STILL SINGLE

CCR Headcleaner – s/t 7” EP (Caesar Cuts)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:53:00 -0400

RECOMMENDED

From the shake of the band Long Legged Woman, whose sole album Nobody Knows This Is Nowhere holds up as a fine document of a band pushing their way out of a box, comes CCR Headcleaner, in which they’ve soaked the cardboard walls of that box with bongwater and lamp oil, and smoked their way out in a haze of toxins and sweat. True mutants fortify themselves with a three-guitar attack and get winded halfway through the first track “53^rd & 420,” leaving the rest of the record to ring out in glorious slo-mo backslide, down into the horrifying world that can appear when you combine too much smoke with psilocybin … or so I’ve heard. I can see the fans of fake psych running for the exits when confronted with people who actually seem to be incredibly fucking high in ways that don’t involve them. Let these emptyheaded bozos stare into a Black Angels CD cover until their eyes go numb from the safety of boredom. The World of Shit is no place for them to be. The rest of us can ride CCR over here in a cloud of inhalants and smeared memories, by-products of a band sacrificing their brain cells to iron us flat with an enormous, twisted, total sound. Highest recommendation. (http://ccrheadclnr.tumblr.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Curriculum Mortis – Sentencia De Muerte LP (Ultra Sonido)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:52:00 -0400

RECOMMENDED

Teenage kids living in the oppressive uncertainty of late ‘80s Peru created this masterpiece of shit-fi metal. It sounds like two warring armies of noisy, chitinous insects discovered early black metal (Hellhammer, Bathory, Mayhem) and U.S. thrash/crossover, respectively, and swarmed one another in a battle to the death. Curriculum Mortis was not alone in the hardcore/metal scene of Lima; groups like Ataque Frontal were around to play shows with, but few if any of these groups possessed the single-minded mania at play here. They were a five-piece with two guitars, and everyone in the band is well above competent, even though their studio accomodations and lack of producers with the know-how to record such a band were far less so. Bass is felt instead of heard for the most part, kind of how like Kevin Shields was said to have erased the instrument sounds off the guitars of Isn’t Anything and left the effects instead. The guitars have an incredible presence of playing so tinny and yet totally saturated within the confines of the mix that they stop sounding like guitars and take on the properties of some crushable third-world synth that electrocutes anyone it comes near. Drums thump and the singer screams, mostly in native tongue, though on the penultimate track “Reaper,” sung in English, the phrasing of the lyric “screams from the gutter” is pronounced just so that it becomes clear that their mission might have been elsewhere: all along, they were trying to sound like the bands on their t-shirts (Metallica, Exodus, Slayer), but got lost in the translation and perfected blackened South American thrash instead. This essential reissue encompasses all seven of Curriculum Mortis’ studio recordings, relentless and choked of air and liberty. It’s the sound of a band that played as if tomorrow might not come. I’ve had a long time to think about this record, and if you buy one release on my word in the next few months, make it this one. 500 copies. (http://ultrasonido.bigcartel.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Decoy with Joe McPhee – Spontaneous Combustion LP (OTOroku)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:51:52 -0400

RECOMMENDED

Somewhere in the ‘90s, Joe McPhee decided to cut to the chase, and since then total improvisation is his main mode of performance. But he hasn’t forgotten all the jazz lore he absorbed through study and practice in the preceding half century, and that knowledge stands him in good stead in his encounters with the English trio Decoy. The instrumentation favored by Alexander Hawkins, Steve Noble, and John Edwards (Hammond B-3 organ, drums, double bass respectively) is freighted with idiomatic associations, but their collective CV (Evan Parker, Peter Brötzmann, Sunny Murray, Veryan Weston, to name but a few) skews more towards the free music than Jimmy Smith-style grooving. This leaves a lot of room to maneuver, and they take full advantage of it on this LP-only release (the second album for the collaboration, the fourth for Decoy). McPhee switches between pocket trumpet and alto sax, squeezing everything from desiccated wheezes to supremely sentimental calls into the space bounded by Edwards and Noble’s space- and shape-conscious jostling. Hawkins likewise spans delicate, flute-like voicings and rumbling swells that sound so hellish, your church won’t allow them to be played. Ornette promised the shape of jazz to come; these guys play jazz for all time. (http://otoroku.cafeoto.co.uk)
(Bill Meyer)

