ANTHONY JANAS “Lucifer, Scooby-Doo & Me” C30 (Nihilist)

Like a guitar-playing monkey whose face has melted off (see cover), Anthony Janas offers us the recorded results of said melting, complete with final impulsive twitches, maybe even the tail end of the critter’s consciousness before fully succumbing. Not for the faint of heart, this Janas fellow, whose “Lucifer, Scooby-Doo & Me” marks his first release in six years or so. And as you might expect from what I’ve suggested so far and the juxtaposition of cartoon mystery-solving hound Scooby-Doo and Lucifer, the devil himself, the results are both disturbing and playful. And weird. The whole thing’s weird.

Weird in a good way. There are spoken vocals on the first and last tracks. The first is run through a text-to-speech program and warns Christians of the “homosexual community’s” adoption of Scooby-Doo (tongue in cheek!) and discusses multiple uses of feces (tongue in cheek!). The last is not, and does not, but there are other things to discuss, with both Lucifer and Scooby-Doo (and me), but we’ll let you go through that one yourself. Otherwise you’re on your own in Anthony Janas’ imagination, and you’re up against every sonic whim he decides is his impulse at that moment in time. Lots to dig into; lots of fun.

https://nihilistrecordings.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan  

TINY MUSIC: s/t c37 (Nihilist Records) & “F.W.S.S.” c76 (self-released)

This clanking collective of Chicagoans really know how to make an interesting din out of household objects. Using explicitly acoustic instruments, they can really clock out a cassette and give dudes with tables full of effects pedals a serious run for their money. Any electricity they do use is only to power their homemade gadgets, spinning chimes and slatted metal to scrape against. The actual list of items they use (included in the liner notes) is staggering, everything from drinking straws to window weights.

The music is always instrumental and generally dissonant, but the contraptions aren’t the whole of the music, there’s also a heavy use of various flutes and bowed instruments that, when the music does come together and become rhythmic, invoke an elven maypole dance, the family minstrel band doing some real medieval truckin’. I was a little disappointed that “F.W.S.S.” (which stands for "Fall, Winter, Sping, Summer”) didn’t really apply it’s seasonal motif more comprehensively; it seemed like each song, though possessing individual idiosyncracies, sounded largely the same structurally, with no difference in mood. Still, I think the potential of this group, both auditorily and in formation, is limitless, and look forward to future releases.

Both tapes come with xerox inserts, but “F.W.S.S.” has varied pieces of flora glued to the front and watercolored labels.

http://www.myspace.com/tinymusicband