September 2010
80 posts
Joshua Abrams – Natural Information LP (Eremite)
Seasoned Chicago musician Joshua Abrams (Town & Country) takes off on his own, building a solo album around the guimbri (a three-stringed African cowhide bass) and flights of fancy with a sampler, harmonium, hand percussion, and a dulcimer. He’s joined in trio by guitarist Emmett Kelly, drummers Frank Rosaly and Noritaka Tanaka, and Jason Adasiewicz on vibes in the creation of super-deep...
Heather Leigh – Jailhouse Rock LP (Not Not Fun)
Wax reissue of 2006 cassette what originally appeared on Fag Tapes from this former Texan, partner in Scorces and Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast and gal behind the half-helpful/half-eye-rolling Volcanic Tongue, the site where absolutely everything involving one note played on one string and one keyboard fed through one pedal in a bedsit is awesome all the time. But enough about the company she...
Little Gold – “Completely Fucked!” b/w “Chainsaw”...
MUCH more like it – ex-Meneguar/Woods guitarist Christian DeRoeck brings back his Little Gold project from the mopey pits of despair and recovery, and with a trio lineup solidified, bangs out two super-catchy jangle pop winners. The lazy drawl to his voice recalls J Mascis, but the band is all barroom shitkicker action, and in turn sounds a lot happier and more guided than on the previous LP,...
No Kids – “Cherry Trees” b/w “An Afternoon at the...
Chirpy pop pap from Vancouver’s Nick Krgovich, offering up the old soft shoe and stuffed animal boogie – he even conned Rose Melberg into singing backup vocals for more felt-covered feelin’. “An Afternoon…” works despite the insulin shock of “Cherry Trees” trying to squash it, probably because of its subdued nature, and maybe a little luck courtesy of Phil Elverum guesting on clarinet or...
Unknown Brain – s/t LP (Mystra)
Bit late to the party on here … had to do a turntable swap, as this one showed up warped … last year. Yeah. Anyway, Tom Ardolino of NRBQ recorded these songs as a 17-year-old somewhere in America around 1972, using a home stereo reel-to-reel recorder with primitive two-tracking abilities. He farts around on guitar, clavinet, church organ, and the instrument he’d be known for, the drums, working...
August 2010
87 posts
Charles the Osprey – Consider LP (Friction)
Two guys reinvent calculus in an unfinished Grand Rapids basement with a guitar and a drumkit. There’s enough finger tapping, tropical post-rockism, and playing-along-with-the-dialup-modem-sound interruptus to remind anyone of Don Caballero circa American Don, and plenty of testy Midwestern math-metal spirit to wash all that down. This music exists in a void, despite support from a fanbase which...
Marco Fusinato – Ambianxe LP (The Spring Press)
Visual artist Fusinato returns after an outing on No Fun, with his guitar and all the busted circuitry connecting it to the outside world. Electronically-processed sixstring punishment runs through the full complement of static abuse, engine-generated progress and unfortunate industrial accidents. The polite applause that ends side one of this filter-clogging monster might have been the most...
King Blood – Eyewash Silver LP (Ignorant Gore)
Little anonymous fuzz guitar rudiment blowdown from ex-Snake Apartment guitarist Ryland Wharton (also the man behind the excellent Skulltones and Twonicorn labels). As King Blood, he lays down eight instrumental four-trackers rendered over a three-year period, nothing but guitar, bass and cymbal to keep time, and in that space the artist gets real, with simple themes repeated in a noisy,...
Pregnant – s/t LP (Burn Books)
Caffeinated, straining rock & roll from a Brooklyn trio who are shooting for a Hot Snakes type sound, but whose pop punk leanings and way with a catchy hook points them more in the direction of 1993 or so, when there were a good number of Superchunk clones huddling around Tascams and SM57s in American garages (and we were better off for it). All ten songs on this short debut LP are very...
Bruce Russell – Antikythera Mechanism LP (The...
Turbine rattle, heavy saddled noiseguitar improvisation, and an incredible, 20+ minute eyelash roaster of controlled/chaotic electroacoustic scrabbling from our man in the Dead C., and a personal hero, Bruce Russell. Antikythera Mechanism is his first solo album since a 2007 omnibus of tape experiments, and shows the artist reawakening into traditional and treated brands of improvised music. The...
