Filed under: Pisces | Tags: Chicago Reader, Plastic Crimewave, Steve Krakow, The Secret History of Chicago Music
Many thanks to Steve Krakow (aka Plastic Crimewave) for his fantastic drawing and summary of Pisces for his ongoing series, The Secret History of Chicago Music, featured in this week’s Chicago Reader.
What makes the tracks haunting is their austerity, the way they use just a handful of instruments — notably a minimum of standard trap drumming — to suggest desolate isolation. Whether it was deliberate artistic restraint or just a lack of resources makes no difference 40 years later. – New York Times
The Bruner tracks are without a doubt the deepest and most memorable moments on this really wonderful reissue. – Dusted
“Sam”, a woozy, chorusless, one-chord farewell that was way too much of a bummer to make an impact as a single but staggers out of the album to glower intently at anyone willing to listen to its naked pain. – Pitchfork
The enduring melodies and unique ambience of “A Lovely Sight” sound as vibrant and relevant today as they did four decades ago. – Chicago Sun Times
This release of A Lovely Sight means one less lost classic is waiting to be unearthed. – Pop Matters
There’s a rustic quality, a boundless imagination at the heart of the album that sounds distinctly Midwestern. There’s a spirit ingrained in these recordings that was not influenced by trends, fashions and the liberal utopias that were quickly crumbling on the coasts. Maybe just two men’s journey to the center of their minds? Quite a concept. – Agit Reader
Just a small sampling of what the media has been saying about 029: Pisces: A Lovely Sight. We’ve got the wax in now, with a bonus 45 limited to the first 1000. Don’t sleep.
You can now delve deeper into the Pisces catalog by checking out the 25 tracks that didn’t make the cut for A Lovely Sight in our Digital Dig section. There’s loads of great material from the Krein/DiVenti archive like the meandering fuzzed out guitar riffs in “Turnips Blues“ or the gentle cumulus instrumental “Riding On A Cloud.” Check it out below as you drift away into the proverbial skies of your mind.
We don’t grace the pages of the Grey Lady very often, but when we do it’s always a great surprise.
The latest time capsule of deeply obscure local music opened by the archivists at the Numero Group is the Pisces collection “A Lovely Sight,” a set of modest, eerie psychedelia from exotic Rockford, Ill. As the 1960s ended, Jim Krein and Paul DiVenti (both born under Pisces) were collaborators in a low-budget studio they named A Lovely Sight, concocting songs under the influence of the Beatles, folk-rock, garage-rock and sundry 1960s pop. They sang or turned the mike over to the somberly emotive Linda Bruner, and they sound deeply introverted, offering lyrics like “Somewhere there waits a golden day” and “The mystery of life is still unlearned.” The songs rarely go faster than a moody midtempo, suspended in reverb with distortion on some of the fringes. What makes the tracks haunting is their austerity, the way they use just a handful of instruments — notably a minimum of standard trap drumming — to suggest desolate isolation. Whether it was deliberate artistic restraint or just a lack of resources makes no difference 40 years later.
Back in our infancy, we traveled down to SXSW to see if there was any business to be done (there wasn’t). I mean, sure, we met a few people, got free drinks, and got our pictures taken with Clarence Reid, but over all the trip was a bust. Two days in we were at a bullshit panel on the future of music and happened to see vaunted Chicago music critic Jim Derogatis sitting alone. Five years prior we shared the same strip of PO Boxes, but that was hardly a connection to build from. Armed only with our hometown affiliation and the knowledge that we had sent him promos, we approached him. Introductions were made, but he could have cared less. When asked about our then recent compilation Yellow Pills: Prefill and any other thoughts he might have on the label, he replied, “Revisionist bullshit.”
With that nugget we departed. Dero was off the press list.
Two years passed. I saw his Sound Opinions partner Greg Kot at WBEZ and he praised the label (but still couldn’t find an angle he liked to write about it–he rectified this last year), and even made a play for an SO appearance. Nothing doing. The two most powerful critics in Chicago music had basically thrown up their hands.
And then a funny thing happened. We announced a show (The Eccentric Soul Revue) and stopped chasing the press. Biz 3 came on board to let us do what we do best, make records. Jim and Greg called and asked us to be on their show. So we did it. Then Jim did an interview with Tom and published it in the Sun Times. Figuring our run of Chicago press was over, we were certainly surprised to see this review of Pisces: A Lovely Sight in yesterday’s Sun Times:
Though it’s primarily known for its “eccentric soul” reissues, the founders of Chicago’s Numero Group label also have a deep and abiding love for the wildly inventive and genre-blurring qualities of vintage psychedelic rock, and with their latest release, they’ve unearthed as brilliant a buried treasure as I’ve ever heard from the fertile period that followed “Sgt. Pepper’s” and the much-vaunted Summer of Love.
