korn and Limp Bizkit. Some of these were great (many were not), but what lacked was a certain freshness... less nostalgia more noise. While Tool was a fine alternative, there was a certain whiff of Prog-Rock about them I found troubling. I happened upon Barkmarket and my questing was (briefly) at an end. The band was fronted by guitarist/singer D.Sardy who looked a little like a hairy high school chemistry professor but sounded like Conan smashing portable televisions with an electric banjo. Vegas Throat was a protean version of their sound that lacked a low-end ooomph that came with Gimmick and L.Ron. When all the pieces snapped together what you had was a band that could channel its stream-of-consciousness rage through a guitar that sounded like it was held together with Xmas lights, gaffer tape and Slinkys, a bass like a rubber coated bee hive and drums that could be medium size oil drums full of agate marbles. The music was exhausting and exhilirating to listen to... and not many people did, apparently, as Sardy packed it in and moved into the role of guitar for hire (playing on Frank Black's first solo album) and producer/mixer, recording albums for everyone from Slayer to Rufus Wainwright. What?! Yes.
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Barry Black - Tragic Animal Stories (Alias) 1997

One of the many side projects of Eric Bachmann... singer/guitarist for the aforementioned Archers of Loaf. This is the second of two recordings under this name. The instrumental tracks most closely resemble the kind of incidental/transitional music you get in indie films... you know, when the quirky hero/loser is driving his bike across town to meet a potential girlfriend at a martini bar... but accidentally he collides into a rack of clothing being escorted across a street by a harried intern at a fashion house... and she is intially furious with him and sure that she will be fired for this... which she is, and she forms a grudge and then a plan for revenge that somehow results in the two crazy kids finding true love at the end of the film. That kind of music.

thirteen

97-105


Mitchell Akiyama - Small Explosions That Are Yours to Keep (Sub Rosa) 2005

Canadian label boss of Intr_version records, Akiyama's previous output under his own name and as Desormais w/ Tony Boggs tended towards either minimal electronics or fractured dub excursions not unlike Pole or Deadbeat. On this more recent recording, and follow-up to If Night is a Weed and Day Grows Less also on Sub Rosa, he returns to his roots in classical composition, primarily for piano. The played pieces, that also include acoustic guitar, gamelan and other instruments, are then subjected to drastic in-computer edits that reconfigure a music that no human could play live... though it is still imbued with the warmth of live performance. This is a realm of composition that is young, but adopted by more artists each year.
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Akufen - My Way (Force-Inc) 2002

Akufen is Marc LeClair from Montreal... and Force-Inc was a sub-imprint of the German label Mille Plateaux that specialized in their less-dance/more-experimental artists. My Way was a watershed of ideas about music construction, using minute (that is to say really tiny) moments of pre-existing music stolen off the radio and other sources and reconstructing, bar by bar and note by note, a new original music from the debris. The end result is the audio equivalent of watching/dancing to a strobe light... probably also not good for epileptics.
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Alog - Red Shift Swing (Rune Grammofon) 1999

Many of the artists on this Norwegian label blur the line between Jazz, Electronic and Folk music by employing elements of all three. Alog are a duo from Tromsø, a small town above the Arctic Circle that seems to breed avant-garde musicians. They use reed and string instruments to start with then alter and embelish with electronics to create loop-based compositions that have a relaxed and, again, human warmth.
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Amalgamated Sons of Rest - S/T (Galaxia) 2002

If you are a fan of Will Oldham (Palace, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), Jason Molina (Songs:Ohia, Magnolia Electric Company) or Alasdair Roberts (Appendix Out) then this is your horn of plenty. Either through a mutual admiration or the fact that people endlessly compare their musical and/or vocal styles the trio got together to make this 6 track e.p. of seafaring songs. Much like the more recent Swan Lake project that featured the vocalists from Destroyer, Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes, there is an overall instrumental consistency here, but there is little doubt (if you are a fan) whose song is whose. Oldham, as usual is the most adaptable and falls easily into the shanty mode, while for Roberts, who regularly adapts traditional material, this is really just a walk in the park... er, the waterpark that is.
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Oren Ambarchi - Grapes from the Estate (Touch) 2004


