The Doors Forum

Recommended by our good friend freedomman--I took the liberty, Ed!!

ALLAH-LAS




"Allah Las, in my opinion Best Album from 2012:

Allah-Las formed in Los Angeles in 2008 around a mutual love for records, Los Angeles history, and the beach. They are all surfers and cover the city from the East Side (Mt. Washington) to way out West (Venice Beach) - and their sound reflects the geography of the city. The group consists of Miles Michaud, singer and guitarist, Pedrum Siadatian, electric guitar and vocals, Spencer Dunham, Electric Bass and vocals, and Matthew Correia, drums, percussion and vocals.

Since coming together as a band, they have cut their teeth playing numerous California dates with groups like Entrance Band, Tyde, Tijuana Panthers, and the Growlers, and have garnered the approval of original UK Psych founding-father Patrick Campbell-Lyons (Nirvana). In the Los Angeles musical community, they have gained a reputation as a laid-back, grooving band with strong ties to the authentically LA-centric sounds of bands like the Byrds, Love, and early Captain Beefheart."

Tell me Whats On Your Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiJYecS0vU0

Busman's Holiday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qGbcOZd5N0

Don't Forget It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQmBdvzLiWU

Long Journey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwYMhfMORw8

................

If I had discovered this not knowing their time line, I would would be sure they were a long lost 60's band with that early Byrds/Love/Stones sound!!



Artists To Watch

Ah, LA. Arguably one of the most infamous abbreviations for a city, the two letters conjure images of a concrete empire shrouded in the remnants of ‘40s. The question of descending from fault lines into the great Pacific always present, at least on a subconscious level, driving smog-shrouded dreams and failed schemes.

The gold rush has long since passed, yet the ache for California lingers on. Although countless artists have dwelled within the expanse of Los Angeles, no band quite captures the city down to its bare roots quite like Allah-Las. Urban dwellers through and through, the quartet records in a distillery in Costa Mesa, aided by the careful production of Nick Waterhouse, in order to carefully craft their reverb-addled, sundrenched sound.

The Allah-Las’ self-titled debut just dropped via Innovative Leisure, a retrospective work spanning the breadth of Los Angeles’ diverse cultural and aesthetic gems. Sharp percussion, swelling guitarlines and breathy vocals bring the beach to the mp3, relishing in a sound that’s distinctively Calfiornian and eternally shimmering in the reflection of waves.

We spoke to lead guitarist Pedrum Siadatian about LA ventures, the resurgence of retro sounds and working Amoeba.



I get the sense that the notion of place is intrinsic to Allah-Las’ sound. What part of LA are you from?

Well, two of us moved from San Francisco. Me personally, I’m from Laurel Canyon.



I read that you guys first met while working at the Amoeba Records in Hollywood. Is there a particular record that brought you guys together?

Pedrum: It wasn’t any record in particular. Spencer and I started jamming in his parents’ basement, and thought we should get a drummer, which is where Matt came in. We were really bad at first, but it was fun. Spencer had gone to high school with Miles and thought, he can sing. We should get him to sing for us. Two weeks after we all met each other we played a Halloween show. Even though we didn’t really have any real songs.



Well, whatever you’re doing now is working! I noticed the production of the album is certainly reminiscent of the warmth of vinyl.

Definitely. We listen to lots of old records, and it’s the kind of production we really like. We kind of wanted to capture it with that aesthetic. We tried producing with other friends, but it just sounded really bad and overproduced. Then our buddy Nick Waterhouse saw us play a show. It was recorded at the distillery, and that’s how we got our first 45. out He has lots of really old, cool analog equipment. We really liked the sound so we recorded the whole album there.



That old distillery sounds cool. L.A. has this element of abandonment to it. What’s the most fascinating part of L.A. history to you in particular?

There’s a lot about LA that’s very unique compared to anywhere else. A lot of hidden treasures in this city, especially from a cultural perspective. We just did this guide to L.A. thing, I wrote in that is Echo Mountain. It’s a hike that starts two miles each way, adjacent to the ruins of this old resort. There’s this old echo phone and you can yell up there, it’s crazy. You can see the tracks from the railway that used to take people up there, it was around for a few decades. The self-realization lake shrine in Pacific Palisades.



