This short split tape between COW (Change Of Women) and Human Adult Band is a really great match up of approaches. I had seen Human Adult Band a long time ago (5 years) and was totally perplexed by them and immediately fell in love. I've kept up with some releases on DIHD and Bonetoothhorn and through a few of their lineup changes; they now incorporate King Darves on drums, Trevor Pennsylvania on Bass and Mike on guitar. I hadn't gathered much from them recently so when i saw this split i was real excited to hear what they've been up. The tape (probably 8 minutes a side) starts with really clean guitar, an almost out of tune bass and the drums mixed to the back of the sounds. A bit of a departure from the new brunswick basement sounds i remember from these guys- formerly sounding like they were covered in new jersey's finest grime and grit, this has a lot more an of an airy feel. But it's not a departure, they haven't gone nu metal, formed a jam band or started introducing dance routines. What was at the core of this group is still there, and we're all the better for it. They're exploring the fundamentals of music, they're operating in a 'band format' with drums, guitar, bass and vocals, there are semi-distinct parts and they stay in time with each other. For the most part. And there in lies the beauty. The bass sometimes misses notes, the vocals sound like the singer was catapulted over the rehearsal space, the mix is a little off sometimes (like during the guitar solo the guitar gets quieter- beautiful!!!) But in the end the guitar cleanly strums away the detritus like a broom does a broken lamp and instead of cleaning up after the house party, they tear down the shades, throw out the couch, scoop up the puke and sleep it off to start all over again, maybe next time covered in algae and earthworms.
Side Two is COW and they have a decidedly different atmosphere, it's not the glue huffing euphoria of Human Adult Band so much as blown out tire on a rumble strip. I don't know much about these guys and don't know if it's my journalistic duty to Google them before i write about them but i didn't want to color my review of them with internet rumor. Anyhow, they definitely share a love of questionable mixing choices (a good thing in my book!) leaving the vocals on some track almost inaudible where on others it's all you can hear. Definite nods to the classic groups of thrash/grindcore like Napalm Death and Carcass, especially in the vocals, while leaving enough room for their own sound to shine. While approaching blast beat speeds COW never loses their musicality, always staying within the parameters set up for the song, a welcome approach to a situation where it's so easy (and can sound so good) to just totally lose it and battle it out with your bandmates. There are some choice moments of heavy tempo changes from thrash beats slowly trudging down the steps into a total tar pit of unconsciousness, like you're being slowly clubbed into the darkness by each and every beat. Another favorite, and something i wish there was a little more of was the double vocals, the sounds of two guys losing molars screaming into a shitty mic is the best. There are 7 songs in this short outing all with a different enough flavor to keep you happily chewing the fat and when it's over, wanting more, even if it's giving you heart failure and you're losing vision in one eye.
Full color cover artwork doesn't really match up with the way either side made me feel, but not a bad looking tape.
www.phaseweb.tk
SEAGULL "From Grass and Earth" (Smoke Filled Casket)
Somehow this recent slab sent in from Seagull's Michael Piercey became unfairly buried in the "already reviewed" pile and so did not appear in the most recent column (which is solely comprised of a ton of reviews to make up for my absence on the 'Gods blog). Just as well, because this piece absolutely kills and so deserves a little extra shine on its lonely.
Seagull recently appeared on the second volume of Sam McKinlay's excellent Lake Shark Harsh Noise compilations. Whereas that track ("The Heart Lies Dormant Against All Who Come For It") had a brutal mid-range heft, this second edition of "From Grass and Earth" is considerably more sadistic on the ears. Scalding sheets of high-pitched hiss and feedback are the main attraction here, particularly on Side A. That might not seem rare in harsh noise, but the particular way Seagull pulls it off is kind of refreshing in a scene of mostly low-end crunch worshippers. Characteristically, "From Grass and Earth" owes more to older Japanese artists like Pain Jerk than Canadian contemporaries like The Rita. It's "dirty" noise that ignores the usual defined, crumbling textures of the wall style in favor of greasy machine overload. At the same time, the layers congeal, separate and rub against each other to create an atmosphere of ghostly subtleties and unexpected harmony.
All in all, a perfect noise tape. Could have sworn this duo had a Myspace page at some point but now I can't find it. Seagull's own label is listed below in all its mailorder-ready glory. I suggest you visit and purchase this item and other merchandises and support the tenure of High Canadian Noise, long may it reign.
www.smokefilledcasket.com
Seagull recently appeared on the second volume of Sam McKinlay's excellent Lake Shark Harsh Noise compilations. Whereas that track ("The Heart Lies Dormant Against All Who Come For It") had a brutal mid-range heft, this second edition of "From Grass and Earth" is considerably more sadistic on the ears. Scalding sheets of high-pitched hiss and feedback are the main attraction here, particularly on Side A. That might not seem rare in harsh noise, but the particular way Seagull pulls it off is kind of refreshing in a scene of mostly low-end crunch worshippers. Characteristically, "From Grass and Earth" owes more to older Japanese artists like Pain Jerk than Canadian contemporaries like The Rita. It's "dirty" noise that ignores the usual defined, crumbling textures of the wall style in favor of greasy machine overload. At the same time, the layers congeal, separate and rub against each other to create an atmosphere of ghostly subtleties and unexpected harmony.
