While it rested its strength in laid back desert atmospherics, the 2010 self-titled debut album from Buenos Aires rockers Humo del Cairo (review here) was more a show of potential than a distinguishing statement. It made the trio a band to watch. The quick-arriving follow-up, Vol. II (Estamos Felices), validates that anticipation. Humo del Cairo – guitarist/vocalist Juan Manuel Diaz, bassist Gustavo Bianchi and new drummer Federico Castrogiovanni – have stripped down their approach to the most necessary parts and presented a well-structured collection of songs that work as well individually as they do grouped together. It’s a rare balance, but Vol. II hits it, and where the self-titled had material that (purposefully) meandered into heavy jamming like the 11-minute “A Tiempo,” the longest song on Vol. II doesn’t quite hit seven minutes and is among the more direct and explicitly memorable riffs on the record. That the trio should be able to so quickly shift their approach between releases may or may not be a surprise – one never knows how long it’s been since the songs for the first record were written unless one asks, and I haven’t (yet) – but the confidence Humo del Cairo bring to their performance here and the sonic breadth they manage to cover while still maintaining relatively straightforward verse/chorus structures speaks to a distinct progression that’s admirable no matter the time span it happened over. Some bands don’t grow this much over the course of three albums, let alone one.

They operate in a variety of moods and still have wind up inevitably comparable to hometown stalwarts Los Natas at times, but by and large, Humo del Cairo’s riffing has gotten thicker and tighter. Diaz and Bianchi’s tones are rich on opening duo “Fe” and “Los Ojos,” and even later on the instrumental layering interlude “Monte,” they seem to retain a character of increasing individuality. If every album has a narrative to it – and most do – then that of Vol. II is one of Humo del Cairo beginning to come into their own stylistically. Heavy rock is at the core of every move they make, and they weave in and out of stonerly atmospheres, but Vol. II is striking in terms of the variety of mood it presents and how well the songs work together. There are 11 tracks, and each justifies its inclusion by standing out in one way or another, be it a particularly engaging riff, a memorable vocal melody (all the lyrics are in Spanish), or in the case of “Fe,” an overall largess of tone that sets the course for the album as a whole. Castrogiovanni distinguishes himself right away with a heavy thud amidst the formidable rumble of Bianchi’s bass, and Diaz places an echoing vocal far back in the mix initially, bringing it up toward the end as a setup for the more straight-ahead drive of “Los Ojos.” He’s almost certainly double-tracked his singing, but neither the vocals nor the music surrounding are lacking for a natural feel; the fuzz Humo del Cairo emit is as organic as one could possibly ask without sacrificing clarity.

As catchy and uptempo as “Los Ojos” is, with Castrogiovanni setting a “follow the bouncing ball” snare beat and sticking by it, it’s “Tierra del Rey” that serves as the first real highlight of Vol. II, and really, it’s all about the riff. Immediate stoner nod meets with rawer vocals and massive groove – a classic formula given new life by the fervency with which it’s executed. Diaz takes a guitar solo following the second verse, and that leads to a kind of mini-jam for the next minute-plus, but the main riff takes hold again and opens into as classic a part as there is within the genre of stoner rock. Subtle lead notes pepper an encompassing riff and Diaz meters his vocals to match the rhythm as Bianchi and Castrogiovanni lock down the march under the ensuing guitar solo. There are several genuine triumphs on Vol. II – among them the more ambient shift that “El Alba (parte A)” and “El Alba (parte B)” bring about immediately afterward – but “Tierra Del Rey” might be the most potent of them. The comedown that follows feels entirely earned, and the less distorted, higher-register notes of “El Alba (parte A)” both allow time to process “Tierra del Rey” and shift the focus to more atmospheric songwriting. The song picks up, riff-wise, and leads directly into “El Alba (parte B)” as the titles would suggest, but it seems reasonable that Humo del Cairo would split the whole into two component tracks, given how well the second of them stands up as a single, particularly in terms of its chorus. It’s more than a minute before Diaz comes in on vocals, but when he does, he brings appropriate gravity and layers of backups only further the character of the song, which is perhaps the most directly comparable to Los Natas’ melodic methodology as Vol. II gets until the heaviness is cut short and an acoustic guitar concludes the last minute and a half.

