KING BLOOD - EYEWASH SILVER
ignorant gore 2010, edition of 100
"In late 2010 this came out of nowhere and blew our minds. Unfortunately it disappeared faster than a fugitive at a busted up coke party. We discovered it through an enticing review that Doug Mosurock over at Still Single / Dusted wrote - when we received the records and realized that there was absolutely no hyperbole or exaggeration in Doug's review: 'Little anonymous fuzz guitar rudiment blowdown from ex-SNAKE APARTMENT guitarist RYLAND WHARTON (also the man behind the Skulltones and Twonicorn labels). As King Blood, he lays down eight instrumental four-trackers rendered over a three-year period, nothing but guitar, bass and cymbal to keep time, and in that space the artist gets real, with simple themes repeated in a noisy, low-rent, yet meditative space. For as thick as these vibes get, the music itself is not necessarily aggressive, which is why these big, billowing songs sound gentle and bluesy and introspective, even in the overblown treatment most of them receive. Early Wooden Shjips or Purling Hiss (and above all, Les Rallizes Denudes) would be good signposts for this album, but without obvious psych moves like wah-solos and acid burn motifs, or the heavy drumming to keep time; King Blood wants to get you down by volume, and in that it is a drifting, uncompromising, diffuse and very loud success.'" - PERMANENT via MIDHEAVEN
"not to be taken lightly, but if you have the time to pull back the layers of hiss, saturation and distortion you'll find yourself pulled in. One for the heads, for sure." - BOOMKAT
"King Blood treats fuzzy guitar riffs not simply as ends, but as mantras to be chanted and monuments to be worshiped. Each track offers one simple figure devoutly repeated, as if musical nirvana is always just one more riff away." - PITCHFORK
this album broke my brain like nothin else ever has or probably ever will
i mostly agree with MOSUROCK that it is impossible to dismiss any influence the perpetual wave of post VELVETS japanese noise rock - LES RALLIZES, HIGH RISE, MAINLINER, etc - likely had on KING BLOOD, perhaps filtered through western translations courtesy SKULLFLOWER, early COMETS and GOSLINGS, but i don't hear EYEWASH SILVER in quite the same way - where noise rock often seems to create noise as a provocation, KING BLOOD employs noise as an invocation, as a key to unlock a hidden door - noise is only the delivery mechanism, the outermost layer of this onion, the first stage of this psycho-sonic moonshot for the ages
"Everyone needs some LRD on the shelf. While I love the sound of the records and mysterious nature surrounding them, I was listening to more Willie Dixon, Howlin Wolf, Agitation Free, Cactus, UFO, Toxodeth and Diamond Head. OZ Days Live boot from years back was probably one of my earliest exposures to LRD. I originally bought it for the Travellers though. Not sure if any of this comes through in King Blood, but my love of Nocturnus and Toxodeth probably doesn't come through either. Influences and references are funny like that: they get ingested, garbled up, and only sometimes does something resembling the original get spit out." - KING BLOOD via VICE
EYEWASH SILVER is -in- the world of noise rock but not -of- it
there was a surge of "noisy rock" at the turn of the millennium, categorically separate from -though perhaps informed by- noise rock lineages, but mostly rigging hardcore punk energy with hard rock heft and a grungy aesthetic into something askew to metal, which i refer to as "brute force psychedelia" - the common model used to label EYEWASH SILVER is comparison to this "noisy rock" scene - BIRDS OF MAYA, PURLING HISS, etc - and to so some extent validated by KING BLOOD's own words, but i (fanatically) believe it is an incomplete model, though it does lend some understanding
and there was (and still is, to some extent) a resurgence of "psych rock" in generic terms, adjacent to said notion of "noisy rock" emphasizing sharp hooks and energetic grooves - pop music, in a sense (and increasingly so), constructed from un-pop components - anthems for garage stoners and punk weirdos working and/or hanging out at record stores became ever more embraced by ever less marginalized listeners - by the time EYEWASH emerged, bands like THEE OH SEES and WOODEN SHJIPS were headlining festivals
"King Blood came out of a fascination with the riff. I was interested in distilling a song to its base element, seeing if it could be whittled down to a nugget that would then expand to fill the field of vision. I don't see the songs as really beginning or ending." - KING BLOOD via VICE
both "the riff" and "the groove" were pricking up more eager ears - DEAD MEADOW records doubled in value - i traded my OLD GROWTH for an IGNORANT GORE pressing - listeners looked beyond the STOOGES and CAN for more "pummel and throb", for something seeming mostly lost for a generation or two -- a real cool time, as IGGY put it -- this is a hurdle the listener must clear when approaching EYEWASH SILVER - on the surface it might seem like just another "noisy psych" record of its time - the form may be similar, but the function is not
i imagine KING BLOOD as quickly bored by WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT then becoming obsessed with LEGENDARY GUITAR AMP TAPES and OUTSIDE THE DREAM SYNDICATE, finding salvation in the riff ad infinitum, with whatever confluence of influences, tapping into a deep spiritualism akin to KOI POND and BART DE PAEPE, on the same wavelength as YERBA MANSA's minimal maximal blues destruction, worshiping at the same altar as MIKE VEST
it's the devout allegiance to mantric repetition that sets EYEWASH SILVER apart, separates this modern day private press monster from most if not all its peers and predecessors, managing to drown out almighty DOPESMOKER and rapturous DREAMWEAPON to my ears - there is something profound in the elegant simplicity of these crude groove-locked fuzzed-out lo-fi jams that stretch on toward infinity, a spirituality in these glorious singularities expanding to fill every corner of the room, of the mind - to employ an adage courtesy CRYPT RECORDS- it'll slay yer arse so hard you'll be left standin in the middle of a busy street naked and confused -- which, amusingly, cuts close to the literal translation of "les rallizes denudes"
"Q: if you had the chance to have a beer with anyone alive or dead in musical history, which would it be? A: Is it too much to ask for a roundtable with 1969 Edgar Broughton, 1980 Steve Harris, 1969 Don Van Vliet, and 1970 Vangelis Papathanassiou, and a couple of six packs?" - KING BLOOD via VICE
that sells EYEWASH SILVER better than i ever could -- to some extent i concede "facination with the riff" is an awful low common denominator here, but i do believe there is -something- to most of the music i present here, and EYEWASH SILVER is the best possible example i could ever submit - i may be proselytizing to the skeptics or else preaching to the choir, but maybe there's some folks attuned to the ripples emitting from this blog who have not heard EYEWASH SILVER or else so closely considered it from the vantage point of one of the central pillars of my philosophy- nirvana is always just one more riff away
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/we-interviewed-king-blood