Oren Ambarchi - Triste (Southern Lord) 2005


Ambarchi/Avenaim - Clockwork (Room40) 2006


Ambarchi/Berthling - My days are darker than your nights (Hapna) 2003


Ambarchi/Muller/Samartzis - Strange Love (For4Ears) 2003

Oren Ambarchi is an Australian guitarist/electronics artist that bridges a lot of musical gaps. Besides his solo recordings and collaborations listed above he has also toured as a member of the drone-metal behemoth that is Sunn O))). He is lumped in with other guitar-via-laptop performers such as Fennesz and Keith Fullerton Whitman, but Ambarchi is much less interested in filling up the sound field with digital snow, preferring a much more minimal approach to things. Both Grapes from the Estate and Triste feature mostly slow evolving tones derived from plucked strings that are intensified and shifted to end up as something approximately like a music box played through a forest of Marshall amps. In his collaborative works this signature sound is quashed and a more subtle and transparent approach is adopted... as on the short album with Johan Berthling that features a single thirty minute piece that channels guitar loops and harmonium into a diaphanous drone. Or with Gunter Muller and Phillip Samartzis where their live and studio interplay consists of minimalist frequency adjustments initiated and followed by all three. One gets the sense that Ambarchi still has a lot of ground he can break and explore. This is what I said about the Ambarchi/Avenaim disc for Exclaim!:

These Australian compatriots have been linked in music and noise since the mid-’90s. Their collaboration began with the noise/punk group Phlegm, who took their influence from the Japanese noise of the time. Their Jewish orthodoxy was imported resulting in a duo recording for the Tzadik label in 1999. Clockwork was initially released that same year on Ambarchi’s own Jerker label, but as with many self-releases it vanished under the sands of time. Hearing it now provides an essential puzzle piece to link the chaos of their roots to the more austere minimalism of Ambarchi’s recent solo work, as well as the duo’s collaborations with Keith Rowe and Sachiko M. The piece features a guitar attack that is subtly amplified but extremely kinetic and varied in tonality. Avenaim’s percussion is likewise frenetic but feathery. After an initial time of tentative sorties the duos’ clipped skitterings lock together with Ambarchi’s guitar taking on gamelan orchestra overtones and Avenaim unleashing a small infantry of grasshoppers with heavy footwear across his toms and snare. Played for contemplation rather than shock, the piece resolves quickly and cleanly like the sound of a book’s page turning.

twelve

89-96


Jason Bajada - Puer Dolor (jasonbajada) 2003
Jason Bajada - Live at Cabaret Music Hall (jasonbajada) 2003

Here's one from the Exclaim! vaults... I probably hadn't listened to either of these since reviewing them... and that is one of those problems that this little experiment addresses. If this record had been by Elliott Smith or even Chad Vangaalen (both of whose work these occasionally resemble) would they languish in my bookcase or be pulled out more often? Something about the cult of celebrity that affects even the independent music scene. This is what I said about the albums in Exclaim!:

If you come from a town with an art college and at least a couple of open-mic night venues you’ve probably seen someone like Jason Bajada perform. Sensitive and slightly rumpled; early to mid-20s; passionate about his record collection; playing sets that blend originals with obscure indie covers, British folk and the occasional ironic ABBA song. All of this may be true of Jason Bajada as well, but on his debut album he still manages to distinguish himself. For one thing his songs are full of shifty little reminders of classic indie pop rather than out-and-out crib notes. They also serve as a reminder that songs can be moody and emotional without having to shout or wield tear-soaked handkerchiefs. The maturity of songwriting and understated but effective arrangements, featuring spare percussion, effects and cello, has more in common with old-timers like Elvis Costello and Go-Betweens than any current alterna-angst. The simultaneously released Live at Cabaret Music Hall showcases Bajada as an easy, engaging performer. The songs are slightly breathier and extended musically to let his band roam a little, but they neither add to nor subtract anything tonally from the studio versions.

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Band of Susans - Here Comes Success (Restless) 1995

Robert Poss is a NY guitarist who developed under the tutelage of Rhys Chatham within a scene that include other no wave upstarts as Glenn Branca, Page Hamilton, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore. Early incarnations of the band featured three members named Susan, ergo... and furthermore Page Hamilton filled in on guitar for awhile before forming Helmet. By this point... their last album... only one Susan (Stenger, bass) remained and the wall of noise elements had been sublimated to some degree. Here Comes Success is still a strong album of muscular and lengthy pieces that resemble a slightly less oblique Sonic Youth.
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Devendra Banhart - Black Babies (UK) (Young God) 2003


Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the Hands (Young God) 2004


Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow (XL) 2005

And then there's the whole New Freak Folk thing. Maybe scenes spring up more organically these days... with bands that have been playing together or separately for long stretches suddenly joined under a newly minted banner. Whatever, Devendra Banhart is one of the most visible figureheads in said "movement." There's a problem I have that relates back, inversely I suppose, to the Jason Bajada point. I like Devendra Banhart... that is to say I like a lot of his music (for those who don't know it, it sounds much like a cross between Marc Bolan, Donovan and Tiny Tim at their most mushroom fueled), but the "Devendra Banhart" character poses a fair challenge to my tolerance of kooks. In the same way that I have a great respect for systems that emphasize communal cooperation and personal freedom, but when confronted with a quote unquote Hippie spouting the ideology as though he just came up with the shit, I'd like to make him eat a hamburger in the back of a Humvee on it's way down to Texas to sell guns to Haliburton's security force. In other words it's not the band, but the fans I hate... although in this case it's rather not the songs but the singer I... well... not hate, but maybe just am irritated by. But since I'll likely never have to share the backseat of a Volkswagon van with him... I'll let it all go.
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Baptist Generals - No Silver/No Gold (Sub Pop) 2003

