YES SELMA / PONY MOON “Split" C30 (Sara Laughs)

This most recent release on the Sara Laughs label finds Yes Selma paying homage to one of history’s most infamous electric guitar torturers with their side-spanning track “Jimi Hendrix’s Spine”, and it sounds a good bit like a SUNN O))) jam sesh, but with added fiddle-work grittily bowed into the mix of distortion, feedback, and distorted feedback. Not exactly helpful for trying to do the Sunday crosswords, but it might cheer one up if they were in the mood to break stuff, but only around objects unaffordable.

The second side, via Pony Moon, is filled with similar wall-o-noise energy, but without being led by the free-range noise-farming of amplifier-as-focal-point. Here, tape loops and a more packed choir of string-v-distortio-drones takes the edge off a bit, swapping out for a low-voltage fuzz-glow around the swells and drop-offs. Maximal theoretic destruction in a minimal visceral event. 

https://saralaughs.bandcamp.com/album/yes-selma-pony-moon-split

and/or

https://chadbeattie.bandcamp.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

DWAYYO“Dwayyo” C60&ROSEMARY KRUST"Evirare" C37(Sara Laughs)

On Dwayyo, two fevered violinists bow a pine tree’s worth of rosin across their strings as they screech, scratch, agitate, and occasionally draw out a pure, sonorous vibration, intermittently and in tandem, for half an hour straight. One side acoustically, the other with electronic amplification. For the noise junkie, this cacophony will scratch some serious itches. For the harmony lover, well, they’re not gonna have a very good time with this one.

https://saralaughs.bandcamp.com/album/dwayyo

&

Rosemary Krust

Side A: Hyper-amnesiac fights off demons with a clarinet whilst the keepers (of said demons) attempt to break in through the garbage disposal. There is always a war on, somewhere, right? In time, pipes and emotional reserves burst, the jig is up; at least there will be calm.

Side B: Rich & bassy, electrocuted guitar moans cut through shrill feedback and blown-out microphones. Distant deaf drum kit blindly leads the rhythm-free melée. Do not get distracted by the human vocal cords! Are those sirens? Organ drones climb up from squeaky floor boards as the sun runs away in slow motion. Dependable fader.

https://saralaughs.bandcamp.com/album/evirare

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

BLOOD ON THE MERCY SEAT“I Love Jesus Like A Good Catholic Girl Does” C23 &“The Giddy Limit” C40(Sara Laughs)

"ILJLAGCGD" finds BOTMS in a full frontal freak-out sesh for 23:06 straight, with the ghost-sheddings of Tony Conrad’s shredded horsehairs littered about the ground, obscuring notes & manifestos inspired by Glenn Branca and Jesus “Dada" Christ, herself.

“The Giddy Limit”, in juxtaposition, proves a tamer companion-piece/antidote for the previous album’s unrestrained mania. All the discordant drones, mumbly-rambled lamentations and guitar-as-percussive-forces are still present, just slowed & stretched out. Still distilled chaos, just now with a li’l less desperation.

https://bloodonthemercyseat.bandcamp.com/album/i-love-jesus-like-a-good-catholic-girl-does

and/or

https://saralaughs.bandcamp.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

HUMAN HOST“Special Moments with Muckle Flugga & the Cronk” C27(Sara Laughs)

While most of the Sara Laughs catalog boasts sound documentations of intense improv exorcisms, NYC’s Human Host keeps it minimal, introspective, and (relatively) relaxing. The preset keyboard tones HH wrings out are obscured from their saccharine settings by oodles and oodles of pedal tweakage, allowing the delayed arpeggios to climb and fall over themselves in fairly harmonious fashion or brush brusquely against one another’s chordal sum, in engaging moments of ruffled surface tensions. If someone said that the source material for these tapes was a caché of mildew-choked Stephen Halpern reel-to-reels, it would not be possible to reasonably dismiss them. 

Lo-Fi New Age meditations for all us on a shoestring budget!

https://saralaughs.bandcamp.com/album/special-moments-with-muckle-flugga-and-the-cronk

and.or

https://humanhost.bandcamp.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan