Ryley Walker / Kikagaku Moyo – Deep Fried Grandeur
Husky Pants – Out Now
Ryley Walker‘s new Husky Pants label has been modestly or shyly called a ‘joke label’ by Walker, but its first release, this two-part live (but subtly smoothed off in places by sound master Cooper Crain) jam between Ryley’s four-piece band and the Japanese psych-prog five-piece Kikagaku Moyo (meaning geometric patterns), has become a Bandcamp best seller. Husky Pants will also be dropping Ryley’s new solo album Course in Fable in the Spring, but for now, this free-spirited blast of tightly played, highly creative music will do just fine.
Apparently, the two bands spent just one afternoon rehearsing and musically bonding before taking to the stage in Holland, where this one-time collaboration was performed live and recorded. You can just about detect a tentativeness to the players at the beginning of the first suite ‘Pour Dampness Down in the Stream’ (the album is divided into two tracks, each fitting a side of a record), with Ryu Kurosaw’s spiky sitar joining equally shifty guitar parts and some scratchy slide, before bass and higher notes begin jostling. Sci-fi sounds also sweep in after a few minutes, along with glassy percussion, before the sound ebbs and a softer guitar sound can be heard chiming with a more nervous run of playing. Although this all sounds busy, the music is far more focused than it should be at such short notice and each musician knows exactly when to play and when to pause. The tidal quality of the music is most notable; there are points when there is little more than a rhythmic guitar chug combining with drums and the space is let in to create the kind of sparse landscape Ryley can do so well (see Little Common Twist). There are also some thrilling rock moments, like towards the end of the first suite, when thundering drums combine with wah-wah effected guitar and some great bass notes to produce a real head down groove ride, before shifting a beat and shooting in another direction. It’s great hearing musicians fuse and find this kind of creative space.
Deep Fried Grandeur is a diverse album, sometimes evoking Indian musical textures and others using scratchy electric guitar notes to bring forth music akin to that found on Sarah Louise’s Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars album, but it is always riveting. The first part of the second side ‘Shrinks the Day’ brings in more of the electric sitar for a more pronounced eastern flavour than the first suite, but it doesn’t take long before the jam takes hold and the players find room to duel and then bond for another deep extended groove, before deteriorating into shreds of guitars and crashing drums and then jumping back into an early Queens of the Stone Age-esque melter. Phew! This is loads of fun, from totally bonkers in places to quite pensive in others. Enjoy.