All in all, a perfect noise tape. Could have sworn this duo had a Myspace page at some point but now I can't find it. Seagull's own label is listed below in all its mailorder-ready glory. I suggest you visit and purchase this item and other merchandises and support the tenure of High Canadian Noise, long may it reign.
www.smokefilledcasket.com
XTRA VOMIT "Inebriation" (Otherwise Dead Records)
Awesome hardcore punk in just about every way. The riffs are catchy but not poppy. The vocal is strenuous and very human; totally youthful. I listen to this a lot in my car (but if you're on a bike you could use yr walkman, which is seeming like a MUCH more appealing situation these days). The production rules so fucking hard cos it's way raw and warm but not lo-fi, not losing any clarity and you can hear what's going on to the right degree I think; even the way the tracks are linked together is perfect; classic sample clips between tracks edited well and not akward or detracting from the music... I got this tape from the Loaded For Bear / Abrade tour in January 2007. I guess this guy Xtra Vomit, or Sock from Grand Rapids MI, was supposed to be with em or something and he couldn't make it, so they were getting his tapes out to people along the way. I didn't initially know what it was (just that it was probably punk or grind and not a noise tape); didn't know it was a solo act or that it was drum machine cos it's kind of like Mavis Concave's SX where the machine is pretty similar to a standard hxc punk drum style. There's a cover of the band Cress (in some ways similar, but not same, as Crass) which I didn't know before Cress actually used drum machines too. This tape definitely got me listening to a lot of Cress afterwards, which I'd really only heard briefly until then, and I can see a good amount of influence they might've had on the Xtra Vomit material in content and approach. There's a xerox zine/book that comes with the tape and it's got the words and collages and notes, totally fun but not at all just some childish bullshit trying to adhere to some stereotyped aesthetic. Xtra Vomit rules cos it's one dude in the midwest doing what he wants to do in the vein of classic hxc punk even in the 21st century. I think we're playing with him in Grand Rapids next month, so I'm pretty stoked. I hear there are other releases besides this "Inebriation" tape too... Robert Inhuman, June 2008
JERK "Narrow Bionic" (Catholic Tapes)
From a murk that threatens to be the tedium of yet another drone-sludge release emerges fantastic and masterful rock music. With no-reference points that are meaningful, Jerk firmly has its own sound that centered around energized rhythms that evolve perfectly. Using the textures of both electronic and acoustic instruments, the beats fun and upbeat without sacrificing the meat. Sparse vocals punctuate just enough to make it a true rock affair. While fans of everything from Arab on Radar to Racoo-oo-oon would love this, Jerk don't travel any type of conservative road calculated to please everyone. They just weave a magic and unique rhythm based sound that feels great. Get it to soundtrack your summer by.
JOHN WIESE "Don't Move Your Finger" b/w "Corpse Solo" (Ecstatic Peace!)
A special brand of legitimacy is bestowed upon Noise artists who do not use pseudonyms. They get to do fancy shows funded by arts councils. (Nothing sounds less worthy of the Fine Arts gallery world than a Noise project called Feedback Twerp, or Stab Wound Crap Sack, regardless of how appropriate for the setting the music may be.) "Real name" artists don't have the burden of adhearing to one specific aesthetic the way that a project with a psuedonym must. In the case of John Wiese, I would never suggest that he is undeserving of any of his success, only that he wouldn't have had the same type of success had he called himself something goofy like almost everybody else. The issue is, how do these artists use their "real name" credibility to further their music, or the genre as a whole. Last year, Wiese toured Europe in a lineup featuring some current popular Noise artists, C. Spencer Yeh and the members of D. Yellow Swans, and some old-school English Free Improv musicians like Evan Parker and John Edwards. The shows were billed as "Free Noise" in an uninspired attempt to mashup the two genre names-- as if Noise weren't somehow "free" in the same sense as Free Jazz and Free Improv in the first place. (Or does it mean that they weren't charging a cover at the door?)
The result of this tour, for the rest of Wiese's work, seems to be a renewed excitement about improvisation and the musical aesthetic of Improv. After he returned from tour, Wiese set up the Sissy Spacek 13-tet, a truly abominable Improv performance featuring members of Mika Miko and No Age who, I'm certain if quizzed, could not name any of the original members of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, let alone grasp what Wiese was actually asking them to do in the performance. It was as if only half of the thirteen players (Mitchell Brown and Joseph Hammer specifically) were even aware that Free Improvisation was a musical practice that hundreds of brilliant people have devoted their entire careers to since the mid-1960's-- i.e.: a practice with a rich history to which a player must have some responsibility before they get up in front of a sold-out crowd and start fucking around.
