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

RUSSIAN TSARLAG "Liquid Nails" LP (Personnel Records)

Hot new LP from dungeon based lifeform Carlos Gonzales aka Russian Tsarlag.  Very limited (200 copies only), so don't sleep on this one.  It's the first release on the label and you can order it direct while supplies last.  Not Not Fun may have some copies too.  Also check on discogs.  Boo.

HEPATITIS (B) YOUTH "s/t" c15? (Friends and Relatives / Green Tape Records)

Liner notes list 12 members on the inside of the tape and it's sort of weird to say it, but it doesn't feel like that at all. Usually you put three dudes in a room and the music is totally (TOO) full, the tape is covered in loop goop and hissing twists. Not this mini-album. A nice ensemble piece that sounds like, after a hearty meal of cardboard dipped in wet sand, the band hit the recycling shed and ripped through a set of their favorite "tunes" with only themselves to please.

I'd long heard stories of the north florida scene (which was mind-blowing enough back then), weird people hanging out under bridges covered in fake blood playing 4 minute sets till the cops showed up (for real!) and have followed some of their paths and detritus since and this is a nice crouton in the sound salad. Carlos Gonzalez is listed first and since his exodus north he's put out a staggering collection of releases getting better every second as Russian Tsarlag (check the most recent LP on Night People, along with a great cassette on Bonescraper). Zach Ippen I know only from running the Green Tape Records label which had a hand in putting this (and a recent Gang Wizard LP) out, but i'm sure if you tracked down some of these other names the pieces would start to fit together.

Definitely a nice little slice of magnetic tape, pretty short which is a little sad but leaves you wanting more of that dude sort of moaning/singing through a toilet paper tube over some bass player stuffed in a bag of leaves with a drummer keeping the beat on the roof of the passing 18 wheeler.

Comes packaged in a plastic snap-shut case,
black and white photocopied art
still in print from Friends and Relatives site (along with lots of other good stuff!)

the not-super-helpful green tape records site:
http://www.freewebs.com/greentape/index.htm
and the more helpful Friends and Relatives site:
http://friendsandrelativesrecords.com/

RUSSIAN TSARLAG "untitled" (Eager Mother Tapes)

Holy shit, this is the motherload. Of the half-a-dozen or so solo Carlos Gonzalez tapes we own, the A side of this C20 is easily the greatest and best recorded collection of his psycho soul songs I’ve ever heard. From the hypno-pop of “Keeper’s Back Glove” through to the languid madness of “Uncovering Many Diseases,” these are crucial Tsarlag gems from the inmost vaults of Carlos’ warped song reservoir. Strangled, ailing guitar notes, robotussin drumming, fucked child rhymes – the combination all hits home like never before. Warrants endless listens. The B side was actually recorded by me, though I had no idea this was even being released. Documenting one of the bleakest, emptiest Smell shows I’ve ever attended, Carlos painted a slime cross on his forehead, wore a cape but no shirt, and set up a cheap strobe light under his chair for the duration of his 8-minute performance. He busted out some classics (“Bleach Party,” “Beach Banquet”) but it was all recorded on a found tape of home-recorded family conversations so there’s this constant vocal babble masking the nuances and deadening the overall audio impact. Too bad. J-card is killer though, tons of Carlos’ beautiful scrawl-figures copied on thick tennis ball-colored neon green cardstock.

RUSSIAN TSARLAG (Green Tape)

Fucked up C3 of stone-classic bafflement from America’s greatest living weirdo visionary nomad, Carlos Gonzales. Far, far, far away from the relative sanity of his art-thrash days in Dynasty and Byron House, Russian Tsarlag captures a couple of the bad trip sing-alongs he was pushing during his last doomed leg of U.S. shows in December/January-ish. Drugged monotone ramblings about egg sandwiches and bleach parties over incompetent hand-clapping accompaniment. Naked, disturbing, minimal, and insane. Anyone who caught one of his shows from this era knows what I’m talking about. Green slime face paint, Manson-damaged lyrics, and underground music’s most charismatic moustache. For fans of living life in a straightjacket.