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Not really much of a surprise that Argentinian riffly rockers Humo del Cairo would have a new video out, what with their new album, but what’s kind of “huh?”-inducing about the situation is that “Fuego de San Antonio” appeared on the first record — not the new one. Far be it from me to criticize (get it?), but it seems to make more sense to me to promote the newer release, which is appropriately called Vol. II, than the debut, righteous though it was.

But maybe that’s why I’ve never been in a killer Argentinian desert rock trio (that’s what’s been holding me back!). Either way, Humo del Cairo‘s video for “Fuego de San Antonio”– directed by Juan Pinnel — is available for viewing below. Hope you dig:

Humo del Cairo‘s Vol. II reportedly came out in October as was planned, though I can’t seem to find any info on how to obtain it. In the meantime, the band has made the new song “Tierra del Rey” available for streaming on Soundcloud, and you can hear it on this player:

I thought we’d end this week with a clip from Los Natas, because over the course of the last week, the mainstay Argentinian heavy rockers have re-uploaded a boat-load of their videos to the Tubes of You. Check out their channel here, if you’re so inclined. The video above is for the song “Patas de Elefante,” which comes from the ridiculously underrated Corsario Negro from 2002.

It’s not what I most often reach for when I’m grabbing Los Natas off the shelf — that’s probably Delmar, the debut — but I look at Corsario Negro in the context of what the band’s done since as a great transitional record. It’s like Dozer‘s Call it Conspiracy (coincidentally released the same year) in that it showed the band as having mastered the form of their earliest work even as they began to progress beyond it. Anyway, I’m a dork for Los Natas, so I hope you enjoy the video.

Tonight I went and saw Judas Priest on their “Epitaph” farewell tour at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It was the biggest concert I’d seen (in terms of crowd-size) in I don’t even know how long. I may write it up Monday or I may just post some pics I took — I scammed my way into a photo pass — and leave it at that. Either way, the show was killer and I’ll have something on it come Monday.

Also next week, stay tuned for a by-request stream of some of Electric Moon‘s heady psych jamming, and before the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll also have some audio from the HeavyPink 7″, as I’ve heard from a couple people at this point saying they’d like to hear how the tunes came out before investing $11 to buy a copy. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, so sometime shortly I’ll have some sounds from that up.

I didn’t get to post my Elder interview this week, which was disappointing, so I’ll try to have that as soon as I can, and Wiht sent back their Six Dumb Questions Q&A, so I should be able to get that up as well. It is Thanksgiving though, and I’ll be in Connecticut to celebrate with my wife’s family, so I’m thinking about swinging down to Redscroll Records for their Black Friday earlybird sale. I think it’s at 6AM or something like that. Could be fun, but a lot depends on where the evening and the wine take me.

Beyond that, stick around for reviews of VRSA and Cathedral and as many more as I can fit. As always, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’ll be spending mine doing homework, so you can pretty much expect I’ll spend significant amounts of time dicking around on the forum. Hope to see you there and back here Monday for more adventure.

