People in the West blame weird moods on a string of things: the wind (those Santa Anas), the end (of the country), the moon (crescent is cursed), even the movies. But it doesn’t matter which is right/real, because the effect is the same, freaked souls in a trapped environment, lotuses floating on a lake littered with bodies. Topaz Rags is a new late night downer trio devoted to mapping these sour times and long goodbyes, and California Ash is their 2-sided elegy for the Golden State’s darkest ghosts, the rich hills full of fire, the day after the kool-aid. Back-alley bass lines plod under smoky piano shadows, drums stalk a straight line in a house with the power out, a trumpet mourns from a warped 78 spinning in the basement. Wasted, grey, DIY drug jazz lost somewhere between Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and some half-destroyed pre-digital Portishead demo.
Eagle Rock’s most reclusive comedown crew creep back into the blacklight for their vinyl debut with a pair of loosely more focused excursions into cold soul music and post-beatnik jazz shadowplay. Dress accordingly. Recorded in the weeks preceding the ritual void sessions that birthed the California Ash cassette, both tracks here tread the grey but groovy haunted interzone between bummed DIY ghost bop and outright goth lament. It’s a fine line, watch it closely.
“Tarot Harem” is the A side, and it feigns a pure funeral mood before slowly stirring to life with erotic spectral voices, distant trumpet, and a swingingly narcoleptic rhythm section. The B is “Black Honey,” which tip-toes a similar path through 3 AM city streets while forlorn piano notes fall like light rain, the drums gently rev up, and vocals scat about “black tar black tar” and how “the beat goes on.” It does. This is the wrong side of town. Hang around if that’s yr thing. Black vinyl singles in hand-silkscreened, photocopied, and die-cut sleeves with topless nature nymph/burnout artwork. Edition of 250. First 78 copies come with a tarot card from the 1970’s Aleister Crowley edition illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris.
Brought to you by your friends at notnotfun|Drums & Vocals: Amanda (LA Vampires, 100% Silk, Pocahaunted, ect ect)|Bass: Britt (Robedoor)|Keys: Ash| |
