SUDDEN INFANT “Dark Sperm” (Teenage Whore Tapes)

Having seen the Sudden Infant name pop up on hundreds of harsh noise tours and proceedings amidst presumably like-minded artists with names like Filthy Turd and Bubblegum Shitface, I was fairly apprehensive about a C30 called "Dark Sperm" with a drawing of an ailing fetus on the cover. But hey, books, covers, the judging thereof…I learned that lesson a long time ago. Which is good, cause this tape is a solid spin. The opener, “Eye Box,” is almost like a punk/no-wave song, with really tight riff-blasts of noise punctuated by high pitch shriek-stabs. Totally focused and un-random and more overtly musical than a lot of noise stuff floating around MySpace. The other 2 A-side pieces move into a more trad “sputtering junk/walls of distortion” noise realm, but they still seem controlled and deliberate in a way I can dig. The B kicks off with “Varicose Vienna,” which lurches with Industrial clang and reverb wreckage in a cool Neubauten mode, before morphing into various other savaged landscapes. Despite the darkness of the sperm at hand, there’s a lot of shades and subtleties Sudden Infant’s world. It’s much appreciated.

COBRA BUBBLES "untitled" (Teenage Whore Tapes)

Further evidence that Robin Williams on Fire is as much Harry Pussy as they are XBXRX comes from this RWOF-related project. Dylan plays two things at once, but it is hard to say exactly what either of those are in this signal-cancellation heaven. It is likely that Mikey, the other half of this duo, also plays two things at once. The dense interplay of punkussion, rocker blurps, and tweeker queefs is usually ecstatic, often monumental, but never forgets to breath... although it hardly ever has to. Both sides begin at full speed. This is the natural pace for Cobra Bubbles. When the duo decides to take a whole note simultaneously, the breakneck speed is instantly recharged. While being sincerely wigged-out requires some sort of ramping/earning phase for most, here is one of those beautiful and youthful rarities that is all explosion and no fuse.

HEAD MOLT / SOCIAL JUNK (Teenage Whore Tapes)

Another whorish outing from the prolific haters at TWT. This one has a fat skeleton holding a cross on the cover and the Head Molt stuff is some of the grossest and least socially acceptable shit I’ve heard from them yet (which is saying something). Lots of repulsive noises and sputtering crap and then negative space zones littered with trash and echoes before the inevitable return to wretched white-faced screaming about hookers and the South Sandwich Islands. Social Junk, here, chase a slightly less aggro dragon. Their jam, “The New West,” is a fried, oddball junkyard of woozy feedback, jittery strings, and bizarre ESP percussion. There’s lots of stops, starts, and quiet parts, all steeped in tension and subliminal dread. Eventually they clatter things up into something like a climax, but it’s not nearly as straightforward-sounding as that. More great stuff from the Junk.

HEAD MOLT / DEPRAVED HEART CRIME VS. LOUIS L’AMOUR (Teenage Whore Tapes)

Got a few tapes in the mailbox from this Hampton, Virginia-based scuzz label, and you could probably guess by the name that their fetishes lie on the hostile/filth side of things (their Myspace website lists the label’s influences as: “People who still buy tapes, Noise, Sluts, Whores, The AIDS Pandemic, Primitive Analog Equipment.” What this love of paid sex and tragic incurable viruses (and not-so-subtle Hole allusions?) translates to on cassette is, of course, the sound of teens gargling fecal matter. Head Molt’s side is allegedly split into 4 “parts” but I didn’t notice a break in the electric puke bubbling outta the speakers. Heat Molt, here, is 4 folks, and people are credited with playing instruments such as “cell phone” and “game of life turn spinner” and “coffee cans” but good luck identifying anything as such. Lo-fi bile, squeezed out of a putrid hose, and put in a pie tin, and thrown in your face. Laugh and lick it up. The Depraved Heart Crime vs. Louis L’amour side is two dudes who record under those names jamming together and it’s way more noise than junk. Just a steady stream of sputtering circuits, unchanging and numb. Like sticking yr head in a waterfall of hot mud. If that sounds like yr idea of a good time, get on board the Teenage Whore train.