Dissipated Face With Daniel Carter – Live At CBGB 1986 7” EP (Roaratorio)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:50:36 -0400

Free sax deity Daniel Carter must’ve been stooping pretty low in 1986 to end up backing this calculated-sounding anti-whatever trio, helmed by Ultra Vivid Scene guitarist Kurt Ralske. There are very few moments in which their no-oriented, third stringer SST combo, sounding like late period Flag with nerd vocals and the occasional jokey HC thrash sesh, click with the reedsman. CBs sounds pretty much empty on the night in question, and that was a big room, with all the ambiance of a high school gymnasium when cleared of people. That’s kind of what this sounds like. You’ll strain to hear the guitar, then wish you hadn’t, over the boomy, all-wall sound and goofy in-joke titles – surely a song called “Rock is Dead, Shithead” shouldn’t be played by people who sound like they have an active interest in killing it, but who couldn’t break a string if they tried. Who wants a fusion of jazz and punk, anyway? Second sub-par record in a row to come through here with Pettibon artwork, too. There’s been a gap between them, but there’s no mistaking consistency. (http://www.roaratorio.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Dope Body – Saturday 7” (Drag City)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:49:57 -0400

If this came out on Skin Graft 17 years ago and I happened to play the store’s copy on a brutally-boring Sunday afternoon manning the counter alone, it’s possible that “I might pay $4 for a used copy of a full length by this band if one positioned itself in the crosshairs on a really good day of consumptive confidence” would have gone through my noodle, but the same could be said for “I pray that today will pass without any French body-odor-soldiers pulling up in a cab and making me play each and every second of each and every import $400 Alex Chilton CD compilation we have in stock” or “God, I really love this Hurl LP” or “Oh, I almost forgot, please no dreadlock-and-giant-pants enthusiasts who make me sample eighteen DJ Shadow-or-related 12”s before the inevitable Flying Saucer Attack or Stars of the Lid curiosity makes me clarify, out loud, that ‘no, this record isn’t going to have any beats’ before they exit without buying a damn thing.” Correction: My brain would not have produced the phrase “consumptive confidence” in those days. As for Dope Body, CHRIST-ON-A-CRUTCH what a tragedy of a band name! … what a stunner of stupid this moniker is … carved into music history forever. I’m guessing that it’s “dope” in the sense of life-ruining substance as opposed to hour-ruining encounter with a circa-Y2K DJ-dipshit pilfering breaks from shitty classic rock records (“The breaks on the first Grinderswitch album are dope, yo.”) Unless they are hilarious for the purpose of hilarity, drug references are dirt-dumb at the very least, if not deserved of a good weekly gang-piling by the participants of an N.A. meeting. Not that long ago, Dope Body were piggybacked by a perpetual Pigpen cloud of inappropriate metal and noise-rock tags, making for an extra layer of irritation as gravy on their for-the-sake-of-it obtuseness. I really hate for-the-sake-of-it obtuseness. U.S. Maple is going to kick this band’s ass for pinging all of the bad parts of U.S. Maple albums right back into a topical non-light. Finally, I cannot fucking believe 2013 is almost halfway shot and I’m staring at a cover-art/design/layout decision that Dope Body apparently have no problem sharing with 2,831,932 other bands, most of which shouldn’t be making music in the first place, and this trend in visually-presenting a record serves as a fine warning or red flag. Now that Dope Body and the Dope Body experience up until the release of this 7” has been unfairly smothered in a vile, terminal sheen of shit-crit, a brief foray into the “music at hand” portion of the review turns up some improvement. But can “no longer maddening in its power to irritate” be considered improvement? I’ll put it this way … you should have only read the first 184 words of this review. (http://www.dragcity.com)
(Andrew Earles)

Factory Floor – Two Different Ways Remixes 12” EP / “Fall Back” 12” (DFA) / Factory Floor with Peter Gordon – “Beachcombing” b/w “C-Side” 12” (Optimo Music)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:48:09 -0400

