Where Should I Start with Bardo Pond?
 

I like what I hear on youtube, so can anyone tell me where I can start. I like this song Tantric Porno.

Thanks in advance.

On its sixth album, Dilate, Bardo Pond cuts through the dense, smoky haze of Set and Setting and Lapsed to deliver its most refined collection to date. Even the title's drug reference (the band's first three releases were named after various mind-altering toads and mushrooms) is subtler, yet more evocative. Bardo Pond's roaring guitars, trippy flutes, and pummeling drums are all still in place, but now the group uses them sparingly instead of in heroic doses. Indeed, the album's best moments mix equally vast amounts of noise and space, giving Dilate an appropriately expansive feel. Isobel Sollenberger's double-tracked vocals take the lead on "Sunrise" and "Inside," a pair of spacy epics that hover around the edges of pop before veering into guitar maelstroms. The album also celebrates the prettier, emotional side of Bardo Pond's music, which the group has often obscured with clouds of distortion. A melancholy beauty permeates the string-driven instrumental "Two Planes" as well as rolling, folk-meets-fuzz ballads like "Aphasia" and "Favorite Uncle." These songs and Dilate's centerpiece, "Despite the Roar" (which shimmers like heat distortion before exploding into a trippy climax after five and half minutes), suggest vulnerability in a gauzy, abstract way that's more affecting than directly stating it. But the album also indulges Bardo Pond's interest in textures, as the Eastern-inspired motifs of "Swig" and subtle guitar washes and backward snares of "Hum" prove. However, it wouldn't be a Bardo Pond album without some glorious guitar excesses, and Dilate delivers with the heavy, wittily named "Lb.," a kinetic piece of stoner rock more in keeping with the group's two previous efforts. And though it's over 11 minutes long, the album closer "Ganges" manages to keep its mix of crunchy riffs and droning strings inventive throughout. Likewise, Dilate proves that the members of Bardo Pond keep finding ways to reinvent their sound, surpassing themselves each time they do.

I would say Lapsed or Dilate, but Amanita is still a big favorite for me even though it doesn't really sound like what they have progressed into these days.

Lapsed or Amanita

lapsed.

ticket crystals too, a good mix of their more subdued shades and plenty of the heavy shit.

dilate is probably the only one i don't really love.

I think Ticket Crystals is probably their best since Lapsed.

If you'd like, I've got a Bardo Pond boot upped to Demilich Monolith.

http://demilichmonolith.blogspot.com...l/Bardo%20Pond

Enjoi.

Thanks!!

it's not really a bootleg, it's the cd archive released last year.

ace shit, nonetheless.

Lapsed, Ticket Crystals, and of course the Buck Paco split that can be found here:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZearthwormpal

Does anybody know anything about Buck Paco? I'm waaay into that record mentioned above, but Google won't tell me much of anything about them.

Are they Bardo Pond in disguise? The B.P. name, the fact that they are from the same city, and that they sound more than a little alike leads me to believe so.

I second what nefeli says about the volumes - the volumes I-IV collection contains some magical music.

That Buck Paco stuff is pretty amazing ... I have only known the songs from the split. As luck would have it, I was listening to Amanita yesterday while jogging, and I once more could verify the brilliance of that album from beginning to end.

There's a Buck Paco CDR available from Boa Melody Bar:

Buck Paco et al - cdr (Abandon Ship) £3

You could point out a krautrock feel here, if you added some heavy motorik drumming. On the other hand, you could think of the long psych rock jams, but the tracks are quite concise and don't wander. Therefore, it seems that whatever influences Buck Paco (et al) has been distilled into his/their own thing. My personal favourite track on the cd sums this up: Lonely Man's Walk is a Duane Eddy/spaghetti western slow twang surrounded in a very pleasing way by a maelstrom of fuzz and oscillation.

See here for how to order.

Thanks guys.

You're welcome, Synthy-wynthy.

Pfft, I prefer poof. Anyways, thaks once again.

yeah bardo pond, like sonic youth, the boredoms and other great bands, also release amazing stuff on their alternate series of experimental recordings. in this case, the volumes.

my vol. 5 degraded and is unlistenable now, though.

yeah, ace split, i was lucky to score an actual copy...also, their recent split 10" with pre is also great on both sides.

don't forget about this beauty:
http://www.threelobed.com/bardo/disc...y/release/4306

I have started with Dilate and progressively loved them more and more.