FAT WORM OF ERROR"Brickfaced Vol.2" c40 (Yeay!)

I'd be quick to name Fat Worm of Error as my favorite live band playing right now. The five member group of Jess Goddard (vocals, keys, costumes), Chris Cooper (guitar), Tim Sheldon (guitar), Donny Shaw (bass), and Neil Young (drums, elctrnx & Yeay! Plastics proprietor) are so much more than the sum of their parts and create sounds so far beyond what is usually expected from a band with such commonplace instrumentation. Fat Worm is far for commonplace. In fact I would go so far to say that there is not a single other band that has ever made such sounds. Sure, there are other bands splashing their post no-wave antics left and right, there are other artists creating fractured electronic blorp-scapes and there are a few costumed noise rock bands still left hanging on, but FWOE is a complete synthesis of everything that has been awesome about the American underground for the last 30 years.

The band of folks who are mostly in their mid-late 30s and early 40s has some serious pedigree, with two of it's members (Cooper/Goddard) hailing from the Bay Area's otherworldly historical reenactment troupe Caroliner (look it up. If you don't own every LP, most are still kept in print for roughly $7 a piece...write agenerak@yahoo.com). Not to mention each of the member's A-1 side projects and loose SF connection to Deerhoof from days of yore. FWOE makes its home in the forests and brick towns of Western Massachusetts.

While they may not outshine Caroliner in the concept or costume department, Fat Worm's broken down, off rhythm composition/improv takes off in surprisingly new directions. Nothing is tied down in their universe; riffs disappear as quickly as they are introduced, off-time vocals land like a ton of bricks over rapidly shifting ground. Parallels could be drawn to a band like Arab on Radar, but FWOE's work is less coarse and brutish. This gang is more like a chamber music ensemble; their strength relies less on overpowering sonics, but on subtle interplay between their constituent parts.

I've probably seen this band play 20 times and it took a little while for me to realize that what I had initially taken to be complete improvised cacophony, was in fact a finely developed Harmolodic songcraft (Ornette Coleman fans take note). At this point I could probably sing along to these lurching odes to disconnectivity. One of the most wonderful things about the Fat Worm crew is the innumerable treasures that repeated listens hold. The band is set to go on tour this spring. Get on the mailing list to stay updated.

To the matter at hand: is Brickfaced: Vol. 2 a good place to start? I'd suppose so, it's a fine collection of unreleased snippets recorded over the last five years. The group's perverted charm shines through over the course of tape's 40 minute run time and I imagine you could become hooked from just listening to this document. But for the uninitiated, I would strongly suggest starting with the Broods LP released last year on Ecstatic Peace and Open Mouth Records. It really shows Fat Worm operating at the height of their powers. Whereas, their early cassette and cdr work with pretty scattered, and their long playing debut CD/LP on Load showed the signs of considerable post production work, "Broods" really captures the organic beauty of these five individuals playing together in one room. That's not to say that you shouldn't head right over to the Yeay website and buy Brickfaced right now, it's only $6 ppd and it will surely sell out quickly, but once you get started, you'll want to track down all of the releases in the band's dense catalog.

Find Yeay Plastics here. One of the few bands reviewed on CG with a wikipedia page. Their live exploits have been heavily documented on youtube. There are tons of Fat Worm jams to listen to on the Free Music Archive, including a complete download of Brickfaced Vol. 1 from 2003.

JASON MARTIN "Harmonic Time Cycles & Scary Guitar Man" c60 (Yeay!)

First off, I'd like to say that it's been WAY too long since the last cassette release on Yeay! (rhymes with "whey", which is pronounced like "way")... Say...HA HA HA, that rhymes with all those other words too!

First off, I'd like to say it's been way too long since the last cassette release on Yeay!, the label run (from time to time) but Fat Worm of Error drummer Neil "Neel" Young. Some of the releases that Neil was putting out 3 or 4 years ago are among my favorite tapes of all time. Track down Jeremy Latch Love Songs For Everybody and Vapor Gourds Dagger Magic at all costs!

This new release from Jason Martin keeps with the label's "out there" aesthetic and comes highly recommended. The A side is a radio play that was first broadcast over unsuspecting airwaves in upstate New York during 2008. It consists of a variety of cut up music for guitar, shortwave radio, tape player, bass, drums, percussion, function generator, organ and samples of a preacher talking about the very P.K. Dickian subject matter of ancient Romans enslaving humanity by freezing time. Apparently this very particular strain of looniness wasn't exclusive to the author of "Valis", but had a few other proponents as well. The full title of the A side is Harmonic Time Cycles or How the Romans Sent A Disruptive Time Piece To Psychotronically Entrap Us Within Our Own Minds. As the piece progresses, it becomes less cut up and a little more musical in a way that is reminiscent of Caroliner, or something like that, but without lyrics. A great grating mass! Towards the end we hear Jason's voice overlaid onto the preacher's voice to awesome effect and we do finally learn just how those crazy Romans did it (entrap us within our own minds, that is). It all ends with a little fractured dirge leading into a rhythmic beeping that brings us back to reality (hopefully).

The B side, entitled Scary Guitar Man is a series of improvisations and spoken word pieces dedicated to Don Van Vliet. The music doesn't so much sound like Beefheart, but surely it's a tribute to his anarchic spirit. The poems, on the other hand, capture his mad sense of lyricism, though they owe much to Williams S. Burroughs as well (second time I've mentioned him in a review during the last week). There are passages of distorted (acoustic?) guitar that sound like lots of different kinds of animals that are really angry. That's cool. Listening to this side made me realize that my favorite parts of this tape are all the little distortions and broken sounds that push Martin's recording device to the max. The beauty is in the details, as they say.

All of this is made clearly audible by the fine dubbing job by Young. The artwork is a double sided full color fold out with insert.

For all things Yeay! - here - "yeay! plastics" leads you to the label
Jason's very informative website - check it out

SAM PHILLPS / SAM GAS CAN "Sam's club" c30 (Yeay! Tapes)

This tape is a split by two dudes who flank the western mass scene, Sam Phillips to the north, a great dude who runs the space the Tinder Box up in brattleboro and Sam Gas Can who runs faux paus recordings, hailing from the outskirts of worcester in central mass. The concept has nothing to do with big box stores, low prices, buying in bulk or joining their 'club' of lowered labor standards, underpricing small businesses and cheap plastic shit.

The sam phillips side is more of a one man band, touring the alleys, trees and dumpsters of brattleboro. Lots of semi-processed (or not?) field recordings married to the tape hiss and wind mix perfectly with the intentionally 'musical' sounds that come off more as sound clips of weird instruments, sounds and voices. The messes mix and unmix with the sound of children, birds and the tape itself being manipulated, the tape reaches into itself with sam eventually shaking what sounds like a fence into a basic rhythm and singing joyfully along to his new "band" and his audience of a parking lot and stream. a nice ride for sure!

Gas Can's side opens with a similar tone of hand-held tape deck cutting into more 4 track recordings, whereas Phillips' side feels more like a leisurely stroll outside, almost as an invisible companion, this side has more of the feeling of looking in the window of Gas Can's bandroom. lots of jumping around from style to style, casio cruisers and keyboard jams with a real mellow feel jumps into some skittering electronics, then maybe to some sampled pieces (or not??) that sound like it could be a compressed piece of a bollywood soundtrack or something from konono no.1, then everything gets super weird as it sounds like sam sings black sabbath lyrics into a well for a while and the tape just slowwwwwwwws down.

comes if full color sleeve w/black and white backside.
still available from the Yeay! site:

http://yeay.suchfun.net/catalog.html

VAPOR GOURDS "Dagger Magic" c30 (Yeay! Tapes)

This tape has been a constant companion in my tape deck since i picked it up from local record store, Mystery Train here in western mass. It was put out, mysteriously, by Neil Young over at Yeay! Tapes, who refused to let it be known who the sorcerer was behind this exceptional tape.

When Jay Dilla died almost two years ago he had just completed my favorite record of his "Donuts" which is essentially a jacked up beat tape, some of the songs have since or were at the time, being recorded over by mc's from all across the map and since his death there has been a non-stop stream of posthumous music (as there usually is when someone dies way too young) and to my surprise, most of it is still AMAZING. i bring it up because this tape, despite having a keen ear for the subtlety of sound that usually accompanies (one would hope!) a noise artist, seems more in line with the left of center, disorienting and beautiful beats that you'd find in the vaults of a jay dilla library.

Albeit, these are a bit more dusty and hang on to, say, swooping washed out synth loops a lot longer than Dilla would, it still has that feel, to me, of someone constructing, building, adding on, taking tiny pieces and coming up with the most amazing pastiche of weird ass soul strings, cheap keyboards, and buried under there somewhere is a beat. There are anomalous moments and that's what keeps this tape worth coming back to; absolutely hypnotizing, reverb soaked guitars, siren/bombs, crazy blasts of keyboard beauty stuck right on top of a beat in a manner that is so jarring it can only be intentional and as it repeats, forming a phrase of "drumbeat, guitar loop, drumbeat, KEYBOARD and then back" the voice of the artist only becomes more apparent and you become more appreciative of the strength of compositions and realize it's definitely a lot more than just "a beat tape".

comes i color copy w/ silk screen covers on white stamped tapes,
still available from the label, check it out FOR SURE.

http://yeay.suchfun.net/catalog.html

BROMP TREB “Audio-Visual Cassette” (Yeay! Cassettes)

Predictably maddening brain-scrambled rectal messes from this resolutely incoherent Massachusetts weirdo squad. Farting, squiggly electronics (in the Crank Sturgeon mold), chopped/screwed patches of wacko drum programming, and inane/insane alien rap experiments (that sorta echo certain Need New Body tracks I’ve heard) all soldered together into a relentlessly goofy C26 chain letter of dangling randomness. Can say with all honesty I can’t ever foresee circumstances leading me to put this thing back in the deck for a second play, but I guess if yr feeling deprived of the sound of Smurfs being choked to death in a neon bouncy castle, then this’ll be your go-to jam. The art is a photocopy of a basic Maxell-style advertorial J-card with Bromp Treb info typed on top, kinda like those pop-punk bands that re-appropriate the Snickers or Pringles logo/font for their album art or Vans Warped Tour t-shirt.