As we all wait and wait (and wait) for that Factory Floor album to ever materialize, the singles keep piling up. The excellent “Two Different Ways” received the remix treatment last year via works by Perc and Richard H. Kirk. There goes Rhymin’ Simon. As for the record, Perc muscles up the A-side, adding ballast and more bounce to the original while removing some of the angles. It’s definitely more club ready and energized, though I’d rather dance to regular old Factory Floor. Kirk clips the beats and dusts for prints, maintaining the dynamic progressive rock feel to the source material while making it a little more slippery. Perc closes it out with an ambient slab dubbed the “Noisy” mix; it is that, indeed, if not pure noise like you might hope. The group’s work on “Fall Back” is among their best to date, mainly because it seems focused on the drums, the most pertinent element this group has: without that live drummer, without those beats, I’m not sure where these tracks would end up. It’s a great one, too, eight minutes of free falling sleep-speech and repeatedly triggered samples that drift over the furiously dialed-in synth-bass and drum pattern. Their collaborations with saxophonist Peter Gordon (Love of Life Orchestra), on their latest single, aren’t full group works; Gordon performs with two members on “Beachcombing” and the third on “C-Side.” There’s a nagging sense that they may have submitted some middling material here, but maybe it’s just because it’s a bit different and closer to the center than a lot of their prior output has been. The drums are gone on both, reduced to a pulse, as the keys and vocals ebb and fade against root melodies and Gordon’s hyperactive sax squeals. Curious parties will collect ‘em all, but if you have to pick one, go with “Fall Back,” or 2011’s Two Different Ways. (http://www.dfarecords.com) (http://www.optimomusic.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Ensemble Pearl – s/t 2xLP (Drag City)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:48:00 -0400

I shortsightedly entered into this engagement with too much Boris on the mind, due entirely to one of them being involved in this seven or eight-person super-group. When Boris have friends over for an album, I believe that the trio could turn even the most torturous of tedium into gold (they have yet the opportunity, but I have 100% faith in this claim), but when the sitch is flip-flopped, one shouldn’t expect anything more than the sum of the parts trimmed by about 90% of its potential greatness, which is what happens when the gazillion-headed collaboration miscalculation is made … the cancel-out.

But that’s not totally accurate here, either. For starters, this began as a soundtrack project, and it began and ended as Stephen O’Malley’s vision. He just invited some friends along, so we get the aforementioned one part Sunn O))/Burning Witch, three “multi-instrumentalists” (can we stop using that meatless term, please?!?) that I am somewhat familiar with but totally indifferent to, one-part Boris: Atsuo and one-part Ghost (Japan, Mr. Michio Kurihara).

When rhythm is found and locked-into, the affair never really takes off and stays firmly within the boundaries of ambient drone that flirts with rock after winking at Krautrock. Kind of like diet-Magnog or the Bardo Pond stuff you’ve only heard once or some other late ‘90s space-lowercase-rock band with pulsating swell where drum and bass should be and drum and bass where freakouts should be. Still, there’s often more happening in a dynamic sense than much of the Sunn 0))) discography, but “heavy” is nowhere to be found, nor is it the point. Once I stepped back and processed this for what it was (a bunch of people, one of which happens to be in Boris, and a soundtrack vision by the personality that is not Greg Anderson) rather than what it wasn’t (something touched by Boris), it allowed for the review you have just read. This is a good thing for all parties (I don’t have all night to be writing myself out of being a horse’s ass). (http://www.dragcity.com)
(Andrew Earles)

Hoax – s/t (Singles Comp) LP (Adagio 830)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:47:07 -0400