Wiese has been much more successful adapting his newfound interest in old-school Improv to his solo work. The cassette, "Don't Move Your Finger b/w Corpse Solo" is the first document I've heard of a style in which Wiese has been performing occasionally throughout the last year or so. Whether or not the pieces are truly improvised is not the point-- they may be thoroughly composed. The sound borrows heavily from the moment-to moment logic of early European Free Improv (EFI) music. Both sides of the tape (appropriately recorded live in Holland and "somewhere in Europe") use minute slices of audio: Wiese shuffling around with contact mics, hitting drums / table legs, and twanging guitar strings. These sounds are placed among very short silences, and ping-ponged across the stereo spectrum. The feeling is very similar to the later days of EFI when electronics became more common but the compositional logic of the players hadn't yet adapted to their new instruments' strengths. One touchstone may be the music of Furt. This tape, like a Furt album, has a distinctly electronic sound palette, a British sense of fussiness (in a very Derek Bailey / John Stevens kind of way) and a pre-EAI (Electro-Acoustic Improvisation) idea of time and linearity. Wiese is proving here that he could have easily held his own had he appeared on the (so-called) orange CD on Charhizma, but on nothing afterward.
The real strength of this area of Wiese's music is not totally represented on this tape, however. The tape is good-- in fact, really good. But when Weise plays similar material live, it is the influence of his Noise music upbringing that makes this style into something special. He plays it loud. Really fucking loud. Which is not something that Furt do. And really, that volume is what pulls this stuff out of the realm of homage (to EFI, to Evan Parker, to whatever) and into something genuinely new. It sounds stupid to say that something so simple could, so drastically, change the nature of this music, but it is absolutely the case. The actual sounds that Wiese plays are, to my ears, undistorted. It is uncommon to hear clean audio at really high volume, and for it to be as violent and assaulting as Wises makes it. Seriously, I thought my teeth might rattle out of my head in the middle of the concert. The one aspect of EFI that Wiese has done away with entirely is it's politeness. By simply cranking the volume, he's given it quite a bit of attitude. So even though he records and perform under his real name (and not Withered By Her Stare or Autoerotic Nightstick) John Weise can still bring the noise. Even when seduced by other areas of art music (those that are substantially better funded) he choses to retain a degree of the confrontational nature inherent to Noise, learned through a decade of Noise mastery.
The result of this tour, for the rest of Wiese's work, seems to be a renewed excitement about improvisation and the musical aesthetic of Improv. After he returned from tour, Wiese set up the Sissy Spacek 13-tet, a truly abominable Improv performance featuring members of Mika Miko and No Age who, I'm certain if quizzed, could not name any of the original members of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, let alone grasp what Wiese was actually asking them to do in the performance. It was as if only half of the thirteen players (Mitchell Brown and Joseph Hammer specifically) were even aware that Free Improvisation was a musical practice that hundreds of brilliant people have devoted their entire careers to since the mid-1960's-- i.e.: a practice with a rich history to which a player must have some responsibility before they get up in front of a sold-out crowd and start fucking around.
Wiese has been much more successful adapting his newfound interest in old-school Improv to his solo work. The cassette, "Don't Move Your Finger b/w Corpse Solo" is the first document I've heard of a style in which Wiese has been performing occasionally throughout the last year or so. Whether or not the pieces are truly improvised is not the point-- they may be thoroughly composed. The sound borrows heavily from the moment-to moment logic of early European Free Improv (EFI) music. Both sides of the tape (appropriately recorded live in Holland and "somewhere in Europe") use minute slices of audio: Wiese shuffling around with contact mics, hitting drums / table legs, and twanging guitar strings. These sounds are placed among very short silences, and ping-ponged across the stereo spectrum. The feeling is very similar to the later days of EFI when electronics became more common but the compositional logic of the players hadn't yet adapted to their new instruments' strengths. One touchstone may be the music of Furt. This tape, like a Furt album, has a distinctly electronic sound palette, a British sense of fussiness (in a very Derek Bailey / John Stevens kind of way) and a pre-EAI (Electro-Acoustic Improvisation) idea of time and linearity. Wiese is proving here that he could have easily held his own had he appeared on the (so-called) orange CD on Charhizma, but on nothing afterward.
