additional reviews for eyes like saucersstill living in the desert (and mostly inside my own head)
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For Jeffrey K, former member of Urdog, current collaborator in Area C and peripatetic artisan behind Eyes Like Saucers, escape o the desert represents absolution and exile. In a move that echoes that of the protagonist of David Malouf's An Imaginary Life,
K's travels become a search for an archaic language. Still Living In The Desert consists mostly of audio documentation of his journeys. Hitting the road with a four-track and harmonium as companion,
K sees these songs as somehow inherent , articulating a paradoxically prelinguistic 'truth'.
In his liner notes, K quotes Nico ("I live like an exile") and her bleakly moving songs for harmonium offer close reference points. Like Nico, his melodies bear sediment of religious music, seesawing around a clutch of notes. "Ideas Of Reference" opens the disc by meandering quizzically across the body of a glockenspiel,
leading into a shaky cover of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song". The opening song from Wyatt's Rock Bottom, its watery logic of disappearance and transformation provides apt analogy for K's project, but his voice is too warbling to pull it off: you want to celebrate the intent, but the power of Wyatt's original
dissolves in this rendition.
After that, Still Living In The Desert gets better: K's speculative compositions excel when he's focusing on minute variations on vamps and themes. These compositions benefit from his relatively artless playing, which strips his songs of affectation, though one suspects they might well
have benefitted from more focussed attention.
Jon Dale
Eyes Like Saucers’ Still Living in the Desert (But Mostly Inside My Head) is just as inspired by space and admittedly even more out there. It’s the solo effort of a former urDog member and one can definitely sense the relation, although this one turns inwards much more than any of the urDog albums ever did. What we get here is an absolutely essential piece of music constructed from bleak song fragments interspersed with shimmering waves of haunting Indian pedal harmonium bliss and electronic bedroom experimentation. It all sounds like some nearly lost memory that you wish you could get rid of, but no matter what you do will be with you in one way or the other for the rest of your life. These mostly instrumental tracks creep up on you like an unexpected madness so reading that the whole thing was recorded when jeffrey k spent most of the year 2006 living within a Volkswagen van in the northern Arizona desert with nothing but his dog, harmonium and 4-track recorder doesn’t really come as a surprise. When traveling through this desert almost ten years ago I fell in love with the place and listening to Still Living in the Desert is a bit like playing those scenes for my eyes again. The slightly Nico-inspired dish presented here is not easy to digest but the reward is plentiful for everyone willing to make the effort.
Finally, Eyes Like Saucers be the work of Jeff Knoch (urDog), who spent the most of the year 2006 in a van in the Arizona desert, a harmonium and a 4-track his only weapon against the elements. As you can thus imagine, the album’s eight tracks are extended organ workouts, complimented with the occasional vocalization. Oh, and there is also glockenspiel, a solo, semi-improvised presentation of which opens the album with “Ideas of Reference”, this title a safe indication of the heady manifest found in the liner notes, a sort of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance memoir spliced with quotations from Heidegger, WV Humbolt, and Knoch’s muse, Nico. The title of the disc, ‘Still living in the Desert (and mostly inside my own head)’, is actually a direct extract from one of the singer’s journal entries, and Knoch even appears to be wearing a Nico t-shirt on the back cover, his body now a shrine to her spirit. Finally, naturally, there is a tribute to Nico by way of the title-track, a booming, droning fugue played with Wurlitzer, one of the album’s two covers; “Sea Song” is the other, an early apex written by Robert Wyatt and the one of two songs with verse, Knoch’s monochrome voice cascaded behind the multiple bellows of organ, recalling the saturated shanty of (VxPxC)’s “Reticent to Manifest”. The disc is more definitive moment than odd, with something like the seven minute “I Want to Believe” and eleven minute “Numinosity” likened in tone and timbre to a Current 93/Nurse with Wound projection, or Hush Arbors’ more obtuse instrumental entries. Finale “Desert Song (where land and water meet)” crams it all in, with David Tibetan incantation and multiple parts for harmonium, toy piano, and big fuzz electric guitar by guest E. Carlson. Like you, it’s slowly occurred to me that this album is not so isolated - the accumulating instruments, the guest, the empathy gaining in his voice – and while it seems to contradict the idea of the disc, it loses none of its glory as a far-reaching work of (relatively) limited means. Presented in traditional Last Visible Dog (non)style, with glossy inserts in a jewel-case. Another recommendation – a great batch!