Whoa. How’d you find that?

It’s a lake, you walk around it and it’s super lush, serene, beautiful. It’s not cultish like it sounds, and with free parking.



What albums do you find yourself constantly going back to music-wise?

I really love this record by the Pretty Things called PhilippeDeBarge. He was this French playboy in the ‘60s who also happened to be a big fan of the Pretty Things. He hired them to record with them way back when. It was lost for years before Ugly Things put it out put it out in 2009. I suppose that’s ironic. Ugly Things putting out a lost Pretty Things record.



What do you listen to on the road to shows?

A lot of the same stuff. The four of us are all really into The Byrds. When the four of us are driving to a show or something, it’s usually the Stones. I especially love when they were in their transitional experimentation period. It’s crazy -- in their catalogue, they easily about twenty or so solid records. I can’t name many other bands who’ve achieved that. We all like White Fence, Ariel Pink and Beach Boys as well.



Definitely see a penchant of California bands. What’s the best part of an L.A. summer?

Ooh. I’m actually the worst person to ask about this, but I think there’s a definitely a nostalgia. Other than that, I don’t really like the heat or the summer. Weird, right?

***

http://www.prefixmag.com/features/allah ... las/69495/

Pitchfork:

Garage rock, even at its rowdiest, is inherently lonely music. It exists outside of time, allergic to trends and suspicious of new technologies, which makes it ideal for loners who feel alienated from culture. Garage rock also sounds solitary. If it is recorded correctly-- which is to say, if it feels like the audio was captured haphazardly by an amateur engineer in 1966-- this music will be alive and sloppy but also a little removed, particularly the vocals. You know a garage-rock band has done its homework if the lead singer can affect a Jagger-esque whine that comes off somewhat anesthetized, like he can't quite bring himself to commit fully to the song or life in general.

You can't accuse Los Angeles quartet Allah-Las of not doing its homework. Three of the four members met while working at one of the country's great record stores, Amoeba on Sunset Boulevard, where they spent countless hours studying up on the vintage sounds that compose their affectingly melancholy self-titled debut. The band formed in 2008, and worked for several years painstakingly assembling the songs on Allah-Las, first releasing the vinyl single, "Catamaran"/"Long Journey", in 2011 and following up with two singles in 2012. All of these songs, plus the eight other tracks that make up Allah-Las, were produced by Nick Waterhouse, a fine L.A. singer-songwriter whose 2012 LP Time's All Gone is a spirited and record-geek friendly collection of raucous 50s-style R&B thrashers.

Waterhouse's production aesthetic involves a lot of tubes and analog equipment and "natural" sounds. The idea is to give the appearance of a band bashing out a record in a matter of minutes, but the reality of the process is far more deliberate and meticulous. "The whole lo-fi, DIY has its own appeal, and there are lots of bands we like that can make that work for them," Allah-Las bassist Spencer Dunham told the L.A. Weekly in 2011. "But for us to make the sound that we really want, we work a lot better in a studio setting with $3,000 microphones from 1953."

This means Allah-Las are even lonelier than the average garage-rock band, obsessively constructing jangly, seemingly simple mid-tempo pop songs in the studio like they're building grand pocket symphonies. The success of Allah-Las is that it doesn't seem like it was strained over; instead, it sounds like an effortlessly wistful batch of starry-eyed, minor-key beauties that gently ruminate on the usual young-guy subjects: sex, freedom, the ways the former can interfere with the latter and vice versa. The album's prettiest song, the Felt-like "Vis-à-Vis", looks back on a failed relationship with a mix of regret and fatalistic acceptance: "Some things can't be undone/ but that doesn't mean it was all just a waste of time," bassist Spencer Dunham says, sounding unknowingly innocent.