Fierce in its commitment to progressive atmospheres, the space-hued third album from Argentinean instrumentalists Poseidótica, Crónicas del Futuro, doesn’t linger on its ideas and varies widely from track to track, but is able to manifest an overall sensibility as well. The four-piece of guitarists Hernán Miceli and Santiago Rúa, bassist Martín Rodríguez and drummer Walter Broide (also of Los Natas) is joined on Crónicas del Futuro by synth expert Ernesto Romeo, who adds much of the space rock feel to the already semi-psychedelic riff-led material. Swirls and ambient noises enhance the mood of songs like opener “Elevación” and some of the shorter pieces on the album like “Otra Fuga Incierta” and the closer “Alunizar,” but between these cuts – which are more substantial content-wise than interludes, if not much longer – Poseidótica confront mostly guitar-led material that varies in terms of structure and execution and never really feels like it’s missing anything for the lack of vocals. “Elevación” is the longest work at 5:18 (immediate points for it being the opener and longest track) and sets the expectations high for what’s to come over the subsequent eight songs. Given the current climate in South American underground heavy rock, one might expect an instrumental unit like Poseidótica to engage in lengthy jams or put their focus on fuzzy tones and thickened bass, but that’s not what’s happening on Crónicas del Futuro. Rodríguez does an excellent job helming the jazzy sway of “Los Extraños,” but the album winds up being diverse enough that its head is never committed wholly to anything other than the band’s own creative will, which proves considerable.

As such, there are various influences that show up throughout the album. One can hear a bit of the last Los Natas in the forward momentum of “La Resistencia,” and “Cyberpunk,” at just 1:11, has a thrust that lives up to its name. However, partnered next to the calmer or at least not as rushed “Xantanax,” it shows the kind of diversity from which Crónicas del Futuro gets its flow. As Miceli and Rúa lead the second half of “Xantanax” away from its Latin rhythms with classic heavy metal riffing, the proposition becomes even more complex. It’s the record’s great achievement that Poseidótica are able to make it coalesce into an engaging whole. With instrumental music that doesn’t have vocals to guide a structure – and all the more so with artists who have a progressive bent – it’s too easy to get sidetracked into self-indulgence, and that’s not what’s happening here. Although Romeo’s contributions lead to sweeping passages of atmospherics, nothing lasts so long as to really feel overdone, and that includes the opener, where the elements of the band’s sound are perhaps best combined. Where “La Resistencia” leans more on the guitar and “Otra Fuga Incierta” seems to roll off of Rodríguez’s bass line, “Elevación” brings everything together in a way that even “Dimensión Vulcano” – which is arguably the most prog rock of the tracks included on Crónicas del Futuro – doesn’t. That’s not to say the rest of the album doesn’t live up to what’s initially promised, just that one imagines that when it came to structuring the tracklist, “Elevación” was put at the head because it introduced the new ideas Poseidótica were gearing toward that perhaps didn’t show up on their past offerings, 2008’s La Distancia and 2005’s Intramundo (both also Aquatalan). Again, the variety of influence here plays into a different kind of satisfaction than would be if the band made everything sound just like first cut.

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Though the clip above of Los Natas guitarist/vocalist Sergio Chotsourian‘s side-project Ararat doing the new song “Caballos” rules, spliced with ’70s film footage and in high definition and quality sound as it is, it’s really just there because I couldn’t imagine putting up a Frydee post without a video at the top. The real reason I wanted to close out this week with Ararat is to post the studio version of the same song, which Chotsourian put on Soundcloud last night. Check it out:

The gorgeous psychedelic groove, synth undertones and riffy plod of it all bode very well for the follow-up to Ararat‘s 2009 debut, Musica de la Resistencia (MeteorCity). According to Chotsourian‘s Soundcloud info, the 16-minute track is serving as a preview for the next album, which will be called Ararat II and will be released on Elektrohasch Schallplatten before the end of the year. It’s a nice thought, and though early 2012 seems more likely — and if “Caballos” is any indication — it will hopefully build on the adventurous spirit of the debut, whenever it’s out.

Hope you enjoy the track, in either incarnation. If you listen to the studio version, make sure you stick around for the bass part a little after 13 minutes in. It’s killer.

And speaking of sticking around, next week I’ll have reviews of The Wounded Kings, Elder, Sandrider, Beastwars and Wiht, my interview with CT from Rwake (I’ll transcribe it if it kills me — and at an hour long, it might), new music from Lonely Kamel and the aforementioned Sandrider, plus September’s numbers and a lot more. The semester has picked back up and between that and work, I’m all kinds of busy, but since most days it’s The Obelisk keeping me sane, I’m not about to let it go neglected. Hence the 1AM Frydee post. Ha.

