Black Access / Black Axes

LOCAL! Radical and intense free music from Oakland. Highest recommendation. This is the final album to feature the duo of Zachary James Watkins (guitar) and Marshall Trammell (drums). In Watkins’s words, this is “new black music: inventive and ultimately emancipatory.” They’ve played KZSU multiple times, and they’re electrifying to see live. This double album captures that experience. Free jazz, doom metal, and noise all blend into something else. It’s not rock ’n’ roll, but it rocks harder than any other new record I’ve heard in 2018. RIYL Sun Ra, Afrofuturism more widely, East Bay noise, Miles Davis in the ‘70s, Earth, Oren Ambarchi, The Psychic Paramount. Favorites: 1-1, 1-6, 2-1, 2-2, 2-4. No words, no FCCs.

Disc 1
1. *(9:09)—Glitchy doom metal guitar intro. Starts with a stuttering rhythm, moves at full speed and with complex rhythmic feints. Full bore rock ’n’ roll.
2. (6:52)—Feedback becomes metallic noise. Free tempo drums enter at 2 minutes, constant rhythmic change.
3. (4:02)—A thick industrial fog of drone. Slow toms. The snare snaps and recedes.
4. (6:00)—Deep, dense dark ambient. No drums. Field recordings of cars.
5. (6:07)—Drums only. Sharp, careful beginning becomes a wall of drum rolls. Dramatic.
6. *(10:04)—Background drone, slow tom rolls. Free and heavy, tempoless, increasingly active on the drums. Jaw-dropping solo drumming for the last two minutes.

Disc 2
1. *(12:50)—Drone in D, snare and hi-hat rolls to start. Intense doom flavor to the guitar harmonies. Pulsing, often consistent dance beat underneath.
2. *(7:34)—Scraping sounds, broken lawn mower guitar. Very fast drums, lots of dinging cymbals. This is some great guitar noise.
3. (13:09)—Distant doom metal drone. Drums kick in late and slow. Lots of toms. Noise gets thick at seven minutes. Swings near the end.
4. *(7:50)—Feedback. Thick, doomy, with lots of snare rolls. At full tilt by four minutes. Has something like a chord progression.