RECOMMENDED

German pressing of Hoax’s three 7”s and their track from the split tour flexi with Sewn Leather. This is an easy way to spend the proper time with these releases, and realize the bleeding conviction of this band for what it is, just about the best hardcore band in the country. You read these lyrics and hear how they’re delivered and there is immediately the sense that singer Jesse fully buys into it, and as each song ends and another begins, you sense the hell that they depict in each track – one of suffering, ridicule, failure, violence, and waste, of opportunity that never comes, of being forced to play with all the broken toys until they hurt you or break some more. You think it can’t get any more difficult to bear, and then it does, thirteen times over. I’ve had enough to say about Hoax’s visceral live show, but really these songs can live on their own now, and the continuity presented here against having to flip a bunch of singles over is welcome. Will Killingsworth’s production gets heavier with each batch of songs, too, something that cannot be overstated in its importance of bringing the cold and miserable reality Hoax envisions into your home, and something which this collection makes more apparent than was on the original releases. If you posed, now’s your chance to clear your name, though you really should try to own the second EP on Youth Attack; it’s a real spectacle, and perhaps their best collection of songs in a single release. (http://www.adagio830.de)
(Doug Mosurock)

Roy Montgomery/Bruce Russell – split LP (Grapefruit Record Club)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:46:23 -0400

Readers of a certain age probably remember the Columbia and RCA Record Clubs, whose six for a penny deals surely helped set the stage for a world that thinks it shouldn’t pay for its records. The Grapefruit Record Club seeks to reverse that trend by offering exclusive limited edition, vinyl-only releases that’ll cost you, but sure look swell on your shelf or on the turntable. And how do they sound? Based on the first record from year two, a split release by New Zealanders Bruce Russell (Dead C, A Handful Of Dust) and Roy Montgomery (Pin Group, Dadamah, etc.), highly faithful to idiosyncratic notions of sound quality. Russell’s side is taken from a concert he played in 2009 at the High Street Project, a Christchurch art space that has since been demolished due to earthquake damage. Although the music was executed in real time using one guitar, Russell’s use of two amps at the end of two different chains of effects sounds more like a duel between a theremin and a walkie-talkie. There’s a special element to this music that is especially well served by the vinyl medium; somehow the physical action of a stylus dragging through a groove makes the music’s hugeness and harshness especially evident.

Montgomery’s piece also has an association with life in earthquake time. It was recorded in 1994, as part of the same extraordinarily productive phase that yielded a stack of singles and the excellent Scenes From The South Island and Temple IV albums, but he’d forgotten about it until he happened upon the tape in a post-quake clean-up. Montgomery’s approach, derived from the atmospheric sweep of Popul Vuh, is simplicity itself. Using reverb and overdubbing, he overlays chiming chords until they surge like an incoming tide; buried deep within, descending lines like submerged surf guitar licks impart an epic quality to the music. “Tarkovsky Tone Poem” departs from Montgomery’s work in one crucial way; the music is enshrouded by a cloud of static, which may or may not have been intentional, but which gives it an edge that makes it pair up well with Russell’s side. (http://grapefruitrecordclub.com)
(Bill Meyer)

The Trash Company – Earle Hotel Tapes 1979-1993 LP (Steady Sounds/Peoples Potential Unlimited)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:45:08 -0400

RECOMMENDED

The premiere “Real People” discovery of 2013 comes from the Richmond, VA store-run label Steady Sounds, and it’s one that sets the pace for future discoveries in terms of its depth, vision, and backstory. Max Monroe is an African-American songwriter and musician who for nearly 15 years occupied Room 111 at the Earle, a downtown Richmond hotel that was caught in a tailspin of decay and decline. Monroe’s lifelong outlet, The Trash Company, started as a larger concern in the vein of Funkadelic, but soon winnowed down to just him and a friend who’d join in on guitar. Apart from one double-sided 45, the studio-cut queasy listening gem “Come To Me Softly” which opens this collection, all of the material here was collected from four-track recordings made in and near the hotel. Monroe quickly shed the trappings of R&B, opting instead for an ominous, homemade sound that encompasses doom, pomp/glam moves, Cramps-style trash rock, lounge-core, new wave, and end-of-the-world downers that are unlike anything I can think of, outside of some of the recent Obnox releases, and maybe Gary Wilson, some of the Jade Stone & Luv tracks, or the very edges of Mick Collins’ catalogue. He’s got a great voice with deep, natural intonation, and proves to be an inventive arranger, particularly when it comes to his rhythm tracks (the drum machine eventually departs, never to return). There’s a rich seam of talent here, mitigated by satisfyingly harsh home recordings draped in fuzz, dirge and reverb. Very few records of this stripe achieve the heaviness on offer here, but it goes deeper than just noise and distortion – the threadbare sound of pulsing bass and pounding drum machine on most of side A rattles the bones of these tracks, and will likely shake yours in the process. At its deepest, Earle Hotel Tapes approaches a level of soulful desolation most commonly associated with Leonard Cohen; no joke. Show me any other records of this caliber that can make that claim. PPU has already released a couple of EPs from the Trash Company stockpile that are also worth examining. (http://www.steadysounds.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Violence – s/t 12” EP (Visage Musique)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:44:16 -0400

