VARIOUS ARTISTS "VSR’s Brooklyn Mixtape" (Very Special Recordings)

“VSR’s Brooklyn Mixtape” is a sampler compilation of tracks culled from various past VSR releases*, highlighting how diverse the label is in its mission to promote pleasant and/or groove-heavy NYC recording artists. All contributions are masterfully produced, medium-paced, and fairly enjoyable. If you happen to only notice acts from the Big Apple’s hip-hop or heavy metal scene, this could be a real eye opener for you.

*said releases lined up in physical form for their photo-op on the front cover of this j-card.

https://vsrmusic.bandcamp.com/album/vsrs-brooklyn-mixtape

  --Jacob An Kittenplan

SHEEN MARINA “Travel Lightly (Very Special Recordings)

TRAVEL LIGHTLY indeed – Sheen Marina is a lithe organism, not overly burdened with the pomp or bloat of rock-and-roll excess. Lean and mean, and not just because of the assonance, Sheen Marina shreds through TRAVEL LIGHTLY, the band’s new (and blue!) tape (whose j-card is also really arty, like a totally detailed van, all fully fold-overed and junk) on Very Special Recordings, a label that knows a thing or two about shifty, active art rock. As such, Sheen Marina fits in spectacularly, drawing comparisons to Deerhoof, Mr. Bungle, the Dismemberment Plan, and, probably, Shudder to Think in some Baltimore-area co-ops. (I know a Baltimorean who was really in to STT, so there.) Guitars are strangled, drums are pummeled – a sax is bleated at some point. But see, Sheen Marina is sneaky – they write these choruses that will have you totally singing along with them, these melodies that just wriggle themselves into your brain. But just when you think you’ve got the song pegged, Sheen Marina pulls the rug and goes in a totally different direction, kind of like “Swipe” takes a page from both “Desert Search for Techno Allah” and “Do the Standing Still.” I love it – it’s pretty much the only kind of indie rock that still does it for me these days, the kind that keeps me guessing because I can never figure out what’s coming next. And don’t you just want to be surprised by the music you’re listening to? Who wants “Evenflow” over and over, generation after generation? I don’t. That’s what makes bands like Sheen Marina special – they keep taking chances, and the fact that they’re making some of the most listenable music you can think of is just icing on the cake. A blue cake, with a weird face decorated onto it. Wait a sec, that cake looks just like my van – is TRAVEL LIGHTLY permeating every facet of my life? God, I hope so.

Sheen Marina
Very Special Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

BENINGHOVE’S HANGMEN “ZOHOVE – Beninghove’s Hangmen Play Led Zeppelin”(Very Special Recordings) SUPER HI-FI “Super Hi-Fi Plays Nirvana” (Very Special Recordings)

Hold on – I’m in love with Benninghove’s Hangmen’s (that’s tough to make possessive) take on Zep, but first I’m going to jump into Super Hi-Fi’s dub reworking of Nirvana.

And even before that – what gives these guys the right, anyway, either of these bands, to tackle the hallowed duo at the top of the classic rock radio playlist? And yes, I realize it’s weird to consider Nirvana within the “classic rock” pantheon, but here we are. It’s classic rock. I remember when I was growing up – well, in junior and senior high, anyway (there’s me aging myself) – Nirvana, even when they were a fledgling little upstart, would be played on the local radio with all the big boys, even back in the early 1990s. It pretty much all but guaranteed them continual (and well-deserved) airplay in perpetuity.

Digression aside, it’s weirdly refreshing to hear such wildly updated versions of these songs. Super Hi-Fi, from Brooklyn, traffics in Jamaican dub and first-wave ska (or whatever wave if you want to argue with Ronald Thomas Clontle), and while that’s not my go-to style, really at any time, the vibe with which these guys groove through such well-remembered songs (“Heart Shaped Box” and “Polly” probably being the most recognizable) casts them in a light that renders them almost indistinguishable from the originals. This practice, if you ask me, is the best way to cover a song. Put your own spin on it! Back in my band-playing days we did a similar thing to Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?,” basically rewriting the music and placing the lyrics within it. No one knew what we were playing until the chorus. It was lots of fun. It sounds like Super Hi-Fi is having a great time here too. And the fact that the tape is instrumental, with vocal lines being performed by guitar or brass depending on the song (or part of the song) is an extra stamp of uniqueness. Other songs here include “Verse Chorus Verse,” “Something in the Way,” “Love Buzz,” and the Leadbelly cover made popular by Nirvana, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” A track called “Space Needle,” written by some dude named Ezra Gale (just kidding, he plays bass here and also runs VSR), makes two appearances, each a different version.