The darker vibes lurking inside "Sandy", with its "too close to the sun" imagery, finally curdle on the album-closing "Long Journey", Allah-Las' most aggressive track with its tough guitar jabs and springy bassline. After stating his intention "to find a love that'll stay," drummer Matt Correia fantasizes about "heading down by the river to kill your daddy tonight/ and by the break of day, you know that we’ll be out of sight." It sounds like a line borrowed from an old blues tune, though much of the yearning for escape on Allah-Las is derived from the beach. (Most of the guys in this band surf.) The seductive groove of "Catamaran" has a strong pull, but the instrumental "Sacred Sands" shows where the band's heart really is. Like so many garage-rock questers before them, Allah-Las are ultimately preoccupied with sound above all else. So long as there are 12-string guitars, four-piece drumkits, and lots and lots of reverb, the rest of the world can go away.

"I’ve been awaiting this album since I heard my first Allah-Las song probably back in 2010. I believe it was “Catamaran.” I was hooked by the perfectly laid-back reverb-drenched surf psych. And yes, it’s true, the Allah-Las are a new band. Despite what your ears hear (and your eyes see below), they are not from the ’60s." -Mike Newman, the vinyl district

for a complete review-a good read...five stars album!

http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/newyork ... ah-las-st/

Sacred Sands
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVD8SVvT_QQ

Hey, Ed...

I shared this with a friend that is rather picky, but he LOVED it!

His comparison was to 13th Floor Elevators...my ears hear Byrds, Stones, Beefheart...Yardbirds

Not bad company.

Allah-Las: American cratediggers in London



Allah-Las, a bunch of surfers who recreate the stoned sound of the 60s, used to work in a giant LA record shop. What would they make of Britain's vinyl stores? Michael Hann takes them shopping







Seven of Allah-Las' eight feet are clad in sensible footwear. The eighth foot, belonging to drummer Matt Correia, has only a sock. Which is why, partway through a fairly comprehensive riffle through the vinyl racks of the Rough Trade shop in west London, he sprints across the road to pick up the single shoe he has popped into a cobbler's for a quick repair. Meanwhile, bassist Spencer Dunham is wondering where, on our afternoon spent browsing in Rough Trade and the collectors' shop Intoxica, he might find a dry cleaner to take care of his shirts.

We're out record shopping to test Allah-Las' cratedigging abilities. Three of them – Correia, Dunham and lead guitarist Pedrum Siadatian –used to work at LA's colossal Amoeba Music store. "I tried to get a job there for eight months, dropping off a resume every month, and I wouldn't get any response," Siadatian remembers. "Then on my eighth month, I dropped off a resume and in highlighter I wrote, 'Hire this man!' and put stars and weird shit all over it. Then I finally got hired."

Michaud was the odd man out: he and another of the band's friends were rejected. "They handed in their résumés," recalls Correia, "and I gave them to the boss. He said, 'Are they surfers? No more surfers.' I don't know why." Three of the band are, indeed, surfers, having learned at school. (Think of surfing as the California coastal equivalent of doing cross-country if you went to school in, say, Bedfordshire.)

They credit the hours they spent sifting through old stock with at least part of their keen sense of pop history. And pop history is what you hear on their widely acclaimed eponymous debut album: despite their vehement insistence that they're not revivalists, theirs is a pretty spot-on re-creation of those few months in 1965-66 after American beat bands started smoking weed, but before they started dropping acid.

A couple of hours in record shops – with £30 a head from the Guardian to spend – produces a haul that suggests there's more to Allah-Las than an impeccable collection of garage-rock compilations. Dunham has albums by Ralph McTell and the Equals ("I wanted to get UK pressings of records that were made in the UK by UK artists"). Siadatian has an album of organ instrumentals by Richard "Groove" Holmes, and some Rolling Stones-related singles: Chris Farlowe ("blue-eyed soul dude") singing the Stones, and a bootleg of the band taunting their then-manager Andrew Oldham. Michaud has gone for a compilation of Nederbeat – Dutch garage rock – and Popcorn by Luiz Enrique and Walter Wanderley. Correia completes the lineup with Did You Ever by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood ("I've only seen it in specialist stores in the US, and it's usually around 50 bucks") and the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde, by Popol Vuh ("I collect Popol Vuh albums, and I've never actually seen this on vinyl. I'm really happy with my finds.")