Time capsule laced-up synth master control pop, like a decade too late for Berliniamsburg. Glassy, cool/warm sounds from this French-Canadian outfit, which puts forth the ultimate façade of perfection and very nearly get away with it. Imagine a velvet rope with you on the wrong side: you’ve just nailed Violence’s brand of totalitarian, steamroller ambiance. The music is good and evocative but there’s definitely not enough here to make for any meaningful additions to the dialogue about where we are now in terms of this kind of music. Vocals are sung in perfect beauty (female) and spoken/bored (male); the bass pumps; the synths fuzz and blitter and phase; the beats pound, splashy and with purpose. The whole session is pitched somewhere between earlier/funkier Gomma label output and something like Ladytron, and Violence seems to revel in this sentiment, feet planted firmly and proud of it. The production is crystalline, the presence is coiffed and buttoned to the top, not a drop of sweat or smudge of mascara in sight. Clear vinyl, acetate sleeve, flat-out oppressive edition of 150. Reading about this record right now is almost a guarantee that you’ll never own a copy (though you’re free to listen to the first five of its six tracks via Bandcamp), and of course, the one song you can’t get, “Istiyorum,” is like the best one here. I had to borrow this record from a friend! And there is no way I am paying $65 to get a copy shipped from Europe, especially since the market for OG electroclash has been bottomed out for quite some time now. I gave up on finding a copy of the Toktok Vs Soffy O album in 2003 or so, but I got one a year ago for $3 and it sounds more successful to me than this. But this is nice, no question. Can’t wait for people to rediscover Kiki or Smash TV though. Felix Da Housecat, Mommy & Daddy, and many others are better left buried in the empty $20 bags of time. (http://www.visagemusique.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Matt Weston – For Teri Morris 7” (7272 Music)

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:42:28 -0400

Teri Morris drummed in Crystalized Movements, and after that Tizzy. That latter band is where she and multi-instrumentalist Matt Weston played for a time. In 2011 Morris died from breast cancer, and this is Weston’s tribute to her. You won’t hear much of the Movements’ psychedelic excess of Tizzy’s crisp power pop here, though. Weston’s a restless, plugged into the improv as well as rock worlds, so the sounds are his, and the connection to Morris is on a conceptual level; it’s all about rhythm. “Coiling For The Kickback” has a full on bass and drums attack that I could imagine Watt and Hurley gifting to someone they like, but I’m not sure how they’d feel about the Fred Frith-ian spider-walking guitars and Mellotron interjections. Not that it matters, since it’s not theirs anymore. “Walking Through The Undertow” has less to do with rock linguistics. It’s an assembly of played and programmed drum tracks, chopped and shuffled but not so much as to compromise the groove. Perhaps Weston wants to say that while people and styles come and go, the beat goes on? Only 150 of this single were pressed, and the uneven borders of the sleeve’s components makes me thing that a scissors was used to cut them to size, which only makes the record feel that much more personal.. There’s no download coupon, but if you feel moved to step over to your computer after playing the record, there is an invitation to head to http://cancer-connection.org and make a donation. (http://www.7272music.com)
(Bill Meyer)

aTelecine – Entkopplung OST LP (Dais)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:22:00 -0400