La grande fratrie des inclassables s’est enrichie d’un nouveau satellite en orbite d’une voie lactée habitée de ces chercheurs de l’indicible fidèles à notre propre festival Octopus et son cousin germain City Sonics. Véritable artisan des musiques indéfinissables, l’Américain Jeff Knoch (aka Eyes Like Saucers) explore la galerie des instruments déclassés (harmonium, glockenspiel, toy piano, ukulélé, mini-orgue Farfisa), en une démarche qui fascinera l’auditeur un tant soit peu aventureux. A l’image de cette splendide – et méconnaissable – reprise du "Sea Song" de Robert Wyatt, les huit morceaux de l’album, joués essentiellement à l’harmonium, effeuillent les contours obscurs de l’indispensable Desertshore de Nico, dont on s’attend à voir surgir le magnétique fantôme à chaque instant. Les deux albums ne partageant pas le mot « Desert » pour rien, un même psychédélisme déliquescent s’empare des huit minutes magiques de "Delusion Of Reference" et du morceau-titre qui lui succède, comme embaumé d’un orgue en plein trip funèbre sur du Nocturnal Emissions. La démarche, qui teste sur "I Want To Believe" les limites de notre lassitude, emprunte – toujours – les sentiers de l’obsessionnel pour virer – parfois – à une névrose parapsychologique dont il est à se demander qui, du compositeur ou de l’auditeur devrait consulter le plus urgemment. Les paris sont ouverts.
-- Fabrice Vanoverberg
Eyes Like Saucers is the solo project of Jeffrey Knoch, formerly of urDog. Here's an artist who isn't afraid of staring into the abyss: the music on Still Living In The Desert evokes the apocalyptic folk of Current 93 and taps into the kind of outsider songwriting of Jandek or Robert Wyatt - the latter being literally the case on Knoch's version of Wyatt classic 'Sea Song'. The principal instrument on the album (made up of both instrumentals and sombre vocal tracks) is an Indian harmonium, although you'll also hear extensive use of glockenspiel, toy piano and farfisa. The pieces fit together very naturally as a whole, calling on a relatively restricted number of sound sources to great effect. The spiralling repetition on 'Fruhling Der Seele' is an especially effective conglomeration of most of the instruments at Knoch's disposal, while the cavernous melancholy of the title track stems from a solid six minutes of Wurlitzer organ. It's a pretty chilling instrumental and a natural escalation from the bleak harmonium tones that dominate much of the recordings. Recommended.
Anyone who covers any Robert Wyatt song is a hero in my book. No surprise then that Eyes Like Saucers [Jeffrey Knoch of the disbanded Urdog] makes up my list of heroes. His sadder than sad solo project - Eyes Like Saucers is one of the more moving releases of this year so far. Who would've thought that harmonium and farfisa organs are prime candidates for a great solo record. But what does Jeff K sound like without Urdog? For one, Eyes Like Saucers is made by someone who seems to self-declare himself a nomad. Don't expect the music to jump right up at you. Don't expect any chorus-line-chorus song selections, nor should you hope for any happy ditties. If anything, this is music that is morosely slow, addictively hypnotic and unbearably honest. Knoch knocks you lightly over the head with subtle harmonium rhythms and farfisa motifs. Best pieces are the drones. The title track is one, long sultry organ piece that slowly points the way towards a dark, ominous path, while "Numinosity" explores a similar path with ssomewhat more oomph. Then, there's that cover of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song". With heavy emphasis on the organ, Jeff's vocals get purposefully drowned underneath a cloud of altercating woosh. Highly enjoyable album, recommended to those who are in mourning or just feeling a tad depressed.
-- Tom Sekowski
Former Urdog organist Jeff Knoch draws out a series of introspective harmonium-based contemplations on “Still Living in the Desert (and mostly in my own head), a Last Visible Dog Records release for his solo Eyes Like Saucers project.
At times Knoch’s purposely simplistic and childlike approach can be grating, especially on “Sea Song,” a track that alone recalls the ‘talent’ of Wesley Willis. However, gorgeous work like “Delusion of Reference,” and the album’s title cut more than compensate– and I have the suspicion that within a few more listens, the purpose of the more simplistic tracks will reveal itself.
