Roadburn: "A time and place to get high en mass [sic] and bask in the heaviness"

Whether you’re looking for leaks and bootlegs from across the spectrum of doom and stoner rock, or you simply want to peruse Photoshopped images of topless, winged women wielding a variety of Renaissance Faire weapons, Doomed To Be Stoned In A Sludge Swamp is the audioblog for you.

Sludge Swamp is a collaborative affair, and right now their contributors are commemorating last weekend’s Roadburn Festival — an annual Dutch gathering focused on the hard rock underground, well known among European burners as a “time and place to get high en mass [sic] and bask in the heaviness,” to quote from its MySpace profile — by uploading live sets from Roadburns past.

Right now the archive includes recordings from Witch, Sunn O))), The Melvins, Om, Wolves in the Throne Room, Brant Bjork & The Bros, Masters of Reality, Hawkwind and Earthless (along with loads of lesser knowns) for your downloading pleasure.

Check out the full list of sets available by clicking here.

Ian Nagoski on American labels and blogs who are finding and sharing good music from all over the world (Arthur, 2008)

PEARL DIVING
Notes on a Few Americans Finding Musical Jewels in International Waters

by Ian Nagoski

from Arthur Magazine No. 32 (Dec 2008)

Record players are altars. The listener first goes through a repertoire of ritual gestures, removing the black spiral-inscribed disc from the sleeve, holding it by the edge and label and placing its center through the spindle before lifting the tone arm and placing it at the edge of the spinning disc. The air in the room begins to move, and the memory held by the disc of a performance by some living, breathing person is reiterated, separated from its image and corporeality in an angelically invisible space. Some part of the listener enters into that space and goes into communion with the unseen force of the sound.

It is magical and mysterious stuff, this impulse for sound-play that is universal among human beings through all times and places on earth.

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