"Grails is evocative, sinuous and unpredictable - like all great music should be. So, it stands to reason that nearly everything written about the instrumental band's music expounds on how much it reminds listeners of particular experiences, sights, moods or dreams. People react emotionally to the Portland, Oregon quintet's powerfully evocative songs because they compel us to fill the gap between music and language. To quote one 20th Century sage, 'instrumental music is Total Music' There's no voice to quaintly tell us how we should feel, only the emotive musical force moving us to understand and empathize." [...]
May 1, 2007, 8:24am
D!M
Following soon after the Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since 2004 release of Redlight. Starting like some throwback psychadelic Appalachian guitar workout and ending more as a Krautrock-inspired jam, Dead Vine Blues is an example of Grails' ambition to provide some connection between instrumental post rock and more archaic song structures and formats. Rather like The Six Parts Seven , Grails make use of traditional American instrumentation (bango, picked guitar, mouth harp and lap steel) alongside the more usual electric guitars and looper [...]
The wonderfully-titled Burning Off Impurities , the proper album follow-up to last year's highly-rated Black Tar Prophecies 1,2, and 3 collection, is a mass funeral pyre built from elements of folk, sludgy metal, Indian drone, electronic composition, and windstrewn field recordings. After the fire, all is charred and barely identifiable, sinking into the ground and decaying… It is a diverse set that wouldn't have sounded terribly out of place on Revenant (sitting next to the No-Neck Blues Band in the catalogue); "Dead Vine Blues" underlines their Faheyesque [...]
The Grails hail from Portland, Oregon. "Dead Vine Blues" sounds nothing like Portland. It's an instrumental track that hints at the Old West, but mixes in a considerable amount of Eastern mysticism. It would be like Jackie Chan in a Western movie, if Jackie Chan didn't do kung-fu, and instead of making jokes with Owen Wilson, he was on a journey of spiritual awakening. In other words, it's nothing like Shanghai Noon. The Grails - Dead Vine Blues [ download ] Burning Off The Impurities, the latest from The Grails will be out April 24th on [...]
Are your brackets busted? This was the first year since I was a wee little one that I neglected to fill out an NCAA tournament bracket in advance. March Madness is only marginally interesting when there are no dramatic storylines or Cinderella teams. Two one-seeds and two two-seeds in the Final Four is about as captivating as the Patriots making the Super Bowl. With all this (one paragraph of) sports talk, I've probably lost my entire Sunday evening audience of sexually ambiguous, mildly anorexic, ironic-shirt-wearing, antisocial music snobs. RULES for uninitiated noobs : With [...]
Following their dark opus, Black Tar Prophecies with a move to Temporary Residence, Grails pick up the stark tale just where they left off. Their latest album Burning Off Impurities is a journey further into the reaches of instrumental western psychedelia. You can feel the dust in your nose and throat and the hot wind on the back of your neck with each note. Grails seem to be mining the same camp that Earth stumbled on, finding the drone and psychedelic impulses of spaghetti westerns. This is a Morricone feverdream; as recapped by the ghosts of [...]
Portland's psychedelic instrumental rock outfit Grails ' new CD Burning Off Impurities , will be out on April 24 on Temporary Residence , in the meanwhile Important Records has the previously released Black Tar FrequenciesEP's compiled onto a CD. The name of this gem fits the music very well, because most of the album is dark & fuzzy, or should I say downright "nocturnal". Grails' sound is a sludgy noisy version of krautrock molded into dense freeform compositions with a brooding reverby atmosphere , but there are some acoustic pieces [...]
my body at times feels like its going into a state of shock. maybe its these strange warm winter days now turning into snow. i feel really tired and all the codeine cough syrup in the world cant seem to keep me asleep but im trying. afterall, today is my birthday... i still cant believe ive already lived a quarter of my life and that i possibly may live another. mahogany my bed is my [...]
Grails have culled together the tracks from their previously vinyl only Black Tar Prophecies. After the separation of the band and their violinist it appears that they decided to reject their previous "post-rock" status and go in a bit of a different direction. The songs are still sprawling instrumentals but the swells of post rock have been replaced with a deeper appreciation for experimentation and a dusty natural sound. The record reeks of barren landscapes and gray foreboding skies. It's the sound of uncertain terrain, and checking over your shoulder every so often. The smell of dust and wet pavement [...]
Grails - chilled live spacey guitar/post-rock. Very deep though. You can stream a session from a Dutch radio station. Click here . Also, here are the MP3s hotlinked from Grails website. Back To The Monastery Stray Dog Black Tar Prophecies Vol's 1,2,&3 , 2006 [...]
I am always on the hunt for good studying/background music. The past two years have been actually very good for this between The Boats , Clogs , Sigur Ros, Boards of Canada and Chihei Hatakeyama all releasing good acoustic /downbeat electronic records. There is another great addition for those looking for minimalist tunes in the new Portland based Grails record Black Tar Prophecies 1, 2, 3. Grails also have a bit of mystery associated with them given that they "came into [...]
Well I guess we can all chalk 2006 as "The Year That Ate Moe Rex" as it seems the one constant with me lately is my being very, very spotty and inconsistent, and sort of missing in action a lot of the time. Oh well. Here I am again. Let's see how long it takes people to figure out I've put up something new.... Grails "Black Tar Frequencies" - I figured what better song for my return from the dark ether than this awesomely eldritch broadcast by Grails , a [...]
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