Ale Mania – “Robust Universe” b/w “Bay View 7”...
This is a worthwhile 7” from San Diego band Ale Mania. What makes this record interesting is that, to my ears, Ale Mania seem to be mining a very specific era of Scottish post punk. This record brings to mind the ‘82-‘84 era of Scottish post punk where post punk began to slide into new pop. Records like the last slick Fire Engines Big Gold Dream 12”, the post-Fire Engines band Win,...
Bob Bellerue/Jarrett Silberman – Amplified Piano...
Without giving much of a clue as to process or instrumentation, there’s still a bit more at stake between this duo collaboration and other PE/noise experiments of its type. There doesn’t seem to be any mixer/source abuse here; we’re led, from the title, to believe that this is a capturing of treated piano, though it doesn’t sound much like it. Excepting the possibility that the piano strings...
Zachary Cale – “Come Quietly” b/w “The Wedding...
This is an extremely pleasant and well done indie psych folk single from a young Olympia-to-Brooklyn transplant. Zachary Cale’s voice has a sardonic and cutting edge to it that brings to mind at times Current 93’s David Tibet or Comus’ Roger Wootton, which stops the well constructed melodies of these two from being merely pretty and floating off into the clouds. Very grave, but memorable music....
CCCandy – Lonesome Berlin LP (Avant!)
Very, very cold and very, very alienated-sounding bedroom minimal synth project from France. Drum pads tap along simple 4/4 beats, vintage synths provide simple and repetitive bass lines, and the vocals alternate between sounding like they were programmed into a speak and spell or they were provided by someone locked in a closet with a pillow shoved in his mouth. Although at points CCCandy...
The Chinese Restaurants – River of Shit 7” EP...
S-S Records has put out many wonderful releases that I return to very often, but I can’t say that this is one of the great ones. What we have here is three tracks of just “kind of there” dissonant trashy noise rock with some electronic meddling from Mattin, who is credited as producer. The most interesting thing about the record is Mattin’s electronic processing of the band. There are some nice...
Ghost to Falco – Exotic Believers LP (Infinite...
Featuring a cast of 30 musicians but essentially the work of Portland’s Eric Crespo, Exotic Believers is as diverse as its roster (including members of Castanets, Parenthetical Girls and Jackie-O Motherfucker). Crespo augments a set of noisy rock songs in the Steve Albini tradition with various side trips ranging from Castanets-style cinematic instrumentals to out-and-out noise - luckily, the...
Källarbarnen – s/t 12” EP (Nattmaran)
Källarbarnen is a noise rock duo from Gothenburg, Sweden, who vomit forth three tracks of sludgy guitar churn, with very occasional drumming that manages to be rigid and arrhythmic at the same time, some vocal moaning buried deep in the mix, and loads of feedback. It is very reminiscent of the Dead C’s more outré mid-period tracks like “Driver UFO,” or perhaps other free noise Kiwi sludgemakers...
The Majnoons – “Mono Mono” b/w “Boudoir” 7” (DLC)
I wonder what which publicity firm sent this to Still Single? Do they check to see what kind of records blogs cover before they mail them out? Can we be taken off their mailing list? Although the band may claim the influences of AC/DC and Prince, they kind of end up sounding a bit like Black Eyed Peas or Crazytown taking a stab at rave-era Primal Scream. Did the Majnoons think that releasing...
Maribelle – With Teeth as Sharp as Old Friends LP...
The last few years have seen an such an influx of former and current punk types trying their hand at acoustic material that it’s become a bit cliché. Chicago’s Aaron Ross is apparently a veteran of several punk & hardcore bands, but his project Maribelle’s new LP is far removed from the strum-und-drang stridency of the No Idea/Plan-It-X crowd – in fact, it’s much closer to indie...
Native Cats – Always On LP (Ride the Snake)
Just when new jack indiepop seems reduced to the tawdry symbolism of a truck stop drug rug, a group emerges from the aether to remind there are still intelligent and talented people creating inventive pop songs without hiding behind cheap effects and sunglasses (no dis to ZZ Top). In this case the record had to come from Tasmania, where the Native Cats duo hang their thinking feller’s caps....