Which raises the question: how come Allah-Las don't sound like a band who've been listening to Richard "Groove" Holmes, the Equals, Ralph McTell, Luiz Enrique and Walter Wanderly, and Popol Vuh, so much as a band who've been listening very closely to the sounds of 1965? Their answer? They don't sound like 1965.

"When people say it just sounds like the 60s, I feel that kind of insults us," Siadatian says. "Somebody once tried to put us in a box that was like, this band sounds just like the Rolling Stones and the Byrds. That statement is kind of stupid, because the Rolling Stones and the Byrds are so different."

"I think the reason we find it so hard to swallow that label of being retro is we never conceived ourselves as being that kind of band," adds Michaud. "We never came together and said, 'Let's make a sound like 1965.' We just kind of ended up with this sound that's just us doing what what we felt sounded good. For somebody then to come along and say, 'They're just trying to do this' felt a little undermining."



At a practical level, it's easy to see why they would want to brace themselves against being pulled into the 60s pigeonhole: if the revivalist badge sticks, they might be condemned to roam the earth for eternity in Cuban-heeled Chelsea boots, spitting out covers of the Sonics for crowds that pretty much define the term "niche".

Nonetheless, Allah-Las' entire view of music seems formulated on the value of the past over the future. We talk about the desire of music critics for constant change and newness, and Michaud suggests such critics "probably spurred a lot of unnecessary development in music, and a lot of bastardised music movements". Even if you grow weary of the insistence on musical novelty, it still seems odd to hear a musician talking of "unnecessary development in music".

Then there's their decision to record the album on vintage equipment, to tape, rather than using modern digital equipment. It's just because it sounds better, they say, not some great point of principle. "People ask us, 'Why did you use tape?'" Siadatian says. "That's the same as asking an artist, 'Why did you use tape as opposed to Photoshop?'"

"What is this, the Renaissance?" Correia asks, mockingly.

I don't know how to square that with Michaud's insistence that "we made a point of saying we didn't want to master our album for iTunes. They asked if we wanted to master for laptops. And we said, 'Why?'"

I think there are points of principle here. I think the band are proud they're taking a stance – and, frankly, it's a pleasure to hear a band who believe so firmly in a right and wrong way of doing things, whether or not they've made the right calls – but the fear of being labelled revivalists has got them chasing their own tails.

Not that theirs is a simple case of "band hears Byrds, band copies Byrds". That cratedigging instinct, and sense of musical history, drew them to where they are now via a more circuitous route. They recall going to see the cult LA country-psych band Beachwood Sparks when they were younger, and trying to trace where that music had come from. "Getting into that group of musicians and going back is how I first got into the Walker Brothers and a lot of other things," Correia says. "I didn't know who Gram Parsons was when I first listened to Beachwood Sparks, and then I went back through all that and tried to figure it out, like the pieces of a puzzle."

Then there are the other threads that can be pulled from their music – the Paisley Underground scene of early 80s LA; the mid-80s indiepop that looked back to the Byrds and Love rather than the Clash and the Pistols; the neo-psychedelia that flourished away from the world on New Zealand's Flying Nun label at the same time. In fact, they were listening to a lot of Flying Nun when they recorded the album, Correia says.

When they play that evening, to an uncomfortably rammed Shacklewell Arms in east London, no one is worrying about the provenance of the music: they're just enthralled by the precise peals of notes from Siadatian's guitar, hanging on the sneer in Michaud's voice and the gentle insistence of the rhythm section. It's a blissful 45 minutes on a cold night. And then the Liverpudlian next to me, aware of his city's history of embracing bands in thrall to the first psychedelic revolution, turns to me and asks: "Are they playing Liverpool on this tour? They really should."

• Allah-Las is out now on Innovative Leisure.

-The Guardian