The real strength of this area of Wiese's music is not totally represented on this tape, however. The tape is good-- in fact, really good. But when Weise plays similar material live, it is the influence of his Noise music upbringing that makes this style into something special. He plays it loud. Really fucking loud. Which is not something that Furt do. And really, that volume is what pulls this stuff out of the realm of homage (to EFI, to Evan Parker, to whatever) and into something genuinely new. It sounds stupid to say that something so simple could, so drastically, change the nature of this music, but it is absolutely the case. The actual sounds that Wiese plays are, to my ears, undistorted. It is uncommon to hear clean audio at really high volume, and for it to be as violent and assaulting as Wises makes it. Seriously, I thought my teeth might rattle out of my head in the middle of the concert. The one aspect of EFI that Wiese has done away with entirely is it's politeness. By simply cranking the volume, he's given it quite a bit of attitude. So even though he records and perform under his real name (and not Withered By Her Stare or Autoerotic Nightstick) John Weise can still bring the noise. Even when seduced by other areas of art music (those that are substantially better funded) he choses to retain a degree of the confrontational nature inherent to Noise, learned through a decade of Noise mastery.
GREY SKULL "Soft Spots" (Breaking World/Bonescraper)
West Mass power trio return from a nebulous hiatus to bludgeon out a punishing pair of half-hour tapes of classic free drum/noise in the hallowed Grey Skull mode. The double cassette is a good format for expansive abusers like GS because it allows enough running time for the beatings to subside for short spells and then resurrect in fresh waves of amplifier violence, which keeps yr ears limber and alert (and waiting for the next blow to fall). I keep hearing rumors of a half-decade-in-the-making LP on Ultra Eczema, and this shit could only sound better if it was blasted on black wax, so I hope the grapevine is tellin' the truth, cause that's worth holding out for. In the meantime however "Soft Spots" is a solid hour of unique psychedelic assaults (some studio, some live) that's perfect for erasing the world and blacking out all thoughts. Fills a similar hole in yr head to shit like Hair Police and certain Load Records outings, high energy misery to combat life's bleaker evenings. With great double-cover art by G Skullers George Myers and Jeff Hartford.
PANOPTICON EYELIDS "Glitter Vomit" (Abandon Ship)
I confess: I was a bit worried when I saw that the B side of this CS was titled "Goodbye Booze/Hello'weed Night," because joke/jokey music is a really jagged pill for me to swallow happily most of the time (there's exceptions, but they're rare). Fortunately, my hesitation was totally unwarranted: this tape/band rules. Panopticon Eyelids are a Montreal posse of weirdos who play really deranged psychedelic rock in a totally unique and unhinged way. The guitar/bass/drums does the classic long-form jam-based freak-out thing, sticking together in a united blobby bobbing mess of motion that seems secretly way more focused and precise than the vibe it gives off. But then they've got someone puking all this stretchy-sounding taffy electronics over the top that sounds kinda hilarious and loony in a cartoon acid trip sorta way. It's hard to describe but it really works for me. It also doesn't hurt things that the A side track is called "Electron Headbanging," because 1) that's awesome, and 2) it's accurate. The "Booze/Weed" B side is basically more of the same, but it's great too, muddy goon squad rock pogo-marching into fields of aluminum foil and poppies. The opening line of their self-penned Myspace bio sums up the dumb/rad path they tread: "Panopticon Eyelids was born in 2002 just before the city of Montreal was taken over by the Ethiopium Biker Rock gang." Sign my ass up for more, please.
CHRISTINA CARTER "Texas Working Blues" (Blackest Rainbow)
I'm fucking floored that after this many years of non-stop music-making Christina Carter can still sit down in a wooden chair, put her hands around an electric guitar, and free-associate fresh arrangements of notes and chords and lyrics and solos and not be bored shitless. Right? I mean, I guess if you multiply six strings by, what, 21-or-so fret positions per string, and then you have to multiply that by something else, because of all the barre chords and open positions and fingerpicking possibilities like that....well, once you start doing the math the number of potential jams to bust on an electric guitar is pretty endless I suppose. But still. The point is that Christina's earliest East Texas loner blues came drifting into the cosmos a long, long time ago ('91-ish?), and here she is, 2008, and "Texas Working Blues" is easily as bewitching and beatific a set of songs as she's ever recorded in her entire life. Stunning and simple ballads of the heart and soul, layered in electric grace, lost on the plains, lying in the dirt, staring at the stars, etc.
DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE "untitled" (Dreamtime Taped Sounds)
Lieven Martens has been oozing creative weirdnesses into the ether since before the day I first learned what a CDR was. His Imvated label was always way ahead of the pack in terms of focused obscurity-cultivation (illogical artwork, random-seeming bands, confusing packaging choices, etc), and most tape-traders were very sad to see it go. But his resurrection via the Bread And Animals umbrella of sub-labels sees Lieven hitting his stride more than ever before, yo-yo-ing out an endless string of ever more esoteric projects and aliases and concepts. One of the greater things about this phase two operation is the added emphasis on Lieven's own music, which lately has been dispersed with increasing frequency under the banner of his new age grey-wave band, Dolphins Into The Future. Seemingly based largely around the ideas espoused by the Sega Genesis game "Ecco The Dolphin," the bulk of the Dolphins recorded output sounds like wobbly cassettes of porpoise conversations played through a daisy chain of delay and reverb and salt water with some ambient keyboard loops layered on top. Deeply aimless shit, for sure, but aquatic drift can be a sublime thing, and this self-titled CS knows when to sink and when to swim, which makes for a nicely balanced soak in the Dreamtime pond. The cover looks like it was straight-stolen from a pamphlet about the astrological properties of crystals though, total soft lavender overdose. Just looking at it makes you feel like you're slowly being brainwashed to believe in past lives and talking animals.