Benninghove’s Hangmen don’t even remotely play it subtle. And really, how can you with Zep? Zep is not subtle. Zep is a blast furnace opened wide in your face. Benninghove’s Hangmen do not shirk that responsibility. Also taking an instrumental approach with guitars and brass handling the vocal lines, a wise move when you’re replacing someone like Robert Plant, the songs breathe a little more, get a little more raucous than maybe you’re used to. I’m weirdly reminded of late 1980s/early 1990s SNL, when G. E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live band would play a ripping cover song into commercial. And that is a really good thing in this instance (and the big question is, do Eyal Maoz and Dane Johnson make G. E. Smith guitar faces when they play?). Nostalgia meets balls. And hey, Ezra Gale plays bass in this band too! I sense a trend. Excellent choice of cover material too, as “Kashmir,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” “D’yer Maker,” and “When the Levee Breaks,” among others, make appearances.

Did I just gush over two cover albums? I sure did. That feels so weird to me, but you should really track these down for a treat.

Beninghove’s Hangmen

Super Hi-Fi

Very Special Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

DUSTIN CARLSON “Shakes/The Noise of Wings” C27 (Very Special Recordings)

The ghosts of King Crimson and Yes – at least of the members who have died, I guess (can you be alive and still be a ghost in some way? I wonder) – haunt Dustin Carlson, permeating his ideas for how music should be composed and presented and inspiring in him practices for maximum technical and melodic output. Put another way, DC likes his prog weird and woolly, and we as listeners should not want it any other way. I mean, I wish I would’ve written this descriptive copy: “[This tape] wouldn’t sound out of place … if an imaginary gospel group ate a tub of LSD and holed up in the studio with Brian Eno.” A whole tub of LSD! Could you even imagine…

Each of the two sidelong suites winds down different paths, changing course and cohering as they progress. Trombones and voice begin “Shakes” before gradually decaying into electronic chaos. A voice and guitar emerges at the end (yes, there’s the King Crimson comparison) to bring it on home. “The Noise of Wings” follows a similar pattern, this time beginning with guitar, banjo, strings, and voice before devolving into a low-frequency bass/spoken fragments middle section. Carlson’s voice returns with heavily treated echoing guitar, ending on an angelic note of transcendent beauty. Did I say transcendent beauty? I did. I’m not kidding. Dustin Carlson’s take on prog and experimental composition is way more refreshing than it has any right to be – anybody digging up the dinosaurs of 1970s excess should be overbearingly dull, shouldn’t they? No – no they shouldn’t. That’s what contemporary American society would have you believe. I say get back in there and fall in love with prog all over again. I sure love it like a crazy person.

Dustin Carlson

Very Special Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

RICK PARKER AND LI DAIGUO “Free World Music” (Very Special Recordings)

Brooklyn. Dali. Put them together and you have what sounds like the female offspring of Salvador Dali were he alive today to appreciate my humor. Or maybe he wouldn’t appreciate it – I have a feeling he’d spend a lot of time in a chair, over/underwhelmed by modern society. “Brooklyn,” he’d mumble, hand shading his eyes from reality, “bring daddy his Rick Parker and Li Daiguo tape. Daddy needs to feel emotions again.”

*Shudder*

Probably best to leave that flight of fancy where it is for the moment because I’m feeling all kinds of feelings right now, crazy feelings, feelings that leave me clamoring for more feelings because I can’t properly process the ones that are overwhelming me right now, so yeah, sure keep ’em coming. Some semblance of context is needed, though, or else Free World Music is going to submerge my attention like the perfect storm in that movie The Perfect Storm, if you imagine my attention is a fishing vessel foolishly setting out to sea with, ahem, the perfect storm bearing down on it. Not to suggest that these two experimental musicians are akin to a natural disaster, they just happen to demand your attention as they do their thing, which is making music, not ginormous waves.

