JOMF are a funny sort of band. For a name that suggests noise based, visceral performance art, the band themselves specialise in a rather psychedelic country-folk with a largely improv, experimental vibe. I own a couple of their other records and they are pretty good, not exactly mind blowing but they have their moments. If I am to be totally honest, if I hadn’t seen this cheap I probably wouldn’t have bothered buying it. I’m really glad I did though because Valley of Fire is an absolute classic of the genre and the best JOMF record I’ve heard. If you are interested in exploring the records of this band then I can recommend this one. I’ve been playing this everyday since I bought it. Great.
Jackie-O Motherfucker are a band from Portland, Oregon based around two core members, Tom Greenwood and Jef Brown. They started their career as a much more experimental band before embracing pastoral themes on 2006’s Ballads of the Sacred Harp. Jackie-O Motherfucker have made a previous appearance at Ducks Battle Satan and that record is along the same lines as this. Blood of Life was a live record which covered a couple of the tracks from Ballads. There is such a serene quality to the music of JOMF on this record and if you like your folky improvisers to have a bit of a tune then this is worth while tracking down. I like this better than Blood of Life for two reasons. Firstly because it’s less bleak than Blood of Life and secondly because they hit a groove right out of the Religious Knives playbook on some of the tracks here. It also has some nice noise elements (around the seven minute mark on Nice One for instance) which lift this beyond hippy dippy psych- folk. They also show a more experimental side – the 16 minute long Spirits would not be out of place on one of the stranger Nurse With Wound outings. I’ve always found a lot of improvised, experimental, folk records a bit of a slog. I’ve dabbled a fair bit but very few have made their way onto DBS. That said, when a band gets it right like Jackie-O Motherfucker do on Ballads of the Sacred Harp, this sort of sound is well worth tracking down.
With a name like Jackie-O Motherfucker I was expecting a lot of things. What I wasn’t expecting was a band that sounds like Sir Richard Bishop’s musicianship crossed with Earth’s recent pastoral bleakness. But this is in fact the best comparison I could come up with to describe the melancholic,folk ambiance of Jackie-O Motherfucker. This is just sublime and sometimes I need to take a rest from noise and listen to something as peaceful, mellow and clever like The Blood of Life. A great deal of this new weird folk stuff I can do without but this bunch of improvising troubadours are an unexpected and welcome addition. I’d really like to hear from anyone who knows a bit more about the band. Is this sort of stuff representative or have some of their earlier releases been a bit weirder? I know very little about the band and this record is a live-to-tape show they did for a Dutch radio station. It’s a great antidote for all the Merzbow I’ve been listening to today. I recommend it.
Ducks Battle Satan 