Hardly a hippie haven, the psychedelic trip as interpreted in Rockford, Ill., circa 1969 was darker, grittier and on occasion more sinister and threatening than anything heard in sunny San Francisco–not for nothing does Numero describe the group of studio musicians who called themselves Pisces as aiming for “the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, but somehow sounding more like the Velvet Underground’s meth’d out Midwest cousin.” As with the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, that hint of menace makes the group’s journey toward the white light all the more powerful.
Previously heard only on three ultra-rare 45’s issued back in the day–the group’s one album remained unreleased until this collection–Pisces’ other big asset is the warm, robust Earth Mother voice of sometimes vocalist Linda Bruner, who shines on tracks such as the enchanting “Dear One,” the lovely “Say Goodbye to John” and the haunting “Sam.” The band was not immune to the indulgences of the times–a song like “Mary” sinks under the weight of all that phasing and studio trickery, while the somber spoken-word bit in “Genesis II” would have been better left to the Moody Blues. But overall, the enduring melodies and unique ambience of “A Lovely Sight” sound as vibrant and relevant today as they did four decades ago.
On the same day that Tortoise’s new album got 2.5 stars out of 4, we got 3.5. Not bad for revisionist bullshit.
Jim, if you’re reading this, you’re back on the list.
Filed under: Pisces, Smart's Palace | Tags: Pisces, Smart's Palace, Use Your Illusion
For those who still get excited about Tuesday new releases, we’ve got two reasons for you to stop by your local record emporium today (if Best Buy is your spot, we apologize). Perhaps you’re just getting home now from a long night camped out in front of your shop in eager anticipation. I can remember begging my mom to let me stay out to buy Use Your Illusion I & 2 on cassette at midnight from the Tower on Bascom Avenue in Campbell, California. It was a no go. If any 14 year olds are reading this and missed out, I sympathize.
We’ll be the first to admit that we’re not so good at getting two formats out on the same day. Try as we may, the process of manufacturing vinyl still takes double the time of what it does to make a CD. Jackets alone are six weeks, not to mention inner sleeves, lacquers, bum test pressings, and a litany of other problems that crop up along the way. That said, we hope that the wait hasn’t been too long for you Smart’s Palace enthusiasts. That extra month and half gave us the time to get a really high quality product made, proving to be one of our nicest LPs to date. Witness the heavy wax, two inner sleeves jammed with notes and photos, and the thickest jacket to ever come off the Stoughton line. Retail price is $22, but you can buy it from us for two bucks less (and take an additional 15% off if you’re a Numero subscriber!).
The other is the CD version of #029: Pisces: A Lovely Sight. Pisces were primarily a studio band operating out of Rockford, Illinois in the late 60s that churned out seriously damaged pop. This Numero-created “album” is the best of their unreleased material and three 45s for the Vincent label. Sometimes fronted by the lovely and mysterious Linda Bruner, the landlocked group took their cues from the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, but somehow ended up sounding more like the Velvet Underground’s meth’d out Midwest cousin. Give a listen to the needle drop below:
Like it? Alright, get your shoes tied, grab your wallet, and get to the shop. In your boxer shorts? Lazy? A little of both? Buy it from us by clicking here.
Since we’ve still got about a month until Numero 029, Pisces: A Lovely Sight hits the streets, I thought we’d give you a little taste of these stellar psych/folk tracks from Rockford, IL circa 1970.
The first 1,000 copies of the LP will also include a limited edition 7″ of the two extended play tracks included on the CD. Here’s Jaffa’s rough sketch for our Vincent Records imitation.
Here’s a brief video giving you a view from the sweet spot in Studio A as we bounce down the final version of “Elephant Eyes” from the Pisces: A Lovely Sight record.
We hit Interstate 90 West early yesterday morning and headed out to Rockford to interview Jim and Paul of Pisces, took some pictures of their homemade gear and Swedish guitars, sifted through the studio for more ephemera and tapes we missed the first time around, and finally knocked on some doors to try and find some lost members of the band. All in all, it was a productive trip and we finalized the contracts, officially making Pisces: A Lovely Sight our 29th release. Here are a few more pictures we took and an MP3 of a breathtaking version of The Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down” we came across in Jim’s massive tape vault.
Peerless sent the Pisces tape transfers over to us this weekend. We are currently burning some naga champa incense, pulling out our old Sabbath blacklight poster, and listening to them all on shuffle this afternoon, picking out the best tracks and takes for the heady Numero 029 release.
