CONTROL POINT “Dreamer’s Disease” (Hot Releases)

 

Everything’s a dirge to Control Point. Dreamer’s Disease finds Philadelphian Lindsay Gambone in slow-motion darkwave mode, each track a lurching funeral procession over synthesizers and drum machines. Proceeding at a crawl, Gambone clearly feels an existential weight bearing down on her, like gravity’s kicked up a notch – or exponentially. Her deep, chanting vocals take on a goth sheen, the ritualism invoked in each excruciating moment a demented prayer of deliverance to whatever monster deity lives out in those woods. I honestly don’t want to get too close to it, that’s for dang sure! Regardless, the Control Point MO spreads across this EP’s six tracks, never wavering from the seeming goal of rendering everything in sight and in life nothing more than a sacrifice to some midnight whim. God help us all.

 

https://controlpoint.bandcamp.com/

 

https://hotreleases.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

DAVE PUBLIC “More Than This” C32 (Hot Releases)

I don’t know what to make of this Dave Public character. On the one hand, his “Same Old Scene” is a tape-manipulation nightmare, a noise-tastrophe of spool-shredding proportions. There’s not a jury on this earth that would acquit the man of cassette-icide. But the ride is a good one, the trip a freakadelic brown acid meltdown that’ll increase your “Dokillys” by fifty or so. But that’s just the start.

“Prairie Rose” is a shimmering exercise in stasis, an ambient slow burner whose timbre comes close to those singing bowl thingees I can’t play properly but pretend to have skill at doing every time I’m served champagne at a wedding. Before something even more confusing happens, let’s just let ourselves get lost in this hall of mirrors, this fractal palace, as Roxy Music nips at the edges of our imagination. But they can’t, because More Than This won’t let them. It’s not the right vibe.

That’s why there’s “NL51217,” something I thought for sure was named after a star but only turned up weird BMW pdf files. It’s a live document lasting sixteen minutes and the entirety of side B, but it coalesces Dave Public’s inclinations on the first two tracks into a cohesive journey or meditation or something along those lines. It’s a rippling noise extravagance, a bright pulsing treat piped in from elsewhere in the galaxy. So maybe it is a star after all!

https://davepublic.bandcamp.com/

https://hotreleases.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

P. GALLAGHER “Soundtracks” C40 (Hot Releases)

Soundtracks:

·       To the history of what happened beneath the wagon wheel lamp.

·       To broken stuff jutting out of the water on a cold, autumn day.

·       To fences and gates rusting amid the weather.

·       To predators and prey and the eternal dance.

·       To ancient organs tuning themselves in the dark.

·       To the early morning as dockworkers show up for their shifts.

·       To the discovery of a secret door in a brick façade.

·       To spilled soup slowly dripping in an abandoned kitchen.

·       To a straight razor slowly slicing away at a working radio.

·       To the night not ending.

https://hotreleases.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

HOT RELEASES - Carrboro, North Carolina

Ryan Martin performs as Secret Boyfriend. Check out his new tape on the always top-notch label I Just Live Here. It's called Furnishing the Void and it's as good an album as he's ever made. It covers a lot of different ground.  When I first saw Secret Boyfriend in a basement in Northampton, I thought he was just a harsh noiser, but the more times I check out his live act or releases, I find a wealth of other musical information.  Martin is as true an outsider as we can have in this modern age and his music should not be ignored.

Neither should his fantastic vinyl label, Hot Releases.  Last year's Ashrae Fax archival find and the year before's double dose of M.B. reissues should already be in your collection, but the new batch is the best yet: Russian Tsarlag / Secret Boyfriend split, Ghedalia Tazartes reissue, Inspector 22 full length, Profligate LP and Tracey Trance full length co-release.  Russian Tsarlag / Secret Boyfriend LP was a great way to start my day. A super mellow long player that showcase's Martin's most spacious side. Gorgeous dreamy vocals and organ can be found on both sides.  The Tsarlag material is a few years old, but has never been issued.  All very hi fidelity.

Ghedalia Tazartes is a French born sound collage and vocal artist who first came to my with the 2011 reissue of his first LP Diasporas from 1979.  His music explores the limitations of the human voice and is both human and experimental.  The new Hot Releases LP Voyage a l'ombre was originally released on CD in 1997.

Inspector 22 Passin' Time 12" I've long been curious about this guy's stuff.  He seems to have a few fans up in Portland, ME where I lived for a time.  Based on the super specific insert, this guy seems like a true character.  Surface comparison's could be made to current ramshackle pop acts like the Happy Jawbone Family Band and also Charlie McAlister and early Beck sonically, but I've got the feeling this goes pretty deep.  The label sums it up best, "blown out Satanic and death-obsessed folk songs with a pleasingly bent guitar style. Death has come, time is near."

Profligate Come Follow Me LP. In case you missed it Noah Anthony's Night Burger project has changed names, but it's still providing the same dancey industrial thrills. This is a companion piece to his current 12" on Not Not Fun.

http://www.hot-releases.org/

Listen to samples from all of the aforementioned Hot Releases on soundcloud

SECRET BOYFRIEND: “End This Thrall” c45 (Hot Releases)

Really pleasantly surprised by this one, didn’t know much at all about Ryan Martin or his North Carolina-based Hot Releases label for a long time, but this one has definitely got me jumping on the wagon. This shit goes all over the place, dense drone, power electronics, clanking scrap metal, drum-machine driven Suicide-style guitar jammers, and even hushed acoustic ballads, this one has got it all, and it seamlessly flows from one to the next. Martin is proficient in all aspects, recording, playing (“noise dude” that actually knows how to play guitar!) and killer collage-style artwork. Totally engrossing and eclectic, can’t say enough good things about this, a musician after my own heart, excited to hear a proper full-length because I can guarantee it’s gonna be massive.

http://www.hot-releases.org/

ANDREA STROUD : "Killer Workout" c30 (Hot Releases)

You know how when your filming a tv screen or computer and the frame rate between the camera and the monitor is off so it flickers or distorts or skips around? Usually in movies they cover it up with fancy modern technology so you can't see the irregularity, but sometimes it's in tact. Like maybe in the dude's house from Silence of the Lambs, or maybe in some gangrene Japanese horror movie featuring a girl who works out non-stop in near darkness to the sound of dripping water echoing down some empty hallway filled with near reptilian hand-less victims mumbling to themselves for an eternity.

Maybe the sound of the tv is on and you can hear "it" but it's so over driven and blown out that only every so often to you catch a glimpse of a melody, maybe it's some synthesizer buried under tape hiss or maybe that's a broken heater and someone breathing down your neck, hard to tell but you know it's not comfort music.

Supposedly all sourced from workout tapes there's definitely a suggestion of someone really really pushing themselves here, everything is in the red and it sounds awesome, the most audible 'music' comes at the end of the second side with a crappy 'punk' sounding guitar jam totally overgrown with moss and sauce, nothing clean, easy or in shape about this.

Comes packaged in really, really well done full color fold out insert of workout photos of the artist, totally insane. Definitely recommended.
Not sure of the edition but still available from the Hot Releases myspace where there are also sound clips:
www.myspace.com/hotreleases
and their proper internet home:
www.hotreleases.org