And to bring it back around to location, side A was recorded in Brooklyn, and side B was recorded in Dali, because c’mon, duh, keep following here. Rick Parker and Li Daiguo are a dream duo for those who are desperately in love with experimental music – I mean, they use an instrument that I’ve never even heard of before, for goodness’ sake, and I’ve heard of a lot of instruments! (For the record, it was the pipa. I know what a trombone is.) And then, to stick with one of my various themes, I feel absolutely unmoored when experiencing Free World Music, as if sinking into the depths as the tunes envelope me. But then I evolve gills, and I’m saved from my fate, and I scold myself for not realizing this would all happen in the first place.

The cohesion of these pieces should have tipped me off, even though they sound far-out when you start to describe them. Different traditions emerge and adhere to one another, those steeped in jazz, traditional Chinese, and other paths of experimentation. There’s power in the movement of these pieces – nothing stays still for long, pretty much ever. The exotic and the familiar merge and become a great new thing, weird and special, like a present-day Salvador Dali or a planet-wide tidal wave churning the futuristic and the modern together before enveloping humanity in its chaotic passage. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the track titles, which are amazing! My favorite is probably “Research Has Shown That Casting Spells Using Contemporary Social Media Is Just as Effective as Chanting over Cauldrons.” See? You’re not even ready for Rick Parker and Li Daiguo, are you. You should prepare yourself.

Rick Parker & Li Daiguo

Very Special Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

THE COUNCIL OF EYE FORMS “The Council of Eye Forms” C26 (Very Special Recordings)

I think it’s a brazen attitude that allows two likeminded experimentalists not to “give a rip” (to use a term perfected by my old youth leader) about what you think or about what I think, or even about what reviewers in general think. We don’t matter. We’re not in the same “headspace,” man, and the moments of connection, so important to the musicians making their racket, are impenetrable to the untrained ear. At least that’s what every stupid person tells themselves.

Me? I’m not stupid. Are you stupid? You’re reading this, aren’t you? Benefit of the doubt then. Because what The Council of Eye Forms, a duo comprised of Brooklyn’s Jon Lipscomb and Sweden’s Alexandra Costin, pull from their instruments is a headspace, and it’s one you have to fully immerse yourself in to appreciate to the fullest. Because they, as suggested in paragraph number one, don’t “give a rip” about the outside influences – the ambience of their surroundings, the people watching Seinfeld in the adjacent room, the incessant construction noises from outside.

So there are two tracks here, one on side A called “Planet Earth” (or, sadly, “Planet Earh” on the j-card because proofreading?), a chiming, noodly confection that dissipates into ambience, and “9th Degree Secret on the B-side, a distorted megalith of intensity. The press says it best when influences such as Sonic Youth (the weird EPs, not regular Sonic Youth), Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, and Caspar Brötzmann are whispered reverently behind barely ajar doors in abandoned hallways. Why abandoned hallways? Because that’s where the best sonics are, you idiot. See? It’s an attitude thing. You don’t have the right one.

Very Special Recordings

The Council of Eye Forms

--Ryan Masteller

PEOPLE’S CHAMPS “American Dreamers” (Very Special Recordings)

I don’t think there’s a musical category People’s Champs don’t tackle on American Dreamers, a full-on clusterbomb of exotic pop stylings made especially for the visionary in all of us. (Well, maybe not noise. Or metal. Or punk. The heavy stuff.) There are hints of funk, Afrobeat, pop, world, rock, R&B, dance, reggae – shall I stop yet? I guess I will. I hate bombarding people with genre lists, but it’s sort of the first thing you notice about People’s Champs – they’re just so comfortable with one another that their songwriting exemplifies the degree to which they can explore their talents. There’s a lot to like about this.

At times reminiscent of Sharon Jones fronting Fela Kuti’s band, or Sharon Jones fronting the New Power Generation, or Sharon Jones fronting a lot of stuff (the singer sounds like Sharon Jones, sue me!), People’s Champs will hold your attention throughout its nine songs, never staying in one place at one time. And hey, check this cred out – the horn section features members of The Superpower Horns, who only worked on Beyoncé’s albums Beyoncé and 4. Has anybody in your band recorded for Beyoncé? I didn’t think so. Go back to the garage.

Very Special Recordings

People’s Champs

--Ryan Masteller