Chicago Thrash Ensemble – s/t one-sided 12” EP...
According to most underground metal elitists, in order to be of “the true,” one must fall from the womb clutching an original copy of Dark Angel’s Darkness Descends on vinyl (ouch!), or do more time in the woods than in school between the ages of 13 and 16. “True” folks love to bemoan its underrated status. “True” folks will probably not like the Chicago Thrash Ensemble, but fuck those lonely...
Wild Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British...
Never has there been a better example of adoration for the idea of a personality over enjoyment of the music made by said personality. The early power-pop/DIY shamble by Mr. Billy Childish can be brilliant in spots, as can the sporadic one-off in the years since. But this EP rests under the umbrella of faux-genius retro-robot hoodwink with 90% of the artist’s output. Knowing jack-shit about...
Exiles from Clowntown – “Around the Corner” b/w...
More sluggish thuds from the Aussie department of corrections (and true to form, someone with the key to the office supplies cabinet made off with the hole punch and had their way with all 200 of the dust sleeves of yet another Greatdividing release) – simple, effective bass guitar workouts that go round and round. “Around the Corner” never even breaks one chord, and “Whistling Assassin” plays...
Fecalove – “Dead Weight” b/w “When” 7”...
And the “Least Likely To Attend Jessica Hopper’s Next Potluck” Award goes to … Fecalove! These two sides of power-electronics are very much on the super-harsh side of the spectrum, and the thickly Euro-accented spoken vocals overdubbed in different pitches are very much on the silly side of said spectrum, so long as one doesn’t eat pot brownies ahead of time or generally think too...
Gape Attack! – Burn This City 7” EP (FDH/Skrot Up)
First song is reminiscent of the Cure circa Pornography or Faith, but that may be the “Forest”-like guitar that anchors the catchy little number. Newbies doing a toe-dip into the coldwave waters would be turned off by this, if this second pressing of 300 were to make it into the homes of dabblers, which it probably won’t. Too much noise and fidelity-fog covering the admittedly great hooks, hooks...
His Electro Blue Voice – “Wolf” b/w “Worm” 12”...
The boys from Lake Como return after a bit of an absence, which some might guess was self-imposed. Who knows? One thing I can tell you is that the HEBV template of somewhat gothy, aggressive rock has flattened a bit with this release, sometimes to their benefit, sometimes against it. The 12” single gives them more of a chance than ever to stretch out, which they have decided to take along the...
Peeesseye – Pestilence & Joy LP (Evolving Ear)
Warm, huggable improv-drone with one freak-out (last track on side….well, one of the sides) and seven or eight gently seasick pieces rooted firmly in the Excepter/Yellow Swans/Mouthus school of free-rock that mostly remains safe for G/W.I.T.R. (Girlfriend/Wife In The Room) play. Pestilence & Joy is this trio’s seventh LP since forming in 2002 (prolific in any other genre) and first since...
Rubbish Throwers – s/t 7” EP (Endless Melt)
Grinding, circular noise rock action from a one-amongst many Australian project belonging to one Duncan Blachford (ex-Witch Hats, if you remember them from touring Stateside), dating back to 2007 but released in recent months. The wait on these things perplexes me, particularly as this brand of tense, vertiginous brand of down-under underpants rugby has been going strong for a good 30 years or...
Vaccine – Human Hatred 7” EP (Painkiller)
Four gentlemen who embrace a life free of drugs or alcohol tell you what’s up, in ten songs that run just over four minutes total. The constraints inherent in this method of operation are obvious: Vaccine wants tell you how fucked up things are, in as brief and violent a way as is possible. Open the poster sleeve and you are presented with the phrases “NO FUCKING HOPE” and “HUMANS ARE VILE.”...
The Young – Voyagers of Legend LP (Mexican Summer)
Until very recently, I was content with believing that I’d never hear a record like this debut album by Austin, TX’s The Young, ever again, for as long as I continue to take up space on this planet. There is hope; therefore, this will be a very difficult review to write.
Voyagers of Legend’s opening tracks “Captive Chains” and “Quintana the Killer” set expectations at a mid-to-high level,...
Enumclaw – Opening of the Dawn LP (Honeymoon...
With artwork promising loner walks towards ever-receding lunar horizons, you may have a hunch you’re in for the spectral on Enumclaw’s Opening of the Dawn. The title track opener finds you in a rising Riley goop, pulsing Arp tone clusters played off against lilting fronds of tremolo. On the flip, “Harmonic Convergence” begins with a groaning heap of ‘rural raga’ detritus MV+EE may have left...
Gravehammer – Ensnared in Dismal Blasphemies 7”...
A random distro purchase that delivered in ways I hadn’t imagined … Swedish death metal purists with some intense BM leads cough up two blood-flecked chunks of late ‘80s style assault. Neither side really lets up, though “Eminent Impurity” definitely toploads it, while “Abhorrent Emanations” holds itself in check for a brutal finish. I gotta say, I miss death metal as it exists here. I miss the...
Ice Nine – Nobody’s Son 7” EP (Prank)
I remember Ice Nine from the back page of HeartattaCk, countless distro boxes at the hardcore fests of my youth, and … and that’s about it. Never took the plunge, though from the way Ken Prank talks, their records never aged, never went out of favor with a small but loyal following. Now the band I missed is back at it, with three intense new songs. I need to get off the slack ass and spend the...
Impractical Cockpit – Facilidad? LP (Turned Word)
Junk rock so impervious to fidelity or sense, so resolutely incoherent, it has the clarity of purpose of The Feeding of the 5000. When I saw this quartet years ago in a Chicago basement (a restrained if muscular affair, I recall, lowercase music in rec-specs), they claimed NOLA residency, but the information here pegs them at times in Minneapolis and in Belfast, ME. Luckily they’ve not yet...
The Reactors – “The Seduction Center” b/w “I Want...
Exact repro of a true rarity … only 100 copies of the Reactors NYC punk 45 were made way back in 1979, and only 80 survived a flooded basement. Frantic punk that sounds very much of the time/place, and man, were these guys ever horny. You don’t get much more punk than “I Want Sex,” two blazing minutes of 30-knuckle shuffle which races out of the opening siren and keeps pumping away, hoping for...
Forced Collapse – Consider the Weather a Failure...
Living, low-wattage rumble from the mouthpiece of a trumpet and treated guitar, in a sort of Emanem Records-inspired tunemuck. Heavy Euro style discomfort, like watching people get off on that fetish where girls sit in cakes and pop balloons. That means HOT STUFF COMIN’ THROUGH. It must be love. (http://www.holycheeverchurch.com) (Doug Mosurock)
Man Benu – The Kindling LP (All Hands Electric)
There’s enough moody modern rock out there in the vein of Interpol or the Ocean Blue or the Van Pelt, but Man Benu seems confident enough to scale that mountain with The Kindling. The trio has enough buttoned-up classiness to put a prep school spin on long-in-the-tooth emotioneering such as is displayed on the six songs. Good songs with motion and melancholy in focus, though some may dither...
RatTail – s/t 7” EP (Unfamiliar)
We have a tepid, if consistent and kinda coolly shadowlike strum pop band here, and a singer that derails the whole thing. I’m not sure if this is the right place to bring it up, but when you try to approximate a low Siouxsie moan with Lauryn Hill/Winehouse-meets-Billie Holiday-meets-a mouthful of a Subway veggie sandwich … RatTail, I’m talking to you … you threaten to drown out whatever is...
Scraps – “A Salty Sea” b/w “Shepherd to Sheep” 7”...
Shuffling the lineups once more, here’s people who claim service in the Popular Shapes and the Intelligence among them, an oddball garage-popper wade with purposefully obtuse arrangements. The overall headspace screams Last Splash-era Breeders but without the polish or the energy, shanties with two too many s’s in the song titles that beckon out beyond the dock in the lakeside night. There’s a...
Tusk Lord – s/t 7” EP (Mind Cure/Dear Skull)
Tusk Lord is Mike Kasunic (also of Slices) but this isn’t heavy, noisy, or extreme in the sense you may have been expecting, and maybe not anymore. He’s run this name through a number of different solo projects and somehow it’s come out the other side as sad bastard music with a solid foundation. Members of Harangue and Centipede Eest help out with three songs of dignified (see: use of piano)...
The German Measles – “Color Vibration” b/w “I...
Genuine dorks from nose to scroat, and they are better for it – NYC’s German Measles plays it loose and silly here, between the dreamy “Color Vibration” and the rambunctious “I Don’t Like Your Friends” – sure to be the band’s calling card from here on out (I was told that this was a potential Cause Co-Motion song that certain members of the band refused to play). Classic mid-’80s college radio...
HPP – s/t 12” EP (Perennial)
An earlier report from this Olympia punk snot factory bore promise, and it’s come to term – interestingly enough, about nine months later, with this anonymous-looking record. No URL on the back sleeve, no insert or lyric sheet, and you’d better recognize the logo above. Inside you get your head knocked around by basement punk and hardcore, delivered with plenty of spit and a really nasty...
Kommissar Hjuler/Mama Baer – Amerikanische Poesie...
I have to admit that I avoided playing this one for a while due to the disturbing, sexually graphic and “shocking” back cover art but I’m pleased to say that the debauchery contained on Amerikanische Poesie und Alkoholismus doesn’t particularly reflect that image. The back of the LP lays out the contents in broken but fairly clear English: one side is two tracks of Mama Baer singing over...
Man Benu – The Kindling LP (All Hands Electric)
There’s enough moody modern rock out there in the vein of Interpol or the Ocean Blue or the Van Pelt, but Man Benu seems confident enough to scale that mountain with The Kindling. The trio has enough buttoned-up classiness to put a prep school spin on long-in-the-tooth emotioneering such as is displayed on the six songs. Good songs with motion and melancholy in focus, though some may dither...
Man Made Hill – Puzzle Answers LP (Beniffer...
Ever come across a crossword puzzle that somebody else has already completed? Kinda weird feeling, especially if you know the person – it’s a deep-enough stare into their own intellect, and what their thought processes are like. You know who you’re dealing with when it comes to a real crossword. For the kiddie-style, “oh let’s be creative with our track listing” type deal that is emblazoned on...
Black Time – More Songs About Motorcycles and...
I don’t get all the Black Time hatred. Gloriously wrecked, soulful garage-pop that mashes girl-group chord changes with the Electric Eels will get a pass from me whenever, and I don’t care if the drummer can’t keep the beat or that people shunned by the big soulie/modspock/Sta-Prest dress-off of the late ‘90s would still harbor a grudge. I love that this band can squeeze off so many brilliant...
Dadawah – Peace and Love LP (Dug Out)
Cavernous, aware, unfathomably deep Nyabinghi soul sesh spearheaded by Ras Michael in Kingston, 1974, well beyond last call. Dub technique is played down, but a massive sound is accomplished all the same The four extended tracks here just keep going, getting past the initial, often mournful verses of the song and stretching them out to a foundation of bass wall anchor and gentle, mysterious,...
Form a Log – Digital Duck 7” (Spleencoffin)
“nnn-chik nnn-chik nnn-chik QUACK QUACK QUACK.” There you have it, Philly’s Form a Log playing with concepts and displaying obvious neon tendencies (the label behind this is from Baltimore, where this sort of motorik art weirdness flies, no problem) around the concept of a robo-duck. Many words are spilled on the paper-bag sleeve in some manner of artist statement, and some playful, abstract...
Homopolice/Black Leather Jesus – split 12” EP...
I get a bad sense from the Homopolice – unless these guys have actually figured out that they are indeed gay, there is some real minstrelsy going on in their presentation. Musically it’s all heavy, industrial-sounding free-dum rock in the tradition of the Brainbombs getting choked out with a spreader bar, kinda the same way that forgotten shit like Zeigenbock Kopf could exist on the unfortunate...
Pollution – ®SMUT 12” EP (C6)
The best songs yet out of this Brooklyn metal/hardcore/punk hybrid can be found on ®SMUT. Pollution had a somewhat amorphous, but definitely scalding and evil sound to start, reflected in a bunch of wild-pitch tapes and singles, where they wandered around and lashed out on a bunch of slightly different variations on a core outpouring of anger, and it was the latter which was much more...