This one languished in the second hand section of the store for a good few months before a slow day prompted me to toss it on. I only had to hear the opener, "Ay Distress" to be won over. It's a dirge played simply on acoustic guitar with occasional cello adding colour and singer Chris Flemmons emoting off-key about "dream[ing] it right." Then at about the three minute mark a cell phone rings and he goes apeshit and smashes everything. The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to that, but it's a nicely unvarnished take on three piece drunken folk rock that sounds like it might have been recorded on the hood of a beat up convertible on a hillside somewhere.
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Bardo Pond - Lapsed (Matador) 1997

There is a largish Psychedelic music scene in Philadelphia, PA and Bardo Pond are arguably its best known band. What makes their better albums work (and this is one of those), is the struggle to balance the loud and quiet elements in the music. Or being able to go from multiple layers of thick and droning guitars only to part the clouds and let singer/flautist Isobel Sollenberger a bit of room to move. The end result is a music that mimics the ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys of a nice lengthy buzz... and also it manages to stuff full each and every frequency of sound to better overwhelm the senses. Not to be taken lightly, y'all.

eleven

81-88


Ab & Terrie - Hef (Atavistic) 2000

Ab is Ab Baars of the ICP Orchestra and Terrie is Terrie Ex... of... The Ex. OK? Both their day jobs involve large collective outfits that play either jazz or politically active punk... but here they've stripped right down to guitar and sax to explore a more microcosmic musical realm. Quiet, but still confrontational... they manage to collide like two big pogoing brains.
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Abir/Wales - Movement A, Study 33/Landscape (Sulphur) 2000

Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner started this Beggars Group sub-imprint to explore the burgeoning
electronics field, especially work by artists who shared his affinity for cinematic soundscapes built from varied sources. This split release features two long tracks. The first one by David Abir is very restrained and moodily effective... sadly Abir seems to have faded off the "scene." The other by Ashley Wales is an equally stirring counterpoint, a little busier and buzzier but still well measured. Wales was/is a member of groundbreaking Drum and Bass duo Spring Heel Jack... who've since moved further into the realm of improvised music having released several full lengths in Blue Series by Thirsty Ear records.
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Muhal Richard Abrams - Visibility of Thought (Mutable) 2001

This is a bit of an anomaly for Abrams, who is know primarily as a free jazz pianist and first president of the AACM: an album of interpretations of his classical compositions. It's a nice surprise to hear these mostly gentle though complex pieces played either solo by Joseph Kubera, know also as an interpreter of John Cage's work, or with delicate string accompaniment by Mark Feldman, ETHEL String Quartet and others.


Accelera Deck - Ipsissima Vox (Scarcelight) 2003

Remember in an earlier post I reviewed another Accelera Deck disc... saying how I was surprised by it's bedroom folkiness given that the other one I own was more abstract and electric and infrequently melodic? Well this is that other one. Perhaps the best way to summarize this one is to mention how, when I was playing it in the store, a woman from the office next door to see if there was some sort of alarm going off. There wasn't.
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Adler/Chauncy/Lloyd/Palmer/Wachsmann - Apparitions (Leo) 2004

As improvised music enters the digital age you find more and more of this kind of group... with musicians who play both acoustic instruments and electronics, either homemade or computer-based. I'm sure there's a huge messageboard debate always raging about the purity of this kinda thing, but I'm mostly interested in how each recording manages the tools they employ. This quintet sticks to the quiet side of things... preferring to find how the "real" instruments can imitate machinistic sounds or how the electronics can emit organic tones. Like a "Hands Across America" for farmers and robots.
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AGF - Westernization Completed (Orthlorng Musork) 2003


AGF/Delay - Explode (AGF Production) 2005

Antye Greie-Fuchs is a German artist who is arguably an inheritor of Laurie Anderson's mantle in music and language. Before working solo she was a member of the duo Laub who's work process included using the programming language of software, musical or otherwise, as lyrical content to be sung/recited. AGF studies language as tool of both communication and alienation in many ways... such as "singing" in English instead of her native tongue to subvert clear meaning, or by razor-edits of vocal tracks to alter sense... much like William Burroughs "cut-up" technique of writing. It comes full circle, as one of Laurie Anderson's songs was based on Burroughs' quote that "language is a virus from outer space." Her partner, Vladislav Delay, is a worthy foil on Explode... having worked both in more structured dance electronics as Luomo, while under his "real" name he explores generative and expansive takes on the Dub genre. Their collaboration touches on many of the elements form their individual works, but also provides a certain stability that neither fully possess separately. If you click on the album artwork you'll also see how they've cleverly presented the songs' lyrics.
+++++++++++++++++++