“Still Living in the Desert,” in many ways, requires listeners to slow down quite a bit– while Knoch’s insistent playing can be forceful, it seems more focused on the pulse and breath of the harmonium than on any sort of keyboard flash. Often Knoch will repeat a short looping phrase, mutating it ever so slightly; by design or embraced accident, it is difficult to tell. “Numinosity” is a good example of this structure, mostly maintaining a small figure for around 7 minutes, and exploring variants of it along the way.
By album’s end, Knoch finally notices his ‘audience’ in “Desert Song” and calls to listeners, “meet me on the desert shore.” Part carnival, part inner conscience, it’s a fine ending to the album.
Overall, the sound of this disc is very nice. Being able to hear the air noise of the harmonium is essential, so anything less would have created a dramatically different listening experience. While not exactly an experimental album, I am enjoying Knoch’s individual take on an instrument I would have previously thought to have had a rather limited capacity for expression.
Solo project of Jeff Knoch of Urdog and more recently Area C. The title comes from a late diary entry from Nico and is most apt for the music within - mostly played on harmonium (just one blast from that wheezy instrument has me wailing "Janitor of Lunacy" anyway!) with a bit of glockenspiel at the beginning and the majestic swell of a wurlitzer pipe organ on the title track. This is a bleak inner flight with the harmonium laying down layers of minor chord impenetrable gloom. Also includes a cover of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song". Recommended.
The solo manifestation of Jeffrey Knoch, Eyes Like Saucers straddles psychedelia, folk, ambient and just plain strange experimentia. The centrepiece of these haunting soundscapes is an Indian pedal harmonium, which reminds this writer of such eccentric and venerable instruments as the bagpipes, the hurdy gurdy, and the piano accordion.
Knoch has a very respectable touring history in the states, having rubbed shoulders on stage with Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Circle, Boris, Six Organs of Admittance, Sunn o))), Jim O'rourke, Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, and Merzbow. Living in the Desert opens with delicate xylophone tinklings, and moves into a cover of Robert Wyatt's “Sea Song”. The title track is a piece that sees the harmonium provide a subtle backdrop to church organ improvisations. The harmonium is a fascinating instrument, a hardy lung pushing out breaths of accordion hypnotics throughout the album. Knoch blends vocals, the glockenspiel, and other assorted electronic mischief, setting them up in orbit around the ethereal chords of the pedal harmonium. Did I mention that this album features a pedal harmonium?
Still Living in the Desert is hypnotic and graceful. Song by song, the listener isn't throttled by the music, instead lulled into inner realms by the otherworldly chords of the harmonium. Eyes Like Saucers' inspirations include Nico, Robert Wyatt, Carl Orff, and early 20th century German poet, Georg Trakl: “(Eyes) evokes a bleak and troubled age that, ironically, can best be surmised as a post-apocalyptic era that we have as yet to arrive upon. (Jeffrey) emerges from the deserts, forests, and mountains of the American southwest where he and Parmalee, the dog, resided for the past eight months within an aged and decrepit VW microbus.”
Definitely an interesting release, which would be eminently suitable for movie and documentary soundtracks, in my opinion. It has been described as evoking a yet to arrive post-apocalyptic era. I'm not convinced of that-the apocalypse has been well nigh for some time now, but nevertheless Still Living in the Desert evokes a reflective transcendentalism, music of the past and future synthesised together. Not for those who need to be blasted out of the water, musically speaking, but this is a great CD for sitting still, and listening, and musing.
A man and a dog living in a van and traveling through the desert is already an inspiring concept per se. That the man also records on a 4-track cassette machine his improvisations on instruments such as harmonium, toy piano, glockenspiel, oscillator, Farfisa minicompact organ and ukulele adds further spice to the recipe. Throw in a drunken Robert Wyatt cover (“Sea song”), a series of clear references to Nico (“meet me on the desert shore”, repeated in “Desert song”, plus the main instrument’s choice) and serve with a bit of tape distortion and lo-fi attitude, and you’ve just had a faint idea of what Eyes Like Saucers does. Still, there are additional surprises; one for all, the fact that several moments of the harmonium-based tracks, built on repetitive washes and hypnotizing, if irregular phrases, had me thinking about a Moondog/Philip Glass mix (I hope that Mr. Glass won’t sue, even if ELS’ pieces are certainly more interesting than most of his music from the last 20 years or so). The title track features the author playing a majestic-sounding Wurlitzer Theatre pipe organ (it saturates the mix, but you’d been already warned) and can easily be considered as the album’s most engrossing moment. I don’t exactly know how it happened but this record, which in other days I could have foolishly judged as a minor item, made me feel so trapped in a still-minded vicious circle that I suspect that something magic hides behind this man and his canine comrade. I must discover what it is.