PAID IN PUKE "The Nyah Nyah Nyyyaaah Demo" (self-released)
Seeming to come from the mind of 13 year old boy, Paid In Puke is actually one New Jersey lady C. Lavender. Fitting in well with the Radio Shock lo-fi beats theory of diy, and harkening back to that brief moment when Cobra Killers' were the breath of fresh air over at Digital Hardcore and Kathleen Hannah's solo album promised something much rougher and punk than Le Tigre ended up being. The assemblage of the beats is equal parts keys, drummachines, erotic samples, and who knows what without feeling overly-collage based. Short and sweet also plays as a strength to this little party in a cloth pouch that appears for a distorted, digitally crunched moment and then is gone. Only complaint is that side B begins about 1 min in. May home dubbing humble us forever.
SECRET ABUSE "Sojourn 3.6" (Agents of Chaos)
Jeff Witscher's Iowa relocation-evolution continues to deepen and intensify with each and every new CS, and although this one says it was recorded in March in California (right around when the aborted Deep Jew tour was kicking off), it has all the hallmark overdriven drone mood motions of his Midwest-birthed "Young Pig" volumes: excoriating sheets of vaporous noise, hypnotic upswellings of low-end, fractured guitar tones fed into the face of an amp, etc. It's the perfect middle ground between the pissed rage of his Impregnable fits and the new age bath of Marble Sky -- harsh meditation, maybe? This one seems to be pitifully rare, and is as ripe for a reissue as everything else he's touching these days. Comes with a couple classic poesy inserts too, as per usual. One of 'em ends with: "It was reported their singing resembled/the flight of moths in moonlight/who can say? it is silent now." You can't make this shit up, it's too real.
PLANKTON WAT "Alchemy of Darkness" (DNT)
Plankton Wat is Dewey from Eternal Tapestry's solo guise where he sits in a chair, oils up his wah pedal, and goes to fucking town. Total one-man instrumental space-drift raga-blues with an emphasis on delay (reverse and regular), wah, and brain-ooze. One could make the claim that there's a lot of this kinda stuff flying around out there on the information superhighway but in truth you could really say that about anything, so that doesn't hold much water for me. To my ears, this is the best Plankton outing I've yet heard, great grey mood rings flashing with shadows of color and layers of refracted light, gently picked strings, bursts of hypnotizing distortion, falling leaves of echo and hush. Would be nice to lay on yr back on a fucked up rug and have Dewey serenade you with these blissed, blue ballads. Could use a pillow too, as long as we're dreaming.
MANDARIN CLIT "Pisum Sativum" (Scumbag Relations)
Scumbag Relations sticks so rigorously to its scum electronics cage one can't help but applaud it. Since the very first tape dubbed its way into the world the mission has been: disgusting, creepy-crawl, experimental nausea. Long may the Scum flag wave. Mandarin Clit has been a very recurrent name in their catalog and each CS I've heard bearing that name has made me feel ill, confused, and awkward. "Pisum Sativum" is no exception. Housed in a a great hand-cut J-card of a pile of olives (and bearing a tiny insert of a photo of a vagina with a twig laying on it), this one-sided C23 is as true to form as a person could conceivably hope. Dry scrapes, a metal object being touched and dropped, the steady hum of a machine, dead space -- this is the ultimate in total unfeeling music. It's not for the listener OR the person playing it. It's hard to even say why it exists. It freaks me out. Cheers!
WILD GUNMEN "untitled" (White Tapes)
Apparently these Cincinnati outcasts have been around for ages but are so exclusively in love with drugs and drug addicts (or pretending like they are) that they never get their shit together enough to play live or tell anyone about their music -- hence their total mystery status despite years of activity. Hilariously (hypocritically?), however, the drugs have in no way compromised their ability to set up and maintain a Myspace page and litter it with daily blogs ranting about hazy nonsense (clearly the the high-speed internet bill keeps gettin' paid on time). Russ from Blues Control put out this tape a little while ago, which then got passed to James Toth/Wooden Wand, who fell hard for 'em and has since released a handful of additional WG CDRs on his Mad Monk label. Don't know what those discs are all about, but this CS is pretty likable, if a little relentlessly inconsistent. The female singer's got a real voice and knows how to use it but often chooses to ditch it for an alternate personality where she acts like a bad actress and sings super high and performance art-y and lists every drug she can think of (a lot like that Queens of the Stone Age hit from a few summers ago!!). The rest of the band's contributions range from loner Jandekian Americana folk stumble to lo-fi noisy rumblings to slow ambient pulsings, but for the most part stay fairly compelling. Warts and all though, a mossy gem of a tape, with lots of hills and valleys and dead-end alleys to get mugged in, and another cool piece of the recent White Tapes resurgence puzzle.