Brian Agro - Poems and Preludes (Percaso) 2000

I've never been a big classical music fan... the pomp and thunder of orchestral music seldom unseats me. I do, however, find comfort in solo piano composition: Chopin's Nocturnes, Satie's Gymnopedes, Cage's Sonatas for Prepared Piano. Brian Agro is a Canadian composer whose work I received in early solicitations for airplay material. He has many of the qualities that I find compelling in the aforementioned artists' pieces. Therefore... me likey this too. Simple.

ten

73-80


Ativin - Interiors (Secretly Canadian) 2001

A three piece math-rock outfit out of the Midwest... a place that seems to breed this type of complex confused aggression. This third album of theirs turned things down a fair bit... playing up the vocals and quieter tensions, creating a strained listening and waiting for all hell to break loose.
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Auteurs - After Murder Park (Hut) 1996

Some of my favourite comics (or graphic serials if you prefer) have tended to be by British writers. Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano, and especially Alan Moore hit notes that resonate both in the idylls and darknesses that England's history have enjoyed. Luke Haines of The Auteurs writes excellent musical accompaniment to their tales. On After Murder Park the band shook off the mantle of "new glam" that had been thrust upon them previously... getting Steve Albini to sharpen focus and find a place where Beatlesque melodies could be used to underscore stories of plane crashes and unsolved child murders.
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Autour de Lucie - Immobile (Nettwerk) 1998

France is a peculiarly insular place for pop music. From limited exposure to their television variety shows they seem to be enthralled with 70s-style Elvis rock swagger, jazzy pop divas and balladeers and have been for three decades now. Occasionally artists and bands need to break free of that star system to assert themselves. Autour de Lucie have more in common musically with twee British pop, but infused with a little guitar muscle too. It tends towards the light... but with teeth enough to leave interesting bites here and there.
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Awkward Stage - Heaven is for Easy Girls (Mint) 2006

Shane Nelken is an associate of various New Pornographers, having played with both head Pornographer A.C. Newman on his recent solo record and as a member of Sparrow with Jason Zumpno. NP drummer Kurt Dahle produces and plays on Nelken's first solo effort. While a lot of West Coast Canadian music has lately tended to swing between a Beatles/Stones polarity, Awkward Stage aims a couple of decades later in the British spectrum, preferring The Smiths as a kind of model. Nelken is a good lyricist and singer and easily pulls off the literate pop thing without irritating.
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Azita - Enantiodromia (Drag City) 2003

Azita Youssefi is a Chicago punk that also plays in bands Scissor Girls and Bride of No No. After a 1997 solo record that was as similarly confrontational as her group work, Enantioidromia comes as a surprise. Taking a stab at destabilizing the 70s jazz piano ballad style, Azita succeeds and ends up with a confusing and compelling record. Given a strong helping hand by Tortoise friends John McEntire and Rob Mazurek on drums and cornet, she uses her peculiar vocal style to it's Nth possibilities... given it is more accustomed to louder exclamations that don't require much attention to harmony and pitch. The effect of tonally unglued diva takes a little getting used to...but it works.
++++++++++++++


Babe the Blue Ox - Box (Homestead) 1993


Babe the Blue Ox - People (RCA) 1996

A weird anomaly in the burgeoning indie rock scene... a trio with a female rhythm section and male guitarist, all three sharing vocal duties. Stranger still was their blend of sweet-voiced pop and faux-Beefheart slap bass funk grumbling. Most of the college rock field at the time was made up of intellectuals with naively little instrumental skill or smart rockers drenched in feedback and skull crushing volume. BTBO didn't really fit in any of these guises, having interestingly vague lyrics and way above average skills. The major labels grabbing them later on did them little favour, predictably such a left-of-everything band would be hard to find an audience or radio play or anything for.


Jessica Bailiff - S/T (Kranky) 2002

I'm a big big fan of the Kranky label (as you'll see throughout this journey we're on together), but Jessica Bailiff is one of their artists I have the most trouble getting into. She plays a kind of wispy folk music that survives on the extraneous details that sometimes creep into the mix, but without these she seems a little run of the mill as far as sirens go. The one exception would be the Clear Horizon collaboration between she and David Pearce of Flying Saucer Attack... but more on that later.