Jeffrey K., chi era costui? No, non si tratta di un Cricco Castelli qualsiasi ma di un artista dal passato molto onorevole negli urDog, che pare abbiano 'splittato' (dopo un brano nella celebrata raccolta "The Invisible Pyramid" ed alcuni dischi su Secret Eye), e così lo ritroviamo alle prese con questo progetto solista che ha girato per concerti tutto il territorio degli States. Le intenzioni di Jeffrey appaiono chiare sin dalle note di copertina, che si aprono con una citazione di Nico («I don't know i can live. It's a constant struggle with myself. I feel like an alien to myself and it's dramatic. I do not have any reference to understand who I am. I live like an exile.»), e vengono confermate dal principale strumento utilizzato, un vecchio harmonium a pedali; accanto e/o in sovrapposizione ad esso ci sono un pianoforte giocattolo, un glockenspiel, un oscillatore, un miniorgano compatto farfisa, un ukelele e, in Still Living In The Desert..., un organo a canne da teatro Wurlitzer. Quasi tutti i brani sono strumentali e hanno un po’ il respiro solenne della musica da chiesa, placcato comunque da impulsi minimalisti e/o placato da un substrato pagano-festaiolo, con l'eccezione di Ideas Of Reference, tutta giocata sul tintinnare asciutto del glockenspiel, e di I Want To Believe, nella cui aria popolaresca l’harmonium suona come una fisarmonica.
Le citazioni non si limitano alla frase di Nico e arrivano a interessare anche due fra i pochi brani in cui viene utilizzata la voce, Sea Song e Desert Song.... Il primo, firmato da Robert Wyatt, viene rifatto in una versione praticamente identica all'originale (compreso il tentativo di imitare il timbro vocale wyattiano) tanto che mi è difficile capirne il senso, ed è proprio a causa di questa sua inutilità ed ignavia che rappresenta il momento più debole del disco. Diverso è il discorso per Desert Song..., una canzone nella cui scrittura Knoch dice di essersi ispirato a Nico!?!!... in realtà si tratta né più né meno di una vecchia canzone della 'femme fatale', cioè All That Is My Own da "Desertshore", ed è un mistero il motivo che ha spinto Knoch ad accreditare il brano di Wyatt al suo vero autore ed a presentare questo come se invece fosse una sua composizione (la resa è comunque meno pedissequa rispetto a quella di Sea Song). Un'ultima citazione è rappresentata dall'immagine sul retro del box che ricalca quella celebre del floydiano "Ummagumma" e in tal caso, vista la povera messe degli strumenti adagiati in mostra, mi par di notare una certa dose d'ironia.
(Il disco è dato in uscita per Agosto).
Recording under the name Eyes Like Saucers, ex-Urdog keyboard player Jeffrey K has created a haunting and personal body of work on ‘Still Living In the Desert’. Mainly recorded whilst living in the Arizona desert in 2006, the album features twinkling minimalist Glockenspiel, and a stately Indian harmonium, the unusual sounds giving the music a refreshing feel and complementing the droning vocals on such tracks as ‘Sea Song’ (Robert Wyatt) or ‘Fruhling der seele’. Elsewhere the instrumental pieces have the simplicity and dignity on ritual music, the emphasis on the atmosphere created, meaning this is wonderful music to relax to, the sounds taking you to the deserts within.
EYES LIKE SAUCERS Still Living In The Desert? (Last Visible Dog)
Urdog was one of our favorite groups, a primitive psych folk ensemble, hypnotic and heavy and surprisingly prog, with a bit of space rock and a whole lot of drone. What was not to love?! The band called it a day a while back, but then a year or two later this little gem surfaced, a solo record from Eyes Like Saucers, which just so happens to be ex Urdog-er Jeff Knoch. But For ELS, Knoch has abandoned all the trappings of a proper rock band (ie drums, bass, guitar, etc), and he and his faithful canine companion took off in a VW van for the desert, armed only with an Indian harmonium, a toy piano, a glockenspiel, an oscillator, a Farfisa minicompact organ, a ukulele and presumably some sort of recording device.
