Veronica Mars Withdrawal

At Camera Obscura Acres we're suffering from Veronica Mars withdrawal, as the show has going into another hiatus, a mere two shows after the main Xmas one. I hear the last two episodes didn't rate very well, so please give this show your support! It's brilliant and fragile and could be gone in the blink of eye, lost in the conjoining of the UPN and WB networks into the WC (or whatever) quite literally.

Next episode should be 15 March in the US. My Bit Torrent waits impatiently to fire up.

Goths Give Fell CD Thumbs Up!

Check out Gothtronic Web Review here.

Fell from Colorado is the side project of Josh Wambeke, also known of the
spaecrock outfit Phineas Gage. The music of Fell is dreamy psychedelic pop. The
songs are experimental, mostly electronic but very atmospheric, with all sorts
of subtle additions. Furthermore they have a nice and warm guitarsound and
strong hints towards wave-doom bands like Spiritualized, Joy Division or The
Cure during the Distintegration times. Their spirit wanders through the music of
Fell without being able to exactly put your finger on it. Spacepop wouldn’t be
such a bad description for the music of Fell. The echoeing and reverb
guitarsound and dreamy vocals give the electronics a totally different feel and
effect. This is one of those lovely records you will spin on a lost Sunday
afternoon. So i will have another listen to this record again now.

Thanks Teknoir!

Storm at C-O Acres

Snapped from the back porch:

Latest Reviews for Terrascope On-Line

Here are links to some of my latest scribings on new releases for the Terrascope UK site:

The Clear Spots CD "Mansion in the Sky" on Deep Water
Phosphene CD "The Plum, the Orange and the Matchbox" on Secret Eye

Random quote from the Clear Spots review:

Beer, bong and barbeque are probably the main influences on the stomping
'Mud Boots', which sounds like some dazed 70s mid-Western garage psychonauts
worshipping at the font of Sabbath while cutting their soon-to-be-lost private
pressing. It has a spectacularly saturated sound that rewards high volume
listening (the sessions were recorded on a good old cassette portastudio).
'Three Dignitaries' is typical of the whole, ploughing a furrow of drone while
occasionally switching of the engine to admire pastoral surrounds. It's damn
near bucolic.

Deep Water E-Zine Goes Live

I've been waiting for this for a while. Great to see Kevin Moist's fine fanzine back from the dead as a web-zine.

They've run an interview I did with Nick Castro, which is nice. You can find it on the main page. Also a recipe for good old Aussie damper bread!

Go here:

Deep Water

Latest Reviews For Terrascope On-Liine

Here are links to some of my latest scribings on new releases for the Terrascope UK site:

Fursaxa CD "Amulet" on Last Visible Dog
Spiral Joy Band CD "Lullabies for Jeff Dean" on VHF

Random quote from the Spiral Joy Band review:

'Lullaby 2' is insanely long at nearly 42 minutes, evolving from the deep
listening trance space created by Gangloff's esraj, to some Last Chord at the
End of the Universe action as furious percussion and shrieking shenais push the
track over the edge of sanity, and an infinite number of howler monkeys toss
their typewriters out of their trees in admiration and sympathy. By its
conclusion, most listeners' nerve endings are quite possibly going to be arcing
like downed power lines.

Fell CD Now Out!

First release for 2006! We're excited! (Then again we're an excitable bunch.)

Artist: Fell
Title: (self-titled)
Cat No: CAM074CD (12 tracks, 47:55 approx)
About the album: Fell is a new project by Josh Wambeke of the Denver, Colorado psychedelic pop duo Phineas Gage (last heard in 2000 on their Camera Obscura CD "Reconsidered"). The band began life as a series of four-track tapes culled from a backlog of Josh Wambeke's demos - experimental odds and ends deemed unsuitable for inclusion in the Phineas Gage repertoire due to their heavy usage of electronics and drum machines. When Wambeke's colleague in Gage, Patrick Porter, embarked on an extensive globe-trot and started on a series of solo releases, Wambeke set out to combine the existing electro-ambient feel of these demo tracks with the heavily-reverbed space guitars and layered, subterranean vocals that had comprised the Phineas Gage sound. Recruiting local drummer Josh Cedillo and friends Zac Hilman, and Mike Dewey, Wambeke purchased home recording equipment and spent the next year in his grandmother's basement recording the songs for a first Fell album. Heavy influences during the recordings included Joy Division and the Cure's "Disintegration".

As sessions for the album progressed, Wambeke took on more and more of the recording himself, the creation of the songs becoming a kind of therapy during a time of uncertainty and depression. A year's worth of basement sessions gave birth to this CD. A number of shows were played, but eventually Hilman and Dewey left the band for other ventures. Currently the group consists of Wambeke and Cedillo, who are continuing to record new songs for future releases. The Fell CD runs the gamut from psych to space to post-rock with nods in the direction of early new wave and ambient electronics but in the end it is the band's effortless song craft and precise arrangements that propel tracks like the hypnotic "Data-Backspace=Error", the melancholy "End Forever", the haunting "Vacant Song" and the sublime acoustic closer "Cause of Cancer" into hearts and stratospheres.

Press for Phineas Gage's "Reconsidered":

"Homegrown psychedelic offerings from Colorado duo…fuzzy guitars and emotional vocals show an affection for more recent drug rock like Spaceman 3 as well as the classics. Nice playing" - Scram Magazine #12

"Overall a great album, dreamy and expressive…these guys have a lot of promise" - LosingToday Magazine

"Phineas Gage's 'Reconsidered' is a Lo-Fi masterwork. Obviously recorded on a tiny or absent budget, the album nonetheless pleases the listener with sturdy yet fragile melodies. Reminds one of the 'Meddle' Floyd era, but without all the sound effects and long guitar solos. A beautiful, haunting, and unfortunately overlooked record." Howard Morris at http://www.psychedelic-music.net

"Criminally overlooked" – Ptolemaic Terrascope On-Line May 2005

Check out MP3s: Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and follow the "Sounds" Link.
Also, there are three or four tracks at the Fell MySpace page:http://www.myspace.com/fellmusic

Email me about ordering direct from us!

Camera Obscura Acres - Photo for Today

Rose walk coming along:

Camera Obscura Bookshelf/DVD Rack

Currently reading the deeply twisted Iain M. Banks space opera-to-end-all-space operas "The Algebraist". Incredibly dark and incredibly funny, and the gas-giant inhabiting Dwellers are one of the greatest creations of modern Science Fiction. Nobody quite combines the galactic-scope with the writing skills in this field. Peter Hamilton has the scope, but writes pretty generically. It's been a dark ride so I'm hoping for some light at the end of the tunnel, but with Banks, that's not usually going to happen.

The Camera Obscura HQ home-theatre (ahem) is screening the Region 1 DVD release of the 1995/1996 series "American Gothic" which is totally more drugged out and noirish than I remember, even though the effects occasionally look a little dated. The box contains five of six eps that never screen so that is cool too. The transfer is a little grainy, but I guess they did the best with what they had, which probably didn't include original 35mm film positives, of maybe they just didn't want to spend the money. Still, it's sufficient.

Also screening, because "American Gothic" is not universally loved around here, is Season 3 of the (God-like genius of) "Homicide: Life on the Street", which is where they really settled into a full-season-order groove. Amazing look, writing, performances, and music selection. Not even approached in quality until The Wire and The Shield came out, and they only really exist because of cable. There is no way that "Homicide: Life on the Street" would be on USA network TV if it came out now.