Oh, and before I forget: Next week the HeavyPink 7″ on The Maple Forum is going to go up for pre-sale. That’ll probably be Monday night or Tuesday, so stay tuned, because you don’t want to miss out on it.

As always, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’ll see you on the forum and back here Monday for more of this nonsense.

At least according to the best translation Thee Googles has to offer, the second album from Argentinian heavy psych upstarts Humo del Cairo will be out Oct. 17. Their second album bears the appropriate title, Vol. II, and was recorded by Alejandro Ortiz (Carajo). No word as yet on whether or not MeteorCity will pick it up for a domestic American issue, but it’s out on Estamos Felices in time for Humo del Cairo‘s South American tour, about which you can find more info here.

The trio has posted the track “El Alba (Parte A + B)” on the Estamo Felices Soundcloud page in the meantime, and it shows some shifts from the first record. The sound is a little darker, the vocals a little lower. It should be interesting to hear how the whole record plays out when it lands. Here’s the stream of the track if you want to check it out:

I’m not really sure what my delay on this one was, but I found out a few months ago about the 2010 split between Argentinian mega-trio Los Natas and more metallic side-project Solodolor. It’s the second one the two bands have done — small wonder since they share guitarist Sergio Chotsourian in common — and with Solodolor vocalist El Topo Armetta (also Dragonauta and Eight Hands for Kali) singing on three of Los Natas‘ total seven tracks, the effect the split has is more like a family/semi-collaboration than the usual one band on this side, one on the other. Because Los Natas‘ music is so fluid tonally anyway, it works.

Solodolor get the last three tracks. The lineup of Chotsourian, El Topo, drummer Gustavo Rowek and bassist Billy Anderson (yes, that Billy Anderson) showed the same three songs on the last, vinyl-only split, so it’s basically a chance for anyone who didn’t hear them then to do so now. They’re heavier than Los Natas in the traditional metal crash and bash sort of way, more High on Fire than desert rock, but even the unhinged feel of “The Battle of Mocha Poo” meshes well with the surrounding material.

Five of the seven Los Natas songs are covers, and the hardest part about them is choosing a highlight. For original material, they do new versions of their own “Soma” from the first album and “Rutation” from the second, but with “Thumb” and “Green Machine” by Kyuss, T.S.O.L.‘s “No Time,” Danzig‘s “I Don’t Mind the Pain,” and a Spanish-language take on the all-time classic of classics, “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead — redubbed “El Ass de Espadas” — it’s the covers that win the day. And that new “Soma” rules, don’t get me wrong, but come on, Los Natas playing the opening riff of “Thumb?” Life doesn’t get much better than that.

The only drawback to the covers is that it isn’t Chotsourian singing. He still plays guitar, and he, bassist Gonzalo Villagra and drummer Walter Broide are as tight as ever instrumentally, but a host of vocalists are brought in to cover duty. El Topo was already mentioned, and he does well on the Kyuss songs and “I Don’t Mind the Pain” — which might be my pick of the bunch, depending on my mood — while Argentinian singer Boom Boom Kid makes the T.S.O.L. song work surprisingly well and Ricardo Iorio (V8) manhandles “El Ass de Espadas.” It’s pretty clear Los Natas chose friends and people they wanted to work with, and it’s hard to fault them that.

I’ll stop short here without going into full review-mode and just say that if like me you’ve waited to check out the Los Natas/Solodolor split, consider that time wasted for not having a voice in stuck your head constantly yelling “El ass de espadas! El ass de espadas!” Awesome.

It’s 10PM and I’m due awake in six hours to begin a drive to Michigan. In case you didn’t know I sing in a band (I usually make a point not to talk about it, but we’re called Maegashira, and we fucking rule) and in addition to playing two shows while we’re out there — one in Lansing, one in Detroit — we’re hopefully going to be recording a new album (our second) completely live. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I’m about to pick discs off the shelf to bring along on the road trip, so enjoy the above Los Natas video while I figure that out.