?The results are much how you might imagine from the instrumentation, long warm, warbly whirring dronescapes, the organ(s) pulsing, and wheezing, the chords shifting subtly, dense and layered, and drifting slowly, contemplative and dreamlike. Super obscure reference: reminds us a bit of NZ outfit Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, but blurred into something much more static and meditative.
?The record begins with a twinkling field of bells and chimes (the toy piano we're guessing) a playful high end field of plinks and plonks, melodies like sunlight through icicles, but then quickly the record gets slower and lower, transforming into a glorious shamanic drone record. Some of the tracks are rich and melodic, almost playful, jaunty, a bit like sea shanties (or desert shanties in this case), while others are lugubrious slow crawls, all whirring shimmer and blurred slow motion slither, some are peppered with the chiming toy piano percussion, or laced with Knoch's buried in the mix monotone vocals, others are left unadorned, just the notes and the melodies, the timbre and the tone, tangled into soft smears, drifting like a warm evening fog over the wide open sands of the desert.
?So great. And there's even a Robert Wyatt cover! Quite recommended.
So beautiful and intimate... Listening to this CD is like wandering through the deserted, half-forgotten roads of America… or the ones that tend to hide deep inside yourself – as the full title of the album so aptly suggests: "Still Living In the Desert (And Mostly Inside My Own Head)". The songs? A reflection of a man's life, more so, of a particular outlook on life.
The back cover picture gives us a clue. A man stands in front of his van – a 1982 WV vanagon, to be precise. He is the one responsible for the music contained on this particular recording. I will not give you his full name though. I can only tell you that his first name is Jeffrey and that he used to play Farfisa in Secret Eye-affiliate Urdog.
In front of Jeffrey lay (some of) his instruments of choice: a harmonium, a glockenspiel, a few pedals and a 4-track cassette recorder (let's not forget the presence of his dog Parmalee too). Nevertheless, most of the sounds that run through this CD come from the playing of a slightly modified Indian harmonium which gives the music this particular breathing/ organic quality: a very human approach indeed.
Previous reviews have mentioned Nico, David Tibet or Robert Wyatt as possible references (Jeffrey does a haunted cover of Wyatt's unforgettable "Sea Song" on this album). Yet, the music has its own way of meandering … As you listen on (track 4 – "Still Living In The Desert", track 5 – "I Want To Believe"), it becomes clear that Jeffrey doesn't necessarily need words to express his relationship to the world(s) around him. The music just takes you in… and you start getting all these pictures in your head – these shape-shifting organ drones being the best companions of all.
Yet, words keep re-emerging here and there. First, in the liner notes. There's a moving quote from Nico, for instance. About how she could feel like an alien to herself in this world. Another clue… Then, there are a few words from Jeffrey too, about the preparation for the journey that (still) lay ahead and which resulted into this particular set of songs. Some personal reflections as well – about man's quest for truth and a deeper sense of meaning.
Finally, in the music itself – in some of the slightly more "melodic" (read: concise) settings. In the song "Fruhling der Seele" (track 6), for instance, in which Jeffrey's voice is heard reciting some words in the background. Or in the concluding statement of sorts (as an echo to the Wyatt Song) that constitutes "Desert Song (Where Land and Water Meet)". Of course, there's no real distinction between words and the musical sounds here (see the Humboldt quote in the liner notes): it's more about the expression of one's voice than anything else, really.
And it all culminates in the epic "Numinosity" which – in addition to its subtle succession of organ variations – also features an oscillator: another way to reflect upon the fragility of the human presence… Listening to this CD is a fascinating experience – it's like a diary through sound, each page/ layer gaining more substance as you read on. This is particularly apparent in the way the organ drones may change in volume and intensity (and texture) within a single piece.
Consequently, the music always seems to follow its own train of thoughts… And it's as if Jeffrey could actually CHANNEL the "thinking power" hidden within the sounds he is able to conjure up. Music as a combination of all. Music as a lonely voice pertaining to another sense of belonging. The Song as an opened form ready to be made concrete by a series of related gestures: gestures-words that are actually able to create meaning. Meaning out of the void. 7/10 -- Francois Hubert (5 February, 2008)