SOCIAL JUNK "untitled" (JK Tapes)
Ashland, KY's pride/joy are gearing up for a MASSIVE US tour and a relocation to KALI-FORNIA, so now is the time to recognize and give praise to Heather & Noah's years-running electronics miscellany mission under the Social Junk flag, and I recently dug out this old-ish C60 on JK Tapes and it's flooring me all over again. Such a broad planet of moods, instruments, tempos, intensities, layers, levels, etc. A genuinely perplexing band to pinhole or even explain, the breadth of terrain they cover is stunning. Subtle low-end loops rumble on concrete, distant sax blasts explode in the corners, hypnotic voices chant, ritual drumming marches into the foreground with a parade of emotive distortion, vibes transition from miserable to majestic in an instant, you get lost in the current of their ideas and tidal pulls and then look up and it's an hour later, the tape's over. This is another gem in the gold vault of SJ's ever-deepening discography. Pay attention soon.
TRAUM ECKE "untitled" (Goaty Tapes)
West Mass backyard ectoplasm sculptors Ducktails have been unleashing a stream of limited cassettes over the past year-ish documenting their very post-Skaters brand of pop-trash neon electronics (themes/artwork usually float around 1992, Nintendo Power, dream zones, Predator, etc) and Traum Ecke is an offshoot operation mining the same basic mirror field of warped tones, shimmering ambiance, and psychedelic murk. This particular CS (packaged in a classically gorgeous Goaty-brand full-color hand-cut J-card) crawls through a really well executed skylight vision bath, awash in looped keyboard sparkle, guitar ooze, and pitter-patter percussion. It's really hard not to hear the echoes of so many Pacific City Ferraro/Clarke incarnations in this stuff, but there's always room for new kids on the block, and the Ducktails dudes are clearly solid descendants in the rad lineage of Slimer-worshiping, acid transmission, basement new agists. Thumbs up.
SAINTS "Umbanda" (Abandon Ship)
First heard a demo tape from this Goleta dude/duo a while back that sounded like a single mic left on in a room while someone took turns clattering out rickety rhythms on various random surfaces. Very empty, small energies, no real agenda. Intrigued me, but didn't really catch fire. For this CS on Abandon Ship they've clearly been doing some jam-homework, ironing out arrangements and aesthetics, it sounds like a totally different band. Now things are heavily in-the-red, with blown-out percussion played slo-mo style, distorted moaning, lots of repressed feedback, discomfort. Whatever coastal loner experimental hippie vibe they used to kick around is gone, replaced with a heavy noise, proto-industrial vibe, pissed off but lazy, lolling around in a stew of bile. Umbanda is a fringe Afro-Brazilian religion founded by a medium in the early 20th century, and every "song" on this C-whatever is named after a different esoteric tenet of this faith, but I can't discern even the remotest relationship between subject matter and sound. Not that there needs to be, of course. Would prefer things not be so angry-sounding, but perhaps they've got an axe to grind with the Umbandan belief system?
TEENAGE WAISTBAND "I Saw What I Wanted To See" (self-released)
I've listened to this tape like 5 times with the intention of rambling out a decent descrip but it always ends right as I'm starting to think of something to say and then the moment's gone. I gotta get faster (long-ass drone cassettes give you way more time to ponder!), apologies. This band is from Providence, RI and this CS has an awesome 2-color silkscreen job on bright orange paper and seems really appealing on the exterior. Inside it's more so-so, stripped guitar/bass/drum punk, played pretty legitimately in that herky-jerky style that kids used to love back in early 00's. The singer's voice is awfully helium-y to listen to for any extended period of time though (so I guess it was wise they only made this CS 14 min long), and the songs have that back-and-forth feeling a lot of punk stuff has where you can sorta tell exactly what each instrument is going to do before it even happens. I'm sure live this would be pretty fun to bob yr head to for 10 minutes and then go hang with yr friends but on tape everything's recorded/mixed pretty sanely and evenly and simply, so it never gets as crazy as you want it to. That's not really a fair complaint, more of a projection, but I feel like a really shitty/raw live recording of TW would RIP, or a freaky session where they force themselves to add a ton of bizarre overdubs to one of their songs or something. Good stuff, but the waistband seems cinched a bit too tight, could use some loosening. Sag that shit out, teens.
