CAUGHT ON TAPE "2x Cassette" (Manhand)

Though C.G.s is a beacon for the groundbreaking and often critically underrated, I have but one rap sheet from the "mainstream" and you will seldom hear a peep from me about it in the future.  This beautifully hand painted 2x cassette package comes from the duo of John Moloney/Thurston Moore documenting some of their best captured last year of free improv touring.  Like their s/t lp on Feeding Tube Records and lesser known Manhand releases "Acting the Maggot" and "Irish-American Prayer" the stuff is duplicated straight from cassette recordings of live shows. 

A bit about each side:

A1: Right out the gate with full frontal guitar musk, barrage dissolving into TM's patented tonal scrapings and knocks.  Later a rendition of "Staring Statues" from the Psychic Hearts LP.

A2: Frantic drums dissolve into what sounds like jamming on a no input mixer but is probably the tape recorder too close to guitar amp destruction through the tri metal pedal, then back into hc punx blast w hints of stoner riffs/full boogie/halloween vibrato in no set chronology.

B1: Floor tom wash under rat squall/heavy space fire from some far off place.

B2: Buzz and howl in continuance with side A1/crash decaying into next crash. Room noise and drones.  Drums to the front with an abrupt ending.  2/4 sides have an abrupt ending.

Check yr favorite record store for this and the Caught on Tape LP and look out for more undoubtably sporadic releases in the future.

- -Matt Robidoux

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN meets BYRON COLEY "In Orbit" c45(Feeding Tube Records)

A live recording of music writer and poet Byron Coley reciting text as a handful of Western MA regulars conglomerated under the Sunburned moniker jam out behind him. I believe Byron is reading from the recently published book "This Planet is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra", a collection of writings by the late great bandleader that reads as much as an admonition of earthlings as it does a paean to the joys of space travel. The writings reveal a deep paranoid streak in Sun Ra, which comes across less in his music, but makes perfect sense when considering the life and work of that celibate monk of the astral spaceways. I'm not sure if Byron adds any of his own words to the Sun Ra material, but if he does, it all blends seamlessly. At times his reading conjures up the psychedelic fury of the wild-eyed Kesey. Pretty fun stuff. Check out the sample of the live set on youtube. If you like what you're hearing, go "glank" this "scozz". If you're only going to buy one object today, you might get the Sun Ra book instead. More info on that here. Actually you might want to write Feeding Tube and see if they have the book in stock and kill two birds with one stone. Now that's an idea I like.

The tape is an edition of 90 and will probably sell out fast.

Feeding Tube webzone. Look under the "tapes" heading.

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN / EMERALDS split (Man Hand)

Cool split between some dudes who have been running the underground track since Nirvana was a band on Geffen not New Age Tapes and some dudes who have been smoking indo on analog synths since No Fun Fest 2006. Old meets new, basically. Savvily and radly, Sunburned reign in their clattery beard blather for an Emeraldsian zoner séance of keyboard levitation and moon sparkle that’s probably the best jam I’ve heard by ‘em in my lifetime (though I’ve only heard about 16% of their discog, I’d guess). Ohio’s chosen sons, for their part, do not disappoint in the least. The Joan Osborne-ly titled “What If God Was On The Subway” ascends a single-file escalator into the sky using a glorious procession of synth arrangements that all sound immaculately mapped and pre-destined to fuse together into this piece’s singular architecture. I gotta say I passionately love it when a band with as much online fervor/hoopla/hype as Emeralds back it up release after release with consummately executed magic like this. So thoughtful and deliberate and intentional it demands the rest of the musical planet’s droners raise their own game, NOW.

SUNBURNED “The Pegadrift” (Fuck It Tapes)

FIT follows up its stunning archival NNCK tape with another chunk of historical audio by a similarly canonized New York psych institution, Sunburned (Hand of the Man). “The Pegadrift” collects a quartet of recordings from the fall of 2005, many (all?) of which document sets from the Sunburned/Magik Markers US tour. They played LA/The Smell on this trek and I recall a hairy guy dropping his pants and hitting a keyboard with his dick, which weirded out the bulk of the under-21 all-ages punk youths there so much that they left, leaving SBHOTM to play their half-hour of jams to roughly 9 people. Fortunately this CS finds them in slightly less confrontational form, and the editing/clothing helps immensely. The A side track, “Horse Country Blues,” is a great, condensed, overtly musical organic psych rhythm slipstream, drums and guitar mantras pounding in runic unison. They start the B side with a muddled/muddy hippy spoken word piece that goes on for waaaaaay too long but eventually it ends and Moloney revs up the drums into a brambly drunken groove, which motors the proceedings to a better place. Momentarily. Then Rob Thomas gets BACK on the mic and spits out more incoherent stream-of-consciousness beatnik babble until the C30 runs out of tape. Love it or hate it, this is what Sunburned is: a sweaty, ragged, intoxicated stink of open mouths and burned minds. Smoke on or sober up.