TURKISH DELIGHT "Tommy Bell" C60 (I Heart Noise)

Alright, look. I’m no SONIC YOUTH scholar or nothin’, but have I got some information for you! Get woke!

So, TURKISH DELIGHT, right? Never heard of ‘em, right? Fairly obscure, right? As in, this here re-issue is over 20 years since its first and only release & you & I didn’t know diddley-squat about it, until just now, right? Do the MATH, man! These Bostonians (AKA NYC’s NEIGHBORS) “made” music that sounds JUST like some “hypothetical” Sonic Youth retrospective “best of” comp, but, like, without all the self-indulgent, onanistic vignettes (you heard me, man), but, rather, this “theoretical compilation” focuses on truly highlighting the more accessible, driving, singalongablenesses of SY’s most loftiest of noisiest points… all of these culled from 1983 until 2009.

DO YOU CATCH MY DRIFT? DO I NEED TO SPELL IT OUT? WHAT I AM SAYING IS THAT TURKISH DELIGHT WERE TIME TRAVELLERS!

They totally traveled to the future, dubbed a mixtape of what Murray Street and Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped and the Eternal would sound like, and then they traveled back to 1995 and used it to better inform themselves on writing some of the catchiest, punkest noise-worshippingest indie rock they could possibly get away with, without getting themselves accused of witchcraft and being extradited to Salem for trial.

Okay, look. Maybe this Kool-Aid is a bit strong. I’ll grant you that. but, think about it. How else could a band be so far ahead of its time and do Sonic Youth even better than Sonic Youth did Sonic Youth?*

https://iheartnoise.bandcamp.com/album/turkish-delight-tommy-bell
and/or
https://turkishdelight.bandcamp.com/

  --Jacob An Kittenplan


*Did I mention Sonic Youth at all? This comparison will be inescapable, because they’re an easy reference point, AND a damn good one. This tape fucking rocks! Too bad it (and the LP) is sold out already and you gotta wait another two decades before you can get it again. Keep your eyes peel’d! I do believe there are a few mp3s left lying around, though, so, there’s that. ☺

WILLIAM CARLOS WHITEN"Burn My Letters" C36(I Heart Noise)

“Dad Rock”, as in, “my dad, in Ohio, who retired his tape deck ten years ago, will really dig this download code I’m about to text him”. I’m keeping the tape. It will sit right the fuck next to a J-Cardless copy of Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Mermaid Avenue II” I found for fifty cents at the consignment shop near my house. Do you even remember how goddamn good Wilco was in the ‘90s?! “Summer Teeth”?! “Being There”!? 

Well, William Carlos Whitten sure as shit does, I’ll tell you what!! He knows that everything after “A Ghost Is Born” was absolute and utter horse-shit, and that, with such an amalgam of incredible musicians, moving “forward” shouldn’t have meant “mind-numbingly vanilla”, right? Ok, maybe I’m projecting here. Maybe I’m definitely without a doubt bitter for what Wilco did to me…but now that that bitterness has faded, and with it, this here album has been released by William Carlos Whitten that takes all of the very best parts of BT & ST & infuses them with a touch of Malkmus-esque guitar quirkery and a rock solid vocal backing to each and every single line sung (with the exception of a blatant Harry Nilsson homage sung solo) and, daaaang, is alll GOOOOOD! Great summer jamz album, for sure!

https://iheartnoise.bandcamp.com/album/william-carlos-whitten-burn-my-letters

  --Jacob An Kittenplan

PETRIDISCH “A Fixed Point” (I Heart Noise)

Boston “darkwave” artist Petridisch has the honor of releasing the first physical artifact on I Heart Noise, till now a blog and digital mixtape label intent on unearthing “peculiar sounds” and unleashing them upon the unwitting populace – sounds a little bit like yours truly, if you ask me. (Except for the label part – who’s got time for that?) Now there are physical things to consume in real space! A CD (ugh; edition of 10) and a tape (yay! Edition of 50), but you’ve already bought the tape (because it’s sold out). Petridisch, true to his vast discographical root structure (see link below), toils in an electronic landscape that’s part techno, part industrial, all mood, and these four songs are a perfect entry point into his psyche-delia. “The Unknown Rabbit” and “Operation Interlude” are my favorite tracks here, mainly because there’s an added dash of shoegaze that was always oh-so-present in my favorite netlabel releases from the early to mid-2000s (Laridae, represent!). Thick synths swell over electro clicks, overwhelming speakers in the best possible way. “In the Red” and “In the Black” feature vocal samples, and while they totally work within the genre and within these two tracks, I’ll take non-vocal tracks any day of the week. Still, “Red” and “Black” have that gothic element, the female voices drifting over the bleeps and blops like KMFDM background singers over a half-speed Orbital track. OK, OK, the space is a magic space. There, I said it, you happy? A FIXED POINT, perhaps THE reference point for all Petridisch music, is the perfecto place to start your collection of PD tunes and also IHN releases. Get in on the ground floor here, folks, and tell everybody I sent ya when these things fetch a grand on Discogs.

Each song comes with a video too!

Petridisch I Heart Noise

--Ryan Masteller