Sorry about the site downtime today. I don’t really know what happened, but I’m glad I was able to bring it back without really losing anything and I’m glad the internet didn’t totally succeed in its seemingly ongoing mission to eat The Obelisk. We live yet another day, my friends. Let’s be thankful while we can.

Next week we’ll close out April and I’ll give the numbers and post an interview with Primordial‘s Alan Averill, as well as the usual bunch of reviews and so forth. T-shirt news is coming soon, I promise, and Roareth are hitting the studio this weekend as well, so we should have more on that forthcoming as well. I say this all the time, but it remains true nonetheless: good things ahead, so stay tuned.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been putting off reviewing the self-titled MeteorCity debut from Buenos Aires desert-style rockers Humo del Cairo for about a week now because I’ve wanted to try and glean some better sense of the album’s structure, form and methodology. I don’t know if I got all that for having taken the extra time, but with a record like this, which alternates between longer and shorter cuts and puts to use a ranging sonic approach, repeat listens can’t hurt.

Humo del Cairo does go back and forth between extended cuts and shorter pieces, at least for the first four of the total six tracks – the last two, “Errantes” and “Cauce” being about eight and seven minutes, respectively – opening with the 11-minute rocker “A Tiempo,” on which the trio waste no time earning a Los Natas comparison with driving rock rhythms. But soon the song opens up into a jam and the reasoning behind the longer track times is revealed. To the credit of the players — guitarist Juan Manuel Diaz, drummer Javier Murillo Gorchs and bassist Gustavo Bianchi – it doesn’t get boring, but the divisions between tracks become almost arbitrary by the end of this first 11 minutes, which is going to drastically change how you experience the album.

The upshot? That Humo del Cairo are best kept to full sessions rather than track-by-track listening. If you’re going to dig into the record, be aware that what you’re getting is a total-album flow. Each song has its grooves, but slower-tempo second track “Nimbo” is undoubtedly best experienced coming out of “A Tiempo,” and ditto for “Panorama,” which shows off Diaz’s nimble hand in another extended stoner jam. Among the usual suspects of ‘70s influences (your Floyds of Pink, Cheers of Blue and Crimson Kings), the band especially cites Pappo’s Blues as a point of particularly Argentine inspiration, and if that’s heard anywhere on Humo del Cairo, it’s heard on “Fuego de San Antonio,” which instead of opening into the by-now expected jam, keeps things straightforward and rocking for its shorter duration and ends as raucously as it begins before giving a kind of drone tone to lead into “Errantes.”

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Forget it, I’m out.

I’ve started three other articles since that Zed review below and they, like that review, all sucked, so I’m punching out early for the weekend. It’s a beautiful day anyway, so I’m going to go try and enjoy it. Thanks to the over 1,200 people who came here yesterday, topping even Wednesday’s numbers. I’ll be back Monday with hopefully a more productive disposition.

Whether the music is your thing or not, what you have to admit about Disparen! (Aquatalan), the second album from Argentina?s El Festival de los Viajes is that it?s accurately titled. Disparate, unique: they simply don?t fit, and that?s clearly on purpose. Disparen! boasts a sound taking cues from the psychedelic spaghetti west and somehow transposing them over rock structures. Can meets Ennio Morricone? Maybe. If they?re anything, they?re hard to pin down.

That being the case, Disparen! is all the more satisfying listen for its individualist qualities. Morricone is an obvious stylistic comparison; the Italian composer scored For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once upon a Time in the West, as well as over 500 other films both western and non. But El Festival de los Viajes are definitely a rock band, if one with considerable folk elements. The subtle groove in the wah guitar of ?El Andante? proves it. I hesitate to call them experimental only because of the connotations of totally inaccessible artistic nonsense the word brings out. Disparen! feels less like that than it does the byproduct of a band simply doing their own thing.

I?ll pause here to allow those who just gasped to recover their breath before continuing?