DIAMONDHEAD "Street Leaf" (White Tapes)
Those familiar with White Tapes proprietor Russ Waterhouse's work in Blues Control will immediately recognize a kindred spirit in Diamondhead. Maybe there's something in the air in South Austin that with the right combination of musical heritage, intuition and whiskey could account for what's channeled on "Street Leaf." L. Eugene Methe (Naturaliste) and R.J. Reynolds' (Leatherbag) melding of psych and R&B with folk sensibilities recalls another couple of Austin dwellers and former tape-slangers, Charalambides. But Diamondhead's influences extend well beyond the south, and since Methe is from Nebraska, that whole correlation might be fudged anyway. A listen to the title track just as easily evokes Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Argento flicks, done up raw garage style with obliterated vocal mumbles, fuzzed out wah guitar, badass creep bass and mean as hell drum gnashing. The various additions of synth, organ and tape effects on "Oh Oh Rimbaud" and "Alabastor" emanate the jarring atmospherics one might expect from a No Neck session. An interlude on side A even throws in some screeching fried violin for good measure. The ten tracks which make up "Street Leaf" tend to sprawl like excerpts culled from hours of living room jams, yet every selection has unique ideas and despite the loose format emerge as whole. Another killer tape from this highly slept-on label. RECOMMENDED!
Click to consume:
http://www.myspace.com/streetleaf
http://whitetapes.8m.com
Click to consume:
http://www.myspace.com/streetleaf
http://whitetapes.8m.com
BABY BIRDS DON'T DRINK MILK "Ekk Ekk" (Lillerne Tape Club)
Factoid: the motto of Lawrence, Kansas is "From Ashes to Immortality." How badass is that? Having about as much experience with the Midwest as with contemporary indie pop- that is to say, little to nothing- I imagined this tape (sent in from the charming Lillerne label) sprouting inexplicably from fields of inedible bioengineered soybeans. Probably not the case, but one has to dream.
More likely, Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk is a phoenix of rad, unabashedly jangly pop juggernauticity ascending from the fetid mediocrity that is the American liberal college town music scene. They're probably popular enough by now in local circles to be releasing more widely accessible CD albums, but damn if a tape release or two doesn't build character. The eight tracks on "Ekk Ekk" swing back and forth without pause between straightforward psych tinged pop ballads and effects-and-loops-laden abstract improv. Maybe it's the format, the hiss, slight tape distortion and warbling that makes "Ekk Ekk" easy to appreciate. It might be the full orchestral sound created by a fairly large band simply playing in unison. There are other groups who do the whole lush acoustic/electric guitar, vocal harmonizing, everything drenched in reverb thing well, but this tape captures a certain feeling that's just...right. Or feels right. Like nostalgia, or even fake nostalgia. Like Family Underground covering a bunch of Sarah Records tunes, or something. Definitely one of the best tapes I've heard this year. Awesome full-color doodled artwork seals the deal. RECOMMENDED!
http://www.myspace.com/lillerne
http://www.myspace.com/babybirdsdontdrinkmilk
More likely, Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk is a phoenix of rad, unabashedly jangly pop juggernauticity ascending from the fetid mediocrity that is the American liberal college town music scene. They're probably popular enough by now in local circles to be releasing more widely accessible CD albums, but damn if a tape release or two doesn't build character. The eight tracks on "Ekk Ekk" swing back and forth without pause between straightforward psych tinged pop ballads and effects-and-loops-laden abstract improv. Maybe it's the format, the hiss, slight tape distortion and warbling that makes "Ekk Ekk" easy to appreciate. It might be the full orchestral sound created by a fairly large band simply playing in unison. There are other groups who do the whole lush acoustic/electric guitar, vocal harmonizing, everything drenched in reverb thing well, but this tape captures a certain feeling that's just...right. Or feels right. Like nostalgia, or even fake nostalgia. Like Family Underground covering a bunch of Sarah Records tunes, or something. Definitely one of the best tapes I've heard this year. Awesome full-color doodled artwork seals the deal. RECOMMENDED!
http://www.myspace.com/lillerne
http://www.myspace.com/babybirdsdontdrinkmilk
ALISTAIR CROSBIE "Sad Faces Of The Moon" (Peasant Magik)
This is the only music I have listened to for more than a week now. Seriously. I see absolutely no reason to ever take this tape out of my cassette deck. Every time it ends, I consider what to listen to next, pause, then flip this bastard over and play it again. Imagine you’ve never heard the term “Dark Ambient” before. Pretend the term is not a genre name, but in fact two adjectives paired to actually describe something. Scotland’s Alistair Crosbie sounds nothing like Alio Die (or any other wretched Goth garbage) but has produced a cold, sorrowful masterpiece of ambient music. “Sad Faces of the Moon” is, of course, culturally closer to the realm of the (pseudo) new age drone that labels like Students of Decay and Twonicorn have been promoting for the last couple of years. But while his peers, for the most part, explore major chords, blissful tones, and fuzz guitar harmonics, Crosbie’s palette is less overtly hopeful. The whole tape is absolutely drenched in reverb, as if the musical material was produced miles away, and the listener can observe only the splashy mournful decay, minutes later. The sounds themselves are earthy, organic, like two smooth stones being rubbed together, above which, the slowly shifting ring of a resonant windstorm howls. While avoiding anything that might be considered melodic, Crosbie’s soundscape evokes the kind of emotions that are usually targeted by melody. As listeners, we know that certain types of melody signify and trigger emotions like heartbreak, longing, grief, regret, and we can recognize them when they are used to manipulate us. “Sad Faces of the Moon” has the power to conjure these feelings without utilizing the usual bag of tricks to do so, and in doing, avoids the triteness and quaintness associated with those tricks. It is a truly astonishing release, with characteristically impressive packaging from the label, Peasant Magik.