RECOMMENDED

The musical trajectory of actress/entrepreneur/adult film star/noise fan Sasha Grey has been a divisive one at best, and a sizable void within her burgeoning, non-sex-work-oriented creative output at worst. Entkopplung changes all that, a soundtrack for a yet-to-be-released science fiction film for which few details could be obtained. Here, at last, aTelecine finds a voice, something to play off of (in this case, the movie’s sprawling screenplay and a section of dailies), creating a distant yet absorbing sound profile somewhere between the Hafler Trio and Emeralds under the boiling, oppressive atmosphere of the planet Venus. Maybe this has something to to with the supposed absence of Ms. Grey from this session? Tracks seem to melt into one another, with few profiles of melody to get in the way of the insect colony buzz, low-end thrum and percussive fractals on play here, which have a way of burrowing into the music rather than spreading out into themes. It’s a very compelling work that doesn’t immediately sound like anything else going right now, but at least like something recognizably musical – a big step forward for aTelecine, and an even bigger one if you were as confused by their earlier releases as I was. (http://www.daisrecords.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Bad Indians – Are On The Other Side LP (C.Q.)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:21:32 -0400

From somewhere in Michigan comes this unfortunately-named outfit (I fully agree with Talya Cooper’s earlier assessment of their handle from the Still Single review of their seven inch). This debut album is pretty long on ‘60s “Teenage Shutdown” styled garage psych affectation, and not as long on good ideas – the best songs here, like the twee-minded “She Is Gone,” the throbbing “Hate” and the shambling closer “Babydoll” sound like they were written for another bands. Mostly Bad Indians stick to garage orthodoxy, particularly in their instrument tones, like the roller rink organ and over-reliance on twangy reverb guitar. Amid all the unfortunate marketing shtick that’s gone into calling music “psychedelic” when it really isn’t, Bad Indians pass the test – they sound authentically like a number of bands from a very specific moment in early psych/acid rock history, so they’re not “fake psych”. But the best latter-day psych bands trade on how unobvious they are in their approaches. A band like Prince Rupert’s Drops has a lot going on, more fully-digested influences, and minds that truly go beyond the stencils. Apache Dropout is another example – they hew closely to a lot of stylistic signposts of psychedelia, but they play with such reckless abandon, even in their more recent poppy moments, that such worries are not their concern. Bad Indians have a few moments here and there but they really need to worry about making more of those, and less about the pursuit of affectations. (http://cqrecords.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

John Butcher – Winter Gardens LP (Kukuruku)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:20:51 -0400

RECOMMENDED

John Butcher’s music isn’t an obvious match to the vinyl medium. His saxophone playing can leap from quiet whispers to harsh barks in a second, and there’s enough silence and room sound in his playing to show up the flaws in any pressing. But Kukuruku, a London-based label with Greek roots, has done the job quite nicely; flawless black vinyl, three-dimensional sound with an impressively lofty pitch ceiling, and elegant sleeve design (with a nicely grotesque illustration) to boot.

Now, on to the music, which is even more worthy of note. This record is drawn from two performances recorded during the shorter months; an acoustic concert at a London church in December 2011, and an amplified one in Milwaukee at the end of October 2011. If that seems to be stretching the definition of winter, I can only say that when I saw Butcher in Chicago the next week, the weather was cold, dark, and shitty enough to feel like winter to any Western European. But there’s no gloom in this music, just single-minded engagement. Butcher’s not the guy to dictate emotional responses; rather, he invites excitement by making music that changes so quickly, and making it out of sounds that can still surprise a person who has been listening to Butcher for many years. He’s not one to stand still, and there are segments where his amplified tenor sax sounds more like an electronic percussion ensemble realizing some hitherto unperformed Xenakis score. The acoustic passages dart and swoop like swallows negotiating a funnel cloud, yet even at speed they retain such poise that they might inspire a Zen master to jealousy.