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Stepping outside his identity as one third of Argentine free riffers Los Natas, guitarist/vocalist Sergio Chotsourian formed the solo outing Ararat as a means for expressing experimental tendencies that did not otherwise fit into his main outfit. Ararat‘s debut, Musica de la Resistencia, crosses cultures and sonic norms en route to bleeding ambience and sometimes dark psychedelia. Based as much around acoustic guitar as noisescaping, the outing defies expectation in almost every way and produces an unsettling, challenging atmosphere.

Chotsourian, joined in his endeavor by his brother Santiago, El Topo (Dragonauta) and others, has shown there’s more to his musical personality than riffs, solos and singing about revolution. With Musica de la Resistencia, a new sonic direction is established and the boundaries seem limitless for what Ararat can accomplish. Sergio was kind enough to once again answer some email questions, and the resulting interview is after the jump. Enjoy.

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A while back, MeteorCity premiered new videos at the same time for Black Pyramid, Freedom Hawk and Farflung. Of course, they were hosted here. Now they’ve done it again, this time Argentinian style with the recently reviewed Ararat (“Little Grissy”) and new label signings Humo de Cairo (“Cauce”), who also hail from Buenos Aires. Give the Humo de Cairo track a little time to open up, and enjoy.

Even looking at the two titles with which he?s chosen to represent his first solo outing apart from Los Natas, it?s plain to see Sergio Chotsourian is working to reconcile two sides of himself. For a band moniker, he?s chosen Ararat, the highest mountain in and national symbol of his ancestral Armenia (actually it?s located in Turkey now, but everyone pretty much considers it Armenian anyway), and for an album title, Musica de la Resistencia, which is inextricably linked to the Latin American revolutionary ideal. The Argentine guitarist/vocalist lets loose this cross-cultural interplay across seven mostly experimental tracks on Ararat?s MeteorCity debut, making a marked sonic departure from his main outfit — at least mostly.

There are two extended tracks on the mostly instrumental Musica de la Resistencia, and the first of them is opener ?Gitanoss,? named for the Romani peoples of Spain. The song begins with an echoey sample and high desert tones with drums underneath before devolving into more ambient territory. Chotsourian wastes no time establishing the fact that Ararat is not going to be a band with one particular approach and a darker track such as the organ-infused ?Gitanoss? is only one face he might choose to show at any given time. Surprisingly, he follows it with an exact port of ?Dos Horses? from Los Natas? latest album, Nuevo Orden de la Libertad (Small Stone). The tones that began and ended that record appear here almost as a flotation device to keep listeners from drowning in the dreariness of the 14 minutes prior, although one wonders if Chotsourian was looking to connect Musica de la Resistencia with Nuevo Orden de la Libertad, he couldn?t have taken the central musical theme of ?Dos Horses? and put it into a new context. The piece has already shown itself malleable enough to be used for multiple purposes, but this is a small gripe.

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Yeah, this was fairly obvious after the interview with Sergio Chotsourian went up last Thursday night, but I’m pretty sure nobody’s paying attention anyway and even if they are, it bears repeating that Los Natas‘ Nuevo Orden de la Libertad (Small Stone) is the finest album to come out so far this year. Number one on the Top Five of the First Half of 2009. The multi-directional Argentinian rockers have stripped down their sound to its barest essentials and rawest form yet, lending the music an intensity never before attained in the band’s storied 16-year tenure.

The songs are approached with a revolutionary fervor and a feel of overdriven underground punk that complements the Los Natas sound perfectly. There’s a dirty sophistication to the heavy parts, and the several acoustic and Western or South American-inspired interludes show that although Nuevo Orden de la Libertad is clearly a record with something to say, time and thought have been given to aesthetics as well. As I mentioned previously, it wasn’t an easy call between this and Wino‘s Punctuated Equilibrium, but in the end, it was the immediacy of these tracks that put them over the top.

By way of sampling the album at its finest, here is the video for the title track of Nuevo Orden de la Libertad. Whatever else you do today, make sure you listen to it and please, please, don’t miss out on this record.