ACRE "Volcanic Legacy" (Bone Tooth Horn)
This one came in a batch with several other Bone Tooth Horn (NJ) releases which will hopefully be worked through for CG soon. Check out the sites below anyway, if not just for the new promotional photo/shrine.
Most anyone with a soft spot for minimal oscillator-driven drone would lap up this trance-inducing 40 minute slothfest from Portland's Acre. The two side-long tracks, "Riley" and "Volcanic Legacy," offer subtle differences in harmonics but more or less all material on here is produced with the same formula. Following a slow build, the tones contort into a simultaneous lull and euphoria. Simplicity like this isn't necessarily easy to pull off, but Acre provides a good example of how it's done. RECOMMENDED!
http://www.geocities.com/bonetoothhorn/
http://www.myspace.com/bonetoothhorn
Most anyone with a soft spot for minimal oscillator-driven drone would lap up this trance-inducing 40 minute slothfest from Portland's Acre. The two side-long tracks, "Riley" and "Volcanic Legacy," offer subtle differences in harmonics but more or less all material on here is produced with the same formula. Following a slow build, the tones contort into a simultaneous lull and euphoria. Simplicity like this isn't necessarily easy to pull off, but Acre provides a good example of how it's done. RECOMMENDED!
http://www.geocities.com/bonetoothhorn/
http://www.myspace.com/bonetoothhorn
WETHER / PILLARS OF HEAVEN / GALLOWS / DEERSTALKER Split (Peasant Magik / No Horse Shit)
This long-playing, four-headed beast of a double cassette from Philly based Peasant Magik and Wilmington, Delaware's No Horse Shit was daunting enough to put off reviewing for a few months (doubtless a few labels could say that at this point). Once the gears get rolling, though, it's damn hard to not play this thing until the bitter end. Wether's "Night Terrors" is a versatile mashup of cacophonous bells, buzzing amplified resonance (not unlike Damion Romero's recent work), manipulation of stereo panning and scorched harsh noise. It's more sparse than cluttered, and Wether's focus on one primary sound at a time works very effectively. Pillars of Heaven follows with "In A Mirror, Darkly," a loping atmospheric piece with multiple layers of wavering tape hiss, distant field recordings and high/ low-pitched oscillations reverberating off of each other. Simultaneously lulling and apprehensive. Gallows is eclectic enough to resist easy labeling, although they resemble Fossils in a soundtrack-ish vein. Miscellaneous clanging, low rumbles and background loops could describe a gaggle of mediocre groups, but this one manages to pull a haunting and melancholy feel from some otherwise apathetic rubble.
The only underwhelming side on here is the closer by Deerstalker. Allegedly a "collaborative effort" between the other artists (there's no mention on the website as to which artists are involved), it bears little resemblence to any of the other groups except Gallows. Rather than calculated drones or walls of distortion, there's some blasé vocal moaning and obscured knob fiddling in the background. Perhaps this was a room recording which translated poorly on tape. This isn't too surprising; as others have previously written, it's not unusual for a one-off noise collab to fail to add up to the sum of its parts.
At any rate, the consistent quality of the other sides should be reason enough to check for this split (both Peasant Magik and NHS have recently had it in stock). The two tapes come in an oversize vinyl case with full-color wraparound art. RECOMMENDED!
www.peasantmagik.net/
http://www.myspace.com/nohorseshit
The only underwhelming side on here is the closer by Deerstalker. Allegedly a "collaborative effort" between the other artists (there's no mention on the website as to which artists are involved), it bears little resemblence to any of the other groups except Gallows. Rather than calculated drones or walls of distortion, there's some blasé vocal moaning and obscured knob fiddling in the background. Perhaps this was a room recording which translated poorly on tape. This isn't too surprising; as others have previously written, it's not unusual for a one-off noise collab to fail to add up to the sum of its parts.
At any rate, the consistent quality of the other sides should be reason enough to check for this split (both Peasant Magik and NHS have recently had it in stock). The two tapes come in an oversize vinyl case with full-color wraparound art. RECOMMENDED!
www.peasantmagik.net/
http://www.myspace.com/nohorseshit
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