It must be said – Butcher has oodles of solo albums out, and while this one is pretty great, so are Resonant Spaces, Invisible Ear, and Fixations (14), to name a few. If you already have some, you might fairly ask if you need another typically great record. But we’re talking about buying records; it’s not about need, it’s about want. Winter Gardens does advance the documentation of his vocabulary, it preserves a pair of excellent performances in sterling sound, and it’s the only one on vinyl. If that’s not enough to make you want it, so be it. (http://http://www.kukurukurecordings.com)
(Bill Meyer)

Caged Animal – s/t 7” EP (Warthog Speak)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:18:30 -0400

RECOMMENDED

What’s shorter than Tony Molina’s record? How about this Tony Molina-fronted EP? Caged Animal is self-proclaimed ignorant hardcore from the Bay Area, completely ridiculous and over the top lunkheaded East Coast style aggression. It’s been made here by dudes who are not exactly hard the way that Freddy Madball is hard (Jackson from Yi, Gladys from Violent Change, Mike from Catholic Guilt Records), but does it matter when the result is the same? Little dudes thugging out this way fucking rules. Keep your heads up, dogs. Seven tracks that are gone in an instant, topped with an intro and shoutout by rapper Antwon and DJ Eons One (Dan Lactose from Spazz). Shit just got real. Tony sounds like he’s 6’1, 250 and ready to fuck you up in the pit. Right on. 330 copies outta print, repress on the way. Mine’s on green vinyl. (http://warthogspeak.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Philip Corner – Gong/Ear: Dance-ing, 1 & 2 LP (Roaratorio)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:16:53 -0400

RECOMMENDED

It’s 1989 in NYC. Public Enemy is winding them up for “Fight the Power” and Philip Corner is elsewhere, with dancers. He bangs a gong and they get it on. Two long, meditative tracks of nothing but gong and the stray om chant, but what a sound this makes – these are ostensibly cassette recordings but they explore the resonant frequencies of Corner’s favored Paiste tam-tam within the kind of loft space that artists in the city can’t get anymore. These documents allow you to access, against the tension of tape hiss, the entire surface of the instrument, the physicality of playing it and the measurement of that response. Here’s where I’d tell you about Corner’s history in the arts but let’s skip that for now and concentrate on the gong show at hand, a beatific sound that seems to go beyond the realm of meditative and into the connections between our atoms. You can feel this. Edition of 305 with a metal gong mounted on the cover with silkscreened calligraphy. Seriously, you need to experience this. (http://roaratorio.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

Endless Boogie – Long Island 2xLP (No Quarter)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:16:00 -0400

There is something very “it was written…” about this band. Maybe it’s that its members are the fingers to the hidden hand controlling all y’alls taste in music. Or maybe it’s the tenacity – fully exhibited no matter where you happen to check in: song, album, career. The gist of ‘em is in each of the parts, like a Homeric epic. Then again, how is Endless Boogie not like Ancient Greek song culture? They’re old, tough, epic, intimidating, hard to penetrate yet built so that misunderstanding them is impossible. They test endurance, and that is not to say only for the listener. Most of all, and fully realized in Long Island, Endless Boogie’s endowment makes itself manifest through sheer pronouncement, much like the hero Achilles, early in the Iliad, declared his own fate.

I hear ya…. “Hey there! Ho there! Whoa there! Some dude who calls himself ‘Top Dollar’ just casually recommended that I not trust William Tecumseh Sherman in the song after a song called ‘Taking Out the Trash’; itself explicitly stating (in an arbitrary rallying call), My intentions are unclear!” –

You take these things as alerts to not take this band too seriously. Your ready-whipped complacence is acquiesced in a Village Voice interview with the band. In turn, you pledge allegiance to a band like say, Purling Hiss – who take the piss as vaguely as possible, because an understanding of the benefit to maintaining creative plausible deniability is somehow built into the sociobiological make-up of an uncertain cross section of contemporary rock music, which also mismanages any real libidinous urgency. Naming a song, “Lolita” does not summon the desired effect; it draws attention to its inadequacies. Whereas the first song off Long Island, “The Savagist,” although not only refuses to recompense cultural signifiers, but also not a recognized word, does eventually make you feel like a naughty little girl around its 11^th minute.

In spite of its flushing effect, I’d be willing to bet – in fact I am certain – that much of what is captured on Long Island cuts premature of spontaneous laughter from within the band. The music is impromptu, but much like Zappa Plays Zappa, it aims to simulate an onus of musicianship. When perfect recreation is met, it is recognized, and it’s hilarious. If you have held the records in your hands that these fellows have, nurturing them from patent obscurity to market absurdity, you’d find that the only honest end to making music is fraternity. The lack of tact here is mine, meant only to illustrate the impossibility of writing music, when you have inadvertently built the siphon for so much of it. (http://noquarter.net)
(Elizabeth Murphy)

Exhaustion – Future Eaters LP (Aarght!)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:14:00 -0400

RECOMMENDED

The best of the recent spate of super-limited, expensive Australian imports I’ve had to track down on my own, Exhaustion ties together the fortunes of three Melbourne guys (Jensen Tjhung of Lower Plenty and Deaf Wish on bass, Per Byström of the Ooga Boogas on drums, and Duncan Blachford from the Witch Hats on guitar/vox detail) into a space you’d know was more familiar to many Australian bands of previous decades: the big sleazy, the groin throb practiced by the Cramps and the Birthday Party along with all acolytes, maybe the dirty repetition that the Fall could always muster. These are roads in need of service, well-worn like the broken seams of Tracy Pew’s leather trousers. What Exhaustion does with these ideas is where the magic resides, and it’s something anyone could have done, but they’re here now so let’s address it. These chestnuts are roasted to fucking oblivion in an impressionable production treatment where reverb is the uncredited fourth member. Future Eaters sounds hot, dusty, and totally immense, like they were born inside a grain silo. A lot of bands try to condense this sound rather than give it the big room it needs to linger and menace. This is most noticeable in the album’s two longest (and best) tracks. “Old Mickey,” the standout of a record filled with true crime anecdotes and Jim Thompson-esque night terrors, creeps on in two minutes of exposition before Tjhung pretty much sticks his cock all the way through the body of his bass guitar and starts humping away, breaking free into the hottest death disco you’re gonna find in the Southern Hemisphere this year (barring Andy Gibb shadow dancing out of the grave). And “No Place For a Holiday” soldiers on for over 10 minutes, turning into one of those Swell Maps-style strafing missions a la “Helicopter Spies,” Blachford extending his lowing croon across measures of marching rhythms and booming soundscapes that collapse into a coda of phased harmonic field disruptions that honestly could go on for another 15 minutes or so without incident. There’s a bit of innovation here and there too, particularly in doo-wop cover “Moon Out Tonight,” where the snare drum is replaced by Byström smashing a reverb unit against the floor, but in an overcrowded field, Exhaustion does what needs to be done to distance themselves from the pack. 250 copies. (https://www.facebook.com/aarghtrecords)
(Doug Mosurock)

Tony Molina – Dissed and Dismissed LP (Melters)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:13:56 -0400

RECOMMENDED

Part of the slew of really great guitar-based pop music coming out of the punk/”indie orthodox” community this year. Imagine these dudes kickin’ it in a place of worship for like five hours on a Sunday morning. Yeah I can’t either. But I can hype you on THE KID Tony Molina, late of regarded but unrewarded Bay Area band Ovens for many years, and now striking out on his own (alongside appearances on the new Violent Change LP as well as fronting totally monstrous-sounding hardcore crew Caged Animal). Dissed and Dismissed is not too far off from the Ovens CD on Tumult; these songs could have come from the same session because Tony has a style that he’s sticking to: sweet riffs, heavy guitar crunch/palm mute/triple-double tracked guitar, stoned-n-lonely singing, no songs over 90 seconds and most getting it finished in half that. Why drag it out? You have a verse, you have a chorus, run ‘em through once, that’s enough. Everyone has been comparing this record to Weezer ca. Pinkerton, as well as early Teenage Fanclub, Dinosaur Jr and Thin Lizzy, and if you can’t hear those directly in the 12 songs and 14 minutes it’ll take you to run through Dissed and Dismissed then you haven’t heard those bands, but even such basic guideposts aren’t needed to get where he needs you to be to enjoy this record. I’ve played this for a number of people now and they’ve all been into it. It’s kind of a no-brainer to appreciate, but may give you pause when you think about how many bands are stuck in their own rhetoric, and how free and effortless Dissed and Dismissed rolls off, one great chunk of song after another, and a sweet, tender version of Guided By Voices “Wondering Boy Poet” to boot. Tony’s got it. (http://melters.bigcartel.com)
(Doug Mosurock)